Some of us have been VERY busy.

This month I wanted to spend some time letting you know of the many things that members and board members have been working on recently.

Beginners Class gets help from AstroImagers members

Antonio Miro runs the OCA's beginners class - now attended by upwards of 30 people each month (many are prospective members of our club). Antonio asked for help - he wanted to be able to show his class some astrophotos. I thought it would be a great idea if the images we used were actually created by other members. The idea being that it will show the beginners class what can be done by regular OCA members. Four members of the special OCA AstroImagers group printed out samples of their work. In particular I would like to recognize Dick Greenwald for producing over 12 high quality prints of his original work - all with very detailed information about the objects in his photos. Antonio used the prints for his October class meeting - and reported back they were very well received by the attendees.
*Thanks also to Jim Windlinger, Dave Kodama and Bill Patterson for their help with this.

AstroImagers takes on AstroImage 2002

The OCA's AstroImagers Special Interest Group now has around 60 online members. This group is dedicated to perfecting the art and science of Astrophotography (both the film and digital kind). Our last meeting marked the first year since this group was formed. The meetings occur each month on the third Tuesday at my offices in Irvine - with more than 20 people usually attending. The past year the meetings have been chaired by Garth Brooks. He has done a great job with running the meetings and keeping us all focused on the topics at hand. Last month he turned over the chair to another great member Gregory Pyros. A recent very important development is the creation of a very special sub-group tasked with the planning for our AstroImage 2002 conference. The whole group has come up with some great ideas for next years conference and it will be the sub-committees task to make it all come together. Look out for more information on this event soon.

ANZA Maintenance Committee

A special group was setup some months ago in order to examine in detail many aspects of the Anza site - including the observatory and Anza house. The committee consists of Barbara Toy, Bob Gill, Tim Hogle and Don Lynn. Don is the person who you will often find down at Anza working on many aspects of the maintenance and upkeep - he has been doing this job for quite a few years now (and we hope many more years :). Barbara Toy created a very extensive report of their findings. One of the first items on this list was related to something I have no experience with -the pumping out of the septic tanks for the observatory and Anza House. Apparently this has not been done for very many years - and there was concern that damage would occur if this was not handled quickly. Barbara arranged everything and went to the site in order to oversee the operation a few weeks ago (everything went smoothly - although we were very near the "danger zone" as far as capacity). While she was there she also took it upon herself to do some items of maintenance on Anza House and also re-painting some of the stairs around the property.

I would like to offer a special thank you to Barbara and the Anza Maintenance Committee for their very many efforts - it is most appreciated by all of us who use the Anza facility.

Upcoming;

The OCA Elections for boardmembers is approaching in January. Nominations for Board Members will be open at the December meetings.

Liam Kennedy
"every day we are connecting ever more photons of light from distant galaxies to the eyes, hearts, minds and imaginations of our members and others in our community."