Editorial

We have had our fair share of Astronomical news this last month - some interesting and some not so good.  Bruce Dickson forwarded an email to your committee, advising us of the death of a friend of our society,  Janet Mattei, and you may read the mail further on in this issue.  The other news was the discovery of the most distant body in our Solar System, Sedna, which has a highly elliptical orbit which lasts 10,500 years.  We have also heard of the plans to implement a permanent Base on the Moon and to put people on Mars within a few years - let’s hope it doesn’t take too long - I’d like a vacation on Mars.

We have also received some updated information about the Total Solar Eclipse in 2006 which will pass across North Africa through places such as Libya and Egypt - so if any of you have relatives in either of those places, now is the time to start making arrangements for a quick visit - and even if you don’t have any unsuspecting cousins, uncles, aunts etc... you can still arrange a tour to view this eclipse by visiting some of the websites referenced in the short article in the depths of this issue.

The major Planets are still putting on a good show with Jupiter having been at it’s brightest at the end of March - though it will of course still be magnificent for some time to come.  

Eben van Zyl continues his Mars series with a piece entitled Getting to know Mars and our Chairman Dave Gordon submits an interesting Chairman’s Chat which may give some of you Cosmologists out there a bit of a headache.  Brian Fraser has, as always, supplied us with good reasons for looking upwards over the next couple of months, and we have also gleaned some articles from the Space Agency websites.

ScopeX is now just around the corner.  We hope to see as many of you as possible during the day and hope you’ll all join us for the Star Party starting at 18:00.  So please diarise Saturday 24^th April for a great time and I’m sure you will have a most enjoyable Astronomical day.

The Editor - chris@penberthy.co.za

 The 2003/4 Committee of the Johannesburg Centre