EARLIER MEETINGS
A Table of our previous meetings are listed below.
(Latest first)
A searchable and sortable listing of our previous talks
A few back to 1994.
It should also be noted that Rob Graham has presented What’s Up, a monthly view of the skies, for many years after the main talk.
| Date | Presenter | Talk Title | Synopsis | Biography |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 06/07/2023 | Committee & Members | GAS AGM | ||
| 06/07/2023 | Max Dobres | GAS AIG - What the Imaging group have been doing this year | An overview of the Astro Imaging Group | |
| 01/06/2023 | Karen Aplin | The Charge of Spheres - Extraterrestial Lightning & How it is studied -via zoom | Most of us have felt awe and wonder when experiencing - preferably, from a safe distance - the majesty of a thunderstorm. As well as its spectacular displays, lightning is a hazard, and affects atmospheric chemistry. It is associated with specific types of cloud and meteorological processes, as well as being implicated in the origins of life on Earth. For these reasons, lightning has long been seen as a significant phenomenon. However, there is more to atmospheric electricity than just lightning: its quieter and less well-known sibling exists in every planetary atmosphere as a continual flow of ions and electrons, and can form a global-scale electrical circuit with lightning acting as a “battery”. The iconic Voyager 1 mission was the first to photograph an extra-terrestrial thunderstorm at Jupiter in 1979. Since then, lightning has been detected on most other Solar System planets. On Earth, small currents away from thunderstorms can affect clouds, interact with particles from dust or pollution and even potentially influence the weather. Similar non-thunderstorm processes may also act in other planetary atmospheres, such as Titan and Venus. In this lecture I will provide the unifying scientific background and context for the study of atmospheric electricity, and describe past, present, and future observations. | Karen Aplin is Professor of Space Science and Technology at Bristol University, and Visiting Professor at the University of Reading’s Department of Meteorology. She previously worked at the University of Oxford’s Department of Physics and the Space Science and Technology Department at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. Her research programme seeks to understand and exploit electrical properties of atmospheres through novel instrumentation and experiments. She also works on space weather, dust and volcanic ash charging, and recovery of historical electrostatic data. Her first degree was in Physics and Philosophy at Durham University, followed by a PhD in experimental atmospheric physics at the Department of Meteorology, University of Reading. She also has a classical performance diploma from Trinity College of Music. She was the recipient of the Royal Astronomical Society’s James Dungey Lecture in 2021. |
| 04/05/2023 | Gavin Dalton | WEAVE: The WHT’s new Wide-field spectroscopy facility | Gavin will describe the development and application of WEAVE: a major facility upgrade for the William Herschel Telescope. 12 years in development, WEAVE uses a pair of robots mounted at the telescope prime focus to deploy up to 950 optical fibres over a two degree field of view. The fibres (100km in total) are routed down the telescope to a new high performance spectrograph mounted in an enclosure on the Nasmyth platform, which provides 16000 spectral pixels for each target. Representing an improvement of more than two orders of magnitude in the capability of the telescope, WEAVE can deliver spectra for nearly 10000 targets in a single night of observations.Exploitation of this facility is centred on a 5-year public survey programme covering the topics from the dynamics and evolution of the Milky Way through the formation of galaxies in the distant Universe. | Gavin Dalton is a professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford and a Fellow at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory. From his early work in Oxford on the design and implementation of cosmological surveys he moved into the field of instrumentation development, including leading the design of an infrared multi-object spectrograph for the Subaru telescope (FMOS) and VISTA’s wide-field infrared camera. In addition to leading the development of WEAVE, he is currently working on the architecture for a new multi-object spectrograph which will be a 2nd generation instrument for the ELT. He has co-authored more than 200 papers in cosmology and instrumentation. |
| 06/04/2023 | Grant Kennedy | The Life of a Planetary System - via zoom | The life cycle of a planetary system has many stages, from birth in a gas-rich nebula, to old age when the host star has evolved into a white dwarf.In this talk I will give an overview of our understanding of the life of a planetary system, which has a few key phases. Things begin in a gas-rich disk where solids coalesce to form bigger objects and eventually planets; these disks are opaque so it is nearly impossible to watch this process in action, but we nevertheless obtain images that are highly suggestive of important processes. The results of planet formation are only truly revealed after a few million years when the gas-disk is dispersed, and the system is a main-sequence system perhaps not so different to our own (but in many cases drastically different!). We can study these middle-age systems in great detail, and a key common focus is attempting to wind back the clock and understand their histories. Eventually, most stars evolve to white dwarfs, but still show both direct and indirect evidence for surviving planets and small body populations. | |
| 02/03/2023 | Martin Lewis | Modern Planetary Imaging | ‘The Principles of Modern Planetary Imaging’. Martin will talk about the principles underlying the best method that exists today for imaging the planets. This is high speed digital video imaging. The method uses stacks of short exposures that freeze the seeing, but at the same time effectively creates a single long exposure of such low noise that it can be usefully stretched to bring out the details. Martin explains the method and will show examples of images he has taken with home-built equipment using this method. | |
| 05/01/2023 | Dave Eagle | Solar Imaging | Observing and imaging our nearest Star. The equipment and techniques used to observe and image the sun safely. | |
| 01/12/2022 | Daisuke Kawata | Archaeology of our Galaxy with Gaia | European Space Agency’s Gaia mission has made the 3rd data release (Gaia DR3) in June 2022. Gaia DR3 provides positions and proper motions for more than one billion stars and line-of-sight velocities for more than 30 million bright stars, which has revolutionised our view of the Milky Way. I will present what we learned about the formation and evolution history of our Galaxy, the Milky Way, from the unprecedented amount of archaeological information from the Gaia data and the other complementary observational data from the other space- and ground-based telescopes in the world. I will also introduce the future space missions to explore still hidden structures of the Milky Way even after the Gaia mission | |
| 03/11/2022 | Katrin Raynor | Exploring Astronomy & Space through Philately - via zoom | The first astronomy themed stamp dates to 1887 when Brazil issued a perforated stamp, buff and blue in colour, depicting the Southern Cross, an asterism seen in the southern hemisphere. Even throughout the 1800’s, stamps were being printed with astronomical watermarks, such as suns and stars and early stamps issued in Egypt were designed with a pyramid and star. Over the decades, we have celebrated astronomy and space on stamps including comets, man on the moon and events in the astronomical calendar such as solar eclipses. Exploring Astronomy and Space Through Philately will take you on an out of this world journey looking at and discussing a selection of astronomy and space themed stamps that have been issued all over the world, proving that we can enjoy the wonders of the universe even on a cloudy night. | |
| 06/10/2022 | Mary Mcintyre | Lunar Sketching - via zoom | During this workshop Mary will teach you how to sketch the Moon using pencil. During the workshop you Mary will talk you through how to create a sketch of the whole lunar disc and also how to sketch craters up close. You are strongly encouraged to sketch along as she will show you step by step, in realtime with a camera pointing at her hands. Even if you think you can’t even draw a stickman please give it a try because you may be very surprised with your results. At the end Mary will show you she approaches lunar sketching with pastels on black paper. | |
| 01/09/2022 | Geraint Jones | What's a comet & MSSL’s Comet Interceptor mission to launch in 2029 | His talk will cover MSSL’s Comet Interceptor mission to launch in 2029. “Comets are strongly deserving of in situ study as they largely preserve material formed at our Solar System’s birth. In 2019, Comet Interceptor was selected by the European Space Agency, ESA, as the first in its new class of F-class missions, and in June 2022 was approved to proceed to development and launch. The Japanese space agency, JAXA, is making a major contribution to the project. The mission’s primary science goal is to characterise for the first time, a yet-to-be-discovered long-period comet, preferably dynamically new, or an interstellar object. An encounter with a comet approaching the Sun for the first time since its formation will provide valuable data to complement that from all previous comet missions, which visited more evolved short period comets. Planned measurements of the target include its surface composition, shape, and structure, its dust environment, and the gas coma’s composition. A unique, multi-point ‘snapshot’ of the comet- solar wind interaction region will be obtained, complementing single spacecraft observations at other comets. The talk will cover the mission’s science drivers, planned observations, and the instrument complement, to be provided by consortia of institutions in Europe and Japan. ” | |
| 05/07/2022 | Philip Harris | A Zoom Talk : GAS AGM followed by Nature's Ghosts - The Mysterious Neutrino | ||
| 05/07/2022 | Committee & Members | A Zoom Talk : GAS AGM | ||
| 02/06/2022 | Paul Daniels | A Zoom Talk : Lagrange points, Jovian and Lunar orbits and the Kordylewski Clouds | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
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| 05/05/2022 | Kate Womack | A Zoom Talk : The Cosmological origins of the chemical elements | Everything around us is made up of chemical elements. But where do these elements come from? The answer: stars. The stars that we observe in the night sky undergo many different processes in order to produce the elements. This talk will give you a whistle stop tour of the different types of stars in the galaxy and the processes that occur to produce the chemical elements. | |
| 07/04/2022 | Nial Tanvir | A Zoom Talk : Short-duration gamma-ray bursts, kilonovae and gravitational waves. | Binary stars consisting of two neutron stars or a neutron star and black hole, will spiral together and eventually merge. These mergers are strong sources of gravitational waves, that can be detected as microscopic wobbles of space-time. They also create explosions called kilonovae, which may be the major sources in the universe for many heavy elements such as lead and gold. Finally they create jets of matter moving at almost the speed of light, which produce extremely luminous flashes called gamma-ray bursts, detectable over billions of light years. As I will describe, linking these diverse phenomena together has been one of the most intriguing scientific detective stories of recent years, and promises further intrigue in the years to come. | |
| 03/03/2022 | Guillaume Mahler | A Zoom Talk : Gravitational Lensing | Gravitational lensing is a direct result of Einstein's General Relativity. The theory describes how massive bodies warp the universe's frame to "bend" light. The effect may distort, magnify, or generate several occurrences of the same object in different locations depending on the position of the transmitting observing body. Light deflection causes luminous sources in the background of such enormous objects to seem distorted, as if they were seen through an optical lens. As a result, astronomers refer to the "gravitational lensing" phenomenon. The phenomena can occur in a variety of regimes, including strong, weak, and micro. In this talk, I'll go over the history of gravitational lensing and the first observations. I'll show how this phenomenon is now frequently utilised by scientists to research cosmology, "see" dark matter, and discover exoplanets. I'll conclude by describing how the future of gravitational lensing is bright and full of exciting discoveries, especially with the recent launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. | Guillaume Mahler is a French astrophysicist. He studied general physics at the University of Strasbourg in France and did his PhD in Lyon. After his graduation, he went for 3 years in the US, doing research as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Michigan and joined Durham University more than a year ago. His research focuses on the study of dark matter and the properties of the first galaxies. Before his travel, Guillaume used to play the saxophone in bands and won with his group the 2013 European Celtic music prize. He recently built a little forge and began forging with his uncle for fun. |
| 09/02/2022 | Chris Brockley_Blatt | Solar Orbiter - Building an Instrument to study the Sun | Solar Orbiter is addressing the big questions in Solar System science to help us understand how our star creates and controls the giant bubble of plasma that surrounds the whole Solar System and influences the planets within it. Launched in February 2020, Solar Orbiter carries six remote sensing instruments, or telescopes, that image the Sun and its surroundings, and four in-situ instruments that measure properties of the environment around the spacecraft. By comparing the data from both sets of instruments, scientists will gain insights into the generation of the solar wind, the stream of charged particles from the Sun that influences the entire Solar System. For the past 15 years, Chris has been the Project Manager of one of the in-situ instruments board, the Solar Wind Analyser (SWA). Made up of three sensors and an onboard data processing unit, the SWA will measure the ion and electron bulk properties (including, density, velocity, and temperature) of the solar wind, thereby characterising the solar wind between 0.28 and 1.4 AU from the Sun. This presentation by Chris will outline the science behind Solar Orbiter, describe more of the mission and the spacecraft, present the SWA and describe the engineering behind building a space science instrument. | |
| 03/02/2022 | Erminia Calabrese | A Zoom Talk : The Atacama Desert's view of the microwave sky | The use of the Cosmic Microwave Background radiation (CMB) to study the physics of the Universe is one of the greatest success stories of modern cosmology. Over the last two decades, the astonishing agreement between the theory and increasingly-precise observations of CMB temperature and polarization has led to the establishment of a concordance cosmological model. However, despite having constrained the parameters of this model to sub-percent precision, many fundamental questions about the Universe are still unanswered and we still need to find out how the Universe began, what is the nature of dark matter and dark energy, what are the properties of neutrino particles and the time of cosmic dawn. To answer these questions new, more powerful CMB data are being collected, analysed and planned for. The Atacama desert in Chile is a prime location for these observations, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope is one of the leading experiments currently operating and will be superseded by the new Simons Observatory from 2023. | Erminia Calabrese is a Professor of Astrophysics at the School of Physics and Astronomy of the Cardiff University. She obtained her PhD in Rome at Sapienza University and then moved to the UK in 2011. She spent 4 years in Oxford as postdoctoral research associate and Beecroft Fellow, moved to Princeton University during fall and winter 2015/2016 as Lyman Spitzer Fellow, and then back to Oxford to start an Ernest Rutherford Fellowship. In May 2017 she moved to Cardiff University to join the Astronomy Instrumentation and Astronomy & Astrophysics groups where she leads a cosmology team supported by a European Research Council Starting Grant. Prof. Calabrese works at the intersection of cosmological theory and data analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background signals, and combines the CMB with galaxy surveys to obtain state-of-the-art constraints on cosmological scenarios, including limits on neutrino physics, dark energy and inflation. She also works on the design and definition of the next generation of experiments. She is a member of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope collaboration and she chairs the Simons Observatory Theory and Analysis Committee; she also act as UK coordinator and European Deputy Spokesperson of the future LiteBIRD satellite. Born and raised on a farm in southern Italy she has a natural inclination and passion for the sunshine, cooking and eating good food, and gardening! |
| 06/01/2022 | Robert Massey | A Zoom Talk : Moon : Art, Science and Culture | Humans have been fascinated with our nearest heavenly body, the Earth’s Moon, since prehistoric times. Join astronomer Dr Robert Massey for a talk about how our obsession with the Moon has manifested itself in the sciences and visual arts, from earliest ritualistic drawings and objects, Romantic symbolism and silent movies, to scientific observation, photography, and space race propaganda. | Dr Robert Massey is Deputy Executive Director of the Royal Astronomical Society, where he spends his days making the case for astronomy to the wider world. Before joining the RAS, his career took him from PhD research in Manchester on the Orion nebula to teaching, local politics, and then a stint as Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. In his spare time he teaches his twelve year old daughter about science, enjoys cooking an eclectic range of dishes, hiking, cycling, running and spends time with his wife enjoying the cultural life of his home city of Bristol. |
| 02/12/2021 | Craig Underwood | A Zoom Talk : A Grand Tour - Pioneering Missions to Jupiter and Saturn | In 1964, Gary Flandro of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) discovered that an alignment of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would occur in the late 1970s that would enable a single spacecraft to visit all of the outer planets by using gravity assists – a technique that, at the time, had never been attempted. This particular planetary alignment occurs only once every 175 years, and it cuts down any potential mission duration from ~40 years to less than 10 years. It was a “once in two lifetimes” opportunity to make a “Grand Tour” of the outer planets in any kind of practical way. Whilst in the end, NASA could not afford to carry out this mission, the concept would later be revived to ultimately result in the highly successful Pioneer 10 and -11 and Voyager 1 and -2 missions. This richly illustrated talk will discuss the planning and engineering of the Pioneer and Voyager missions to Jupiter and Saturn, describing the major research findings from those missions. | He is Emeritus Professor of Spacecraft Engineering at the Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey. He has over 35 years’ experience in space systems engineering and has worked on numerous small satellite missions, specialising in sensors and instrumentation for radiation detection, optical and radar remote sensing. Craig gained his PhD from the University of Surrey in 1996 with his work on the effects of space radiation on electronics. |
| 04/11/2021 | Paul Fellows | A Zoom Talk : Quark Stars and Strange Matter | The usual story told of the end stage of giant stars is that they either finish up as a neutron star or collapse completely to a black hole. However, in this talk Paul looks at the possibility for other extremely exotic forms of matter which may add to the picture – and how the latest observations seem to back up these ideas. | Paul Fellows is co-presenter of the public observing season at the University of Cambridge leading the live outdoor shows every week (or giving indoor presentations when the clouds get in the way!). Either way these attract audiences of 200+ on a regular basis and are aimed to appeal to people of all levels from the complete beginner who wants to know where to start, yet also adding something even for the more knowledgeable. He is also a regular speaker on cruise ships. Having built his first telescope aged 14 and experiencing the wow moment of seeing the rings of Saturn for the first time, he has been stargazing for some 40 years and has his own private observatory where he images the sky, taking pictures of galaxies, clusters, nebulae and planets. Many of his own images will appear in his talks. . |
| 07/10/2021 | Mark Mcintyre | A Zoom Talk : Meteors: an observer's guide | ||
| 02/09/2021 | Brad Gibson | A Zoom Talk : Colonising Mars: Fact or Fiction. - a new talk | ||
| 08/07/2021 | Committee & Members | Members Only - GAS Zoom AGM | ||
| 17/06/2021 | Susan Cartwright | A Zoom Talk: Supernova Neutrinos | A core-collapse supernova - the explosive death of a massive star - is one of the most spectacular events in astronomy. Supernova 1987A was visible to the naked eye, despite being 160000 light years away in the Magellanic Cloud; the supernova of 1034, which created the Crab Nebula, was visible in daylight for 23 days and at night for nearly two years. Yet these spectacular light shows involve only 1% of the energy released by the exploding star: the remaining 99% is emitted in the form of neutrinos. This was verified in 1987 by the detection of about 20 neutrinos from SN 1987A, but if a core-collapse supernova were to occur in our own Galaxy, our modern - much larger - neutrino detectors would see thousands of neutrinos. In this talk I wll explain why supernovae produce neutrinos (and why neutrinos are necessary to produce supernovae), how we detect them, and what we might learn from the next Galactic supernova. | Neutrino Physics and Astrophysics |
| 03/06/2021 | Raman Prinja | A Zoom Talk: Doomed massive stars | A combination of stellar evolution basics, and massive star outflows. | Raman Prinja is Professor of Astrophysics and Head of the Physics and Astronomy Department at University College London (UCL) His main research interests are in the multi-wavelength studies of the evolution and properties of the most massive stars in our Galaxy. Raman has been awarded the Pol and Christiane Swings research prize and is a multiple winner of the UCL Faculty and Department Teaching awards. Beyond research and teaching, Raman is keen to promote astronomy to wider audiences, and has written over 20 successful Outreach-level books, including several titles aimed at children. His award winning titles include 'Science Crazy' (winner School Library Associated Award) and 'Planetarium' (winner of the 2019 Royal Society Young People's book prize). He was awarded the 2019 American Institute of Physics science communication award. |
| 20/05/2021 | Natalie Rees | A Zoom Talk: AGB (Asymptotic giant branch) stars : thermal pulses, third dredge-up and binary interactions | The asymptotic giant branch (AGB) is a late stage in the evolution of intermediate mass stars. These stars are extremely luminous, with outer layers that are cool and expanded, causing them to be found in the upper right portion of the Hertzsprung-Russell diagram. By this point in the star's lifetime, helium has been exhausted in the core leading to a carbon and oxygen rich core surrounded by separate helium and hydrogen burning shells. The double shell burning results in dramatic thermal pulses when helium ignites under degenerate conditions in a thin shell. The pulses give rise to the phenomena of third dredge-up where material from the core (primarily carbon) is mixed all the way up to the surface, where it can be detected by observers. AGB stars are also thought to be the location of the slow-neutron capture process (s-process) which produces heavy elements such as barium and lead, making them important contributors to the galactic chemical evolution. In addition, AGB stars are also likely to interact with a binary companion due to their large size and strong stellar winds, resulting in mass transfer and potentially even common envelope evolution. This talk will investigate all of these processes and how they lead to a variety of different observed stars including carbon stars, nitrogen-rich stars, S stars, barium stars, cataclysmic variables and red stragglers. | Natalie is currently a PhD student at the University of Surrey under the supervision of Dr Robert Izzard. Before this, she completed her undergraduate and masters degrees in astrophysics at the University of Cambridge, during which she realised she had a particular interest for all things stars. Her current work is focusing on improving computational models of asymptotic giant branch stars, which will then be used to investigate the process of common envelope evolution in binary systems. |
