Visits (2015/2016)

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2015/2016 Archive pages:

Visits

The society organises trips to visit places of interest, exhibitions and conferences. Members pay for shared transport and any entrance fees as appropriate - with the society obtaining group discounts wherever possible.

2nd - 3rd October 2015 - International Astronomy Show

The International Astronomy Show was inaugurated in 2013 and proved to be a great success - including a visit by HAS members. The next show will be held on Friday 2nd and Saturday 3rd October 2015.

The show has moved to Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire (CV8 2LZ) - the old site of the Royal Agricultural Show.

We will put more details of HAS plans to attend the show here.

Information about the show and talks can be found here:

http://www.ukastroshow.com/

10th October 2015 - Spaceguard Centre, Madley

Saturday 10th October 2015 - A visit to the Spaceguard centre to explore the hazards posed by Near Earth Objects. Also, if clear, an opportunity to use the centre's telescopes.

Please aim to be there by 6:30 pm so we can have a prompt start at 7pm.

Attendees limited to 25 people.

There is an entry cost of £8 per person. There will be an opportunity to offer and share transport at our monthly society meeting at the Kindle Centre on Thursday 1st October

5th - 6th February 2016 - European Astrofest, Kensington

The society organises trips to visit places of interest, exhibitions and conferences. Members pay for shared transport and any entrance fees as appropriate - with the society obtaining group discounts wherever possible.

TBD - Gran Canaria

We've put off the proposed trip to Gran Canaria, hopefully we'll look at it again for next year's calendar.

Saturday 4th June 2016 - Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge

Visit to the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge hosted by Dr Carolin Crawford, which will explore the latest X-ray astronomy research and will include a guided tour of its historic buildings and telescopes. We also hope to visit the famous array of radio telescopes aligned along a former railway line. Further details to follow.

Visit to the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge

Our big trip this year was to visit the Institute of Astronomy at Cambridge where we were hosted by Dr Carolin Crawford. Dr Crawford welcomed us into the Institute's very comfortable lecture theatre where she explained what's done at Cambridge and introduced us to the world of X-ray astronomy illustrated with some tremendous animated graphics and photographs.

Here are some piccies from our trip. She showed us one of the lenses from an X-ray telescope - not what us visual observers are used to. The shiny inside coatings of the carefully shaped concentric tubes look like gold - that's because they are coated with gold !

Dr Crawford then took us on a tour of the historic telescopes and visual observatories at the Institute. Here's the Northumberland observatory - the scope is a 20 foot refracting achromatic with an 11.6 inch lens which was one of the worlds largest refractors. The scope is still used in public observing evening - I rather fancied reclining in the observing chair to look at the heavens.

Dr Crawford next showed us the 36" telescope which, although originally built in the 1950s is still used today for research into stellar radial velocity. By passing the light captured by the scope into a spectrometer, shifts in the spectral lines of key elements indicates the radial velocity. So a scope that's over 60 years old has been at the forefront of finding extra-solar planets using this radial velocity technique!

After a pub lunch we met Peter Doherty who gave us a most comprehensive tour of the Mullard Radio Astronomy Observatory a few miles outside Cambridge. The MRAO has many working telescopes and some vast decommissioned antennae that speak to the great history of radio astronomy carried out at Cambridge. Below are some of the things we were shown - one of the dishes from Manchester University's eMerlin interferometer array, the Arcminute Microkelvin Imager Small Array, a new experimental array that Peter is just building, and a marvellous control panel with lots of switches, knobs and dials which, most disappointingly, has now all been replaced with computer screens:

No, this isn't Paul's new observatory, this is where Jocelyn Bell controlled the Interplanetary Scintillation Array from which she discovered the very first Pulsar

So, we had a fab time - a big thank you to Paul for organising it.

14th - 15th October 2016 - International Astronomy Show

The International Astronomy Show was inaugurated in 2013 and proved to be a great success - including a visit by HAS members. The next show will be held on Friday 14th and Saturday 16th October 2016.

The show has moved to Stoneleigh Park, Warwickshire (CV8 2LZ) - the old site of the Royal Agricultural Show.

We will put more details of HAS plans to attend the show here.

Information about the show and talks can be found here:

http://www.ukastroshow.com/