Professor Sanjeev Gupta is one of the leading academics directing the Mars Curiosity mission, where his role is to analyse ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars and determine if the Red Planet could ever have been habitable for life. He is a geologist in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College, and has […]

by Chris Mann January is perhaps the best month to understand how all the constellations all fit together.  Find a dark site and just go out and look.  The Milky Way sweeps across the whole sky, overhead, from north-west to south-east and it’s a glorious sight. Almost all the major constellations seem to be embedded it, […]

Our first observing session of 2014 and our first for many weeks, due to weather, proved to be an enormous success. The event was not only promoted as a Flamsteed observing session, but also as one of the BBC’s Stargazing Live’s events which took place the same week. We elected to hold the event on Thursday […]

Greg Smye-Rumsby is a popular planetarium presenter at the Royal Observatory, where he also leads astronomy classes. He produces detailed star maps and astronomical artworks for ‘Astronomy Now’ magazine, and is well known to members of the Flamsteed, having given some very popular lectures to us in the past. Greg stated that, had he given […]

by Mike Meynell Here is a list of objects to view in the sky in December 2013: Comet C/2012 S1 ISON. Unfortunately, the comet seems to have completely disintegrated. We may see a meteor shower in early-mid January. However Comet C/2013 R1 (Lovejoy) is well placed in pre-dawn skies. Venus is an evening object, about magnitude […]

Report by Christina Chester Every night in the past week, weather forecasters for London skies had predicted cloud cover. Sadly, there was no exception for Tuesday evening where the Museum Members’ Christmas Market had taken place. Evading the ice-cold temperatures outside, Flamsteed members set up a selection of telescopes beside the Christmas tree at the entrance […]

As the new organiser for our members-only event I was a little nervous of the weather not being kind to me, especially with the last couple of weeks of wind, rain and the astronomers nemesis; cloud, but as the day went on, my spirits were lifted by the clearing skies and the fair reports. As […]

Chris Lintott needs little introduction to Flamsteed members. He is a co-presenter on the BBC Sky at Night programme and, as a trustee of the National Maritime Museum, a regular visitor to the Flamsteed. His talk to the Flamsteed was about trying to answer a rather unusual question. Is our own Milky Way galaxy special […]

Pictures by Sumitra Sri Bhashyam, Daniel Berrange and Michael Kaye. Video by Sumitra Sri Bhashyam Our regular monthly Blackheath Stargazing event had been scheduled for either Friday 8th or Saturday 9th November, depending on weather conditions. The huge amounts of rain that fell on Friday put paid to any hope of running an event on […]

The latest meeting of the Flamsteed Radio Astronomy group was held in the Endeavour Room at the ROG on Saturday 26th October 2013. Grey Lipley opened the meeting by welcoming those present and in particular some new faces amongst some more familiar ones. He then got the meeting underway by giving a short presentation on […]