The latest news from Sunderland Astronomical Society
Although it took only three minutes to make our Universe (see ‘Beginning of Everything’) it will take more than a trillion trillion years for it to come to an end. In this talk Dr Steve Barrett (Liverpool University) will talk about this talk looks at what will happen to the Earth, the Sun, our the…
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,…
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…
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.
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.
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…
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…
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…
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…
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.