A number of changes have been made regarding the reporting of those observations which are submitted on paper. Please, will all members who still report in this form now do so to Melvyn Taylor. This applies especially to those members who are new to variable star observing, as Melvyn has volunteered to continue his work in liasing and helping such members get the most satisfaction from their observing.
Regarding the submitting and logging of observations the major change has taken place "behind the scenes". After paper reports have been seen by Melvyn and any correspondence dealt with, he will forward the observations to Crayford where Terry Miles has volunteered(?!) to log them. Terry has gained quite a lot of experience in logging the Section's reports as he has done it for some years now. However, from now on, it is anticipated that he will be dealing only with current observations as it is felt that it will be too busy to log any of the old records!
Besides the new reports coming in, Dave had 4 four-drawer filing cabinets full of past Section records. It was fortunate that three of these cabinets contained records that had already been entered into computer form. This leaves just the one cabinet with records still to be entered. Dave was also being pressed for space at home where these cabinets reside and so it was agreed that all of them would eventually be transported to Crayford for safe storage. The first cabinet (the one with all the records still to be entered) was transported by John Toone in late September and another team of willing (again?!) helpers at Crayford have agreed to commence keying in these old records. Once entered onto computer all these records will be sent to Dave (either on disc or by e-mail) for logging into the Section's database (currently standing at over 1.6 million observations in machine readable form).
The Section Officers (and especially the new Director) are thankful that Dave has agreed to continue in his main role of logging these observations and maintaining the Section's Web Page as well as dealing with requests from professionals.
The recent Officer's Meeting brought about a number of changes in both personnel and their titles. Melvyn's title has changed yet again, as he was uncomfortable with his previous title and duties and so he now becomes the Section's Binocular Secretary. Any queries relating to naked eye and binocular observations should be sent to Melvyn.
We are very fortunate indeed that Tony Markham, the Society for Popular Astronomy's Variable Star Director, readily agreed to combine his roles and take over as Eclipsing Binary Secretary of the VSS when we approached him. All queries, requests for charts and all observations of eclipsing binaries should now be addressed to Tony contact details for Tony are on the back cover of this Circular).
Our Editor, Karen Holland, also found that other commitments were precluding her from fulfilling the role of ccd advisor in the way that she wished. We are grateful to Richard Miles for agreeing to take over this task from Karen. Again, any queries relating to all aspects of ccds should be addressed to Richard (see back cover for contact details).
I reported in the last Circular that Gary Poyner is continuing to look after the Recurrent Objects Programme and the QJ287 project.
The positions of Charts Secretary and Nova/Supernova Secretary remain unchanged.
My thanks to all Section Officers both new and existing and all those others like Terry Miles who are helping to keep the Section running smoothly.