Continued from previous message.

President's DAy, with low activity and little commuting, New York was 
smothered under 1/3 to 1/2 meter of snow. 
    The storm whacked much of the northeast, including Washington DC. 
That town called off work at federal agencies on Tuesday the 18th. 
Goddard Space Flight Center was one of them, with resulting long delay 
in processing satellite data. This happened just when comet NEAT, 
2002-V1, soared thru the LASCO C3 plates! By the end of the week, 
Goddard was back in normal operations and the pictures were issued. 
    The megaevent continues to be the new Einstein exhibit at the 
American Museum of Natural History, the largest and fullest of any 
Einstein ever. It's on the fourth floor, with the dinosaurs, and 
requires a timed ticket. That's a ticket, for $7 (adult nonmember of 
Museum) after entering the Museum, stamped for the next halfhour 
interval of the day. You can ask for any halfhour remaining in the day 
and you may stay in the exhibit as long as you like, until closing. 
    This is a must-see for anyone visiting the City. The Einstein 
artifacts are rotated every couple weeks, both to upset preplanned 
theft and to help preserve the fragile papers. There are lots of 
'toys' to play with like a rubber table for warped space near masses, 
a floor mat which shows your 'gravity field' on a mural-size video 
screen, a time dilation wall of clocks. 
    The recently inaugurated viewings at York College and the ongoing 
ones at Columbia University attract healthy crowds. On Friday the 
21st, four NYSKiers rook in the special public talk by Columbia's Dr 
Arlin Crotts, who discussed use of gravitational lensing to study 
intergalactic 'dark matter'. 
    Check Columbia at at www.astro.columbia.edu/~jake/public. York is 
at natsci.york.cuny.edu/~yco. 
    NYSkies's new brother astronomy group is doing well, with several 
of us now enrolled into it. Guild of Manhattan Sidewalk Astronomers in 
Yahoogroups, curated by NYSkier Dante Rosati. He promotes informal 
stargazing from Manhattan sidewalks and already attracted a few 
NYSkiers to it. Join at -- yes!, you have to type this whole thing --
guildofmanhattansidewalkastronomers-subscribe{at}yahoogroups.com. 
    I myself had a real special treat on Sunday 9 February. In mid 
January I was tapped by the NYC Science and Engineering Fair to be a 
judge! I included this public event in last month's column without 
ever foretelling what it would turn into for me. After due 'check of 
my qualifications', including praise for NYSkies, I was inducted at 
City College of New York early on that Sunday morning. One person to 
thank for this honor is a computer and transit associate, Steve Kaye. 
He works with his high school students to get their exhibits into the 
the Fair. I posted an article about my experience in NYSkies. 
    The Amateur Astronomers Association, at is Board of Directors 
meeting on 8 January 2003, shot down four proposals to reform the 
ByLaws. One, #5, was tabled for the February 19th meeting, when also 
the remaining 13[!] are debated. 
    That February 19th meeting was to be hosted by the AAA Staten 
Island Chapter at College of Staten Island, Willowbrook SI. It was not 
convening at AAA Headquarters. Then came the blizzard on the 17th, two 
days earlier. AAA President Michael O'Gara moved the meeting back to 
AAA-HQ, with a promise to let Staten Island host the Board in August. 
    This Board meeting lacked a quorum (even I was absent) for voting. 
There was no action on the remaining 13ish proposals for ByLaw 
reforms. They will be taken up at a special meeting on April 3rd. 
    As 'complete' as NYC Events tries to be, there will ALWAYS be new 
items or changes in listed ones. The shift of venue for the AAA Board 
meeting is one such change. Of course, NYSkies carried President 
O'Gara's notice of this change to its subscribers and its calendar 
section was duly updated. 
    New items included the Greenwich Village Antiquarian Book Fair on 
February 21-23 and a repeat show by the Terra Incognita band about the 
Galileo mission. This was at the 313 Gallery in the Lower East SIde on 
February 21st. I passed over both of these on the 21st in the favor of 
hearing Dr Crotts at Columbia. 
    That's why the better astronomers of the City and surrounds 
adhere to NYSkies. Thru its postings and calendar they get addiurnate 
news on the goings on all over our turf. 
    I did take in the bookfair on Saturday the 22nd. Bingo! I ran into 
a old book friend whom I thought went out of business. She's still 
alive and well and still runs her book store. This is Pageant Books 
and Prints, now working out of the proprietor's home near Holland 
Tunnel. We caught up on times and, well, I have some very snazzy hand-
colored starcharts and she made her booth for the day. 
    On February 2nd the two finalist plans for rebuilding the World 
Trade Center were chosen from the nine on exhibit in December and 
January. One is gorgeous, by Daniel Libeskind. He proposes a half-
kilometer tall office tower,several quarter-K towers, public gardens 
and spaces. He leaves much of Ground Zero open for a memorial. The 
design is momumental, yet airy and soaring. And it dramaticly repairs 
the Lower Manhattan skyline. 
    The other finalist, by a team named THINK, is, ahem, uggalee! It 
consists of two half-kilometer skeletal framework towers, looking so 
much a humongous electric power pylons. Some say they look like the 
burned out skeleton of the late Twin Towers. They have almost no 
functional space within them except for isolated civic and cultural 
modules. It violates the City and possibly may include horrendous 
searchlight beams spitting out from its sides. 
    The Lower Manhattan Redevelopment Corp announced on February 26th 

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