STEM Talk Programme
STEM subjects lie at the heart of the NLO’s activities, past and present. The NLO’s STEM group meets on the first Tuesday of each month at the NLO to hear talks from members or invited speakers.
As part of the scheduling process, below is a rolling, evolving, list of possible topics for talks. The list is in no way prescriptive; all STEM-related topic suggestions are welcome. The list is a mix of people who have made STEM contributions that impact astronomy, new models/theories that help interpret astronomical observations, and techniques and technologies that have advanced astronomy.
If a topic on the list stirs your interest, or you have new topic suggestions, please let us know. All the better, if you offer to give a presentation on highlighted, or new, topics, to the group.
Presentations should plan to be between 30 and 40 minutes long and are followed then by an open discussion led by the meeting’s Chair. Presentations can be entirely oral, oral with hands-on practical demonstrations, or rely in part or wholly on screen projections (N.B. If you would like help preparing slide materials, please contact us).
- Telescope designs
- Atmospheric aberrations
- Radio astronomy
- The photon
- Blackbody radiation
- Astronomical aberration
- John Lamont
- Diffraction gratings
- UFO stories and other nonsense
- Henry Roscoe
- Spectrometers on Hubble and the JWT
- The Sun’s Chromosphere
- Atomic clocks
- Radiation detectors
- Atmospheric refraction: observations and correction
- Star spectra
- The search of extraterrestrial life
- Isaac Newton
- Making lens and mirrors
- 19thC Astronomical photography
- The Red Shift
- Robert Ball
- Spectroscope design
- Angelo Secchi
- Etc.
Upcoming STEM talks will appear in “What’s On at the NLO” on the website
STEM Group talk team:
Robin Devonshire (r.devonshire@sheffield.ac.uk)
Bob Miles (milesb436@gmail.com)