Andy Wilson

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  • in reply to: February JBAA #621732
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    Hi Paul,
    Looking in MailChimp I can see you subscribed to the Newsletter on Sunday. So I think you must have received the email asking if you wanted to resubscribe and clicked the link to resubscribe yourself?
    You won’t receive backdated Newsletters as that is not how the mailing list works. The Newsletter for the February Journal was sent last Friday. You will be sent the next Newsletter around the time the April Journal is ready to be posted.
    Does that make sense?
    If I have misunderstood, then it may be worth discussing this away from the forum and checking with the BAA Office if needed.
    Andy

    in reply to: February JBAA #621715
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    My Journal also arrived today. The paper wrapper for mine was fully sealed. If anyone else notices a problem then I can pass it along to the Journal editors and Office.
    Andy

    in reply to: February JBAA #621673
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    Hi Paul,
    I have just instructed MailChimp to send you an email with a link to subscribe to the Newsletter.
    Normally the BAA Office handle subscriptions to the Newsletter. However, I just had a look and MailChump won’t let us subscribe you as you unsubscribed in 2019. This is a protection given by MailChimp, to ensure organisations can’t abuse the system by sending bulk emails to people who do not want to receive them.
    The email might end up in a junk/spam folder. Let me know how you get on.
    Best wishes,
    Andy

    • This reply was modified 5 months, 1 week ago by Andy Wilson.
    in reply to: February JBAA #621660
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    My Journal usually arrives a few days after the Newsletter announcing the Journal. The Newsletter went out on Friday so I am expecting my Journal sometime next week. Do you subscribe to the Newsletter?
    Best wishes,
    Andy

    in reply to: Forum oddities #621554
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    I have removed the post from someone attempting to spam the forum and hopefully blocked them from trying this again. It has been reported to the website developer to see if something can be done to prevent this in future.
    Andy

    in reply to: JBAA Feb 2024 out now? #621446
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    But ‘Astronomy Now’ are advertising the 2004 BAA Deep Sky section annual meeting…!!! It must have been a good one.
    Astronomy Now, February 2024 page. 69.

    Ha! This happens to all of us.

    I am not sure if the post was updated, but along those lines I updated a 2024 meeting today when someone pointed out the text within the webpage stated 2023.

    in reply to: JBAA Feb 2024 out now? #621439
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    Might it have been the thread on the BAA song? That mentions the February Journal from 1924 rather than 2024.

    https://britastro.org/forums/topic/baa-song

    • This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by Andy Wilson.
    in reply to: Deep Sky Webinar #621329
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    Both the Celestron Origin and Unistellar eVscope 2 are advertised at around £4,000. A lot more than the ZWO SeeStar S50 and DWARF II which are just over £500. Not too surprising given the Celestron and Unistellar have significantly larger apertures.

    in reply to: Deep Sky Webinar #621311
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    The Celestron Origin is another interesting entrant to the market. I wonder if they might offer a B&W version of the camera in future as it has a filter drawer. The filter is for light pollution filters.
    Richard Berry is trying the Origin out for variable star photometry. There is the opportunity to use the green channel as with DSLRs, or all the light, depending on the goal of the observation.
    The HOYS Citizen Science Project are accepting observations from ZWO Seestar 50mm telescopes, these use a colour CMOS chip. This is a research project run by Dirk Froebrich at the University of Kent, to monitor young stars.
    Both of these approaches use the raw files saved by these smart-telescopes, rather than the processed images displayed on smartphones and tablets.
    Andy

