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Capturing nebulosity requires low focal ratio. To get optimal correction of chromatic aberration and coma at low focal ratios requires more lens elements. Yes you can use an ED (or similar) doublet with a coma corrector, but that’s 4 lens elements in total, and in most cases it won’t be as optimal as it could be, and there’s likely to be spacing errors, so better really, if you know the telescope will be used for imaging at this focal ratio, to build it all into one optimised, correctly measured-up tube assembly. Many people wish to use the dual-band, tri-band and quad-band filters for one-shot imaging, so chromatic aberration will still be a moot point.
It’s an interesting subject. There is a Moon Treaty to which the UK is a signatory, but it is a product of Cold War thinking, in that only bans nation states from claiming ownership of the Moon or parts of it, it does not prevent businesses based in those states from exploiting the Moon. How can you exploit something you do not own? It is a situation analogous to that with the deep oceans, which are not owned by states, but can be exploited. However there is an international mechanism to regulate that (not without controversy). There is no mechanism at all for the Moon.
This is all a rather different subject to light pollution, however, which is a fairly local issue, within the remit of national and local governments to deal with, if they care.
Incidentally, I don’t think it is a good idea to have a thread in the forum called ‘General’. Threads should be specific to the topics they are concerned with. What you have tried to do here is create a thread for what should be a forum sub-category. I don’t know if we actually can have sub-categories in this forum though.
And researching this topic led me to this fascinating lecture on the use of optical instruments by renaissance painters, very relevant to my talks (Presidential addresses) on the history of the telescope.
Interesting. I’m with James. I think it is a glass object that has been painted, and the painting has been finished, but I doubt it is a telescope. There are various geometrical, navigational and surveying instruments scattered round the room. I think the object in question could be a spirit level, with metal end sections and a short central glass section containing the liquid, through which we see the monkey’s arm. Such a level would be an important tool for a painter drawing horizons and buildings. Unlike a builders’ level, you might not make it with a flat base, as there would be no reason to do so.
They would be very complicated!
If the moons lined up, you would get big tides; if they were at 90º (2 moons) or 60º (3 moons), the tides would partially cancel out. But of course it would also depend on the masses of the moons and their distances from the Earth.
If the Earth had several moons they would probably be in resonant orbits, like those of Jupiter, with specific ratios between the orbital periods. Therefore there would be a certain period after which the same configuration would recur, and so would the same tidal conditions.
Yes, the basis of Conrad’s novel ‘The Secret Agent’, in which the author imagines an elaborate background plot to this event, linked to the Russians (who seem to be permanent bogey-men of espionage and terror in the British imagination).
It is possible to reduce undesirable inhibition through methods other than alcohol, Nick, and other inhibitions had best not be reduced. We want to remain in Sparsholt College’s good books.
I’ve had a further think about this, and decided we are not going to do it in a drunken manner in a bar, we are going to make as good a job of it as possible. I’ve put it on the agenda for Sunday afternoon at Winchester, and the words will be printed in the programme.
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.
To reply to Duncan, in respect of the 2023 vote on membership rates, the Trustees voted to increase the young person’s membership, but the Council voted to keep it at the same level (but their vote was only advisory on the Trustees). On the same day, the membership plus Council members present at the SGM also voted to keep it unchanged, so that became the binding decision. The proposal in the SGM came from Council members. In other words, under the By-laws change proposed, which gives the final decision to Council, the result would have been the same (but achieved more quickly). We’re dealing with very small numbers of votes here. There were only a handful of people at the SGM who were not also on the Council.
I don’t see this proposal particularly as a response to any ‘large structural problems’ the BAA may face (if indeed it does). As I wrote in the December Journal, this is part of a package of changes designed to to achieve:
-An administratively simpler subscriptions structure;
-Fairness across the various age groups;
-No reduction in the Association’s income;
-An easy and recognised route for those who wish to contribute more to do so.I still believe they do this.
The age profile of the BAA is a separate issue, and I wrote about this earlier on this thread, and on the thread about schools’ affiliation. Suffice it to say here that the SPA (mentioned in this thread by Alan Thomas) also now has a much older average age than it had in previous decades. I’m not sure that this means that either society is not sustainable in the long term. An older age profile than at a certain point in the past does not equal ‘dying out’.
The complexity of administration that Andy alludes to is very much the point here, and very much in the thinking of the Working Group that recommended this package of changes, and also in the considerations of the Trustees and Council, who have discussed this several times in the last year. The income aspect is quite significant, as this is around 10% of the membership that is paying no subs, but also what needs to be considered is paying for the staff time to administer a complex system. That’s primarily what we are trying to grapple with. Also very apparent, as Andy mentioned, is the lack of volunteers, that means paid staff must do ever more tasks to run the Association.
Some have asked that we honour 50 discontinuous years of membership rather than only 50 continuous years. I cannot imagine how that could possibly work. Membership data over the years has been held on several different systems, manual and computerised. The current on-line database only goes back a few years. People who have lapsed then rejoined probably have multiple membership numbers. Marrying this information up, where people change numbers, addresses and even names, to prove whether someone has or has not subscribed to the BAA discontinuously for 50 years, would be an administrative nightmare. Maintaining the system we have is bad enough!
Though I can see how people who expected to reach honorary status soon might feel a bit disappointed, I must say I struggle to understand some of the solutions that have been proposed here. ‘Honorary’ means unpaid, free. That’s what the word means, and what we are considering here: whether or not to continue to give free membership to those who achieve 50 years continuous membership. Abolishing the honorary membership does not mean not honouring those members who reach this milestone, whether it be by publishing their names in the Journal, congratulating them in a meeting, or giving them a certificate or a badge (though I’m not sure if the cocoa thing was a joke or not).
