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December 18th |
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Mat Irvine dodged the jams on the M25 and brought a selection of models along to our Xmas meeting to illustrate his talk, Creating Space, about space exploration "as it should have been". Since the early 1950's model kit manufacturers have produced model space craft. Some of these were models of existing craft but others explored interesting alternative designs, and it was these others that Mat showed us. He showed how some were designs "ahead of their time", and others contained design elements subsequently used in actual space craft. It may be we'll see craft using other elements from some of these models in future craft.
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November 27th |
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Our President Gilbert Satterthwaite gave us a talk about the Longitude Problem, and in particular about Harrison's Clocks. He illustrated it with many slides, and also explained the alternative favoured by the Astronomer Royal of the day. The Lunar solution involved measuring the position of the moon relative to two or more background stars and then performing a complicated calculation, and could not be expected to produce an answer in less than two or three hours. Unfortunately for Harrison the Astronomer Royal had a seat on the Longitude Board, so Harrison didn't receive the prize due to him until the King himself intervened. The clocks Harrison made are now kept at the Royal Observatory , Greenwich. |
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October 23rd |
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Rob Warren from the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, gave us a talk about Robert Hooke. This year is the 300th anniversary of Hooke's death, and there is a special exhibition at the R.O.G. until January. Hooke is best remembered for his book "Micrographia", but he played a part in many scientific and architectural endeavours during the later part of the 17th century. He worked with many of the great scientists and architects of the time. He was one of the group who formed the Royal Society, and was for a while its Curator. After the Great Fire he was responsible for a significant part of the re-building of London, and helped Wren with the design of the dome of St. Paul's Cathedral. The Monument was largely Hooke's work, and the zenith telescope inside it, though not a success itself, was the inspiration for Flamsteed's Well Telescope at Greenwich. Hooke was responsible for the 8 foot quadrant there, He undoubtedly had a profound effect on the growth in the understanding of science, very probably contributing to many of the developments made by his contemporaries, but he did not himself publish or patent as much as he might have done, and he was critical of some of his contemporaries. Flamsteed and Newton were both targets of his criticism. Today, perhaps, he should be recognised for far more than just "Micrographia". |
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September 25th |
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Roy Easto gave us a talk about The Dynamic Universe this evening, using animated computer models to show how dynamic systems in our universe develop over time. The use of computer models is helping us to understand some of the things we see in astronomical images at all scales from solar systems to clusters of galaxies and inter-galactic voids. As computers become more advanced the complexity of the models can be increased, and results more enlightening, but even relatively simple models can shed light on astronomical phenomena. Among the models Roy demonstrated were ones demonstrating the evolution of galaxies, stellar collisions, asteroid distributions and the development of the early universe. |
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August 30th |
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At our second Public Meeting for National Astronomy Week, Greg Smye-Rumsby again gave us a talk about the planets, and Gilbert Satterthwaite explained some of the finer points of planetary orbits to show us how and why the current opposition of Mars is special. Don Searle brought along his collection of meteorites, and computer and poster displays were also present. The weather smiled on us, and our visitors were able to see Mars itself through telescopes set up on the site of the old High Elms house. Other astronomical sites including Uranus, the Andromeda Galaxy, the Ring Nebula, were also seen, and we hope that some of the fruits of the evening's observing will soon appear in the gallery. Many thanks to all those who helped and organised the events during National Astronomy Week |
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August 28th |
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At our first Public Meeting for National Astronomy Week, Greg Smye-Rumsby gave us a talk about the planets, with particular emphasis on Mars, as it is at close opposition this week. Unfortunately, plans to hold an observing session after the talk were thwarted by the weather, so discussions continues in the pub afterwards instead. |
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July 24th |
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Another Members Evening started with Greg Smye-Rumsby giving us a quick overview of the results obtained from the Time Team Big Dig at the site of the Craig Telescope on Wandsworth Common. He explained the significance of a few of the finds. We expect to hear more about this early next year. Jeff Harries gave a brief report of the all-night observing evening, and Paul Whitmarsh added a report of the Mercury Transit that followed. Tony Buick showed us a number of pictures of the transit. Finally, Ian Tonks gave us a live demonstration of a couple of image stacking and processing programs, using an AVI file he'd taken during an evening of exceptional seeing early in the year. The results produced by both these programs were impressive.
- Registax An excellent CCD image processing program with some clever tricks for sorting, registering, selecting and stacking images from a CCD webcam.
