HARTRAO needs you!

The Hartebeeshoek Radio Astronomy Observatory now has a busy public outreach program, and on many evening hosts groups, some of whom sleep overnight.

The evening groups are treated to a magnificent view of the night sky and binoculars are made available to them, as is a 14 inch Celestron, which is operated by a professional astronomer.

The already busy astronomers are therefore now also doing night shift, catering for the groups. They could use some help from us amateurs.

Amateurs could help in two ways:

[1] Amateurs have a hard earned knack of finding objects in the sky at short notice, completely without help from star charts or computers. They could show the professional radio astronomers where the visual objects are.

[2] Amateurs could assist in running the evening groups: there may be some compensation for travel costs involved. Certainly if we could spare an evening once every, say six weeks, the task would not be onerous and it would be a great pleasure to view the sky from out of town, in a safe locality, and through a 14" 'scope.

If anyone is interested in helping out, please contact the writer.

For a long time now, HARTRAO has freely advertised the Johannesburg Centre as a place for interested amateurs to gather: let's help them to help us!

Trevor Gould