Please join two interesting discussions on historical astronomy
Saturday, May 7, 2009
NCHALADA LXXXVII
Northern California Historical Astronomy
Luncheon and Discussion Association
www.nchalada.org

Chabot Space & Science Center, 10000 Skyline Blvd., Oakland
in the Board Room, Dellums Building (West end)
Directions
(Parking is free in the overflow lot, but costs $4 in the structure)

Morning discussion, 10 - 12:30:
Constellations of Middle and South America

Chair:  John Westfall, Association of Lunar and Planetary

Lunch probably at Harry's Hofbrau or Home Town Buffet, then a brief business meeting

Afternoon discussion, 2 - 5 PM:
The Other Moons of the Solar System

Chair:  Nancy K. Cox, San Francisco Amateur Astronomers

Unfinished Business: Metric distances
A few meetings ago, John noted that astronomy uses several non-metric units, where metric units are available. He cited the light-year and the astronomical unit for length. Astronomy also uses the masses of the Sun, or Jupiter, or the Earth, instead of grams. This long-established usage predates SI's invention of prefixes greater than mega-.

The light-year is very close to 10 trillion kilometers. It is closer to 10 trillion kilometers than the distance to anything measured in light-years is known. Therefore, in practice, for every distance cited in light-years, that is the number of tens of trillions of kilometers. If I get my metric prefixes right, a light-year is about 10 petameters: 10 Pm.

-- Norm
Unfinished Business: Dramatic Astronomy
At the last meeting, I asked some questions about astronomical dramas, and the group suggested many interesting possibilities.

What astronomical principles and events would make good plot elements for plays?

Transits, eclipses, impacts, shuttle disasters, predicting an improbable disaster, time allocation committee, discovering a message from ET, priority on a discovery, Large Hadron Collider makes a black hole, Trinity burns the atmosphere, Arthur Stanley Eddington goes to Principe, and other expeditions; the Neptune Scandal, stranding in space, conflict between what Mission Control says and what you want to do, discovering pulsars, the cretaceous/tertiary controversies.


What astronomical settings would make good settings for movies and plays?
observatories, spacecraft, Star of Bethlehem, exploring the Moon, Venus, South Pole, ...


What astronomical personalities would make good movies and plays?

Giordano Bruno, Tycho, Stephen Hawking, Caroline Herschel, Maria Mitchell, Pickering's Harem, Nobel Prize winners.

Please bring munchies.
For further information, contact:
Norm Sperling, Editor

The Journal of Irreproducible Results
413 Poinsettia Avenue

San Mateo, California 94403
650-573-7125
nsperling@california.com
www.everythingintheuniv.com