Bernie Zelazny called the meeting to order at 7:30 PM in Room 300, Lawrence Hall, on the Sul Ross Campus. There were 15 people present.  Treasurer Betty Grimm reported that 21 members have currently paid their dues for the current year.
 

           Bernie Zelazny gave a program on the wealth of astronomical information available on the Internet. For example, the Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn is now returning a great many highly detailed and multicolored pictures of the planet and its system of rings, and will continue doing so for several years. (For more information, go to http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm, and also visit our own BBAStro web site, http://www.bigbendastronomy.org.)
           Several new unmanned space missions have been planned, such as Corot and Kepler.  A terrestrial planet-finder mission has been planned for 2012-15, which will look for wobbles in the positions of stars. (Several tens of stars have been found showing such wobbles.) The planet-finder mission will also detect the presence of oxygen, water vapor, and other gases associated with life as we know it.  The Darwin Mission will send eight spacecraft to look for chemical signatures associated with life by detect-ing particular wavelengths of light.
           The Hubble Space Telescope Site offers a huge number of space pictures. For example, a picture of the Large Magellanic Cloud shows an enormous number of galaxies, many of them as large or larger than our own Milky Way (for example, http://oposite.stsci.edu/).  Among the Best-of-Hubble images were many views of Mars and the moons of Jupiter.
           As a practical observing aid, Bernie showed an especially clear figure giving the phases of the moon day by day for the month of August. For sources of detailed information on many topics, see the following web sites:

Astronomical News:

http://www.universetoday.com

http://www.universetoday.com/am/publish/search_for_more_earths.html?1272004

http://www.seds.org/hst/hst.html

http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/photo_gallery/other_sites.html

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html

http://www.mass.com/moc_gallery/

http://www.jpl,nasa.gov/pictures/jovianmoons/

 http://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/sseop/clickmap

http://sunearth.gsfc.nasa.gov/eclipse/eclipse.html

http://stardate.org/

           It is with much regret that I submit my resignation as your Secretary and Editor of the Newsletter.  I was present at the inception of the BBAS ten years ago, and indeed, served as your first president.  I will miss playing an active role in our organization, but I will continue as a member.
           I have enjoyed the fellowship and stimulation that you have provided me, and I wish the BBAS every success in the future.