Meeting Reports

Meetings Ordinary Meeting and Christmas Lecture, 2004 January 10 held at the Geological Society Lecture Theatre, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1 Tom Boles, President The January sky sky and a chart of its movement was shown. Ron Johnson, Nick Hewitt and Nick Joining Mr Mobberley from the audience, James, Secretaries Dr Richard McKim then explained how the Mr Mobberley opened his presentation with recent Martian dust storm had evolved and, The President opened the third meeting of a summary of the discoveries made in 2003. following this, pictures from the NASA Spirit the 114th session, welcoming a very full au- There had been thirty-three comet discover- probe were shown. dience to the Christmas Meeting. However, ies, most by LINEAR and NEAT, but Vello Mr Mobberley also showed some extraor- he regretted that the first item of business Tabur, an amateur astronomer, had also dinarily high quality images of Mars and was less happy, for Jeremy Cook, a past snatched a discovery from the southern hemi- Saturn taken in mid-December by Damian Director of the Lunar Section, had passed sphere. Five galactic novae had been discov- Peach. For amateurs with the ability to take away suddenly on December 21. Further- ered in 2003, by Japanese patrollers, Nick high quality images, many storms on Sat- more, Lionel Mayling, who had previously Brown in Australia and one by Bill Liller in urn’s globe could be recorded and followed held positions as both Treasurer and Assist- Chile. Over 300 supernovae had been dis- at the present time. Moving on to Jupiter, ant Treasurer to the Association, had lost a covered, with our own President, Tom Boles, Mr Mobberley explained the major bright long battle with ill-health on January 4. A finding an incredible thirty himself. Mark and dark spots on the giant planet’s disk and minute’s silence was observed in their hon- Armstrong had added sixteen to his impres- how they were currently being followed by our. Dr Nick Hewitt proceeded to read the sive tally and had secured over 80,000 im- advanced imagers, mostly using webcams. minutes of the November meeting, which ages in the process. His total was now up to The speaker showed that two BAA aster- were approved and signed. The Papers Sec- fifty-five discoveries, from over a third of a oids, 2602 Moore and 4084 Hollis, were cur- retary reported that Council had approved million images checked since 1995! Indeed, rently close together near the Beehive clus- one paper to appear in the Journal: Tom and Mark were the world’s leading in- ter M44; both would peak at around 15th dividual (i.e. not working as a team) patrol- magnitude. For binocular viewers, asteroids Stonehenge astronomers and the preces- sion of the Equinox, by David Hughes lers. Ron Arbour had discovered four of the Ceres and Hebe were now well placed in brightest supernovae found in 2003: his SN Gemini and Canis Minor respectively. Mr Boles said that 20 new members were 2003ie in NGC 4051 was the seventh bright- As January turned into February the 2km proposed for election. The 26 members who est of the year. No less than eight new UK diameter Apollo asteroid 6239 Minos would had been proposed at the previous meeting supernovae (five by Mark and three by Tom) pass within ten million kilometres of Earth, were approved and duly elected. The next had been discovered since the last BAA meet- peaking at around mag 14.3. meeting at the present venue would be on ing. Mr Mobberley explained how he had Finally, Mr Mobberley said that, on 2003 March 31, when the main speaker would be secured his own first extragalactic discovery November 23, after eighteen years of trying, Dr Meghan Gray, with a talk entitled Dark on December 18, of a nova in M31. He Andrew Elliott had managed to videotape an Matter and Gravitational Lensing. Before thanked Tom, Mark and Guy Hurst who asteroid occulting a star, from his home at then, the Association’s fourth Observers’ had helped him validate the claim. Warton in Lancashire. The asteroid was 102 Workshop would take place at the Open On January 14 the Moon would occult Miriam (mag 12.7) and it had occulted an University in Milton Keynes on February the bright double star Gamma Virginis and 11.4 magnitude star in northern Orion. A copy 28, and a meeting of the Deep Sky Section the speaker showed how the star would be of the video was shown, in which the star on March 6 in Northampton. placed with respect to the Moon’s limb. With disappeared for ten seconds, re-emerged and The President then introduced Prof help from Jonathan Shanklin, Malcolm Longair, Jacksonian Professor of Mr Mobberley then explained Natural Philosophy at Cambridge Univer- how the comets 