Saturday, February 18, 2006
Congratulations
A propos nothing whatsoever to do with satellite tracking, I just thought I would congratulate local heroine Shelley Rudman on her silver medal at the Turin Winter Olympics. She is from just up the road in Pewsey and works here in Devizes. Well done!
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Thoughts on Astrofest 2006 and the BAA
Hm. I haven't posted here for a couple of weeks. Time to rectify that.
The other weekend (4 Feb) I travelled to Kensington to Astrofest 2006, which is a bit like a BAA Exhibition Meeting on steroids. The main attraction is the large number of stands rented by the retailers - including a huge stand occupied by Telescope House (formerly known as Broadhurst Clarkson and Fuller). The display and the whole floor was dominated by the magnificent TMB 203 eight-inch f/9 refractor. This beast would set you back at least £14k for the OTA alone; add a £6k mount and a suitable observatory (I guess £5k for a dome large enough to house it) and perhaps another couple of grand for accessories and you are looking at the thick end of £30, 000. I am sure that the views are worth it!
Andy Burns, who is the leading light of the Wiltshire Astronomical Society and my chauffeur for the day, was picking up various bits of hardware over the two days of the exhibition. He had already been the day before and had seen some of the talks (including one by Steve O'Meara about his career in visual astronomy, which sounded very interesting). I picked up a book and a couple of bits and pieces for the video camera set up I am working on gradually.
Whilst at Astrofest I had a very brief conversation with John Mason on the BAA stand where I mentioned that I had a latent interest in observing variable stars. He said that the Association always was looking for variable star observers...
...And a couple of weeks on I am now a member of the BAA again. I say "again" as I joined as a teenager in 1982, though I only stayed a member for a year. One reason I held back from joining before was that the BAA no longer has an Artificial Satellite Section. It was disbanded by Howard Miles in October 1998. In a private email to me Neil Bone stated that the reasons for this were "a lack of incoming observations" coupled with the increasing accuracy of professional observations. In addition to this, publishing of predictions has since been taken up by Heavens Above.
I admit I was puzzled by this. True, amateur observation of satellites is never going to be as popular as lunar or planetary observing, but there is still a small but dedicated cadre of satellite trackers whose work is going unrecognised by any of the astronomical organisations. As for professional trackers, they don't publish the elements of the classified sats and in any case they have been known to make mistakes, as anyone on SeeSat-L could tell you. Satellite tracking has expanded beyond just taking positional observations, not contracted; for example, there are those who have imaged satellites from the ground, there is the work of the Belgian group on flashing periods (PPAS observations), others are taking images of the ISS on lunar and solar transits, and some others - particularly Greg Roberts in Cape Town - are pioneering video observation techniques.
Perhaps it is time an Artifical Satellite group was started within the BAA. Even if there are not the members to justify a fully-formed Section, there is still enough to keep amateur observers occupied even if the traditional role of the former Artificial Satellite Section of co-ordinating amateur observations for professional analysis and issuing predictions, has been superseded.
In the meantime I will start observing variable stars as well.
The other weekend (4 Feb) I travelled to Kensington to Astrofest 2006, which is a bit like a BAA Exhibition Meeting on steroids. The main attraction is the large number of stands rented by the retailers - including a huge stand occupied by Telescope House (formerly known as Broadhurst Clarkson and Fuller). The display and the whole floor was dominated by the magnificent TMB 203 eight-inch f/9 refractor. This beast would set you back at least £14k for the OTA alone; add a £6k mount and a suitable observatory (I guess £5k for a dome large enough to house it) and perhaps another couple of grand for accessories and you are looking at the thick end of £30, 000. I am sure that the views are worth it!
Andy Burns, who is the leading light of the Wiltshire Astronomical Society and my chauffeur for the day, was picking up various bits of hardware over the two days of the exhibition. He had already been the day before and had seen some of the talks (including one by Steve O'Meara about his career in visual astronomy, which sounded very interesting). I picked up a book and a couple of bits and pieces for the video camera set up I am working on gradually.
Whilst at Astrofest I had a very brief conversation with John Mason on the BAA stand where I mentioned that I had a latent interest in observing variable stars. He said that the Association always was looking for variable star observers...
...And a couple of weeks on I am now a member of the BAA again. I say "again" as I joined as a teenager in 1982, though I only stayed a member for a year. One reason I held back from joining before was that the BAA no longer has an Artificial Satellite Section. It was disbanded by Howard Miles in October 1998. In a private email to me Neil Bone stated that the reasons for this were "a lack of incoming observations" coupled with the increasing accuracy of professional observations. In addition to this, publishing of predictions has since been taken up by Heavens Above.
I admit I was puzzled by this. True, amateur observation of satellites is never going to be as popular as lunar or planetary observing, but there is still a small but dedicated cadre of satellite trackers whose work is going unrecognised by any of the astronomical organisations. As for professional trackers, they don't publish the elements of the classified sats and in any case they have been known to make mistakes, as anyone on SeeSat-L could tell you. Satellite tracking has expanded beyond just taking positional observations, not contracted; for example, there are those who have imaged satellites from the ground, there is the work of the Belgian group on flashing periods (PPAS observations), others are taking images of the ISS on lunar and solar transits, and some others - particularly Greg Roberts in Cape Town - are pioneering video observation techniques.
Perhaps it is time an Artifical Satellite group was started within the BAA. Even if there are not the members to justify a fully-formed Section, there is still enough to keep amateur observers occupied even if the traditional role of the former Artificial Satellite Section of co-ordinating amateur observations for professional analysis and issuing predictions, has been superseded.
In the meantime I will start observing variable stars as well.
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