Headlines of Issue No 124 (September 2003)

• Prof Ring talks on Herschel in BBC radio
  Please read the "Main article of the issue".
  
  
• Prof Ring's press release details "the World of Nobuko's Art"
  A press release for the cloisonné exhibition held in Bath in July.
  
  
• Reproduction of the 7ft Herschel speculum (2)
  Contribution by Mr Y Ogane, a Society member, who challenges to reproduce a metal speculum.
  
  
• 2003 annual convention
  A notice from the Society.
  
  
• Collingwood in watercolour painting
  A floor plan and a colour paintings of the drawing room of Collingwood in Hawkhurst, Kent, where John Herschel and his family moved and lived soon after returning from observation in South Africa.
  
  
• My first Herschel tour (2)
  A report by Ms M Matsuo, a member of the Society, on her first Herschel tour.
  
  
• 20 years with Elizabeth and Leslie Hilliard (4)
  A serial by Mr Seiji Kimura, the General Secretary of the Society.
  
  

Main article of the issue

Prof Ring talks on Herschel in BBC radio

For fifteen minutes from 11:05 in 9th July, Prof Ring, the chairman of the William Herschel Society, and Mr Kimura, the general secretary of the Herschel Society of Japan, appeared in a live broadcast from BBC studio in Kingsmead Square in Bath. Prof Ring talked in detail mainly about William and Caroline Herschel, and furthermore, about Herschel Museum established in bicentennial of discovery of Uranus, the exhibition of cloisonné arts in the City Central Library, and the metal speculum now being polished in Japan.

Herschel Museum was established to reveal the Herschel family's achievements, not only discovery of a planet Uranus, but also general contribution to advance in astronomy, and especially detailed star atlases completed by two generations of them, of which the Northern Hemisphere searched by William and Caroline, and the Southern Hemisphere by John, succeeding to his father.

He began by the correct pronunciation of the artist's name Nobuko Iizawa to mention the exhibition "World of Nobuko's Art". She visited Bath three years ago, in 2000, the bicentennial of discovery of infrared rays and the 250th anniversary of Caroline's birth, bringing a lot of her cloisonné works, such as a large plate of Caroline's portrait. This exhibition of many new works completed in her continuing creation would last for two weeks. He also talked that listeners could visit Herschel Museum after the exhibition in the library, for postcards and reproductions of the cloisonné works, which would be difficult to obtain due to so much time and effort to complete them. The 3-D art of "Leonids" was created on her experience to watch Leonids for the first time under clear sky at freezing midnight in the northern country. British listeners enjoyed Prof Ring's good speech on real and detailed creative life of Ms Iizawa who bears one cloisonné art after another in cold and snowy Hokkaido, fascinated with wonderful starry skies.

He mentioned as well that another member of the Hershel Society of Japan was challenging for a long time to polish a metal speculum of the same size as the replica of the telescope in Herschel Museum with handwork the same as W Herschel did. Mr Michael Tabb, a committee member of the William Herschel Society, who made the replica, recorded this program on tape and kindly sent copies to me.