Sacramento Valley Astronomical Society

Liam McDaid, SVAS President

Hi, everybody! I first want to remind everyone that if you haven’t renewed, please do so. The SVAS is down to less than 100 paid members, and $35 can’t be too much for everyone. This situation is improving financially somewhat as a result of not printing our newsletter out anymore, but we do need people to renew. (Click here to download the Membership Form in PDF format.)

It’s been six months now since I became SVAS President and I’d like to review the changes that have happened since then. The most important one is that we have a new place to meet. Sac City has been gracious enough to host us for our monthly general meetings thanks in part to the stellar roster of speakers that Board member/Speaker Seeker Mike Mehrdadi has created. In fact, in November our local legendary eclipse-chaser Dave Buchla will speak on eclipses and China. We also have a more user friendly website. All information about meetings and directions and parking (which is FREE) is located there. We are also working to get an email service that can actually email the newsletter to the membership. This should come on line within the next month or so. This way, everyone (almost) will be reading this instead of an unknown number now.

That’s it for the good news. The bad news is that our volunteer base has dropped way too much. Few folks have stepped up to help out and that has not been good for the organization. As a result, our public face is much reduced here in the community. Lynda Hall has become our Outreach Director again and if you are interested in volunteering, I urge you to contact her at lyndahall@surewest.net We are always looking for volunteers and this has always been true.

It’s almost the end of the International Year of Astronomy and there are still two months left. It is, we must admit a poor choice for this anniversary as no really (TV reporter type) interesting astronomical things happened that were visible here this year (not even a bright comet, massive impact on the Moon, or nearby supernova ). There was the big impact from LCROSS and the Moon, but that appears to have been a bust.

The one truly interesting thing in the sky this year because of its very nature can’t be shown with a telescope. The Sun is quiet, in fact too quiet. It’s in the 14th year of its 11-year sunspot cycle. That’s not a typo. Every time I check the sunspot count for the day (http://www.ct.astro.it/sun/ , click on the picture marked Continuum), it’s pretty dead. So what, you ask? When the sunspot count is low, the luminosity or power output of the Sun goes down. It seems like it should be the other way around, but that’s how it works. This means that when the Sun is quiet, the Earth gets less energy from the Sun. Global Warming, anyone? In the 17th century during a time known as the Maunder Minimum, the Sun was comatose quiet and the Earth was very cold. If the Sun is going into another minimum, this could delay or even counteract the effect of Global Warming for decades. Climate modelers don’t want to hear this because the issue has become politicized, but the warming of Earth could be delayed. Of course, when the Sun comes raging back to normal it will make the effects of warming much worse down the road, but when have humans ever planned for the long term? Now the Sun may not be going through a minimum like the Maunder Minimum, but it is an interesting coincidence that it should happen right when we need it to buy time to get off fossil fuels. Perhaps it will help our species dodge a bullet. Perhaps. We’ll just have to keep watching the Sun.

Clear and action filled skies to all (keep hoping for that supernova – my money’s on Eta Carinae),
Liam McDaid, SVAS President

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