2001 Q4 sity. The President joked that to give a full (NEAT) and 2002 T7 (LIN- CV for Prof Longair would require longer EAR) were developing in the than the talk itself, citing his former posi- southern and northern skies. tion as Astronomer Royal for Scotland, and Mr Shanklin also showed a present post as head of the Cavendish Labo- light curve of 2P/Encke, com- ratory, Cambridge, as two of his most nota- piled from BAA observations. ble appointments. It gave Mr Boles great Both Q4 and T7 were bright- pleasure to welcome Prof Longair to de- ening steadily. The paths of a liver the 2003 Christmas Lecture, entitled number of much fainter com- Astrophysics and Cosmology in the 21st ets, essentially CCD targets, Century. were also described. Mr Mob- Prof Longair spoke with great clarity and berley then showed a short ani- enthusiasm, his excitement for his subject mation of the approach of clearly evident. He has since kindly provided NASA’s Stardust probe to the his own summary of the address, found else- nucleus of Comet Wild 2. The where in this Journal. The talk was followed shots of the nucleus were only by enthusiastic applause, after which the the third such set of images ever meeting broke for tea. obtained, after Halley and Following the tea break the President in- Borrelly. vited Mr Martin Mobberley to give his Sky The planet Venus was The nucleus of comet Wild 2, imaged by the Stardust probe Notes. slowly creeping into the evening during its close flyby of the comet on 2004 January 2. NASA J. Br. Astron. Assoc. 114, 5, 2004 287 These articles are copyright © the Journal of the British Astronomical Association, www.britastro.org/journal. If you wish to reproduce them, or place them on your own Web page, please contact the Editor: Mrs Hazel McGee, [email protected] Meetings then, some time later, the asteroid separated Betelgeuse, Bellatrix, Rigel, and further out, from the star. Aldebaran and Sirius. Some names were an- The President thanked Mr Mobberley for cient, many more modern; some were wide- his Sky Notes and explained that as the spread, whilst others were very personal. scheduled final speaker was unwell, Dr Each age had brought its own distinctive fla- Hewitt would be giving a talk on his own vour to the art. More modern nicknames in- specialist area, the Deep Sky. cluded ‘Jack and his Wagon’, common Brit- ish names for Mizar and Alcor, separated by a little under 12 arcminutes. Popular names for nebulae were, Dr Hewitt added, invari- ably modern since in all but the brightest What’s in a name? cases, their discoveries had to await the tel- escopic era. Even naked eye nebulae were typically neglected previously as too faint The following talk, Dr Hewitt explained, to warrant attention. would be an informal tour of some of the In the modern era, stars had received nick- nomenclature of astronomy. Much of the names for a wide range of reasons. Cor language used by stargazers seemed exotic, Caroli, otherwise known as Canes Venatici, but somehow beautiful; often foreign-sound- was assigned its new name in 1725 by ing to Western ears, and very bewildering to Halley, in honour of Charles II. It was the newcomer. Even accomplished northern claimed by court physician Sir Charles observers could feel themselves thrust back Scarborough that it had shined most bril- into this state of perplexity upon their first liantly on 1660 May 29, the eve of the new Lord Rosse’s drawing of M1, the ‘Crab’ nebula, visit south. As an example, the names of the king’s return to London at the end of the probably the origin of the name. constellations were derived from a rich stew Commonwealth era. Physicians would evi- of zoological names, often deeply embroiled dently go to extreme lengths to win favour mag 7−10 range, cascading into NGC 1502 in ancient mythology, and mixed with more with a new monarch! The origin of the names in Camelopardalis. modern additions. The speaker hoped that Sualocin and Rotanev for and Delphinus Some deep sky observers, particularly what followed would provide insights into respectively had long remained a mystery those working in America, were very keen many familiar, and a few unfamiliar, objects. after their first spurious appearance in the on forming new asterisms. A great hero of Constellation names, the speaker explained, Palermo Catalogue of 1814. The explana- this cause had been the late Walter Scott were a tool which made the sky easier to navi- tion was eventually found to lie in their Houston, who wrote his Deep Sky Wonders gate, or an aide memoir to help in memorising inversion to form ‘Nicolaus Venator’, a column for Sky and Telescope from 1946 groups of stars.

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