April Lake Whitney Astro Celebration …. Harry Bearman

Despite the torrential downpours we experienced Saturday, the Third Annual Lake Whitney Spring Star Party was quite a success. This event is independently organized by Thomas Williamson, and he gets aid from members of area clubs, including FWAS, TAS, and CTAS, as well as the AAAA. This year's speakers were Dr. Paul Derrick who writes the "Stargazer" column for the Waco paper, Ed Flaspoehler, Vice President of the American Association of Amateur Astronomers, and Dean Chandler of Central Texas College in Killeen. Friday, we probably had 150 people gaze through our telescopes, and even though it was cloudy Saturday afternoon and evening, we still had about 30 people turn up for the presentations and door prizes.

Activities during the day included fine grinding and polishing a 14" mirror. Much assistance was provided by a visiting Texas A&M grad student, Mike Warren. He'd read of the event in Astronomy magazine, and came up just for this. Our own John Dowell came out and, sheltered from the rain by the eaves of the Recreation Center, completed making a Dobsonian mount for the 14". By the way, the ultimate home for this telescope will be the State Park. Contact Thomas Williamson for information about how you can use this or one of the other telescopes of the Lake Whitney Astronomical Association's telescopes.

It turned out that that weekend was some sort of nationwide Girl Scout campout weekend, and we had probably 100 Girl Scouts come through. One leader had her merit badge book, so were able to make sure that all these girls had met the requirements for their Star Gazing Merit Badge!

All in all, the spring event turned out quite well, despite the rain, and plans are afoot for the summer party on August 3rd.

Mike Warren, Burl Haley, & Thomas Williamson Work a
Mirror

John Dowell Works Gets his Bearings

Nasa Notes ….. Jim Timmons

FAR OUT  (Stardust) - The first comet sample return mission continues normal operation as it returns toward the inner solar system. Stardust reached 2.72 A.U., the farthest distance ever reached by a solar powered spacecraft. Despite the cold temperatures and decreased solar intensity, the spacecraft's battery charge dropped no lower than 91.6%.

HST CHECKS OUT KBOs (Hubble) - The Hubble space telescope has been used to measure the mass of Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs) that travel in pairs. The KBO 1998WW31 was discovered to be a binary last year and the Hubble has measured its mass to be about 5,000 times less massive than Pluto and Charon. Since the discovery of 1998WW31, six additional binary KBOs have been discovered.