David Arditti

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  • in reply to: Astrofest 2024 #621362
    David Arditti
    Participant

    I think we are just all mystified what this is about, Ken.

    in reply to: BAA song #621347
    David Arditti
    Participant

    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: Scrapping Honorary Membership ! #620891
    David Arditti
    Participant

    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’.

    in reply to: Scrapping Honorary Membership ! #620868
    David Arditti
    Participant

    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.

    in reply to: IAU for amateur astronomers? #620865
    David Arditti
    Participant

    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.

    in reply to: End of Schools’ eligibility to be Member Societies. #620864
    David Arditti
    Participant

    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
    President

    in reply to: Scrapping Honorary Membership ! #620814
    David Arditti
    Participant

    Tony, 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

    in reply to: Scrapping Honorary Membership ! #620806
    David Arditti
    Participant

    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
    President

    in reply to: Scrapping Honorary Membership ! #620797
    David Arditti
    Participant

    Concerning 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
    President

    in reply to: Christmas meeting #620767
    David Arditti
    Participant

    To 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
    President

    in reply to: New membership categories #620766
    David Arditti
    Participant

    I’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

    in reply to: Proposed changes of bye laws #620736
    David Arditti
    Participant

    To answer James’s question, members will have the opportunity in the meeting to propose amendments to the proposed By-laws, so they could vote to accept parts of the proposals but reject other parts.

    David Arditti
    President

    in reply to: Proposed changes of bye laws #620735
    David Arditti
    Participant

    I can answer these questions Alan.

    It is not usual in this day and age for large membership charities to allow their members to vote on subscription levels. For example, when did the National Trust or the RSGB last ask their members to vote on their subscription levels? In practice only a tiny proportion of the BAA membership votes on the subscription levels: last year, only about 30 members attended the SGM, of whom about 15 were on the Council. It’s not a representative sample. It seems to me, and the rest of the Trustees and Council, that it is part of the proper job of the Trustees, for which they are elected, to look at the Association’s finances including income and expenditure, reserves, investments etc. and to decide what the appropriate levels for subscriptions are. The fact that, under the proposals, there will be a vote on subscription levels by the Council, creates a check on the Trustees’ decision and subjects it to further discussion within the Association. Another point is that, following the recommendations of the Subscriptions Strategy Working Group, we will be introducing a higher tier of subscription called a ‘Benefactor’ subscription for those who wish to contribute more than the standard subscription. There’s no reason why the general membership should take a view on the appropriate level of such a voluntary contribution.

    In the 2023 ballot we had 477 digital ballots and 56 paper ballots completed, so only 9.5% of the ballots were paper returns. Both the digital ballot and the paper ballot cost us about £1000 to run (so £2000 total). So the paper votes are costing us £20 each. The Trustees have not taken the decision to cease the paper ballot, but we’d like the authority of the members to do so if we feel it is just not a sensible expenditure. We may also look into the costs and practicality of sending paper ballot papers to only the members for whom we do not hold email addresses, so as not to disenfranchise them.

    The proposed change to affiliated societies is to remove them as a category of membership. This recommendation also comes out of the Subscriptions Strategy Working Group. If enacted, affiliated societies would no longer pay a fee to the BAA and they would no longer get one copy of each issue of the Journal and one copy of the Handbook. However they would still be affiliated to the BAA and their members would still be welcome at BAA meetings.

    David Arditti, President

    in reply to: Astronomical images and NFT’s #620293
    David Arditti
    Participant

    Sounds 100% like a scam to me. I don’t know how it works, but one clue is that $2000 for an astronomical image is far too much. When I’ve had images published in books, the payment has been in the £10s range, never more than £100.

    David

    in reply to: Accommodation at dark sky locations for astronomy(?) #620005
    David Arditti
    Participant

    I can recommend Olly Penrice’s place in the south of France. He is is an astro-imaging specialist: https://www.sunstarfrance.com

    The best location in the south of the UK I have found is Llanerchindda Farm, run by the Hadley Family in mid-Wales. They don’t have much equipment there (they have a 6″ Dob) and they are not astronomy specialists, but they are very helpful. https://cambrianway.com

    in reply to: Bias Frames for CMOS #619884
    David Arditti
    Participant

    Yes, though I am surprised your flat frames need to be exposed for so long. I use a twilight sky and the exposures are less than 0.1s.

    in reply to: Bias Frames for CMOS #619881
    David Arditti
    Participant

    I agree with Ian Sharp’s answer. There’s no need for bias frames. A better solution is the combination of dark frames of length and temperature equal to that of the light frames, flat frames specific to the optical setup and filter, and dark flat frames of length equal to the flat frames. I think this is better for all sensor types.

    in reply to: Elections to BAA Council #619842
    David Arditti
    Participant

    To provide a conclusion to this topic, I can report that the BAA Council discussed the proposal that the ballot should not be held in years when no positions are contested. They voted by a large majority to retain the current system of holding a ballot every year.

    However, we will shortly be bringing forward proposals to amend the By-laws so as to give the Board of Trustees explicit authority to hold only an on-line ballot, without the postal one, if they decide this is appropriate. This would considerably reduce the costs of holding our elections.

    David Arditti
    President

    in reply to: October JBAA (Missing) #619841
    David Arditti
    Participant

    Having consulted with the Office and Journal Editor, who has spoken to the printer, the consensus of opinion is that what has gone wrong is that copies have escaped from the compostable plastic wrappers in the post, because of the extra weight of the Handbook, and have got lost, or been repackaged and not yet delivered.

    We have told the printer to revert to using paper wrappers. We hope this will solve the problem.

    Paul, Alan and Roy should get theirs direct from the Office shortly.

    in reply to: Understanding Timings used in the Journal #619810
    David Arditti
    Participant

    It is decimals of a minute. So e.g. 10:47.7 is 10:47 and 7/10 of a minute, which is 42 seconds.

    Some software packages used in astronomy produce this output.

    I observe Jupiter a lot and use the WinJupos package by Grischa Hahn, and that gives everything in decimals of a minute. So also every piece of software that feeds into this (e.g. the image capture software) has to use that time format as well. In this case I think the reason is just historical, that visual observations could not be accurate to better than this, and in early days of programming it was easier to do it this way, and it has carried on. I don’t really like it.

    Occultations of course can be timed to at least a tenth of a second, but I suppose the prediction does not need to be so accurate, so I suspect this is really due to both trying to save space (in print) and software that is a bit long in the tooth.

    But someone who works with occultation predictions might care to comment.

Viewing 20 posts - 21 through 40 (of 127 total)