The Astronomical Society
of New South Wales Incorporated
Since 1954 | ABN 51 807 120 936 | www.asnsw.com

Society Announcements for ASNSW Members

Membership Renewals

All memberships to the Society expire as at 31st December 2007. If you are already a member, you will have received an invoice from the Society in the mail late in November, advising you of the fee payable for 2008.

When you have received your fee invoice in the mail, you can save time and money by renewing your membership right here on line. Simply complete our Online Membership Renewal Form with your personal details and provide your credit card details (Visa or MasterCard). When you have finished, click the "Submit" button, and your Membership Renewal Form will be submitted electronically to the ASNSW.

Why not share your enjoyment of astronomy by making a donation to the Society? Donations help us keep our fees lower, for the benefit of all members, and also greatly assist with the development of the Society's facilities.

Membership of the ASNSW also entitles you to heavily discounted subscriptions to various Astronomical publications, including:

UNIVERSE - Monthly Journal of the Astronomical Society of New South Wales Inc., renowned world-wide as being one of the highest quality publications produced by an Astronomical Society. Posted free to all current members each month, keeping members in touch with what is happening in the world of Astronomy, as well as providing its readers with a number of personal accounts of observing sessions and Astronomical discoveries.
Astronomy 2008 - Australia's most popular astronomy year book, packed full of information that is essential to all amateur observers, is available to ASNSW members for the specially discounted price of $19.00 at meetings or $21.50 posted in Australia ($25.00 posted overseas).
Australian Sky & Telescope - Australian version of the long-running monthly Astronomy magazine, with an Australian focus on both professional and Amateur Astronomy. Available to ASNSW Members at the discounted rate of just $40 per 12 month subscription (6 issues), which is a 15% saving off the newsstand price.
Sky & Telescope - A long-running monthly Astronomy magazine produced in the USA, with a combination of articles focussed on both professional and Amateur Astronomy. Available to ASNSW Members at the heavily discounted rate of just $US49.95 per 12 month subscription.


SPSP 16 Dates Announced!

The 16th Annual South Pacific Star Party will be held over the weekend of 4 - 6 April, 2008. We are expecting a bigger than ever attendance at this event. Registrations are now open!


Notice of Special Meeting - Friday 26 October 2007

Members of the Astronomical Society of New South Wales Inc. are advised that a Special Meeting of the Society will be held on Friday 26 October 2007 at 8:00pm at Epping Creative Centre.

The purpose of the Special Meeting is to vote on the Committee's nomination of Chris Ross for Life Membership.

Members are encouraged to attend.


Election of ASNSW Committee for 2007-2008

The ASNSW Committee for 2007-2008 was formally elected at the Annual General Meeting on Friday 17 August, 2007:
  • President - Les Sara
  • Treasurer - John O'Brien
  • Secretary - Monte Wilson
  • VP Crago - Paul Hatchman
  • VP Wiruna - Joe Cauchi
  • Editor - Don Whiteman
  • Technical Officer - Chris Ross
  • Observations Officer - Scott Mellish
  • Librarian - Tony Nolan
  • Education Officer - Karen Whittingham


    Change of Meeting Venue

    PLEASE NOTE: From June 2006, all ASNSW Meetings will be held at the Epping Creative Centre (ECC) at 26 Stanley Road, Epping. The Epping Creative Centre (ECC) is situated in Dence Park, which is just off Epping Road and about 1km from Epping Station. The Epping Aquatic Centre is also located in Dence Park. Ample parking and good facilities are available at the ECC.


    ASNSW's Yahoo! Discussion Group

    A Yahoo! Discussion Group has been created for members of the ASNSW. Members are encouraged to join the group and to take part in the discussions, to enable the Society to better cater for the greater membership, and to progress further as we move forward into the technological age that is 21st Century.


    Accreditation To Use ASNSW Observing Facilities

    As some damage has occurred to equipment in the past, a system of accreditation has been implemented for the use of some facilities outside of normal scheduled observing sessions, and only accredited members may use these facilities at these times, unless accompanied by an accredited member.

    The ASNSW's Observing Facilities are available for all ASNSW Members to use when an accredited person is on site to supervise. As you can appreciate, guidelines need to be put into place to manage these wonderful assets.

    These guidelines have recently been updated and as a result, all members currently accredited to use the ASNSW's Observing facilities will need to re-apply for accreditation, as many of the facilitieds have been upgraded and have new equipment installed requiring additional training.


    ASNSW Web Site Award

    The ASNSW Web Site has been awarded the Links˛Go Key Resource Award for Australian Astronomy.

    Each quarter, Links˛Go samples millions of web pages to determine which pages are most heavily cited by web pages, such as the ASNSW Web Site. The most popular pages are downloaded and automatically categorized by topic. At most, 50 of the pages related to a topic are selected as "Key Resources". Out of 50 pages selected as Key Resources for the Australian Astronomy topic, the ASNSW Web Site ranked 10th.

    The Links˛Go Key Resource award differs from other awards in two important ways. Firstly, it is objective. Most awards rely on hand selection by one or more "experts", many of whom have only looked at tens or hundreds of thousands of pages in bestowing their awards. Selection for those awards means no more than the fact that one person, somewhere, noticed your page and liked it enough to select it. The Key Resource Award, on the other hand, is based on an analysis of millions of web pages. Any group or organization who conducts a similar analysis will arrive at similar conclusions. When Links˛Go says your page is a Key Resource, we mean that your page is one of the most relevant pages related to a particular topic on the web today, using an objective statistical measure applied to an extremely large data set.

    Secondly, the Key Resource award is exclusive. We get literally hundreds of people requesting that their page be added to one or more topics per week. All of these requests are denied. The only way to get listed as a Key Resource is to achieve enough popularity for our analysis to select your pages automatically. We do not accept fees, offers of link exchanges, free advertising, or bartered livestock as inducements to add new sites to our lists. Fewer than one page in one thousand will ever be selected as a Key Resource.

    Pages like the ASNSW Web Site, which rank near the top of the list of Key Resources will almost certainly remain Key Resources on subsequent rebuilds of the index.


    ASNSW Web Site Award

    The ASNSW Web Site has also been awarded the prestigious StudyWeb™ Academic Excellence Award. On 28th October, 1999, this Web Site was selected as a featured site in StudyWeb™ as one of the best educational resources on the Web, according to their researchers, and was given the Award.

    StudyWeb is one of the Internet's premier sites for educational resources for students and teachers. Since 1996, their expert reviewers have scoured the Internet to select only the finest sites to be included in the StudyWeb™ listing of educational links. Inclusion in StudyWeb™ will increase a Web Site's exposure and attract new visitors to the site. StudyWeb™ reviews have been featured on Webcrawler Select, The Lycos Top 5%, Education World and many others, and StudyWeb™ updates are provided to media and educational resources around the world.