Friday 4th September 2020 at 7.30 pm on Zoom, Dr Dirk Froebrich, The HOYS-CAPS Project – Hunting Outbursting Young Stars

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The talk will introduce the Hunting Outbursting Young Stars (HOYS) citizen science project. They work with amateur astronomers to study the formation of stars and planets. We will give a brief overview on how stars and planets are forming and discuss how the project relies almost exclusively on data taken by Amateur Astronomers. The second half of the talk will be used to show some of the interesting results they have obtained. The lecturer will also briefly explain how people can participate in the data collection and data analysis.

Dr Dirk Froebrich is a Senior Lecturer at the Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, School of Physical Sciences, University of Kent

The recording of this lecture is now freely available on the Virtual BRLSI YouTube channel. Please go the following link to view.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsNLyRRv57U&t=3s

Friday 6th March 2020, Professor Michael G. Edmunds – Astronomy in an Age of Revolutions: The Foundation and Founders of the Royal Astronomical Society 1820

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Two hundred years ago on a cold winter’s night in January, fourteen men sat down to dinner at the Freemasons’ Tavern in London. They agreed to form the Astronomical Society of London – which would become the Royal Astronomical Society in 1831.  What sort of men were they? What were they hoping to achieve?  In this bicentenary year the talk will look at these colourful characters – some famous, some less well known – with a few others from the early membership, and ask:  what was known about the Universe at that time?

Friday 7th February 2020, Dr Cees Carels, “Dark Matter and Current Direct Detection Experiments”

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A large fraction of the matter content of the universe is thought to be dark matter. There are numerous experiments around the world that aim to detect dark matter or infer its properties directly or indirectly, though to date there has not yet been a conclusive direct experimental detection of a dark matter interaction. Dr Cees Carels will explore the current evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter, and cover in more detail a number of modern experiments and the challenges towards direct detection.

Our lecture programme has been suspended from April 2020 onwards

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Our lecture programme was suspended from the beginning of April 2020 onwards because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore the planned lecture by Michael Perryman on Friday 3rd April 2020 did not take place. The title was “Hipparcos and Gaia – Space Astrometry: unravelling the formation and evolution of our galaxy”. Also cancelled for now is our May lecture which was to have been “How the Sun Paints the Sky” by Dr Robert Fosbury.

The programme will be resumed in September 2020 with lectures streamed live over Zoom complete with Q & A sessions. Tickets will be available from Eventbrite at the same price as for physical lectures (£2 for members/students, £5 for others). Please check this Events page for further details and links to purchase tickets.

Tuesday 26th November, at 7pm, Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture, Bath University – Small Stellar Systems, Big Astrophysical Questions, Dr Anna Lisa Varri, University of Edinburgh

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Friday 4th October 2019, Joint WHS/BIS Lecture – William Herschel and the Rings of Uranus, Dr Stuart Eves

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It is generally believed that the rings around the planet Uranus were discovered during an occultation experiment in 1977. Remarkably, however, the first possible observations of a ring around Uranus may have been made by William Herschel some 180 years earlier. This talk discusses the evidence, and then considers the factors that might have changed to prevent further observations of the rings.

Friday 6th September 2019 – Exploring the Properties of Extreme Matter using Gravitational Waves and Gamma Ray Bursts, Dr David Tsang

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Dr David Tsang was born in Canada, and did his undergraduate degree in Engineering Physics and Maths at the University of British Columbia, followed by a Masters and PhD in Physics at Cornell University. He has worked as a research scientist at Caltech, McGill University, the University of Maryland and the University of Southampton. He is now a Lecturer in the department of Physics at the University of Bath specializing in theoretical astrophysics.