Update February 1, 2004

Treasury:

Bank - $1,782.65, Petty Cash - $85.00, Total - $1,867.65.

1. Paid monthly phone bill.

2. Made $42 to Keith Richards for electricity, this was for the 2nd half of 2003.

3. Paid $143 for quarterly insurance payment.

4. Paid $96.76 to Keith Richards for real estate tax.   This is for the last three 1/2 years and gets us current with Keith.


Observatory Director:

1. The electricity usage has almost doubled since August. This might be an indication we are having some type of electrical problem. Marty is aware of it and he will run some tests very soon.

2. The Meade 12" is back up and in working order. The declination motor which burned out was replaced.

3. A web cam was installed in the new observatory to monitor the dome's slit. This is another step in preparing the telescope for remote control operations.


Director of Observations:

For Bob’s complete observations report please visit the Monthly Sky Calendar on our website.

Due to clouds, not much viewing was done. T

Editor:

Getting together material for the next issue, which should be out in a month or two

All members of CVAS and the OTAA are encouraged to contribute ideas, articles, images and observation reports for possible inclusion in future issues of this monthly update and in the quarterly editions of The Valley SkyWatcher.
 

Old Business:

1. Steve Fishman, Larry Boros, Vicky Ford, and Dan Galdun have volunteered to teach a group of girls at Mayfield Middle School the basics of Astronomy in preparation for the Science Olympiad competition to be held at Cleveland State on February 28th. Had four training sessions already, with another four to go.

2. Dan Rothstein, Larry Boros, and Ian Cooper met with the Geauga Park board. This was basically an organizational meeting to discuss the 25" Oberle Telescope. The park district has big plans for a project. Besides having a building with a roll-off roof for the telescope, they want to have a warm room for meetings, restrooms, a paved parking lot, etc. They want to use to place for other things besides just the Oberle Telescope, such as having a weather station, solar telescope, hiking trails, etc. No decision has been made as to where to place this at, when the weather gets better plans are to visit the possible sites that the park owns. They plan to go after grant money and local business to pay for this project. Another meeting is planed for February 23rd at Geauga's West Woods location.

3. Grants - Larry went over some of the feedback he received on what to use grant money for. The main goals are for our own electrical hookup, automating the clubs telescopes, restrooms with running water, making the place more handicap accessible. And since the Geauga park district is planning to go after grant money as well as us, we talked about how do we differentiate ourselves from them. This main thing to point out is that the park is for general viewing and introducing people to the astronomy and we are for where people go from there. We can stress things like actually using telescopes, learning the sky, astrophotography, and doing research.

New Business:

1. Went over calendar - Added dates for Nassau Station on May 21st, June 11th, August 20th, and September 10th, see Calendar for rain dates and setup time information.

2. Club Member, Bobby Weitzner, school science fair project which was in doing astrophotography with a web cam and photographing the planets with different filters was selected to go on to a more advance competition at Cleveland State University.

Visitors:

Had 9 visitors, 5 were from the Hershey Montessori Farm School.  Wolfram Kiparski, a member from the late 1970's returned to Cleveland and joined the club today.