The newsletter of the Rainwater Astronomical Association.

December 1998, Vol. 9 No. 7

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The December meeting of the Rainwater Astronomical Association will be Friday, December 11, 1998 at 7:15 PM. Jim Hill will give a presentation on the story behind the Christmas star and will answer any questions out there to all you Santas who are planning on getting/giving a telescope for Christmas. Also, there will be a club business meeting to plan next year. As you will see in the next article, we have a lot of new toys on their way. Well discuss discounts in Astronomy and Sky & Telescope magazines for members and vote on RAA re-joining the Astronomical League. If you want to find out about (or even join) the Rainwater Astronomical Association, this is the meeting to come to. Hope to see you there!

Rainwater Observatory just purchased a Spitz A-2 Planetarium Projector and a 20 diameter dome from the University of Wisconsin-Madison! The weekend of the 19th Jim and Craig will travel up there to get it. We will finally have a working planetarium! As you may or may not know, the Goto S-2 projector has never worked properly with our size dome. We believe that the S-2 is fixable, but we just can seem to figure out how. Once we have the planetarium operational with the Spitz A-2 we may consider selling the S-2. It wont be long and well have planetarium shows!

A big thank you to the French Camp Academy Board of Trustees which have approved building a 25 X 40 classroom/library addition to the Planetarium. If youve visited us recently, you probably noticed how much stuff we have accumulated over the years. The Planetarium is just not big enough to hold everything. With this new classroom, well offer workshops for science classes and science teachers. Well also have a lot more room for people (especially during the Mid-South Star Gaze and for groups). Once the building is built, well need your help in furnishing the classroom. Stay tuned to the Rainwater Observer and the web site for more information.

The building for Dr. Don Brannans 6 Astrophysics Telescope is complete and is in operation. You have never seen Saturn until you look at it through the 6. Crisp! says Jim. Hats off to Dr. Brannan for sharing such a wonderful toy with all of us!

Now all we need is comfortable chairs for the planetarium. . . Jim and Craig went to the Pink Palace Museum in Memphis and picked up 150+ chairs in good to excellent condition for FREE last month. Boy, the only thing were missing is the kitchen sink. (We plan to have one of those too in the new addition!)

Instead of retyping these NASA press releases, I've set up these links to the stories at NASA's web site. The Universe "Down Under" is the Target of Hubble's Latest Deep View New Mars Images Show Lava Flow Plates and Active Dunes

Ask the Astronomer Since weve re-opened the web site at rainwater.astronomers.org, weve been bombarded with questions from our Ask the Astronomer page. Dear Astronomer, Eger accommodationWe are two eighth grade students from the Philadelphia area doing a science fair project about the consistency of heavenly bodies in different time zones of the United States. We were wondering if you could give us any advice or materials to help us with this project. We plan to go into open areas at night on the last two weeks of December 1998 at the same time in different time zones, chart what we see as in planets and constellations and compare our information. We are presently searching for star charts of those nights in Philadelphia, Pa. and St.Louis, Missouri, and how to design our own star maps according to what we see. The Answer: The stars relative positions will look the same from any place in the world at the same local time. That is, if you look at Orion from Philadelphia at 9:00 p.m eastern time., it will be about the same height above the eastern horizon in St. Louis at 9:00 p.m. central time. This will be an hour later in St. Louis than in Philadelphia since it takes the Earth an hour to turn 15 degrees of longitude. (15 times 24 equals 360 degrees) Since St. Louis is a bit south of Philadelphia, Orion will be a bit higher in the sky, and the north star will be a bit lower. The north star will always be the same height above the northern horizon (in degrees) as you latitude. At the north pole, the north star would be straight overhead. At the equator, the north star would be on the northern horizon. Medieval sailors used to use this trick to find their latitude. The Earth's motion around the Sun

causes the stars to rise about 4 minutes earlier each day (365 times 4 minutes is about 24 hours). The stars motions across the sky with respect to each other are so slow that we don't see any relative change of position in a human lifetime. For more information, check any astronomy text book, Guy Ottewell's Astronomical Companion, Sky and Telescope magazine, or Http://www.pa.msu.edu/abrams/diary.html I hope this helps. Link of the Month NASA Human Spaceflight Web Site: http://shuttle.nasa.gov Be sure to check out the Real Time Data -- Orbital Tracking, and see if you can track the space shuttle in your sky. Coming Events December 11: Rainwater Astronomers Meeting. December 12: Open House. December 13: Geminid Meteor Shower. January 9: Rainwater Astronomers Meeting. If you want to come to the Observatory, but can't make any of these dates, give us a call or e-mail. We're open by appointment too! Rainwater Astronomical Association Current Members: 57