The March 11, 2004 meeting of the Champaign-Urbana Astronomical Society was
called to order at 7pm by President Jeff Bryant in the Staerkel
Planetarium. Twenty one people attended the meeting.

Announcements and coming events:

CUAS (and U of I astro club and the planetarium) will each have a table at
Krannert Center before and after the Saturday, April 3rd Kronos Quartet
concert titled "Sun Rings." The Sun Rings performance is based on the
sounds of plasma waves recorded by the Voyager and Galileo space probes.
Kronos Quartet has for thirty years, broken musical barriers by recording
musical numbers as diverse as Howlin' Wolf's "Spoonful", or Jimi Hendrix's
"Foxy Lady", alongside of more classical and experimental fare. Here is a
the night's scheduled musical program:
http://www.kronosquartet.org/Kq-web-inc/2003-04progs/040403.pdf

Later this spring, two comets may be visible in our skies: Comets C/2001 Q4
(NEAT) and C/2002 T7 (LINEAR). The best bet for glimpsing Comet NEAT
locally will be from May 12-16, when towards the west after sunset the
comet and Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter form a line in the sky. Comet
LINEAR can be seen best just before sunrise at the end of April and early
May if your eastern horizon is uncluttered (and unlighted.) Later in May,
it will be in the evening sky, but may be very dim by then.

CUAS continues to plan for our May 22nd star party near Penfield at the
Middle Fork River Forest Preserve(http://www.ccfpd.org/midfork.htm)

We have scheduled two observing sessions at U of I's Allerton Park, near
Monticello, the evenings of June 19th and August 7th. Bring mosquito
repellent!

CUAS is invited to have a display at Marketplace Mall July 17th at "Museums
at the Mall".

Bob Lozar, of the Dark Sky Preserver committee, announced the six potential
sites for a dark sky preserve are Penfield, Allerton, Arthur (in Douglas
county), Walnut Point State Park, South of Sidney and Newman, and the "four
corners" area near Broadlands.

There was a discussion about light pollution at the dome, and whether
anything could be done to limit further deterioration of the darkness of
the sky at the dome near Monticello Field station southwest of Champaign.

Phil Wall will be the new liaison to the Astronomical League. The liaison
sends the AL our member list, this is how we get "The Reflector". (The
current Reflector features a short article by Dave Leake about a DVD!)

There will be a meeting of the CUAS officers at 6:30pm this Sunday, MArch
14th, at the Village Inn. Members at large can attend if they wish.

Then Dave Leake used the planetarium dome to show us how the path of the
Sun, Moon, planets and stars change during the year, and how various
ancient civilizations had found ways to observe these periodic events.

The meeting adjourned at about 8:30pm.

Submitted by Bob Rubendunst
Secretary, CUAS