The Flamsteed Radio Astronomy Group was relaunched with a workshop on Tuesday 17th November 2015 at the Royal Observatory Greenwich. In the 90 minute workshop, Clive explained how to set up simple radio systems for meteor detection and solar flare monitoring. These systems use relatively small radio aerials and cheap equipment, and do not require much technical […]
It has been more than a hundred years since Einstein produced his general theory of relativity and it is still our current theory of gravity. One of the most exotic objects predicted by General Relativity is the black hole, once thought to be theoretical quirks we now know they really exist, formed by the collapse […]
Imagine being at a gathering where the guest list includes Galileo, Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, Caroline Herschel and John Flamsteed. That’s pretty much what it felt like as 16 members of the Flamsteed attended our third visit to the remarkable Royal Astronomical Society library at Burlington House in Piccadilly. RAS librarian Dr Sian Prosser […]
The world is uniting in order to build one of the largest and most ambitious scientific facilities that has ever existed. Consisting of two telescopes in Australia and South Africa, the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) will answer fundamental questions related to the nature of the Universe and our place within it. From spinning neutron stars […]
On the 10th October 2015, around 20 members of the society enjoyed a tour of the Mullard Radio Observatory at Lord’s Bridge, near Barton, a short distance to the west of Cambridge. Our guide for the tour was Peter Doherty, a member of observatory staff. Peter began by outlining the fascinating and at times secretive […]
An impromptu session was arranged on Blackheath this morning to view the total eclipse of the Moon. A few hardy souls turned up at 3am to view totality, and what a spectacular view it was. More pictures will be added to this report as they are received. If you took any pictures of the eclipse, […]
Thermonuclear supernovae signal the sudden and explosive destruction of a white-dwarf star. They are key to calibrating the expansion and acceleration of the cosmos; yet they occur rarely amongst the galaxies of our immediate cosmic neighbourhood. Serendipitously, in January 2014 one such supernova, the closest in a generation, was discovered in the nearby galaxy Messier […]
Our August observing event took place on Saturday August 1st under clear skies. This was a pleasant surprise, as the weather forecast had suggested a slight preference for holding the event on our backup date of Friday. After much dithering it was decided to proceed with Saturday as planned, which turned out to be excellent. […]
Report by Rupert Smith Following a successful FAS Members Solar Observing event at the ROG, we setup on Blackheath in preparation for the conjunction of Venus and Jupiter. The event started before the scheduled 9pm while the skies were still quite bright (and clear – more on that later!). Right from the start we had […]
Report by Mike Meynell We had decided to go ahead with our involvement in the Summer Solstice Sun Day at the Royal Observatory Greenwich regardless of the weather conditions on the day. This was because there were still plenty of indoor activities for attendees to enjoy, not least a solar astrophotography workshop led by Rupert […]
