see http://cantonbecker.com/retrograde for details…
see http://cantonbecker.com/retrograde for details…
Details about NOVAC meetings can be found at http://www.novac.com/meetings/ – including information about the club’s informal pre-meeting dinners.
Sunday November 10th, 2013 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm
Guest Speaker: Daniel Reichart
Topic: Outreach growth for Skynet
Location: Meeting Room at the base of the Observatory in Research Hall
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The Leonid meteor shower will reach its maximum rate of activity. Some meteors will be visible each night from 15 Nov to 20 Nov, but the best show will be on this evening. The maximum number of meteors expected to be visible from a dark location is around 20 per hour (ZHR). The Moon will be 15 days old at the time of peak activity, and being so close to Full Moon, will severely limit the observations that will be possible. Man, the moon won’t give us a break for meteor showers in 2013…
Radiating from the constellation Leo the Lion, the Leonid meteor shower is famous. Historically, this shower has produced some of the greatest meteor storms in history – at least one in living memory, 1966 – with rates as high as many thousands of meteors per hour. Indeed, on that beautiful night in 1966, the meteors did fall like rain. Some who watched the shower said they felt as if they needed to grip the ground, so strong was the impression of Earth plowing along through space, fording the meteoroid stream. The meteors, after all, were all streaming from a single point in the sky – the radiant point – in this case in the constellation Leo the Lion. Leonid meteor storms sometimes recur in cycles of 33 to 34 years, but the Leonids around the turn of the century – while wonderful for many observers – did not match the shower of 1966. And, in most years, the Lion whimpers rather than roars, producing a maximum of perhaps 10-15 meteors per hour. Like most meteor showers, the Leonids ordinarily pick up steam after midnight and display the greatest meteor numbers just before dawn.
November’s Full Moon is the “Hunter’s Moon” (English), “Beaver Moon” (Native American), “Frost Moon”, “Snow Moon” , or “Kartik Poornima”.
This meeting is cancelled due to weather – Elections will be held in January and “Show and Tell” will be booked for another time in the future.
NOVAC Members,
Our next meeting will be Sunday Evening, December 8, 7:00 pm with an equipment “show and tell” event with NOVAC members bringing their astronomy equipment for others to see.  You will be able to talk with the equipment owners about how and why they use what they have for observing.  We will meet in Room 163,  Research Hall, George Mason University. Check the web page, http://www.novac.com/meetings/, if you need directions and details.
We are looking for members to bring their equipment like last year. Â Email webmaster@novac.com (and the list for that matter) to let us know what you are planning on bringing.
Also, bring along whatever you use to power your equipment (unless it is your automobile!) so that attendees can see the creative ways folks get power to their scopes and mounts and accessories.
If you are setting up equipment to show, please try to arrive between 6:15 and 6:45 to setup your things.
We will also have light refreshments in the spirit of making this a social event to honor all of our volunteers that served NOVAC so well during the past year.
We will elect officers for 2014 at our December NOVAC Meeting. Â Candidate nominations have been received for each position. Â If you wish to run for one of the officer or trustee positions, please self-nominate by emailing your desire to do so at this email address: Â elections@novac.com
We look forward to you coming to attend this fun NOVAC meeting!
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Geminids
The final major meteor shower of every year (unless one surprises us!) is always the December Geminid shower, often producing 50 or more meteors per hour. It is a beloved shower, because, as a general rule, it’s either the August Perseids or the December Geminids that give us the most prolific display of the year. The Geminid meteor shower will reach its maximum rate of activity. Some meteors will be visible each night from 7 Dec to 16 Dec, but the best show will be on this evening. The maximum number of meteors expected to be visible from a dark location is around 100 per hour (ZHR). The Moon will be 11 days old at the time of peak activity, and being so close to Full Moon, will severely limit the observations that will be possible.
December’s Full Moon is the “Oak Moon”, “Cold Moon”, “Frost Moon”, “Long Night’s Moon”, “Moon Before Yule”, or “Margashira Poornima.