Grant

This week we are joined by our guest speaker Mike Frost (http://www.mikefrost.info/) to give us his talk 'The Green Flash'.

Mike is the director of the BAA Historical Section, his day job is in system engineering but astronomy has always been a major part of his live. He is a past-chairman of Coventry and Warwickshire Astronomical Society, a member of the B.A.A. since 1995, a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and a founder member of the Society for the History of Astronomy. Mike's major interest is the history of astronomy including the history and mythology of sky phenomena, eclipses and transits, especially transits of Venus.

This week Mike will be talking about 'The Green Flash'.

The Green Flash or Green Ray is a fleeting and beautiful phenomenon which can be seen at sunrise and sunset when some part of the Sun suddenly changes colour - at sunset, from red / orange to green / blue. 

This has inspired the imagination of story-tellers from ancient Egypt to the present day. Meet the nerdish Aristobulos, hero of Jules Verne's "Le Rayon Vert", and David Abden, roguish hero of Winston Graham's "The Green Flash", as they try to explain the mysteries of the setting sun.

We very much look forward to welcoming Mike to give us a talk and look forward to seeing you all Sunday.

Meeting details below:

Topic: EP34 - Sunday, 24th January 2021 7:30pm GMT - The Green Flash by Mike Frost
Time: Jan 24, 2021 07:30 PM London

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Meeting ID: 961 1471 3041
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Sorry for the delay - please PM me if you want the link to watch this if you missed it.

See you in just under an hour 🙂

This week another member @George Jones has kindly offer us to give us his talk 'Gravitational Wave Astronomy: A Descriptive, Non-Mathematical Talk'.

George is a physics Senior Lab Instructor at the University of Northern British Columbia in Canada, where he often gives public outreach talks and demonstrations. A childhood interest in space and astronomy led to his career in physics.

Gravitational waves, first observed in 2015, are produced when compact objects such as black holes and neutron stars merge. Just as useful astronomical information can be extracted from light wave signals, useful information about black holes, neutron stars, and cosmology can be extracted from gravitational wave signals.

Thank you George for offering to give us this talk, our first trans-continental talk! We look forwards to seeing you all there Sunday night.

Meeting details below:

Topic: EP33 - Sunday, 17th January 2021 7:30pm GMT - Gravitational Wave Astronomy: A Descriptive, Non-Mathematical Talk by George Jones
Time: Jan 17, 2021 07:30 PM London

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Meeting ID: 958 0536 4889
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Tonights talk starts in around 20 mins 🙂

On 30/12/2020 at 18:36, TerryMcK said:

Dr Rebecca Smethurst aka Dr Becky. She is an astrophysicist at Oxford University. Her bio states “MY RESEARCH IS FOCUSSED ON LOW-REDSHIFT GALAXY EVOLUTION STUDIES; PARTICULARLY THE MECHANISMS RESPONSIBLE FOR THE QUENCHING OF STAR FORMATION. I AM CURRENTLY WORKING WITH SDSS-IV MANGA DATA TO DETERMINE WHETHER NEGATIVE AGN FEEDBACK IS OCCURRING ON A POPULATION WIDE SCALE. COMPLIMENTARY TO THIS, I AM ALSO INTERESTED IN THE GROWTH AND POWERING OF AGN IN GALAXIES WITH MERGER-FREE EVOLUTIONARY HISTORIES.”

Her YouTube channel is excellent, very informative and entertaining and you can contact her through her website https://rebeccasmethurst.co.uk

 

Thank you - will drop her a line.

On 30/12/2020 at 18:07, George Jones said:

In the months leading up to COVID, I gave a couple of public talks on gravitational waves. I don't know if a non-maths talk on what's below would be interesting or appropriate.

 

Gravitational Waves and Gravitational Wave Astronomy

Gravitational waves, first observed in 2015, are produced when compact objects like black holes and neutron stars merge. Just as useful information can be extracted from light wave signals, useful information  also can be extracted from gravitational wave signals.

There's a lot of interest in this area so a talk would be great! 

Welcome back! Kicking off our first StarGaZine of 2021 we are welcoming Steve Clifton / @tomato a longstanding member of SGL who is going to give us his talk 'Astrophotography Then and Now' - A not too technical look at the AP process in the pre-digital age and contrasting that to what can now be achieved with modern amateur equipment.

Steve has had a lifelong interest in astronomy and was an enthusiastic Astro photographer back in the 80’s and 90’s He took up the hobby again in 2014 after a 25 year hiatus, the talk has been sparked by my experiences both then and now and the tremendous advances that have taken place over that time.

It sounds like a really interesting talk and a great way to kick off our programme of talks for 2021 - I'm looking forward to this! Thank you Steve for offering to give us a talk.

Meeting details below:

Topic: EP32 - Sunday, 10th January 2021 7:30pm GMT - Astrophotography Then and Now by Steve Clifton (tomato)
Time: Jan 10, 2021 07:30 PM London

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Meeting ID: 951 4831 7888
Passcode: 942068

1 hour ago, Mark at Beaufort said:

Grant you may find this useful.

http://astrospeakers.org/astro-speakers-list.html

Thanks Mark - I use this a lot already but there's nothing quite like personal recommendations.

1 minute ago, George Jones said:

How long is a typical talk?

45 minutes plus 15 mins Q&A is usually about right. Sometimes longer though.

lol! Not that kind!!!

All,

We want to restart our weekly Zoom talks on the 10th January after a Christmas / New year break.

Does anybody have any speaker suggestions or perhaps would like to give a talk themselves?

If so, please post here or PM me 🙂

Thanks!

