At the monthly meeting held on 1st June we had Dr Nial Tanvir as our special guest speaker. He gave a presentation based upon his current research as a professional astronomer. Although a specialist regarding 'Gamma Ray Bursters', he chose to speak about his survey of M31 - The Andromeda Galaxy. As an introduction he gave a short history of M31 and how Edwin Hubble used Cephid variable stars to determine its distance from us. Nial's own work involves measuring velocities of the outer stars of the galaxy both to determine the weight and spread of its gravitational influence up to 50,000 light years distant from the galaxy centre. From this survey there was evidence for streams of stars, sattelite dwarf galaxies and unusually heavy open star clusters. Many of the phenomena observed give clues as to the nature of Dark Matter. He ended this extremely interesting talk with the revalation that where for decades it has been stated that M31 is larger than our own 'Milky Way' galaxy, M31 is in fact, much less massive.
The next meeting to be held as usual at the 'Friends Meeting House' in Granville Road, Clacton on July 6th. There will be a change to our published program in that some presentations will be bought forward. Details have yet to be obtained.