Derby and District Astronomical Society

Aries
The Journal of the Derby and District Astronomical Society
September - December 2005
[Contents]

Society News

Society Sponsored Walk

Recently the Society needed to raise some extra cash, so a fund raising idea was put forward at a committee meeting, the idea being a sponsored walk. The walk was to go from Melbourne to Breedon-on-the-Hill and back. 6 members took part in the walk, they were:

Michael Lancaster
Dave Maynard
Arthur Tristram
Graham Ensor
Adrian Brown
Cathy Grimes

The walk took place on Saturday 14th May 2005, and for once the weather was kind - the whole walk took place in sunshine. The walk raised a total of £418 for the Society coffers, a fantastic result I’m sure you will all agree. So a big thank you to those who took part and to all those who sponsored the walkers. Well Done!

Click here for the story in pictures.

Society Committee 2005/2006

The results of the elections of Society Officers and Ordinary Committee Members at the DDAS AGM held at the Friend’s Meeting House, St. Helen’s Street, Derby on 6th May 2005 were as follows:

Committee Officers:

Chairman – Michael Lancaster
Vice Chairman – Dave Maynard
Secretary - Anthony R. Southwell
Treasurer - Arthur Tristram
Site Curator - Mike Dumelow
Aries Editor - Anthony R. Southwell
Webmaster - Michael Lancaster

Ordinary Committee Members:

David Selfe
Adrian Brown
Cathy Grimes

Click here for mugshots.

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions regarding the Society, then please talk to any of the above at one of the general meetings, they won’t bite, honest, well not hard anyway!

Lottery Award Equipment

Following our successful bid to get Lottery funding we purchased the items we asked for in our proposal to the Awards For All organisation. We were awarded a grant of £3,500 and with that we procured a digital projector and an 8" Meade LX90 telescope. We actually came in under budget and managed to have around £1,000 left over. So after contacting Awards For All, we got the go ahead to buy a spare bulb for the digital projector and also a laptop. We were still about £90 pounds under budget! So a solar filter and mount has also been purchased for the LX90. Thanks must go to Mike Lancaster for all his hard work in getting the award application completed and for acting as equipment procurement supervisor.

Meeting Programme

For our current meeting programme click here.

and Finally...

We have a couple of CCD imaging stars in our midst! On several occasions over the past year both Adrian Brown and Chris Newsome have gained 'Picture of the Week' status on the British Astronomical Association (BAA) website. Adrian's images include Saturn (January 2005), M27 (June 2005), and Chris' include Sunspot 798 (September 2005), and Iridium 7 (14th November 2005). So, a very well deserved congratulations to Adrian and Chris for their achievement. Keep those images coming!