Does anyone know if the Society have a new Chairman yet? Their ‘far more dynamic and interactive website’ doesn’t appear to have changed in many months and certainly doesn’t give any indication that anyone has been brave enough or foolish enough to volunteer for the post.
I was thinking of applying, but then I remembered that I’d been summarily banned from membership…
I’ve just heard that Neil Bone died a couple of days ago. I have seen him lecture several times and he was always worth the entrance money. A sad loss to astronomy…
Mmm, another one bites the dust! The Chairman of Worthing Astronomical Society has decided to quit – that’s 4 or maybe 5 chairmen in a row now who couldn’t work with certain members of the committee?
Now that the dust has settled on the whole issue of societies and domains etc, I thought I would mention a new society in Worthing, the Worthing Astronomers. This is the group founded by those who left Worthing Astronomical Society last year and it is entirely free to join – no subscription! There are currently around 35 members, which is not bad for a society only a very few months old.
They meet once a month and more details can be found at http://www.worthingastronomers.org.uk
It’s been brought to my attention that, although I believe no-one reads this blog anymore, I haven’t updated it for a while. I am happy to make clear that since 21st October 2008, this site is in no way associated with Worthing Astronomical Society. They can now be found at http://www.worthing-astronomical-society.com.
Well, where to start!
A couple of months ago the WAS committee took the decision to resign en masse, not just from the committee, but from the Society itself. This was not a decision taken lightly but was due entirely to the frustration and despair caused by the continued actions of the Honorary President. The final straw came when the President acted against the express wishes of the committee and sent a letter on behalf of the society asking a member to resign his membership, for reasons that still are not clear.
After the July monthly meeting an update was published on the website stating that the President had unilaterally decided to quash the increase in memberships subs – a proposal voted for by the committee, members and, indeed, the President himself.
On the 8th of August the webmaster received an email signed by the President “On behalf of all at the Worthing Astronomical Society” asking that the website be taken down, although no reason was given. When queried the President stated that the site was being used against him in a personal and derogatory manner.
The request was declined as the webmaster considered the comments to be a fair and accurate report of the events and in no way offensive. A few days later these comments – and only these comments – were removed by an unknown third party. When the webmaster attempted to restore them he found he was locked out of the website; the site had been illegally hacked.
Over the next few days further amendments were made to the site, including the insertion of Google Ads and other banners. At this point the webmaster decided the only way to protect visitors from possible malware was to take the site down completely.
Until the site can be restored from backups, this blog will be the society’s presence on the web.
Instead of attending the WAS monthly meeting last week, I was laid up in my sick-bed watching the football from Euro 2008. However, it was not easy to forget where I should have been.
Barely 5 minutes in the match the co-commentator stated that “the ball should be hit into space.” Before the first half was out, a misdirected shot was described as “a mis-kick of astronomical proportions.” A German player was referred to as “their brightest star“, a Croatian as “mercurial” and the following night a Dutch winger was compared to his compatriot Marc Overmars.
Okay, I’m stretching the football-astronomy connection a bit there, but outside the Euros there are others even more tenuous than the atmosphere of Europa: England defender Sol Campbell, ex-Wolves fullback Mark Venus and Brighton goalkeeper Michel Kuipers. Pele lived out semi-retirement with the New York Cosmos, and Manchester United were formed as a railway works team called Newton Heath.
There is one major difference between space and football though: space doesn’t have corners…
It was good to see an astronomical story hit the mainstream media last week with the much-anticipated first images from NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander. In fact, so mainstream was it that it warranted TWO mentions in the BBC’s ‘Have I Got News For You’, even if one of them was an expression of disappointment at the images showing red dust and not a Martian enjoying a cigar and a round of golf. However, at least it’s put the topic of space back in the minds of those for whom science is something that they forget about the moment they leave school. But why are people not interested? Is it a chicken and egg situation?
I know it’s been mentioned by many others, but the media treats science as the poor relation of politics, gossip and celebrity worship (and I use the word ‘celebrity’ quite wrongly); if a scientific story is deemed big enough for the television news at all, it’s invariably between the sport and the ‘…and finally’ section about three-legged tortoise having a wheel attached to its shell. Newspapers are no better: the majority of them have a daily horoscope, but none that I am aware of have even a monthly ‘night-sky’ column. I know they might say that there is no demand for it by readers but they are just perpetuating the myth that the stars are only there for fortune-telling.
But on the other hand, you only have to walk into a newsagents like WHSmith and see just the two or three magazines with an astronomical theme stacked against more than a dozen popularising pseudo-scientific drivel such as astrology and the paranormal to realize that there isn’t the thirst for hard-science knowledge amongst the British populace .
But, for the sake of a couple of square inches of newsprint, the newspaper readers could find what the stars are REALLY telling us, like what we are made of, how the universe was created and how it might end. Surely that is of far greater interest than some vague promise about meeting a tall, dark stranger? Unless, of course, that stranger is a Martian enjoying a cigar and a round of golf.
Following last Monday’s very interesting talk by Brian on the Tunguska Event, I thought I’d point you in the direction of another theory, that of Russian scientist, Andrei Yu. Ol’khovatov. His idea is that the blast was caused by “a geophysical event, associated with tectonic processes”. Have a look and see what you think, but I’m not totally convinced…
Talking of planetarium software, I forgot to mention Microsoft’s Worldwide Telescope for Windows and the Mac, although it appears to be more about stunning images from the like of Hubble, Spitzer and Chandra et al. I’ve not had the chance to play around with it yet, but some reports say that it will be “will be significantly better than Google Sky”.
This was a Blog 