JWST’s transformational observations of Uranus and Neptune Professor Tom Stallard, Northumbria University (speaking remotely from Northumberland) The image is the first Neptune auroral observation since Voyager, and the starting point for our observations. At the left, an enhanced-color image of Neptune from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. At the right, that image is combined with data […]
Professor Clive Ruggles, University of Leicester The image is © English Heritage/André Pattenden, The connection between Stonehenge and summer solstice sunrise is well known, but decades of over-speculation, by both astronomers and archaeologists, concerning the use of the monument for observations of the sky have led many to steer well clear of the subject. In […]
Dr Heather Fenwick Johnston, University of Exeter The image is © NASA, ESA, CSA, Jupiter ERS Team; image processing by Judy Schmidt Giant planets like Jupiter play a key role in shaping the architecture of planetary systems. However, they make up only a tiny fraction of the 5,000+ exoplanets known today. Giant planets are found […]
Dr Andrew Wilson, University of Exeter The image is a photo of the young star cluster and nebula IC 1396 © Dr Andrew Wilson Our modern ideas about star formation date back to Immanuel Kant’s nebular hypothesis of 1755. Over the past 270 years, advances in telescopes and computing have allowed us to confirm and […]
Dr Stephen Case Friday 7th October 2025 7.30 pm in the BRLSI, Bath, and on Zoom, note that the lecture will be given remotely from the U.S. For those at the BRSLI Dr Case will be “beamed in” to the big screen. The image is of Dr Stephen Case’s book of the same title. Apart […]
The Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture 7 pm Thursday 20th November 2025 at 10E 0.17 Lecture Theatre, University of Bath and online Dr Victoria Fawcett, University of Newcastle Dr Victoria Fawcett, University of Newcastle Dr Fawcett is a Research Associate at Newcastle University. She works on quasars and how they influence their host galaxies. She has […]
Anthony Symes, Herschel Society Friday 5th September 2025 7.30 pm in the BRLSI, Bath, and on Zoom The image is a portrait, supposedly of Thomas Harriot, which is at Trinity College, Oxford. Thomas Harriot was not only the first in England to be documented as pointing a telescope at the night sky and drawing the […]
Dr Claire Davies, University of Exeter Friday 5th September 2025 7.30 pm in the BRLSI, Bath, and on Zoom The image shows a star surrounded by a protoplanetary disk. Accredited to NASA. The field of exoplanet detection and characterisation has bloomed over the past couple of decades and a wide variety of systems have been […]
Dr Emma Perkins This Wikimedia image is of a mural showing Tycho Brahe taking celestial measurements in a Quadrant, and is from the Danish Royal Library. From his island observatory funded by the Danish king, astronomer Tycho Brahe (1546–1601) conducted a systematic programme of observation that would lay the foundations for significant astronomical innovations of […]
The Davy lecture (The Royal Society of Chemistry) Professor Mike G. Edmunds Friday 2nd May 2025 7.30 pm in the BRLSI, Bath, and on Zoom The infrared image of the Eagle Nebula was obtained using JWST. Stars are born inside the dense, blue-gray “pillars of creation” – vast clouds of dense interstellar gas and dust. […]