- QCUIAG The QuickCam and Unconventional Imaging Astronomy Group. A mine of information about using webcams and the like to capture astronomical images.
- K3 CCD tools Another CCD image stacking program, with a handy wizard and some fancy features. (The website can be a bit tricky to navigate using browsers other than IE, though. The site's designer would do well to take on board some of the ideas behind The Any Browser Campaign.)
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June 26th |
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This month's talk, about "Planetary Nebulae" was given by Owen Brazell. He started by telling us about the early observations of planetary nebulae by observers like Messier, Ross, and the Herschels. William Herschel first used the description "planetary nebula". Many catalogues of diffuse objects, beginning with those by Messier and Herschel, have included planetary nebulae, but only recently have attempts been made to produce catalogues exclusively of planetary nebulae. In part this has been because it has been difficult to identify them positively. Early spectroscopic observations discovered that their spectra included emission lines which were later shown to be caused by "forbidden" ionisation states of oxygen. However, other objects also show similar spectra. Early catalogues often included objects like supernova remnants which are in some respects similar. While showing us images of planetary nebulae taken by the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories, Owen explained the current theories as to how planetary nebulae are formed. The variety of forms shown in the images helped underline the uncertainties in the current theories, and there is clearly still much to be learned about these fascinating objects. The following links might be useful for anyone interested in learning more.
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May 22nd |
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Bob Mizon gave us an informative illustrated talk about light pollution and the Campaign for Dark Skies. Light pollution is an issue that is beginning to get political notice at last. There are good reasons to use well-directed lighting. Poorly directed light is a waste of energy (which costs money) and can also make locations more dangerous. Deep shadows, often caused by bright but poorly directed lighting, can hide rather than reveal. Bob referred to some of the worst lighting as anti-light because of the way it made things more difficult to see. He showed us slides of many poorly lit locations to illustrate this point. Some of the worst were an over-illuminated car park, a golf driving range and a floodlit church. He also showed us examples of good lighting using horizontal flat-glass fittings so that the ground was illuminated and observers were not dazzled. One important point is that street lamp fittings have an average life of 30 years, so it's important to get councils and other bodies responsible for lighting to adopt a policy of only installing good flat glass fittings as soon as possible. That way, in 30 years time we may be able to see the Milky Way from Orpington again. |
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April 24th |
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Tony Buick gave the main talk at this Members Evening. He described some novel approaches to astrophotography, complete with pictures of various mounts and attachments he has made in order to take photograpms through his telescope and binoculars. He showed us a series of photographs of a particular distant telegraph pole to allow us to compare the effectiveness and field of view of each of the optical asseblages. Brian Weller wrapped up the evening by showing us a few of his fine astro-slides. |
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March 27th |
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Lisa Wright gave us an informative and well-balanced talk with the title "Galaxy Formation: Painting by Numbers", illustrated using computer animations and a practical demonstration using a lycra sheet, a large steel ball bearing and various other less weighty spheres. She gave us an insight into some of the factors that influenced the formation of galaxies in the early universe. Computer simulation can be used to run experiments in galaxy formation that would take billions of years if done for real. The results of a computer simulation can be compared with observations of the real Universe to give an idea of the probable accuracy of the model. Early simulations tended to produce galaxies less varied and smaller than those observed in the real Universe. Factors such as the presence and distribution of dark matter, the density of dust and gas, and the resultant rate of star formation all affect the way galaxies form and involve. Her most recent computer simulations produce results that appear much more like the real Universe, even producing some spiral galaxies (which were missing from earlier results). |
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February 27th |
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Our Annual General Meeting was followed by two talks. The first, from our President Gilbert Satterthwaite was a short tribute to the Pioneer 10 space probe, which has finally fallen silent. Gilbert gave us a brief overview of its contribution to planetary exploration, with particular emphasis on its images from Jupiter, the first ever close-up views of the planet. After the break our Chairman Greg Smye-Rumsby gave us an enthusiastic lightning tour of the Solar System using many fine illustrations displayed to excellent effect using the data projector. |
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January 23rd |
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Our first meeting of 2003 was addressed by James Wilhelm and was about "Amateur Radio Astronomy". His talk included a live demonstration of a PC using a sound card and a spectral analyser program to display a low frequency radio spectrum, and several recordings of radio events. The UKARANet (U.K. Amateur Radio Astronomy Network) website contains a selection of radio astronomy projects, and has the spectral analyser software available for download. |
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