I hope plenty of people come to the SGM in January. Last January only between 30 and 40 people attended the meeting, as I recall, about half of those, Council members. Not all Council members attend the London meetings, as some are in remote corners of the UK, but they can still participate and vote in Council meetings by Zoom. However, ordinary members cannot vote in a meeting remotely, they have to be present. This raises the possibility in my mind that a vote in Council could be overturned in the SGM by a smaller and less representative selection of the membership than voted in Council. This would be very unsatisfactory. But if plenty of people turn up to the SGM, there is no such issue.
It might be better for the actual IAU to have an amateur branch, thus using the administrative resources they already have, and not setting up an entirely new organisation. I have had some contact with the IAU Assistant General Secretary, who is British. A problem with the ‘amateur IAU’ idea today is that this might be seen to cut-across the IAU’s new, and major, Citizen Science agenda. ‘Citizen Science’ was not a term that existed in the 1960s-80s. The landscape has changed.
David is correct, the proposed alterations to the By-laws do include the removal of mention of schools in the section on affiliation. Nice to see members are reading this in great detail!
I believe we have no schools affiliated, and have not had any in modern times. Hence this is a bit academic.
However, I agree with the point that we should engage with schools. We are doing this. At the New Scientist Live Exhibition in London this year, on the day devoted to schools, BAA volunteers engaged with hundreds of school children, demonstrated telescopes (indoors), spoke to them about astronomy and handed out materials. Moreover, Marie-Louise Archer, on the Council, is organising a day of activities at Harrow School in Spring 2024, involving BAA members, teachers, and pupils from state schools as well as Harrow. Actually starting to do these things in practice, after many years of the BAA doing little in education, is far more important than what the by-laws say.
I’m interested to hear that the Cockermouth Society engages with schools. Local societies are generally better-placed to do this than the BAA, but the BAA could be a hub for sharing good practice and resources for working in education, and for putting teachers in touch with volunteers who’d like to help them. There’s considerable discussion in the BAA at the moment on how we can develop this, and I very much support it.
David Arditti
PresidentTony, if it were to be proposed at the meeting it would need to be debated, therefore you would need to be there to speak in favour of not removing honorary memberships. You would also need a seconder. Decisions at the EGM are taken only by the members present. We have never had a poll by e-mail (apart from the annual ballot). To organise an electronic ballot of all the members is very expensive.
David
To slightly clarify what Andy wrote, the SGM is formally convened to vote on the proposed alterations to the By-laws, as detailed on on the leaflet delivered with the Journal (and also on this website front page under ‘Association News’). The 50-year rule has never been in the by-laws; it is a therefore only a convention, that is within the powers of the Council to change. I (and the Council) are not proposing to hold a vote on this, though if there were a demand from at least two members at the meeting to hold such a vote, I would allow it.
David Arditti
PresidentConcerning the ageing demographics, I note that this problem is not exclusive to the BAA or to astronomical societies, but it is visible in most membership societies operating on traditional models, across all activities and hobbies. The young generation is much less interested in joining societies than the immediate post-war generations were. They get their information and social interactions in different ways.
We have a Diversity Working Group which is looking at the whole issue of what the BAA should do to broaden its appeal – not just to young people, but (the bigger issue really) to women, and to minorities. It will report to Council shortly, and hopefully some suggestions will get taken forward and do some good.
Young persons’ membership rates are already less than half the full rates, and I’m not convinced offering free memberships would get us more participation from young people.
However we remain a democratic organisation, and if someone wished to propose (and someone else second) such a proposal at the SGM, it would be voted on, and the Trustees and Council would be bound by the result. Similarly, someone could propose that we continue to give the free membership to those with 50 years’ continuous membership, and, if the meeting so voted, we would.
David Arditti
PresidentTo be fair, the credit card analogy in that BBC report is to explain the proportions of the iceberg, not its size. I think this is conceptually useful. It’s like the explanation of lunar crater morphology Patrick Moore tended to give, as being ‘more like dinner plates than soup bowls’. Whereas the giraffes/pandas thing is just silly (and obviously just a jape by one particular writer for the Jerusalem Post).
Anyway, I am, glad John enjoyed the meeting. I have had many comments of appreciation for the drinks party afterwards. Thanks to Hazel Collett and Marie-Louise Archer for organising it. I hope we will do the same next year.
David Arditti
PresidentI’ll try to answer this.
We are proposing removing affiliated societies as a category of membership. Thereafter they will not pay anything to the BAA, and will not receive the publications. However, we anticipate that many societies will still wish to be affiliated because they wish to be associated with the name of the BAA, and will view it as a mark of their standing or credibility. Council would only approve the affiliation of properly-constituted societies.
The members of affiliated societies would still be welcome at BAA meetings. For meetings where there is a ticket fee, it is possible we could continue to offer lower prices to affiliated society members than to the general public, but that will be decided on a case-by-case basis. We’d be free to offer other benefits to them not yet decided. I hope we would give affiliated societies publicity on our website and in the Journal. I think Section Directors would still be happy to give advice to members of affiliated societies (though speaking as Director of the E&T Section, it is my policy to give more time to people whom I know have subscribed to the BAA individually).
What Bill says about the Journal distributed through a local society is interesting. Most societies I know have abandoned maintaining a lending library, and, if affiliated, they don’t really know what to do with the Journal and Handbook, they are typically just kept by the Secretary. It would of course be possible for an official of the society to join in his or her own name, get refunded by the society, and donate the publications to the society – which is the same as happens now, but using different words.
David Arditti
President
