Since we have decided to meet every other month during the first half of 2002, there was no General Meeting in May.  Our next Star Party will be June 8, and our next General Meeting will be on Wednesday June 12 (see Coming Events).

       (Edited from The New York Times).  The age of dinosaurs, which ended with the cataclysmic impact of a meteor 65 million years ago, may also have begun with one.
       Researchers recently reported in the journal Science the first geological evidence of a meteor impact 200 million years ago, coinciding with a mass extinction that eliminated half of the major groups of life, opening the door for what was then a relatively small group of animals: the dinsaurs.
       "There is a geochemical signature of something important happening, probably an asteroid impact, just before the time in which familiar dinosaur-dominated communities appear," said the lead author of the article, Dr. Paul E. Olsen, a professor of earth and environmental sciences
at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, NY.

       (From The Associated Press).  Astronomers at the University of Hawaii have discovered 11
more moons orbiting Jupiter, bringing the total Jovian moons to 39.

       (From NASA, May 24).  Stick out your index finger and hold it at arm's length.  The width of your fingertip (less than 2 degrees wide) is how far apart Jupiter and Venus will be on June 3rd –  a remarkable close encounter between the two brightest planets.
       The two planets are rushing together, drawing noticeably closer each night.  In fact, there is no danger of a true collision – Jupiter is 560 million miles from Earth while Venus is only 120 million miles away.  The two will converge in appearance only.

       Barbara and I saw an interesting overflight of the International Space Station on Saturday, May 25, from 21:15:55 to 21:18:07.  The magnitude of the ISS was 1.4.  Near the middle of its path, the ISS transited the moon, passing between us and the moon at an altitude of about 11 deg.  The transit took a few seconds, during which the ISS was invisible.  Had the ISS been much brighter, or darker, we might have been able to see it against the face of the moon.
       When we realized we were going to see a transit, we were too surprised to time the event.  Such a transit should be visible over a narrow band extending west to east on the surface of the earth.  You can check the times of visible passes of the ISS and many other satellites at
http://www.heavens-above.com for Alpine and a couple million other locations worldwide.