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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We had most of the “hard-liners” turn out for the meeting. Dean, Keith, Hank, Harry and I were present for our 80th meeting. It was only a short 8 weeks since our previous meeting but the weather has gone from snow shovels to salt tablets for the heat and humidity. The Chicago area always provides…
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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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We zoomed again and this time I had some new technology, a new webcam that enabled me to host the meeting from my desktop rather than my overwhelmed laptop. Dean, Harry( by phone), Hank, and surprise participant, Keith, joined me in the discussion. We kept the meeting to 2 1/4 hours but covered a vast…
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We zoomed again. Keith helped as co-host and Beth, Chad, Dave and Harry participated. We also had a special participant, Jim Plaxco, President of the Chicago Society for Space Studies, who added his knowledge on the topics we were discussing. First topic was concern about the Space Camp organization going bankrupt. Beth is a two…
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The pandemic continues but our comfort with Zoom seems to be improving. Co-hosting by Keith improved performance and we were able to play video clips without any problems. I mentioned that July 21st was our 9th anniversary of holding meetings and tonight was our 66th get-together. It was a smaller group of meeting stalwarts with…
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We did it! The US launched 2 astronauts from Florida on a SpaceX Dragon2 capsule! Weather was iffy but it seemed like the clouds opened up and provided an opportunity at the 2:22 PM launch time. Dean, Keith, Hank, Phil and I were all “zoomed” in to share the event. The 1 minute discrepancy among…
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Keith, Hank, Harry and I checked into the Zoom meeting to share our experiences for the launch. Unfortunately, the countdown reached T-17 minutes and it was scrubbed for weather criteria. Electrical potential and cumulus clouds plus another factor were all out of bounds for a successful launch. Ironically, 25 minutes later all the weather criteria…
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Because of the limitations of Zoom we weren’t able to discuss a few miscellaneous topics, I thought I’d share my notes on them before they become too stale. NASA has been having yearly contests of short amateur films made from their archival footage. Here are some recent winners in Cinespace 2019. Particular moving is this…
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With us all locked down for the coronavirus pandemic, we tried Zoom for a digital meeting. We had good participation with, Keith, Phil, Harry (ending work at Ohare), Hank, Dave (mostly only audio), Beth & Chad, Dean (with a slight delay from technical problems) and myself. I was a little disappointed that when I shared…
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We had a good turn out after an 18 week hiatus. Dean, Beth, Chad, Harry, Dave, Keith and his friend, Hank and I. The background for my presentation had this interesting photo showing men on horseback riding up to check on the Soyuz capsule with one of the Russian helicopters in the shot. I thought…
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Silvio, Dave, Harry and I were in attendance for our 63rd meeting.It was ironic that after 8 years we are still waiting for the first manned launch of the Commercial Crew program. A person could have gone through high-school and college in that time. But I assured the group that the first manned flights are…
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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 had a good turnout for our 60th meeting with Dean, Phil, Harry, Keith, Silvio, Dave and myself. With so many of the old-timers present, we had to pose for a quick photo in front of the TV with my new presentation software Google Slides showing Starman heading out to an orbit beyond Mars in…
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I started the meeting with a cool picture from the Hubble Space Telescope. The smile is the distorted image of a galaxy behind the two eyes which has had its light bent by the gravity of the foreground galaxies. The photo was taken with the Wide Field Camera 3 which astronauts installed during the last…
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We had a good turnout with Dean, Keith, Dave, Jim A. and myself in attendance. We started our 7th anniversary meeting with some of our recent experiences. I had finished COD astronomer Joe DalSanto’s two astronomy courses each consisting of 12 well produced videos available on YouTube. The course titles are “Stars and Galaxies” and…
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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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Dean, Silvio, Dave, Beth, Chad and I were in attendance for the first meeting of 2018. Last minute work issues prevented Keith and Phil from attending. This meeting turned into a SpaceX Falcon Heavy and Falcon9 fest. I apologize to Dean for delaying our kickoff of the Carl Sagan Cosmos revisit. I promise to minimize my…
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Dean, Keith, Silvio, Harry, Phil and I were in attendance for our last meeting of 2017. I kicked the meeting off by describing how Carol and I had watched the ISS flyover the previous night around 5:15 PM while we were walking the Prairie Path. Just as the ISS pasted the zenith, we saw another…
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Who would of thought that we would have a new record for MASS attendance with 10 people. It was almost a “standing room only” situation. There was Dean, Silvio, Jim A., Dave, Harry, Dennis, Beth, Chad, myself and Dave’s friend Calvin. One thing I noticed is that when we have that big a group our…
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What a delightful meeting we had! Even though I was a little under the weather with a UI, everyone’s feedback on the eclipse and the attendance of Beth and her husband Chad added some great discussion to the topics. With Dean, Silvio, Phil, Jim A., Keith and I in attendance, it was a great turnout.…
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It was a long 9 weeks since the last meeting but we pressed ahead and got our get-together in before the eclipse. Dean, Silvio, Harry, Harry’s friend Denny and myself were in attendance. There was no main topic tonight but we all looked forward to Harry briefing us on his multiple-day stay at the Oshkosh…
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This was our 51st meeting! Again a long 14 weeks between get-togethers. Keith, Silvio, Harry, Dave, Phil, Jim A. and I were in attendance, so it was a great turnout. We were going to shoot for a new Guiness Record for “Number of Topics Discussed” because I had notes for 38 defined topics and 8…
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This was our 50th meeting! Boy, time sure flies when you’re having a good time! Keith, Silvio, Harry, Dave, Phil, Dean and I were in attendance. Since it had been 15 long weeks since our last meeting, we spent quite a bit of time catching up on what people had been up to. Dean made a…
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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 49th meeting. Dean, Harry, Dave and his friend Liz, Keith and I were in attendance. As the first order of business, we all suggested that Keith credit himself on the website. It would not exist without his support and technical expertise. There are quite a few interesting programs coming on this November.…
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This was our 48th meeting. Jim A., Keith, Phil, Silvio, Dean and I were in attendance. We suggested that Keith add a spot on the web site assigning himself credit as the designer of the site. But so far I don’t see a picture or any text related to him. 6/19/16 I went to the CSSS meeting…
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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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