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May 2021
LDAS Monthly Meeting – The Parker Solar Probe, touching the face of the Sun
Tonight's talk will be given by Keith Townsend. Launched on 12th August 2018, this adventurous probe will complete many firsts during the next seven years. It will become the fastest man-made object at around 432,000 miles per hour, it will fly closer to the sun than any other object, passing less than four million miles from the surface and it will be the first to physically encounter the sun's corona. There will be a brak following the talk and then…
Find out more »June 2021
Monsters in the Dark by Dr Matt Bothwell
Tonight's talk will be given by Dr Matt Bothwell. Matt is our new Honorary President so this is a great opportunity to 'meet' him - well, as much as Zoom allows! Giant elliptical galaxies are by far the biggest and rarest galaxies in the modern Universe. But how do they form? When astronomers used the Hubble Space Telescope to examine the formation of galaxies, peering back billions of years, there didn’t seem to be anything big enough to produce an…
Find out more »July 2021
LDAS Monthly Meeting – The James Webb Space Telescope TBC
Tonight's talk will be given by Dr Stephen Wilkins, Reader in Astronomy at the School of Mathematical and Physical Sciences (MPS) at the University of Sussex, STFC Leadership in Public Engagement Fellow, Head of Astronomy and the Director of Outreach and Public Engagement (DOPE) for MPS. He has lectured extensively on the upcoming joint NASA, ESA, and Canadian Space Agency Webb Telescope. The JWST should launch on 31Oct21 and has a great deal of expectations resting on it's success! Following…
Find out more »August 2021
LDAS Monthly Meeting – a PICNIC!
Yes, a picnic. We have decided to have a first social event for a long time, and decided on a a casual occasion where members can get together and discuss whatever takes their fancy. So, if you need some advice on setting up your equipment, or any other help, come along. There will be a brief 'formal' part to the meeting where the committee will remind everyone who they are and we ill be able to support any new members…
Find out more »September 2021
LDAS Monthly Meeting – “The Rise of a Giant – Extremely Large Telescope”
Dr Aprajita Verma (Dept Physics, Univ of Oxford) Project Scientist for the UK Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) Programme and International Program Coordinator for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory. Responsible for conducting independent research on galaxies at all redshifts. With a primary mirror of diameter 39m (about 20% larger than Stone Henge's Sarsen Circle), the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) will be the "World's Biggest Eye on the Sky" operating in the visible to infrared (IR) wavelength range.…
Find out more »October 2021
LDAS Monthly Meeting – Hawking’s Black Holes and the Edge of Physics
Tonight's talk will be given by Paul Fellows. In this lecture Paul will look at the first ideas behind "black holes" and then look at how in 1976 the young researcher Steven Hawking came to publish a paper shocked the entire scientific world and began his rise to world fame. This paper was the first time that the three separate pillars of modern physics, Thermodynamics, Quantum Mechanics and General Relativity had been brought together to yield a confident new prediction…
Find out more »November 2021
LDAS Monthly Meeting – Time in Einsteins Universe
Tonight's talk will be given by Colin Stuart. It can be wasted and killed. Spent and saved. Kept and lost. Time is one of life's most perplexing mysteries. In the century since Einstein turned our ideas about time upside down, we know more about it than we ever have, but big questions remain. Can you go back and kill Hitler? What happens to time inside a black hole? Does time even really exist? Find out our latest thinking in this…
Find out more »December 2021
LDAS AGM, and end of year talk by Pete Williamson
Tonight is our Annual General Meeting, and is for members only. More details to follow. The AGM will commence at 1900 and the talk at 2000. After the AGM we will have our final talk of the year: Herschel to Hawkwind, Music and the Cosmos by Pete Williamson FRAS.. Pete talk mixes history, science and astronomy with music how each influence each other! Pete is a musician and amateur astronomer with a wide range of talks covering a plethora of…
Find out more »January 2022
LDAS Monthly Meeting – Mega-Constellations and Space Debris – What future for ground based Astronomy?
Prof Don Pollaco Dept of Physics, Univ of Warwick) will give tonight's talk. Here we look at the prospects for ground based astronomy in the new era of satellite mega constellations. The shear number of satellites and launches is expected to exponentially increase over the next few years. Not only will this impact on our view of the universe but it will also dramatically increase the amount of space debris bringing forward the prospects for a Kessler event. In this…
Find out more »February 2022
LDAS Monthly Meeting – The Solar Cycle by Lyn Smith
Lyn Smith is the Director of the British Astronomical Association Solar Section and will give a talk entitled "The Solar Cycle". Lyn will give a brief history of the solar cycle and then look back in more depth at solar cycle 24 and the sunspot groups that featured. We will then consider the progress of the current solar cycle and speculate as to how that may develop over the coming decade. There will be an astronomy news update from Gordon…
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