| 06/05/2021 | Paul Daniels | A Zoom Talk: The Megaconstellation Threat | The impact of satellite megaconstellations on amateur & professional astronomy | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
| 15/04/2021 | David Hendriks | A Zoom Talk: The creation of gravitational waves and what the observations could tell us about the progenitor systems | In this talk I will give an overview on the topic of gravitational waves. After a short introduction I will cover the theory of gravitational waves and show which systems and phenomena would emit gravitational waves. I will then talk about show the history the different observation methods, the current (and future) detectors and the first observations of gravitational waves. Gravitational wave observations give us a new way of observing the universe, and, as such, also new opportunities to narrow down the uncertainties we have within stellar evolution, or even confirm or reject different possible scenarios. In the last part of this talk I will zoom in on the science we do with the observations of gravitational waves, specifically the use of synthetic populations that are matched to the observations. Several assumptions for e.g. the supernova kick velocity or the common envelope ejection efficiency are used as input for these synthetic populations of stars, and it has been shown that some of these can significantly affect the merger rate. By evolving populations of stars we can estimate these merger rates for different types of binary systems, and compare that to the observed merger rate, allowing us to infer the input values that best match the observations. | David Hendriks is a PhD student at the University of Surrey where he works under guidance of Dr. Robert Izzard in the Surrey Stars team. His current research focuses on the interaction between binary stars and accretion disks. Specifically the loss of material from accretion disks and the impact that this has on the orbital evolution. He obtained his Bachelor and Master degree at the University of Amsterdam after doing his master thesis on synthetic models of black hole populations and the impact of (pulsational) pair instability supernovae on the observable gravitational waves from these black holes. |
| 01/04/2021 | Alasdair Thomson | A Zoom Talk: Professional Radio Astronomy | The Square Kilometer Array (SKA) is planned to be the biggest and most complicated telescope ever constructed when it begins operations towards the end of this decade. Built from thousands of individual antennas across two continents and connected via optical fibre to a 100 petaflop supercomputer, SKA will deliver the sharpest, as well as the most sensitive images of the radio sky to date, allowing us to address several of the biggest open questions in contemporary astrophysics, including: (i) how do galaxies form/evolve, and what is the nature of dark energy?; (ii) was Einstein right about gravity?; (iii) how were the first black holes and stars formed?; (iv) are we alone in the Universe?, and more. In this talk, I will introduce the SKA, give a brief overview of the need for (and techniques behind) radio interferometry, and will highlight some of the science projects which are already underway with SKA Precursor/Pathfinder telescopes (including the UK's eMERLIN radio telescope) as the international science community prepares for SKA itself. | Dr Alasdair Thomson is an eMERLIN Support Scientist and Postdoctoral Research Associate at Jodrell Bank Observatory, the University of Manchester. Originally from Ayrshire, he completed his undergraduate and PhD studies at The University of Edinburgh, and had a four-year stint working as a postdoctoral researcher at Durham University before arriving in The South (Manchester) in 2017. His research focuses on high-resolution (sub-arcsecond) radio and millimetre-wave observations of dust-obscured star-formation in the distant Universe, using telescopes such as the VLA, ALMA and eMERLIN. |
| 18/03/2021 | Arman Aryaeipour | A Zoom Talk: Accreting white dwarf binary systems which result in nova outbursts | ||
| 04/03/2021 | David Arditti | A Zoom Talk: The History of the Telescope | From the BAA Members page- David wrote a book entitled Setting-up a Small Observatory, in Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series (Springer). He often contributes to Astronomy Now magazine. he gives talks, mostly around practical amateur astronomy, but also sometimes on historical and cosmological subjects. David is currently (2018) on the Board of Trustees and Council of the BAA. In June 2018 Council appointed him the first Director of the new Equipment & Techniques Section of the BAA (a successor to earlier sections concerned with telescope-making and the like). He is also on the committees of the Jupiter and Mercury & Venus Sections and Chair of the Sir Patrick Moore Prize committee. David is also a Vice-President of, and Publicity Officer for, the West of London Astronomical Society. |
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| 18/02/2021 | Giovanni Mirouh | A Zoom Talk : The music of stars reveals their deep interiors | In olden times, arts and science were associated as tools to describe the world. Greek philosophers described a mystical Universe where each planet and star would have a corresponding note, creating a cosmic orchestra. This description fell into oblivion until 1960 and the discovery of variations in the Solar luminosity. These variations come from surface vibrations caused by sound waves within the Sun, that resonates just like a (very big) bell. Most stars show similar variations, the real music of stars. It opened for the first time a window to the interior of the stars, and created whole new field of research: asteroseismology. I will link recent results in this field, which is at the core of my current research, with basics of music theory. In the end, we will see that the vibrations of stars are not very different from those of a guitar string, and can even be used to compose pieces that are, quite literally, out of this world. | Dr. Giovanni Mirouh is a research fellow at the University of Surrey. His research focuses on asteroseismology and evolution of massive stars: these stars produce the most heavy elements of the universe (such as the ones planets are made of), and they evolve into black holes and neutron stars. Their study is complex as these stars rotate fast and often have binary companions, two phenomena that still call for a better description. Dr. Mirouh obtained his PhD. in 2016 from the University of Toulouse (France), then moving to the International School of Advanced Studies (SISSA, Trieste, Italy) before the University of Surrey. He is also involved in the Kepler and TESS collaborations. |
| 07/01/2021 | Neil Bowles | A Zoom talk: The latest news of Lunar Exploration | Measurements by NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter's Diviner radiometer instrument have revealed the Moon's surface to be one of temperature extremes, from over 100 C at noon on the equator to some of the lowest recorded naturally occurring temperatures at the poles of < -240 C. Why is this the case? And what does it mean for the future of planetary science and exploration of the solar system? Our space instrumentation, laboratory and numerical modelling work in Oxford are helping with the next generation of missions to airless bodies in our solar system, including NASA's recently confirmed Lunar Trailblazer small satellite. | Neil Bowles is a Professor in the Department of Physics, University of Oxford. He is a Co-Investigator as part of NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mission and is leading the development of the Lunar Thermal Mapper for NASA's Lunar Trailblazer mission. His lunar research interests include understanding the Moon's surface composition from lunar satellite observations and mapping and understanding its temperature properties for future robotic and human exploration. |
| 03/12/2020 | Pete Williamson | A Zoom talk: Remote Observing - Remote Telescopes for Public and Educational use | The talk covers what is available to the general public when it comes to world wide observatories plus how societies can get involved with educational projects | Pete Williamson is an astronomer & broadcaster. Peter started his astronomical journey in 1967 when I started Hagley RC Secondary School and noticed an observatory in a garden near the school playing fields in the village of Churchill Worcestershire. He has gone on to run many projects & and started the Shropshire Astronomical Society. He now does solar imaging, Deep Sky Imaging with robotic Telescope workshops for organisations or the individual and not just in the UK, I also have many images published in the major Astronomical Journals and books around the globe plus I write articles for publications when asked to do so. Pete's Website is http://www.peterwilliamson.co.uk/biography.html |
| 05/11/2020 | Andrew Thomas | A Zoom talk: Radio Astronomy for Amateurs | It often surprises amateur astronomers that it is possible to observe at radio wavelengths without needing a huge Jodrell Bank sized dish. This talk will describe some of the observations which can be undertaken by amateur observers, the equipment needed and how to get started. Projects can start with solar observations which can be made indoors with simple equipment and can progress to more complex outdoor antennas. Radio astronomy is not limited by light pollution and weather and can be an interesting sideline to optical observations. | Andrew Thomas is a Trustee of the UK Radio Astronomy Association and a member of the BAA. I found that my long standing interest in astronomy was re-energised when I discovered amateur radio astronomy. This was due to a chance encounter at a business conference with a self declared ˜amateur radio astronomer'. Prior to that I had no idea that such things were possible. I enjoy building the instruments needed for making observations and encourage others to have a go. I currently observe Very Low Frequency (VLF) signals and ionospheric disturbances and occasionally meteors. My current project is to add a magnetometer to my observatory and observe the impact on the Earth's magnetic field of solar wind and coronal mass ejections. UKRAA is the UK Radio Astronomy Association, a charitable body which historically developed from the British Astronomical Association Radio Astronomy Group. UKRAA promotes the science of radio astronomy and all branches of radio astronomical research by designing, manufacturing, and selling radio astronomy equipment for amateur astronomers. |
| 01/10/2020 | Mikako Matsuura | A Zoom talk: Recent findings of a possible neutron star in Supernova 1987A. | Mikako Matsuura is STFC Ernest Rutherford fellow, and a senior lecture at School of Physic and Astronomy at Cardiff University. She completed her PhD in astronomy at University of Tokyo in 2001. Her works are about observational studies of dust and molecules in space, and mainly focus on stellar evolution. Her current projects involve Herschel Space Observatory, Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), Very Large Telescopes in Chile, and NASA's airborne telescope, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) |
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| 03/09/2020 | Chris Lintott | A Zoom talk:- Crowd and the Cosmos | Astronomer Chris Lintott explains how you could help astronomers sort through galaxies, explore the surface of Mars, or even discover a planet. This is the story of the Zooniverse, which has enlisted more than two million people in the search for cosmic truth. Using stories drawn from contemporary research, this talk describes their discoveries - including the most mysterious star in the Milky Way - and argues that the search for the truly unusual could rely on you. The talk includes at least one picture of penguins. | My background is in work on the chemistry associated with star formation, but these days I think about galaxy formation and run citizen science projects to investigate galaxy formation, discover planets and more. Professor Lintott was Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Computational Cosmology from 2010-2014, where he focused on devloping the Zooniverse, a citizen science platform. Professor Lintott is also presenter of The Sky at Night on BBC Four. |
| 02/07/2020 | July's AGM is cancelled | Unfortunately we have cancelled this month's AGM meeting due to the Coronavirus outbreak and to contribute to social distancing. In the mean time please watch our Facebook page for any further announcememnts. | ||
| 04/06/2020 | June's Meeting is cancelled | Unfortunately we have cancelled this month's meeting due to the Coronavirus outbreak and to contribute to social distancing. In the mean time please watch our Facebook page for any further announcememnts. | ||
| 07/05/2020 | May's Meeting is cancelled | Unfortunately we have cancelled this month's meeting due to the Coronavirus outbreak and to contribute to social distancing. In the mean time please watch our Facebook page for any further announcememnts. | ||
| 02/04/2020 | This Month's Meeting is Cancelled | Unfortunately we have cancelled this month's meeting due to the Coronavirus outbreak and to contribute to social distancing. In the mean time please watch our Facebook page for any further announcememnts. | ||
| 05/03/2020 | Spyridon Grammenos | Surrey Satellite Technology | Space Debris - A horror story | From Spyridon's LinkedIn page :- I am a graduate engineer currently undertaking PhD research. I am quite enthousiast about all fields of electronic engineering. My mainfield of interest is microwave communications applied in satellites and avionic systems. Also i am interested in the progress and advance of the 5G technology. |
| 06/02/2020 | Glenn Bates | Basic Astrophotography | Really basic Astrophotography, covering nightscapes, star trails & processing. | |
| 06/02/2020 | Rob Graham | Monthly Whats Up Presentation | This months news from the heavens | |
| 06/02/2020 | David Rothery | Mercury and its geology | Mercury is the Solar System's smallest rocky planet, but the only one other than Earth to generate it's own magnetic field. It has a very large iron core, the outer part of which is fluid, overlain by a relatively thin silicate mantle & crust. This is probably a result of much of the body's original crust & mantle having been stripped away in a collision. Despite this, the present crust is comparatively rich in volatile elements. These Lubricate tectonics (driven by global thermal contraction), & have enabled explosive volcanism to continue after the effusive volcanism that formed most of the crust waned. On-going, non-explosive, volatile loss is demonstrated by "moth-eaten" patches of ground called hollows. | From The Open University, Professor Rothery says:- In November 2013 I became Professor of Planetary Geosciences. I was a Senior Lecturer in the Open University Department of Earth Sciences since 1994 (transferring to the Planetary & Space Sciences Division of the new Dept of Physical Sciences in August 2011), and before that was a Lecturer here. During 1999-2004 I was Director of Teaching and Geosciences Programme Director. I have also been Leader of the IAVCEI Commission on Remote Sensing, and in 2005 I was appointed to the PPARC Solar System Advisory Panel and the BepiColombo Oversight Committee. In May 2006 I was appointed UK Lead Scientist on MIXS (Mercury Imaging X-ray Spectrometer), which is the only UK Principal Investigator instrument on BepiColombo, the European Space Agency mission to Mercury to be launched in 2018. I became MIXS Lead Co-Investigator in 2014. I chair ESA's Mercury Surface and Composition Working Group. As from 1 March 2018 I am leading the geological mapping workpackage for a the Horizon 2020 Planmap project, which aims to improve European capabiliy in planetary geologic mapping. My research interests centre on the study of volcanic activity by means of remote sensing, and volcanology and geoscience in general on other planets. |
| 02/01/2020 | Robert Izzard | Binary stars: astrophysical laboratories | The stars in the sky are not always isolated and alone: many live with companions in binary star systems. If the stars in a binary are close enough they can interact by interchanging mass and spin, leading to astophysical phenomena like thermonuclear supernovae and gamma-ray bursts. I explain how binary stars are bound by the fundamental force of gravity, and how they can escape this force when one of the stars explodes. Some of these we see as hypervelocity stars zooming out of our Galaxy, while those that remain bound can make the recently-detected gravitational waves predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity. Binary stars provide a laboratory in the sky to study such fundamental physics and are critical to our understanding of the Universe. I will show some computer simulations of binary stars as used in our state of the art research. | From Roberts, University of Surrey page, he says- I am an STFC Rutherford fellow and lecturer in the astrophysics group at the University of Surrey. I was previously at the Institute of Astronomy, part of the University of Cambridge. I was also a teaching by-fellow at Churchill College. Prior to this I was a W2 Professor at the University of Bonn, a Marie-Curie fellow at l'Université libre de Bruxelles, an NWO fellow at the University of Utrecht and I did my PhD at the IOA in Cambridge, graduating in 2004. |
| 02/01/2020 | Mike Cruise | Gravitational waves: Now and in the Future | Prof Mike Cruise is a member of international teams searching for gravitational waves using ground based and space based facilities. He has published over 100 research papers and a text book on The Principles of Space Instrument Design. Mike is President of the Royal Astronomical Society. Mike obtained his BSc and PhD from University College London where he worked at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory on instrumentation for X-Ray Astronomy. In 1985 he was appointed Deputy Director. In 1986 he left UCL to become leader of the Astrophysics Group at the Rutherford Appelton Laboratory, subsequently becoming the Associate Director for Space. In 1995 he was appointed to a chair at the University of Birmingham, followed by five years as Head of School and five years as Pro Vice Chancellor for Research and Knowledge Transfer. Mike has contributed significantly to a number of Space missions including Skylarks 921,922, 821,822,1104 Ariel V, Ariel VI, Hipparcos, AMPTE, ROSAT, Spektrum Roentgen Gamma, SOHO, Cluster, XMM-Newton, STEREO, LEGRI, SMEI. LISA Pathfinder and LISA, a space based gravitational wave observatory. Mike has pioneered the development of gravitational wave detectors for very high frequencies- above 1 MHz and has a long term interest in the interaction of gravitation and electromagnetism. |
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| 05/12/2019 | John Evans | Dark Skies Project | John spent his career in education and recently retired from his job as an educational adviser and schools inspector. Of his own education, he recalls that the grammar school he attended placed him, despite his protests that he wanted to be an astronomer, on the arts side because, in a one-off test at age 13, he did better in Latin than maths. Mercifully, things are more flexible nowadays. John went on to read languages at Oxford and later also gained qualifications in philosophy and education. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In spite of his school's best endeavours, the astronomy never went away. John is horrified to note that he has been looking at the night sky with some degree of seriousness for fifty years! His first telescope was a 60mm draw-tube refractor by Dallmeyer bequeathed by some long-lost family member who had been a sniper. He made a wooden equatorial mounting for it and still remembers the thrill of seeing, perched on the garage roof, the Galilean satellites for the first time. He recalls an observation of the cusp-caps of Venus made with this telescope being mentioned in the BAA journal. His eye-sight, or perhaps his imagination, must have been better in those days. When he was 14 he took and processed his first photograph of the night-sky - an image of Orion on a Kodak glass plate - with a camera he made himself. A year later he ground and polished an 8" mirror on a barrel in his bed-room - he had understanding parents! For many years, John provided practical outreach sessions for students and ran a course for teachers in teaching astronomy. He believes that introducing people to the night-sky is one of the most important things that we can do, not just for its scientific interest, or even the experience and enjoyment of the sky's natural beauty, but for its impact on people's understanding of who and what they are and might become. He wishes that people would look down less and up much more. Over the years, John has owned or used most types of telescope and now owns 'only' three: 80mm and 140mm apochromatic refractors and a 300mm Dobsonian, which he feels give him pretty much all the options he needs. In recent years he has regularly gone in search of dark skies overseas, especially to La Palma, one of the best observing locations on the planet. There, he says, the skies can be so breathtaking that he is happy to gaze upwards for hours with no instrumental aid, other than perhaps a pair of binoculars. For him, this is the ultimate observing experience. |
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| 05/12/2019 | Choong-Ling Liew-Cain | A machine learning tool for characterising evolution of nearby galaxies | Whilst we have some idea about how galaxies evolve, quantifications of their evolutions, particularly in the nearby universe, are still being determined. With the next generation of telescopes, terabytes of data are being collected each night to help answer this question. In order to examine all of these data, we need fast algorithms to determine the values of age and metallicity of galaxies, which parameterise the evolution of galaxies. In this talk, I will present my work on creating a machine learning method of analysing large volumes of data efficiently to investigate the evolution history of galaxies. I will show neural networks, which are a type of machine learning, are able to reproduce the properties of galaxies accurately from lower resolution data. | Miss Choong Ling is a PHD Student - Astrophysics Group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory |
| 05/12/2019 | Chris Lintott | Public Science | My background is in work on the chemistry associated with star formation, but these days I think about galaxy formation and run citizen science projects to investigate galaxy formation, discover planets and more. Professor Lintott was Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Computational Cosmology from 2010-2014, where he focused on devloping the Zooniverse, a citizen science platform. Professor Lintott is also presenter of The Sky at Night on BBC Four. |
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| 07/11/2019 | John Axtell | Monthly Whats Up Presentation | John Axtell has been GAS Secretary for two years and Observing Co-ordinator since January 04. John's interest in astronomy began when he was a little lad of 7 or 8, at one time he was the youngest member of the Junior Astronomical Society (now known as the Society for Popular Astronomy). Teenage interests took over, but he retained a background interest in the subject. He became a born-again astronomer in 2001, his road-to-Damascus moment being the Total Eclipse of the Sun in Zambia. | |
| 07/11/2019 | Leah Morabito | Black holes that feed on galaxies | At the heart of almost every massive galaxy, there is a super-massive black hole. We see evidence in astronomical observations that these super-massive black holes are linked to the global properties of the galaxies in which they reside. One of the biggest open questions in astronomy today is: how do super-massive black holes impact galaxy evolution? A small fraction of super-massive black holes are in an 'active' phase, where they are feeding on gas from their host galaxies. We can identify these active galaxies in astronomical observations, and study how they can help direct the path of galaxy evolution. We do not yet know exactly how this happens, but in this talk you will learn about the phenomena powered by active super-massive black holes, with a focus on what can be learned from radio observations from telescopes like the Low Frequency Array. I will cover both current indirect evidence for the co-evolution of super-massive black holes and their host galaxies, and upcoming work which will help definitively push forward our understanding of how super-massive black holes impact galaxy evolution. | I am an astronomer using radio telescopes to answer fundamental questions on how super-massive black holes co-evolve with the galaxies in which they reside. My specialty is high-resolution imaging at low frequencies, using a Square Kilometre Array pathfinder telescope, the Low Frequency Array. I am currently a Hintze Fellow and the Millard and Lee Alexander Postdoctoral Fellow at Christ Church, University of Oxford. Outside of work, I am an avid reader, I love to sew, and I row for Christ Church! |
