Category for past lectures/events with recordings and/or text version available.

Friday 5th May 2023 The Quest for Cosmic Dawn

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First Results from the James Webb Space Telescope

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Webb’s First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.
Image credit: NASA

Friday 5th May 2023 7.30 pm in the BRLSI and can be attended remotely on Zoom.

Richard Ellis
Professor of Astrophysics, UCL

The first billion years after the Big Bang represent the final frontier in assembling a complete picture of cosmic history. During this period early galaxies formed and the universe first became bathed in light.

How and when did all this occur? Recent progress with the James Webb Space Telescope suggests we may soon witness this dramatic period when the universe emerged from darkness. The motivation is fundamental: the origin of starlight began the chemical evolution which ultimately led to our own existence in this remarkable universe.

Richard Ellis is Professor of Astrophysics at University College London. A Welshman by birth he has held professorial positions at Durham, Cambridge and Oxford universities and spent 16 years at the California Institute of Technology where he was Director of the Palomar Observatory. Richard is a Fellow of the Royal Society and the Australian Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society and the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for his research achievements in cosmology and galaxy evolution. One of the most highly-cited astronomers, he has recently published a semi-autobiographical account of the progress over his career in studying distant galaxies in “When Galaxies Were Born: The Quest for Cosmic Dawn” (Princeton 2022).

“When Galaxies Were Born: The Quest for Cosmic Dawn” is available from Amazon at a cost of £23 with free delivery on this link: https://www.amazon.co.uk/When-Galaxies-Were-Born-Cosmic/dp/0691211302. Anyone who brings a copy of the book to the lecture can get it signed by Richard Ellis.

A recording of the lecture is freely available here.

Friday 14th April 2023 Supermassive Black Holes

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How to feed them and what happens when you do

Image is an artist’s impression of a black hole with accretion disc.
Image Credit: XMM-Newton, ESA, NASA

Friday 14th April 2023 7.30 pm in the BRLSI and can be attended remotely on Zoom.

Dr Carolin Villforth
Senior Lecturer, University of Bath

Supermassive black holes are present in the centres of practically all massive galaxies. Through most of their lives they have little impact on their surrounding galaxies. In rare cases, however, gas accretes onto the black hole, turning it into a so called active galactic nucleus. These objects can outshine entire galaxies. I will explain how gas is driven onto supermassive black holes to make them active and how an accreting black hole can impact its host galaxy.

Dr Carolin Villforth is a senior lecturer in the Astrophysics group at University of Bath. Carolin completed her Diplom in Physics at University of Heidelberg in Germany. She obtained her PhD working on variability in accreting black hole systems from University of Turku in Finland. Before moving to Bath, she held research positions at the Nordic Optical Telescope on La Palma, the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, University of Florida and University of St Andrews. Carolin studies the connection between supermassive black holes and galaxy evolution.

A recording of the lecture is freely available here.

Friday 3rd March 2023 Accuracy, Innovation and the Advance of Astronomy 1923 – 2023

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Image of Laser guide stars in action at ESO’s VLT – credit: ESO/P. Horálek

Friday 3rd March 2023 7.30 pm given in person at the BRLSI and can be attended either in the BRLSI or remotely on Zoom.

Professor Mike Edmunds
President of the RAS and Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at Cardiff University

How have advances in technology changed astronomy over the past 100 years? In this talk I will show just how closely discovery has followed technical innovation, allowing observations that would previously have seemed impossible. Obviously great advances have come with spaceflight allowing observations from outside the Earth’s atmosphere, but two other factors have also been crucial – the development of efficient detectors of electromagnetic radiation and the application of computers to both instrument control and data analysis. Driving down experimental errors in pursuit of ever-more accurate measurements has been important too. I will particularly highlight advances in cosmology, the nature of galactic nuclei and the discovery of exoplanets.

Mike Edmunds is Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics in the School of Physics and Astronomy at Cardiff University in Wales. Both his first degree (Natural Sciences) and Ph.D (Astronomy) were from the University of Cambridge. He moved to Cardiff University in 1974, where he was in succession Research Fellow, Lecturer, Senior Lecturer, Reader and Professor, serving as Head of School between 2002 and 2005. Prof. Edmunds. main areas of research have been in the determination and interpretation of the chemical composition of galaxies and the Universe, and on the origin of interstellar dust.

