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The Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 2016 December

Volume 126, Number 6

Next year’s comets, the final resting place of Rosetta, a Europe-wide occultations symposium, a remarkable and ingenious historical telescope... this could be the most varied issue of the Journal yet...

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Selected highlights from this Journal:

Notes and News

‘End of mission’ for the Rosetta spacecraft

Nick James

Jupiter and the Juno mission: the latest developments

John Rogers

The BAA at New Scientist Live, 2016 September 22 − 25

Janice McClean

BAA members’ pages are now live on the BAA website

James Dawson

Observers' Forum

Chasing the Charioteer

Callum Potter

The 35th European Symposium on Occultation Projects (ESOP XXXV)

Tim Haymes

Comet prospects for 2017

Jonathan Shanklin

Also in this issue

Absolute Beginners No. 8: The phases of Venus

Paul Abel describes the observations you can make of our sister planet Venus, and explains the reasons for its varying position and brightness as it orbits the Sun.

Paul G. Abel

The 2016 George Alcock Memorial Lecture: Systematic visual photometry of variable stars

Visual photometry is the earliest form of photometry of variable stars, but is today considered to be of limited value due to its low accuracy compared with photometry undertaken by electronic means. This presentation is intended to challenge this view.

John Toone

Refereed Papers

Mr William Strachan and his remarkable telescope

The observing career of Mr William Strachan of Bournemouth, a BAA member from 1908 to 1935, is described. Despite severe lifelong disability he managed to regularly observe the Sun, variable stars and a few other objects for 26 years. His observing career in later life was only made possible by using a custom made polar refractor Coudé system which he used regularly from 1924 to 1934.

Martin Mobberley

Saturn in 2001 − 2002

The south face of the rings was displayed nearly to its maximum effect during this presentation. The various occultations of the planet and its satellites by the Moon were further highlights of the apparition.

Richard McKim

Short paper: Perigee lunar eclipses

Details are presented of lunar eclipses occurring very close to perigee, for the years 1000 to 3000.

René Bourtembourg & Jean Meeus

Short paper: Polar alignment of the equatorial mount: how accurate must it be for trail-free astrophotography?

This paper develops and presents a rule of thumb as to how accurate the polar alignment of an equatorial mount must be, in order to avoid trailing stars in astrophotography.

Simon White

Supernova 2012fr and the distance to NGC 1365

BVRI and unfiltered MicroObservatory CCD observations of SN 2012fr covering the first 100 days following its discovery are reported.

Martin J. F. Fowler

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The Journal of the British Astronomical Association, 2016 December

Notes and News

Observers' Forum

Also in this issue

Refereed Papers