| 03/10/2019 | Lewis Dartnell | Origins. How the Earth made us | When we talk about human history, we focus on great leaders, mass migration and decisive wars. But how has the Earth itself determined our destiny? How has our planet made us? As a species we are shaped by our environment. Geological forces drove our evolution in East Africa; mountainous terrain led to the development of democracy in Greece; and today voting behaviour in the United States follows the bed of an ancient sea. The human story is the story of these forces, from plate tectonics and climate change, to atmospheric circulation and ocean currents. How are the Himalayas linked to the orbit of the Earth, and to the formation of the British Isles? By taking us billions of years into our planet's past, Professor Lewis Dartnell tells us the ultimate origin story. When we reach the point where history becomes science we see a vast web of connections that underwrites our modern world and helps us face the challenges of the future. | Lewis graduated from Oxford University with a First Class degree in Biological Sciences and completed his PhD at University College London in 2007. He now holds the Professorship in Science Communication at the University of Westminster. His research field is astrobiology and the search for microbial life on Mars. Lewis has held a STFC Science in Society Fellowship and am very active in delivering live events at schools and science festivals, working as a scientific consultant for the media, and have appeared in numerous TV documentaries and radio shows. He has published four books. |
| 05/09/2019 | Martin Baker | GO1 Repairs | ||
| 05/09/2019 | Pam Noon | Chillean Solar Eclipse 2019 | ||
| 05/09/2019 | Max Dobres | Training - Where & What ? | ||
| 05/09/2019 | Tim Ellison | Albury Observing | ||
| 05/09/2019 | Lucie Green | The Latest Developments in Solar Exploration | From her UCL page, Lucie says:- My research focusses on the study of the evolution of the Sun's magnetic field and how it drives solar activity that in turn leads to space weather at the Earth. My early work used new techniques to quantify the amount of magnetic helicity ejected by the Sun during events called coronal mass ejections. The results are important for many areas of solar physics including dynamo theory and the evolution of the global solar magnetic field. More recently, I have focussed on the question of whether or not flux ropes form in the lower solar atmosphere before coronal mass ejections. I am interested in how observations can be used to quantify the magnetic flux in these ropes so that we can better understand their evolution to an unstable and eruptive configuration. This work is important for developing the science that underpins space weather forecasting. |
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| 04/07/2019 | Max Dobres | Light Weight Grab & Go Imaging | ||
| 04/07/2019 | Martin Baker | A trip through our bit of the Galaxy - some of my pictures | Some of my images taken over the last couple of years. | |
| 04/07/2019 | Committee & Members | Members Only - AGM | ||
| 06/06/2019 | Brad Gibson | How the Universe Will End… | ||
| 02/05/2019 | John Cossins | Astronomy Over the Internet. | ||
| 02/05/2019 | John Rogers | Jupiter and the Juno mission | The talk will deal with recent advances in our understanding of Jupiter's massive atmosphere, especially from the Juno orbiter and from ongoing amateur imaging. The spectacular JunoCam images are revealing remarkable features in the polar regions and fascinating details in the atmospheric circulations and cycles that we are studying from the ground. | John Rogers is the long-standing director of the BAA's Jupiter Section, and author of ˜The Giant Planet Jupiter' (CUP, 1995). In addition to analysing worldwide amateur observations of Jupiter, he is collaborating with the imaging team on NASA's Juno orbiter, and posting regular reports on the results on the BAA Jupiter Section's web site. Professionally, Dr Rogers was a lecturer and researcher in molecular neurobiology at the University of Cambridge, until he retired in 2014 so as to devote himself full-time to Jupiter research. |
| 04/04/2019 | David Arditti | Lunar Imaging | From the BAA Members page- David wrote a book entitled Setting-up a Small Observatory, in Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series (Springer). He often contributes to Astronomy Now magazine. he gives talks, mostly around practical amateur astronomy, but also sometimes on historical and cosmological subjects. David is currently (2018) on the Board of Trustees and Council of the BAA. In June 2018 Council appointed him the first Director of the new Equipment & Techniques Section of the BAA (a successor to earlier sections concerned with telescope-making and the like). He is also on the committees of the Jupiter and Mercury & Venus Sections and Chair of the Sir Patrick Moore Prize committee. David is also a Vice-President of, and Publicity Officer for, the West of London Astronomical Society. |
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| 07/03/2019 | John Axtell | What's Up for March 2019 | Straight from the Studio at Brooklands, John tells us about this month's sky & astronomical topics | John Axtell has been GAS Secretary for two years and Observing Co-ordinator since January 04. John's interest in astronomy began when he was a little lad of 7 or 8, at one time he was the youngest member of the Junior Astronomical Society (now known as the Society for Popular Astronomy). Teenage interests took over, but he retained a background interest in the subject. He became a born-again astronomer in 2001, his road-to-Damascus moment being the Total Eclipse of the Sun in Zambia. |
| 07/03/2019 | Graziella Branduardi-Raymont | SMILE: A novel and global way to explore solar-terrestrial relationships | For those of you who have not heard yet, here is some news: Yesterday the SMILE mission was 'adopted' into the ESA Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 Programme. This is a very important step in the development of a space mission: it means SMILE has received the green light for implementation, and UKSA will release funds to support the UK institutes involved in the mission, up to launch (expected end 2023). SMILE (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) is a joint venture by ESA and the Chinese Academy of Sciences, with two Mission Co-PIs, Prof. Chi Wang on the Chinese side and Graziella Branduardi Raymont on the European side. SMILE will investigate the impact of the solar wind on the Earth's magnetic environment in a very novel way, by taking X-ray images of the dayside magnetosheath and cusp regions (Soft X-ray Imager, or SXI), and will link the processes taking place there with those leading to the auroral displays in the polar regions (monitored by the UV Imager, UVI). A plasma package (Light Ion Analyser, LIA, and the MAGnetometer) will simultaneously monitor conditions in the solar wind or the magnetosheath. All of this will take place from a very highly elliptical polar orbit, taking the spacecraft out to 20 Earth radii. In terms of hardware, we at MSSL are contributing to the SXI by providing the Front End Electronics, and to LIA, by supporting the instrument design and carrying out calibrations of the analysers. | Graziella has been fascinated by astronomy and space research since she was a teenager. After a degree in Physics at the University of Milano, Italy, and a PhD in X-ray Astronomy at University College London (UCL), she worked at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, USA, and then returned to UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory where she is based and is Professor of Space Astronomy. Graziella has participated in major X-ray observatory missions over many years: her scientific interests span X-ray emission from distant active galaxies, stars and planets. She is Co-Investigator for the Reflection Grating Spectrometer (RGS) operating on board ESA's XMM-Newton X-ray observatory since 1999, having also been project manager for the MSSL hardware contribution to the RGS. She is now co-leader of the ESA-Chinese Academy of Sciences SMILE mission, which is under development and due for launch in 2023. |
| 07/02/2019 | John Hodder | Constellation Viewer Application v2.3 | After the break, GAS member John, who wrote this application, shows us how to use it. it's available on our website as a download. | |
| 07/02/2019 | John Lancashire | The Antikythera Mechanism | UNDER THE HOOD OF THE ANTIKYTHERA MECHANISM. I'll start by explaining the history of the early loss of the Mechanism in around 70BC, and then its discovery in 1900AD by Greek divers. I'll show how the recent research and X-rays have revealed far more about the construction of the Mechanism and its purpose. Then I'll work my way through the Mechanism, explaining the astronomical theories behind each part of it and showing, with the aid of videos, how the theories have been implemented and how the instrument works. I'll also identify some of the engineering challenges the Ancient Greek craftsmen must have faced. As part of this I'll describe with the aid of a timeline the key steps in the development of astronomical theories in the Hellenistic era during the period from 500BC through to the time when the Mechanism was lost. I'll describe the thinking behind their first models of the Universe and how they evolved over time. I'll then demonstrate how my version of the complete Mechanism works and illustrate some of the challenges associate with calibrating it for the present day. Topics which will be covered include: 1. Astronomy in the ancient world and the need for a Calendar Computer. 2. How the Mechanism predicts eclipses 3. The first Lunar Anomaly 4. The apparent motion of the Sun from a Geocentric perspective 5. The motions of the Inferior planets 6. The motions of the Superior planets | John Lancashire BSc ACA John graduated in Mathematics from Bristol University, where he studied general relativity and quantum mechanics in his final year. Torn between an academic career or a life in business he chose the latter, although he always retained his enthusiasm for science and mathematics. He spent many years working in IT for international companies as a software designer, risk manager and programme director. He retired 3 years ago. His interest in the Antikythera Mechanism was sparked back in 2006 and he has been following the developments and research ever since. In his project to create a modern reconstruction of the machine he's bult on his expertise in computer aided design and learnt much about modern manufacturing and prototyping techniques. He believes the Mechanism is a fascinating instrument which still has relevance and value today. Although a small number of bronze reconstructions of the Mechanism have been built by researchers, these are all now sitting in glass cases in museums. People cannot see the engineering inside or explore the functionality of the machine. Hence his aim has been to bring the Mechanism to life by creating a version using modern materials which can be reproduced in small numbers. He would like people to be able to "get inside" the mechanism, understand how it works and actually use it in real life. |
| 03/01/2019 | Colin Mcgill | Cosmology Pt 2 | The second lecture will focus on inflationary cosmology and the insights from the cosmic microwave background: Negative pressure and inflation Inflation, perturbations, oscillations and cosmological structure formation. Supernovae Type 1A and evidence for dark energy The future: gravitational waves, the polarisation of the CMB and dark matter. | Dr. Colin McGill is a member of GAS. Colin currently works as a project manager for BP - but before that he was a professional astronomer. His Doctoral research at Oxford was on the large scale structure of the universe. He also completed two Post-Doctoral Research roles, one at the prestigious Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto in cosmology, and one back at Oxford on galactic dynamics. Colin is also a keen imager. He has a remotely operated telescope in Spain and is also training people to use the GAS imaging telescope in Holmbury St. Mary. |
| 06/12/2018 | Tim Ellison | The Society's Observatory Facilities | A brief illustrated description of the Holmbury Observatory and the equipment which is available for members to use. | |
| 06/12/2018 | Julia Gaudelli | Outreach - The Astroboost Project | GAS was chosen to participate in 'Astroboost' which was organised by RAS and funded by the STFC. We have been provided with an excellent resource kit which will allow us to showcase the James Webb Space Telescope at our outreach events. I will present a quick run-through of the show and demo all our lovely new equipment. | |
| 06/12/2018 | Colin Mcgill | Cosmology Pt 1. | Cosmology is the study of the universe as a whole. In these two lectures, Colin will show the key evidence and explain sufficient theory to allow you to understand why we think the universe is as we believe. The lectures will approximately follow the historical evolution of cosmology over the last 100 years. The first lecture will cover conventional cosmology: The cosmic distance ladder, Hubble's Law and the age of the universe. Symmetries: Isotropy, the Cosmological Principle homogeneity. The thermal history of the universe. Predictions of the big bang theory: nucleosynthesis and the cosmic microwave background. Problems with the big bang theory. | Dr. Colin McGill is a member of GAS. Colin currently works as a project manager for BP - but before that he was a professional astronomer. His Doctoral research at Oxford was on the large scale structure of the universe. He also completed two Post-Doctoral Research roles, one at the prestigious Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics in Toronto in cosmology, and one back at Oxford on galactic dynamics. Colin is also a keen imager. He has a remotely operated telescope in Spain and is also training people to use the GAS imaging telescope in Holmbury St. Mary. |
| 01/11/2018 | Ghina Halabi | The intimate lives of stars | Stars are our intimate connection with the cosmos and exploring them is an exploration of our own cosmological heritage. They live eventful lives then fade away and die, donating matter back to the Universe, matter which may form new stars and planets one day. How do we study them? What do we know about them and what mysteries do they still hold? That's what the talk will unfold. | Ghina M. Halabi, BSci., MSci., PhD, is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute of Astronomy and a Junior Research Fellow at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge. She is the first person to obtain a PhD in Astrophysics from a Lebanese institution, the American University of Beirut, where she worked as a lecturer before coming to Cambridge. Her PhD investigated the lives of stars and the formation of the chemical elements in the Universe. She is a mentor, educator, blogger, TEDx speaker and a published scholar. She is an invited speaker and panellist at several international astronomy conferences and interdisciplinary forums. As a member of the United Nations Space for Women Project, she advocates gender equality in STEM. She frequently engages in outreach projects including the Cambridge Science Festival. She is the founder of Scheherazade Speaks Science, a science platform to improve the representation and visibility of female scientists. |
| 04/10/2018 | Steve Baker | Astrospectroscopy ... where pretty picture end and science starts | After the break, our very own Steve talks about spectroscopy | |
| 04/10/2018 | Mikako Matsuura | Herschel Space Observatory and ALMA explore deep into the space | Mikako Matsuura is STFC Ernest Rutherford fellow, and a senior lecture at School of Physic and Astronomy at Cardiff University. She completed her PhD in astronomy at University of Tokyo in 2001. Her works are about observational studies of dust and molecules in space, and mainly focus on stellar evolution. Her current projects involve Herschel Space Observatory, Atacama Large Millimetre/submillimetre Array (ALMA), Very Large Telescopes in Chile, and NASA's airborne telescope, Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) |
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| 06/09/2018 | Paul Fellows | Hawking, Black Holes and the Edge of Physics | Einstein's theories that nothing could ever escape from a black hole troubled the young researcher Stephen Hawking leading him to publish his 1976 paper bringing together General Relativity and Quantum Mechanics for the first time. This paper revealed, in Stephen's own words, that ‘Black holes ain't so Black!' which shocked the scientific world. Paul guides the listener through these ideas in straightforward terms step-by-step. | Paul Fellows is co-presenter of the public observing season at the University of Cambridge leading the live outdoor shows every week (or giving indoor presentations when the clouds get in the way!). Either way these attract audiences of 200+ on a regular basis and are aimed to appeal to people of all levels from the complete beginner who wants to know where to start, yet also adding something even for the more knowledgeable. He is also a regular speaker on cruise ships. Having built his first telescope aged 14 and experiencing the wow moment of seeing the rings of Saturn for the first time, he has been stargazing for some 40 years and has his own private observatory where he images the sky, taking pictures of galaxies, clusters, nebulae and planets. Many of his own images will appear in his talks. . |
| 12/07/2018 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 05/07/2018 | Martin Baker | GDPR for GAS | What the latest data protection regulation means | |
| 07/06/2018 | Nigel Mason | Astrobiology; The Cradle of Life | How did life begin on Earth? Is there life elsewhere in the universe? How can we look for it? These are three fundamental questions for modern science. In this talk I will discuss how we are trying to answer them. | Professor Nigel Mason is the Professor of Molecular Physics in the School of Physical Science, The Open University. He graduated from UCL in 1983 & obtained a PhD in atomic physics in 1987. He joined the Open University in 2002. Professor Mason was awarded an OBE in 2007 for services to science. |
| 03/05/2018 | Marcell Tessenyi | Twinkle: An Alternative Approach to Science Space Missions | Twinkle is a small, low-cost mission that will use spectroscopy to decode the light from hundreds of extrasolar planets. Twinkle will be able to reveal, for the first time, the chemical composition, weather and history of worlds orbiting distant stars. The Twinkle satellite will be built in the UK and launched into a low-Earth orbit within 3 to 4 years, using a platform designed by Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd and instrumentation led by UCL. This project also is allowing for collaboration between amateurs and professionals in gathering data for candidate stellar systems. Dr Tessenyi will be updating us with the latest developments in this exciting program. | As well as project managing the Twinkle mission he is also CEO of Blue Skies Space Ltd. Dr Tessenyi has a PhD in astrophysics from University College London in exoplanet spectroscopy. He has worked in France and in the UK, gaining experience in engineering and management training. |
| 05/04/2018 | David Waltham | Lucky Planet | Science tells us that life elsewhere in the Universe is increasingly likely to be discovered. But in fact the Earth may be a very unusual planet perhaps the only one like it in the entire visible Universe. In his talk on the "Lucky Planet, Professor Waltham asks why, and comes up with some surprising and unconventional answers. | |
| 01/03/2018 | Carlos Frenk | TBA | Tonights meeting (1st March) is unfortunately cancelled due to the poor weather conditions. Professor Carlos Frenk has also postponed his visit to GAS due to the weather & travel disruption from Durham. | |
| 01/02/2018 | Bob Mizon | Dark Future? | The talk examines recent and current trends in lighting and their significance for the night sky, and what the future may bring for astronomy as LEDs, switch-offs, remote control and 'intelligent lighting ' (and even driverless cars) become the norm. | |
| 04/01/2018 | Carly Howett | Exploring the Pluto-System: A view from New Horizons | The New Horizon spacecraft flew-by Pluto in July of 2015, observing Pluto and its five moons using a suite of instruments that included two cameras, an ultra-violet and an infrared spectrometer. This talk will give an overview of New Horizons' exciting results, and describe what the post-Pluto future holds for this important mission. See Carly at TEDxBoulder "https://tedxboulder.com/videos/pluto-worth-the-wait" Follow Carly on "https://twitter.com/carlyhowett?lang=en" | |
| 04/01/2018 | Stephen Tonkin | Ten Ways the Universe Tries to Kill You | From gamma-ray bursts to asteroid impacts, an overview of cataclysmic events. This light-hearted but scientifically robust approach incorporates a lot of fundamental cosmological processes, from stellar evolution to galactic interaction. Stephen (Steve) Tonkin has been an amateur astronomer since childhood and now spends most of his time doing astronomical outreach. He has taught astronomy to adults and children for over 30 years and has authored many articles and several books on practical aspects of astronomy. He writes equipment reviews and a monthly Binocular Tour for Sky at Night magazine. Steve is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, a past-chairman of the Wessex Astronomical Society and a founder member of Fordingbridge Astronomers. | Stephen (Steve) Tonkin has been an amateur astronomer since childhood and now spends most of his time doing astronomical outreach. He has taught astronomy to adults and children for over 30 years and has authored many articles and several books on practical aspects of astronomy. He writes equipment reviews and a monthly Binocular Tour for Sky at Night magazine. Steve is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, a past-chairman of the Wessex Astronomical Society and a founder member of Fordingbridge Astronomers. |
| 07/12/2017 | Joel Davis | The Story of Water on Early Mars: Rivers, Lakes, and Seas on the Red Planet | 50 years since spacecraft first arrived at Mars and sent back the first images showing ancient valleys and canyons on the surface, the story of water on early Mars is growing increasingly complex. Rivers, lakes, and possibly seas existed globally across the planet billions of years ago, with significant implications for the early martian climate. This talk will use recent, high-resolution images of the martian surface to summarise these findings and reveal the intriguing history of our second nearest neighbour. | |
| 02/11/2017 | Martin Barstow | Diamonds in the Sky – The Importance of White Dwarfs in Modern Astrophysics | While it is more than 150 years since the first known white dwarf, Sirius B, was discovered, these stars remain enigmatic objects. They are implicated in Type Ia supernova explosions and the population can be used to place limits on the age of the Galaxy. In recent years new surprises have emerged, suggesting that white dwarfs are accreting the remnants of their ancient planetary systems. These stars might also be used to probe the fundamental physics of the cosmos. This talk will discuss the history of the the discovery of white dwarfs leading to these latest discoveries. | |
| 05/10/2017 | Ian Shipsey | From Quark to the Cosmos | BSc Lond, PhD Edin Fellow by Special Election in Physics Professor of Experimental Physics Teaching I teach Physics at all levels. I am passionate about teaching both one-on-one and in large lecture format. Students at Purdue University USA, where I have spent most of my career, gave me their highest award for teaching. About me I develop cameras that enable new ways of seeing the world. Most recently we saw the Higgs Boson for the first time. I am Chairperson of the Collaboration Board of the Compact Muon Solenoid Experiment (CMS) at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, Switzerland, a member of the Board of Directors of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Corporation, and formerly the co-coordinator of the LHC Physics Center at Fermi National accelerator Laboratory (Fermilab), and co-Spokesperson of the CLEO experiment at Cornell University. I am a Fellow of the American Physical Society (APS) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Chair-elect of the APS Division of Particles and Fields (DPF). My research I am an experimental particle physicist. I work in large international scientific collaborations. We seek to understand how the universe was born how it will evolve and how it will end using particle accelerators and telescopes. I study quarks and the Higgs Boson, search for dark matter, the study of dark energy. Graduate I have had the privilege to have had more than a dozen brilliant students receive a PhD so far and I have also mentored 10 postdoctoral fellows. Other I am profoundly deaf. I have given over sixty colloquia and talks to the public on hearing, cochlear implants and perception since the miracle of a cochlear implant restored my hearing. |
