British Astronomical Association

Supporting amateur astronomers since 1890

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Percy Mayow Ryves (1881-1956): Observer, discoverer & BAA Section Director

The astronomical career of Percy Mayow Ryves, a BAA member from 1899 to 1956, and a Walter Goodacre medallist, is described in detail. Ryves contributed to the BAA for most of those 57 years, mainly as a variable star observer, but he also served as the Mars Section Director for 14 years. In addition, he was a popular BAA meetings speaker during the 1940s and 1950s. Ryves’ visual discovery of a comet, from Spain, in 1931 places him in the unusual category of being a BAA comet discoverer in that barren period between the W. F. Denning/ Edwin Holmes era and the prolific discovery period of George Alcock.

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127-2 sussenbach

Bright features on Neptune in 2015

In July 2015 Ricardo Hueso Alonso and colleagues discovered a bright spot on Neptune at latitude −41° with the 2.2 metre telescope of the Calar Alto Observatory. This paper reports observations and monitoring of this feature by amateur observers in the Netherlands and shows that with current amateur telescopes and digital cameras, bright features on distant Neptune can be detected and analysed.

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