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The Warren Astronomical Society meets on the first Monday of the month in the auditorium of the Cranbrook Institute of Science. At the meetings, we spend the first hour or so of the meeting on club business and observing reports, then have two presentations, one short and one full-length.

Main Talk: Lunar Imaging
As an avid member of the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers, Rik Hill has imaged a whole lot of the moon. His "airplane window" views of lunar features frequently grace the pages of our newsletter, The WASP. In this talk, Rik will talk about his approach to imaging our friendly neighborhood satellite.

Rik Hill was born in June 1949, shortly after Antares was obscured by a nearly full moon. His first astronomical observation took place on May 6, 1957, during a Mercury transit. He continued observing through the 1960s, first with a 2.4" refractor and later with a Criterion RV-6, which he bought with money earned from mowing lawns and washing cars. In the Navy as a radar technician, he helped navigators identify stars and participated in the Atlantic backup recovery for Apollo 8. After his discharge, he sold his RV-6 to a local high school girl, who later invited him to help establish an astronomy club. They married in June 1974 and have been together for over 50 years. Rik got involved with ALPO (founded the Solar Section) and AAVSO, co-founded The Sunset Astronomical Society in Midland with his wife, Dolores, and became 1st VP of the WAS while working as an optician in Saginaw. From there, they both went professional and moved to Arizona.

Rik worked at the Warner & Swasey Observatory on Kitt Peak for 12 years, then at the Lunar & Planetary Lab at the University of Arizona for 22 more years. In his work with the Catalina Sky Survey, he discovered thousands of asteroids and 27 comets before retiring in October 2015. Now, he focuses on astronomy from his home observatory while caring for bonsai trees and fostering rescue cats.

Short Talk: Measuring the Distance to the Moon the Old-Fashioned Way

Jeff MacLeod recreates how astronomers first estimated the distance to the moon without any modern equipment like radar, retro reflectors or even telescopes? He will guide you along his recreation of these ancient measurements, showing that what starts off as a seemingly simple experiment, can escalate to an obsession.

Jeff MacLeod is a former Warren Astronomical Society President, Observatory Chair, and now Outreach Chair. During his time at Wayne State, he was a presenter in their Planetarium while getting a bachelor’s in physics and another in astronomy. Jeff works in the aerospace sector simulating missiles. Nowadays, most of his free time is spent working on his space-flight simulator, a life-size recreation of a Gemini spacecraft you can actually fly in.

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If you would like to present either a short talk (10-15 minutes) or a full-length talk (45-60 minutes) at a future meeting, please email Jonathan Kade at firstvp@warrenastro.org.

The views expressed in presentations are those of the speakers and do not necessarily represent, and should not be attributed to, the Warren Astronomical Society.

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