Editorial

December ( already??? ) - we’re halfway through the ASSA Jo’burg Centre’s year and it feels like just a couple of months ago, we were gathered at Tom’s farm enjoying the 1998 Star Party, and within a couple of weeks we’ll be there again celebrating the end of 1999…and just around the corner, 2000 - the last year of the 2^nd millenium.

The bright planets are still putting on a good show for us - Jupiter ( a good sight in a moderate sized telescope and quite awesome in a large one ) and Venus are very bright and unmistakable and Saturn is also there though less spectacular to the naked eye.

Eben van Zyl continues his interesting series on Galaxies by introducing us to Globular Clusters and Trevor Gould has submitted a couple of articles, one of which is of special interest to those who are involved in, or who want to become involved in, the search for meteorites.

Brian has supplied us with the Astronomical calendar for December and January and your editor will be applying a little arm-twisting to get an article from the Frasers about their Leonid viewing trip to the Kalahari, for our next
( January ) issue.

There have been several reports of good Leonid sightings and any of you out there who have something to share with us, please do so for the January issue. Your editor has received several reports via email and has included a couple of these for your perusal.

The December and January issues will, unfortunately, be published without the always excellent and interesting articles on JPL and NASA from Bill Wheaton, who undergoes major surgery on the 30^th November. The good wishes of Committee and Members are directed to you Bill and we look forward to hearing from you once you regain your mobility.

Lastly, we wish all members well over the Festive Season.

The Editor

Chris   chris@aqua.co.za

 The 1999/2000 Committee of the Johannesburg Centre