Terry Moseley, currently PR Officer of the IAA, and previously President for the maximum permitted 3 stints of 3 years each, has been awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2013 Queen's Birthday Honours. This award is given for meritous service worthy of recognition by the Crown - in Terry's case for Services to Astronomy Education. This medal was awarded from 1922-92 and was revived by David Cameron only last year (2012).

On Saturday 15th June the IAA will be returning to Carnfunnock Country Park after successful visits in the past.This venue offers tremendous scenery looking out towards Scotland across the North Channel and boasts a maze in the shape of Northern Ireland and also the biggest collection of sundials in Ireland.

The IAA will be presenting another evening of astronomy at Glenavy on Friday 14 June as part of the Glenavy Fun Week.

The 2013 Noctilucent Cloud Season has kicked off to an electric start with a magnificently bright display starting almost immediately after sunset on 30th May. The display continued until the sky lightened after 0230 on 31st, though it was somewhat subdued by this time.

For a few days around Sunday 26th May, a close three-way conjunction of planets Jupiter, Venus and Mercury will be visible in the NW sky for a while shortly after sunset. Venus will be the brightest, followed by Jupiter, but on 26th Mercury will be the highest above the horizon of the three, so if you're part of the estimated 99% of the population who have never seen Mercury, now is possibly the best chance you will get! The three planets will all be within 2 degrees, or four moon diameters of each other and will remain close in the evenings before and after 26th.

Wednesday 17th April marks the date of the 39th Annual General Meeting of the Association. The purposes of the meeting are to review the activities of the past year, elect a new Council for the coming year and for the Council to receive feedback from the membership on how they - that's you - would like to see the Association develop.

The Pan-STARRS1 telescope is the largest telescope currently used to systematically survey the sky for comets and asteroids. Since starting in 2010, it has been used to make over 4 million detections of comets, asteroid and other Solar system bodies. This cornucopia of data is allowing us to study many different regions from Near-Earth space to the Kuiper Belt. In this talk Professor Alan Fitzsimmons will describe how Pan-STARRS1 works, how asteroids and comets are found, and what we have discovered so far.

Andor Technologies is a Belfast based company manufacturing a ranges of cameras including some which are capable of high-end astrophotography. The company grew out of the Physics Department of Queens University Belfast and now supplies cameras to the world market. Some of the topics covered by the lecture will include:-

·         Lucky Imaging

·         Hunting for Extra Solar Planets using various techniques