Volume 117, No.4: 2007 August
Detailed contents: Notes and News / Articles / Observers' Forum / Reviews / Letters / Meetings / BAA Update
The European Space Agency GAIA mission (Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics) is scheduled for launch in late 2011. This combined astrometric/photometric facility is planned to extend to at least the year 2020 and is expected to set new standards in astrometry & photometry for many years to come. See Richard Miles' Presidential Address A light history of photometry on page 172. (? ESA; illustration by Medialab)
From the President (Richard Miles ) / Perseids set for a favourable showing (Neil Bone) / Solar Section (Lyn Smith ) / Asteroids & Remote Planets Section (Roger Dymock) / Another supernova for Tom Boles (Stewart L. Moore) / Part-time Accountant required for the BAA / Mercury in transit, 2006 November 8-9 (Richard McKim) / A daylight occultation of Saturn (Mike Foulkes)
Photo: A composite image of Saturn at egress adjacent to the Mare Smythii at 20h 18m 21s UT, by Peter Lawrence. 356mm Schmidt-Cassegrain (C14) at F11. Luminera SKYnyx-2-0M camera with Astronomik red filter. The lunar image was taken at 20h 19m 15s UT.
Lightcurve of the eclipsing binary AR Aurigae recorded by
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The Journal of the British Astronomical Association
Cover image
Notes and News
The 2006 BAA Presidential Address
A light history of photometry: from Hipparchus to the Hubble Space Telescope... Richard Miles
Science, and in particular that branch known as physics, has its basis in measurement: that is quantifying a particular phenomenon so that it can be more fully described mathematically. In the case of light, we can use our own eyes to assess the phenomenon, but how can we describe what we see by way of numbers? How can we measure the amount of light we are experiencing? This is what I would like you to understand by way of the term 'photometry'. Let us go on a journey through time past and trace the developments that have taken place in photometry over the years.
Note that in the interest of brevity I shall limit this account to the measurement of light in the visual range of the spectrum. This will mean omitting the study of spectra and spectrophotometry, an examination of which might otherwise prove to be a distraction from the main theme, which is one of technological progress and human achievement.
the author from Mouldsworth Observatory, Cheshire, in 1983.
Refereed articles
Trouvelot's threads: the 'murs enigmatiques' of Etienne Leopold Trouvelot... Nigel Longshaw
The aurora 2005... R. J. Livesey
Analysis of the first confirmed superoutburst of
V337 Cygni in 2006 May... David Boyd, Tom Krajci, Jeremy Shears & Gary Poyner
Click here to obtain a PDF file of any of these articles
Letters
Observers' Forum
BAA Update
Meetings
Reviews
A & C Black, 2006. ISBN 0-7136-7939-5. Pp 192, £29.99 (pbk).
Reviewed by Martin Morgan-Taylor
Icon Books, 2007. ISBN 1-84046-720-7. Pp x + 292, £9.99 (hbk).
Reviewed by Lee Macdonald
Cambridge University Press, 2007. ISBN 0-521-82048-0. Pp xii + 344, £70.00 (hbk).
Reviewed by Stewart L. Moore