By Dr Andy McCrea  Andy needs no introduction: as proprietor of North Down Telescopes, for many years he has been supplying amateur and professional astronomers throughout Ireland with all sorts of astronomical equipment from a complete observatory down to an eyepiece or filter. He’s also an accomplished astro-imager, with many excellent photos in Stardust and our exhibitions to his credit. If there’s anything he doesn’t know about telescopes, binoculars and astrophotography, it’s not worth knowing!

He has agreed to step in at short notice as another speaker had other last minute commitments. He’ll bring along a selection of equipment, as well as telling you all you need to know.

Bell Lecture Theatre, Physics Building , QUB, 7.30pm

All welcome. Free admission, including light refreshments.

Here's a synopsis of the talk from Prof Smartt…

"I will describe the remarkable discovery of the first electromagnetic counterpart to a gravitational wave source. The merging neutron star source GW170817 was temporally and spatially coincident with a short gamma ray burst and several teams located a transient optical source within the LIGO-Virgo skymap within 12 hours. A world wide observational campaign on telescopes from x-ray to radio immediately started showing that this electromagnetic transient was unlike any other observed to date. The UV to near-infrared emission showed that high velocity,  low mass material was ejected and powered by the radioactive decay of heavy r-process elements. I will  show how the electromagnetic radiation is consistent with models describing what we expect to see when two neutron stars merge."

Prof Stephen Smartt is a Professor in the School of Maths and Physics at QUB. Previously worked at the University of Cambridge and at the Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes on La Palma.  Awarded the George Darwin Lecture of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2018, and previously held two major european awards : an ERC Advanced Grant , and European Young Investigator award. 

Abstract: Supermassive black holes, million to billion times more massive than the Sun, are now believed to lurk at the centre of every galaxy. Furthermore, it would appear that supermassive black holes "know" in which galaxy they live, as bigger galaxies contain bigger supermassive black holes and vice versa. This suggests that the formation of galaxies and the growth of supermassive black holes are tightly linked, which is surprising considering that despite their tremendous mass such black holes are still much smaller than their host galaxies, just like DNA molecules to a human body. Could they play a similarly vital role in the growth of galaxies?

Here's Prof Doyle with the synopsis of his talk…….

"The first part of the talk is on solar flares, how they occur, their energy, etc .. then I go into stellar flares and show data from Kepler on flares from solar-like stars and discuss whether such super-flares could occur on the Sun .. i include spot data over the past 300 years .. what is happening now, predications for the next cycle, how a super-flare could occur on the Sun .. plus observations from 900 years ago."

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……

Observing at Delamont Country Park is ON tonight Sat 6th Oct

As well as our Lecture with Prof Frank Drury on 3rd October, we hope, weather permitting,  to hold an Observing Night at Delamont Country Park in Co Down on either Friday 5th or Saturday 6th October as part of Irish Space Week, and World Space Week. Keep an eye on this page of the Forum or our Facebook page for the latest update on whether the event is go/no-go.

As well as this, there are many other events taking place throughout Ireland listed on these pages…

Irish Space Week

World Space Week

Throughout most of its long history astronomy has been based on the study of light from the stars and other celestial objects. In the language of physics this is photonic astronomy, the photon being the quantum mechanical particle of light. Yet at least two other astronomies are possible according to standard physics. The graviton, the particle asssociated with gravity, and the neutrino, associated with the weak force, share the property of being electrically neutral and stable and can thus propagate undeflected over cosmic distances. Remarkably both these new astronomies have recorded significant developments in the last few years, notably the simultaneous detection of a merging neutron star binary in both gravitational waves and the optical and the recent claim of an association between high energy neutrinos detected in the ice-cube detector and a flaring AGN. 



Professor Luke Drury has recently stepped down as head of Astronomy and Astrophysics in the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. He studied experimental physics and pure mathematics in Trinity College Dublin before a PhD in Astrophysics at the Institue of Astronomy, Cambridge. Subsequently he worked in the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg, Germany, before returning to Ireland in 1986

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……