Talks by our guest speakers at the South West Astronomy Fair on the 28th June

Entrance tickets for the event and tickets for each of the talks can be purchased on the day, or online in advance through the link on the Astrofair page.

Mike Foulkes: The Full Moon

Mike’s talk on the Full Moon will feature the Moon in general, but in particular will show us what can be seen around the time of Full Moon including lunar eclipses.
Mike Foukes is director of the BAA Saturn, Uranus & Neptune section.

Martin Lewis: Practical Aspects of Modern Hi-Resolution Planetary Imaging

The talk will start with a quick overview of the current best method of planetary imaging – using a high speed digital video camera at the eyepiece end of the telescope to gather thousands of frames of data. This data is then processed with specialised free software to give amazingly detailed views of our near-neighbours in space. The principles of digital video imaging will be discussed along with factors affecting the resolution and how to optimise the imaging set-up. Mention will be made of the benefits of stacking, which magnification to use, what gain and exposure settings are best, and the benefits of accessories such as atmospheric dispersion correctors. The aim of this talk is to give an idea of what the current ‘state of the art’ is in modern planetary imaging. The talk will be extensively illustrated with Martin’s own images and videos, all taken from his back garden in St. Albans.
Martin is a professional engineer and part-time planetary imager, telescope builder, and deep sky sketcher. He images using his home-built 444mm and 222mm Dobsonian telescopes. Martin has been shortlisted in the Astronomy Photographer of the Year for the last 8 years, primarily in the Planets section, and has been a category winner
twice.

Megan Argo: How not to go the way of the way of the dinosaurs

We all know space is a very big place – the fastest rocket to ever leave the Earth took nine years to reach Pluto, and that’s just our cosmic back yard. But when we hear news stories about asteroids passing close to Earth, our local corner of the Universe can sometimes feel uncomfortably crowded. Have you ever wondered just how much stuff is floating around in the inner solar system? How many asteroids are there, and what are they made of? Just how much of a risk do they pose, and what are the chances of another impact on
the same scale as that which wiped out the dinosaurs many millions of years ago? Join astronomer Megan Argo for a crash course in planetary defence as we tour the local astronomical neighbourhood, looking at the numbers, sizes, shapes, and even composition of asteroids. We will take a look at how astronomers go about detecting asteroids, why this is becoming more difficult all the time, and how we might do something about it if we did spot one on a collision course.
Dr Megan Argo BEM, is a professional astrophysicist and award-winning science communicator, she is a Senior Lecturer in Astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire.

Chris Lintott: Our Accidental Universe

Exploring a cosmos as vast as ours is bound to result in a few surprises. In this talk, Chris Lintott (BBC Sky at Night/University of Oxford) explains how astronomers stumble across their discoveries. From the rich diversity of worlds in our Solar System to the edge of the observable universe, he will explain what we know about the cosmos is usually the result of happenstance. Along the way, we get a whistle-stop tour of cutting edge science and encounter sometimes profound, sometimes amusing but always thought-provoking
stories from astronomy’s past.
Prof Chris Lintott is an author, a broadcaster for the BBC’s long-running Sky at Night program, and involved in all sorts of public engagement and outreach projects.