BAS Observer November 2017

4 BAS OBSERVER Club activities by Peter Allison, BAS President Star-BQs and clouds There seems to be something about the New Moon that makes clouds materialise from nothing. After months of fine, cloud-free and certainly rain-free weather, the clouds roll in again just after sunset on our New Moon Star-BQ evenings. As a result, the attendance numbers were very low at our Brisbane locales of Forgan Park and Harding’s Paddock in September. However, the Sunshine Coast BAS members managed to avoid the clouds on Saturday, 23rd September, even though they wheeled out a 30-inch monster telescope. Such an expanse of fine glass under a Brisbane sky would surely result in a biblical deluge. I must learn how those guys do this. So, we tried again in October – same result but even more clouds and rain this time (grumble, grumble, grumble). So, what will Saturday, 18th November bring? I can hazard a guess! Even so, I encourage all BAS members to come along to these evenings. If you need help with your telescope, please come along to one of the Harding’s Paddock Star-BQ evenings and I’ll personally do my best to get you up and running. All the date, time and location details are on the BAS website in our Events Calendar and promoted on our Facebook page. See you under clear skies in November. Australia joins the Space Race I’m old enough to remember the original Space Race – the real one. Australia made a valiant attempt in the regional heats of the Space Race but failed to make it into the finals. While the USSR and United States slugged it out for supremacy in the 1 9 60s, Australia faded to nothing in terms of space hardware. While we did manage, with the assistance of the Brits, to compete extremely effectively in the ‘astronomy race’, we are now right up there with Iceland as world powers in space technology. It is great to see that the Australian Government has announced the creation of an Australia Space Agency (see page 8 ) – and also great to see that the proposal has now lasted more than a month without a budget cut announcement! You can see my jaded perspective on this: announcements by governments are the easy bit. Now, mister Minister, stump up the money and implement a good governance structure that keeps government delays and committees out of it. I’ll let you know how I view this initiative in about twelve months.