Thank you for the super talk last night @MartinB

Many thanks for Jack for giving us this talk - I found it incredibly interesting and learnt a lot - thank you 🙂

Just now, happy-kat said:

zoom is failing to run

 

Eek - all seems OK here so might be a local issue, we are recording it though if you don't manage to get on.

Talk has just started 🙂

This starts in about five minutes 🙂

Long-time SGL member and moderator Martin Bradley (MartinB) has kindly offered to give us a talk he had prepared for this years cancelled SGL star party 'Night Time Landscape Photography'.

Many of you will already know MartinB and have seen the amazing images he posts on the forum and on his 'AstralPeaks' Facebook page. Martin has been photographing deep space objects for several years and more recently have been increasingly attracted to the stunning beauty of rural landscapes at night.

The talk aims to be a guide for taking widefield, nightime images which combine a landscape and the night sky.  Areas covered will include planning, composition, workflow, equipment and, if time permits, a quick Milkyway process in Lightroom.  

Attached is some notes that Martin has kindly put together which will act as a companion to his talk.

This is the second-part of our double bill on Sunday, this is at the usual 7:30pm time. We look forward to seeing lots of you there

Meeting details below:

Topic: EP31 - Sunday, 13th December 2020 7:30pm GMT - Night Time Landscape Photography by Martin Bradley (MartinB)
Time: Dec 13, 2020 07:30 PM London

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Nightime landscape photography notes.pdf

SGL member Jack Martin has kindly offered to do a talk for us this Sunday afternoon 'Spectroscopy Live' (unless raining!).

Jack has been a keen amateur astronomer for over 50 years. Active in Spectroscopy since 1997. He studied Astronomy and Planetary Science at The Open University 2010. Co-authored Practical Amateur Spectroscopy 2004 and author of A Spectroscopic Atlas of bright Stars 2009 for Springer. Also, written articles for The BAA Journal, Astronomy Now, The Webb Deep-Sky Society, The Society for Popular Astronomy. Running The Huggins Spectroscopic Observatory UK since 2013. Doing long term collaboration studies with an international group of Small Telescope Spectroscopists monitoring h alpha lines etc of Be and Syombitic stars using a Shelyak Lhires III spectrograph.

Jack is going to give us a tour of his observatory and explain how he acquires Spectra.

Due to the earlier time, we will record this and make it available for later watching but hopefully some of you can make it to this early slot. We will also be having an additional member talk in the evening at the usual time slot, details to be announced shortly.

Hopefully see lots of you twice on Sunday 🙂

Meeting details below:

Topic: EP30 - Sunday, 13th December 2020 2:30pm GMT - Spectroscopy Live by Jack Martin
Time: Dec 13, 2020 02:30 PM London

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Meeting ID: 920 2020 2953
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If anybody would like to watch this, please PM me and I will send you the private link.

If anybody would like to watch this, please PM me and I will send you the private link.

Very tricky one to judge, lots of excellent entries and we had a lot of different favourites between the judges.

A group of us at FLO have picked our favourites, you can see all the entries here and the winners are....

Winner - Skipper Billy

Runner Up - ZiHao

Runner Up - Rob63

Congratulations all!

Thanks to everybody else who entered, we really get a lot of enjoyment out of seeing people have fun with this data.

We have some exciting news about the IKO project coming soon and some more data!

Sorry all I'm running a bit behind today so we will announce this tomorrow now.

20 minute warning 🙂

This week we are joined by Jonathan Tate (Jay) Director of the Spaceguard Centre and the National Near Earth Objects Information Centre to give us his talk 'The Science of Armageddon'.

For 26 years Jonathan Tate was a serving Army Officer, specialising in surface to air missile systems.  In June 1996 Tate submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Defence and the British National Space Centre proposing the establishment of a British National Spaceguard Centre to study the NEO hazard. Scientists worldwide lent their support. The Ministry of Defence dismissed the proposal.  Later the Department of Trade and Industry established a Task Force to investigate the threat.  The subsequent report validated the hazard, and made significant recommendations for action.  Implementation of these recommendations did not happen.

In January 1997 Tate established Spaceguard UK, which became the largest independent Spaceguard organisation in the world. Thanks to the efforts of the members the subject of Spaceguard has been publicly debated in both Houses of Parliament, and Tate has been a regular contributor on television and radio, also in professional and popular journals Tate is a member of the Board of Directors of the international Spaceguard Foundation, a consultant to the International Astronomical Union Working Group on Near Earth Objects, an associate of COSPAR, the vice-president of the Space Development Council and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.  He is the Director of the Spaceguard Centre in mid-Wales and took over the role of National Near Earth Objects Information Centre in October 2013.

In 2013 Tate was awarded the Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement in Planetary Science. In recognition of his work Asteroid 15116, discovered by the Spacewatch programme in 2000. has been named “Jaytate”.

The Science of Armageddon

The Earth has a long and violent history of collisions with extra-terrestrial objects such as asteroids and comets, causing mass extinctions and severe changes to global climate and geography.  Many smaller impacts, such as the Chelyabinsk event as recently as 2013, have caused considerable damage.

In his talk Tate will analyse the nature and extent of the Near Earth Object (NEO) hazard, how it can be dealt with, and give an up to date account of what is currently being done to address the most significant long term natural threat to the Earth’s ecosystem

We look forward to welcoming Jay on Sunday and hope to see lots of you there 🙂

Meeting details below:

Topic: EP29 - Sunday, 6th December 2020 7:30pm GMT - The Science of Armageddon by Jay Tate
Time: Dec 6, 2020 07:30 PM London

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Meeting ID: 949 9630 3334
Passcode: 659378