Ordinary Meeting, 2006 March 22

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Ordinary Meeting, 2006 March 22

held at New Hunts House, Guys Hospital, London Bridge, London SE1

Richard Miles, President

Ron Johnson, Hazel Collett and Nick James, Secretaries

Dr Miles opened the fourth Ordinary Meeting of the 116th Session, and invited Mrs Hazel Collett, Meetings Secretary, to read the minutes of the previous Meeting, which had taken place at the seventh Observers' Workshop in Milton Keynes in February. These were approved by members and duly signed. Before moving on, the President commented that the proceedings of that meeting had included half an hour of observing time booked on the Faulkes Telescope in Hawaii. In the event, the intended observing slot had been clouded out, but the telescope operators had offered to place a 30-minute observation request into an offline queue as compensation. A raffle had been held at the meeting to choose a target, but a month on, it seemed that the weather in Hawaii was still bad, and so the Association's request was still awaiting telescope time.

The President announced that ?? new members were proposed for election; those ?? who had been proposed at the previous meeting were approved by members and declared elected. The President invited any new members in the audience to introduce themselves to him at the end of the Meeting. Mr Nick James, Papers Secretary, announced that six papers had been approved for publication in the Journal:

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The next Ordinary Meeting would take place in Liverpool, during the weekend of the Out of London meeting, to be held on April 21-23 in association with Liverpool Astronomical Society. The weekend's programme would include, amongst other distinguished speakers, two talks by Dr Allan Chapman. In the meantime, the Winchester Weekend, this year celebrating its 40th anniversary, would take place on April 7-9. The Alfred Curtis Memorial Lecture, now in its 30th year, would be given by Dr John Mason.

The President then proceeded to invite the evening's first speaker, Martin Mobberley, to present his regular Sky Notes. Before handing over, Dr Miles remarked that Mr Mobberley had recently given notice of his intention to step down from the job of giving these talks after the Exhibition Meeting in June. His ability to mix lively banter with an authoritative guide to the sky would be a hard act to follow, and so instead of looking for a permanent replacement, the President planned to arrange for a series of volunteers to present their own sky diaries at future meetings; any interested members were invited to get in touch.