CUAS monthy meeting Thursday, March 8th, 2001
- minutes taken by P. Wall, secretary

Members attending: 15

Guests attending: 0

- Geoff Burch, president, opened the meeting by going over the list of
  events. The most noteworthy are April 28th, which is National Astronomy
  Day, and the upcoming Messier Marathon during the members' skywatch
  on March 24th.

- Dave Leake, treasurer, reports $2641 in the treasury. Geoff had sent
  out 80 postcoards to members who had let their memberships lapse. Dave
  got back four. He reports (from memory) that we had 97 members before
  but we now have 72.

- Geoff brought up hats and T shirts. A picture of the T shirt artwork was
  passed around. Next meeting we will be taking orders for T shirts. Dave
  said that he will inquire about shirt sizes and having our club logo on
  the front with the artwork from the vendor on back.

- Mike Rosenberger, observatory directory, says that we have most of the
  original pieces of our dome's mount. We discussed restoring or
  rebuilding the mount and fork.

- Mike also says that he is willing to try to make adapter plates so that
  people with C-8s, Criterions, and other scopes can use the pier. He just
  needs a template for each kind of scope.

- Dave mentioned that he and another had gone Bob Tolson's (spelling?)
  retirement party. Taking over as general manager of the Park District
  is Bobbi Herockovitch (spelling?), who is said to be a very nice person.
  [Note: The Champaign Park district helps us with the newletter, leases
  the dome site for us, and has helped us with digging on the site, both
  when the dome was constructed and when we needed a hole dug for our
  new pier.]

- Phil Wall, secretary, got pinned down to do the Constellation of the 
  Month presentation at the April meeting. He will do Ophiuchus.
  There was no presentation at the March meeting.
  
- We discussed the Messier Marathon and hints and tips for getting the
  most out of it. Geoff also mentioned the idea we'd come up with at the
  last board meeting for using either the dome or the shed as a warming
  hut.
   
  > Saturday, March 24th, dusk to dawn.

  > Dress properly, with lots of layers.
  
  > Get there early, no later than 6:30, so that you can be set up in
    time to get the first object, M77, which sets at 7:10 that night.
    
  > The consensus seems to be that the first five and last five objects
    will be the most challenging.

  > There is a two hour lull in the early morning when few or no Messier
    objects are visible. It is recommended that skywatchers take a nap
    during this lull.

  > There are lists of Messier objects presented in order of sighting them
    both in the current Astronomical League's Reflector newsletter, on the
    web at Sky Online, and I believe Geoff mentioned the SEDS website (see
    the CUAS web page for the link).

- Dave then showed many of the objects, in order of efficient sighting,
  with a slide projector, then showed where the first and last ones of the
  evening are located using the Zeiss star projector.

- We closed the meeting with general discussion.

- On my way out, I talked with Dave and Geoff about using the warming shed
  idea. Geoff says that Bob Robendunst has volunteered the use of his
  kerosene camp stove, and I mentioned the possibility of renting a very
  large thermos that we can fill with boiling water so members can make
  warm-up beverages such as coffee, tea, herb tea, or hot chocolate during
  the marathon.