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In reply to: coalition
I think a coalition of organisations with a shared interest in reducing light pollution is an excellent idea. While the CfDS could campaign purely on astronomical grounds, this won’t be important to many people and politicians. Joining forces with others who see the problems of light pollution from other perspectives will strengthen the case for change.
There is no mention of involvement with ‘climate activist’ groups or anything that is likely to be picked up by media as activism. I think you would find the majority of wildlife campaign groups go about their activities in a law abiding way, trying to engage with people rather than causing confrontation. That is certainly how our local wildlife group goes about their work. In fact we had a talk on light pollution this week.Topic: coalition
J. Br. Astron. Assoc., 134(5), 2024 – Commission for Dark Skies (349)
I fear the CfDS committee’s aims of forming a coalition to campaign together with other groups against the harm that excessive artificial light causes will achieve little other than for the media to lump us in with climate activists. Probably not to be recommended since action that could be deemed to have a negative economic impact carries a longer prison sentence than GBH.
My understanding is that the House of Lords Science and Technology Committee have actively investigated the impacts of artificial light and noise on human health and heard from all interested groups:From the recommendations, the areas I see that the CfDS committee could try to influence are:
• Defra should establish a standard methodology for tracking, monitoring and reporting on light pollution.
• The government should issue a light policy statement for England which details the government’s policy on minimising light pollution and the roles it expects different departments to play.
• The light policy statement and planning guidance should incorporate up-to-date guidance from the Society of Light and Lighting, the Institution of Lighting Professionals and the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers on best practice for lighting.
• DLUHC should set out what resources local authorities should have to respond adequately to light and noise pollution policies.
Perhaps CfDS committee members could enquire about joining the Society of Light and Lighting (SLL) although I suspect they would cringe at the thought of a ‘Creative Lighting Design Festival’ or ‘Light Night Leeds’. The future is literally Bright.
In reply to: Congratulations to Dr Andrew Wilson
Many thanks to WOLAS. The local society I joined many decades ago when my interest in astronomy began.
AndyIn reply to: Preparing for the eruption of T CrB
Invitation to Brad Schaefer’s Zoom talk on August 17th regarding the predicted eruption of T CrB
I am sharing this invitation from Edwin Aguirre about this Zoom talk on August 17 (Saturday) at 1:30 p.m. UTC (14.30 BST)
It will be interesting to hear his prediction for the time of the eruption.Jeremy
I would like to invite you and the BAA members to Brad Schaefer’s Zoom talk on August 17 (Saturday) at 9:30 a.m. EDT (1:30 p.m. UTC) regarding the anticipated eruption of T Coronae Borealis. The talk is free and open to the public.
Attached are the details of Brad’s online talk. In addition to Zoom, the event will be streamed on Facebook Live and recorded for YouTube viewers.
NOTE: Everyone needs to register first in order to get the Zoom link for the webinar. You can either scan the QR code on the attached announcement with your cellphone or go directly to the Zoom registration page:
https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Bm_NLfhkSQyG0Es31OYkqg#/registration
Brad’s talk is part of the “Astronomy Experts Speaker Series” that Imelda and I started two years ago in collaboration with the Astronomical League of the Philippines. As you know, the Philippines is a relatively small developing country in Southeast Asia, and many people there cannot afford to travel overseas to attend astronomy seminars and conferences.
So, our goal is to help raise public science literacy and awareness in the country by inviting renowned scientists, researchers and science communicators to share their knowledge and expertise online with the Filipino people through our Zoom webinar series. It is all part of our international astronomy educational outreach efforts.
