We will be holding a public / outreach observing event at the car park, Seapark, Co Down, on Wednesday evening as part of IRISH ASTRONOMY WEEK.
All welcome. Come along, and bring a telescope or binoculars if you have them, We’ll observe a beautiful First Quarter Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and the Pleiades, Orion Nebula, etc. See the amazing performance of the new Seestar Smart telescopes.
ACCESS. Seapark Road, off the Holywood Bypass / Bangor Road, then Right into Ballymenoch Pk. Going from Belfast direction, go past the traffic lights at Holywood, then next left just as the road starts to climb uphll. The car park is at N 54.64705, W -5.82662.
Monthly Archives: March 2026
IAA LECTURE: Wednesday 18 March, 7.30 p.m. Larmor Lecture Theatre, Physics Building, QUB”Exo-rings and Exo-comets” by Dr Ernst de Mooj, Astrophysics Research Centre, QUB
SYNOPSIS
Over the past 30 years, we have discovered thousands of exoplanets, but at the same time we have also started to find other objects around these stars, including exo-comets and giant exorings, some of which might be one astronomical unit across. I will discuss some of these strange objects, how we find them and how we can investigate them.
Brief biography
Dr. Ernst de Mooij is a Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast. He obtained his PhD from Leiden University, after which he became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Toronto. Subsequently he moved to Queen’s University Belfast as the Michael West Fellow, following on from that he was an assistant professor for 3 years at Dublin City University.
His research is focused on the characterisation of exoplanets, focusing in particular on their atmospheres and the circumplanetary environment, including exorings. He has also been investigating exo-comets, particularly those orbiting beta Pictoris.