Last night’s AGM

Great meeting last night and I very much enjoyed attending and catching up with a few people. I was interested in hearing about Clyde Foster’s amazing observations of Jupiter and I thoroughly enjoyed our president’s continued address on the history of the telescope. One thing I would have pointed out about the Palomar Schmidt telescope (and this was true of the UK Schmidt Telescope) was that thin photographic plates were used at the curved focus rather than film. This meant that, rather unnervingly, the plate had to be bent to the right shape without breaking the glass. At the UKST the plate was inserted into the frame and then there was a handle at the side which was cranked over to force the plate into the right curved shape. Not for the faint hearted! Of course copies were made of the originals which were film and years ago you could visit the survey library of the UKST at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh as I did on occasions when I was a student.