 Friday,
July 4, was a momentous day. While the convention program
was going on, the Mars Pathfinder mission landed on
Mars. Attendees could listen to the talks, or watch
NASA-TV on the Copper Mountain Cable system. The talks
included Dr. Ben Clark speaking on "Anticipated Martian
Discoveries from Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Pathfinder",
and Dr. John Brandt (pictured at left) on "Recent Spacecraft
Observations and Discoveries Related to Comet Hale-Bopp".
A conference call was then placed
to Ken Wilcox in Bolivia where the Astronomical League's
Southern Sky Star Party was being held. Southern Sky
is a now annual event where Astronomical League members
travel to South America to view all the objects in the
southern sky that are invisible from the northern hemisphere.
This was followed by the Astronomical League's Annual
Business Meeting. Minutes of this meeting appear elsewhere.
During lunch, the Mars Pathfinder
landed on the planet. NASA Select had live views from
the Pathfinder Control Room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL). The Pathfinder was able to send back telemetry
indicating it had survived the landing. This was exciting
news!
The afternoon started with a talk
by Mr. Adam Block on the "NOAO Public Outreach: A New
Era for Amateur Astronomy". This was followed by this
year's National Young Astronomer Award winner Heather
Cameron who talked about her multi-year solar observing
project in "To the Sun and Back".
 Ms. Cameron has been interested in observing the Sun in the radio
portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. Her first observations
were of ionospheric enhancement caused by solar flares.
After building a receiver to observe a distant very
low frequency (VLF) radio station and measure the signal
strength with a chart recorder, she began correlating
the signal with solar phenomena. When a solar flare
occurs, the ionosphere is becomes more electrically
charged, and the signal from the distant VLF station
suddenly increase. This is called sudden enhancement
of signal (SES).
After observing for many months, Ms.
Cameron was able to correlate her observations with
solar flares, auroral activity, and coronal holes. Non-solar
phenomena she observed included sunrise, sunset, electric
lights, refrigerators, and electric motors. She was
able to determine a solar rotation rate of 31 days.
Later, she obtained a used satellite "dish" antenna
and used it to more directly observe the Sun. She is
now trying to build an pair of "horn" antennas to study
the temperature of the surface of the Sun.
The Mountain Astronomical Research
Section and the Front Range Astronomical Super Cluster
(MARS/FRASC) then held their business meeting. MARS
is the Region of the Astronomical League that includes
Colorado, Utah, Wyoming, and Montana. FRASC formed from
astronomical societies on the front range of the Rockies
and spread out over some of the same area. All of the
societies in these areas had the opportunity to tell
everyone about their activities during the past year.
Before the evening program, news came
in from JPL that the petals of Mars Pathfinder had successfully
opened. This crucial event meant that the we would at
least get images from the surface of Mars, and we even
might be able to get the Rover onto the surface. It
was announced that with the successful landing, the
Pathfinder would be known as the "Carl Sagan Station"
in honor of the man who had contributed greatly to the
planetary sciences and did so much to popularize astronomy
as well as found the Planetary Society.
The evening meal was a Wild West Barbecue.
Held near the horse riding stables, the food was plentiful
and the company interesting. Ms. Jeannie Kuich, an author
and story teller, told us about the "Soap Operas of
the Sky". A wildfire many tens of miles away brought
a pall of smoke to the startlingly clear mountain sky.
The fire was extinguished later that night, and never
affected observing. Those who wanted to see fireworks
took the shuttle bus to Lake Dillon to see what was
described as "some of the best fireworks ever" to celebrate
the signing of the Declaration of Independence 211 years
earlier.
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