Hi gang,

We really had a grand meeting last night.  We started off with a great presentation from Mark introducing everyone to astrophotography.  A load of experience compacted into a concise, fact filled presentation.  Next we discussed a bit about the future of the club and we seem to have an agreement that we need to do the following:

·         Get AFN to run regular announcements about our meetings in order to pull in both newcomers to the hobby as well as established amateur astronomers that are new to the island.

·         Hold monthly meetings with presentations, discussions, videos or other items of general interest to insure the club survives through those months where the weather doesn't cooperate.

·         Use this discussion group to stay in communication and coordinate ideas for meetings.

About 8PM we headed out to Torii Station to enjoy some relatively dark and quite clear skies.  The transparency and seeing (http://www.nexstarsite.com/_RAC/articles/SeeingConditions.htm) were a bit above average and we had three scopes on the field.  We logged several globular clusters, galaxies, planetary nebulae, open clusters, double stars and diffuse nebulae.  Quite a lot of memorable beauty.  We also caught Saturn before it sank into the ocean and spent a good deal of time on Jupiter.  

In fact, Jupiter was unusual last night.  The south EQ band was double its normal width and with quite a bit of texture across the entire width.  It was so wide in fact that it extended all the way up past the equator.  There was still a distinct separation from the north EQ band.  To make it more remarkable, two hours later we went back to Jupiter and the SEB was back to its usual appearance.  Those who witnessed this last night may want to make a note in your observation log - this is not the type of thing you see often.

A few of you are not yet on the Yahoo Group - this is the last message you will get directly.  You can join here:

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/RACAstronomy/

I have just updated the web site - http://www.NexStarSite.com/rac.htm - the meeting schedule for the year is posted and I added a map to the Torii site to the meeting page.  Note that the November and December meetings fall on the weekends associated with Thanksgiving and Christmas.  What does everyone think - should we leave them or reschedule them?  The disadvantage of rescheduling is that a recurring AFN announcement for the 4th Saturday of each month would then be incorrect for those months.

Best regards,

Mike