Space lecture series

Adult evening lectures on the 2nd Weds of the month by visiting speakers. Includes a short planetarium show about the month's sky. Scroll down for this season's schedule.

Also check out our monthly Adult Evenings and occasional Afternoon Lectures.

 
 Image credit Graham Green HantsAstro 

Tickets & booking

It's best to pre-book as tickets can sell out (nb we don't re-sell for no-shows). If you intend to buy a ticket on the night, please call to check availability.

Tickets: 

£6.50/£5.50 conc (seniors, full-time students or under-16s). Minimum age 11yr.

Special deal:  5-for-4 ticket offer. You need to book all five tickets at the same time (specifying dates). The cheapest ticket will be free.

Booking:

Telephone bookings (01962) 891925. Please have your credit/debit card ready. 

Telephone bookings 9am-10am & 2pm-4pm weekdays only. Sorry; we don't have a bookings team and staff may be too busy to take your call outside these hours. However, we can call you back if you leave your number.

Alternatively you can come to INTECH to book your ticket in person.

Timing

5:00pm    Doors open. Come early to explore the upper-floor exhibition or visit the cafe
6:30pm    Lecture by visiting speaker, followed by question and answer session
7:35pm    Short break
7:45pm    Planetarium Show
8:00pm    End

The cafe sells hot pasties, cold foods (great cake!) and hot/cold drinks.

NEWSFLASH: The cafe will also have alcoholic drinks (limited selection) before the January, February and March lectures. If this proves popular, it will be continued throughout the series. 

NEWSFLASH: After our November lecture about the LOFAR telescope, there were requests for an in-depth explanation of the nitty-gritty of how it works. Derek has agreed to return to give a super-geeky talk about this on Thursday 1st March. Full details.

Forthcoming Lectures

Past lectures detailed here. 

8th February  -  Living in the Sun’s atmosphere

SOLD OUT
 
Dr Lucie Green (Mullard Space Science Laboratory) 
 
The cafe will be selling a limited selection of alcoholic drinks before this lecture.
 
Lecture: The intense light emitted by the yellow, seemingly placid, disk of the Sun hides the reality that the Sun is a violent and active star. This violent side is well seen by telescopes that are put above the Earth's atmosphere can take images of the Sun in ultraviolet and X- ray radiation. This talk will show how space telescopes have revealed the true nature of the Sun since the dawn of the space age in the 1950's, and in particular what we have learnt about eruptions from the Sun called coronal mass ejections.
 
Lucie Green is a  solar researcher based at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL's Department of Space and Climate Physics. She studys activity in the immense magnetic fields in the Sun's atmosphere. These sporadically erupt to form a coronal mass ejection.
 
She take a strong interest in science education and public engagement, and is a member of the Royal Society's Education Committee and was on their State of the Nation reports Working Group during 2007-2009. UCL has been awarded Beacon for Public Engagement with Science status and Lucie sits on UCL's Steering Committee for this project. She runs MSSL's public engagement programme and is the 2009 recipient of the Kohn Award for excellence in public engagement with science. She also works in TV and radio, writes science articles and give talks about the UK's current research in solar system science.
 
 

14th March  - Sophisticated small satellites from surrey

Dr Stuart Eves (Surrey Satellite Technology Ltd) 

The cafe will be selling a limited selection of alcoholic drinks before the lecture.
 
Lecture: Stuart will discuss current and future missions using small satellites, with an emphasis on activities at SSTL and the space-science missions that are now becoming possible as small satellites become increasingly sophisticated. 
 
Dr Stuart Eves is Lead Mission Concepts Engineer at Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL) in Guildford. He initiated the TopSat imaging satellite programme, which established a new world record for “resolution per mass of satellite”. Indeed, the mission was so successful that the engineering model of the satellite now forms part of the space gallery at the Science Museum in London. Stuart has an MSc in Astrophysics, a PhD in constellation design, and has been a fellow of the UK’s Royal Astronomical Society for 20 years.
 
