The new star which appeared in Cassiopeia in A.D. 1181 attracted considerable attention in the Far East. It was visible for about six months, and its position was carefully recorded by the Chinese and Japanese astronomers. Their observational evidence favours the identification of the star as a supernova of type I. It is proposed that the radio source 3C 58 is the remnant of the new star.

In their Report for the year ending 1970 August 31 the Council of the Royal Society announced a decision to dissolve the Joint Permanent Eclipse Committee.

The occurrence of short-lived, localized colour phenomena on the Moon has long been supported by amateur observers, but it is only in comparatively recent times that there has been satisfactory confirmatory evidence. In view of the recent results from the seismometer left on the Moon by Apollo 12, it seems appropriate to give a summary of the present situation with regard to these transient lunar phenomena now known generally as T.L.P.s.

The last ten years have brought significant changes to the venerable disciplines of astronomy and spectroscopy. Traditionally astronomers sought wavelength catalogues of identified spectra lines. Under this impetus spectroscopists laboured to provide very accurate wavelength measurements and estimates of emission line intensity. Physicists and astronomers alike are now recognizing interest not only in such properties of isolated atoms as energy levels (or spectral-line wavelengths) and oscillator strengths, but also those atomic properties which depend upon the surroundings of a radiating atom: spectral-line profiles, excitation rates, and level populations. In turn, new uses of lasers and interferometers, fast time resolution, and simple but significantly different absorption and emission samples are altering experimental spectroscopy almost beyond recognition. The present colloquium, chaired by A.H.Cook (University of Edinburgh) and held at Imperial College, London, on September 1-4 1970, aimed to identify the means by which astronomers can now obtain fundamental atomic data.

Professor K.M.Creer (Newcastle) who arranged this meeting, took the Chair at 2 p.m. In formal contributions, Professor Creer and Dr J.C.Briden (Leeds) discussed the relevant evidence from palaeomagnetism; Professor S.K.Runcorn (Newcastle) discussed how polar wander and continental drift might be attributed to different kinds of convective motion in the mantle; Professor J. Sutton (Imperial College), Dr F. Vine (East Anglia) and Mr B.J.Harland (Cambridge) spoke of various types of geological evidence, particularly of a structural and petrological nature.

The structure of the Galaxy can be studied by the following techniques: (i) measurements of the continuum emission, both on the large scale and from discrete objects such as supernova remnants; (ii) measurements of line radiation, again both from large and small scale features; and (iii) measurements of the transmission properties of the interstellar medium. All these techniques have been pursued in recent work at Jodrell Bank. This section describes work in the categories (i) and (iii); work under (ii) is described in Sections 6 and 7.

At the Solar Research Station, Malta, Dr von Klüber has continued photoelectric measurement of central intensities of certain Fraunhofer lines on areas of the solar disk selected according to the local magnetic field, a large number of records being sent to Cambridge for further reduction. He also made a number of carefully calibrated photographs of the D lines for line profile investigations.