BAA Comet Section meeting - Cambridge, May 14th

[Rick]

There will be a Comet Section meeting at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge on Saturday, May 14 (see http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/contact/map/ for directions).
The meeting will cover a wide range of cometary topics so there should be something of interest for everyone.

With the imminent arrival of the Deep Impact spacecraft at Comet 9P/Tempel 1 and the recent spectacular apparition of C/2004 Q2 (Machholz), this year promises to be an important one for comet observers. This meeting will give particular emphasis to the extraction of data, particularly photometry, from comet images.  This is a complex subject and we are pleased that two of Europe's leading cometary astronomers (Mark Kidger from Spain and Giovanni Sostero from Italy) will be presenting their methods.

Doors open at 10am and a buffet lunch will be available at the venue. The provisional programme is as follows:

10:00   Doors open, tea/coffee

11:00   Introduction
11:10   Guy Hurst - Visual comet observing, naked eye to telescope
11:40   Martin Mobberley - The future of amateur comet discovery
12:10   Peter Birtwhistle - CCD imaging and astrometry of faint comets
12:50   Lunch

14:00   Mark Kidger - CCD cometary photometry - The Spanish approach
14:45   Giovanni Sostero - Amateur CCD imaging and photometry
15:30   Open forum discussion chaired by Nick James
15:45   Tea/Coffee

16:15   Jonathan Shanklin - Historical comet observations
16:40   Denis Buczynski - Discoveries of the past, tools of the trade.
17:15   Close

A tour of the telescopes at the site will be organised for those interested. The meeting is open to all, whether members of the section or not.

Nick James.
Comet Section CCD advisor.


[ This Message was edited by: Rick on 2005-04-28 19:11 ]