Release 1:

Lincolnshire Astronomer Paul Money is proud to announce that World Renowned Vatican Astronomer Brother Guy Consolmagno will be coming to Lincolnshire on Monday October 10th to talk to local astronomers and the public.

The event takes place at Horncastle College at 7:30pm and tickets are £7.00 adults/waged and £4.00 U16 and unwaged.

Brother Guy will be talking about 'Why the Pope needs an Astronomer'. He is the author of several Books on a wide aspect of Astronomy and Space. He has co-authored four astronomy books: Turn Left at Orion, Worlds Apart, The Way to the Dwelling of Light and Brother Astronomer, Adventures of a Vatican Scientist.

Consolmagno serves as curator of the Vatican Meteorite collection, one of the largest in the world.

His research explores the connections between meteorites and asteroids, and the origin and evolution of small bodies in the solar system. Consolmagno has been honoured by the naming of an asteroid after him.

Today, Dr. Consolmagno divides his time between Tucson, Arizona, where he observes asteroids and Kuiper Belt comets with the Vatican's 1.8 meter telescope on Mt. Graham, and Castel Gandolfo, Italy, home of the Vatican meteorites.

Tickets can be purchased on the door with doors open at 7pm.

For more information contact Paul Money on 01507 524037
e-mail paul@astrospace.co.uk or check the website www.astrospace.co.uk

Release 2:

Paul Money's popular night sky book 'Nightscenes 2006' has just been published and is now available at many outlets across Lincolnshire and nationally available through Ottakars Bookshops.

Nightscenes has been written and Published by Paul since 2000 and has gained an excellent reputation for its ease of use and quality of publication. Indeed there is no other publication of similar kind that is in full colour throughout. Retailing at £5.00 it is shortly to be listed by Ottakars Bookshops Head Office on their master list as a book shops should stock - something that Paul and his wife, Lorraine, have been working towards for the last couple of years.

Stockists in Lincolnshire include:

• Perkins Newsagents in Horncastle
• Martin's Newsagents in Woodhall Spa
• Coningsby Bookshop/Post Office
• Richard Sivill Gallery in Tattershall
• Spencers Bookshop/Newsagent in Louth
• Oldrids Books in Boston
• WH Smiths in Boston
• Bourne Bookworld in Bourne
• Tom Dennis Photography in Lincoln
• Robert Watson Hardware in Sutton on Sea

Plus Lincoln Ottakars and Boston Ottakars.

Paul will be giving a special talk and Book signing event at Lincoln Ottakars on October 18th at 7pm Contact Gill at Lincoln Ottakars on 01522 540011

A book signing event at Boston Ottakars on Oct 29th contact the branch on 01205 360002 and a Book signing at Perkins Newsagents at Horncastle on Dec 10th.

For more information use the contact details given above.

Paul Money has recently published the latest ISS visibility times table for passes that are visible from Lincolnshire and surrounding counties. The table covers the period spanning August 31 to September 19.

The posting also contains details about the annual BAA Horncastle Astronomy Weekend.

The following has just come in regarding the FAS Convention on 1st October:

Date: October 1st 2005

Location: Institue of Astronomy, Cambridge

Speakers:

• Prof. David Southwood - Director of Science, ESA
• Professor John Brown, The Astronomer Royal for Scotland: Abra cad Astra - The Magic of the Cosmos
• Dr Alan Longstaff - 'Mars Revisited'
• Neil Bone, of the British Astronomical Association

• Andromeda Books
• Aurora Books
• AWR Technology
• Cape Newise
• Earth and Sky
• Faulkes Telescope Project
• Green Witch
• Lambda Publications
• LH Corp

• British Astronomical Association Campaign for Dark Skies
• OUSAPS (Open University Society for Astronomy and Planetary Science)
• Society for Popular Astronomy
• Society for the History of Astronomy

• Federation of Astronomical Societies AGM - this is the chance of society representatives to influence how the FAS is run
• Lunctime Tours of the IoA's wonderful observatories (from the old Cambridge University Observatory which was established in 1823)
• Lunchtime Live Demonstation of the Faulkes telescope which is based on Hawaii
• FAS Raffle, prizes include 2 hours of observing on the Faulkes telescope, astronomy products from Phillips and many more (more info on our website).

• Tickets can be purchased from John Parratt, 73 Woolbarn Lawn, Whiddon Valley, Barnstaple, North Devon, EX32 8PQ.
• Telephone: 01271 372331
• Or you can email ticket.sales@fedastro.org.uk

Just a reminder that this week sees the maximum of the Perseids meteor shower. Alastair McBeath (director of the SPA's Meteor Section) has made a useful post about them on the SPA's BBS.

A sky section has been added to the site. Currently this only contains details of the current phase of the Moon (courtesy of USNO) and an indication of current aurora activity (courtesy of AuroraWatch). This section will be expanded at some point in the near future.

The society now has a listing in the Clubs & Societies section of the Sky at Night Magazine website. You can find us in the Lincolnshire section.

Paul Money has recently published the latest ISS visibility times table for passes that are visible from Lincolnshire and surrounding counties. The table covers the period spanning June 28 to July 4.

Following the Annual General Meeting on th 13th May the society's committee was elected en block with the exception of David Swatton who stood down and the addition of Chris Wynne who is serving for the first time.