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| 07/09/2017 | George Seabroke | The Gaia Revolution | Gaia is a European Space Agency mission is to reveal the composition, formation and evolution of our Milky Way Galaxy. The whole mission cost around 1 billion Euros, the Gaia satellite (launched in 2013) has the largest CCD camera in space with nearly 1 billion pixels and it is observing over 1 billion stars (1% of the Galaxy's population). The revolution began with Gaia's first data release (DR1) in 2016, which included the positions of over 1 billion stars, allowing the most detailed map ever of the night sky to be made. The revolution will continue with Gaia's second data release (DR2, April 2018). DR2 will improve this map and extend it to 3D by publishing the parallaxes of these 1 billion stars, from which their distances can be inferred. It will be possible to turn this 3D map into a movie because DR2 will also include how stars move with time (proper motions and radial velocities). Not only will Gaia revolutionise most of astrophysics because distances are so fundamental to the subject, it will also discover thousands of supernovae, tens of thousands of new planetary systems around other stars, monitor hundreds of millions of variable stars, study 500,000 quasars across the Universe, measure how space-time is warped by the gravitational fields of the Sun and major planets and provide our first census of asteroids in the inner Solar System! I will present the scientific motivation for Gaia, the satellite itself and its measurement principles, the human side of Gaia, the contents of DR1 and highlights of its scientific results, the promise of DR2, MSSL's contribution to the mission, how anyone can get involved with the mission now (Gaia Alerts) and the future of the mission. | |
| 06/07/2017 | Martin Baker | Filters in Astronomy | ||
| 06/07/2017 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 01/06/2017 | Donald Kurtz | Planets and Pulsations: The New Keplerian Revolution | One of the biggest questions humans can ask is, "Are we alone?" Does Earth harbour the only life in the universe? Everyone has an opinion on this question but, as scientists, we want to know. A first step is to find other planets like the Earth, planets with rocky surfaces and liquid water where conditions are similar to home. The Kepler Space Mission has done this. With the discovery of nearly 5000 planets orbiting other stars Kepler has revolutionised our view. It has found entire solar systems orbiting other stars and it has even found planets orbiting double stars: Yes, Luke Skywalker's fictional home planet Tatooine really does exist out there. The Kepler mission measured the brightnesses of 200,000 stars for four years, giving us a view of the stars 100 times more precise than is possible from the ground. From this a jewel box, exotic stars have been discovered, and astrophysics that used to be purely theoretical is now also observational. This talk introduces the concepts of asteroseismology and shows a selection of exciting results from the Kepler mission in a multi-media performance of science, animations and the physics of music and the stars. | Professor Kurtz is a co-author of the fundamental textbook, "Asteroseismology" and (past) Vice-President of the Royal Astronomical Society. |
| 04/05/2017 | David Waltham | Is there Life on Proxima b? | This is a change to the previously advertised talk. Last year was remarkable in many ways but two events, unnoticed by many, may prove more significant in the long term than Brexit, Donald Trump or even the Brangelina break-up. In April of 2016, the world's most famous living scientist (Stephen Hawking), and two of its richest men (Yuri Milner and Mark Zuckerburg) held a press-conference to announce a plan to send space-probes to our nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, within a few decades. Then, in August, the world's most prestigious scientific journal published research showing that Proxima Centauri (the nearest member of the Alpha Centauri system) has a habitable planet, a world called Proxima b. Together these announcements imply that we could send a spaceship to a potentially inhabited planet orbiting another star, within the lifetime of most people alive today! In this talk I will investigate how likely it is that Proxima b is not just habitable but actually inhabited (whether by green slime or little green men). I'll do this by taking a Copernican perspective (i.e. I will assume that Earth is a typical inhabited planet) and explain why this strongly implies that worlds, such as Proxima b, that orbit red dwarfs are probably uninhabited. However, the only way to be sure is to take a good look and so I'll also talk about how we can do that from a distance already and how we might be able to do it close-up, with a space-probe, as early as the 2060s. | |
| 06/04/2017 | Colin Forsyth | The Greatest Light Show on Earth | NB: This is a change to the previously advertised talk. The Earth sits in a stream of positively and negatively charged particles that are constantly streaming away from the Sun. These particles bombard the Earth's magnetic field, resulting in a breakdown of that field and the storage and release of peta-Joules worth of energy. That energy is fed from space into the Earth's atmosphere by mega-Amp currents. As the current passes through the atmosphere, the particles in the atmosphere glow resulting in the aurora borealis and australis. Join me as we take a journey from the heart of our solar system to the top of our atmosphere, exploring the processes and science behind space weather and the aurora the greatest light show on Earth! | |
| 06/04/2017 | Nigel Mason | The Chemical Cosmos - and the Origins of Life | Professor Nigel Mason is the Professor of Molecular Physics in the School of Physical Science, The Open University. He graduated from UCL in 1983 & obtained a PhD in atomic physics in 1987. He joined the Open University in 2002. Professor Mason was awarded an OBE in 2007 for services to science. |
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| 02/03/2017 | David Hughes | Astronomy and Sex: the historical relationship between Women and the Cosmos | David W. Hughes is the Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has spent his life teaching and explaining the joys and complexities of astronomy to students and doing research into the minor bodies of the solar system and the history of astronomy. He was a co-investigator on the extremely successful European Space Agency's GIOTTO space mission to Comet Halley and also on ESA's Smart 1 mission to the Moon. David has served on a host of space and astronomy committees and has twice been a Vice President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association. He has lectured all over the world, led astronomical eclipse expeditions and has three times given the prestigious annual Herschel Lecture in Bath. In 1990 asteroid 4205 was named David Hughes in his honour. | |
| 02/02/2017 | Haley Gomez | Supernovae as Cosmic Dust Factories | Cosmic dust has a huge impact on our view of the heavens, yet its origin is still a mystery. Massive stars, which live fast and die young, culminating in an explosion (supernovae), could provide a source of dust grains and explain the dusty galaxies seen in the early Universe. Our observations which detect heat directly from cool dust suggest that supernovae are indeed prolific dust factories and are important for producing the first solid particles in the Universe. | |
| 02/02/2017 | Ramon Rey-Raposo | The digital window to the Universe: Using computers to understand the Cosmos | NB: Due to illness this is a change to the previously advertised talk. During the last 20 years there has been an incredible advance is Astrophysics geared by the increased availability of computing power. In this talk, I am going to give a brief overview of how computers are helping us to do Astrophysics, from simulating the birth of the Universe, to the creation of new stars or even modelling weather in Exoplanets. | |
| 05/01/2017 | Guy Hurst | Variable Stars: a vital area of observing for amateur astronomers | A study of the history of variable stars is described and the huge efforts to catalogue and classify them. The work of the various organisations such as the AAVSO and BAA Variable Star Section is described and how a team effort pooling results from many observers can be very valuable. The drawing of charts and how comparison stars are selected and measured will be covered, Special emphasis given on unique variables which defy classification especially the eruptives objects. | Taken from Guy's own website http://www.guyhurst.co.uk In 1975 Guy became Editor of The Astronomer , a monthly magazine for active observers of the night sky and, 34 years later, he still holds this post. In 1976 he formed the UK Nova/Supernova patrol to encourage amateur astronomers to search for these exploding stars. The numerous successes using both simple binoculars and more advanced electronic telescopes means the project appeals to many observers. If you are interested in more detail you can email Guy at guy@tahq.demon.co.uk. From 2001 to 2003 he was President of the British Astronomical Association and earlier, in June 1998, he received the Walter Goodacre Medal from the Association. In October 2005 he received an award from the Royal Astronomical Society (professional astronomers) for services to astronomy. His main aim has been to promote active observing of the night sky. Regular meetings are held and he is involved in a launch of observers' workshops. |
| 01/12/2016 | Katherine Blundell | Black Holes and Spin-offs | Katherine Blundell is a Professor of Astrophysics at Oxford University and a Research Fellow at St John's College. Prior to this she was one of the Royal Society's University Research Fellows, having been a Research Fellow of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 and before that a Junior Research Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. Her awards include a Philip Leverhulme Prize in Astrophysics, the Royal Society's Rosalind Franklin Medal in 2010, the Institute of Physics Bragg Medal in 2012 and the Royal Astronomical Society's Darwin Lectureship in 2015. Her research interests span a broad range of topics. She has published extensively on the evolution of active galaxies and their life cycles, on the accretion of material near black holes and the launch and propagation of relativistic jets. She uses techniques from across the electromagnetic spectrum, both imaging and spectroscopy, as well as computational techniques. A major project she has initiated is Global Jet Watch, which aims to: take advantage of the rotation of the Earth to make a novel exploration in time-domain astrophysics understand how matter behaves in the vicinity of a black hole to obtain round-the-clock measurements of scaled-down models of quasars that are in our own Galaxy to deploy a round-the-world network of telescopes in boarding schools, where pupils will take observations and learn about astronomy, maths, physics, engineering and technology to inspire a new generation of globally astute scientists. |
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| 03/11/2016 | Ian Crawford | Extraterrestrial Resources: Mining the Moon and Asteroids | There is growing interest in the possibility that the resource base of the Solar System might in future be used to supplement the economic resources of our own planet. As the Earth's closest celestial neighbour, the Moon is sure to feature prominently in these developments. In this talk I will review what is currently known about economically exploitable resources on the Moon, while also stressing the need for continued lunar exploration. I find that, although it is difficult to identify any single lunar resource that will be sufficiently valuable to drive a lunar resource extraction industry on its own (notwithstanding claims sometimes made for the 3He isotope, which I find to be exaggerated), the Moon nevertheless does possess abundant raw materials that are of potential economic interest. Asteroids also represent a significant potential resource of raw materials, and many near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are relatively easy to reach in energy terms and have very low surface gravities, which would minimise the cost of transferring materials extracted from them to locations where they can be used. I will argue that extraterrestrial resources are relevant to a hierarchy of future applications, beginning with the use of lunar and asteroidal materials to facilitate human activities in space (including scientific exploration), gradually evolving in scale to underpin a future industrial capability within the Earth-Moon system. In this way, gradually increasing access to space resources may help bootstrap' a space-based economy from which the world economy will ultimately benefit. | |
| 06/10/2016 | John Zarnecki | Spacecraft I Have Known and Loved | In 35 years of space research, I've had the good fortune to work on a variety of iconic space missions including the Large Space Telescope (later named Hubble!), the Giotto mission to Halley's comet, the Beagle 2 mission to Mars, the Rosetta mission to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, the Cassini/Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan and others. And, while living in Guildford, I was involved as part of my PhD research, in launching sounding rockets from Woomera, Australia in the early days of x-ray astronomy. I shall describe my journey into space research and these projects from both a scientific and personal perspective. | |
| 01/09/2016 | Tim Greenshaw | Exploring the Non-Thermal Universe: the Cherenkov Telescope Array | Images of the Universe made at different wavelengths and hence temperatures give us information about the current state of the Cosmos and how it evolved. Studying non-thermal radiation with current and future instruments will allow us to understand the most violent events occurring in the Universe and will give us insight into some fascinating problems. For example, the origin of the cosmic rays that bombard the Earth's atmosphere with energies orders of magnitude higher than we are able to produce in the most powerful accelerators, like the LHC, will be revealed, as will perhaps the nature of Dark Matter, the major component of the material in the Universe which so far we have only seen through its gravitational interactions. This talk will discuss some of the physics that will be made accessible with the Cherenkov Telescope Array, describe the instruments under construction for the Array and present the current status of the project. | |
| 07/07/2016 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 02/06/2016 | Allan Chapman | Mary Somerville - An Astronomer of the Victorian Age | Allan gained his degree from the University of Lancaster and then a DPhil in the history of science at Wadham College, Oxford. His special interests are astronomy and scientific biography. He is an excellent, informative and entertaining public speaker, prolific publisher, regularly appears on both television and radio and, between 2003 and 2004, was the Visiting Professor in the History of Science at Gresham College in London. In January 1994, he delivered the Royal Society history of science Wilkins Lecture, on the subject of Edmund Halley. He has written many books including biographies such as England's Leonardo on Robert Hooke. Allan is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a founder member and president of the Society for the History of Astronomy (SHA). In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Central Lancashire and in 2010 an honorary doctorate from the University of Salford. |
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| 05/05/2016 | Michele Dougherty | The JUICE spacecraft mission to the Jupiter system. | The European Space Agency mission JUICE (Jupiter Icy moon Explorer), is planned for launch in 2022. Details of the mission will be described, including the payload, planned orbits and the resulting science. The focus of JUICE is to characterise the conditions that may have led to the emergence of habitable environments among the Jovian icy satellites, with special emphasis on the three ocean-bearing worlds, Ganymede, Europa, and Callisto. Ganymede is identified for detailed investigation since it provides a natural laboratory for analysis of the nature, evolution and potential habitability of icy worlds in general, but also because of the role it plays within the system of Galilean satellites, and its unique magnetic and plasma interactions with the surrounding Jovian environment. The mission will also focus on characterising the diversity of processes in the Jupiter system which may be required in order to provide a stable environment at Ganymede, Europa and Callisto on geologic time scales. Focused studies of Jupiter's atmosphere, and magnetosphere and their interaction with the Galilean satellites will further enhance our understanding of the evolution and dynamics of the Jovian system. | Michele Dougherty is a space physicist who is leading unmanned exploratory missions to Saturn and Jupiter. Amongst other important findings, her work led to the discovery of an atmosphere containing water and hydrocarbons around Saturn's moon Enceladus — opening up new possibilities in the search for life. Michele is principal investigator for the magnetometer (MAG) instrument onboard the Cassini spacecraft on its mission to explore Saturn and its neighbourhood. She and her team measured the level and direction of magnetic materials from the atmosphere of Saturn and the moons visited by Cassini. Michele's innovative use of magnetic field data has therefore had an enormous impact on our understanding of the moons in our Solar System. Michele was the lead investigator for the European Space Agency's JUICE spacecraft, scheduled to go into orbit around Jupiter's largest moon, Ganymede, in 2032, and was recently selected as Principal Investigator for its magnetometer. She received the Royal Society's 2008 Hughes Medal and a prestigious Research Professorship in 2014, which enables her to focus on her research throughout this important space mission. |
| 07/04/2016 | Jerry Stone | Nell, Esther and Aunt Effie - The story of the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket | All of the rockets that have been used to send craft into space, to the Moon and planets can be traced back to March 16, 1926, when Dr Robert Goddard launched the first liquid-fuelled rocket. Goddard was one of the great pioneers of rocketry, and although his work was totally misunderstood and ridiculed by the New York Times and neglected by the government for many years, they both came to apologise and acknowledge his expertise years later, and NASA named one of its major research centres after him. In this commemorative presentation you can discover the significance of Nell, Esther and Aunt Effie. | Jerry Stone has given presentations on space since 1969, having started when he was 14 years old at school. Now he runs Spaceflight UK, and has spoken at venues that have included The Edinburgh Festival, The Royal Institution, The British Science Festival, The Palace of Westminster, Sir Patrick Moore's garden, and a rock festival! He is described as one of the leading speakers on space exploration. Freelance Presenter on Astronomy and Space Exploration Author of "One Small Step", commemorating the first men on the Moon Founder, The Sir Arthur Clarke Awards President, The Mars Society UK Leader of The SPACE Project STEM Science Ambassador Member, Association for Science Education Member, European Association for Astronomy Education Interplanetary Poet For details of his presentations and his space workshops for schools, visit www.spaceflight-uk.com |
| 07/04/2016 | Paul Daniels | Thereby hangs a tail | Comets are fascinating remnants of the early solar system. Their orbits and their appearance are more varied and dynamic than any other solar system body. Comet tails are one of the most spectacular aspects of a comet's appearance and this talk explains in more detail what comet tails are, why they appear the way they do and how they evolve during their orbit and over longer periods of time. | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
| 03/03/2016 | David Hughes | Mars, my second favourite planet | Colder, smaller and about 50% further from the Sun than Earth, Mars is just in the Sun's habitable zone. The surface iron oxide gives it a red colour but what makes it endearing is its terrestrial nature. Mars has a day like the Earth's and seasons like the Earth. These annually change the size of the icy polar caps and the ferocity of the winds and the extent of the atmosphere. The surface is pittered with impact craters, but also boasts giant volcanoes and huge canyons. Even though the surface is now desiccated there is clear evidence that it was once wet. Many mysteries remain. Did life break out on Mars? Do living things inhabit subsurface regions? Ever since the dawn of the space age Mars has been a prime target. Mars-space teams with orbiting craft and surface rovers slowly wander across its deserts. Humans look on with fascination. Just how long will we have to wait before our colonisation begins? | David W. Hughes is the Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has spent his life teaching and explaining the joys and complexities of astronomy to students and doing research into the minor bodies of the solar system and the history of astronomy. He was a co-investigator on the extremely successful European Space Agency's GIOTTO space mission to Comet Halley and also on ESA's Smart 1 mission to the Moon. David has served on a host of space and astronomy committees and has twice been a Vice President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association. He has lectured all over the world, led astronomical eclipse expeditions and has three times given the prestigious annual Herschel Lecture in Bath. In 1990 asteroid 4205 was named David Hughes in his honour. |
| 11/02/2016 | Matt Taylor | The Rosetta Mission - where are we and what have we done? | Please note that this meeting is on the second Thursday of the month and is being held in The Griffiths Lecture Theatre not the usual Lecture Theatre L. The Rosetta Mission is the third cornerstone mission in the ESA programme Horizon 2000. The aim of the mission is to map the comet 67-P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko by remote sensing, to examine its environment in situ and its evolution in the inner solar system. The lander Philae is the first device to land on a comet and perform in situ science on the surface. Nearly 10 years after launch in 2004, on 20th January 2014 at 10:00UTC the spacecraft woke up from hibernation. Following successful instrument commissioning, Rosetta successfully rendezvoused with the comet. Following an intense period of mapping and characterisation, a landing site for Philae was selected and on 12th November 2014, Philae was successfully deployed. The spacecraft has subsequently escorting the target comet through perihelion and is current moving away from the Sun. This presentation will provide a brief overview of the mission up to date. It is given on behalf of ALL Rosetta mission science, instrument and operations teams. | Matt Taylor was born in London, gained his undergraduate Physics degree at the University of Liverpool, and a PhD from Imperial College London. His career has focused on the space plasma measurements, working in Europe and the US on the four spacecraft ESA Cluster mission, leading to a post at ESA which started in 2005 working as the project scientist for Cluster and the ESA-China Double star mission. His studies have focused on energetic particle dynamics in near-Earth space and in the interaction of the Sun's solar wind with the Earths magnetic field, particularly focusing on how boundary layer interactions evolve, leading to 70 first or co-authored papers. Most recently he was appointed the Project Scientist on the Rosetta mission. Since early on in my career I have enjoyed working with groups or teams of scientists towards a common goal, encouraging them to work with one another and to support their activities. This really fits with my project science activities at ESA, which focus on getting the most science out of our missions, by supporting and liasing with the instrument scientists and their teams, along with the mission and science operations teams at ESA and other agencies such as NASA. The opportunity to work on Rosetta was huge and I cannot begin to describe the excitement associated with this mission. It really is just so cool. Previous missions have only flown past comets. For the first time we will fly with the comet and actually land on it! The Rosetta mission is a breakthrough in space science and exploration and really demonstrates what international collaboration can achieve. |