In recent years he has worked in the history of astronomy. He also has particular interests in physics education and public outreach. He has served on the Councils (and many committees and panels) of the UK Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council and the UK Science and Technology Council. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Royal Astronomical Society. He was the 2004 George Darwin lecturer on “The Elementary Universe” for the Royal Astronomical Society, and has just retired as Chair of their Astronomical Heritage Committee. He is also Chair of the Antikythera Mechanism Research Project, Chair and Member of the Institute of Physics Curriculum and Welsh Education Committees and a vice-president of the Herschel Society.

A recording of this lecture is freely available here.

Friday 3rd February 2023 Ireland and the Herschels – Some Surprising Connections

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Image of Michael Burton in front of the Armagh Observatory and the Troughton Dome, where the oldest telescope in the world still in its original dome resides: credit (c) Armagh Observatory and Planetarium.

Friday 3rd February 2023 7.30 pm from Northern Ireland and can be attended either in the BRLSI or remotely on Zoom.

Professor Michael Burton
Director, Armagh Observatory and Planetarium

William Herschel’s discovery of Uranus in 1781– the first new planet found by humanity since antiquity – made him famous overnight.  It is just one of many discoveries – by William, Caroline and John – that have left their impact on science. 
 
Less well known are the Irish connections to their astronomical endeavours.  Inspired by the discovery of Uranus, Archbishop Richard Robinson (who knew Herschel in Bath), the Primate of All-Ireland, founded Armagh Observatory in 1790.  Armagh is now the longest running observatory in the British Isles continuously used for astronomical research.  The famous NGC Catalogue of Nebulae and Clusters of Stars was compiled in Armagh in 1888, following on from John Herschel’s General Catalogue, using a telescope that still works today. 
 
Motivated by Herschel’s building of the “40 foot”, the 3rd Earl of Rosse built his 6-foot diameter Leviathan at Birr Castle in Ireland in 1845, so succeeding it as the worlds’ largest telescope.  His son, the 4th Earl, followed Herschel’s discovery of infrared radiation from the Sun by making the first observation of the infrared with a telescope – finding it was also emitted by the Moon, so beginning the field of infrared astronomy.
 
The connections between the Herschels and Ireland are multifarious.  Armagh Observatory and Planetarium’s Director, Professor Michael Burton, will expand on some of them.  His own research career can be said to be following in the Herschels’ footsteps.  It began in Edinburgh studying cosmic sources of infrared radiation using one of the first telescopes specially built for the infrared – the UKIRT in Hawaii.  So important has the field now become that the James Webb Space Telescope – the most expensive telescope in history – was built specifically to observe the cosmos in the infrared.
 
In past decade Michael has been studying the structure of our Galaxy – another field started by the Herschel’s – using radio telescopes in Australia to map giant clouds of molecules where stars are forming.  His talk will also touch on this work and reflect on the profound effect the Herschel’s have had on astronomy today.

A recording of this lecture is freely available here.

Tuesday 15th November 2022 Unveiling the Dark Universe with the Dark Energy Survey

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The Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture 2022

7.00 pm Tuesday 15th November 2022 at the 10E 0.17 Lecture Theatre, University of Bath and online via Zoom

Dr Alexandra Amon
University of Cambridge

Dr Amon uses observational data for over 100 million galaxies and a technique called ‘gravitational lensing’ in order to test the Standard Cosmological Model. The intriguing results she and her collaborators find hint at cracks in the currently accepted model for our Universe, which is mostly dark, with over 95 percent of it in the form of dark energy and dark matter, whose natures are the biggest mysteries in modern physics.

In her Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture entitled “Unveiling the Dark Universe with the Dark Energy Survey”, Dr Amon will describe some of the mind-blowing historical moments leading to the paradigm-change, the challenges in the field, the Dark Energy Survey and its results, including the experimental process – from nights at the remote telescope to hurdles in the data analysis. The conclusions will guide the audience to appreciate current mysteries and future directions.

