President John Bell opened our meeting at 7:30 PM in Room 300, Lawrence Hall, on the Sul Ross Cam-pus.  There were 15 people present.  John held a drawing for several door prizes such as star charts and glow-in-the-dark displays.  John’s program was a video on the universe as seen in infrared.

           Although infrared light is of a wavelength too long to be directly visible to the human eye, it is possible to record infrared electronically and photographically, thereby making it visible.  Until the 1960s, our knowledge of astronomy was essentially wholly based on observations made with visible light, as in Galileo’s discovery of the moons of Jupiter.  In the 1960s, radio telescopes were able to record images in radio waves having wavelengths enormously longer than light waves.
           William Herschel demonstrated the existence of invisible infrared wavelengths, too long to be seen by the human eye, but detectable as a form of heat energy.  Although the earth’s atmosphere blocks most infrared, sensitive heat meters cooled with liquid helium were able to record infrared radiation from space by the 1960s.
           In January, 1983, the Infra Red Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) was launched into an orbit 540 miles above the earth.  IRAS was a joint Dutch-American undertaking.  Data from IRAS were downloaded twice daily to a ground station in England, an amount of data as large as  an encyclopedia.  Indeed, IRAS recorded more data than any other space project up to that time.
           IRAS was able to see 20,000 galaxies.  The satellite confirmed the disc shape of our own galaxy, and also discovered a disc of dust grains and pebbles around Vega, the first indication of the beginnings of another solar system outside our own.  [Later workers, notably Marcy and Butler, have discovered as many as 50 extrasolar planetary systems.]
           IRAS’s supply of liquid helium, necessary for its operation, had evaporated by November 23, 1983.  The satellite’s useful life had come to an end, and it was then destroyed.

           We still have many people have not yet paid dues for the current year. Please have a look at your checkbook, and if you have not yet paid your dues for the current year, please send a check to:

           We need everyone’s support for the premier astronomical society between Odessa and El Paso, if not beyond.

           Jim and Barbara Walker passed around a sample copy of the Explore the Universe Calendar, available from Tide-Mark Press at a cost of $5.38 each.  We agreed to order 24 calendars to sell for $12.00 each as a fund-raising exercise, as we had done 2 years ago.

           Dale Evans and Brenda Bell commented on the bright lights at the Dairy Queen in Alpine.  Jim Walker said that he had recently had a call from Red Patillo, a county commissioner, concerning those lights.  One of Patillo’s constituents had called him (Patillo) complaining about those lights, which do not comply with the Alpine or Brewster County Lighting Ordinance.