THE 217th meeting took place on June 22 with 29 members in attendance and several apologies.

President Horace Jobson welcomed everyone and congratulated Adrian Madge and John Buchanan on their recent birthdays. He gave a report on the funeral of Alan Hunt, which took place at Arrow Church at the end of May, the service well attended by members.

Speaker Steve Jones gave an interesting talk on Our Marvellous Universe. He explained how he became interested in the subject as a 10 year old. At his school there was an observatory where he would go and observe the stars, galaxies and planets at various times of the year. He became so fascinated he wanted to study and learn more about it. In later life he joined the British Interplanetary Society.

He talked about how the universe was created and how it is still expanding with time, the measurement of the light year and the many great expeditions that had been accomplished by NASA over the years together with the science and technology that had been gained from it. He also mentioned the Cassini Eugene expedition that sent a probe deep into Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and the observation of Saturn's rings and the Temple Comet probe.

He went on to speak of the link up in space in 1975 by Russian cosmonauts and American astronauts in the Soyus Space Probe, the Russian Mier Space Station and the new international Space Station which will be the largest structure ever to be built in space and has 15 countries involved in its construction and maintenance.

He concluded by talking of the future and explained that all over the world radio telescopes were scanning the universe in the hope they would be able to contact another planet.

Harry Hayton gave the vote of thanks. The next meeting is the AGM today (Wednesday, July 27). There will be no speaker.