We've added a Friday night (7pm) speaker, Caty Pilachowski, Chairman of the
Astronomy Department at Indiana University.  Topic:  "Tempest in the Teapot:
the Core of our Galaxy".

Mirror cleaning demo will be at 6pm Friday
Ronchi telescope testing on the observing field after dark Friday night.
Foucault mirror testing in the Nature Center after the contest awards
Saturday night, so that should be about 6:30.  Bring your mirrors for
testing.

-John

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The starting time is wrong.  The event opens 4pm Thursday, 2pm Friday, noon
Saturday.
The $5 "single day" admission is available Friday or Saturday only.

-John


>From: pg_obs@yahoogroups.com Reply-To: pg_obs-owner@yahoogroups.com
>To: pg_obs@yahoogroups.com Subject: [pg_obs] Indiana Family Star Party,
>8/9/2007, 2:00 pm
>Date: 2 Aug 2007 17:55:29 -0000
>
>Reminder from: pg_obs Yahoo! Group
>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pg_obs/cal
>
>Indiana Family Star Party
>Thursday August 9, 2007
>2:00 pm - 12:00 am
>(The next reminder for this event will be sent in 5 days, 4 minutes.)
>Location: Prairie Grass Observatory
>Street: 6815 West Co. Rd. 200 N
>City State Zip: Frankfort, IN
>
>Notes:
>2pm Thursday through noon Sunday
>
>
>All Rights Reserved
>  Copyright © 2007
>  Yahoo! Inc.
>  http://www.yahoo.com
>
>Privacy Policy:
>  http://privacy.yahoo.com/privacy/us
>
>Terms of Service:
>  http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

_________________________________________________________________
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Well I thought I had posted an update a few weeks ago, but it looks like I
forgot.  There's even more now (I just updated the website a few minutes
ago), so if you haven't checked the starparty website recently, take a look.
   We've got vendors, speakers, and several door prizes this year.  Also
mirror testing and cleaning (with collodion) demonstrations.
<http://indianastars.us/starparty>

-John

_________________________________________________________________
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Sorry, you need to add 1 hour to the times I listed.  I forgot I had never
updated the "pgo" user configuration at heavens-above.com for the change to
daylight savings time.

-John

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The space shuttle and the space station will be chasing each other across
the sky tonight, at 9:52-9:56 pm, and separated by about 1 second (with the
shuttle leading).  It starts in the west-northwest, and will be 10 degrees
above the horizon at 9:52:28.  Peak altitude (angle above the horizon) is in
the southwest at 9:55:17, 55 degrees above the horizon.  They will fade into
the earth's shadow at 9:56:04 in the south-southeast, 38 degrees above the
horizon.

These times are for PGO, but the times should be within +/- 10  seconds if
you're within 50 miles of PGO.  See
<http://heavens-above.com> for details (hint- if you log in as user "pgo",
PGO's lat/long coordinates will automatically be entered.  No password
needed).

-John

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Sorry for the late notice.  Somehow the timing for this (automatically
generated) message was set wrong.

-John


>From: pg_obs@yahoogroups.com Reply-To: pg_obs-owner@yahoogroups.com
>To: pg_obs@yahoogroups.com Subject: [pg_obs] Open House, 5/11/2007, 9:00 pm
>Date: 12 May 2007 00:41:08 -0000
>
>Reminder from: pg_obs Yahoo! Group
>  http://groups.yahoo.com/group/pg_obs/cal
>
>Open House
>Friday May 11, 2007
>9:00 pm - 12:00 am
>Location: Prairie Grass Observatory
>Street: 6815 West Co. Rd. 200 N
>City State Zip: Frankfort, IN
>

_________________________________________________________________
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The Indiana Astronomical Society and the Wabash Valley Astronomical Society
are sponsoring a free  Astronomy Day event (two days, actually) at PGO on
Friday/Saturday April 20/21.  The rest of this year's schedule is also now
on the website:
<indianastars.us/schedule.html>
The year's first event is Saturday March 17.