To date, our guest speakers have included:
Prof. Jay Pasachoff (Williams College), who talked about his 2021 Antarctic solar eclipse expedition
Zolt Levay (STScI), who discussed the Hubble Space Telescope’s most iconic images
Dave Eicher (Astronomy magazine editor-in-chief), who spoke about galaxies and galaxy classification
Fred Espenak (Mr. Eclipse), who talked about predicting and chasing total solar eclipses
J. Kelly Beatty (Sky & Telescope magazine senior editor), who spoke about the fight against light pollution
David Levy on how he and the Shoemakers discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9
Heidi Hammel (AURA vice president for science), who spoke about the James Webb Space Telescope’s latest findings
Dan Green (CBAT director), who discussed the nature of comets
Debbie Elmegreen (IAU president), who talked about galaxies at the dawn of the Universe
Father Chris Corbally, S.J. (Vatican Observatory/Steward Observatory), who explained the mystery of “The Star of Bethlehem”
Brother Robert Macke, S.J. (Curator of the Vatican Observatory’s meteorite collection at Castel Gandolfo, Italy), who talked about meteorites, asteroid 101955 Bennu, and the OSIRIS-REx mission
Brother Guy Consolmagno, S.J. (Vatican Observatory director), who talked about Vesta and the Dawn mission
Valentin M. Pillet (National Solar Observatory director), who discussed the solar corona and the current Solar Cycle 25
Mike Brown (Caltech), who talked about Pluto and the search for Planet Nine
Robert Nemiroff (Michigan Tech), co-founder and editor of NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (APOD)
Jonathan McDowell (Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics), who spoke about the Chandra X-ray Observatory and the invisible Universe.
For fall/winter, we plan to have Meg Urry (Yale University), who will talk about the supermassive black hole lurking at the center of the Milky Way, and Michael S. Kelley, program scientist for the Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA Headquarters, who will discuss the impact threat posed by NEOs, and for next year, NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who will talk about astrophotography from the International Space Station. We are currently finalizing the schedules for their respective webinars.We hope you can join us for Brad’s talk on the 17th!
Best regards,
Edwin
Attachments:
In reply to: Excellent Spring Meeting
In reply to: Wow! What an auroral display!
Indeed, Duncan, it was a remarkable display, only surpassed by the one I witnessed over 30 years ago in my Loudwater Valley (M40 Jn3). My collection of refurbished old security cameras, some with just 2-megapixel resolution, allowed me to observe the event from various angles, from approximately 21:00 to 03:30 UT the following morning. While these cameras may not compare to even the most basic phone cameras today, the images they captured, though crudely assembled, reveal a fascinating progression of rays in terms of color, intensity, direction, and speed. The output process is slow, transferring via USB stick from recorders placed near the floor, and made even slower by my age-related infirmities. Yet, this slow pace affords me a precise approach to the observational content of the sequences I produce. Just minutes ago, after some diligent work, I sought some relaxation by visiting the IMO website—a welcome respite after losing access to the daily data from UKMON, which I often used and valued. I had captured the fireball event, designated as IMO 2340-2024, traversing through Cygnus, near Deneb, surrounded by, and mostly beneath, the blue/purple ionized rays. Currently, the IMO has no photographs or videos submitted for this event. To support visual observers, who are invaluable during special event surveys, my first priority is to edit a video of the fireball at 4 frames per second for submission to the IMO via the SPA. In the meantime, I am hopeful that a member of the BAA will assist me in creating a JPG still shot that captures the fireball’s dashed trajectory through the colorful skies. I’ve previously undertaken a meticulous course of manually ‘joining the dots’.. I Aam hopeful of the sort of guidance I would have received from ‘Dave Gavine and the Spectrum’ in earlier times.
In reply to: Dark Sky Events
The AGM for DarkSky International is on the 21st March at 19:00; details on their website. The connection between CfDS and DarkSky International (the IDA that was) goes back a long way. Headed paper of the Campaign for Dark Skies from last century has the subheading “A Joint commission of the BAA and the IDA.”
In reply to: Historical Section Activity
Greetings, I’m a new member and have tried to
join the section online. The contact the director doesn’t seem to work. Just hangs after hitting the submit button.
Can you help please.
Cheers,
Gary Drouin
207291Topic: Historical Section Activity
Historical Section News 29 has just been published. If you are not on our distribution list, but would like to receive section publications then please contact us to join.
Free booking has also opened for our 2024 Section Meeting. See future events for details.
Mike Frost & Bill Barton.
I have recently joined the Variable Star section. I have successfully used ASTAP to create a valid format file for uploading (BAAVSS and AAVSO).
However, I also use AstroImageJ and I have struggled (so far) in using the BAA Photometry Spreadsheet 2.11 to convert the AIJ measurements table into the BAA required format.
The AIJ measurements file appears to be imported into the AIJ tab of BAA_Photometry_Spreadsheet_2.11.xlsm ok but the Calculation and Results tabs do not seem to want to update any details and leave the pre-existing WASP example data.
