19th January Lecture: Galaxies – One Gigayear at a time
What are galaxies, how are they classified, how are they formed: What do we understand about their lives, and their influence and how many pretty pictures can Julian can fit in one talk.
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16th February Lecture: What is Space?
We know surprisingly little about the nature of the stage upon which the universe’s great show plays out. In this talk Graham Darke will take us through the ages, along the way examining humanity’s developing understanding of what space is. It will bring us right up to the modern era where what we know today…
16th March Lecture: Tackling Turbulence
As larger telescopes get, as more light they gather. This together with the wish for higher spatial resolution gives rise to the development of telescopes of larger size. However, while the light gathering power increase works very well, due to the perturbations of our atmosphere the larger telescopes not necessarily deliver images of higher resolution,…
24th November Lecture: James Webb Space Telescope JWST+3
In this talk Dr Steve Barrett will talk about the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) nearly 3 years after the launch of the JWST on Christmas Day 2021, this shorter talk reviews some of the images and spectra released to date.
15th December Lecture: The Star of Bethlehem
The Star of Bethlehem. Talk this Sunday 15th December 7pm. With the academic world closing for Christmas we’re not able to get a guest speaker this month’s talk slot. Therefore Chris Duffy our Chair will do a light hearted topical talk this Sunday on “The Star of Bethlehem“. Assuming the famous star was real, what…
17th November- Sunderland Astronomical Society AGM
The Sunderland Astronomical Society AGM will be taking place on Sunday 17th November 2024 from 7:00 pm at our base of operations Discovery Room at the Washington Wetlands Centre. SAS members are invited to attend, listen to chair’s reports and vote in the election of the committee and nominations are asked from the SAS members. The agenda is…
20th October Lecture: Searching for Living Fossils of the Early Galaxies in the Local Universe
JWST has revealed exciting discoveries of galaxies that existed only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. However, due to the faintness of these distant galaxies in JWST observations, obtaining detailed information such as their environments and chemical distributions remains challenging. Extremely metal-poor galaxies in the local universe, a type of dwarf galaxies…
SAS Memberships – New Season 2024-2025
September is the start of our new season. SAS Memberships will be due from 1st September 2024 (payable throughout September) for this season 2024/2025 Joining/Renewing helps support your local astronomical society & community. So come on down to the Cygnus Observatory (based at the Washington Wetlands Centre) to join or renew your SAS membership. The SAS is the largest…
15th September Lecture: How did the Moon get there?
Rocks returned to Earth by the Apollo astronauts over 50 years ago profoundly changed our view of how the Moon has formed. This talk will review our current understanding of the Moon’s formation, explaining planet formation more generally and how computer simulations are being used to try to infer what happened 4.5 billion years ago.
7th September: SAS Starbeque
This year’s Starbque will be held at our usual venue, the Millshields car Derwent Reservoir on Saturday 7th September 2024. We meet around 3pm for our picnic / barbeque and continue into the night for stargazing. A bit of cloud or rain will not stop the event going ahead but we will consider an…