Why the Martian Canals Never Existed

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 7th March 2024 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: The J.A. Jones Hoober Observatory

Join the meeting online HERE if you can't attend in person

Speaker: Bill Barton

Bill Barton left Secondary School in 1979 with ‘O’ level qualifications. After a four-year apprenticeship in Signal Engineering with British Rail he held multiple signal engineering positions until his early retirement from Network Rail in 2014.

He joined the British Astronomical Association in 1984 and contributed to their Solar Section between 1990 and 2000, also sharing his observations with the Solar Division of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. Other favourites are observing eclipses, transits and planetary conjunctions.

In 2002 he was a founder member of the Society for the History of Astronomy and was also elected Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. The next year saw him licensed to operate the Orwell Park refractor (IAU observatory no. 582) on behalf of the Orwell Astronomical Society (Ipswich), which he had joined several years earlier.

In 2017 and 2019 he received the SHA Roger Jones Award for contributions to their ‘County Survey of Astronomers’ (see photo).

An early foray into astronomical history was a biography by Charles May, and more recent work has been on Fiammetta Wilson and Alice Grace Cook (the subject of this evening's talk).

Bill has a particular soft spot for classic refracting telescopes such as the Carl Zeiss Telementor and Questar Maksutov Cassegrains. He owns some astronomical antiques, usually eyepiece micrometres, planispheres or similar teaching aids. He also has more old astronomy books than he likes to admit to.

In January 2020 he was appointed as the Deputy Director of the British Astronomical Association Historical Section.