Editorial

The excitement over the Mars Festivities which has been growing over the past several weeks and in some circles months, grew to huge proportions in the last couple of weeks as our Mars viewing evenings became "booked out" and we had to schedule extra viewing nights. Both the membership and the public out there showed tonnes of interest in this once-in-a-lifetime event and all of those who attended any of the viewing evenings seemed to have thoroughly enjoyed themselves. This is really good for our society and we will hopefully see a membership growth as an outshoot of the events as people out there see what it is that the ASSA members find so fascinating about the night sky.

The view of Mars itself is fantastic in just about any sized 'scope ( within reason of course - don't expect miracles while viewing through a small spotting scope or moderate sized binoculars for instance ) and that polar ice-cap is really quite bright against the colour of the planet itself. In reasonably sized 'scopes, quite a few of the very large surface features are visible and your editor had visions of Percival Lowell and his "discoveries" on the planet, and wondered what additional features he would have "discovered" at such a ( relatively ) close range.

Our August meeting coincided with a very special birthday - see the pictures of the meeting in this issue.

Dave Gordon regales with us again in the "Chairman's Chat" and Eben van Zyl raises an interesting thought or ten in his next piece on Variable Stars. Brian Fraser reviews the heavenly happenings over the next couple of months, while Evan Dembskey has found some more interesting astronomically oriented web sites for us to visit and enjoy and Mary McKinnon gives another viewpoint of the extreme dark sky expedition down to the chilly hills and dales of Lady Grey.

Please remember to pay your annual subs as per the loose insert. This year, the last issue of Canopus to be delivered to those who don't pay on time is the September issue - i.e. if your subs are not received by 23^rd of September, you will miss out on at least that issue.

The Editor - chris@penberthy.co.za

 The 2003/4 Committee of the Johannesburg Centre