| 07/01/2016 | Paul Daniels | Astronomy Basics | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
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| 07/01/2016 | Kazuya Koyama | Gravity: From Newton to Einstein and beyond | The Universe is expanding at an increasing rate, but is this really due to some mysterious Dark Energy, or were these great scientists simply wrong about gravity? About 300 years ago, Newton theorised how gravity works and Newton's theory is still used today to describe gravity in our daily life . In 1916, Einstein put forward his general theory of relativity and revolutionised our concepts of time and space. General relativity is now precisely tested in the Solar System and our modern technology such as the GPS relies on his theory. Einstein’s theory also provided the basis for our understanding of the Universe. In 1998, astronomers made a surprising discovery that the expansion of our Universe is accelerating. In the framework of Einstein's theory, the acceleration would originate from a mysterious “dark energy”. Alternatively, there could be no dark energy and Einstein’s theory itself is in error on cosmological scales. In this talk, I give an overview of the development of our understanding of gravity and explain the exciting challenge facing modern scientists after nearly 100 years since Einstein proposed his theory of gravity. | |
| 03/12/2015 | Colin Wilson | Venus exploration past, present and future | Venus should be the Earth's twin – similar in age, size and composition to the Earth – but its climate has gone seriously awry, with a runaway greenhouse effect which heats its surface to 450°C. How and why did Venus end up so different from the Earth? A fascinating flotilla of spacecraft have visited Venus, including orbiters, short lived-landers and even balloons. ESA's Venus Express, the only spacecraft to orbit Venus in the last two decades, has provided tantalising evidence of volcanic activity. Finally, a new raft of Venus missions is under consideration in Europe, America, Russia, and even China and India – we'll consider what these may reveal. | |
| 05/11/2015 | Paul Daniels | Next Horizons? | Given as a member's talk after the break on the evening of Prof Christian Knigge's talk. | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
| 05/11/2015 | Christian Knigge | Hubble Highlights: Amazing Images and What They Mean | This talk focusses on examples of fantastic images the Hubble Space Telescopes has taken and explains why these images are so important scientifically.. | |
| 01/10/2015 | Kevin Pretorius | The Big Bang Theory | Kevin is an amateur astronomer and active member of the Farnham AS where he currently serves on the committee as Programme Secretary. He has a degree in computer engineering, works as a project manager in the IT industry and enjoys writing software, but on a clear night you're more likely find him out under the stars with binoculars or a telescope, and possibly doing a little imaging. His interest in astronomy, physics, maths and science in general dates back to junior school days, where he eagerly digested books and magazines on space and astronomy; keenly followed the space race; and studied the skies with the aid of a very cheap, blurry and unsteady 60x60mm refractor. He promised to replace the refractor with 'something better' when he grew up, but that promise wasn't honoured until perhaps 30 years later, after teenage pursuits, university studies, career and family had finished occupying centre stage. His active pursuit of astronomy was rekindled in his mid-40s with the purchase of an 8" S/N Meade LXD55, which has recently been displaced by the purchase of something a little more serious. Kevin is motivated by a strong desire to understand how the universe really works, and to share that understanding with others. He's a regular speaker at Farnham AS, participates in their public outreach and observing events, and contributes occasional articles to their website. He has a science and astronomy blog on MySpace and (by his own admission) spends way too much time on their forums explaining scientific concepts to anyone who will listen, and debunking pseudo-scientific claims from those who generally won't. He has an understanding wife, two teenage children, and lives near Camberley in Surrey. |
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| 03/09/2015 | Bill Chaplin | Sounding stars and the search for exoplanets: New results from Kepler/K2, and future prospects for TESS and PLATO | In January 2013 I gave a talk to the Society on the new results from the NASA Kepler Mission on asteroseismology -- the study of the natural resonances of stars -- and how we were using those results to classify newly discovered stellar systems elsewhere in our Galaxy comprising Sun-like stars and newly discovered exoplanets. In this talk I will update the wealth of new results that have appeared in the last two years, discuss the discoveries we are beginning to make with Kepler in its new "K2" mode of operation, and also look to the future with the planned NASA Mission TESS and the planned European Space Agency Mission PLATO. | |
| 02/07/2015 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 04/06/2015 | Allan Chapman | William Lassell | William Lassell (1799-1880) was an English merchant, beer brewer and astronomer. An early pioneer of the equatorial mount, he used his self-made 24-inch telescope in 1846 to discover Triton, the largest moon of Neptune, in 1848 to discover Hyperion, a small moon of Saturn and, in 1851, Ariel and Umbriel, two moons of Uranus. In 1849 he became a Fellow of the Royal Society and, in 1870, he became the President of the Royal Astronomical Society. | Allan gained his degree from the University of Lancaster and then a DPhil in the history of science at Wadham College, Oxford. His special interests are astronomy and scientific biography. He is an excellent, informative and entertaining public speaker, prolific publisher, regularly appears on both television and radio and, between 2003 and 2004, was the Visiting Professor in the History of Science at Gresham College in London. In January 1994, he delivered the Royal Society history of science Wilkins Lecture, on the subject of Edmund Halley. He has written many books including biographies such as England's Leonardo on Robert Hooke. Allan is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a founder member and president of the Society for the History of Astronomy (SHA). In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Central Lancashire and in 2010 an honorary doctorate from the University of Salford. |
| 07/05/2015 | Leigh Fletcher | Realm of the Giants: New Views of the Outer Solar System | Upcoming missions to Jupiter and our view of Saturn after a decade of Cassini exploration. | |
| 17/04/2015 | Paul Nurse | Doing Science | I have been a research life scientist for over 40 years, working on cell biology, particularly what controls the process of cell division. But I have also been an amateur astronomer, very much the amateur who all my life has enjoyed observing the beauty of the heavens. In fact it was astronomy that first started my interest in science at the age of nine years. In my talk I will share my experiences as a professional life scientist researcher and amateur astronomer. Note that this bonus meeting is on the third Friday of the month. | |
| 02/04/2015 | Justin Read | How to Weigh a Galaxy | Exciting recent results on weighing a galaxy backwards in time! | |
| 19/03/2015 | Paul Daniels | Radio Interview on BBC Radio Surrey | A pre-recorded interview broadcast on the BBC Surrey Drive at 5 programme the day before a partial eclipse of the Sun. | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
| 05/03/2015 | David Hughes | The Influence of Astronomy on Life in Ancient Times | Astronomy had a profound effect on the development of civilisation. As the first science it introduced things that were constant and predictable to what was usually an unpredictable life style. The Sun, Moon, stars and planets provided daily timekeeping and a year-long calendar to regulate their lives, and the means to navigate on land and sea. The yearly variation of the Sun's rising, setting and noontime positions marked the progression of the seasons and thus heralded the times to gather, hunt, fish, sow and harvest. The monthly variations of the Moon's phase helped them predict the tides, and see at night. Astronomy was important in all aspects of ancient life. The Sun, Moon, stars and planets provided a basis for stories, myths, religions, festivals and fortune telling. And pyramids, henges, and churches were all orientated in specific solar directions. In this talk we go back go back to the time of the cave men and the early towns and cities, and ask a simple question, What was the use of astronomy? | David W. Hughes is the Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has spent his life teaching and explaining the joys and complexities of astronomy to students and doing research into the minor bodies of the solar system and the history of astronomy. He was a co-investigator on the extremely successful European Space Agency's GIOTTO space mission to Comet Halley and also on ESA's Smart 1 mission to the Moon. David has served on a host of space and astronomy committees and has twice been a Vice President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association. He has lectured all over the world, led astronomical eclipse expeditions and has three times given the prestigious annual Herschel Lecture in Bath. In 1990 asteroid 4205 was named David Hughes in his honour. |
| 05/02/2015 | Martin Bureau | Weighing Black Holes | Using light to make measurements in space and weighing black holes using ALMA. | |
| 08/01/2015 | John C Brown | Sun-plunging comets | Please note that this talk is on the second Thursday of January. | |
| 04/12/2014 | Chris Lintott | Is the Milky Way special: Our galaxy and the other galaxies | My background is in work on the chemistry associated with star formation, but these days I think about galaxy formation and run citizen science projects to investigate galaxy formation, discover planets and more. Professor Lintott was Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Computational Cosmology from 2010-2014, where he focused on devloping the Zooniverse, a citizen science platform. Professor Lintott is also presenter of The Sky at Night on BBC Four. |
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| 06/11/2014 | Simon Evetts | Human Spaceflight; from Apollo to Zeitgeist in half a Century | ||
| 02/10/2014 | Alan Bond | The SKYLON spaceplane - a gateway to the solar system | An update on the SKYLON spaceplane and its SABRE engine will be presented showing the progress made in the past few years towards realising the project. An outline programme will be given for its planned development over the next decade, including the contribution made by the UK Government towards the programme. The talk will end by indicating how SKYLON will enable major missions to other planets, especially Mars, during the second half of this century. | Ex-Rolls Royce and British Aircraft Corporation with wide experience in gas turbines and rockets. Employed at the Atomic Energy Authority in 70s & 80s on the JET and RFX nuclear research projects. As a consultant engineer to BAe during the HOTOL project, invented and patented the RB545 engine design. Since forming Reaction Engines in 1989, managed evolution of HOTOL into SKYLON. The Reaction Engines Ltd website gives more information about SKYLON and HOTOL and more about Alan can be found on Wikipedia. |
| 05/09/2014 | Paul Daniels | Radio Interview on BBC Radio Surrey | I was invited into the studio for an interview on Joe Talbot's 'Feeling Good Friday' programme. | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
| 04/09/2014 | Paul Daniels | The Maximum Brightness of Venus | Given as a member's talk after the break on the evening of Jim Al-Khalili's talk. | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
| 04/09/2014 | Jim Al-Khalili | The Lost Legacy of Medieval Astronomy: filling the gap between Ptolemy and Copernicus. | Jim Al Khalili graduated with a BSc in Physics from Surrey University and then continued on to obtain a PhD in nuclear reaction theory from Surrey in 1989. After that he carried out two years postdoctoral research at UCL returning to Surrey in 1991 as a research assistant then lecturer in 1992. In 1994, he was awarded a five-year EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship during which he became a recognised expert in the mathematical modelling of 'exotic' nuclei. After this he returned to full time lecturing at Surrey. In 2000, he was elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics and was promoted to Senior Lecturer at Surrey in 2001. In 2003, he was elected onto the Council of the BA (British Association for the Advancement of Science). Through his teaching and research, science engagement activities and popularising science he was promoted in October 2006 to a newly created chair in the Public Engagement in Science. He is the author of several popular science books, including e.g. "Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines" (Institute of Physics Publishing, 1999) and "Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed" (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003), and appears regularly on radio and television. In 2007, he was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for Science Communication and he was appointed to the OBE in the 2008 Birthday Honours. For more information on his work, visit his official website http://www.jimal-khalili.com or his Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al-Khalili |
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| 03/07/2014 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 05/06/2014 | Allan Chapman | Hevelius | Allan gained his degree from the University of Lancaster and then a DPhil in the history of science at Wadham College, Oxford. His special interests are astronomy and scientific biography. He is an excellent, informative and entertaining public speaker, prolific publisher, regularly appears on both television and radio and, between 2003 and 2004, was the Visiting Professor in the History of Science at Gresham College in London. In January 1994, he delivered the Royal Society history of science Wilkins Lecture, on the subject of Edmund Halley. He has written many books including biographies such as England's Leonardo on Robert Hooke. Allan is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a founder member and president of the Society for the History of Astronomy (SHA). In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Central Lancashire and in 2010 an honorary doctorate from the University of Salford. |
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| 01/05/2014 | Nik Szymanek | Photographing the Night Sky | Nik's talk will cover aspects of all modern forms of deep sky imaging including film, DSLRs and CCDs. The talk will be illustrated with lots of images including from locations such as La Palma and from a robotic CCD imaging setup in Spain. The talk will be suitable for all levels. | |
| 03/04/2014 | David Whitehouse | The Rainbow and Astronomy | David will be familiar to many as a BBC Science Correspondent, author of astronomical books, contributor to astronomical magazines, and speaker. For more information on his books and interests, visit his website http://www.davidwhitehouse.com/. |
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| 06/03/2014 | David-W Hughes | Astronomy and Art | Over the centuries astro-art has been produced by astronomers, artists, and the specialist scientific-artist'. First were the astronomers who were keen to have a permanent visual record of their observations. Before photography, the astronomers had to get out their sketchpads, pencils and paints to record the comets, planets, moons and galaxies they saw. Their artistic skills were also used to map the stars in a constellation, or represent the path of an eclipse. True artists, exemplified by Monet, Van Gogh, Escher and Palmer, have also been inspired by celestial phenomena but are less concerned with scientific accuracy. The scientific artist, an amalgam of the astronomer and the artist, first worked in the twentieth century. These visionaries use their paints to show us what it would be like to use rockets to explore the Solar System, stand on an orbiting rock in the rings of Saturn; to fall into a black hole; or to witness the birth of the planets. | David W. Hughes is the Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has spent his life teaching and explaining the joys and complexities of astronomy to students and doing research into the minor bodies of the solar system and the history of astronomy. He was a co-investigator on the extremely successful European Space Agency's GIOTTO space mission to Comet Halley and also on ESA's Smart 1 mission to the Moon. David has served on a host of space and astronomy committees and has twice been a Vice President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association. He has lectured all over the world, led astronomical eclipse expeditions and has three times given the prestigious annual Herschel Lecture in Bath. In 1990 asteroid 4205 was named David Hughes in his honour. |
| 06/02/2014 | Paul Murdin | Are we being watched? The Search for Life in the Cosmos. | Professor Paul Murdin assesses whether life really could exist outside our planet. If it does, what form might it take, and could it be as advanced as life on Earth? Or, are we simply alone in the universe? Prof Murdin is former president of the European Astronomical Society. He has been director of the British National Space Centre and is a fellow of the Institute of Astrononmy at Cambridge University and visiting professor at Liverpool John Moores University. His works include Catalogue of the Universe and Secrets of the Universe. | |
| 16/01/2014 | Mark Gieles | Globular Clusters | ||
| 05/12/2013 | Colin Pillinger | My Life on Mars | ||
| 07/11/2013 | David Southwood | Ten Years of ESA Space Science | The speaker spent ten years 2001-2011 in charge of the European Space Agency space science programme. His responsibilities expanded for the last three years for developing in addition a robotic exploration programme. The talk will describe some of the high points and low points of his term. Major space observatories were launched, the two largest being the Integral Gamma Ray Observatory and, at the other end of the electromagnetic spectrum, the Herschel infrared/submillimeter telescope. Joint work continued with the US, Japan and Russia. New space science cooperation started with ESA collaborations with China and India. The decade marked ESA's arrival in planetary exploration. Missions were launched to the Moon, Mars, Venus and building started on a mission to Mercury. Perhaps the highest point was the landing of a European probe, Huygens, on Titan and the lowest the loss of the Beagle2 lander at Mars. The speaker will give his personal perspective on these events as well as describing some of the most satisfying experiences and the most disappointing. | |
| 03/10/2013 | Rob Kennicutt | The Hidden Universe Revealed | ||
| 05/09/2013 | Lucie Green | Solar Max | From her UCL page, Lucie says:- My research focusses on the study of the evolution of the Sun's magnetic field and how it drives solar activity that in turn leads to space weather at the Earth. My early work used new techniques to quantify the amount of magnetic helicity ejected by the Sun during events called coronal mass ejections. The results are important for many areas of solar physics including dynamo theory and the evolution of the global solar magnetic field. More recently, I have focussed on the question of whether or not flux ropes form in the lower solar atmosphere before coronal mass ejections. I am interested in how observations can be used to quantify the magnetic flux in these ropes so that we can better understand their evolution to an unstable and eruptive configuration. This work is important for developing the science that underpins space weather forecasting. |
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| 04/07/2013 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 06/06/2013 | Iwan Williams | Investigating the Properties of Asteroids and Differentiating between Dead Comets and Asteroids | On completion of his PhD at Royal Holloway, he was appointed a Lecturer at Reading University in 1963,as a Reader at Queen Mary in 1971 and promoted to Professor in 1987. He was Dean for Research 1991-97 and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences 1999-2002. Since 2009, he has been Emeritus Professor. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in1946, was on the Council 1982-1985 and Vice-President in 1984-85. He was elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics in 1995 and was the President of the Society for Popular Astronomy 1991-93. He was elected a member of the International Astronomical Union in 1974, becoming President of Commission 22 1992-97 and President of Division III, Planetary Systems Sciences 2003-2006. He became a Founder Member of the European Astronomical in 1991. He was a member of the SERC Solar System Committee 1982-85 and the SERC Space Telescope Advisory Group in 1986. 1986-87 he was Chairman of the RAS/SERC Committee on the UK Observations of Comet Halley (CHUKCC) and also a Member of the Steering Group of the International Halley Watch. He was a member of the British National Committee on Space Research 1986-89 and the Royal Society Interdisciplinary Committee on Space 1988-93. In 1994 he was on the ESA Time allocation Panel for ISO and in 1999 on the Hubble Space Telescope time allocation panel. From 1990 to 2009 was Chair of Examiners for GCSE Astronomy. In 1998 he was Director of the Pre-Doctoral Summer School "Solar and Extra-Solar Planetary Systems" in Ballyvaughn, Ireland. He has been Chair of the Scientific Organizing Committee for the following International Conferences, "Meteors and Their Parent Bodies", Smolinice, Slovak Republic 1993 "Meteors", Bratislava, Slovak Republic 1995, "Dust in the Solar System", Canterbury, UK 2000 "Astrophysical Tides: Effects in the Solar and other Planetary Systems", Nanjing, China 2002, IAU Joint Discussion Bejing China 2012 And a member of the Scientific Organizing Committee of the following international conferences "Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 93" Bergamo, Italy, 1993, "Minor Bodies in the Solar System" Alund, Finland, 1994, "Physics, Chemistry and Dynamics of Interplanetary Dust" Gainseville, USA 1995, "Near Earth Objects" Volcano, Italy, 1995, "Asteroids Meteors Comets 96" Paris, France, 1996, "Cometary nuclei in Space and Time" Nanjing, China, 1998, "Near Earth Objects" Torino, Italy 1999, "Asteroids Meteors Comets 99" Cornell, USA, 1999, "Asteroids Comets Meteors", Berlin, Germany, 2001, "Meteors 2004" London Ontario, Canada, "Asteroids Meteors Comets" Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, 2004, "Near Earth Asteroids", Prague, Czech Republic, 2005, " Meteors 2007" Barcelona, Spain 2006, " Meteors " Breckenridge, USA, 2010. He has been a regular observer at many telescopes, including the William Herschel Telescope, the Isaac Newton Telescope, the Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, the South African Astronomical Observatory 2m telescope, the Infrared Satellite Observatory (ISO), the Hubble Space Telescope, Gemini South and the VLT. Asteroid 3634 is named IWAN in his honour. After a few years working on problems regarding Stellar Evolution, Iwan worked on the formation of planetary systems and then became interested in the dynamical aspects of solar system evolution, producing for example the first models of meteor streams that contained a realistic number of meteoroids. A number of features of meteor streams were explained. In 1985 the opportunity of observing Halley's Comet could not be missed and this started a long series of Photometric observations of comets which evolved into a program to observe the nuclei of comets and determine their spin properties. The morphology of asteroids can be carried out by spectrography and this has been a topic investigated using the 4.2m telescope on La Palma. The value of spectrum was also evident for investigating the impact of S-L9 with Jupiter. The discovery of an object beyond Pluto led to the start of a program to discover and follow Kuiper belt objects, resulting in three new objects being discovered, 1993 SB, 1993 SC and 1994 KV8 very soon after the first discovery. The main thrust of research is now into the origin of meteor streams and meteorites and their relationship to comets and asteroids. In connection with this, Iwan is a Co-Investigator on the CONSERT experiment on the ESA Rosettta mission to study the interior of a comet and was also a Co-Investigator on the MARSIS experiment on Mars Express. |
