The May 10, 2004 meeting of the Champaign-Urbana Astronomical Society was 
called to order at about 7pm by President Jeff Byrant in the Staerkel 
Planetarium. 17 people attended the meeting.

We discussed CUAS's first star party held May 22nd at the county forest 
preserve in Penfield, where we we not overwhelmed with large crowds. 
Questions were asked. What could be done to make the event better. Was the 
event too far away? Was it not publicized enough? Should we not bother with 
a pot luck dinner next year? Should we have a guest speaker? Did we like 
the facilities of the park? The thing mentioned the most as a negative of 
the event is that for a summer event, when the skies don't get dark until 
late, the 11pm event closing was too early. Someone suggested using the 
meeting facility in the winter, when an 11pm closing would offer a few more 
hours of dark skywatching? John Stone suggested that Walnut Point may be 
more flexible concerning closing, and Dave Leake mentioned that Walnut 
Point is even more remote than the forest preserve.

From the CUAS web page, you can link to this page which maps out how bad 
the light pollution is at our observatory:
http://cleardarksky.com/lp/ChampUrbILlp.html

Sometime soon we will schedule the cosmology video from John Dobson's 
group. The presentation will most likely be split up into two separate 
viewings a month apart.

The weekend of  July 17-18, CUAS will have a table at the Museums at the 
Mall event at Market Place Mall. Volunteers would be appreciated. This 
would be a good event to try to gently educate our neighbors about how 
light pollution is wasteful and detracts from the wonderful night skies we 
have in Central Illinois.

The club will order 25 2005 calendars.

For the July and August meetings, we will have to park on the north side of 
the planetarium due to construction.

The majority of members who voted about the green laser issue voted for the 
club to not buy a green laser pointer.

Dave Leake will order 15 tons of limestone rocks for our observatory 
driveway soon. The club may need some volunteers to help smooth out
the rocks.

The members voted on supporting a children's astronomy program, and all 
votes were in support of program for children.

From 7:50 to about 9:00pm, Bob Lozar gave a presentation about light 
pollution in our area, and showed how concerned Hoosier astrogazers were 
able to get a nature preserve designated as the first dark sky preserve in 
Indiana. Bob was fairly persuasive that we could do something similar if we 
work at it collectively. Bob says that both the U of I club and CUAS should 
put up some web site content (perhaps from his computer slide 
presentation?) educating people about light pollution, and why it should be 
reduced; how it saves money, increases safety, preserves our natural 
resources and heritage. People interested in helping keep our skies dark at 
the observatory or elsewhere should contact Bob at 
Robert.C.Lozar@erdc.usace.army.mil, or visit the International Dark Sky 
Association web site at http://www.darksky.org/

The Meeting was adjourned at about 9pm.


Submitted by Bob Rubendunst
Secretary, CUAS