Five hardy and hopeful BBAS members gathered at the Walkers’ in spite of rather heavy clouds.  How-ever, by about 10:30 PM the heavy clouds had disappeared leaving no more than perhaps 10% very light clouds.  We saw several good Perseids, some leaving briefly glowing trails.  We saw about 50 Perseids and about half as many sporadics.
       Friends in Sunny Glen saw a better display about 4:00 AM.  The consensus in the astro community seems to be that we had about an average year for the Perseids.  Better luck next time!

       (Edited from NASA, August 16, 2002)       Our twin spacecraft, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, will soon complete 25 years in space.  Voyager 2 was launched first, on August 20, 1977, and Voyager 1 was launched later on September 5, 1977.
       These spacecraft have made a wealth of discoveries about our four gas-giant planets and their 48 moons, including volcanoes on Jupiter's moon Io.  As NASA marks the mission's silver anniversary, they hope at least one Voyager will pass beyond the boundary of the Sun's influence before the onboard nuclear power supply runs down. Voyager 1 is now the most distant human-made object, about 85 times as far from the Sun as Earth is.  This spacecraft is now about 6 billion miles from the sun, about twice the current 2.8-billion-mile distance of Pluto, heading toward interstellar space at more than 35,000 mph. Voyager 2 is now about 68 times the Sun-Earth distance.  Both spacecraft are still going strong, although they were designed for only a four-year journey to Jupiter and Saturn.  The Voyager team still receives information almost daily from the two spacecraft, now traveling beyond all the planets.
       "A radio signal traveling at the speed of light takes nearly 12 hours to travel between Voyager 1 and Earth,” said Ed Massey, Voyager's project manager.  He noted that if something went wrong on board, a full day would lapse before we could know about the problem and send commands to fix it.  So the project team tries to anticipate any emergencies, Massey said. 
       Whatever their future holds, the Voyagers have already performed superbly.  Among their big surprises: Jupiter's moon Io has active volcanoes; Saturn's rings have kinks and spoke-like features; Miranda, a small moon of Uranus, has a jumble of old and new surfacing; Neptune has the fastest winds of any planet; and Neptune's moon Triton has active geysers.  Long after they fall silent, the Voyagers will keep speeding away from our solar system, each carrying an "interstellar outreach program" of recorded sounds and images from Earth, Massey said.  For more information, visit http://www.nasa.gov.

       Giovanni Belli will be our guest at our September meeting. Coming from the 17th century, he will explain why so many in the Italian academic community are pleased to see that the Vatican has finally decided to act against Galileo Galilei. This fellow is an argumentative, scheming, stubborn man whose opinions are in error and who is meddling in things that are not his business.  Don't just go along with common thinking about Galileo.  Come and hear the other side of the case.