With the recent launch of NASA's Europa Clipper mission, this presentation looks back at the history of spacecraft that have visited the mighty planet, the challenges they faced and the […]

Note: Dr Mason will be presenting this talk remotely via zoom The Sun has given us quite a few X class flares recently and even some beautiful displays of the […]

Dr Andrew Gascoyne from the University of Wolverhampton will give a talk on sunspots: Sunspots have long served as a window into the dynamic processes of our nearest star.  This […]

We take a trip down memory lane for a retrospective look at the steady state theory. Starting with its origins and how it compared to the big bang theory. The […]

Society member Linda Manas presents a talk on Trigonometry in Astronomy: Measuring the Earth and the Moon. Linda will discuss early trigonometrical methods of finding the Earth’s tilt, latitude and […]

Most of the UK population live either in a city or town, or near enough to one, that light pollution is a problem for both observers and imagers. Robin Scagell, […]

I am the ninth director of the British Astronomical Association's Historical Section. The first director was a solar astronomer called Mary Evershed (nee Orr). She was the editor of the […]

This talk will explore the Space Shuttle, from its origins, its missions, how it contributed to astronomy and on to current and future Shuttles.

A look at the birth, life and death of stars. What are the three factors (the ABC) that determine why stars are the way they are and why they evolve […]

Have you ever looked at the clouds and wanted to throw your expensive equipment in the bin? Here in the UK, much of the time, a cardboard tube would be […]

'Nova Corona Borealis 1866 was the first Nova to have its spectrum examined.  Eighty years later in 1946 the Nova erupted again, causing great excitement.  Now, after a further eighty years of […]

Special Relativity Without the Maths (or How to Fit a Metre Stick into a Matchbox)You might think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s. You might even […]

NASA’s JUNO mission was launched in August 2011 and has been in orbit over Jupiter’s poles since 4th July 2016, its mission to understand the origin and evolution of the […]

This talk will investigate the astronomical alignments at Stonehenge - both those that are academically accepted and also some others not generally known about. Do they all exist? Are they […]

101 years ago, a 24-year-old English woman had her astrophysics PhD published based on her work at Harvard College Observatory. It bought together 50 years of effort by Harvard’s computers […]

The light from stars is intercepted by molecules in deep space but we do not know what the majority of these particles are. They appear as absorption features in the […]

Pluto was recognised as a planet in 1930 but appeared to be alone until 1978. The discovery of a large moon, Charon, changed our perspective. With the flyby of the […]