Dr Amon is an expert in cosmology and a Senior Kavli Fellow at the Institute for Cosmology at the University of Cambridge. Before this, she was a Fellow at Stanford University and the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. She obtained her Masters degree and PhD at the University of Edinburgh in 2018 and has numerous awards, such as the Michael Penston Thesis Prize/Fermilab Tollestrup Award. Dr Amon is co-coordinator of the Weak Lensing group of the worldwide collaboration “The Dark Energy Survey”, including over 100 members.

the video of Alex Amon’s lecture is now available on Youtube, here.

Friday 4th November 2022 Views of the Universe with the NASA Chandra X-ray Observatory’s Sharp Eyes

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Image (of the Chandra X-ray Observatory) credit: (c) CXC/SAO/NASA

Friday 4 November 2022 7.30 pm BRLSI in-person and Zoom lecture

Professor Belinda Wilkes
University of Bristol

NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory was launched on 23 July 1999 by the Space Shuttle Columbia. Now in its 23rd year of operations, Chandra continues to be an indispensable tool for expanding the frontiers of knowledge throughout astrophysics. Chandra’s uniquely high (subarcsec) spatial, and spectral resolution have facilitated the deepest and sharpest images of the X-ray sky to date, resulting in changing paradigms in multiple celestial source types. Combining the X-ray data with that from optical, infrared, and radio telescopes gives us an even deeper understanding of each source. I will review Chandra’s unique capabilities, and take us on a tour of some of the most spectacular discoveries across the whole range of celestial sources. These include the birth and death of stars, super-massive black holes, active galaxies, clusters of galaxies, dark matter, merging neutron stars, and more.


Professor Belinda Wilkes is a Royal Society Wolfson Visiting Fellow at the School of Physics, University of Bristol. She recently retired as a Senior Astrophysicist at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian (CfA) (Cambridge, MA, USA), where she served as Director of the Chandra X-ray Center, which operates NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory, from 2014-2020.
Wilkes received her BSc (Hons) in Astronomy and Physics from St. Andrews University, Scotland in 1978 and her PhD in Astronomy from Jesus College, University of Cambridge, England in 1982. She spent two years as a NATO postdoctoral fellow at the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory, and moved to CfA’s High Energy Astrophysics Division in 1984. She is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, American Astronomical Society, American Physical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Cambridge Philosophical Society, and a member of the International Astronomical Union, and the European Astronomical Society. She has received numerous awards, including the NASA Outstanding Public Leadership Medal, 5 NASA Group Achievement Awards, and a NASA MSFC Director’s Commendation, and many Smithsonian Institution Exceptional Accomplishment Awards. In 2018 she was elected an Honorary Fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge University.
Wilkes’ research involves X-ray and multi-wavelength studies of active galaxies: super-massive black holes in galaxy nuclei. She is author and co-author of over 490 science publications, including 170 refereed papers, two books, several book chapters, and multiple articles and interviews in the public media.

the video recording of this lecture is now freely available on the Virtual BRLSI YouTube channel here.

Saturday 1 Oct 2022 09:30 – 17:45 BRLSI All-day conference – A Celebration of William Herschel’s Astronomy

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Image credit: (c)

This event is part of H200 – the Herschel Society’s celebration of William Herschel on the bicentenary of his death.

A joint conference put together by the Herschel Society in tandem with Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institution, and being held at Queen Square in Bath, is the centrepiece of the Herschel Society’s celebration of William Herschel’s achievements on the 200th anniversary of his death in 1822.

If you love astronomy, but Herschel’s home city of Bath feels light years away, you might be pleased to know that you can attend the conference both live at Queen Square and online. Wherever you are in the world you will be able to engage in the company of likeminded enthusiasts.

Why is it that we celebrate Herschel over 200 years after his death? William Herschel’s discovery of the planet Uranus in 1781 brought him widespread fame, but his importance to astronomy rests much more on his pioneering work on the deep sky beyond our solar system over the subsequent decades.

This fantastic day of talks will bring the chance to explore William’s telescope making; observing methods; ground- breaking deductions; unique collaboration with Caroline his sister, in cataloguing the deep sky; his speculative views on life on other worlds. The conference will show what this has led to today in the latest astronomical survey work by the Gaia space observatory. It will also illustrate his achievements in other more surprising ways.

The conference delivers the chance to engage with Herschel’s work at a far deeper level and each talk allows for questions with the visiting speaker. There will also be the chance to talk among yourselves and share thoughts with likeminded friends.


