James and Martin. Hail storm and rain, but there's still the roof to look at!

Having had the last few observing sessions cancelled due to poor weather conditions, it was with some excitement that we received the “GO” from Martin to head down to his wonderful observatory on Romney Marsh, on what looked like being a beautifully clear night. With Sumitra, Chris and myself in one car, and James travelling from Richmond […]

My goodness what an evening!   Our Flamsteed volunteers covered themselves in glory by providing the backbone and several highlights of the BBC’s Stargazing Live event at Charlton House.  It was the BBC’s London flagship event.  Our team was joined by the ROG astronomers and groups from the Science Museum, Queen Mary College, and elsewhere. For […]

It was a pleasure to welcome back an old friend, Dr Robert Massey, now Press Officer at the Royal Astronomical Society. He was previously Public Astronomer at the Royal Observatory and has appeared many times on radio and TV to explain various aspects of modern astronomy and space exploration.  Robert was instrumental in helping to […]

The main event of the Flamsteed Christmas evening was a lecture by Dr Darren Baskill who is well known to us as an Astronomy Learning Officer at Greenwich where he gives many planetarium shows and runs various short courses.  His main role away from Greenwich is Outreach Officer at the Department of Physics and Astronomy […]

Carl Murray is a member of staff at Queen Mary, University of London, and is part of an international team of astronomers and scientists working on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. His speciality is the study of Saturn’s ‘F’ ring. The lecture started with the projection of an interesting slide showing the ‘G’ and ‘E’ […]

This lecture was presented by Greg Smye-Rumsby who is on the Astronomy staff at the Royal Observatory Greenwich; as part of this role, he presents an “Evening with the Stars” when he operates the 28” telescope; he is a planetarium presenter and he also leads astronomy classes. In addition, he produces some of the graphics […]

This was the first John Griffiths Memorial Lecture, presented in honour of Dr John Griffiths who sadly passed away in 2010.   John was a passionate astronomy teacher and a good friend and mentor to many Flamsteed Members.  The lecturer on this important occasion was Professor Allan Willis who was a colleague and friend of John’s […]

This lecture was presented by Dr Roger Hanson who lives in New Zealand. Roger gained a 1st class honours degree in chemistry from Manchester University, and a PhD from Trinity Cambridge.  He subsequently became a chemical engineer for Big Oil, designing industrial chemical plants.  Roger asserts that there is a strong connection between chemical engineering […]

The 20 biggest cosmic mysteries made simple by Dr Stuart Clark This lecture was presented by Dr Stuart Clark, Senior Editor for space science for the European Space Agency, and a contributor to the New Scientist, The Guardian, and The Times.  Stuart has written several excellent books and this lecture was based upon his recent […]

Jim Al-Khalili is Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Surrey and also holds the Chair in the Public Engagement in Science.  He is well known as the presenter of several excellent TV science programmes. Jim began by explaining that he was born in Baghdad and his father had the foresight to leave Iraq and […]