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. Each civilisation had attached Latinised form of the name of Giuseppe until his death in 1993, his last column ap- its own associations to various areas of the Piazzi’s assistant and successor, Niccolo pearing in July 1994, and who had enthusi- sky, each with its own mythology. Some of Cacciatore. astically and persuasively encouraged their these required more imagination than others, Moving onto groups of stars, the speaker construction. However, the speaker ques- Capricorn being one of the more fanciful. With had found definitions of the word ‘asterism’ tioned the value of scanning the sky with only ten stars, each of mag 3−4, forming the somewhat elusive in the astronomical litera- binoculars seeking to instigate new nomen- outline, to modern eyes a mythical creature ture, but the word was increasingly in very clature – recent additions ranged from the with the horns of a goat and the tail of a fish common usage. Many such groupings were Broken Engagement Ring of Ursa Major to seemed not the most obvious connection to of ancient origin, such as the Plough, the Lit- the Red Necked Emu of Cygnus! draw. Indeed, to many, a boat seemed to spring tle Dipper or the Square of Pegasus. Each The speaker moved onto the names as- to mind. However, astronomers would ap- helped to highlight a prominent area of a con- signed to deep sky objects, so numerous and pear in general to be an imaginative group, and stellation, and were useful celestial signposts. of such varying types that they invited a vast the more elaborate image is now taken for The most ancient qualifiers for such status array of descriptive terms. The early deep granted; its origins completely forgotten. Just were usually open clusters, such as the sky observers, working at the dawn of this as we can so readily perceive clouds to take Pleiades, the Hyades, Praesepe and Coma vast field, made full use of the opportunity to the form of real objects or creatures, it seemed Berenices. Some of these names could be construct elaborate descriptions of the sys- perhaps that this was a prehistoric instance traced back beyond the earliest literature we tems they observed. The disappearance of of the Rorschach inkblot test at work. And, have, for example, Homer made reference to such florid language as used by these pio- as to whether this was no more than the hal- the Hyades cluster in his writings. Other neers was a loss that the speaker regretted in lucinations of a drunken Babylonian, the asterisms, such as the Summer Triangle and the modern electronic age, and so he used the speaker could but only speculate. The origins the Teapot in Sagittarius, were more recent closing minutes of his talk to put forward of the constellations being a vast subject in its additions, the former having been coined by some of these more poetic depictions. own right, the speaker moved briskly on. Sir Patrick Moore. Many newer additions For example, upon discovering the Ring Browsing any star atlas, a novice was sure were so faint that they had not warranted Nebula, M57, in 1779, Darquier in Tou- to become rapidly baffled by the hotchpotch much attention before the telescopic era, but louse said of it ‘a very dull nebula but per- of Greek letters, Arabic numerals, even Ro- now provided instantly recognisable and in- fectly outlined; as large as Jupiter and looks man numerals in some older atlases, as well valuable signposts to asteroid and nova pa- like a fading planet.’ Messier thought it to as the vast array of catalogue numbers that trollers. The speaker’s personal favourites be a ring of unresolved stars, and William form stellar names. Many of the more con- included Brocchi’s Cluster, named after a Herschel described it as both ‘a ring of stars’ spicuous stars, or groups of stars, had not chart-maker at the AAVSO at the turn of the and ‘a perforated nebula’, coining the term surprisingly acquired more memorable des- 20th century, Dalmiro F. Brocchi, though now ‘planetary nebula’ in comparison of its disc ignations and nicknames. As an example, the often called by its conformational lookalike, to that of a planet. John Herschel was the speaker used the well-known stars around ‘The Coathanger’. Another favourite was first to comment upon the inner light as Orion, each with familiar informal names: Kemble’s Cascade, a group of 20 stars in the ‘like a gauze stretched over a hoop’. The

