Here you’ll find brief reports of the talks we’ve heard at Society meetings. In these we try to include any web links or other pointers to further information that were provided by the speaker at the meeting. If you were at one of our meetings and would like to correct or expand the report relating to it then please use the Society’s contact form.
Anyone who has read Arthur C Clarke’s 1973 science fiction book “Rendezvous with Rama”¹ will have immediately thought of it when the discovery of ‘Oumuamua² was revealed in 2017. Some may have hoped, as in that book, that it was … Continue reading
I’m going to jump right in here and say that before the talk began I thought about the title and decided ~ yes, it was! Was I going to be right on the night was worth the wait to find … Continue reading
Our arranged speaker Jeff Wagg was unable to attend November’s society meeting, so Tony Sizer stepped in to talk on ‘The Vulcan Affair’. Tony started by taking us back to the 1878 USA eclipse and comparing it with the recent … Continue reading
The ‘Members Evening’ was split into two parts with three presenters. The first part was a report of their visit to the USA for the much anticipated 21st August 2017 Total Eclipse by Ken Pearson and Iain Pringle. Supported by … Continue reading
I don’t know about you but I struggle with astrophotography; for me it is a bit of a black art. Not that I don’t appreciate the results. One of my highlights of every society meeting is the ‘Members Images’ section … Continue reading
Like many, I have watched some of the Royal Institution’s (RI) Christmas Lectures but not all of them. That’s not a bad thing as they have been happening since 1825 and I could not have done that anyway. However, having … Continue reading
Our June 2017 Society Meeting saw a wonderfully entertaining talk from Dr Francisco Diego, University College London, who is currently a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Dr Diego hails originally from Mexico and is a … Continue reading
In November we scheduled an extra meeting “It’s About Time” presented by Professor Donald Kurtz. Don Kurtz is Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire. His research is in asteroseismology and magnetic stars and he teaches the undergraduate … Continue reading
A talk by Greg Smye-Rumsby. The planet Uranus is named after the Greek god Ouranos, meaning ‘sky’ or ‘heaven’. It is the coldest of the planets, an ice giant with a tumbling orbit which takes 84 years to orbit the … Continue reading
Roy Easto from Croydon Astronomical Society led a QI type quiz with two teams of two ‘volunteered’ from the membership. This was a change from our usual Christmas Quiz when everyone participates, but the teams played their parts sportingly and … Continue reading
Chris Lintott was unable to visit us as he was on La Palma, so Tony Sizer stepped into the gap at short notice, and gave us an informative and entertaining talk entitled Violent Universe. The Universe is not as benign … Continue reading