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| 02/05/2013 | Roger Davies | Giant Telescopes of the Future | ||
| 04/04/2013 | Sarah Matthews | Sun-quakes | ||
| 07/03/2013 | Tim Leighton | Sound in Space | ||
| 07/02/2013 | Bill Chaplin | Asteroseismology and exoplanets with the NASA Kepler Mission. | ||
| 10/01/2013 | Robert Smith | The tangled history of the Cepheid period-luminosity relation | ||
| 06/12/2012 | David Hughes | The Star of Bethlehem, an astronomer's view | In 1976 I wrote an 85,000 word book explaining the biblical and astronomical clues as to the physical nature of the Star of Bethlehem. The conclusion was that the wise men had predicted and seen a close approach of the planets Jupiter and Saturn in the zodiacal constellation of Pisces. This was the sign that a new king of the Jews had been born in Israel. This talk discusses the Jupiter-Saturn theory and also contrasts it with a host of other suggestions concerning comets, new stars, and lunar conjunctions. One tentative conclusion of the planetary conjunction hypothesis is that Jesus was born on Tuesday 15th September 7 BC. Another Biblical possibility is that St Matthew made the whole thing up! | David W. Hughes is the Emeritus Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sheffield, UK. He has spent his life teaching and explaining the joys and complexities of astronomy to students and doing research into the minor bodies of the solar system and the history of astronomy. He was a co-investigator on the extremely successful European Space Agency's GIOTTO space mission to Comet Halley and also on ESA's Smart 1 mission to the Moon. David has served on a host of space and astronomy committees and has twice been a Vice President of the Royal Astronomical Society and the British Astronomical Association. He has lectured all over the world, led astronomical eclipse expeditions and has three times given the prestigious annual Herschel Lecture in Bath. In 1990 asteroid 4205 was named David Hughes in his honour. |
| 01/11/2012 | Allan Chapman | The Drapers | The lives and works of John William & Henry Draper – pioneers of astrophotography. | Allan gained his degree from the University of Lancaster and then a DPhil in the history of science at Wadham College, Oxford. His special interests are astronomy and scientific biography. He is an excellent, informative and entertaining public speaker, prolific publisher, regularly appears on both television and radio and, between 2003 and 2004, was the Visiting Professor in the History of Science at Gresham College in London. In January 1994, he delivered the Royal Society history of science Wilkins Lecture, on the subject of Edmund Halley. He has written many books including biographies such as England's Leonardo on Robert Hooke. Allan is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a founder member and president of the Society for the History of Astronomy (SHA). In 2004 he received an honorary doctorate from the University of Central Lancashire and in 2010 an honorary doctorate from the University of Salford. |
| 04/10/2012 | Chandra Wickramasinghe | Life in the Cosmos: New Horizons | Chandra Wickramasinghe was born and educated in Sri Lanka where he graduated and won a Commonwealth scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge. He gained his PhD in Cambridge in 1963 under the supervision of the late Sir Fred Hoyle and that same year was elected a Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge. The following year he was appointed a Staff Member of the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge where he worked on the nature of Interstellar Dust and published the first definitive book on Interstellar Grains in 1967. In 1973 he was awardedthe ScD by the University of Cambridge. He is regarded as being one of the world's leading experts on interstellar material and the origins of life and has made many important contributions in this field, publishing over 350 papers in major scientific journals with over 75 in Nature . In 1974 he first proposed the theory that dust in interstellar space and in comets was largely organic, a theory that has now been vindicated. Jointly with the late Sir Fred Hoyle he was awarded the International Dag Hammarskjold Gold Medal for Science in 1986. He was a UNDP Consultant and Advisor to the President of Sri Lanka in 1982-84 and a founder of the Institute of Fundamental Studies in Sri Lanka. In 1983/84 he was appointed the founder Director of the Institute of Fundamental Studies by President Junius Jayawardene, in 1992 he was decorated by the President of Sri Lanka with the titular honour of Vidyaj Yothi and, in 1996, he was awarded the International Sahabdeen Prize for Science. In 1973 he was appointed Professor and Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics and Mathematical Physics at University College, Cardiff, being the youngest Professor appointed at the University up to that time. He was responsible for starting an Astrophysics research group in Cardiff under the auspices of a new Department that was formed under his headship, the Department of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy. He remained Head of this Department until 1989 by which time the Astronomy Research School in Cardiff was regarded as being one of the best in the UK. From 1989-1999 he held the post of Professor of Applied Mathematics and Astronomy within a newly structured School of Mathematics at Cardiff University of Wales. In the year 2000 he was appointed Director of the newly formed Cardiff Centre for Astrobiology. The University announced it was withdrawing funding for the Centre in 2010 and in 2011 the Centre transferred to the University of Buckingham. He is an award-winning poet and the author or co-author of over 25 books and over 350 scientific papers. He has held visiting professorial appointments in a large number of Universities worldwide. In recognition of his extensive contributions to science and culture he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the Soka University of Tokyo, Japan in 1996. He was the John Snow Memorial Lecturer and John Snow Medalist of the Association of Anesthetists of Great Britain and Ireland in 2004. |
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| 06/09/2012 | Ben Ritchie | Super-massive Stars | ||
| 05/07/2012 | Pam Noon | Hawaii 2012: Transit of Venus, lunar eclipse and more | ||
| 05/07/2012 | Tony Questa | The Holmbury Observatory | ||
| 05/07/2012 | David Putland | My US Astronomical Holiday | Dave has been interested in astronomy since he made his first telescope from his Dad's shaving mirror when he was thirteen. Since then he's been through an engineering apprenticeship specialising in optical instrument making, including manufacturing optics, and then a forty year plus career making and designing optical instruments and doing optical measurements including testing lenses, mirrors and complete telescopes, all at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington. He's still working part time and has a Zygo interferometer for testing his optics in his garage. He has a shed/small observatory in his garden and enjoys star parties with local people. He's very keen on sidewalk astronomy and teaching scout-groups, etc, which he's done, with others, on behalf of GAS. His latest project is an analemma for 2009 which he started in January and which is driving him mad as the sun seems to vanish at just the wrong moment! | |
| 05/07/2012 | Tony Marsh | Starlight's Alphabet | Tony is now retired after some 40 years as a research chemist. About three quarters of that time was spent working on tropospheric pollution chemistry including cloud chemistry. He spent some time catching clouds on mountain tops and with aircraft all over Europe. This inevitably gave rise to a signature tune from Mick Jagger and company of 'Get off of my cloud'. It also lead to family comments on dismal UK holidays of "Why does dad have to bring his work on holiday?". He joined GAS in 1996 and has been learning to live with clear skies ever since. |
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| 05/07/2012 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations Tony Questa: The Holmbury Observatory Pam Noon: Hawaii 2012: Transit of Venus, lunar eclipse and more… David Putland: My US Astronomical Holiday Tony Marsh: Starlight's Alphabet | |
| 07/06/2012 | Nick Howes | Observing The Sun With Coronado Telescopes | ||
| 03/05/2012 | Carl Murray | Cassini Observations of Saturn's Rings | Carl gained his BSc and PhD from Queen Mary College, University of London, in 1977 and 1980 respectively when he researched the dynamics and evolution of the orbits of small particles within the solar system. He continues to investigate the dynamics of planetary systems, from the orbital evolution of dust particles to the stability of planetary orbits. He is a member of the Imaging Science Team on the NASA/ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and was a co-investigator on the Combined X-ray Spectrometer (D-CIXS) instrument on the SMART-1 mission to the Moon. He was also a science associate on the Beagle 2 lander on the Mars Express mission. Carl is a former editor of Icarus , the International Journal of Solar System Studies, and a former editor of Celestial Mechanics and Dynamical Astronomy . He is a member of several professional organisations including the Royal Astronomical Society, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the Mars Task Group of the IAU's Working Group on Planetary System Nomenclature and a Full Member of the American Astronomical Society. In 1996 minor planet 1991 PN18 was officially named (5598) Carlmurray in recognition of "his immense contribution to our understanding of the dynamics of the minor bodies of the Solar System". For more information on his research and career, visit his web page . |
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| 05/04/2012 | Guy Hurst | Pro-Am Liaison in Astronomy | Taken from Guy's own website http://www.guyhurst.co.uk In 1975 Guy became Editor of The Astronomer , a monthly magazine for active observers of the night sky and, 34 years later, he still holds this post. In 1976 he formed the UK Nova/Supernova patrol to encourage amateur astronomers to search for these exploding stars. The numerous successes using both simple binoculars and more advanced electronic telescopes means the project appeals to many observers. If you are interested in more detail you can email Guy at guy@tahq.demon.co.uk. From 2001 to 2003 he was President of the British Astronomical Association and earlier, in June 1998, he received the Walter Goodacre Medal from the Association. In October 2005 he received an award from the Royal Astronomical Society (professional astronomers) for services to astronomy. His main aim has been to promote active observing of the night sky. Regular meetings are held and he is involved in a launch of observers' workshops. |
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| 01/03/2012 | David Williams | Solar Speed Cameras | ||
| 01/03/2012 | David Arditti | High-resolution Imaging The Bright Planets | From the BAA Members page- David wrote a book entitled Setting-up a Small Observatory, in Patrick Moore's Practical Astronomy Series (Springer). He often contributes to Astronomy Now magazine. he gives talks, mostly around practical amateur astronomy, but also sometimes on historical and cosmological subjects. David is currently (2018) on the Board of Trustees and Council of the BAA. In June 2018 Council appointed him the first Director of the new Equipment & Techniques Section of the BAA (a successor to earlier sections concerned with telescope-making and the like). He is also on the committees of the Jupiter and Mercury & Venus Sections and Chair of the Sir Patrick Moore Prize committee. David is also a Vice-President of, and Publicity Officer for, the West of London Astronomical Society. |
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| 02/02/2012 | Lucy Rogers | It's ONLY Rocket Science | ||
| 05/01/2012 | John Mason | Exploring the Universe with Hubble | Dr John Mason is Co-Editor, with Sir Patrick Moore, of the Yearbook of Astronomy. He is a past President of the British Astronomical Association and Acting Director of the BAA's Meteor Section. He is currently Principal Lecturer at the South Downs Planetarium and Science Centre in Chichester. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and has appeared many times with Sir Patrick Moore on BBC TV's The Sky at Night. For over 25 years he has been leading overseas expeditions to observe and record annular and total solar eclipses, the polar aurora and major meteor showers. He was made an MBE in the 2009 New Year's Honours List for his services to science education. | |
| 01/12/2011 | Jim Al-Khalili | Everything and Nothing | Jim Al Khalili graduated with a BSc in Physics from Surrey University and then continued on to obtain a PhD in nuclear reaction theory from Surrey in 1989. After that he carried out two years postdoctoral research at UCL returning to Surrey in 1991 as a research assistant then lecturer in 1992. In 1994, he was awarded a five-year EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship during which he became a recognised expert in the mathematical modelling of 'exotic' nuclei. After this he returned to full time lecturing at Surrey. In 2000, he was elected Fellow of the Institute of Physics and was promoted to Senior Lecturer at Surrey in 2001. In 2003, he was elected onto the Council of the BA (British Association for the Advancement of Science). Through his teaching and research, science engagement activities and popularising science he was promoted in October 2006 to a newly created chair in the Public Engagement in Science. He is the author of several popular science books, including e.g. "Black Holes, Wormholes and Time Machines" (Institute of Physics Publishing, 1999) and "Quantum: A Guide for the Perplexed" (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2003), and appears regularly on radio and television. In 2007, he was awarded the Royal Society Michael Faraday Prize for Science Communication and he was appointed to the OBE in the 2008 Birthday Honours. For more information on his work, visit his official website http://www.jimal-khalili.com or his Wikipedia entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Al-Khalili. |
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| 03/11/2011 | Stephen Slater | Destination Titan | ||
| 06/10/2011 | David Whitehouse | One Small Step | David will be familiar to many as a BBC Science Correspondent, author of astronomical books, contributor to astronomical magazines, and speaker. For more information on his books and interests, visit his website http://www.davidwhitehouse.com/ |
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| 01/09/2011 | Greg Smye-Rumsby | Pluto - an enigmatic world | Greg has been a frequent vistor to GAS, and has always been a very entertaining and dynamic speaker. He is a regular contributor to the UK's leading astronomy magazine - Astronomy Now. Here's a picture of Greg as he welcomed visitors to the 2007 AstroFest. | |
| 07/07/2011 | John Slinn | Using an Astrotrac | ||
| 07/07/2011 | Stuart Eves | Which human being has been nearest the Sun? | Stuart Eves is the Senior Account Manager (Military Systems) at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford. He spent 16 years with the UK Ministry Of Defence, in various space-related posts, before joining SSTL in January 2004. During his time with the MOD, Stuart initiated the TopSat satellite programme, which is now on-orbit conducting its Earth-observation mission. Indeed TopSat has been so successful that the engineering model of the satellite now forms part of the recently re-vamped space gallery at the Science Museum in London. Stuart has an MSc in Astrophysics, a PhD in constellation design, and has been a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society for more than 15 years. |
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| 07/07/2011 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations Bill Turnill: The Search For Life In The Universe John Slinn: Using an Astrotrac Stuart Eves: Which human being has been nearest the Sun? | |
| 07/07/2011 | Bill Turnill | The Search For Life In The Universe | ||
| 02/06/2011 | Nigel Bradbury | The Northern Lights Experience | Nigel is a Northern Lights Tour Guide who accompanies flights making the trip North from various UK airports and also trips to Norway. He'll show what can be seen and make comparisons between what you see from aircraft, boat and land-based excursions. | Nigel has been an active Amateur Astronomer for over 40 years and has been fortunate enough to have taken over 20,000 people to view the Aurora. He is a member of the Chesterfield AS, where he was Director of Observations using the 18" Reflector there. The past owner of a private garden observatory housing a 10" Reflector, he used to regularly open this up to the public during exciting Astronomical events. The lecture discusses the percentage of Auroral sightings plus many 'insider views' on the Northern Lights Flights he does, alongside Pete Lawrence, BBC Sky at Night Observing Expert. |
| 22/05/2011 | Paul Daniels | Shooting Stars and Dirty Snowballs | Given as a public talk at the Leith Hill Astronomy Festival and at a public outreach event at the Royal Greenwich Observatory, Herstmonceaux | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
| 05/05/2011 | Alan Bond | SKYLON – Beginning the Conquest of Space | Ex-Rolls Royce and British Aircraft Corporation with wide experience in gas turbines and rockets. Employed at the Atomic Energy Authority in 70s & 80s on the JET and RFX nuclear research projects. As a consultant engineer to BAe during the HOTOL project, invented and patented the RB545 engine design. Since forming Reaction Engines in 1989, managed evolution of HOTOL into SKYLON. The Reaction Engines Ltd website gives more information about SKYLON and HOTOL and more about Alan can be found on Wikipedia. |
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| 07/04/2011 | Mike Maunder | Atmospheric Phenomena | Michael Maunder describes himself as a Forensic Chemist, CSI style, by profession, but an astronomer by inclination. Even way back in 1957 when leaving school [Whitgift Middle, now Trinity, that's become the Whitgift Shopping Centre in Croydon] he knew that employment opportunities in astronomy were bleak. So nothing changes, then, in last half century, and chemistry beckoned. The JAS Group that evolved into today's Croydon Astronomical Society had its telescope on Lower Field of the School [where Boots is now!]. That's when Michael first met Patrick Moore when he opened the Observatory a year or so before his TV Series started. The beginning of a long friendship and continued astronomy passion. Whilst on holiday with a school friend's family in Perranporth in 1957 they 'supped' on real ale and went for a walk on the beach in the dark. Michael saw a fuzzy patch and sobered up enough to recognise it as a comet after the Arend Roland earlier in the year when 'Sky @ Night' started. A letter was sent to Herstmonceux. A delightful reply was received from Dr JG (Guy) Porter, the chap who did the Radio programmes that evolved into S@N, who was the Computing Guru. The encouragement Michael received for being "Just 2 days late in discovering Comet Mrkos", cemented another lasting friendship. Guy was the founder Editor with Patrick on the Famous Yearbooks. Michael quotes these two tales in detail because it helps explain the continuing passion for astronomy, but is more likely the reason for supporting real ale drinking, in the hope of discovering another comet. More seriously, why he's such a strong supporter of the seeing eye, better known as 'The Mk1 Eyeball'. "Keep an eye on the sky, not the ground" is his astronomy motto. As a committed 'Umbraphile' Michael has seen nearly 20 total eclipses and only missed 3 through bad weather, and main night astronomy is meteor photography, when not actively viewing. He's written uncounted astronomy articles, given lectures and written 3 books on the topic, as well as one on forensic Infra-red for drug detection. He still runs Speedibrews manufacturing photographic 'Rocket Fuel' developers. Yes, Speedibrews did start in wine making… |
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| 03/03/2011 | Francisco Diego | Cosmic fire beyond Astrology: the real influence of stars in our lives. | Cosmic fire beyond Astrology: the real influence of stars in our lives. We live in a Universe developing out of pure and simple energy that emerged thousands of millions of years ago. In this lecture we travel back in time to explore those initial conditions, when the primordial energy was encapsulated in a handful of tiny particles, the building blocks of the Universe to be brought together at different stages by the four known fundamental forces. After admiring the beautiful constellations seen by the human eyes of all times, we will travel deep inside dying stars to witness the fundamental forces at work, where the materials to make more stars and planets are not only assembled, but also charged with vast amounts of strange and powerful energy that we find all around us. For good or for evil, we have now the power of stars in our hands. | Francisco is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Physics and Astronomy University College London, vice president of the UK Association for Astronomy Education and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. He is a keen populariser of astronomy and has extensive experience as a planetarium producer/presenter, lecturer, author and broadcaster. He has appeared on TV series like Stephen Hawking's Universe and BBC's The Planets. He is producing and delivering The Mind of the Universe, a collection of public and school lectures and teacher workshops on astrophysics, cosmology and life in the Universe, initiated under a Science in Society fellowship from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. For more information visit his page on the UCL website http://www.ucl.ac.uk/themindoftheuniverse/francisco/. |
| 03/02/2011 | Richie Jarvis | My Astronomical Journey | Richie Jarvis is an IT professional and amateur astronomer based near Brighton in the South of England. After several equipment false starts Richie turned his IT skills to astrophotography. Several of Richie's images have been displayed in UK Astronomical magazines, and he has written an article for Astronomy Now. Richie also chairs the regular Under British Skies internet radio show on Astronomy.FM on the third Sunday of the month at 20:00 GMT. |
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| 06/01/2011 | James Fradgley | The Origin of the Solar System | James is the Chairman of the Weymouth Astronomy Club, Vice-chairman of Wessex AS and Chairman of the Bournemouth Natural Science Society Astronomy section. He has a BA in Astrophysics and is an FRAS (Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society). He is more interested in theory, i.e. understanding what I'm looking at, than getting cold at night. |
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| 02/12/2010 | Bob Nichol | Dark Energy | Bob's main research interests and projects include: Studies of the large-scale structure in the Universe (Euclid, SDSS-III BOSS, 2SLAQ, ISW); Supernovae (SDSS-II Supernova Survey, DES); Galaxy properties as a function of environment (Galaxy Zoo, SDSS); Halo properties of galaxies and how they trace the underlying dark matter (BOSS, 2SLAQ); Advanced computational and statistical methods; Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI, LOFAR). | |
| 04/11/2010 | Kevin Pretorius | Sizing the Universe | Kevin is an amateur astronomer and active member of the Farnham AS where he currently serves on the committee as Programme Secretary. He has a degree in computer engineering, works as a project manager in the IT industry and enjoys writing software, but on a clear night you're more likely find him out under the stars with binoculars or a telescope, and possibly doing a little imaging. His interest in astronomy, physics, maths and science in general dates back to junior school days, where he eagerly digested books and magazines on space and astronomy; keenly followed the space race; and studied the skies with the aid of a very cheap, blurry and unsteady 60x60mm refractor. He promised to replace the refractor with 'something better' when he grew up, but that promise wasn't honoured until perhaps 30 years later, after teenage pursuits, university studies, career and family had finished occupying centre stage. His active pursuit of astronomy was rekindled in his mid-40s with the purchase of an 8" S/N Meade LXD55, which has recently been displaced by the purchase of something a little more serious. Kevin is motivated by a strong desire to understand how the universe really works, and to share that understanding with others. He's a regular speaker at Farnham AS, participates in their public outreach and observing events, and contributes occasional articles to their website. He has a science and astronomy blog on MySpace and (by his own admission) spends way too much time on their forums explaining scientific concepts to anyone who will listen, and debunking pseudo-scientific claims from those who generally won't. He has an understanding wife, two teenage children, and lives near Camberley in Surrey. |
