Doug Christianson--Like many FWAS'ers I took most of the month off, cuddled up on the couch with cocoa and Astronomy magazine instead of braving the cold and the dark of winter with my scope. Feeling guilty after the last meeting, I took advantage of warm weather this week and set up everything for an imaging session in my backyard. Alas, during the setup I discovered that the balky cooling pump for my cookbook camera would not pump at all. That meant that cooling my ccd was impossible and long exposures (more than a second or so) were going to be overwhelmed by electronic noise. What can I do with an un-cooled ccd camera and short exposures? Bright planets were the answer and the subject of my imaging session. Both Saturn and Jupiter were in ideal locations and needed exposures of less than half a second, cooling wasn't going to be a problem.

(Continued on page 7)

Scott McDonald - Normally I would have been up early to watch the reentry too but this is the busiest time of the year for me at work and I was tired so I opted to sleep in. That was a bad choice. We received a phone call from a friend who lives in Houston at 8:30 a.m. and we immediately turn on the TV. We had a hard time believing what we were seeing.

Less than one year ago on February 28, 2002 my wife and I decided, at the last minute, to go view a shuttle launch. If successful it would be our second launch to

(Continued on page 2)

Inside this issue: