Author: Jim Mueller

This was our 88th meeting and it couldn’t have come at a better time. The down feeling from the recent election was over-shadowed by the great turn out of friends. Dean, Laura, Keith, Hank, Phil, Dave, Harry and Beth all joined in for over 3 hours of great conversation about ourselves and all the great…
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This was our 87th meeting. We were able to celebrate the 13th anniversary of MASS meetings, our first meeting was on July 20, 2011. Some things never change, I think we talked about the Dragon and Starliner capsules that night too. Dean, Laura, Keith, Hank, Don, Harry and myself were in attendance. There are also…
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Monday April 8th was a long day but completely worth it. I had spent the previous week before the eclipse pouring over cloud sky cover percentages and researching sites from Arkansas to Indiana that had viewing areas. Historically, Texas and Arkansas had the best probability of clear skies, but that would be a long drive.…
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This was our 86th meeting and the last meeting was a long 21 weeks ago. Our meetings are becoming a little sparce with only 3 of them in 2023. But it was great to get the band back together. Dean, Laura, Phil, Don, Dave, Beth, Chad and myself were in attendance. The theme for tonight…
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Here was our background picture for tonight’s meeting. But with the meeting so close to Halloween, I saw this picture from the Planetary Society and thought it might has been more appropriate. It was a cool night for our 85th meeting and Keith, Hank, Don, Beth, Harry and I were in attendance. I started with…
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It was our 84th meeting and our 12th anniversary meeting. I still remember our original group getting together at Triton College in July 2011 and deciding rather than getting to listen to Dean talk once a month at Triton or a couple of times at the Villa Park Library, why don’t we form a club…
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After a long 25 week hiatus, we had a great turnout for our 83rd meeting. Dean, Keith, Hank, Don, Phil, Beth, Chad, Laura, Carol and I attended. The long interval was not intentional, we tried for a meeting on March 31 but the threat of tornadoes and hail made me call it off and not…
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We had a good turn out with Keith, Hank, Harry, Don, Dave and myself present for our 82nd meeting. Before we got into our introductory items we had to oh and ah at the success of the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission. DART launched around Thanksgiving of last year, November 24, and impacted the…
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We had a good turn out with Dean, Keith, Hank, Harry, Phil, I, and new member Don present for our 81st meeting and our 11th anniversary get-together. We started by introducing ourselves to our new member, Don. Don and I connected through our mutual health club. It pays to wear, astronomy themed t-shirts. Don’s profession…
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It was a good turn out on a damp and cold night. Dean, Keith, Hank, Phil, Harry and I were present for our 79th meeting. I had plenty of topics to discuss after 4 months since our last meeting. The fact that I had read one and a half years of back issues of “Astronomy”…
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At 6:20 AM CST on Christmas Day JWST launched from French Guiana on its million mile trip to the L2 LaGrange point. It was a smooth and flawless countdown. Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA Associate Administrator for Science, said the launch is only 20-30% of the risk factor for the mission which has 344 single-point failure items…
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At a 2 PM CST Dec 21 press conference, NASA says JWST is ready to launch on Dec 24 but then hours later said due to high-altitude winds the launch is delayed one more day to Saturday, December 25. The communication issue where there are some data drop-outs between the telescope and the ground support…
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The communication problem between the telescope and the rocket has been corrected. Bill Nelson, NASA Administrator, says December 24, 2021 at 6:20 AM CST is still the launch time. Less than one week!!Now they will encapsulate the telescope within the Ariane 5 fairing. Next milestone will be the roll-out to the launch pad on December…
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This was to be the one week update, but trouble with a cable between the rocket and the telescope has caused a least a two day delay for the launch. It is now scheduled for Friday, December 24, 2021 at 6:20 AM CST. The JWST has been placed on the rocket which was when the…
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This was our 78th meeting and we had a great turn-out for our end of 2021 get-together. Dean, Keith, Phil, Harry, Hank, Dave and I were in attendance. We had sad news to share with the death of one of our inaugural members, Silvio. He will be greatly missed. His enthusiasm for all things involving…
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It was great to be back in the groove with an in-person meeting. Dean, Phil, Hank, Silivio and I were in attendance. Hank was very stylish with his SpaceX Falcon 9 shirt. Preliminaries After exchanging pleasantries, we plunged into “Preliminary topics”. I told the group that Dean had shared his Great Courses program “Introduction to…
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Since it has been a while since our last meeting, I’d thought I would post a status of manned space for 2021. I’m recovering from a 4 day Internet and Uverse TV outage and glad to be connected to the information torrent again.The Inspiration 4 crew of 4 returned to an Atlantic splashdown off the…
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It was great to get back to an in-person event after a long 17 months of Zooming. Dean, Keith, Phil, Hank and I were present. This was our 76th meeting. We were celebrating our 10th anniversary of meetings. The first one was on July 21, 2011. I started off by displaying the pile of notes…
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We had a quorum with Keith, Hank, Harry, Silvio, Phil and myself there for our 75 meeting and 11th one using Zoom. A missed communication kept Dean away and Beth was meeting at the same time with her analog space mission team that will be getting together in Poland this July. Keith did the honor…
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Another good group participated for our 74th meeting. Dean, Keith, Hank, Harry, Silvio and I were there for our 10th meeting using Zoom. We again recorded our meeting and I’m proud to announce that with the aid of Keith’s expert video editing our first meeting on YouTube already has more than 100 views. Watch out…
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We had a good turnout for our 73rd meeting. Dean, Keith, Phil, Hank, Harry and I were there for our 9th get-together on Zoom. We were now comfortable enough with Zoom to have Keith record the meeting. We’ll see how well our meeting translates into video format after Keith gives it a once over.To lead…
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We had a good group with Keith, Silvio, Phil, Hank, Jim P., Dean and myself present. With our new start time of 7:30 PM, I was proud that we finished up at 9:30. I think monthly Zoom meetings are helping me keep the get-together to a 2 hour limit. Our first order of business was…
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We had a record turnout for our 71st meeting and the 7th on Zoom. Keith, Dean, Beth, Chad, Silvio, Hank, Harry, Dennis, Beth’s mom, Bonnie, and Beth’s friend from Green Bay, WI, Lisa, and myself, set a record of 11 people on the call. We started a little later at 7:30 PM to accommodate Dean’s…
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We had another good turnout for our 70th meeting and the 6th one using Zoom. Keith, Phil, Silvio, Hank, Beth and Chad joined me in a 2 hour 15 minute summary of events happening in space and astronomy. First order of business was to announce the entries for our next MASS Prize, this time it…
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We had great participation. Dean, Keith, Silvio, Phil, Hank, Jim Plaxco, Harry and I were all on the zoom meeting for 2 1/2 hours. This was our 69th meeting and the 5th one using Zoom. I’m still waiting for the time we can all participate in person. Nothing beats the give-and-take of an in-person get…
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This was our 62nd get-together and our 8th anniversary. It was our second meeting as an “eating” event, following our PlutoPalooza 4 years ago. Dean and his wife, Laura, Phil and his wife, Lin, Keith, Dave, Silvio, my wife Carol and I were in attendance. We enjoyed Portillo’s beef sandwiches, chopped and fruit salads, a…
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Dean, Phil, Keith, Phil and I were in attendance for our 61st meeting. I started the event with a series of questions. The first question was who knew what this picture was? Only a couple of people knew that it was the recent picture of the black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy…
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We were a small group with only Silvio, Dean and myself in attendance. I started the night by sharing my neutrino knowledge that I acquired from a recent COD talk. Neutrinos were first proposed in the 1930s but not detected until the 1960s. About 65 billion neutrinos pass through each area of your body the…
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I never realized that Trump’s picture would be emblazoned at the top of our website for over 3 months because my meeting notes from November 11th were the last update and we did a short story on what his election might mean for the space industry and NASA. So this short article is to help…
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This was our 47th meeting. Phil, Silvio, Dave, Dean and I were in attendance. Silvio and I related our presence at the Cernan Space Center relaunch on May 24, 2016. There were quite a few dignitaries present, including a couple of mayors and the Triton College President. The last SkyWatch had good news, Dan Troiani…
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Keith, Phil, Dave, Dean and I were in attendance for our 46th meeting. We started the meeting with a quick review of a couple of Internet astronomy resources. One resource is from an astronomer, Chris Impey, of the University of Arizona. His site TeachAstronomy has a good mix of short text and video clips. Chris…
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Dave, Jim A., Phil, Silvio and I were in attendance for the 45th meeting. Both Dean and Keith were not able to come due to work commitments. We went with Plan B and hopefully Keith can present his space colonization paper at a future meeting. I did show everyone his article “Space Colonization, What Are…
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Dave, Silvio, Keith, Dean and I were in attendance for the 44th meeting. It was great to see everyone for the first time in 2016. Since Pluto was discovered the day before on Feb. 18th, 1930 and my discovery was on the same day-of-year but in 1949, we celebrated with a bottle of Rogue “Mango…
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