Astronomy in the Netherlands

Astronomy is quite popular in the Netherlands and many towns and regions have their own astronomy club or public observatory. Most local clubs are affiliated with the national club: de Koninklijke Nederlandse Vereniging voor Weer- en Sterrenkunde (KNVWS), which was founded in 1901. Many public observatories are united in the Landelijk Samenwerkende Publiekssterrenwachten. Amateur activities in the Netherlands are supported by Stichting 'De Koepel' (the Dome, in English). De Koepel in an information center on astronomy, publisher of Zenit, as well as several other publications like astronomical yearbooks. De Koepel also handles many administrative tasks for the KNVWS.

If you do not master the Dutch language, the information on this website is not very useful to you. But if you would like to have more information on astronomical activities in the Netherlands and Belgium, please contact de Koepel: tel. +31-30-2311360, fax. +31-30-2342852, e-mail: info@dekoepel.nl .

Zenit is also interested in the experiences of foreign astronomers and amateurs. If you would like to contribute to our magazine, please contact the Editor-in-Chief at zenit@dekoepel.nl. Please read further for more technical information.

Writing for 'Zenit', the Dutch astronomy magazine

We must advise you though, before you start working on a longer article, to get in touch with the editorial board first. In that way we can prevent two authors from working on the same subject at the same time. In any case the editorial board has the right -- or must we say duty? -- to edit (and translate!) articles that are sent in for publication or to turn them down.

Authors are requested to adhere to the following guidelines:

Contents

Try to be concise and give your article an appetizing title and introduction text. If the article gets long (several pages) anyhow, please put sub-headers in relevant places. Subjects that needs an extra explanation can be addressed in boxes.

A thousand words of text will fill about one printed page without figures in Zenit. Two thousands words is in general a good article length. Together with figures and tables this will take up four pages in the magazine. Please note that the number of words include, apart from the body of the article, also the title, introduction, headings, captions, boxes, footnotes and references. The text in tables can be counted as illustrations.

Please add a short description of yourself of about 25 words to your name.

Try to avoid cross-referencing figure and table numbers; otherwise you run the risk that the numbering order will be lost in the final layout. Instead use coded instructions that clearly stand out from the normal text such as '***figure X here***'.

Please put captions for figures, photos, tables and all other stuff that doesn't belong in the main text at the end of the article. Do not try to make a layout yourself, this interferes with the processing of your article. Be sure that the caption tells the complete story of the figure or photo: don't put essential information about illustrations in the main text only! If you use figures created by others, please make sure that you are allowed to do so. Check copyright notices for any material you download from the web and contact the copyright owner in case of doubt. For publication in a magazine like Zenit, permission is usually granted. Please quote the source in the figure caption, stating the name of the maker and/or the institute that holds the copyright.

Please do not use the footnote function of Word, but handle this manually: add reference numbers in superscript to the text and list the footnote text beneath the paragraph.

Digital

Almost all authors use word processors to write their articles. It is not necessary to send us printed copies of your article; an attachment to an e-mail will do. Do not send us diskettes as we can hardly process these anymore.

Most articles are written in Word. If you use a different word processor, then it will usually be able to save in Word format. If this is not the case, then please use RTF format or ASCII text format. If you use (La)TeX, please use as few self-defined macros as possible.

Photos and illustrations

Also images can be handled digitally. This is handy for CCD-images and your own digital photos which can be sent in in JPEG or TIFF format. But also selfdrawn line images in EPS, PS or PDF are welcome.

It is very important that images are of high enough quality for reproduction in the magazine. Finding photos on the internet, e.g. with Google image search, is a great help, but mind the resolution. Many images on webpages are in low resolution and not suited for print. With Google you can actually filter on middle-sized or large images. When in doubt, please contact the editors.

Many scientific sites offer you the option to download images in print resolution. In that case use the best or second best option. JPEG or TIFF images of at least 200 dpi resoltion are useful. Note that a photo of 21 x 14 cm in the magazine needs a size of at least 1650 x 1100 pixels. For black and white line drawings (vector images) you can use EPS, PS or PDF. (TIFF is also possible, but then we need a resolution of 1200 dpi or more.)

Submitting your paper and images

If paper and images add up to a few MB, you can send them as attachments to a single e-mail to our editorial e-mail addres zenit@dekoepel.nl. If you have many files, it is easier to put them in a single ZIP file first.

If you have many MB, then e-mail is less suited. Alternatives are:

• Put a ZIP file on your own website and send us the URL so that we can download it.
• Use a service like www.yousendit.com (Lite version free till 2 GB, max. filesize 50 MB) or www.dropbox.com (free till 2 GB) to put a ZIP file on-line and send us the details to download it.
• Send us a CD-ROM or DVD by regular mail, but please agree with the responsible editor what the most convinient postal address is.

Our default postal address is: Zenit, Zonnenburg 2, 3512 NL Utrecht, The Netherlands