Meeting Information

Monthly meetings are held at:

Willingdon Memorial Hall
Church Street
Willingdon
BN20 9HR

Willingdon Memorial Hall Map (courtesy of Multimap)

These are held every month from September/October to July.  We usually have a visiting speaker, but we also have talks by our members, slide shows and demonstrations. Part of the evening is set aside for refreshments and informal discussions.

There is on-road parking available. Doors open at 7.00 pm, and the meetings start at 7.30pm, when members and visitors can browse our growing library of books and magazines concerning all things astronomical and view display panels containing news about the Society and recent astronomical events. Committee members are available for up-to-date information and brief chats both before the meeting and during the refreshments break. 

Any meetings programme is inevitably a pot-pourri of speakers and topics, the choice of which depends on many factors, not least the willingness of an individual to give freely of his/her time. The meetings secretary endeavours to arrange a varied programme to cater for all tastes, in which both professional astronomers and amateurs (all experts in their particular fields) travel from far and wide to share their knowledge with us and keep us up to date with recent developments.

Programme of Monthly Meetings 2008 - 2009

Date

 
Talk

 
Speaker
Speakers may be substituted at short notice

 
10th October 2009

19:30

 AGM
Norman Walker.
14th November 2009

19:30

 "THE DAVID GODFREY LECTURE"
Meteor Showers, Streams and their Progenitors.		 Dr. John Mason MBE
Principal Lecturer at the South Downs Planetarium, Chichester, and Past President of the British Astronomical Association.
12th December 2009

19:30

 "In Search of the Multiverse."
Discussing the evolution of the Multiverse idea from the days of Schrodinger's Cat and the Everett Many Worlds Interpretation up to M-theory and the Cosmic Landscape. Along the way we will encounter Boltzmann's brain and solve the mystery of the arrow of time.
 Dr. John Gribbin - University of Sussex.
Dr Gribbin studied astronomy at Sussex and Cambridge, but is best known as the author of popular science books, the latest of which is "In Search of the Multiverse". He also writes science fiction  and teaches the course "Our Place in the Cosmos" at Sussex University, where he is a Visiting Fellow.
9th January 2010

19:30

 CANCELLED !!!!!!!!!!!  

Rescheduled 6th March.

 CANCELLED !!!!!!!!!!!

.
6th February 2010

19:30

 "Simulating the Universe".
Using computer models, following the growth of the universe, gaining greater insight into the cosmopolitan parameters that describe the large-scale universe, as well as the physical processes that go on within it. The results are surprising!
 Professor Peter Thomas, Professor of Astronomy at the University of Sussex since 1989, following Cambridge University Inst. of Astronomy and Postdoctoral fellowship at the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics.
6th March 2010

19:30

 Members Evening - talks as follows:
What is a Programme? (15 mins)
An Introduction to Astronomical Imaging. (1 hour + or - before and after break)
The Southern Sky. (15 mins)
Gordon E. Taylor.
Richie Jarvis.

Keith Brackenborough
10th April 2010

19:30

 The New Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at the ESO's Paranal Observatory, Chile and Its Work.
 Professor Jim Emerson (Queen Mary, University of London)
8th May 2010

19:30

 The Search for Other Worlds Like Our Own -  (Planned Study of Terrestrial-type Exoplanets and his work at ESA on  CoRoT, PLATO and Darwin.)
 Dr. Malcolm Fridlund (ESA, Noordwijk)
5th June 2010

19:30

 Twenty Years of the Hubble Space Telescope: From near disaster to the world's most famous telescope.
 Dr Robin Catchpole - Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge.
3rd july 2010

19:30

 What are the Biggest Questions in the Universe?
 Dr Stuart Clark - Astronomy Journalist, former Editor of Astronomy Now and Visiting Fellow, University of Hertfordshire.