Was William Herschel the greatest astronomer the world has ever known? Charles Draper shares with us just some of the reasons we celebrate Herschel over two hundred years after his death. To know more about Herschel and the breadth of his achievements don’t forget to book your tickets for our conference on October 1st.

Watch Charles Draper now.

Schedule for the day.
9.30 – Welcome and Introduction (Charles Draper, Chairman, Herschel Society)
9.45 – The Context of William’s Life and Work (Professor Mike Edmunds, President of the Royal Astronomical Society)
10.00 – William’s Telescopes (Dr Jim Bennett, Keeper Emeritus of the Science Museum, London) William built the finest deep sky telescopes in the world in the late Eighteenth century, but just how he prepared and finished the reflecting surfaces of these astonishing instruments is less well understood.
10.45 – Coffee
11.00 – William Herschel’s Astronomy (Dr Wolfgang Steinicke, author of William Herschel – Discoverer of the Deep Sky). William and Caroline catalogued 2500 deep sky objects, and William deduced many important characteristics of them and our galaxy as a result. Their results and methods were key pioneering works of modern astronomy.
12.00 – William and Caroline in their own words (Dr Sian Prosser, Librarian and Archivist at the Royal Astronomical Society) William and Caroline have left us fascinating records of their work, including annotations on an earlier star atlas and revealingly different accounts of important events.
12.45 – Lunch Interval (self-organised). Demonstrations by Dr Bob Fosbury (ex European Space Agency astrophysicist and current UCL researcher on vision) on Infra-Red Radiation and Bath Spa University Students of their 3D virtual model of William’s finest telescope.
13.45 – William and Georgian views on extra-terrestrial life (Dr Josh Nall, Curator at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science, University of Cambridge) William strongly believed in the presence of life on heavenly bodies – even the sun. This was not unusual in his time.
14.30 – Giant Strides from Herschel to Gaia; Mapping the Sky from Space (Dr Michael Perryman, Ex Space Scientist with the European Space Agency, including key leadership roles on the Gaia Mission) Tracing the steps of how comprehensive surveys of the sky are revolutionising our understanding of the universe as they did in the Herschel’s’ time.
15.30 – Coffee
15.45 – Round Table Discussion
16.45 – Closing remarks by Dr Allan Chapman (President of the Herschel Society)
17.00 – Closing drinks for those at BRLSI
17.45 – End
JOIN US FOR ‘A CELEBRATION OF THE ASTRONOMY OF WILLIAM HERSCHEL’ , SATURDAY 1ST OCT 2022

Video recordings of the following lectures from the conference are now freely available on YouTube – use the links below.

Link to watch Part 1 here
Introduction (Charles Draper)
The Context of William’s Life and Work (Professor Mike Edmunds)
William’s Telescopes (Dr Jim Bennett)

Link to watch Part 2 here
William Herschel’s Astronomy (Dr Wolfgang Steinicke)
Lunchtime demonstrations (Dr Bob Fosbury and Bath Spa University students)

Link to watch Part 3 here
William and Georgian views on extra-terrestrial life (Dr Josh Nall)
Round Table Discussion
Closing remarks (Dr Allan Chapman, Charles Draper)

Virtual Telescope

Bath Spa Students 3D Virtual Model of Herschel’s 20 ft telescope – you can see the virtual model in a website created by the students here:
https://herschel200.com/


Friday 30 Sep 2022 7.30 pm St Swithin’s Church – Concert: A Celebration of William Herschel’s Music

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The Bristol Ensemble and the Vauxhall Players.
Image credit: (c)

Performed by The Bristol Ensemble and the Vauxhall Players and introduced by Dr Matthew Spring

This programme intermixes music composed by William Herschel during his years in Bath (1766-82) and in the six years he spent in the North of England, with music by those who worked with him and whose music he knew: Charles Avison, Thomas Linley, Venanzio Rauzzini and Benjamin Milgrove. We include music intended for the home, for the church and chapels, for the Assembly rooms, and for the Pleasure Gardens. Instrumental items are intermixed with vocal pieces, both unaccompanied and accompanied, to produce an introduced varied programme that charts the musical life of William Herschel.