288 J. Br. Astron. Assoc. 114, 5, 2004 Meetings word ‘ring’ first appeared in descriptions cessive increase of optical power, the struc- low surface brightness objects had been prop- by d’Arrest and Smyth, and would seem to ture has become more complicated’. He was erly recognised for the first time, including have persisted. convinced that NGC5195 was physically the Helix Nebula, NGC 7293, and the Es- The famous Crab Nebula, M1, was dis- connected to its neighbour NGC5194, draw- kimo Nebula, NGC 2392. In recent decades, covered by John Bevis in 1731, later being ing it as such. In the photographic age, this with modern photographic and CCD equip- noted by Messier on 1758 September 12. conviction has been vindicated, though the ment, amateurs had become able to image The name ‘crab’ was not to appear until connecting tail is very faint. The name ‘whirl- these objects which had previously only been 1844, when Lord Rosse described the fila- pool’ describes well its appearance, but was accessible to professionals. The Hubble ments as like ‘the legs of a crab’. As for the of unknown origin, quite possibly one of Space Telescope was now pushing the fron- Dumbbell Nebula, M27, the speaker recalled Rosse’s many attributions. Next the speaker tiers to even deeper objects: the Cartwheel Messier’s description upon its discovery in moved to the Trifid Nebula, M20, discovered Galaxy, the Egg Nebula, the Hourglass 1764 as an ‘oval nebula with no star’. William by Le Gentil and named by John Herschel, Nebula, and many more. Herschel later described a ‘double stratum who said of it ‘...singularly trifid, consisting In conclusion, the speaker said that no- of stars’, whilst John Herschel noted the of three bright and irregularly formed nebu- menclature had an important role to play in luminosity filling lateral cavities, and first lous masses... they enclose and surround a making astronomy more accessible. Used used the name ‘dumb-bell’ of it. Lord Rosse sort of 3-forked rift or vacant area, abruptly in moderation, it could fire the imagination, commented upon ‘an external ring like a and uncouthly crooked and quite devoid of but there was a danger of inventing new chemical retort’. nebulous light...’ words in excess. Messier had been the first to stumble upon After describing a few further jewels from After the applause, the President wished the Whirlpool Galaxy, M51, in 1773, whilst the deep sky treasure trove, each illustrated members a successful new year before ad- observing a comet. His friend Méchain noted with fine images, many from the Associa- journing the meeting until Saturday February its outlying companion galaxy, NGC 5195, a tion’s active deep sky observers, the speaker 28 at the Open University in Milton Keynes. few years later. Rosse provided a beautiful went on to discuss the changes brought by description: ‘spiral convolutions... with suc- the modern photographic age. Diffuse, large, Dominic Ford & Martin Mobberley

Ordinary Meeting and Observers’ Workshop, 2004 February 28 held at the Berrill Lecture Theatre, The Open University, Walton Hall, Milton Keynes Tom Boles, President ence. Mr Nick James read the titles of the Richard Miles: Photometry of asteroids Ron Johnson, Nick Hewitt and Nick papers accepted by Council on January 28 Roger Pickard: Variable star photometry James, Secretaries for publication in the Journal: with AIP software. A comparison between sunspot activity, After lunch a tour was made of the George The President welcomed all to the 4th meet- geomagnetic activity and the frequency Abell Observatory recently opened on the ing of the 114th session, and thanked the of discrete auroral apparitions observed campus, containing a 40cm Meade LX200 − Open University authorities for allowing use from the UK in the years 1977 2002, telescope. The speakers, helped by David of their splendid facilities. by Ron Livesey Boyd and Karen Holland, then went to their Elmer Reese’s pre-discovery of the inter- Mr Boles then invited Dr Nick Hewitt to seminar rooms and gave hands-on practical read the minutes of the meeting of 2004 Janu- nal circulation of the Great Red Spot on Jupiter, by Walter Haas advice to their respective audiences. While ary 10. These were accepted by the audi- The President said that at the January Council this took place, Nick Hewitt gave a talk on 22 new members had been elected subject to ‘Deep Sky Observing Projects’, outlining approval at this meeting. Approval was given ideas for deep sky enthusiasts who could and Mr Boles hoped that any new members become involved in structured observing both present would come forward to meet him later. for recreational and scientific interest. After After a few short notices relating to forth- tea, Bob Marriott talked about micrometers coming meetings, Mr Boles asked Nick past and present, their uses and the difficul- Hewitt to act as Master of Ceremonies for ties of their renovation. the rest of the day. Dr Hewitt outlined the Finally the majority of the attendees aims and structure of the day, the fourth in a regrouped for a short plenary session. Dr series of Observers’ Workshops. The morn- Hewitt thanked all the speakers for their ing session was to be a series of short intro- tireless efforts throughout the day, the ductory talks by those who would then act staff of the Open University, their cater- as demonstrators in practical sessions in the ers and the audiovisual technician, and afternoon. Those who wished to hear about handed over to the President to formally less electronically biased observing would close the meeting. have two lectures in the Berrill Lecture Thea- Mr Boles thanked Dr Hewitt for putting tre that would run concurrently with the on a most interesting day, also thanked all demonstrations. who had made the Workshop such a suc- Dr Hewitt then introduced the following cess, and adjourned the meeting until 2004 to give their talks, which we hope to publish March 31 at the Geological Society, Burling- ton House, Piccadilly, London. The 40cm SCT in the Abell Observatory of separately in the Journal: the Open University, Milton Keynes. Tom Boles: Software guiding of telescopes Nick Hewitt Photo: Maurice Gavin. Nick James: Astrometry

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