Since Milly needed presentation equipment, the meeting was held in Witmer Hall, room 116. The meeting was called to order by President Dean Smith at about 7PM on December 8, 2000.
Magazine Subscriptions
Magazine subscriptions were again discussed. See last months minutes for subscription details. Since we have enough people subscribing to both magazines, those wishing to begin a new subscription will be able to do so at the club rate.
Anyone interested in subscribing should contact one of the club officers.
Leonid Meteors and the HABP
Unfortunately we were clouded out for this event.
Presentation
Chris Milford presented his findings for his research topic An attempted Search for Supernova at the UND Planetary Sciences Observatory. Milly spent many hours out at the PSO, often in very cold weather, imaging target galaxies in hopes of discovering a supernova. What he did discover was the various techniques, imaging and analysis techniques needed to perform a supernova search. Several analysis techniques include:
Milly noted that there are various auotmated search programs going on, but one of the more recent discoveries was missed by these automated searches (Supernova in M81, 1993 J). So there is hope for individual observers with modest equipment. Milly and Dean discussed at length one of the images that contained an anomaly discovered a year after an image was taken at the PSO. After an exhaustive search, no other images were found that could be identified to indicate that this was an object in solar (or Earth) orbit. On the other hand, there is no way of knowing whether or not they captured the only image of a supernova in this galaxy.
The meeting adjourned at about 8:30 PM