  • William Herschel: Symphony di Camera no.4 in D minor (1760), Allegro moderato; Adagio ma non troppo; Allegro moderato
  • William Herschel: Three movements from 24 Capriccios for solo violin (1763), nos. 1, 11, 17
  • William Herschel: Service Music – Te Deum in G major
  • William Herschel: Solo for harpsichord in G major, from Sei Sonate per il Cembalo (1769): allegro grazioso
  • Charles Avison: trio sonata no.2, op.1, in G minor: Andante, Adagio, Allegro
  • Thomas Linley: Song with English guitar, ‘No flower that blows’; William Herschel: Song with Eighteenth-Century Spanish guitar ‘Ah! non lasciami’; Thomas Linley: Madrigal, ‘Let me careless and unthoughtful lying’
  • Venanzio Rauzzini – Opera Aria ‘Infelice! In tant orror’ from Pyramus and Tisbe (1775)
  • William Herschel; Serious Glee in three parts with band ‘We sing of love’; Duetto –‘with thee my Strephon; Pleasure Garden Patriot Song – ‘Let humble faithless France’ (1778)
  • William Herschel: Unaccompanied catches ‘You’r tipsy Tom’; ‘Pray let us sing a merry catch’; ‘Today I am just 29’;’Echo catch’ (1778)
  • Benjamin Milgrove: ‘Funeral Hymn on the death of George Whitfield’; ‘The rose had been washed’ – pleasure garden song with band
  • William Herschel: Symphony no. 9 in F (1761): Allegro assai, Andante assai, Allegretto

If you would like to listen to this music, a virtually identical concert by the same performers and introduced by Dr Matthew Spring, was recorded in a studio setting and is available on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxVgbVNaL8E.

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

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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 early stamps issued in Egypt were designed with a pyramid and star.
Over the decades, we have celebrated astronomy and space on stamps including comets, astronomers, man on the moon and events in the astronomical calendar such as solar eclipses. Exploring Astronomy and Space Through Philately will take you on an out of this world journey looking at and discussing a selection of astronomy and space themed stamps that have been issued all over the world, proving that we can enjoy the wonders of the Universe even on a cloudy night.

Katrin Raynor-Evans is a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and Royal Geographical Society and also a member of the Cardiff Astronomical Society and Astro Space Stamp Society. She writes articles and interviews for popular astronomy magazines including the BBC Sky at Night, Popular Astronomy, Stanley Gibbons and has a regular monthly column for All About Stamps. She is co-authoring her first book and is the astronomer for the Country Focus show on BBC Radio Wales. Asteroid 446500 Katrinraynor is named after her.

This lecture will be delivered remotely from Wales, but may be attended either in the BRLSI or remotely on Zoom.

A recording of this lecture is freely available on YouTube here.

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?

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Dr Eloy de Lera Acedo
University 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 of complex celestial objects we now know it to be today. The SKA, with its unprecedented imaging capabilities, will in a few years be able to image this unexplored epoch of the infant Universe, and a series of precursor instruments are already paving the way. He will discuss these, their science cases and their latest results.

Dr de Lera Acedo is a STFC Ernest Rutherford Fellow at the Cavendish Astrophysics laboratory of the University of Cambridge, from where he leads the Cavendish Radio Cosmology group and the REACH (Radio Experiment for the Analysis of Cosmic Hydrogen) project. Dr de Lera Acedo’s career started designing radio antennas and modelling and calibration techniques for the Square Kilometre Array telescope, and over the last decade has transitioned to cosmology research of the early epochs of the Universe using highly precise calibrated radiometers. The Cosmic Dawn (birth of the first stars) and the Epoch of Re-ionization (subsequent shaping of the InterGalactic Medium by those first stars) are the two unexplored epochs under study by Dr de Lera Acedo’s group at Cambridge.

Dr de Lera Acedo will give the lecture remotely from Cambridge via Zoom. It can be attended remotely on Zoom or in the room at the BRLSI where it will projected. 

This talk was being given remotely from Cambridge and the video recording of this lecture is now freely available on the Virtual BRLSI YouTube channel. Please go the following link to view it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNaZtjsMv6k&list=PLJW1gdt3yAhdurWMK_vHNdlR9w_kHEiwC