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NEWBURY NEWS LETT RS & ASTRONOMY

Thursday, April 16, 2020 16

Newbury Weekly News

Your views POST : Newspaper House, Faraday Road, Newbury, RG14 2AD EMAIL editor@newburynews.co.uk talk to us Email letters to editor@newburynews.co.uk with your full name, a terrestrial address and daytime phone number. DEADLINE: MONDAY NOON

Please empty the dog poo bins more often I OWN a dog, I pick up the poo, I dispose of it in the proper way. I hope the district council can empty the poo bins more often this year and I trust they will cut the grass more often than last year. The frequency of cut last year was abysmal – don’t let them say it was to be more environmentally friendly and ecologically sound. It was literally a covert way of spending less money. The grass was so tall, it was extremely difficult to find all the poo deposited from the dog. I sincerely hope it won’t be repeated again but with Covid 19 as the excuse. However, there is no excuse for people not even attempting to pick up poo. THATCHAM RESIDENT Name and address supplied Thank you to the staff at Thatcham Park Pryimar WE write to express our sincere thanks to Mrs Alison Webster and her staff at Thatcham Park Primary School. In these challenging times, they remained open for vulnerable children and the children of keyworkers, not only after other schools had closed, but

Cockchafers are quite frightening to look at I’M quite certain the flying bug involved in the unfortunate road accident was a Maybug or cockchafer ( Newbury Weekly News , April 9). They are, even worse for the car driver, harmless, but being large with hard shell wing covers are quite frightening as they bumble about at speed, making lots of noise as they crash into windows, lights etc. When they open up their wing covers and wings and stag-type feelers they look really spooky. Look on Google at ‘May Bugs’ and scroll one down to a one-minute-40- second video by the Natural History Museum for a rundown on their lives, looks and habits. I have a newspaper cutting of May 1972 (regrettably not the NWN, but Reading Evening Post ) with two black and white photos with details of ‘The Beast of Tilehurst’. I was in discussion with my landlord in Porchester Road about the Maybug in our porch.

REFERENCE the letter from Robert Cooke about trees on the common ( Newbury Weekly News , April 9). Nobody likes to see mature trees felled, but this is sometimes necessary when trees are diseased, damaged or have simply outgrown their location. Attention to the health of trees is especially important when they are in public areas or next to roads. For this reason, the Town and Manor of Hungerford commissions an annual survey, by a professional arboriculturalist, of all the trees on the common, Freeman’s Marsh and the Croft. On the common, this year’s survey identified extensive disease in a large WhatoTwn and Manor is doing to plant trees The commitment and dedication of Mrs Webster and her team allowed us to continue working, for which we are grateful. DRS R AND S PONGRATZ Newbury also through the Easter holidays. It is our understanding that they kept their doors open to children from schools from neighbouring villages such as Aldermaston and Brimpton, as well as to children from the independent sector. As a family with two keyworker parents, we would have been without any childcare with the current restrictions in place in the UK due to the coronavirus pandemic.

Norway maple at the Three Ways junction plus a nearby black poplar which had become too large for its location and had shed large branches in the past. In addition, ash dieback disease and a large split were found in a mature ash overhanging the Inkpen Road. These three trees were felled in early February. So far this year the charity has planted eight new specimen trees on the common, including three disease- resistant elms, as part of an initiative to reintroduce this species after a large number was lost to Dutch elm disease in the early 1970s. These are in addition to 25 elms planted on the common in the previous two years, all of which are thriving. On Freeman’s Marsh, the survey found widespread evidence of ash dieback in Westbrook Down, the area south of the railway line, where it was necessary to fell 36 trees. Following the charity’s policy of always planting many more trees than it fells, over 400 trees will be replanted here this autumn, including field maple, English oak and other native species such as Guelder rose, holly, crab apple and spindle. This is part of a Woodland Trust scheme where the Town and Manor is working with St Lawrence Church and the Hungerford Environmental Action Team. If anyone would like to assist with this planting, do get in touch. JED RAMSAY Chief executive, Town & Manor of Hungerford

How to get your views published in the NWN THE NewbyurWeekly News is delighted to receive letters and views from readers. Preference will be given to letters of fewer than 300 words and local topics. All views may be edited to conform with legal and publishing requirements. The identities of contributors may be withheld only in exceptional cuirmstances. Anonymous submissions will not be considered. resistance and died in a concentration camp in 1945, after having her death sentence commuted to life imprisonment. She apparently died of pneumonia. COLIN BARRETT Essex Street Newbury Common after evading Nazis, April 5 1945’ ( Old Memories Revived, Newbury Weekly News , April 2). I was intrigue to read the above article regarding Fru Varinka Muus (note the spelling) and her husband Flemmish Bruun coming to stay with her uncle at 33 Essex Street, Wash Common, Newbury. The reason for this is that I have owned and lived at 33 Essex Street since 1979. Her uncle was Desmond George Massy- Beresford, who owned the property from 1943 till 1948. He died in 1966 at the age of 60. As the article also says her mother, Monica Muus, was also in the

A first for me at the time. DEREK A OLDFIELD Paddock Road Newbury

I live in house ‘Danish Resistance duo’ fled to REF: ‘Danish Resistance duo escape from Gestapo, Woman flees to Wash Don’t miss meteor shower Worth a loo–kthe Lyrids will peak ounesTday next week

THIS month there is a meteor shower, the Lyrids, which peaks on the evening of April 21. In the sky they will appear to originate near the bright star Vega (look north west towards the horizon). There are expected to be around 20 meteors per hour and the Moon is a thin crescent on this date, so we have quite favourable conditions this year and they are worth a look. Meteors appear when the Earth travels through debris left by a comet, in this case comet Thatcher, which last came close to the sun in 1861. Several planets are easy to spot THERE has been a lot in the newspapers about the famous star Betelgeuse and whether it is about to explode (go ‘supernova’). Speculation is growing because the star has been dimming in brightness recently (a 20 per cent reduction since October 2019) and that is thought to happen just before a supernova. First a bit of context. Betelgeuse is the reddish- coloured star in the top left corner of Orion and that constellation is very visible during the winter and spring here in the UK. The star is a red giant – 20 times the mass of our Sun – that is running out of hydrogen for its nuclear fusion.

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this month. Venus is easily visible in the west as a bright star after sunset. Saturn, Mars and Jupiter were visible low in the South, just above the Moon in the early morning (5am to 6am) yesterday and will be today (Thursday). When this happens these stars become hotter and start fusing other elements and they grow in size and pulsate as fusion reactions generate and then release heat. At the biggest stage of its pulsa- tion it is 1.5 billion kilometres in diameter and if it were in our solar system would stretch right out to the orbit of Jupiter. We know that it will eventually run out of fuel and its enormous mass will collapse down to a small volume due to gravity, triggering a supernova explosion. Although this will happen ‘soon’ in astronomical terms, this means anytime within the next 100,000 years. It’s impossible to forecast

n Find out more about astronomy via Newbury Astronomical Society, which hosts monthly meetings for both beginners and experienced astronomers. See www.newburyastro.org.uk Questions: tonyhersh@ hotmail.com

TOPIC OF THE MONTH –BETELGEUSE

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accurately and we have seen previous cycles of increases and decreases in brightness. When it does explode it will be visible in the daylight sky for weeks and luckily its enormous distance from Earth of 650 light years means we won’t be in danger from radiation from the explosion.

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