IAA President Paul Evans gives out the Club News and gives us a trip around the highlights of the Autumn Sky
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Lecture – Weds 4th Oct – Dr Sophie Murray, Trinity College, Dublin – “Cloudy with a Chance of Flares: the importance of Space Weather Forecasting”
Our speaker at this meeting is Dr Sophie Murray, currently a Research Fellow at TCD where she works on Space Weather projects within the Astrophysics Research Group. She has previously worked with the Met Office on Solar Physics and Thermospheric Modelling projects.
Dr Murray has over ten years experience as a research scientist, analysing and visualising large volumes of satellite data, and developing and verifying modelling techniques. Her current research interests range from solar flares and active regions to the impact of space weather on the Earth's upper atmosphere.
Space weather describes the changing environmental conditions in near-Earth space. Severe space weather events in the form of solar flares, coronal mass ejections (CMEs), and solar energetic particle events, have the potential to severely affect a range of vital technologies. It is thus crucial to improve our scientific understanding of solar storms and the Sun-Earth connection in order to provide accurate forecasts of severe events.
Doors open about 7.15pm. There is free parking available on the campus in the evenings. Admission Free, including light refreshments. We are located in the Bell Theatre, Department of Mathematics and Physics, QUB – details here……
With thanks to the Astrophysics Research Centre, QUB, for assistance with this event.
Video – Season Introduction 20th September 2017
For those of you who couldn't make it, here's the Introductory part of Wednesday's Season Opening meeting including highlights of the Summer, an outline of the first half of the coming season, a look at the Night Sky, and the presentation of the Aidan P Fitzgerald Medal to speaker Professor Mark Bailey!
Enjoy!
Lecture – Weds 20th Sept – Prof Mark Bailey, Emeritus Director of Armagh Observatory. “Ancient Stones and Comets: Developing the Giant-Comet Hypothesis”
A bright comet can become the most prominent object in the sky other than the Sun and Moon and a source of wonderment and awe for those lucky enough to see one. This talk begins with an introduction to comets, their origin and proximate source in the Oort cloud; and then discusses evidence for exceptionally large, so-called "giant" comets with diameters 50km to 100km or more.
Such an object can be expected to arrive in the inner solar system at intervals of the order of 50 to 100 thousand years, and debris from their evolution may produce a very much more "active" sky than that experienced today.
Evidence for the arrival of the most recent giant comet some 10 to 20 thousand years ago suggests a possible explanation for mankind's early interest in the sky, a powerful motivation for the erection of monuments with astronomical associations, and the origin of religion.
Doors open about 7.15pm. There is free parking available on the campus in the evenings. Admission Free, including light refreshments. We are located in the Bell Theatre, Department of Mathematics and Physics, QUB – details here……
With thanks to the Astrophysics Research Centre, QUB, for assistance with this event.
IAA Members’ Eclipse Success
We're very pleased to report that a number of IAA members on holiday in the USA have had excellent viewing conditions for the Total Solar Eclipse – the featured image comes from Andy McCrea in Idaho with excellent conditions also being reported from Terry Moseley and Kate Russo in Wyoming and a number of members of the Irish Astronomical Community in Oregon.
Congratulations all, well done!
More to follow.
IAA Perseid Meteor Shower Barbeque – Sat 12th August – Delamont Country Park
The Perseid Meteor shower is caused by the Earth passing through the debris trail of Comet 109P Swift-Tuttle which orbits the Sun with a 130 year period. The meteors hit the Earth's atmosphere comparitively fast, aprroximately 35 miles/sec or 120,000 mph and burn up at a height of around 50 miles.
Our traditional Perseid barbeque and Observing will be held at our observing site at Delamont Country Park.
We have chosen Saturday 12th August as offering the best weather prospects, though the Moonrise at 11:02pm will compromse viewing somewaht, the brighter meteors should still be visible.
Bring your own Barbeque, food and drink, regrettably Terry and his famous Barbie are not available this year.
Meet at 8:00pm for the Barbeque with observing from 10:30pm onwards.
IAA Solar Day at WWT Castle Espie – Sun 6th Aug
The next popular IAA solar outreach day will be on Sunday 6th August from 2:00 to 5:00. All the usual attractions – solar observing if clear, telescope display, meteorites to handle, exhibition of space & astronomy items and of course the ever popular starshows in the Stardome, courtesy of Armagh Planetarium. Shows will run at 2:00, 2:45, 3:30 and 4:15 and tickets are bookable at the reception desk at Castle Espie
The "Solar Days" are generally held at one or two venues during the summer months and provide an excellent opportunity to promote astronomy at a time when dark skies don't arrive until late at night and we're getting prepared for our lecture programme which starts in September. They are always popular events and all ages are catered for.
“Heavens Above” exhibition comes to Bangor! 3rd – 29th July
‘Heavens Above’ is an Astrophotography exhibition presented by The Irish Astronomical Association. All are welcome to the launch on Mon 3rd July 1.30-3.30pm in the Carnegie Library – Hamilton Road, Bangor. The exhibition is open until 29th July.