    • This reply was modified 5 months, 3 weeks ago by Andy Wilson.
    in reply to: Deep Sky Webinar #621296
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    I found Mark Stuart’s “Exploring the cosmic tapestry” very entertaining. Chris Lee’s talk on Electronically Assisted Astronomy wetted my appetite for giving this a go. I like the idea of a telescope that can be quickly and easily setup and controlled from indoors.
    Andy

    in reply to: Does anyone need iTelescope points for a project? #621291
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    You can contact a member by clicking their name/image next to their forum post. This takes you to their profile page and then you can press “Contact” in the lower left.
    This sends an email, so it enables contact without sharing email addresses publicly.
    Cheers,
    Andy

    in reply to: Radio Astronomy Meetings #621172
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    Hi Mike,
    The Radio Astronomy Group holds lots of online meetings. They have their own page where they list them all.
    https://britastro.org/section_information_/radio-astronomy-section-overview/razoom-programme
    It could be useful for someone to add these to the main events page. Each meeting takes a bit of work to setup, so it is a non-trivial task to set them all up and maintain them. There is also a minor issue that as there are so many, setting them up would knock some other upcoming meetings off the list on the homepage. Something for the Web Ops Group to think about.
    Best wishes,
    Andy

    in reply to: 2023 – how was it for you? #621141
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    Oh dear, that was really nasty accident. I hope you fully recover soon Mel.
    My current observatory has an electrically driven roof. I used to have a manual one that was a real struggle and I had to get onto a bench to close it. I worried about having an accident in the night!

    in reply to: Roger Pickard #621129
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    He will be very greatly missed. I had known Roger for over 20 years. I first met him at a BAA Exhibition Meeting in Cambridge, which led to my involvement in the VSS. He did a huge amount for variable star astronomy and the BAA.

    in reply to: Help needed with VSS database entry #621036
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    Hi Duncan,
    As Gary has alluded to, you need the fainter symbol in front of both the light estimate and the magnitude, so [P and [8.4.
    With normal magnitude estimates an “=” is assumed, so just 8.4 means equals 8.4.
    This is all to do with the way the database verifies the data, and can recalculate magnitudes when a sequence is updated.
    Best wishes,
    Andy

    in reply to: Unable to change my web profile #620984
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    Hi Andy,
    I have just started my Christmas holiday, so I am not sure we will get this fixed until next year. I can see roughly what has happened, though it is a little involved.
    I can see you have a family membership. However, you are both the main family member, and a second copy of you is set as the other family member, with the same email address. This could be confusing the systems and causing things to go wrong. It looks as though changes were made around July this year via the Sheep online account. Without giving out personal details on the forum, I wonder if the other family member may have originally been someone else, perhaps your wife.
    To fix this we will either need to reset you back to 2 different people in your family membership, or delete the other copy of you. We might also need to delete your website account, and get you to set up a fresh one, but we will only do that if the first step does not fix this.
    To avoid putting personal data on the forum, I suggest we contact each other away from the forum. I will send you an email to the address we hold on the system.
    Best wishes,
    Andy (BAA Systems Manager)

    in reply to: BAA homepage problem #620971
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    This is now fixed.

    in reply to: End of Schools’ eligibility to be Member Societies. #620871
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    I have checked the records and the last school lapsed their membership over 7 years ago. Under my reading of the proposed By-laws changes, a school society would be permitted to apply for Affiliated Society status.

    in reply to: End of Schools’ eligibility to be Member Societies. #620850
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    The plan is for the BAA to continue to have Affiliated Societies. However, they would not be a paid type of membership that receives the Journal.

    Depending on how this is handled, this could open up Affiliated Societies status to more societies.

    On a related topic, the BAA also has a library category of membership. Unless an individual joins to share the Journal, this might be a way to separate Affiliated Society status from paid membership while giving a route to receive the Journal.

    in reply to: Scrapping Honorary Membership ! #620847
    Andy Wilson
    Keymaster

    I would like to make the observation that the BAA has a habit of gradually making the administration more complex with time. The Honorary and Digital Honorary paid would be another two categories, as there was no plan to ask existing Honorary and Digital Honorary to start paying. The Paper Honorary paid would have 3 membership categories behind the scenes for UK, Europe and Rest of the World postal charges. The membership types have to be coded into some of the IT systems, as well as manually maintained in several places.

    I absolutely agree the achievement of 50 years membership should be recognised. This was the thinking behind the certificate. Gary makes the interesting suggestion of a gold lapel badge.

    I am not suggesting this should be the deciding factor, but a factor worth considering in whatever is decided.

Viewing 20 posts - 21 through 40 (of 443 total)