On Wed, 26 Oct 2005 13:08:02 -0700, Mike Simmons
wrote:

There's a chance Clarke was using a designation that might have made sense
at the time, based on your speculation that "NGS" could stand for the
National Geographic Society. What is now referred to as the Palomar
Observatory Sky Survey (POSS) had begun in 1949 and was at the time
referred to as the National Geographic Society-Palomar Observatory Sky
Survey (for the sponsor of the survey). Thus Clarke might have used "NGS"
as a catalog designation in anticipation of the publication of a catalog he
might have expected many years in the future (the survey was completed in
1958 but any catalog that might have resulted would have taken many more
years to reduce from the glass photographic plates.

Interesting. That sounds very much like something Clarke would do (and
he does identify NGS in the book as the National Geographic Survey).

_________________________________________________

Chris L Peterson
Cloudbait Observatory
http://www.cloudbait.com