NEKAAL Observer - December-January, 2009-2010 Vol. 4 No 1 Volume , Issue

	The NEKAAL Observer
December-January, 2009-2010 Vol. 4 No 1 PO BOX 951, Topeka KS 66619 (785)449-2102 http://www.nekaal.org The official newsletter of Farpoint Observatory and the Northeast Kansas Amateur Astronomers' League

Sky Highlites for December and January
Janelle Burgardt
Here are the sky highlights for the next two months on separate pages for printing. Thanks, Jan!

Change For A Time
Graham Bell
Time, it seems, is a moving target. Graham Bell summarizes a new concept of time and provides two references, including a recent Scientific American article. The links are broken in this pdf (my fault), so just copy and paste them into your browser. What a great "time" of year to ponder time, itself.

Staring At Lightning
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
This month's Space Place article describes the new Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM) satellite that can see and monitor lightening activity accurately. Though this will help safety issues for aircraft and pilots, its main use will be as a tool to quantify and monitor climate change.

2010 Official Ballot
Russ Valentine
Here is the ballot. Please follow the instructions and vote for the board officers and board members for 2010. Bring your ballot to the Christmas Party on December 13th or mail it into our fearless secretary, Russell Valentine. If you have a family membership, you may vote twice. Just print out two ballots.

Manual for controlling the 14" Meade Telescope from the Main Building
Russ Valentine
Russ has written a terrific and comprehensive step-by-step manual on how to remotely run and image celestial objects with the 14" Meade LX-200 telescope located in the Kessler Building, remotely from the heated comfort of the main FPO building. This includes detailed pictures and screenshots from the software programs. Since this was a very large document, Russ has uploaded the manual to the server and provided a description and link to the manual, rather than publish the entire manual in The Observer.