BAAH 2025

[Dr Paul Leyland]

The PDF version of the 2025 Handbook has just been released.

I am very pleased to see so much information about exoplanets, asteroids, minor planets and KBOs. It’s only quite recently that BAA members have wanted to make (and able to, for that matter) detailed observations of objects fifteenth magnitude or fainter, or which vary in brightness by less than 0.02 magnitudes, and it is good to see them treated in detail.

If there was one category in which I would wish to see more, it is the non-traditional (for want of a better term) planetary satellites. Saturn has been well treated for decades, but how about adding Deimos, Himalia, Oberon, and Triton to give just one bright satellite of the other planets? That is not a reason to neglect Pasiphae, Phoebe, Ariel, Umbriel, Titania and Nereid and their cohorts — though I noticed that the first of these gained an honourable mention in the occultations data.

My congratulations to the team who produced these sections.

Paul

[Grant Privett]

Every time I image an 18th magnitude star for variability or capture a 17th magnitude nebula, I wonder at how things have changed over the last 30 years.

I enjoyed visual observing before neck arthritis stopped play, but these days I get a kick out of what we can do via imaging.

I remember looking at long duration photography in the 80s and thinking I would be really smug if I reached 13th mag with my 8″ Fullerscopes Newtonian and some Tri-X. Its a 1sec exposure with a modern CCD.

[Mr Owen Michael Brazell]

you can get to 13th mag with a Seestar now

[David Arditti]

Thanks Paul for your congratulations to the team. They have indeed done a great job.

I quite like your suggestions re. the ‘non-traditional satellites’, but, before that, I’d recommend a better treatment of Uranus and Neptune. These are far more observed by amateurs now than they were, and we can monitor features on them. They deserve a tabulation of data to similar that for the other major planets.

David
Vice-President

[Dr Paul Leyland]

David: we are in emphatic agreement re Uranus and Neptune.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Mr Owen Michael Brazell wrote:

you can get to 13th mag with a Seestar now

True, but a Seestar can do much better than that. An image in the gallery show a 17th magnitude galaxy which required only 11 minutes on a SS50.

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