2024 Programme
Meetings are held on the first Friday of each month* at Lhanbryde Community Centre (Robertson Road, Lhanbryde, Moray, IV30 8QQ). The Centre is ideal for routine observing either during or after meetings, with only minimal light pollution.
*January, February, March and April meetings will be fully online via ZOOM. This is to avoid having to cancel any meetings due to bad weather locally or affecting the Speakers being able to travel to Moray, and/or Speaker’s availabilty.
In the event of any other meeting having to take place over ZOOM this will be communicated to members by email and the website.
Doors open at 7pm for a 7.30pm start.
Non-members are always welcome – please contact us.
| Friday, 5 January 2024 Andy Green Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (FRAS) |
In search of the Goddess of the Dawn The story of the Aurora |
| Friday, 2 February 2024 Prof. Brad Gibson University of Hull |
How the Universe Will End One of the most exciting questions in all of science remains “How did the Universe begin?”; less spoken about though is the opposite end of the life-cycle: “how the Universe will end…”. Over a rollicking and interactive hour, Professor Gibson will walk you through our Universe, from its birth and toddler phase, to the rough teenage years and mid-life crises, and ultimately, its mysterious fate, billions of years from now. |
| Friday, 1 March 2024 Prof. Ian Robson Science and Technology Facilities Council, Royal Observatory, Edinburgh |
The Pluto Story This talk is about the erstwhile planet Pluto, how it was discovered and how discovery and observations of Kuiper Belt Objects eventually led the International Astronomical Union (IAU) in 2006 to declassify Pluto from being a planet. Although ‘what is a planet?’ might seem to be an easy question to answer, it turns out that the ensuing debate by professional astronomers was both complicated and fractious. The twists and turns of how Pluto finally came to be demoted by the IAU are revisited on a personal basis – astronomical democracy in action – or not, and what was the legacy from the decision and what have we learned from the New Horizons space mission to Pluto and beyond. |
| Friday, 5 April 2024 Hazel Collett BAA |
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| Friday, 3 May 2024 Dr. Howie Firth MBE SIGMA |
The Bear and the Ship An old Shetland folktale and a 2,000-year-old Mediterranean voyage lead Howie Firth on an astronomical trail to Siberia and ancient Egypt. We visit the islands of Fetlar and Paxos, and take a journey in the sky with the star Canopus and two constellations. |
| Friday, 7 June 2024 | AGM |
| Friday, 5 July 2024 | Equipment Night/Solar Observing |
| Friday, 2 August 2024 Dr. Hugh Hudson University of Glasgow |
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| Friday, 6 September 2024 Pete Sherman SIGMA |
Navigating the Night Sky |
| Friday, 4 October 2024 Prof. Andrew Cameron University of St Andrews |
Exploring small planets with TESS, HARPS-N and CHEOPS Extrasolar planetary systems contain both familiar planet types – gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn, ice giants like Uranus and Neptune – and unfamiliar ones such as rocky super-Earths and mini-Neptunes with extended atmospheres. But what about true Earth analogues? In principle these are easy to detect with space photometry from missions like TESS and CHEOPS, but weighing them with ground-based spectrographs like HARPS-North is proving to be a headache – thanks to the stellar equivalents of sunspots and faculae that mottle the faces of their host stars. These mask the stellar orbital reflex motion that reveals a planet’s mass. Andy will talk about some recent successes, and a major new initiative to bring ultra-realistic, large-scale computational models of the physics of stellar photospheres to bear on the problem. |
| Friday, 1 November 2024 Pauline Macrae HAS |
Weird Stars Not all stars are born equal and this can lead to some real monsters, large and small, out in space looking and behaving in weird ways. This talk looks a little closer at some of these stars but beware, nightmares are made of these… |
| Friday, 6 December 2024 Christmas Quiz SIGMA Members and your Families |
Bring along the family for a night of fun, questions and mince pies to end the year. There will also be the usual Christmas raffle. |