THE ASTRONOMER Electronic Circular No 702 1993 Jan 17 13.13UT Ed:Guy M Hurst, 16,Westminster Close, Kempshott Rise, Basingstoke, Hants, RG22 4PP,England. Telephone/FAX(0256)471074 Int:+44256471074 TELEX: 9312111261 Answerback: TA G TELECOM GOLD: 10074:MIK2885 GMH at UK.AC.RUTHERFORD.STARLINK.ASTROPHYSICS STARLINK: RLSAC::GMH GMH at UK.AC.CAM.ASTRONOMY.STARLINK STARLINK: CAVAD::GMH ------------------------------------------------------------------- TA PRODUCTION Despite the appeals in The Astronomer no-one had come forward to offer assistance by the magazine deadline for the January issue. Mark Hurst has kindly agreed to cover the despatch work for the time being. We have now also consulted with various commercial printers for quotations, most of which were nearly double the amount at present being paid. However one firm in Basingstoke has agreed to print the inside pages of the magazine at a similar price to our present commitment. They also offer us the option of retaining A4 printing with stapling down the edges or printing on A3 ( two A4 pages at once) with stapling down the spine. With regard to the covers the Basingstoke Company have just acquired a new sophisticated photocopying machine with a 'photo- mode' option and could also take over printing the covers on this basis at a cost also similar to our present commitment. At present we are dealing with two different firms and in two locations i.e. printing of pages in London and covers in Northampton. This present arrangement has led to delays which are unacceptable to the Editor and the readership in general. Thus our new firm could take on the whole production process and could auto-collate and staple all in one process leaving our Production Manager to merely fix address labels, place magazines in envelopes, stamp and despatch - about two nights work. We would plan to revert to a despatch date of 20th instead of 2-3 weeks later which has occurred in recent months. It would also enable the cover deadline to be advanced to the same as the observations i.e 5th of month of issue, and perhaps where an important new object appeared nearer to the issue date, by special arrangement an up-to-the minute photograph could be inserted. The only aspect which gives cause for concern is the quality of reproduction of photographs on the cover by the new process. Samples have been obtained from originals of the 1992 December issue. The 'photo-mode' of the photocopier appears to handle faint star images extremely well. In the photograph by Herman Mikuz of Nova Cygni all the stars on the original print are re-produced in the photocopied version. The treatment of Messier 20 (back cover) is also good with the dark lanes of the nebula clearly visible and the stars embedded in the nebulosity. Against this the front cover photograph has been printed with four varying contrast levels under the test. The stars again re-produce well but the comet's coma is generally larger than the original cover (printed from plates). The effect seems to be that some faint stars near the coma, visible on the original, are masked out and there is not a gradual change from dense white coma to grey outer regions but rather a 'sharply defined white ball'. Our situation is that the next cover deadline for February is January 20 (3 days time) if we continue with the Northampton firm. We would welcome our magazine subscriber thoughts via e-mail on all the above aspects before then, Guy M Hurst