Under the society's constitution, although members can stand and hold office indefinitely on the committee (subject to election), it is required that committee members do not hold one particular office for more than three consecutive years.

The society has now entered its fourth year and following the AGM some of the committee believe it would be beneficial to the society for certain key members to carry on for one additional year in their positions.

Therefore, under the constitution, the committee has called for an Extraordinary Meeting to ask permission of the membership to allow a temporary change to the constitution for a period of one year. It should be noted that 50% plus 1 of the membership will have to approve the committee's proposal for it to pass. Any questions you may have on this matter will be answered on the night.

The committee wish to thank the membership for their continued support of the society and, as ever, we have a great line-up of talks; the next of which will be on the 10th June, given by Martin Lunn MBE from York on the subject of Pre-Telescope Observing. We also have your free copy of the Hubble Space Telescope 15th Anniversary DVD awaiting collection, which I know you will find highly interesting.

Clear skies,

Mark Underwood.

The following has been announced on the SPA forums:

My paintings of the constellations are to be exhibited at Grantham Museum, Lincolnshire, UK. The exhibition starts on 18th June 2005 and runs for three months. With official, obsolete constellations and asterisms, it may be the most complete scheme of constellation illustration in the world. Hope you can visit, and please mention it to your members. It's a non-commercial exhibition, for the promotion and understanding of the constellations. Free admission.

Yours,

Peter Rollings

The following has been sent out by The Open University:

The popular OU & BBC TWO series returns on 4 July 2005 to cover NASA's Deep Impact mission.

http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/

The programme is being hosted by Dr Brian Cox, particle physicist (at CERN in Switzerland, Manchester University, and Fermilab in the USA) and former member of the rock-band D:ream - along with Dr Lucie Green, who co-hosted prior Stardate programmes.

There will be two programmes on the day - one during the day-time on BBC One (likely to be 11.45am), which will broadcast the mission's first images, and one in the evening on BBC Two (likely to be 8pm), which will detail the days events - please check TV listings for further details closer to the date of transmission.

More details to follow shortly.

All of the mobile pages have been rewritten. The previous versions of the pages were not working on all mobile phones. Testing so far shows that the new versions of the pages should work a lot better.

A reminder that members of the society will be attending some of the following events during the next few months:

The Nightlife 2005 Event.

Saturday 9th July in Portsmouth. Bob Winterton and Mark Underwood are travelling down on the Friday and returning Sunday Morning. They have booked accomodation at the venue (Royal Sailors' Home Club) for two nights. There is space in the car for anyone else who would like to go. Contact Mark if you would like to join them.

StarFest 2005.

Friday 5th August to Monday 8th August in Dalby Forest, North Yorkshire.

The Herstmonceux Science Centre Astronomy Festival 2005.

September 9th, 10th and 11th. Dave King, Bob Winterton and Mark Underwood will be travelling down in convoy so contact either Dave or Mark if you wish to join them.

The 11th Equinox Sky Camp.

Thursday 29th September to Sunday 2nd October 2005 in Kelling Heath, Norfolk. David King, Bob Winterton and Mark Underwood are attending. If booking a tent pitch book as soon as possible since space is limited. For those frail astronomers who perfer comfort above the demands of living under canvas: they do have lots of nice static units on site for rent as per the website for Kelling Heath. Contact either Dave or Mark if you wish to join them.

The FAS 2005 AGM and Convention.

Saturday 1st October at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. Note that this event clashes with the Sky Camp at Kelling Heath.

Two more pages of the website have been WAP enabled. There is now an opening page at http://wap.newtonsas.org.uk/, from this page you'll find links to all other WAP-enabled pages. The contacts list has also been made available via WAP at http://wap.newtonsas.org.uk/contacts/

See the mobile facilities page for a full list of WAP-enabled pages on this site.

Can't remember when the next NAS meeting is? Got a WAP-enabled mobile phone to hand? If so, bookmark and use http://wap.newtonsas.org.uk/meetings. Now there's no excuse for missing another society meeting.

Anyone wishing to get hold of free star charts might want to take a look at The Mag-7 Star Atlas Project. From the project's home-page:

This project is my attempt to produce a free, downloadable set of high-quality star charts -- the Mag-7 Star Atlas -- capable of being printed at reasonable resolutions on the average home printer.

The Mag-7 Star Atlas plots stars down to Magnitude 7.25, with double / multiple stars indicated by a thin horizontal bar. Plotted DSO's (Deep Sky Objects) include all objects on the Messier list, the RASC's finest NGC list, and the Herschell 400 list --- more than 550 DSO's in total.

A new page has been added to the site that provides nighttime weather forecasts for the next few days for Lincolnshire. This page uses the astronomy forecast data supplied by Weatherweb.net.

A history of past meetings is now available on the NAS web-site. Please note that this isn't (yet) a full history of all meetings that have been held; this list just covers the period since this new web-site was launched.

Paul Money has recently published the latest ISS visibility times table for passes that are visible from Lincolnshire and surrounding counties. The table covers the period spanning April 17 to May 5.

The NAS web-site has been updated with two new features. First is a page that records changes made to the site and the second is a news page (which you're reading now) which will include news about the society and also information about and pointers to astronomy related news stories.