Editorial

Mid-Winter is now long gone and we are now well into the 2^nd half of 2002. Where does the time go? It never used to go this quickly when we were kids at school and wishing that the terms would go more quickly - mind you, we didn't want the holidays to go as fast! July has been largely clear and cold with pretty good seeing most of the time, and Venus is shining like a veritable beacon in the evening skies.

And talking of good seeing - now that there are specialised asteroid and NEO telescopes hard at work, they are finding many new chunks of rock orbiting around up there - quite a few of which are potentially of significance to us down here on Earth. One of these, 800 metres in size, will pass close enough to us to be viewable in ordinary binoculars. This could cause quite a dent if it had to land down here.

Another new Asteroid has been discovered in an orbit tilted quite sharply to the plane of the Ecliptic. What makes this one special is that is the first to be awarded a positive Torino ( or is it Palermo? ) number, as it could potentially collide with the Earth in 2060, and at it's size of 2Km, could cause global catastrophe. There is more information on these items in these pages.

Eric Brindeau has submitted an article showing us how to use the Digitized Sky Survey and Brian Fraser gives us some details of a few heavenly happenings for the next 2 months. Eben van Zyl answers Val's question on the expansion of the Universe, and Bert van Winsen shows us how he built and uses his snug little observatory.

ECLIPSE chasers - remember we have a solar eclipse on 4^th December. If you would like to be there, contact a committee member, or Brian Fraser for further details on how to get to the area of interest.

The Editor - chris@penberthy.co.za

 The 2002/3 Committee of the Johannesburg Centre