This is a free family event with Tea & Coffee, an incredible Meteorite display, solar viewing with telescopes, weather permitting, talks by Prof Stephen Smartt from QUB, Dr Mike Simms from the Ulster Museum and Paul Evans from the IAA.
All 40 images on display have been taken by our members.
The exhibition runs until 29th July 2017 and has previously been staged at a number of high profile venues with huge popular acclaim, including the Linenhall Library, Belfast, the Lisburn Island Arts Centre, the Clotworthy House gallery, Antrim and the St Patrick Centre, Downpatrick. The meteorites displayed are an exciting new addition to the exhibition originating from asteroids, the Moon and even Mars before they make a fiery landing on our own planet Earth. These meteorites are both rare and valuable and this is your chance to get up-close with these remnants from the solar system’s other worldly bodies.
This piece concerning the Meteorites on display was written by Dr Mike Simms of the Ulster Museum….
From Heavens Above to Hell on Earth
The meteorite that exploded high above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013 weighed about 10,000 tons and was just 17 metres across. But travelling at 40,000 mph it exploded with the force of more than 20 Hiroshima bombs! So imagine the effects of a meteorite 3 or 4 kilometres across hitting the ground at this speed. It would literally create a Hell on Earth. It formed a crater perhaps 40km across and 5 km deep. Temperatures reached as much as 10,000oC, the meteorite and thousands of cubic kilometres of the rock it hit would melt or even vapourise. Blobs of molten rock were flung out across the landscape by the impact. They form a distinctive layer, an ‘impact deposit’, that spreads for hundreds, or even thousands, of kilometres in all directions from the crater.
On Earth these impact craters and impact deposits are very rare. Over countless millions of years most are buried or eroded away. In the UK only two impact deposits, and one deeply buried crater, have ever been found. For the first time ever pieces of both of these unique impact deposits, and some pieces of the Chelyabinsk meteorite, are on display together as part of the Heavens Above exhibition which runs from 3rd to 29th July at Bangor Carnegie Library. They are on loan from National Museums Northern Ireland.
In the far north-west of Scotland is an impact deposit up to 12 metres thick, with green chunks of impact-melted rock mixed with red sand. It was deposited almost 1200 million years ago, flung out from a 40 km diameter crater that now lies deeply buried beneath northern Scotland. The other impact deposit, found near Bristol, forms a layer just a few cm thick. It is made of tiny ‘beads’ of impact-melted rock deposited just 214 million years ago. Amazingly, geologists have shown that the source of this deposit is actually in eastern Canada, at the 100 km diameter Manicouagan Crater!
Surrounded by breathtaking pictures of the night sky in the peaceful setting of the library, these unique rock samples were witness to catastrophic events when Heaven and Earth collided in the distant past.
Annual General Meeting, Weds 12th April
Wednesday 12th April marks the date of the 43rd Annual General Meeting of the Association. The purposes of the meeting are to review the activities of the past year, elect a new Council for the coming year and for the Council to receive feedback from the membership on how they – that's you – would like to see the Association develop.
We have also had a sub-committee sitting to decide whether or not the prestigious Aidan P Fitzgerald Award should be awarded this year, and if so, who the recipient should be.
This award is given no more than once a year for "Outstanding Service to the Association" and is named after one of the leading members of the Association in the 1940s and 50s.
As well as the formal business, which we will try and complete as quickly and efficiently as possible, we will a showing of a short film marking this day as "Yuri's Night", being the 56th annivaersary of Yuri Gagarin becoming the first man in space. Then we'll have a telescope auction, bring and buy and telescope clinic, so if you're looking to buy some new gear, bring some maony along and grab a bargain!
All are welcome, though of course only paid up members are eligible to vote on business matters. Doors open about 7.15pm. There is free parking available on the campus in the evenings. Admission Free, including light refreshments. We are located in the Bell Theatre, Department of Mathematics and Physics, QUB – details here……
With thanks to the Astrophysics Research Centre, QUB, for assistance with this event.
Lecture – Weds 29th March – Henry Joy McCracken – Institut d’Astrophysique de Paris – “The Euclid Mission: finding out what dark matter and dark energy really are”
The nature of dark matter and dark energy remains one of astronomy’s most profound mysteries. Scheduled for launch in 2020, ESA’s Euclid satellite will map precisely the distribution of dark matter in the Universe and provide the most accurate measurement yet of the cosmic acceleration.
Taken together, these two observations will provide a stringent test of our cosmological model. In addition, Euclid will provide an unprecedented legacy of high-resolution imaging over tens of thousands of square degrees of sky.
In my talk I will describe the Euclid mission and the challenges of realising such a precise experiment.
Euclid is an ESA mission to map the geometry of the dark Universe. The mission will investigate the distance-redshift relationship and the evolution of cosmic structures by measuring shapes and redshifts of galaxies and clusters of galaxies out to redshifts ~2, or equivalently to a look-back time of 10 billion years. In this way, Euclid will cover the entire period over which dark energy played a significant role in accelerating the expansion.
Doors open about 7.15pm. There is free parking available on the campus in the evenings. Admission Free, including light refreshments. We are located in the Bell Theatre, Department of Mathematics and Physics, QUB – details here……
With thanks to the Astrophysics Research Centre, QUB, for assistance with this event.