Craters on the Moon and Phoebe - Robin Waddling
Robin showed members lunar images that he had obtained with the Starlight Xpress MX7C, using his f5, 8'5" Newtonian reflector. He showed how to determine the approximate height of a crater wall. This may be done by measuring the shadow length and the distance to the terminator from a particular crater, Wrottsely in this case. Robin also showed pictures of Phoebe, the retrograde outer moon of Saturn. Names have just been allocated to its twenty four largest craters by the I.A.U. The theme is Jason and the Argonauts.

Dark Matter Galaxy - Robin Waddling
Robin second presentation was about the recent discovery of an invisible dark matter galaxy. In the Virgo cluster of galaxies, some 50 million light-years away, astronomers looked for radio-wavelength radiation coming from hydrogen gas. They found a well of it that contains a hundred million times the mass of the Sun. It is now named VIRGOHI21. The well of material rotates too quickly to be explained by the observed amount of gas. Something else must serve as gravitational glue. "From the speed it is spinning, we realized that VIRGOHI21 was a thousand times more massive than could be accounted for by the observed hydrogen atoms alone," Minchin said. "If it were an ordinary galaxy, then it should be quite bright and would be visible with a good amateur telescope".

Water on Mars - Brian Thomas
Brain Thomas presented some of the latest images from Mars Express which clearly show ice on Mars and there is now very good evidence for water under the surface as permafrost.

A Light Echo - Brian Thomas
Nebula V838 Mon is a glowing cloud of gas and dust surrounding a nova-like variable star some 20,000 light years away toward the constellation Monoceros. The nebula is illuminated by the red eruptive variable star near the center of the image. The star "erupted" or "flashed" in 2002. Light from this erupted has been reflected from the surrounding cloud of gas and dust toward Earth, thereby producing an example of a "light echo." This image of V838 Mon was obtained in February 2004 using the Hubble Space Telescope with the Advanced Camera for Surveys.

Diamond in the Sky (BPM 37093) - Brian Thomas
Brian entertained the membership with news of this star which is a huge cosmic diamond. It is actually a crystallised white dwarf. The cosmic diamond is a chunk of crystallised carbon, 4,000 km across, some 50 light-years from the Earth in the constellation Centaurus. Astronomers have decided to call the star "Lucy" after the Beatles song, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.