Some fields in the BAAVSS and AAVSO calculated tabs have data from my AIJ measurement table but most fields appear to have old WASP dataThe BAA VSS database manager, Andrew Wilson has been very helpful but suggested I reach out to the community
I wonder if there’s any members who are experienced in using AIJ with the BAA Photometry Spreadsheet who might be able to assist in a walk-through as I suspect I’m doing something fundamentally wrong (eg via a Zoom call or other method)?
Relevant files attached for info.
Many thanksIn reply to: Astrofest 2024
Hi Dominic, Amazing! I transferred to Alan Knapp’s group in 2002 (or thereabouts) in the twilight of my career with Philips, avoiding redundancy in the process. I eventually took redundancy and early retirement when what was left of the lab moved to Cambridge in 2008. A sad end to what was part of a prestigeous institution that was up there (almost) with Bell labs. I had many interesting projects and conference/business trips over the years since I joined, in 1973, what was then the Mullard Research Laboratory. My happiest time was through the 1980’s to early 90’s modelling silicon power devices, computing power was increasing according to Moore’s law and the models could therefore become more and more detailed so I’m very familiar with solving thousands of sparse profiled matrix equations. I still have the software to do this (if you’re interested). It can solve (in principle) via LU decomposition any number of equations in any number of dimensions to any level of “fill in” all the way up to a direct solver using various iteration methods developed in the 1980’s (conjugate gradients, bi-conjugate gradients etc). I posted some of my work on the “legacy page” of my website http://www.thewhightstuff.co.uk.
Back to spectroscopy: I think you are referring to the principle of detailed balance in your last reply and that is what I used to determine the Einstein B coefficients but they vary too strongly between the Balmer series lines to reproduce my measurements. They are also temperature independent whereas my measurements, over a number of stars, definitley show a temperature dependance hence the reasoning leading to my equation A.4.12. Another pleasing feature of my model is that all calculated internal parameters have believeable values, the impact parameter for pressure calculation is approximately 8 Bohr radii and photon cross-sections are of the order of 10 Bohr areas.
I suppose I am looking for someone who would look at my model and say “yes this is how a ball of gas in thermal equilibrium would look spectroscopically” or “no it isn’t because….”, whether it’s a good model of any particular star is a separate question though the Sun looks to be well modelled in it’s gross features. I realise this is a big imposition on anyone so if it is of interest to you please continue this discussion via my email address ken.whight@btinternet.com and if you still live in the South East or are attending Astrofest it would be great to meet up. if it’s not of interest then thank you very much for taking the trouble to comment.
Regards
Ken WhightIn reply to: Astrofest 2024
Hi Ken,
Interesting that you worked at Philips Research. Our paths may well have crossed in the early 2000s, when I did three summer internships at PRL. At the time I was torn between a career in astronomy versus joining Philips, but the decision was made for me when PRL closed down. Just in case the world wasn’t already small enough – I’m guessing you worked in Alan Knapp’s group? His wife taught me chemistry at school…
As you say – you can get a long way by assuming local thermal equilibrium. How far is an interestingly controversial question. Without any independent way of measuring the physical conditions and composition of a star, it’s hard to verify exactly how accurate models are.
It’s a very long time since I’ve looked at these kinds of calculation, but I think the jigsaw piece you’re missing is Kirchoff’s Law. From memory, this has the consequence that any plasma that is in equilibrium for the polychromatic case is also in equilibrium with regard to emission and absorption at every monochromatic wavelength of light. The result is that you never need to solve the polychromatic case. You solve the equilibrium equations monochromatically for every wavelength you’re interested in. As I recall, if you’re interested in solving for the equilibrium occupation probabilities of the quantum states, your monochromatic equations give you a bunch of (thousands of) simultaneous equations that you can solve with a big (sparse) matrix inversion operation. You should end up with something resembling a Boltzmann distribution.
The oscillator strengths reflect the fact that transitions are more likely between quantum mechanical states with similar wavefunctions – which give rise to strong lines – versus those with very dissimilar wavefunctions – which give rise to weak “forbidden” lines. But calculating wavefunctions is somewhere between difficult and impossible, and numerical approximation often don’t seem to resemble reality particularly well. Hence the tendency to use empirical lab measurements.