 

11th April  - Stonehenge, pyramids & astronomy

Prof Malcolm Coe (University of Southampton) 

Lecture: the role of ancient monuments in astronomy and/or astrology has long been debated. This talk presents an astronomical perspective on the roles of two of the most famous sites : Stonehenge and the Giza pyramid. Their contribution to our understanding of the motion of the Sun and the precession of the Earth will be discussed.

Professor Malcolm Coe obtained his PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College, London before going off to work for NASA at the Goddard Space Flight Center for several years. Subsequently he moved to Southampton University where he has been since. He is an excellent speaker and is now a Trustee of INTECH so can't say no when we ask him back!

9th May  - From star to star - the story of gold 

Prof Jocelyn Bell Burnell (University of Oxford)
 
Lecture: as the Olympics approach our thoughts turn to the award of gold medals to star performers.  The gold in those gold medals (and in our valuables, in the fillings in our teeth etc) all comes from the stars. This talk describes our latest understanding of how and where the gold in the universe was created, showing how scientific understanding evolves (including going backwards sometimes!)  Along the way we will talk about where elements essential for life such as  calcium, oxygen and iron come from!
 
Jocelyn Bell-Burnell, as a postgraduate student, discovered the first radio pulsars with her thesis supervisor Antony Hewish, for which Hewish was awarded a Nobel Prize. Since this time she has had a successful academic career studying stars and astronomical bodies, has championed women in science, been president of the Royal Astronomical Society and is current president of the Institute of Physics (IOP).  She has received many honours for her scientific research and for engaging the public; she was made a CBE in 1999 and a Dame in 2007. 
 

13th June  - Our dynamic sun: sunspots and climate change

Dr Helen Mason (Cambridge University)
 

Lecture: the Sun goes through an 11 year cycle of activity. For the past few years it has been very quiet, but now it is becoming active again, heading for solar maximum, with an increase in the number of sunspots, active regions and solar flares. This cycle of activity can affect the Earth's environment in many ways. Scientists are monitoring the Sun from space, with several different spacecraft: Hinode, Stereo, the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory and most recently, the Solar Dynamics Observatory. This talk will explore the causes of solar activity, links with space weather and the climate, and what we are learning about the Sun from space observations in the ultraviolet and X-ray wavelength ranges.

Dr Helen Mason is a solar physicist and has worked on many space projects.In 2010, she was named as one of the 'Women of Outstanding Achievement' in recognition of her inspirational work in communication within Science, Engineering and Technology (SET). Helen has participated in many outreach projects and given science presentations to audiences at many venues, including at summer music festivals, with the Sunworshippers team at Glastonbury. She is internationally recognised as a researcher in atomic astrophysics and leads the Sun|Trek project (www.suntrek.org) which explores the Sun and its effects on the Earth.

11th July  - The origin of science

Dr Stuart Clark
 
Lecture: Cold, rational, detached – just some of the words commonly associated with science. In this presentation, Dr Stuart Clark will relate how the fractious birth of science in the seventeenth century was driven by some of the hottest blood of all. People like Galileo, Kepler and Newton dreamed of finding a ‘theory of everything’ – a way to explain all things in the ‘language of God’: mathematics.

Perhaps most surprising of all is that they drew heavily on things that science now rejects: astrology and alchemy. Under funded, under appreciated, driven by the noblest dreams of achievement yet consumed by the pettiest of jealousies, this tale of science’s birth has a surprisingly modern ring to it.

Dr Stuart Clark is a journalist, award-winning author and broadcaster, and an engaging storyteller. Fiction or non-fiction, his work is written with conviction and with passion. He holds a first-class honours degree and a PhD in astrophysics and has devoted his career to presenting the complex and dynamic world of astronomy to the general public.

His latest work is the pioneering trilogy The Sky's Dark Labyrinth, which blends gripping, original historical fiction with popular science to tell of the story of astronomy.

His Twitter account is @DrStuClark and his website is www.stuartclark.com

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

Last Modified: 07/02/2012