Log, Mar 12, 2004
40 people. We had quite a crowd tonight with a number of families and a Cub Scout Den from Ashaway. A lot of folks got a good view of Jupiter and its 4 Galilean Moons. We decided that reports of seeing more than 4 moons were probably an exaggeration by some of the Cubs. Les led the Cubs outside to do some Sky Hopping and later accompanied them to the Nature Center where the Cubs had candy snacks and cocoa. While Les was outside, Joe displayed M65, M105 and M42. When M105 was in the eyepiece we also saw NGC3384 or maybe NGC3389.After the Cubs left, talk started to get more esoteric. We discussed the make up of the clouds in M42 (mostly hydrogen and helium with a heavy sprinkling of heavier elements). Les pointed out that a surprising amount of water, equivalent to all the water on Earth is created in M42 every 24 minutes.Somehow the topic drifted to an area where no one seemed to know much. Basically it was the E. Haekle's idea of "Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny" or the growth of the embryo goes through the same stages as the evolutionary rises of vertebrates. Since this is an area that none of us professed to understand, I will leave the details to your fertile imagination. Somehow I don't think NASA will need to review the material to plan the next stage of exploration of the rovers. Stephen Jay Gould's 1977 book on the subject explains all for those who really would like to understand it.We tried again to split the Pup from Sirius. This was a good example of why it is important to double check. We did split something, but it was just Too Good. There was too wide gap and the eyepiece simply wasn't that strong. Nothing appeared in the next eyepiece. Almost certainly it was an internal reflection in the first eyepiece. We tried Rigel as a check to see how splitting was going. We closed early.-Les Coleman
