Bernard Lovell

Simultaneous Photoelectric and Radio Observations of Flare Stars

;\ CCOUNTS have already been published of the correfi lated photographic and radio observations of flares from the UV Ceti type stars13 • Additional information about the relationship of the flare events in the visible and radio parts of the spectrum has now been obtained from simultaneous photoelectric and radio observations of the stars U V Ceti, EV Lacertae and Ross 882. The radio observations were made at J odrell Bank using the 250-ft. radio telescope on a frequency of 240 Mc/s as described previously1 •3 • The photoelectric observations were made at the Crimean Astrophysical Observatory of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences, using a photoelectric photometer attached to a 64-cm meniscus t)lescope. An E.M.I. 6256B photomultiplier was used with yellow or blue filters, and, after amplification, the photocurrent was recorded continuously on a pen recorder. During the observations of UV Ceti and Ross 882 tho the radio and visual flares for the three stars. In order to do this it is first necessary to correct the measured light curve for EV Lacertae made in blue light to that of the UV Ceti and Ross 882 records made in yellow light. If the readings of the recorder, corrected for sky background, are I FL in the flare state and IN in the normal state, then

The Blackett-Eckersley-Lovell Correspondence of World War II and the Origin of Jodrell Bank

1. Introduction During the transference of my papers to the archive of the John Ry lands University Library of Manchester, I discovered a letter from T. L. Eckersley to P. M. S. Blackett that had a vital bearing on the early development of Jodrell Bank. Blackett had shown me this letter shortly after the end of the war but I had believed that he had just received it. In fact, the letter is dated 12 March 1941 and concerns a paper by Blackett and myself published in the Proceedings o f the Royal Society in 1941. Eckersley suggested that we had omitted a factor in the calculations which might influence our conclusions. Indeed, when I investigated this, I discovered to my dismay that, by omission, we had introduced an error of many orders of magnitude which invalidated our proposed research. Evidently if we had been able to give attention to Eckersley’s letter in 1941, the incentive for the proposed post-war research would have vanished and Jodrell Bank would not exist today.

Obituary: Robert Hanbury Brown (1916–2002)

Pioneer in radar and observational astronomy

Obituary: Robert Hanbury Brown (1916|[ndash]|2002)

Pioneer in radar and observational astronomy

Robert Hanbury Brown (1916–2002): Obituary

Pioneer in radar and observational astronomy

Herschel’s work on the structure of the Universe

THE revolutions in human thought associated with Copernicus and Galileo in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries did not immediately introduce any substantial change in man’s wider concepts about the nature of the Universe. In the cosmical sense these revolutions were local. In Aristotle’s cosmology the Earth was stationary at the centre of the Universe and matter and space ended at the sphere of the fixed stars. This ancient cosmology was both geocentric and egocentric. After the age of Copernicus and Galileo cosmology became heliocentric but remained substantially egocentric. That is, the Sun instead of the Earth had to be regarded as the centre of the Universe, but in the overall cosmological outlook the Universe consisted of the sphere of the fixed stars with Earth, in motion around the Sun, in the central region.

Solar Flare Phenomena

Solar FlaresBy Henry J. Smith and Elske van Panhuys Smith. Pp. xii + 322. (New York: The Macmillan Company; London: Collier-Macmillan, 1963.) 100s.

Cosmic Radio Waves

Cosmic Radio WavesBy I. S. Shklovsky. Translated by Richard B. Rodman and Carlos M. Varsavsky. Pp. xvi + 444. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London; Oxford University Press, 1960.) 65s. net.