Since we have decided to meet every other month during the first half of 2002, there will be no General Meeting during May.  Our next meeting will be on Wednesday, June 12.  However, there will be a star party on May 4 (see Coming Events).

       Tennessee really was his name - not a moniker, or a nickname, but his real, bona fide, legal name.  Barbara and I met Tennessee soon after he arrived in Alpine about 1990.  Some of us remember that he had a Watkins franchise in those days.  He was also in the tree-trimming and wood-chipping business, and he became involved in Hal Flanders' early recycling efforts.  He was an early member of the Sierra Club for a time, and more recently a volunteer for the Cham-ber of Commerce.
       Tennessee was a member of the BBAS for the last five years.  He enjoyed our star parties, especially when we had potluck suppers.  We could depend on Tennessee to bring the ice cream.  He was always disappointed when we discontinued our potlucks as we went on Daylight Saving Time each year.  He strongly disapproved of Daylight Saving, and also the way our time zones have been gerrymandered.  He was fond of pointing out that Alpine and all of West Texas should be in the Mountain Time Zone, as he argued (rightly, in my view) in a couple of letters to the editor.  I have thought the years he spent as a radio man in the Merchant Marine may have sharpened his appreciation of time zones.
       An unusual man, Tennessee.  We will miss him.

       (Edited from Japan Today, April 11, 2002.)  Yuji Hyakutake, the Japanese amateur who discovered Comet Hyakutake in 1996, died April 10 in Kagoshima Prefecture, Japan.  His family reported that he died from internal bleeding from an aortic aneurism.  Hyakutake won international notice after he found his second new comet, using a powerful pair of binoculars in January, 1996. Japan Today has received condolences and notes of appreciation from amateur and professional astronomers worldwide.
       We have fond memories of Comet Hyakutake sailing across our sky in 1996, its slender tail extending as much as 60 degrees.  In some respects, Hyakutake was more impressive than Hale-Bopp, which was discovered earlier but only later became a naked-eye object.  The passage of Hyakutake across our sky, like the passage of its discoverer, was all too brief.

       A star chart is a kind of map of the sky, showing the locations of stars, constellations, and other objects.  The ancient Greeks presumably used star charts, but none have survived from that era.
       Until about the 1400s, star charts were greatly influenced by the early Greeks, who named their constellations after mythical figures.  In many cases, the locations of the stars bore little relationship to the figure a constellation was said to represent, as John showed us in several transparencies, some of them quite fanciful.  Later star charts have shown the constellations as "stick figures," such as Orion and Canis Major, rather than the earlier, more fanciful characterizations.
       The planisphere is a kind of circular star chart that can show the whole sky, for a given latitude, at any chosen time of year and time of night.  By setting an open window to the proper date and time, a planisphere will show the entire sky at that particular time.  Some planispheres have white stars on a black background while others show the stars as black on white; choosing one of these over the other is simply a matter of taste.  Because we see different regions of the sky from different north-south locations on the earth, it important to choose a planisphere designed for the latitude where you plan to use it, 30 degrees north in our area.
       Sky globes have been constructed showing the sky as it would appear from outside our galaxy.  Such a globe shows the stars and constellations reversed left and right, compared with what we see from the earth.
       Star atlases are bound collections of star charts covering the whole sky.  Edmund Scientific's Mag 5 Atlas shows stars down to 5th magnitude, near the limit of naked-eye visibility under a good sky.  John recommends this atlas as useful to a wide range of amateurs.  The Herald-Bobroff Atlas is much more detailed, but less straightforward to use.  Several other atlases are available at varying levels of scale and detail.
       Jim Walker passed out copies of three star charts, noting that star charts differ in important ways from maps of the earth. If you orient a map so that north faces north on the earth, then east is to your right on the map and on the earth, and west is to your left.  Now if you orient a star chart in that way, and look down on the chart, as you would a map, then east is to your left and west is to your right - opposite to these directions in the sky.  But if you orient a star chart overhead, when you look up at the chart, the directions on the chart will correspond with the directions in the sky.  A star chart should lie between your eyes and the sky, just as a map lies between your eyes and the earth.  With experience, however, it is possible to make sense of a star chart without holding it overhead.
       One star chart showed the northwestern sky at 9:00 PM on April 13, the night of our scheduled star party (which was clouded out).  Comet Ikeya-Zhang was low in the NW on that chart.  Another chart showed the whole sky at the same time.  The third chart showed the location of Ikeya-Zhang for several days through April 20 at 5:00 AM CDT, well above the northeast horizon.  On a clear morning, you should be able to find the comet with the naked eye.  It is quite prominent in binoculars.
       Doug McCombs showed a small atlas of finder charts for the Messier objects and other things of interest.  Each page of the atlas shows the portion of sky surrounding an object as seen through a finder scope.
       The Sky Spot Atlas, in three volumes, about 4 X 6 inches, is published in Bountiful, Utah.  Doug has argued that finding objects by star hopping - using star charts to find things, as opposed to go-to telescopes, or even setting circles - helps people learn the sky better.  Anyone who has ever observed with Doug will agree that he has indeed learned the sky.  No doubt, star hopping builds skill, and maybe even character!  If you would like to order a set of the Sky Spot Atlas, Doug can give you more information.

       (Edited from Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.)  Inching across the sky like bumper-to-bumper commuters on their way to work, a rare planetary alignment will allow sky observers to see every planet in our solar system in a single evening!  "There will be other opportunities in the future to see the planets in different configurations," says Philip Sadler, Director of  Science Education in Cambridge, MA, " but it won't be anything like this for at least another 70 years. This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience."  This month's Star Chart features this gathering of the planets in the early evening.
       Two very special events will occur during this planetary line-up.  On May 10, Mars and Venus will appear to pass so close to one another that, to the naked eye, they will seem to become one bright heavenly object.  Earlier, on May 5, something even more spectacular will happen. The bright planets Mars, Saturn and Venus will group together to form a perfect equilateral triangle in the western sky. This dazzling configuration will be visible almost everywhere on Earth.