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VOL. XIII NO.11 November 1995
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A PUBLICATION OF THE APL ASTRONOMY CLUB
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FROM THE EDITOR
Membership in the APL Astronomy Club is open to all JHU/APL
Recreation members. The Club frequently sponsors astronomical
activities and has a Celestron 11-inch telescope with Nikon
camera, an 8-inch Tinsley telescope, an Astroscan 4.5-inch
telescope, and a pair of 16X80mm binoculars available for use by
members on a weekly basis. The Club also maintains a library of
astronomical literature in room 7-54 which includes a current
subscription to Astronomy magazine. Anyone wishing to join the
Club should contact any member.
Contributions to this Newsletter should be submitted to the
Editor (Rm 6-247, internet e-mail: gef@aplcomm.jhuapl.edu) by the
15th of the month prior to the month in which publication is
desired.
CLUB OFFICERS
President ................ Marty Pittinger .. X8588
Vice President ........... Tom Potyraj ...... X6598
Secretary/ST Editor ...... Gary Frishkorn ... X6825
Treasurer ................ Bernard Kluga .... X7257
Librarian ................ Ray Sterner ...... X3032
EQUIPMENT CUSTODIANS
C-11, Tinsley ............ Bernard Kluga .... X7257
16X80mm Binoculars ....... Tom Potyraj ...... X6598
Questar .................. Gary Frishkorn ... X6825
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CLUB NEWS
An Astronomy club meeting will be held on Wednesday,
December 13, at 12:00 noon in Library classroom L-4.
David Dunham will show his videos of the recent solar
eclipse and lunar graze events. Also, Ryan Newcomer
from the Johns Hopkins University has been invited to
join us for the meeting. Assuming that he is able to
attend he will describe the various activities currently
under way at the Bloomberg Observatory on the JHU
Homewood campus. Hope to see you at the meeting.
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Who Mangled the Title of this Newsletter?
As editor of the club s newsletter for over the past six
years, I have received so little feedback concerning its
content that I have often wondered whether anyone actually
reads it. Well that changed last month when I received
some email from David Dunham who forwarded to me a note
from Glen Cameron. Glen observed that the spelling of the
newsletter title was incorrect - i.e. Siderial should be
Sidereal !
This caught me totally by surprise. My first response
was to see when the error was introduced. Craig Patterson
started the newsletter in 1982, and I believe, also gave
it its name. A quick look at the original copies showed
that Craig had used the correct Sidereal spelling. The
first copy that I edited came out in August of 1988 and it
also had the correct spelling. Since the title gets copied
from one month to the next, the only way it could change
is if it were redone from scratch. This happened two years
ago when I started sending the newsletter via email. For
some reason I never checked the spelling when I made the
stick-figure title.
Being a very poor speller, I tend to rely heavily on spell-
checkers. Of course the spell checker didn t help on
the stick figure title! The thing that bugged me now was
that the incorrect spelling still looked *right* to me and
I felt sure I had seen it before. I checked the dictionary
and a variety of Astronomy texts in my possession, but all I
could find was the Sidereal spelling. I mentioned this
to Marty Pittinger one day and he too thought he had seen the
alternate spelling. Soon after, Marty pointed me to a web
page maintained by St. Mary s College in Halifax
(http://mnbsun.stmarys.ca/logo.html). The page uses the
siderial spelling in a way that clearly refers to time
measurement based on motion of the stars.
Now I had a lead. I ve always been susceptible to adopting
British spellings for words so I looked up the Oxford English
Dictionary. ( The Compact Edition of the Oxford English
Dictionary , Oxford at the Clarendon Press 1971) There
I found that the word sidereal has had a tumultuous history
over the past few hundred years. Apparently there have
been at least five different valid spellings since 1700!
Derived from the Latin word sidereus these are:
1700 s syderial
1700 s sydereall
1700 - 1800 s sydereal
1700 - 1900 s siderial
currently sidereal
Two things that were not clear to me from the dictionary
were when the current spelling first appeared and whether
the siderial spelling (the one I accidentally adopted)
is still considered valid. In any case, since I have no
intention of changing the name of the club s newsletter, the
reader will note that the title has been changed back to
its original form beginning with this issue. Thanks for
keeping me on my toes!
-- The Editor
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Telescope Training Available at Bloomberg Observatory.
To get training on the 20" Cassigrain Telescope @ Bloomberg,
Please send your request to train to: Ryan Newcomer's E-Mail
address or call the observatory at 1-410-516-6525
ryan.newcomer@pha.jhu.edu
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