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| 07/10/2010 | Grant Privett | 10 Must-See Astronomical Objects | Grant Privett is an amateur astronomer currently based in Wiltshire. Cranborne Chase is not exactly Mauna Kea or La Palma, but is pretty good for southern England, which is just as well as his main observing interests are deep-sky. If it's stupidly faint, then he will be trying to image it with the 250mm f4.4 Newtonian on an EQ6 which he sets up every clear dark night (back ache permitting). Currently, he earns his daytime crust working as a physicist ; specialising in imaging and image processing of various sorts ; but he has in the past been employed as a professional astronomer/programmer and was responsible for writing the ESP Galaxy Photometry software suite for Starlink. Going even further back he spent 10 years working at what was the Royal Gunpowder factory at Waltham Abbey having a great time ; The Joy of RDX. Increasingly, he find himself writing articles for magazines and also giving talks to local societies ; though he does moan that it keeps him away from observing. To make matters even less clear, he has written a couple of books for Springer and is now working on his third. |
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| 02/09/2010 | John Mason | Meteors: Showers, Storms and Their Progenitors | Dr John Mason is Co-Editor, with Sir Patrick Moore, of the Yearbook of Astronomy. He is a past President of the British Astronomical Association and Acting Director of the BAA's Meteor Section. He is currently Principal Lecturer at the South Downs Planetarium and Science Centre in Chichester. He is a frequent broadcaster on radio and television and has appeared many times with Sir Patrick Moore on BBC TV's The Sky at Night. For over 25 years he has been leading overseas expeditions to observe and record annular and total solar eclipses, the polar aurora and major meteor showers. He was made an MBE in the 2009 New Year's Honours List for his services to science education. | |
| 01/07/2010 | Brian Gordon-States | Recording white light solar activity | I decided to take up astronomy as a hobby in 1980. Like many others before me I started off with a store bought 60mm Tasco refractor on a wobbly tripod. It was not much of a telescope, but it did awaken in me the interest in astronomy to go further, and gave me views of the Moon, Saturn, Jupiter and Mars. I then purchased the optic for a 12" f6 Newtonian and Dobsonian mounted it. An observatory made from wood ; 12 feet in diameter followed and was known as the States-Dyer Observatory (SDO). I became a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, member of the Webb Society, British Astronomical Society, Society for Popular Astronomy, Guildford Astronomical Society and Worthing Astronomical Society. My observatory has subsequently been rebuilt on two occasions to its final current specification. In the 1980's and 90's the observatory housed the 12" f6 Newtonian and 8.75" f7.5 Newtonian piggy backed on the same mount. Back in the days of the visit of Halley's Comet in the late 80's the observatory had been open to the public for viewings, and still today we have visitors come around, and I enjoy very much showing them the wonders of the night sky. I was scanning through the SDO's visitor's book a few days ago and a certain astronomer from Houston had written that just maybe the skies in Guildford were as good as those in Texas - they can be occasionally. My wife, three daughters and I flew to Houston in May 1987. During our stay I the signed the Twinning Charter between HAS and GAS with Lee Cain of HAS, gave a talk to the HAS on Guildford AS, and also attended the Texas Star Party at Fort Davis, and was fortunate enough to have private access to a large 36" telescope at the McDonald Observatory along with my friend Larry Wadle, and met Clyde Thombaugh the discoverer of Pluto. In '87 I also got the opportunity to observe at the HAS observatory site in Columbus. We returned to the USA in 1991 and joined the NASA Astronomical Society and Houston Astronomical Society for a trip to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico for the total eclipse. We observed at an old airfield, Santiago Ixcuintla, along with a few NASA astronauts (what great guys they are) and saw all 7 minutes of the eclipse totality. I also gave another talk to HAS, this time on Astronomy in the UK. Since the first SDO was built the skies in Guildford have deteriorated badly thanks to the advance of sodium lights, and I have become in the main a solar observer with my data being sent to folks in the UK and the USA, but I still enjoy night observing, weather permitting. At Christmas 2003 I took semi-retirement from my position as a lecturer in automotive engineering at Brooklands College, and only worked there three days a week and I finally retired in July 2009, but I still do work for the British Red Cross, so am still kept busy. My back problems have resulted in me re-thinking what telescope I can use. I can't climb ladders to the eyepiece any more, or crank my neck round to look through the Telrad or finder. I seriously considered a large aperture Meade SCT GOTO, but could not justify the cost. In the end I purchased a Celestron C6RGT (6" refractor) on a GOTO mounting with GPS. This CG5 mounting proved unsuccessful and it was replaced with a Skywatcher NEQ6. Attached to the SDO was my office, which I have now outgrown, and so now have a 14-foot square, fully insulated, climate controlled log cabin, which should be OK for a few years. In the last 6 months I have purchased a Solar Max 60 hydrogen alpha telescope and a 8" Skywatcher Newtonian. I had joined Guildford AS around 1980 ; since which time I became a committee member, served two terms as President, negotiated the purchase of the society's 20.5" telescope, from Henry Wildey, introduced the society magazine ˜The Skywatcher' which was my call sign on the then popular CB radio and served as editor for a few years, and then Houston coordinator. I then took a few years off before rejoining Guildford AS and I am now a member of the committee. I enjoy very much taking part in outreach events and passing on what knowledge I have to newcomers to astronomy. I have also successfully passed distance learning courses at the University of Central Lancashire in Astronomy and Cosmology. I addition to astronomy my other main hobby is genealogy, this I started in 1987, after the death of my father in 1985. |
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| 01/07/2010 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 03/06/2010 | Anthony Brown | The Square Kilometre Array | Prof Anthony Brown is Associate Dean for the Faculty of Engineering and Physical Sciences, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the University of Manchester where he is a member of the senior management team for the faculty, the largest in the UK, with special responsibility for Teaching and Learning. In research he is heavily involved in antennas, propagation, wireless communications and in radar. Specific recent projects include: Ultra-wide band antennas and propagation Wide band large scale arrays for radio astronomy (Square Kilometre Array) Impact of Wind Turbines on Radar systems RF Friendly Buildings (Frequency Sensitive Walls) Interference effects in UWB communications and Sidelobe limits in small array antennas |
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| 06/05/2010 | Paul Daniels | May the force be with you | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
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| 01/04/2010 | Andrew Coates | Latest Results from Cassini | Prof Andrew Coates is the head of the Planetary Science Group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). He is a regular and very popular visitor to GAS. | |
| 04/03/2010 | Ian Ridpath | Pictures in the sky | "The origin and history of the constellations" In the days before writing, storytellers used the sky as a picture book to illustrate their tales of gods, mythical heroes and fabulous beasts. Those pictures among the stars were the origin of our system of constellations. Today, the entire sky is divided into 88 constellations of varying shapes and sizes. This talk, which includes illustrations from some of the world's greatest star atlases, will trace the origin of the constellation system back to Greek times and explain who filled in the gaps between the ancient Greek figures, who decided on the official boundaries between constellations, and how the names of certain stars came about. | Ian has been a full-time writer, broadcaster, and lecturer on astronomy and space since 1972. Previously he worked at the University of London Observatory and in publishing. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (Council member 2004;07), as well as a member of the Society of Authors and of the Association of British Science Writers. Ian runs his own desktop publishing system for producing books and magazines and is the author of well over 40 titles as author or editor including several recent editions of the classic Norton's Star Atlas. For more background on Ian see his website http://www.ianridpath.com/. |
| 04/02/2010 | Tony Marsh | Wanderers far from home | Tony is now retired after some 40 years as a research chemist. About three quarters of that time was spent working on tropospheric pollution chemistry including cloud chemistry. He spent some time catching clouds on mountain tops and with aircraft all over Europe. This inevitably gave rise to a signature tune from Mick Jagger and company of 'Get off of my cloud'. It also lead to family comments on dismal UK holidays of "Why does dad have to bring his work on holiday?". He joined GAS in 1996 and has been learning to live with clear skies ever since. |
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| 07/01/2010 | Andrew Coates | Latest Results from Cassini | Prof Andrew Coates is the head of the Planetary Science Group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). He is a regular and very popular visitor to GAS. | |
| 03/12/2009 | Stuart Eves | Sophisticated Small Satellites from Surrey | Stuart Eves is the Senior Account Manager (Military Systems) at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford. He spent 16 years with the UK Ministry Of Defence, in various space-related posts, before joining SSTL in January 2004. During his time with the MOD, Stuart initiated the TopSat satellite programme, which is now on-orbit conducting its Earth-observation mission. Indeed TopSat has been so successful that the engineering model of the satellite now forms part of the recently re-vamped space gallery at the Science Museum in London. Stuart has an MSc in Astrophysics, a PhD in constellation design, and has been a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society for more than 15 years. |
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| 05/11/2009 | David Whitehouse | The Moon — A Biography | David will be familiar to many as a BBC Science Correspondent, author of astronomical books, contributor to astronomical magazines, and speaker. For more information on his books and interests, visit his website http://www.davidwhitehouse.com. |
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| 01/10/2009 | Helen Walker | Exploring Mars and Other Planets with Satellites | Helen graduated from the University of St. Andrews with a PhD in Astronomy in 1979 where she was involved with astronomical satellites (and has been ever since). In the mid-1990s Helen was Head of the UK ISO Support Group and a Co-Investigator on the ISO Photometer (ISO was the Infrared Space Observatory ; an ESA satellite). For the past two years she has worked in the Satellite Operations Group at RAL, under contract to the European Space Agency, on Mars Express (as the group's Project Scientist) helping scientists plan their science observations on the Mars Express satellite. Recently Helen was asked to take over leading the Test Team for MIRI, the mid-infrared instrument, for the James Webb Space Telescope. Helen is also Senior Secretary of the Royal Astronomical Society and currently President of the Society for Popular Astronomy. |
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| 03/09/2009 | Guy Hurst | The Search for Novae and Supernovae: from visual to laptop | Taken from Guy's own website http://www.guyhurst.co.uk . In 1975 Guy became Editor of The Astronomer , a monthly magazine for active observers of the night sky and, 34 years later, he still holds this post. In 1976 he formed the UK Nova/Supernova patrol to encourage amateur astronomers to search for these exploding stars. The numerous successes using both simple binoculars and more advanced electronic telescopes means the project appeals to many observers. If you are interested in more detail you can email Guy at guy@tahq.demon.co.uk. From 2001 to 2003 he was President of the British Astronomical Association and earlier, in June 1998, he received the Walter Goodacre Medal from the Association. In October 2005 he received an award from the Royal Astronomical Society (professional astronomers) for services to astronomy. His main aim has been to promote active observing of the night sky. Regular meetings are held and he is involved in a launch of observers' workshops. |
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| 02/07/2009 | Chris Franklin | And all I ask is a tall ship | And a star to steer her by. A brief history of how Astro Navigation came about, why it was needed and what developments occurred before it could be usefully used. | Chris has always been fascinated with space, both the universe that we live in and technologies we send into it. This interest and the fact that he has a ˜scientific brain" led him to direct his education in that direction. At A-level, he took Double Maths, Physics and Chemistry and these led nicely into his further studies at university. Chris graduated from the University of Surrey in 2006 with an undergraduate Masters in Aerospace Engineering and decided to take some time off before commencing the job hunt and this is when his interest in Astronomy was re-ignited. Looking up at the stars one evening, Chris realised that while he had long had an interest in space, he knew very little about Astronomy. The only things he could identify in the sky up until this point were the Plough (not a constellation), and hence Polaris, and the constellation of Orion, which, it being around April, was not visible at the time. This was soon to change. A copy of The Sky at Night magazine was purchased and several nights were spent outside until a number of constellations could be identified without consulting the magazine's handy guide. That June, Chris started attending meetings of the Guildford Astronomical Society. Chris has been a member of GAS now for almost five years (is it really five years? Wow!) and can commonly be found sitting in the back row at the monthly meetings. He finds the talks interesting and the other members and visitors friendly and encouraging, such that, no matter where in the country he finds himself working each month, he makes every effort to get back to Guildford on the first Thursday for the meeting. Chris eventually got himself a job and is currently a Civil Servant on an engineering graduate scheme, but still has aspirations to work in the space industry. |
| 02/07/2009 | David Putland | Galileo: His Telescopes & Observations | Dave has been interested in astronomy since he made his first telescope from his Dad's shaving mirror when he was thirteen. Since then he's been through an engineering apprenticeship specialising in optical instrument making, including manufacturing optics, and then a forty year plus career making and designing optical instruments and doing optical measurements including testing lenses, mirrors and complete telescopes, all at the National Physical Laboratory in Teddington. He's still working part time and has a Zygo interferometer for testing his optics in his garage. He has a shed/small observatory in his garden and enjoys star parties with local people. He's very keen on sidewalk astronomy and teaching scout-groups, etc, which he's done, with others, on behalf of GAS. His latest project is an analemma for 2009 which he started in January and which is driving him mad as the sun seems to vanish at just the wrong moment! | |
| 02/07/2009 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations Chris Franklin: And all I ask is a tall ship David Putland: Galileo: His Telescopes & Observations | |
| 04/06/2009 | Alan Longstaff | Mars Revisited | Alan Longstaff originally trained as a biochemist, and after working as a research scientist at the Universities of Rome and Aberdeen, taught for 18 years at the University of Hertfordshire. He jumped ship in 1998, becoming a University student once again, to study astronomy and geology. Now he divides his time between teaching and writing. A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, Alan is an Associate Lecturer in Earth Sciences at the Open University, with research interests in astrobiology. He teaches astronomy at the Royal Observatory Greenwich and Waldegrave Science School for Girls and lectures widely to Astronomical and Geological Societies. As a freelance science writer specialising in medical sciences and astronomy, Alan has written and co-authored several textbooks; he writes for Astronomy , Astronomy Now , Popular Astronomy and similar publications. | |
| 07/05/2009 | Derrick Farley | Astrophotography using a Digital SLR Camera | Derrick is an experienced digital astrophotographer. His observatory (Leckhampstead Observatory) is in a small rural village a few miles North of Newbury in Berkshire. It benefits from lower than average light pollution (in UK terms) as the nearest streetlights are several miles away. His observatory consists of: 12.5" RCOS Ritchey-Chretien Telescope mounted on an Astro-Physics 1200 GOTO Mount TMB 152/1200 Apochromatic Refractor mounted on an AstroPhysics AP900 GOTO Mount SBIG ST-10XME CCD Camera See his website http://www.dfarley.co.uk for more details and some amazing pictures of astronomical objects. |
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| 02/04/2009 | Barrie Jones | Exoplanets and Life Beyond the Solar System | ||
| 05/03/2009 | Robin Gorman | Why Pluto had to go | Robin has promoted astronomy to the public in Hampshire for 30 years. He frequently gives talks at schools. Robin was a lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the Highbury College for 18 years from which he retired in 1992. He served as Chairman of the Hampshire Astronomical Group from 1972 to 1983. He was President of the group from 1983 to 2003. During this time, Clanfield Observatory, which is run by the group, has become one of the best-equipped amateur observatories in the country and currently has 140 members. He founded the first National Astronomy Week in 1980. There have been 5 National Astronomy Weeks since 1981. Robin is currently planning the National Astronomy Week for 2009, which will coincide with the 400th aniversary of the first recorded use of a a telescope for astronomical observations. He has been running adult education classes in astronomy for over 25 years. He has produced over 100 astronomical mirrors up to 20 inches in diameter. |
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| 05/02/2009 | Graham Bryant | Space Roving Vehicles | ||
| 08/01/2009 | Martin Lunn | Astronomy before the telescope | Martin is curator of Astronomy at the Yorkshire Museum in York and is responsible for promting astronomy in York and North Yorkshire. He was awarded an MBE in 1998 for services for astronomy and education. He is currently researching two historical areas of astronomy, Viking Astronomy and Astronomy and the English Civil War. Pre telescopic Astronomy tells the story of astronomers views of the night sky from the earliest of times until Galileo. |
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| 04/12/2008 | John Evans | La Palma Nights - film and CCD imaging from a truly dark sky site. | John shows examples of film and digital images taken during his trips to La Palma and describes and answers questions about his experience of observing there. He hopes to clarify some of relative merits of film and CCDs and, in so doing, show that, for some applications at least, film should not yet be viewed as down and out. | John spent his career in education and recently retired from his job as an educational adviser and schools inspector. Of his own education, he recalls that the grammar school he attended placed him, despite his protests that he wanted to be an astronomer, on the arts side because, in a one-off test at age 13, he did better in Latin than maths. Mercifully, things are more flexible nowadays. John went on to read languages at Oxford and later also gained qualifications in philosophy and education. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. In spite of his school's best endeavours, the astronomy never went away. John is horrified to note that he has been looking at the night sky with some degree of seriousness for fifty years! His first telescope was a 60mm draw-tube refractor by Dallmeyer bequeathed by some long-lost family member who had been a sniper. He made a wooden equatorial mounting for it and still remembers the thrill of seeing, perched on the garage roof, the Galilean satellites for the first time. He recalls an observation of the cusp-caps of Venus made with this telescope being mentioned in the BAA journal. His eye-sight, or perhaps his imagination, must have been better in those days. When he was 14 he took and processed his first photograph of the night-sky - an image of Orion on a Kodak glass plate - with a camera he made himself. A year later he ground and polished an 8" mirror on a barrel in his bed-room - he had understanding parents! For many years, John provided practical outreach sessions for students and ran a course for teachers in teaching astronomy. He believes that introducing people to the night-sky is one of the most important things that we can do, not just for its scientific interest, or even the experience and enjoyment of the sky's natural beauty, but for its impact on people's understanding of who and what they are and might become. He wishes that people would look down less and up much more. Over the years, John has owned or used most types of telescope and now owns 'only' three: 80mm and 140mm apochromatic refractors and a 300mm Dobsonian, which he feels give him pretty much all the options he needs. In recent years he has regularly gone in search of dark skies overseas, especially to La Palma, one of the best observing locations on the planet. There, he says, the skies can be so breathtaking that he is happy to gaze upwards for hours with no instrumental aid, other than perhaps a pair of binoculars. For him, this is the ultimate observing experience. |
| 06/11/2008 | Malcolm Maccallum | Gravity Waves | Malcolm is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Queen Mary, University of London School of Mathematical Sciences. His research interests include computer algebra applied to differential equations and most aspects of classical non-Newtonian gravity theory. More details can be found on his website: http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk/~mm/ |
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| 02/10/2008 | John Murrell | Weather for Astronomy | John Murrell is a railway engineer by profession but spends his spare time trying to keep up with the latest happenings in the Astronomical World. Living near London he suffers from light pollution and has become more interested in the brighter astronomical events such as conjunctions, occultations and transits. He favours the technical approach to astronomy and tries to connect as much equipment to his two telescopes as possible. However he still enjoys binocular views of some of the highlights such as the Moon, the Pleiades and the Orion Nebula. When the weather is uncooperative and even during the day he can be found behind his computer hunting down information in the Virtual Observatory but that's another lecture or two! He is currently working with Professor Janet Drew of the University of Hertfordshire, the Principal Investigator of the IPHAS survey to recruit a number of keen and dedicated amateur astronomers to assist in searching the IPHAS images for diffuse objects that emit in Hydrogen Alpha. |
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| 04/09/2008 | Owen Brazell | Observing Supernova Remnants | Owen is a very well known and expert observer of Deep Sky Objects. He has lectured to many Societies on this theme, and is the Editor of the Webb Society's Magazine - The Deep Sky Observer. | |
