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SEPTEMBER 28, 2012 - General Membership Meeting
at the
Franklin Park Civic Center -
The
Tudor House
Alternate
Meeting
Location !!!
For a Map and Directions
to The Tudor House, click
HERE
We had to change the location of this month's meeting due to the Kiwanis Civic
Center, our normal meeting location, being used for Kiwanis' business. We
should be back at the Kiwanis Civic Center for next month's meeting. Watch
for announcements prior to the next meeting.
Easiest directions to The Tudor House: |
1) |
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Enter through the
Portage Lakes State Park entrance from Manchester Rd. |
2) |
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Follow the curvy main park road
1.2 miles to
the beach area parking lot without making any hard turns. |
3) |
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At the near right corner of the beach area parking lot is an access
drive into the Tudor House parking lot. |
4) |
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Park in the Tudor House parking lot. |
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8:00PM
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Call to order and introduction of
our speaker for tonight - Glenn Cameron
Abstract:
Have you ever run across an old photo in a box and wondered
at the details? Who, what, when, where, and why? I faced the
equivalent only in video form. I had some old video I had taken
through my telescope back in 2003. I knew the date, time, and
location and I knew the details of the image train from sky to
video camera. I also knew that Pluto was somewhere in the frame.
I just didn't know which little white dot was Pluto. I'll speak
about how I managed to figure out the mystery using a
combination of planetarium and astrometry software as well as
Internet cloud based software. I had fun and can't wait to share
the details with the club.
Here are some web sites mentioned in Glenn's talk:
http://www.astrometrica.at/ Great astrometry
software.
Comes with a fully functional 100 day trial license. 30 Euros to
buy.
http://nova.astrometry.net/ Free online astrometry
solver. What's an astrometry solver? You upload a picture of
stars and after a while the web site will "comment" on your
picture telling you where in the sky the picture was pointed and
what objects are in the picture. This site is partially funded
by the US National Science Foundation, the US National
Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the Canadian National
Science and Engineering Research Council.
http://www.flickr.com/ Flickr from Yahoo! This is
a popular free photo sharing site. If you join Flickr and within
Flickr you also join the Astrometry group, you get another free
astrometry solver. In this case you upload your star picture
then you also submit the picture to the Astrometry group. In a
half hour to an hour, usually, the Astrometry group will
"comment" on your picture telling you where in the sky the
picture was pointed and what objects are in the picture. Now
here's the weird thing. The Astrometry group in Flickr is the
same as Astrometry.net. That's not the weird part though. The
weird part is that I've submitted pictures directly to
Astrometry.net that failed to get solved yet when submitted to
the Flickr/Astrometry group that same picture gets solved. When
your picture is solved you are offered a link to http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/
and shown the same area of the sky that your picture covers.
http://www.worldwidetelescope.org/ This is another
free site. It's a beautiful planetarium program that shows real
photographs of the night sky. You can zoom in to beautiful
pictures of deep space objects. If you link to this site from
your solved Flickr/Astrometry group picture you can adjust a
slider that fades your picture in and out while overlaid onto
the web site view.
http://www.youtube.com/user/universetoday Universe
Today offers several videos on YouTube. I recently discovered
that they hold weekly "virtual star parties." You can join them
live online or you can view them after the fact. The virtual
star parties will be hosted by a few people on webcams who also
upload what their telescopes are viewing. One of the frequent
hosts is Phil Plait, author of Bad Astronomy. Very cool! |
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9:00PM
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Short break |
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9:15PM
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Business meeting will be called
to order. |
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