Here's the program for April 20/21:

Friday 7 pm  Russ Kaspar will give a presentation on his recent trip to the
American Astronomical Society's semi-annual meeting, in January in Seattle.
The AAS is the main professional society for professional astronomers in
America, and they held this meeting in conjuction with the semiannual
meeting of the American Association of Physics Teachers, so that joint
sessions on teaching astronomy at the high school and undergraduate levels
could be discussed.
Evening observing starts at 9 pm

Saturday:
Solar observing (both H-alpha and white light) all day starting at 2 pm
2 pm: Highlights of  the Spring Sky, John Switzer
4 pm: "How Big is Big?", John Switzer
5 pm: Wonders of the Evening Sky, Thad Hatchet and/or Jeff Patterson (a
presentation of images)
7 pm: Tutorial/Demonstration of Telescope Types and Binoculars, John Mahony
Evening observing starts at 9 pm

-John

_________________________________________________________________
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Camp Cullom's annual "Graze and Gaze" event will be held this Saturday Oct
14.
The Chili Supper will begin at 4:30 (with smores for dessert, I think).  A
hayride will follow, with observing after dark at PGO.
Meal tickets will be $6.00 for adults and $4.00 for children 4-12.  Younger
children may eat free
with their families.

-John

Here's some pictures of the dome, with the new scope mounted.

-John

.. is nearly finished.  The carpet was put in this morning, and I'm
finishing the hold-down hardware.  Bill Hayward has been working on
motorizing the dome.  I brought the mount out to PGO this week, and Bill and
I will be bringing the scope to the dome on Saturday.  We should be there
about 1 pm.

-John

It was a stressful but ultimately successful week.  After several false
starts, the dome was finally put on top of the building last Friday (which
coincidentally was the 5th anniversary of the opening of PGO).  Watching the
dome hanging on the crane cable 8 feet in the air was the most stressful 5
minutes I've experienced in many years.  Thanks to Frankfort Power&Light for
the heavy duty utility truck.

The dome was raised on a square frame of 2X4s, which had to be removed
before the dome could be fully lowered into position.  So four screws were
mounted in the upper ring of the base building to act as jack screws to
lower the building the last few inches (and to raise it in the future if
needed for maintenance).  Then the dome was raised a fraction of an inch on
the screws so that the 2X4 frame could be removed, and then 40' of
weather-stripping was added around the perimeter of the upper ring of the
building (when the dome is lowered, this fits into a channel in the outer
edge of the dome's base ring).  Then the dome was slowly lowered on the
screws to about 3/4 inch above its final position (the track and rollers
still needed to be installed).  While lowering the dome, it was noticed that
one quadrant of the dome seemed to be "sagging" about 1/4 inch more than the
rest of the dome's base ring.  When the dome was built, the first step was
to set the base ring on 8 concrete blocks as a base, and then level it with
shims, before the rest of the dome was built on the base.  I can only guess
that one of the shims got knocked out of position early in the construction.

On Sunday and Monday I added the track and rollers, but then when I tried to
lower the dome the last 3/4 inch, the sagging quadrant caused a major
problem- that portion of the bottom ouside "skirt" of the dome was resting
on the building's roof corner before the dome was fully lowered.  So I had
to re-do the entire track on Tuesday, using wider metal, so that the final
position of the dome was a fraction of an inch higher.

In the end it worked well.  The dome rolls so easily that when I tried to
close the shutters, the sideways force made the dome rotate instead!
There's still a lot of fine-tuning of the track and rollers needed, and then
carpeting and other finishing details.  If you want to help, we start
Saturday at 9am, Sunday at 11am.

I forgot to take picture of the track and rollers, but here's a few pictures
taken Tuesday night with the dome rotated to various positions.

-John

See attached pictures.  That's me in the third picture holding up the dome
;)

The truck this time was from the Frankfort power and light utility.  Serious
machinery.

There's still plenty to do to get the dome properly attached to the base
building, installing the track and rollers, a bit of painting left to do,
etc, so show up this weekend, Saturday starting at 9am, Sunday at 11.

-John