Editorial

The early morning skies are quite interesting at present - what with Saturn and Aldebaran sitting staring at each other from fairly close range - the one slightly reddish and the other a sort of buttery yellow. One can make out a reasonable amount of detail on Saturn at present, as long as you have a sizeable amount of mirror ( or lens as the case may be ) collecting the light for you. Jupiter is also still very bright and no longer has to contend with Venus, which is dropping into the morning light, to vie for the title of the brightest object in the morning sky. Orion rises as his nemesis the Scorpion sets and stands above us as a uniquely identifiable constellation.

Of course, the big news this month is that Mars Odyssey has successfully entered its initial elliptical orbit around Mars, and will soon begin aerobraking in order to attain its final circular mapping orbit. Well done to NASA's JPL and especially the Mars Odyssey team.

Wolf Lange supplies the next in his series of "The A to Zee of Astronomee" with the first of a multi-part on the letter "C". Eben van Zyl's article, "A Turning Point in Astronomy" tells us of the techniques developed by some Astronomers to calculate the distances to the Stars and Galaxies.

Bruce Dickson supplies an answer to Val's question regarding the Speed of Light as well as submitting an article on the Tinsley telescope, showing us that we do indeed have a unique 'scope on our site, and Brian Fraser has supplied us with a general guide to the skies above for the next 2 months. These tables of astronomical happenings are very useful to find daily items of interest and I can highly recommend them.

Those of you who attended the last monthly meeting were privileged to hear a really good presentation by Bill Sheehan, noted astronomical writer and historian. As Mars is once again in the news, his talk was all the more appropriate at this time in "history". You will also find a couple of articles relevant to Mars in this issue of Canopus.

Once again a plea to those who have not already done so - please pay your subs for 2002 as soon as possible and more importantly, fax or email us the proof of payment. If you don't let us know you've paid, we can't update the database and Canopus is printed according to the number of active members shown therein. So if you are subsequently are able to show that you had paid, but had not proved this at the time, we will probably not be able to supply you with a back issue of our own magazine.

The Editor - chris@penberthy.co.za

 The 2001/2 Committee of the Johannesburg Centre