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 demonstrated excellence in research, including a strong publication record, and co-leadership of the working group on active galactic nuclei within the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) collaboration. She is is an exceptional role model and promoter of increasing diversity in Astronomy and Physics. She also has an outstanding track record in outreach and communication, focussed on young people in the North East of England. She speaks with great clarity and enthusiasm in public talks, and her lecture topic should be of great interest.

A link to the recording of this lecture is available here.

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. Accredited to NASA.

There is the real and fascinating probability that in the future we will be confronted with extraterrestrial worlds whose physical conditions and compositions result in chemistries radically different from our own. This is the Humphry Davy Lecture, first given at the Royal Society of Chemistry in London last autumn.  It outlines our current knowledge of the origin and distribution of the elements in the universe, as we try to push as far as we can into astronomical environments where complex chemistry is taking place. Currently we believe we have a remarkably good understanding of the processes and astronomical sites that have led to the formation of the elements in the periodic table. Except for hydrogen, some helium and a little lithium, all of them have been synthesised since the beginning of the universe. Recent spectroscopic observations to high redshifts are enabling us to follow their build up in galaxies from back in the earliest times to the present. The discovery of many planetary systems beyond the Solar System, and the investigation of dense interstellar environments, imply a huge unexplored range of chemical possibilities and may lead to profound implications for life in the Universe. It is suggested that extensive theoretical investigation of these enticing possibilities may be both possible and necessary.

Mike Edmunds is Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff University, and the immediate past-President of the Royal Astronomical Society.  He was educated at Cambridge, but has lived and worked in Wales for fifty years. His research career involved the determination and interpretation of the abundances of the chemical elements in the Universe – particularly through spectroscopy of galaxies – and investigation of the origin of interstellar dust. Later work has been in the history of astronomy, including the ancient Greek Antikythera Mechanism. He was a member of two UK Research Councils. He is a Vice-President of the Herschel Society and an Honorary Vice-President of the Society for the History of Astronomy. He can occasionally be seen in his one-man play about Newton – ‘Sir Isaac Remembers…’. He was the subject of BBC Radio 4’s ‘The Life Scientific’ in April 2024, also appearing on “In Our Time” in November.

A video recording of this lecture is available here.

The William Herschel Lecture

Dr Robert Fosbury

Friday 14th March 2025 7.30 pm in the BRLSI, Bath, and on Zoom

Life on planet Earth has evolved for billions of years in the presence of light from the Sun. Over recent decades, radical changes have taken place in the lighting of the built environment which have, for the first time in evolutionary history, removed the non-visible regions of the spectrum present in natural daylight. This absence, driven by the quest for the energy efficiency of lighting, is resulting in the disruption of human metabolism that may have health costs that far exceed the modest reductions of energy use for lighting that may have been achieved. In this talk, I discuss the way in which near-infrared light penetrates deep into living tissue where it allows the body’s metabolic systems to work at the level they have evolved to achieve.

A video recording of this lecture is available here.

From the Discovery of Uranus to the Astronomical Observatories of Ireland

Professor Michael Burton, Director of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium

The image is a sketch of M51, the Whirlpool Galaxy, by William Parsons, 3rd Earl of Rosse in 1845.

William Herschel’s discovery of Uranus in 1781– the first new planet found by humanity since antiquity – made him famous overnight.  It also profoundly changed our conception of the cosmos and stirred the imagination, a driver for the Enlightenment and the emergence of modern science.

The consequences were many, one of which was the founding of an observatory in Armagh, now the longest running observatory in the British Isles that has been continuously used for its original purpose – of exploring the cosmos.

Richard Robinson, Archbishop of Armagh and the Primate of All-Ireland, knew Herschel from the time he spent in Bath in the years following the discovery of Uranus. He was inspired to found Armagh Observatory in 1790 by it.  A century later the famous “New General Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars” (the NGC) was compiled in Armagh by its then Director, John Dreyer. The NGC is the successor to John Herschel’s General Catalogue, made using the Grubb 10” telescope in Armagh that still works today. 

In Birr Castle, in County Offaly in Ireland, the 3^rd Earl of Ross, William Parsons, was motivated by Herschel’s “40 foot” telescope to build his Great Telescope in 1845, with its 6-foot speculum mirror – the Leviathan – so succeeding Herschel’s 40 foot as the world’s largest telescope. Using it, and working with the Director of Armagh Romney Robinson, he uncovered the enigma of the spiral nebula, what we recognise today as other galaxies situated far beyond our own Milky Way,

Today the historic observatories of Ireland – Armagh, Birr and Dunsink (Dublin) – whose astronomers have worked closely together from their foundations – have come together as the Astronomical Observatories of Irelands with the aspiration to seek UNESCO World Heritage accreditation for their outstanding astronomical heritage, still very evident at the three sites today.

Each observatory also has ambitious plans for their sites. All are still active in scientific research and education in addition to their heritage, serving as beacons for the public communication of science in our challenged 21^st century world, where many of the pressing problems faced by humanity must be tackled through the application of science.

As we approach the 250^th anniversary of Herschel’s epoch-making discovery of Uranus in Bath – which will occur on the 13^th of March in 2031 – it is timely to ask how might we mark this discovery and celebrate the achievements of all the Herschels in their pursuit of frontline science?

Professor Michael Burton is the Director of the Armagh Observatory and Planetarium as well as the President of the International Astronomical Union’s Commission C4 on “World Heritage and Astronomy”.

His own career in astronomy has followed in some of Herschel’s pioneering footsteps.  It began in Edinburgh studying cosmic sources of infrared radiation (as first discovered by Herschel) using one of the first telescopes specially built for the infrared – the UKIRT in Hawaii.

Over the past decade he has been studying the structure of our Milky Way Galaxy – of which Herschel drew the first map – using radio telescopes in Australia in order to map out the giant clouds of molecules where stars are forming.

Today he runs both the Observatory and Planetarium in Armagh, where research & discovery, education & outreach, history & heritage all come together and contribute to a sense of place and civic pride in the community.

A link to a video recording of the lecture is available here.