Ordinary Meeting, 2004 March 31

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Ordinary Meeting, 2004 March 31

held at The Geological Society, Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1

Tom Boles, President

Ron Johnson, Nick Hewitt and Nick James, Secretaries

Mr Boles opened the fifth Ordinary Meeting of the 114th session, and invited Dr Hewitt to read the minutes of the previous meeting, held at the fourth Observers' Workshop in Milton Keynes. The minutes were approved by members and signed. The President announced that 59 new members were proposed for election, and members approved those 23 proposed at the previous meeting. Mr Boles invited any newcomers to introduce themselves at the end of the evening's proceedings. Mr James reported that there were no newly approved Journal papers.

The next meeting was the fast-approaching Winchester Weekend, 2004 April 2-4, which would this year include an Instruments & Imaging Section Meeting. The next Ordinary Meeting would be on Saturday April 24 at Nottingham High School for Girls, during the fifth of the Association's series of Observers' Workshops. Finally, the President regretted to inform members of the death of Dr Janet Mattei, on March 22, after a long illness. Director of the American Association of Variable Star Observers for over 30 years, she had been noted for her warmth and personableness, and had long been seen as a bridge between the amateur and professional communities. Her death was described as a tremendous loss for all amateur astronomers.

The President then proceeded to introduce the evening's first speaker, Dr Meghan Gray of the University of Nottingham. Born in Nova Scotia, Dr Gray had travelled to the UK in 1997 to study for a PhD at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. Since then she had worked at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh, before moving onto her present post. Though her work had primarily centred around the subject of her present talk, gravitational lensing, more recently her interests had widened to include galaxy evolution.