Universe Day celebrated the Society’s 21st year. The event was was marked by an astronomical based meeting open to all with presentations by well known astronomical personalities, planetarium, solar system walk, astro-balloon race and commercial stands. … Continue reading
Dr. Stuart Clark, who is Assistant Editor of Astronomy Now, and who also works part-time for the European Space Agency, gave a talk entitled “Life on other worlds and how to find it“ … Continue reading
Greg Smye-Rumsby gave an entertaining talk about the forthcoming transits of Mercury and Venus, and Tony Sizer talked about the relative sizes and densities of the solar system, the galaxies and the universe. … Continue reading
Dr. Helen Walker, who has worked for many years on the ISO project, gave a talk entitled “Infra-red astronomy“ in which she explained that IR is used in many areas of astronomical research, such as determining the composition of the … Continue reading
Dr. Jonathan Shanklin gave a wide-ranging talk entitled “An Astronomer in Antarctica“ in which he described a visit to Antarctica, with reference to the many and varied astronomical, meterological and environmental phenomena that are either peculiar to the region or … Continue reading
Dr. Monica Grady gave us a very interesting talk entitled “Mars, meteorites and the search for life“ in which she explained why she was sure some of the meteorites could only have come from Mars. She also gave us an … Continue reading
Geoff Epps stepped into the limelight at rather short notice, and gave a talk entitled “The early history and subsequent evolution of the planet Mars“ in which he described some of the hypotheses about Mars’ early history, and the evidence … Continue reading
Annual General Meeting and Chairman’s Address. … Continue reading
Dr. Chris Owen gave a talk entitled “The Solar-Terrestrial Connection“ in which he described the interaction of plasma and magnetic fields. His talk was accompanied by illustrations including several animation sequences of images from spacecraft such as Soho and Polar, … Continue reading
Dr. Alan Hart gave a talk entitled “The Earliest Sundial“ as part of our Xmas meeting. … Continue reading
Greg Smye-Rumsby gave an entertaining talk entitled “What size is that?“ in which he described the effects of scale, and illustrated the comparative sizes of objects of astronomical interest, often relating them to terrestrial equivalents. Two notable examples were of … Continue reading
Dr. Geoff Macdonald gave a talk entitled “The Miracle of Starbirth“ in which he described the ways in which stars can be formed. … Continue reading