15th August 1977 The Wow! signal is received by the Big Ear radio telescope at Ohio State University. The original record, preserved by Ohio State History connection is shown below. This recording of a radio signal was extraordinary and it was used to support the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. A strong narrowband radio signal, it appeared to come from the direction of the constellation Sagittarius and had the characteristics of extraterrestrial origin. Astronom

Garry Dalrymple, Sydney City Skywatchers historian, is an avid TROVE searcher, currently ‘mining’ the 1895 to 1930 articles from the Sydney Telegraph, looking for articles relating to amateur astronomy, astronomical events and members of the BAA NSW. In this article he is investigating the solar observations during the Spanish Flu in 1919. Feeling the Sydney Covid 19 Lockdown Blues? How did our predecessors, the members of the BAA NSW Branch get on in 1919 during the Spanis

The disc shaped asteroid belt is located between Mars and Jupiter at a distance ranging from 329-478 million kilometres from the Sun. The image below is a diagrammatic view courtesy NASA/ESA/STSci of the asteroid belt, and you can see the Earth and Jupiter and in the Centre our Sun. The caption reads "Asteroid belts at just the right placers are friendly to life". The size of objects in the asteroid belt vary from as small as a dust particle to almost 1,000 kilometres wi

In March 2005 I visited Macquarie University with Dr Nick Lomb, who was then Curator of Astronomy and Sydney Observatory. In a large shed there were many boxes of pieces of telescopes, which had been in the custodianship of Dr Alan Vaughan since 1983, when Sydney Observatory ceased operating as a research observatory. Some of the boxes included parts of a large metal open truss telescope made by George Herbert Hoskins in 1917 in Beecroft, north west of Sydney. George Hoskins

Presented by Dr Ian Kemp Monday 2 August 2021 6:30pm ​ This talk is about “UGSU cataclysmic variables” - one of the most interesting species in the variable star zoo. They are binary systems, in which a red star spills material onto a white dwarf, giving rise to periodic massive eruptions which can brighten the system from magnitude 15 to magnitude 9, easily within the range of a backyard telescope. These stars are very important systems in astronomy, because they are

Monday 6th September 2021 6:30 to 8pm ​ Presented by Rick Benitez. Rick Benitez is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Sydney and he has extensively researched and published about the ancient philosophers, classics and ancient history. He is also an amateur astronomer and enjoys observing astronomical events as well as contemplating the origins of our knowledge about them. In this presentation he will give an insight into the past through the story of

In this issue: Missing Dark matter, Omega Centauri, Solar Observations and NGC2516.

Monty Leventhal OAM Summing up for the month of June 2021; Sunspot activity at the start of Cycle 25 once again has remained very low with only 6 groups of sunspots seen, these included single spots. Prominences were a little more active but most remained very faint. The image left shows a large hedgerow prominence which was seen on the 10th and 11th of June. No Flares were seen during my watch during the month but some were observed by others in various parts of the world. T