Our speaker in April was Dr Mike Leggett of the Milton Keynes Astronomical Society; subject: the Moon. This was one for those who like lots of facts and information; a hugely informative talk ranging from early calendars, Aristotle recording an occultation of mars by the moon, the estimate in 150bc of 240,000 miles to the moon by Hipparchus, right through to the proposed LunarSat launch in 2007. On the way there was mention of Leonardo DV explaining earth-light, bishop John Wilkins suggesting lunar bases in 1638, the first photo by Draper in 1840, the first radar echoes in 1940 and Wilkins' 300 inch dia map in 1959. There was information about eclipses, libration, TLP's and blue and green moons. There was a detailed listing of virtually all the space missions and quite a lot about geology and theories about moon formation. Whew!

Mike ended up with the point that after a long pause there is now a lot more moon activity in progress and planned. In particular there is ESA Smart1 in 2002 which will do a huge amount of work. Even more ambitious is Selene from Japan. Due for launch in 2004 Selene is the first phase of a 30year programme towards a manned base on the moon.

Although an excellent talk, there was of course far too much information for anyone to absorb it all; perhaps we ought to ask speaker to provide a fact-pack handout!

- Stan Waterman