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BASIL December 2025

The front cover shows our Outreach Coordinator, Allan McCarthy, who has won the Federation of Astronomical Societies' Graham Bryant Memorial Award, which is a national award recognising significant contributions to the advancement of amateur astronomy by an individual. Many congratulations to Allan for winning this prestigious national astronomy award! See pages 32-33 for more information about Allan's activities leading to winning this award.

Key topics for the month include:

• The Geminid meteor shower in December, which has a favourable orientation for a good display.
• Imaging opportunity: Comet 24P/Schaumasse crosses the Leo constellation in December and continues to brighten.
• Jupiter. Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all visible this month.
• Observe the 'Cold Moon' with a 'Super Full Moon' on 4 Dec.
• 23 DSO observing targets are listed for the month.
• Observe the open star clusters the Pleiades and the Hyades in Taurus.
• Constellation of the month is Taurus, which is well placed to observe.

See pages 26-29 for members' images of the Moon (normal view and processed to show a mineral map) and M33 (with commentary), taken by BAS members Andrew Grasemann and Chris Lee.

Long-standing BAS member Alan Court sadly passed away in November and p30 contains a message from Alan's daughter and a photo from the BAS archives.

A warm welcome to all our new members for the 2025/26 programme year - see p31 for details.

The BAS programme of meetings to June 2026 can be found on p34.

Season's greetings to all members and hope you can make it to the BAS Christmas Party which will be held on Friday 12 Dec at Unit 13.