| 03/07/2008 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 05/06/2008 | Jack Cohen | Four Invented Planets - a god's eye view | Jack Cohen is an internationally-known reproductive biologist, who consulted for test-tube-baby and other infertility laboratories, and has worked in Assisted Conception Units. He was reproductive biologist in the Zoology Department at Birmingham University for some thirty years, later in Warwick Maths Institute for five - he denies being a mathematician, despite having been made an Honorary Professor in that Institute. His last position, at Warwick University, bridged the Ecosystems Unit of the Biology Department and the Mathematics Institute, and his brief included bringing more science to more public awareness - which he still attempts. He has published about 120 research papers. His latest, on Sex, diploidy and the human Y chromosome, has appeared in Systematics and Biodiversity 2 1-7 (CUP). His books include Living Embryos (Pergamon, 1963, 1967, 1980), a classic textbook that sold more than 100,000 copies; Reproduction (Butterworth's); Spermatozoa, Antibodies and Infertility (Blackwell); and The Privileged Ape (Parthenon), a rather different look at human evolution. He now works with the mathematician Ian Stewart (Does God Play Dice? and the 1997-8 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures) with whom he has explored issues of complexity, chaos and simplicity. Their first joint book, The Collapse of Chaos, was published by Viking/Penguin ('94, re-issued 2000), and their Figments of Reality: the evolution of the curious mind (Cambridge University Press) was published in '97. Both authors cooperated with Terry Pratchett in The Science of Discworld (Ebury), and its sequel The Science of Discworld 2: The Globe (Ebury). the third The Science of Discworld: Darwin's watch has just appeared. They have also produced a science-fiction novel, Wheelers (Warner-Aspect) which was chosen as November 2000's monthly choice by the SFBC, and did well in the US and the UK (Simon&Schuster). A sequel, Heaven, has been published by Warner-Aspect, and a prequel is in preparation. Evolving the Alien (Ebury), with Ian Stewart, about the real biology of alien life, was published in 2002. (It is called What Does a Martian Look Like; the science of extra-terrestrial life by Wiley in the US. The Ebury UK paperback also has that title.) The Science Museum in London is putting on an "Aliens" Exhibition, October 2005, based in these books. The third science book, The Appearance of Design, with Stewart, is in preparation, signed up for Penguin. Stop Working and Start Thinking: how to become a scientist (with Graham Medley, epidemiologist and statistician) was published in 2000, and the second edition was published by Taylor & Francis in June '05. He acts as a consultant to top science fiction authors (e.g. McCaffrey, Gerrold, Harrison, Niven, Pratchett) designing alien creatures and ecologies. He is frequently heard on BBC radio programmes, and has initiated and participated in the production of several TV programmes, e.g. BBC Horizon: Genesis; ITV Science: Take Another Look; Channel 4: Reality on the Rocks; BBC Channel 2: Fancy Fish (for which he did much of the filming, especially time-lapse microscopy); and for BBC2 on the 1997 Mars week-end: The Natural History of an Alien. More are in preparation. His hobbies include boomerang throwing and keeping strange animals (from hydras to mantis shrimps, and octopi to llamas). |
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| 01/05/2008 | Tony Marsh | The Sky is Falling | Tony is now retired after some 40 years as a research chemist. About three quarters of that time was spent working on tropospheric pollution chemistry including cloud chemistry. He spent some time catching clouds on mountain tops and with aircraft all over Europe. This inevitably gave rise to a signature tune from Mick Jagger and company of 'Get off of my cloud'. It also lead to family comments on dismal UK holidays of "Why does dad have to bring his work on holiday?". He joined GAS in 1996 and has been learning to live with clear skies ever since. |
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| 03/04/2008 | Pieter Morpurgo | The Sky at Night Experience, a Producer's View | Pieter Morpurgo worked for the BBC for 30 years as a producer and director, working on many programmes ranging from Nationwide to That's Life , Panorama , Children in Need , Crimewatch , Watchdog and many others. One of his main roles was to produce The Sky at Night programme for virtually the whole of the 80s and 90s, making close to 250 episodes. Although mostly made in the studio, there were some 50 films. His talk at the Guildford Astronomical Society on 3 April will be based on the making of those films and how the programme is put together. | |
| 06/03/2008 | Henryk Herman | The Search for Planetary Life | Henryk Herman is a Chemical Physicist and laser specialist over 30 years of experience in academic and industrial research in the UK, Europe, Japan and the United States. His degrees in Chemical Physics and Laser Physics from the University of Bristol biased him towards science interfaces and he has employed his skill set in areas ranging from laser radar, through to medical applications of lasers, the chemistry of the upper atmosphere, remote sensing for oil exploration, materials composition, remote sensing of minerals, development of life sciences package for the ESA Mars mission, authentication of art objects (e.g. The Holy Infants Embracing, ascribed to Leonardo), conservation of heritage (Mary Rose, Hampton Court) and the effect of potential treatments on model Alzheimer cells. His main interest is in remote sensing ; the use, primarily of light, to obtain chemical and physical information on inaccessible objects. Latterly this has been used in the area of on-line and in-situ process analysis and control, notably for gasoline quality measurements, polymer manufacture, and pharmaceutical formulations. |
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| 07/02/2008 | Emily Baldwin | Impact Craters | I am currently in my final year of my PhD in Planetary Science. My research interests focus on the mechanics of impact cratering, through laboratory experiments and numerical modelling, to understand how varying targets ( i.e. dry vs. wet, porous vs. non-porous, hard-rock vs. sediments) affect the way impact craters form. I'm also looking at how the impacting body survives an impact event. There may be ancient fragments of terrestrial meteorites on the lunar surface, which, if discovered, would provide vital information on the early history of the Earth. Projectile survivability is also important for the theory that life could or has traveled through the interstellar medium on an asteroid and survive an impact, inhabiting the planet it strikes. I am also an active council member for the Society for Popular Astronomy. I'm the editor for Prime Space, and have just completed the setting up of the 'Young Star-Gazers' section of the SPA, aimed at under 16s. Emily is from Guildford and used to attend GAS meetings when she was a youngster. |
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| 07/02/2008 | Stuart Eves | William Herschel and the Rings of Uranus | Stuart Eves is the Senior Account Manager (Military Systems) at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford. He spent 16 years with the UK Ministry Of Defence, in various space-related posts, before joining SSTL in January 2004. During his time with the MOD, Stuart initiated the TopSat satellite programme, which is now on-orbit conducting its Earth-observation mission. Indeed TopSat has been so successful that the engineering model of the satellite now forms part of the recently re-vamped space gallery at the Science Museum in London. Stuart has an MSc in Astrophysics, a PhD in constellation design, and has been a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society for more than 15 years. |
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| 03/01/2008 | Andrew Coates | Latest News from Venus Express | Prof Andrew Coates is the head of the Planetary Science Group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). He is a regular and very popular visitor to GAS. | |
| 06/12/2007 | John Stapleton | Incoming - The evidence for meteor impact upon the Earth. | John Stapleton has been an amateur astronomer for 38 years. Originally a member of the Torbay Astronomical Society where he served as both secretary and chairman, and where one of his proteges was Chris Lintott, John now lives in Hants. He is a teacher and adult education lecturer. From his AE courses in Basingstoke the BAS was formed. He has served as chairman and is currently secretary. John is also a past President of the Devon Astronomical Association and is a member of the SAGAS working group. |
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| 01/11/2007 | David Whitehouse | Space — The First 50 Years | David will be familiar to many as a BBC Science Correspondent, author of astronomical books, contributor to astronomical magazines, and speaker. For more information on his books and interests, visit his website http://www.davidwhitehouse.com. |
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| 04/10/2007 | John Axtell | Happy Birthday Dear Sputnik | John Axtell has been GAS Secretary for two years and Observing Co-ordinator since January 04. John's interest in astronomy began when he was a little lad of 7 or 8, at one time he was the youngest member of the Junior Astronomical Society (now known as the Society for Popular Astronomy). Teenage interests took over, but he retained a background interest in the subject. He became a born-again astronomer in 2001, his road-to-Damascus moment being the Total Eclipse of the Sun in Zambia. | |
| 04/10/2007 | Paul Daniels | No Sultan's Turret? | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
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| 06/09/2007 | Greg Smye-Rumsby | The Solar System Today | Greg has been a frequent vistor to GAS, and has always been a very entertaining and dynamic speaker. He is a regular contributor to the UK's leading astronomy magazine - Astronomy Now. Here's a picture of Greg as he welcomed visitors to the 2007 AstroFest. | |
| 05/07/2007 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 07/06/2007 | Gavin Stacey | Members Evening - Back to Basics: Choosing Your Telescope | ||
| 03/05/2007 | Tony Marsh | Two Arcseconds per Month | Tony is now retired after some 40 years as a research chemist. About three quarters of that time was spent working on tropospheric pollution chemistry including cloud chemistry. He spent some time catching clouds on mountain tops and with aircraft all over Europe. This inevitably gave rise to a signature tune from Mick Jagger and company of 'Get off of my cloud'. It also lead to family comments on dismal UK holidays of "Why does dad have to bring his work on holiday?". He joined GAS in 1996 and has been learning to live with clear skies ever since. |
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| 05/04/2007 | James Fradgley | Variable Stars - What Makes Them Tick? | James is the Chairman of the Weymouth Astronomy Club, Vice-chairman of Wessex AS and Chairman of the Bournemouth Natural Science Society Astronomy section. He has a BA in Astrophysics and is an FRAS (Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society). He is more interested in theory, i.e. understanding what I'm looking at, than getting cold at night. |
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| 01/03/2007 | Ian King | Widefield CCD Imaging | ||
| 01/02/2007 | John Murray | Latest News from Mars Express | ||
| 04/01/2007 | Jerry Workman | Mars Express | ||
| 07/12/2006 | Ian Morison | Exciting Times At Jodrell Bank | ||
| 02/11/2006 | Lucie Green | Solar B: New Views Of The Sun | From her UCL page, Lucie says:- My research focusses on the study of the evolution of the Sun's magnetic field and how it drives solar activity that in turn leads to space weather at the Earth. My early work used new techniques to quantify the amount of magnetic helicity ejected by the Sun during events called coronal mass ejections. The results are important for many areas of solar physics including dynamo theory and the evolution of the global solar magnetic field. More recently, I have focussed on the question of whether or not flux ropes form in the lower solar atmosphere before coronal mass ejections. I am interested in how observations can be used to quantify the magnetic flux in these ropes so that we can better understand their evolution to an unstable and eruptive configuration. This work is important for developing the science that underpins space weather forecasting. |
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| 06/10/2006 | Jerry Stone | The Day They Launched a Woodpecker | Jerry Stone has given presentations on space since 1969, having started when he was 14 years old at school. Now he runs Spaceflight UK, and has spoken at venues that have included The Edinburgh Festival, The Royal Institution, The British Science Festival, The Palace of Westminster, Sir Patrick Moore's garden, and a rock festival! He is described as one of the leading speakers on space exploration. Freelance Presenter on Astronomy and Space Exploration Author of "One Small Step", commemorating the first men on the Moon Founder, The Sir Arthur Clarke Awards President, The Mars Society UK Leader of The SPACE Project STEM Science Ambassador Member, Association for Science Education Member, European Association for Astronomy Education Interplanetary Poet For details of his presentations and his space workshops for schools, visit www.spaceflight-uk.com |
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| 05/10/2006 | Robin Scagell | Observing From The City | ||
| 07/09/2006 | Tony Sizer | How Far Are The Stars? | ||
| 06/07/2006 | Paul Daniels | Kepler Is Not A Klingon Toast! | Paul has been interested in Astronomy since the age of 13 (in the days of the Apollo missions and the first Moon landing) when a school-friend let him look through his 4" Newtonian reflector and many happy nights were spent on sun-loungers in the garden watching for meteors. The ephemerides in the 1969 BAA Handbook particularly intrigued him and that was the start of a passionate interest in how such things were calculated and a desire to know more about the solar system. Paul went on to get a degree in Astrophysics from QMC, London University, where he served as the QMC Astrophysical Society's Secretary and Chairman in his 2nd and 3rd years and introduced luminaries such as Dr Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, Prof Ken Pounds, Dr Patrick Moore and Prof Sir Hermann Bondi. In 1981 he earned a PhD from Sheffield University studying aspects of dust particle accretion and the structure and evolution of comets and, during that time, gave adult evening class lecture courses about the solar system and was the first Physics postgraduate student at Sheffield to give an undergraduate lecture course (Minor Bodies of the Solar System). Another year was spent at the Max Planck research institute in Garching (near Munich, Germany) developing some prototype software for ROSAT before, in 1983, his career moved away from Astronomy and into computing. Paul has been a freelance IT contractor since 1988 and joined GAS in 2000 to renew his interest in Astronomy. He is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. Paul was President of GAS between 2012 & 2018, he is VP Astronomy for the Royal Astronomical Society |
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| 06/07/2006 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 01/06/2006 | Neil Bone | Atmospheric Phenomena | ||
| 04/05/2006 | Robert Smith | Stars that go BANG in the Night | ||
| 06/04/2006 | Committee & Members | Members Evening - Astronomical Software - Demos and Reviews | Astronomical Software - Demos and Reviews | |
| 02/03/2006 | Martin Lewis | Getting the Best from Your Telescope- Dealing with Thermal Effects and Dewing | ||
| 02/02/2006 | Andrew Coates | Latest Results from Cassini: what they are and how to observe them | Prof Andrew Coates is the head of the Planetary Science Group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). He is a regular and very popular visitor to GAS. | |
| 05/01/2006 | Bob Mizon | Milky Way Survey | ||
| 01/12/2005 | Ian Crawford | The Scientific Case for a Return to Manned Lunar Exploration | ||
| 03/11/2005 | Chris Lintott | Cosmology for the Terrified | My background is in work on the chemistry associated with star formation, but these days I think about galaxy formation and run citizen science projects to investigate galaxy formation, discover planets and more. Professor Lintott was Co-Director of the Oxford Martin Programme on Computational Cosmology from 2010-2014, where he focused on devloping the Zooniverse, a citizen science platform. Professor Lintott is also presenter of The Sky at Night on BBC Four. |
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| 01/09/2005 | Nik Szymanek | An Introduction to Astrophotography | ||
| 02/12/2004 | Jack Cohen | Aliens, more than biology | Jack Cohen is an internationally-known reproductive biologist, who consulted for test-tube-baby and other infertility laboratories, and has worked in Assisted Conception Units. He was reproductive biologist in the Zoology Department at Birmingham University for some thirty years, later in Warwick Maths Institute for five - he denies being a mathematician, despite having been made an Honorary Professor in that Institute. His last position, at Warwick University, bridged the Ecosystems Unit of the Biology Department and the Mathematics Institute, and his brief included bringing more science to more public awareness - which he still attempts. He has published about 120 research papers. His latest, on Sex, diploidy and the human Y chromosome, has appeared in Systematics and Biodiversity 2 1-7 (CUP). His books include Living Embryos (Pergamon, 1963, 1967, 1980), a classic textbook that sold more than 100,000 copies; Reproduction (Butterworth's); Spermatozoa, Antibodies and Infertility (Blackwell); and The Privileged Ape (Parthenon), a rather different look at human evolution. He now works with the mathematician Ian Stewart (Does God Play Dice? and the 1997-8 Royal Institution Christmas Lectures) with whom he has explored issues of complexity, chaos and simplicity. Their first joint book, The Collapse of Chaos, was published by Viking/Penguin ('94, re-issued 2000), and their Figments of Reality: the evolution of the curious mind (Cambridge University Press) was published in '97. Both authors cooperated with Terry Pratchett in The Science of Discworld (Ebury), and its sequel The Science of Discworld 2: The Globe (Ebury). the third The Science of Discworld: Darwin's watch has just appeared. They have also produced a science-fiction novel, Wheelers (Warner-Aspect) which was chosen as November 2000's monthly choice by the SFBC, and did well in the US and the UK (Simon&Schuster). A sequel, Heaven, has been published by Warner-Aspect, and a prequel is in preparation. Evolving the Alien (Ebury), with Ian Stewart, about the real biology of alien life, was published in 2002. (It is called What Does a Martian Look Like; the science of extra-terrestrial life by Wiley in the US. The Ebury UK paperback also has that title.) The Science Museum in London is putting on an "Aliens" Exhibition, October 2005, based in these books. The third science book, The Appearance of Design, with Stewart, is in preparation, signed up for Penguin. Stop Working and Start Thinking: how to become a scientist (with Graham Medley, epidemiologist and statistician) was published in 2000, and the second edition was published by Taylor & Francis in June '05. He acts as a consultant to top science fiction authors (e.g. McCaffrey, Gerrold, Harrison, Niven, Pratchett) designing alien creatures and ecologies. He is frequently heard on BBC radio programmes, and has initiated and participated in the production of several TV programmes, e.g. BBC Horizon: Genesis; ITV Science: Take Another Look; Channel 4: Reality on the Rocks; BBC Channel 2: Fancy Fish (for which he did much of the filming, especially time-lapse microscopy); and for BBC2 on the 1997 Mars week-end: The Natural History of an Alien. More are in preparation. His hobbies include boomerang throwing and keeping strange animals (from hydras to mantis shrimps, and octopi to llamas). |
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| 02/09/2004 | Tony Marsh | The Strange Case of the Blue Stragglers & the Missing Dark Matter | Tony is now retired after some 40 years as a research chemist. About three quarters of that time was spent working on tropospheric pollution chemistry including cloud chemistry. He spent some time catching clouds on mountain tops and with aircraft all over Europe. This inevitably gave rise to a signature tune from Mick Jagger and company of 'Get off of my cloud'. It also lead to family comments on dismal UK holidays of "Why does dad have to bring his work on holiday?". He joined GAS in 1996 and has been learning to live with clear skies ever since. |
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| 01/07/2004 | Committee & Members | Members Only | AGM & Members Presentations | |
| 03/06/2004 | Gavin Stacey | Telescopes - Back to Basics | ||
| 06/05/2004 | Andrew Coates | The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn (preview of Saturn plus Jupiter results) | Prof Andrew Coates is the head of the Planetary Science Group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). He is a regular and very popular visitor to GAS. | |
| 01/04/2004 | Alice Breeveld | From our nearest star to the edge of the universe - a personal view of the SOHO and XMM space missions | ||
| 04/03/2004 | Sarah Matthews | Solar B: connecting the photosphere to the corona | ||
| 05/02/2004 | Liz Puchnarewicz | The Swift search for gamma-ray bursts | ||
| 08/01/2004 | Jerry Workman | The 2003 Annular Eclipse | ||
| 04/12/2003 | Robin Catchpole | From the Solar System to the Edge of the Observable Universe | Dr Robin Catchpole works as an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, having retired as Senior Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich in July 2004. | |
| 06/11/2003 | Malcolm Maccallum | Einstein - was he 100% right? | Malcolm is Professor of Applied Mathematics at the Queen Mary, University of London School of Mathematical Sciences. His research interests include computer algebra applied to differential equations and most aspects of classical non-Newtonian gravity theory. More details can be found on his website: http://www.maths.qmul.ac.uk |
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| 02/10/2003 | Andrew Coates | Chasing a comet: ESA's Rosetta Mission | Prof Andrew Coates is the head of the Planetary Science Group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory (MSSL). He is a regular and very popular visitor to GAS. | |
| 04/09/2003 | Tony Marsh | The Odyssey of Galaxies | Tony is now retired after some 40 years as a research chemist. About three quarters of that time was spent working on tropospheric pollution chemistry including cloud chemistry. He spent some time catching clouds on mountain tops and with aircraft all over Europe. This inevitably gave rise to a signature tune from Mick Jagger and company of 'Get off of my cloud'. It also lead to family comments on dismal UK holidays of "Why does dad have to bring his work on holiday?". He joined GAS in 1996 and has been learning to live with clear skies ever since. |
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| 01/05/2003 | Owen Brazell | New Thoughts on Planetary Nebulae | Owen is a very well known and expert observer of Deep Sky Objects. He has lectured to many Societies on this theme, and is the Editor of the Webb Society's Magazine - The Deep Sky Observer. | |
| 06/09/2001 | Tony Marsh | Redshift and Black Hoyles | Tony is now retired after some 40 years as a research chemist. About three quarters of that time was spent working on tropospheric pollution chemistry including cloud chemistry. He spent some time catching clouds on mountain tops and with aircraft all over Europe. This inevitably gave rise to a signature tune from Mick Jagger and company of 'Get off of my cloud'. It also lead to family comments on dismal UK holidays of "Why does dad have to bring his work on holiday?". He joined GAS in 1996 and has been learning to live with clear skies ever since. |
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| 01/05/1997 | Owen Brazell | Deep Sky Resources for Amateur Astronomers | Owen is a very well known and expert observer of Deep Sky Objects. He has lectured to many Societies on this theme, and is the Editor of the Webb Society's Magazine - The Deep Sky Observer. | |
| 07/04/1994 | Owen Brazell | Observing Planetary Nebulae | Owen is a very well known and expert observer of Deep Sky Objects. He has lectured to many Societies on this theme, and is the Editor of the Webb Society's Magazine - The Deep Sky Observer. |