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September 2007

The Solar System Today: Talk by Greg Smye-Rumsby

The first meeting of our new season proved very popular. There were 52 attendees, including no less than nine new members who joined on the day; they are most welcome. The original title of the programme had been The Solar System Today, but in the event it switched to The Universe in 3D. Greg Smye-Rumsby has just completed turning a whole series of astroimages into 3D - a very time consuming process using some new scanning procedure he has developed. These images will appear in an Astronomy Now publication later in the year. Greg issued 3D glasses to everyone and then showed us some absolutely stunning images, in his usual, lively, inimitable style. Not only did we see our solar system in 3D, but also clusters and galaxies. The one that stood out for me was The Sombrero Galaxy - the impression of depth was awesome. Watch out for that publication, it'll be well worth getting.

John Evans (President) and Greg Smye-Rumsby.

Viewing Greg's 3D images.

It was the first meeting under the auspices of our new president, John Evans. After the tea-break John took the floor and reported on the excellent progress on Health and Safety issues, on a temporary setback with the main telescopes drives, and outlined the training plans for observatory procedures, CCD imaging and image processing. Tony Questa, Chris Hopper and Peter Dean all contributed to this report, Peter's spot being about website progress and SkyWatcher. John Axtell finished off the evening with a quick "What's Up", some society notices and reports on outreach work.

First meeting of 2007/8 session has been well attended.

Another feature of the evening was that we ran a Powerpoint presentation in a repeating loop. This was shown before the main talk and during coffee break. This covered several of the items which would otherwise appear in John A's "What's Up", thus saving time later. It also included a Constellation Of The Month feature. This presentation seems to have been well received, and so will be a regular at future meetings.