Best wishes,
Dominic
In reply to: map of light pollution trends
See a presentation on this at the 2018 joint BAA/AAVSO meeeting
https://britastro.org/event/baa-aavso-joint-meeting-on-variable-stars
Mario Motta – American Medical Association statement on street lighting
There could be a video of it somewhere on the website
In reply to: map of light pollution trends
I tried pointing out to the local lighting officer and my County Councillor that lower colour temperature LEDs were better, as they reduced scattered light in hazy/foggy conditions
You would probably have more success going on social media saying blue LED lighting causes cancer. (Unlike with 5G there is apparently some evidence to support this and has caused some towns in the US to rip out their recently installed blue LEDs in favour of lower temperature versions. See a presentation on this at the 2018 joint BAA/AAVSO meeeting). Failing this, pointing out the effect on wildlife might gain more traction among the general public, particularly if yo have any green councillors
In reply to: BAA song
OK, I’ve given this a go, and I found the words are extremely difficult to fit to the tune, especially the final line of each quatrain. The secret is to put the main stresses there on the B of ‘British’ and the A of ‘Association’. The final word has to be sung ‘As-so-ci-a-tion’, not, as printed in 1924, ‘Associ-a-ti-on’
To get a unified rendition of it, with a group, one would need to print up an accented copy of the words, similar to what church choirs use for singling psalms.
It would work best, exactly as the report says, with one person singing all the words, and the rest joining in only on the choruses consisting of repeats of the last pair of lines in each quatrain.
If people are serious about this, I’ll offer to conduct a rehearsal.
In reply to: BAA song
Everyone else would need ear protection if I were to join in.
Only dogs like my singing; they howl along with me.
In reply to: Roger Pickard
A great shock. Roger was a great help to me when I joined the VSS, never treating any of my novice requests as trivial. I have a treasured memory from some years ago when I came over from Australia and attended a Christmas meeting chaired by Roger as President. As proceedings got under way, to my amazement Roger gave me a formal welcome. How pleasantly surprised I was!
A sad loss. Roger will be greatly missed.
In reply to: Roger Pickard
I would like to thank Dr Shears for informing the VSS group of the passing of Roger Pickard. It is always sad when somebody reaches this time in their lives. Rodger helped me when I joined the section a few years ago and although I only met him on a few occasions he was a gentleman. Maybe Rodger wanted us to be informed in this way.
In reply to: IAU for amateur astronomers?
As mentioned by Martin, the IUAA had their General Assembly in Dublin in 1978. Also there, Patrick Moore gave a public lecture in the Mansion House. I remember it well, as this was my first time to attend an astronomical talk! I am afraid I cannot remember the actual title of Patrick’s talk. I did not attend the excellent IUAA event itself as I had not yet joined the IAS.
Quite a few of the IAS members were involved with the IUAA. My memory was that James Kelly, Ciaran Kilbride, Eamonn Ansbro & Vincent Deasy were the IAS representatives.
The IAUU had very laudable ambitions of setting up worldwide observing sections. However, one problem was they were overlapping (in part) with organisations like the BAA and the AAVSO etc which were already doing a good job.
John
In reply to: Scrapping Honorary Membership !
We should indeed be making it more affordable for young people to join. In fact I wrote to the President at the time to suggestion a lower rate for young people, but it was many years before it came to pass. Which is why I proposed a motion at the 2023 SGM, seconded by Nick James, not to increase the young person’s membership rate (as reported in the current Journal).
I was present at 2023 SGM when we voted not to increase the young person’s membership rate and I thought that this was a good thing at the time. Now with the proposed changes to the by-laws we, as membership, will not be able to do this and it is something that also worries me. I know that often not many people turn up to vote at these SGMs but I am sure if a rate change was contentious enough people would attend.
As far as honorary memberships go it seem to me that it looks a bit like fiddling at the edges of a bigger problem to do with the future survival of the BAA. Unless it becomes a financial burden I don’t see that this should be changed out of hand just because it appears as low hanging fruit. Perhaps the BAA needs to face up to larger structural problems. What is the major issue at stake? Is it that it can’t survive longterm on the money it raises through membership? Is it that membership will eventually decline because of its age profile? Is it that it is becoming too large to manage all the things it currently does?
British Astronomical Association
Supporting amateur astronomers since 1890
