Entries by Tony Symes

Sept/Oct 2022 Herschel 200: This month we marked the bicentenary of the death of William Herschel in 1822 with a series of three very special events:

Friday 23 Sep 2022 7.30 pm BRLSI Film showing – William Herschel and the Universe. The film director, George Sibley, from Florida, will introduce the film and answer questions afterwards. Friday 30 Sep 2022 7.30 pm St Swithin’s Church, The Paragon, Bath – Concert: A Celebration of William Herschel’s Music, Performed by The Bristol Ensemble […]

Friday 2 Sep 2022 7.30 pm BRLSI lecture – Exploring Astronomy and Space Through Philately – A Brief Introduction

Katrin Raynor-Evans FRAS Image credit: (c) Katrin Raynor-Evans The first astronomy themed stamp dates to 1887 when Brazil issued a perforated stamp, buff and blue in colour, depicting the Southern Cross, an asterism seen in the Southern Hemisphere. Even throughout the 1800s, stamps were being printed with astronomical watermarks, such as suns and stars and […]

Friday 6 May 2022 7.30 pm BRLSI Zoom lecture projected at the BRLSI and delivered from Cambridge 21-cm Radio Cosmology with the Square Kilometre Array (SKA): What happened after the Big Bang?

Dr Eloy de Lera AcedoUniversity of Cambridge. Image credit: (c) SKA Organisation/Swinburne Astronomy Productions In this talk Dr de Lera Acedo will discuss the science behind understanding how the first stars formed and ionised the intergalactic medium, ~ 300 Myears after the Big Bang, effectively transforming a mostly simple and empty Universe into the realm […]

Friday 1 April 2022 7.30 pm BRLSI Zoom lecture projected at the BRLSI and delivered from Texas The Water Cycle of a Cold Early Mars and its Potential Role in the Persistence of a Northern Ocean

Stephen CliffordSenior Research Scientist with the Planetary Science Institute in Flagstaff, Arizona. Image credit: (c) National Aeronautics and Space Administration Investigations by robotic spacecraft have provided persuasive evidence that early Mars was water-rich, hosting numerous lakes and possibly a northern ocean that covered as much as a third of the planet. This talk will review […]

Saturday 5th March 2022 18:00 GMT – Free Zoom Webinar: New Views of William Herschel (1738 – 1822)

In Memory of Michael Hoskin (1930-2021) Professor Woodruff T Sullivan (University of Washington, Seattle, Wash.)Sarah Waltz (University of the Pacific, Stockton, Cal.)John Mulligan (Rice University, Houston, Tex.)David Koerner (Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Ariz.)Clifford Cunningham (University of Southern Queensland, Austin, Tex.)Stephen Case (Olivet Nazarene University, Kankakee, Ill.) On the occasion of the 200th anniversary of William […]

Friday 4th March 2022 BRLSI in-person lecture also available online

The James Webb: The Next Generation of Hubble Telescope

Professor Martin WardEmeritus Temple Chevallier Professor of Astronomy at Durham University. Image credit: (c) National Aeronautics and Space Administration The Hubble Space Telescope has become an icon of Astronomy and it is now more than 30 years old. The new and much more powerful James Webb Space Telescope will soon extend our frontiers of observation. […]

Friday 4th February 2022 BRLSI Zoom lecture projected at the BRLSI and delivered from California

A Tour of the Dynamic Universe

Dr Jeffrey ScargleNASA Ames Research Center, retired. Image credit: (c) National Aeronautics and Space Administration Casual observation of the night sky leads one to view the Universe as well-ordered and stable, changing only in minor ways and regularly, smoothly and predictably at that. Even intensive study with telescopes — starting with Galileo, and including William […]