Meetings and Events

Friday 2nd May 2025 19:30 Main Talk Peter Goodhew “Setting up and operating a robotic telescope for remote astrophotography”. Live talk.
Peter will describe how amateur astronomers go about making such discoveries, and some of the challenges involved. He will take the audience through a typical case study. He will share some of the most remarkable, and beautiful discoveries made by the team, including some strange and unexpected objects.

Peter is part of an international team of amateur astronomers collaborating in searching the Cosmos for undiscovered objects. The team have already made over 200 discoveries. He coordinates the operation of a network of 6 high-performance robotic telescopes located in dark sites in Spain. Peter is a Fellow of The Royal Astronomical Society and a frequent contributor to Astronomy Now magazine.

Friday 6th June 2025 William Joyce "Astrobiology." Live talkWith an astrophysics degree, William has worked in space research at Leicester university with Earth remote sensing satellite instruments and in industry in laboratories, space software engineering and later in aerospace systems engineering. William changed career in the mid 2000's and obtained a degree in Earth and Planetary science and followed this with university teaching and astronomy work

Friday 4th July 2025 19:30 Main Talk Tony Roberts "Airborne Observatories" Live talk.
Tony Roberts has observed the heavens since a child in the sixties and is the current chair at both SAGAS and Croydon Astronomical Society.

No Meeting in August

Friday September 5th 2025 19:30 Main Talk Les Brand will talk Royal Observatory Greenwich and his career
Les is a part-time astronomer at the Royal Observatory and Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society: delivering shows to schools and the public; leading the Evening with the Srars events. He teaches introductory online courses on astronomy and Astrophotography .
Les has his own back garden observatory, and owns several telescopes and cameras with which he battles London's light pollution and clouds! He was an advisor on the recent BBC series Universe, where he showed it was possible to capture an image of a distant galaxy from Canary Wharf.
Although his knowledge of astronomy and astrophotography is largely self-taught, Les successfully completed a masters degree in astrophysics in 2022 and loves to inspire new learners and the next generation.

Friday 3^rd October 2025 19:30 Main Talk Owen Brazell "Galaxy clusters"
Bio:
Owen has been interested in astronomy from an early age and got his first telescope when he was ten years old so has been involved in astronomy for over 50 years. He did an astronomy O level, probably the only time he used a Patrick Moore book, and this led to him doing an Honours degree in Astronomy at St Andrews University and then a part time MSc from Queen Mary college but has spent his working life in the oil exploration industry. Nevertheless, he has found time to be on the council of the British Astronomical Association a number of times and was deputy director of its deep sky section for 20 years. He now holds the post of President of the Webb Society and is also chairman of Abingdon AS. He has also been on the council of the FAS. His main interests are in visual deep sky observing which he does with a variety of telescopes up to 22” in aperture. He also has an interest in observing comets and in solar observing. He has given talks on various aspects deep sky observing to many societies and has written a monthly deep sky column in the Astronomy Now magazine for many years. He also writes a monthly Galaxy of the Month column for the Webb Society website. He has also contributed material to a number of books. Owen has also been a keen attendee at star parties and he has been at some of the best sites in the world for these.

Friday 7th November 2025 19:30 Main Talk TBA
Ian has a background in physics, electronics and programming. He is a very enthusiastic, active member of the Altair Group which is currently carrying out research into the detection of exoplanets in PCEB binary systems using Eclipse Time Variations (ETVs). The most recent published paper by the Group is:
Eclipse timing variations in post-common envelope binaries: Are they a reliable indicator of circumbinary companions?

Friday 5^th DECEMBER 2025 RENE BRETON subject tbc
Rene Breton received his PhD in Physics from McGill University, Canada, in 2009. He is a Professor of Astrophysics at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, University of Manchester. His main research interests revolve around the study of pulsars, which he uses to attempt to understand matter under extreme density, gravity and magnetic fields. Some of his past work enabled us to test 'geodetic spin precession' - a phenomenon predicted to exist in General Relativity - for the first time in the strong gravity environment. Rene also has a keen interest for science communication. He recently started applying his data analysis skills for research in the area of agriculture and trying to map the spread of invasive plants using satellite imaging. He recently started applying his data analysis skills for research in the area of agriculture and trying to map the spread of invasive plants using satellite imaging.

Friday 9th January 2026 19:30 19:30 Main Talk Michael Foulkes "TBA"
This talk discusses the most famous of transit events, I.e transits of Mercury and Venus. It looks at the history of Venus transits and the attempts to use these events to measure the distance between the Earth to the Sun. It also discusses other types of transit phenomena including how transits have been used to find exo planets.
Michael is the Director of the BAA Saturn, Uranus and Neptune Section

Friday Febuary 6th 2026 19:30 Colin McGill Cosmology Part 1: Essentially going from 1920 when we still didn’t know whether galaxies were internal or external to our own galaxy until modern day

Friday March 6^th 2026 19:30 Colin McGill Cosmology Part 2: Why physicists are so convinced about inflation

Friday 1st May 2026 19:30 Main Talk Ian Smith TBA
I’ve been an amateur astronomer for several decades and used to be chairman of the Abingdon Astronomical Society for many years. My own astronomical interests started with planetary observing and then imaging. Then when the planets effectively disappeared from UK skies, I turned to imaging PNe, which I’ve now been doing now for the last 6 years or so.

Friday 5th June 2026 James Fradgley Msc FRAS MinstP "Astronomical causes of climate change" More factors than they tell you about in the press: solar effects, Milankovitch etc

Observing Events weather permitting