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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
PresidentTo 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
PresidentI 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
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
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
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.
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.
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
PresidentHaving 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.
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.
Sorry to hear about this.
I don’t know it there is a systemic problem here, but as there are three of you, it sounds as if we need to take this up with the printer, who sends them out directly from the print works.
In the short term I’ll let the BAA Office know that you are missing your October Journals, and they should be able to send you copies from their stock.
David
PresidentThe full financial statement is now available to members here:
https://britastro.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/BAA-2023-Financial-Statements.pdf
Sorry for the delay.The financial statement published in the Journal is an abbreviated version of the full financial statement which should be published on the website. I have just looked for it and found it has not yet been published. My apologies for this oversight, and thanks for bringing this to my attention. I will see that it is fixed shortly.
The full financial statement has this paragraph on page 21, which answers your question:
‘The British Astronomical Association has been notified of a will in which they are beneficiary. However this is currently being contested. The charity will be liable for the advice in arriving at a decision. The cost of the legal fees to settle this case may be deducted from the estate or may be awarded against the Association. To date, approximately £30,000 of costs have been incurred by the Association and further costs of up to £70,000 could be expected.’
As you will be aware, the Trustees are elected by the members to manage the assets of the Association. They keep this case, and expenditure on it, constantly under review. They believe it is highly likely that the BAA will win this case and these costs will be recovered, plus more. However, it is our duty to tell the members that there is a chance that the case could be lost and the costs could be awarded against the Association.
You would be, of course, quite at liberty to ask questions on this at the AGM. The case of the Roy Panther estate is in the public domain, and has been widely reported.
David Arditti, President
