From sugar lumps to galaxies and superclusters FAS member Charles Dixon had the ambitious title of “Galaxies and Large Scale Structures” for his talk to us in November 2018 and it was, as always with Charles, a thoroughly-researched presentation which took us at a fair lick from the Big Bang to the current understanding of …
Category: Past Talks
Probing the Dark Universe
I approached our October 2018 meeting with some trepidation. The topic “Probing the Dark Universe” usually leaves me as much in the dark at the end as at the beginning. This time, thanks to our brilliant speaker Dr David Bacon of the Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation at Portsmouth University, I felt rather more enlightened. …
Gaia: mapping the Milky Way
Gaia: mapping the Milky Way and how you can take part. To an Earth-bound observer, the Milky Way looks like a band of light across the night sky. We know it is made of billions of stars but only a tiny proportion of these are bright enough and close enough for us to see individually. …
Using a DSLR camera
Astrophotography with a DSLR camera Our February meeting didn’t sound as if it would be a great success. We had known some time ago that the original speaker had postponed. Now we learnt that the replacement speaker had withdrawn because of flu – and even the kitchen urn wasn’t available. Step up to the plate, …
The Twins Paradox
Another look at the Twins Paradox The Twins Paradox – aargh, the Twins Paradox! The familiar version of this is based on a thought experiment where one twin shoots off on a journey through space at close to the speed of light and travels for some years. When he or she returns, they find that …
Pluto revealed
Many of us would have been amazed by the images of Pluto sent back during the fly-past of the New Horizon mission in 2015. We were even more amazed by FAS member Kevin Pretorius’ presentation at our June meeting about the analysis of those images. As always with Kevin’s talks, there was a wealth of …
Discoveries on the Milky Way
The Milky Way, from Herschel to Hubble Many of us attend the talks at the Astronomy Society to learn more and expand our knowledge of the universe. So at the start of Katherine Rusbridge’s talk this week it was quite intriguing to be asked to forget everything we know about stars and galaxies…..even the word …
Making a mirror for a telescope
Making a mirror for a telescope Are you looking for a hobby which will allow you to develop new skills, channel your inner Heath Robinson and lead to a useful product, maybe saving you money as well? If the answer is Yes, then making your own telescope mirror might be just the thing for you. …
Climate on exoplanets
Predicting the climate of exoplanets The weather – that favourite topic for small talk with the British. Most of us must listen to at least one weather forecast a day and moan if it is wrong. Our January speaker, Professor Peter Read of Oxford University, does something which seems much more difficult than forecasting what …
Astrochemistry : the start of life
The debate about the origin of life on Earth is having a bit of a moment at our Tuesday meetings. In September, member Mark Rumsby gave an excellent overview of the conditions needed for life to start, develop and be sustained. He also included ideas about how likely it was that we would ever contact …