wpo - meetings & events
BAA Observers' Workshop #4 - OU - Milton Keynes -UK
2004 Feb 28 - an excellent and high powered meeting attended by 88 BAA
members and guests to the Open University on a raw winter's day. It was great
opportunity to meet old friends who had traveled from all over the UK. In
morning session in the Berrill Lecture Theatre went thus..
Tom Boles [BAA President] Software controlled
telescope systems
Nick James [BAA Papers Sec] Astrometry
Roger Pickard [BAA VSS Dir] Photometry of Variable Stars
Richard Miles [BAA AARP DDir] Photometry of Minor Planets
After a lunch break a tour was made of the George Abell Observatory
with 40cm Meade LX200 on the campus followed by separate hands-on tutorials
by the morning's speakers. These were most enlightening and indicated
the sophisticated results of professional standard that amateurs with modern
amateur telescopes and computer software can achieve. In one example
of astrometry that may have taken a day to reduce a single position of an
asteroid from a photographic plate via a plate measuring machine can be done
in a few seconds via CCD and appropriate software.
Additional afternoon talks in the Berrill Lecture Theatre were less computer
orientated e.g.
Nick Hewitt [BAA Meetings Sec] on Deepsky Observing
Projects
Bob Marriott [BAA I&I Dir/Curator of Instruments] on the Micrometer.
A great day was had by all and batteries certainly recharged!
