The 414th Meeting of the Altrincham and District Astronomical Society, held at Timperley Village Club on Friday 3rd of March 2006 at 8pm

Those present were:
Paul Clark, Kevin Thurstan, Tony Aremia,
Norman Thurstan, Colin Eaves, Nick Dixon,
Ged Birbeck, Paul Brierly, Chris Suddick,
Don Utton, Roger Livermore, Stuart Oldbury,
(Total 12)

The Secretary opened the meeting by welcoming Paul Clark who this evening would be doing an extended sky diary and then talking about the Messier Marathon possible later in the month.
Paul welcomed everyone to the 414th meeting thanks them for turning up given the weather and urged everyone to please take care on the way home.
He then began by telling us about some of the things visible in the sky at the moment. Mercury is currently visible. In prime position is Saturn being 55 degrees up and you can get good views as he Don and about 60 others can attest to from Tuesday night.
It was then commented on as to how well club members are doing with their imaging of the moon, Jupiter but especially Saturn at the moment in a range of scopes from six to fourteen inches aperture, mostly using web cams.
He noted that there is also a comet passing through Pegasus in the morning during March.
Now if we go to the end of the month, you can pick up over 100 Messier objects in one night.
The messier marathon not only helps to hone your star hopping skills, but it helps you understand the positional relationships and how the night sky moves through the year.
Paul stated the key ones to start were the autumn galaxies M31, M33 & M74. Next is M52, he went on to explain how to carry on along the clusters via M34 around to M35. You then do the line of galaxies M81, M82 and work down the line of galaxies. Once you’ve finished the Virgo galaxies you usually have a wait of half an hour or more for the summer constellations to rise.
The meeting then took a break.
When we resumed Paul explained that after your rest the summer constellations are now rising with the Milky Way open and globular clusters.
So you can see over 100 in one night only really needing a star chart for the Virgo galaxies.
We thanked Paul for his talk and went on to society business.
The minutes of the last two meetings were taken as read.
The secretary reminded everyone that the next Delamere evening was in two weeks time, Paul Clark and Chris Suddick said they would each do a talk.
We had a discussion about where we would hold our next meeting and decided that as we had an outside speaker coming we would hold the April meeting at the village hall, but hope to hold the May meeting at the Scout hut.
Paul said the speaker at the next meeting would be David Ratledge talking about some of the latest developments in astrophotography.
Ged reported that the Timperly country fair will be held this year but it would be a week earlier than usual.
Finally Paul reported that for the first ever time, we had offered to hold the NWGAS meeting in six months at the Scout hut.

The meeting was then brought to a close.

The 413th Meeting of the Altrincham and District Astronomical Society, held at Timperley Village Club on Friday 3rd of February 2006 at 8pm

Those present were:
Paul Clark, Kevin Thurstan, Mark Crossley,
Tony Aremia, Mike Cook, Norman Thurstan,
Richard Bullock, Terry Bailey, Geoff Flood,
Colin Eaves, Geoffrey Walton, Graham Sinagola,
Nick Dixon, Ged Birbeck, Paul Brierly,
Chris Suddick, Peter Baugh, Don Utton,
Colin Bowler, John Tipping, Andy Carroll,
Barry Carroll, 4 Others
(Total 26)

The chairman Paul Clark opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to the 413th meeting and announced that tonight’s talk was one man and his telescopes by mike cook, telling the story of his experience with the telescopes he has owned over the last six years.

His interest was kicked off by his uncle Malcolm and he bought himself a pair of 50mm binoculars, but soon wanted more. So he went to buy some larger 80mm binoculars and came away with a 5 inch Macksutov-Cassegrain.
Mike then went on to describe his buying, selling and sold ownership of at least 24 telescopes of various designs and sizes over the past six years. These included a 5” Darkstar reflector, 10” & 14” home made Dobsonions, Nexstar 114, Celestron 80mm refractor, Konus 80mm refractor, ETX 70 tube assembly, Intes MN56 5” Maksutov Newtonian, Orion 6” tube assembly, Helios 8” reflector and 77mm Borg refractor. Next he sold everything he still had and got a 12” Meade LX200 with a Takahashi FS102 as a finder. Soon after he took it down to Devon for a star party and returned home with a TMB 105 triplet refractor instead.
After the tea break he continued with some of the other scopes he has owned since including a Celestron C5, a 7” Mirage Maksutov with a Takahashi FS60 as a finder, 63mm Karl Zeis refractor, Takahashi FS70.
Currently he has an 8.3” Takahashi CN212 Cassegrain/Newtonian, a Takahashi Sky 90 refractor and a Celestron C14 Schmidt Cassegrain.
He also owned, for a short while, a 6-foot observatory dome, which didn’t make it into his own garden before being sold.

Mike was thanked for his talk and we move don to the society business.

First was the news that the Stockport sky beam planning application had been refused by the full planning council on environmental grounds.

There was no news as yet from the council and the possible surrender of the obs lease.

The meeting was then brought to a close.

The 412th Meeting of the Altrincham and District Astronomical Society, held at Timperley Village Club on Friday 6th of January 2006 at 8pm

Those present were:
Paul Clark, Kevin Thurstan, Mark Crossley,
Tony Aremia, Mike Tyrrell, Philip Masding,
Norman Thurstan, Richard Bullock, Terry Bailey,
Geoff Flood, Colin Eaves, Geoffrey Walton,
Graham Sinagola, Nick Dixon, Nick Odom,
Ged Birbeck, Stuart Oldbury, Adam Oldbury,
Paul Brierly, Chris Suddick, 2 others.
(Total 21)

The chairman Paul Clark opened the meeting by welcoming everyone to the meeting and commented on what a good turn out it was for a January meeting. He told us that there was no speaker tonight but that we would be seeing some lunar pictures by Paul Brierly and a DVD about David Malin.
We were told that next month Mike Cook would be bringing in some of his equipment to tell us about and explain some equipment pitfalls.
We then started with the DVD about David Malin the acclaimed astronomer and astrophotographer on colour in the universe. It told the story of his astrophotography, mostly with the Anglo Australian Telescope, but also from telescopes in the Canaries and Hawaii, using glass plate photography in three different colours to create spectacular pictures of great scientific value. How over the years his experiments with processing, printing and later with newer processes such as unsharp masking, had enabled him to make many new discoveries and obtain new information off photographic plates taken many years ago.
The Chairman then thanked Geoff for providing the original video and Chris for transferring it onto the DVD that we watched.
We then had our tea break.
We restarted the meeting with some of Paul Brierly’s new Lunar pictures, the results of his first experiments with his new Philips tou cam pro & laptop and some of the problems he had experienced. Mark Crossley then recommended various software packages you could use to stitch them together into a mosaic.
Next to business. The minutes of the last meeting were taken as read. The Secretary went through the post and reminded everyone that the area-planning meeting for the Stockport sky beam was on Monday evening 9th January. He and Geoff Walton would be going and anyone else who could go would be welcome, the Chairman apologised for not being able to go because of work commitments.
The treasurer reported that society funds were currently just over £2000 but that bills just received would take it back under that figure.
We were then brought up to date on the situation with the obs site and a possible move. The council had inspected the site and were waiting for an answer from the leisure department. Feedback from the Scout hut committee was mostly favourable but one or two were not sure at a rent of £400- £450.
We said we would keep our eyes on the weather for a possible group-observing trip maybe to Clough House.
The meeting was then brought to a close.