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May 2017 meeting
Another great meeting with an excellent speaker in Dan Oakley, Lead Ranger of the South Downs National Park Dark Sky Reserve. Dan’s lively presentation gave us a good overview of the park and what it took to achieve its Dark Sky status. Meeting the criteria of the International Dark –Sky Association was no mean feat! Dan also discussed many issues relating to good and bad lighting practice generally. Thanks Dan, your talk was much enjoyed and was most instructive.
Bob Mizon’s Object of the month was the strange NGC 6745 in Lyra This is a 10 billion year old galaxy over 200 million light years away that has been disrupted by a another passing galaxy causing massive new star formation. Some object!
After our refreshment break, Arthur Davis’ Constellation of the month was Sagitarius, filled with deep sky objects. Arthur highlighted the galaxies M8 and M20.
Bill Reed shared some of his images including Comet Johnson, M 13, a solar prominence and a short clip of solar surface activity. All of course up to the high standard we’ve come to expect from Bill.
Pete Adshead’s account of his occasional struggles with clouds to get his deep sky imaging done, rang bells with all who have tried. But he also shared with us in his usual clear and entertaining style, how he finally found and imaged M98 in the Coma Cluster.
Many thanks to Zena, and her merry band for providing and serving our refreshments and to all who again volunteered in the kitchen and with clearing away.
Next month Steve Tonkin will be warning us of ‘Ten ways in which the Universe tries to kill us’. Hope we survive to hear the talk!!
See you on June 21st
This entry was posted on Thursday, May 18th, 2017 at 8:23 pm.
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