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iPhone image (not sure why, but it’s been turned while uploading) from Slough caught at 20:00, didn’t think I was going to get it as it was cloudy at 18:58 when I went out.
Next (and last) opportunity, 28 April at 21:30BST.
A tribute to Heather is going to be on this afternoons BBC Radio 4 obituary programme ‘Last Word’ broadcast 16:00-16:30 Friday 21 February 2020 and available online afterwards.
My (very incomplete) knowledge of Elizabeth in the Liverpool Astronomical Society is that she joined on 1884 January 21 and that she published two papers in the LAS Journal:-
1, Solar Section Report, vol. 4, p. 2 (1885 October)
2, Auroræ and Sun-spots, vol. 7, p. 52 (1888 December)
She may well have made other contributions.
Elizabeth is noted as having a 6½ inch aperture Calver reflector, a 3½ inch aperture Wray refractor and a 3 inch aperture refractor by an unknown maker and various spectroscopes in vol. 2, no. 6 (1896 June) p. 97 of the Journal of the Astronomical Society of Wales. On page 120 of vol. 1, no. 4 (1898 November) of the Cambrian Natural Observer she is noted as an ‘Associate Member’ of the Astronomical Society of Wales.
Volume 5, p. 28 (1897) of our Memoirs lists her observations of variable stars during the summer and autumn of 1895, a field not usually associated with her name.
Yes, Elizabeth was an Original Member and by December 1890 she had already been appointed Director of the Solar Section.
I have also written on the lives of two prominent women members of the BAA:-
Alice Grace Cook, JBAA, vol. 129, no. 1, p. 29-37, and
Fiammetta Wilson, The Antiquarian Astronomer, issue 13, June 2019, p. 23-29.
I was hoping for something on-line so I reference it for others to see, but I have now found an alternative source of the information required, which is available on-line.
My confusion has been over the use of minutes and seconds as divisions of both degrees (of declination or right ascension) and hours (of right ascension). A complete circle is either 360 degrees or 24 hours so these minutes and seconds are actually different sizes.
It’s the day before the Society for the History of Astronomy‘s Summer Picnic at the Norwich Astronomical Society‘s Observatory.
Yes, that’s the one.
Herbert Tomkins lived locally and his biography is on the OASI website.
Thank You.
