[Chaos-l] CHAOS Meeting

[Jayme Hanzak]

The February CHAOS meeting was well attended with 30 in attendance. 

Topics of discussion were:
Astronomy Day; Walter Fowler informed the club that it was well attended by the public and encouraged everyone to come next year to see all of the displays. 

Frank Porter Graham Observing session: Robert Nielsen talked about the observing session. He said that the skies that night were the best he had ever seen for an observing session. Mickey Jo Sorrell who organized the session said that there was about 105+ there to look through the telescopes. Saturn was the object of the night as usual. 

Farrington Boat ramp: Our recent ejection from the sight was discussed. I mentioned that I have an email out to the NC Wildlife people to see what we can do to resolve the issue of us using the ramp parking lot to observe. There was also discussion about the Big Woods sight that the Raleigh club uses. We need to talk to them about our usage. 

Morehead Planetarium: Mickey Jo Sorrell talked about Morehead's plans for the Lunar Eclipse coming up February 20th. They will be observing at the sun dial and they would be appreciative of our help. They also have a public observing session coming up at Little River Park in Northern Durham on February 29th with a cloud date of March 7th.

T-Shirts: are still available for $15.00. They are long sleeve shirts.

Our Speaker, Professor Henry Greenside gave a very interesting about Fusion as a source for electrical power. He told us about how the stars create their fusion and ways that we can create fusion as well. He explain how the fusion reactor, the Tokomak, functioned and showed some pictures of the units immense size and all the other pieces of equipment to help keep the fusion controlled. The really amazing thing about these reactors is the amount of fuel it take to run them per day. Where it take 9 thousand tons of coal per day to run a coal electrical plant, it take a whopping 4 pounds of fuel to generate the same amount of energy using the tokomak. Unfortunately, it is a carrot that is still out of our reach.

We'll see you next month.


Jayme