Editorial
Did any of you manage to visit the ASSA Jo'burg Centre stand at the Hobby-X show a few weeks back. It was really quite an amazing effort, considering the short amount of time we had to set it up. A great word of thanks is due to our vice-chairman Dave Gordon for his foresight, and to Chris and Gill Stewart for their efforts in helping Dave to set up what turned out to be a really good advert for the Society. A lot of interest was sparked by the stand, and membership took a sudden leap upward - this can only be good for the society as a whole. Last and not least, another word of thanks is also due to those members who took the time to join Dave on the stand and helped to promote the Jo'burg Centre. This to my mind is a forum that should become an annual event, with as many members as possible lending a hand.
And talking of annual events; what it is hoped will become a regular exhibition for the Jo'burg Centre, ScopeX 2002 ( and hopefully 2003…2004…etc… ) will be taking place on the 18th of May 2002 at the War Museum just next to the Johannesburg Zoo. It will consist of an exhibition of telescopes followed by a Star Party as soon as it darkens ( and of course the old proviso - weather permitting ). There will be place for vendor displays as well so we will see both home-made and commercial telescopes on display.
Venus is now quite nicely visible in the early evening sky and Jupiter and Saturn still there until fairly late in the evening. A newcomer to our skies - comet Ikeya-Zhang is also granting us a fleeting display and it seems that we can expect a fairly reasonable view of this speedy visitor.
Eben van Zyl opens the book on a few more techniques used by Kepler in calculating planetary orbits and such and gives us some insight to the brilliance of the man. The astronomers of old surely managed the get and awful lot of work done and without the help of computers nogal! Brian Fraser tells us what's happening for the next 2 months and this includes tables of the rising and setting of the Sun and 5 major planets. Wolf Lange continues the A to Zee series using astronomical items beginning with the letter "E".
ECLIPSE chasers - remember we have a solar eclipse on 4th December. If you would like to be there, contact a committee member, or Brian Fraser, for further details on how to get to the areas of interest.
The Editor - chris@penberthy.co.za