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Monthly Meeting Notes

Lots of interesting announcements at the July meeting:

  • Comet LINEAR is still quite visible, now as early as midnight
  • The Martian global sandstorm has pretty well obliterated viewing of surface features for now
  • Mike Daniel attended the National Radio Astronomical Observers' convention this month
  • Ron DiIulio got some good CCD images of the daylight occultation of Venus this month
  • University of North Texas in Denton opens its observatory to the public on the first Saturday of the month.  Contact Ron DiIulio  for direction and details.

The program for the evening was brought to us by John Dowell on the subject of the life and times of Johannes Kepler (1571 - 1630).  Johannes Kepler is now chiefly remembered for discovering the three laws of planetary motion that bear his name published in 1609 and 1619).

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Welcome New Members!

Jim Smith
Michael Thomas

Inside this issue:

Observing Notes

Gene Dawson--The other night I made my first sketch of Mars at my Orion XT-8 dob from my backyard in Benbrook. The next day I calculated the central meridian using data in Sky and Telescope. When I compared the sketch to some CCD images at similar orientation I was excited to see similar images. I was then able to use the Sky and Telescope map of Mars to identify some of the major features.

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