Preface to the First Edition
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This special jubilee issue of the Journal of the Auckland Astronomical Society does not set out to be a formal history of the society.
It is a story of how things happened during the first fifty years with some interesting look-backs into astronomy in New Zealand-in the words of the people involved.
It has not been possible to locate everybody who has made a notable mark in the society or to interview everyone who may have something of interest or importance to contribute.
Nor has it been possible to avoid some discrepancies, because much of what is in this journal is based on the memory of people involved-and different people remember things in different ways.
This documentary is, therefore, presented with apologies to the far greater number of members who are not quoted and maybe not even be mentioned. However, we the hope that it does manage to give more vividly than a history, a picture of a society in a constant state of growth and flux.
Partly because the earlier history of the Society was the more vital to record, this journal has taken too little account of the tremendous surge of activity and interest within the Society which has followed the opening of the Auckland Observatory in 1967.
More in real astronomy has been done in Auckland, and around it, in the past five years than in the previous 45 years. These things, and other developments such as the widespread participation of women in the society at all levels and the more recent strong revival of the junior section should also be fully documented before long.
But they have been possible only because of those who struggled to keep the Society alive through years of discouragement, and who refused to take their eyes from the ultimate goal of an Observatory in which the Society could be at home.
Thanks are due to many who have contributed to this publication, especially Tony Messenger who has spent hours bearing a tape recorder from home to home. And, as always, to our typist Margaret Caffell, who has tackled bravely the problem of setting out, with typewriter alone, a form of narrative to which a printer with a range of type would be hard put to do justice.
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