Roy Hookway entertained us with a splendid talk about Charles Messier. Roy has been a Flamsteed member for over 10 years, and for 13 years was Secretary of the Thurrock Astronomy Society. Roy’s interest in Messier began when he came across ‘Messier objects’ and was told only that Messier was a French bloke who found […]
Professor Carl Murray from Queen Mary College, London, returned to the Flamsteed for his 4th appearance over the last 10 years, to give us an update on the Cassini mission to Saturn (see links to previous lecture reports at the end of this report). Carl joked that the Flamsteed were like a second family, as […]
After a few events where the weather has not been that great and we have spent more time looking at the 28-inch Great Equatorial Refractor rather than through it, it was nice to be able to open the dome and reveal to our members what a great telescope the 28-inch still is today, despite being […]
Report by Tej Dyal As a year long member, I had signed up for this arranged Flamsteed visit to Romney four times before, but sadly, each time it was cancelled due to bad weather. However, perservence is the name of the game in this challenging but rewarding new hobby and so on this fifth attempt, […]
Colin Stuart is part of the Royal Observatory astronomy team. When not at Greenwich, he writes about science, penning articles for New Scientist, The Guardian, The Observer, BBC Sky at Night magazine and the European Space Agency among many others. His first book – The Big Questions in Science – was published in September 2013, […]
The first Flamsteed History of Astronomy Group meeting of 2014 was an entertaining look at the origin of many of the constellations in the sky that we are familiar with, along with several constellations that have now been lost to the annals of astronomical history. The talk was presented by Tony Sizer. Tony is, of […]
Our first official Observing and Imaging Group session on the ROG’s 28-inch refractor managed to coincide with forecasts of clear skies. An unheard of combination! Not unsurprisingly, the clouds began to gather as our session was due to start, but not enough to prevent the scope being put to some use. Seven of us had attended with hopes of […]
Professor Sanjeev Gupta is one of the leading academics directing the Mars Curiosity mission, where his role is to analyse ancient sedimentary rocks on Mars and determine if the Red Planet could ever have been habitable for life. He is a geologist in the Department of Earth Science and Engineering at Imperial College, and has […]
Our first observing session of 2014 and our first for many weeks, due to weather, proved to be an enormous success. The event was not only promoted as a Flamsteed observing session, but also as one of the BBC’s Stargazing Live’s events which took place the same week. We elected to hold the event on Thursday […]
Greg Smye-Rumsby is a popular planetarium presenter at the Royal Observatory, where he also leads astronomy classes. He produces detailed star maps and astronomical artworks for ‘Astronomy Now’ magazine, and is well known to members of the Flamsteed, having given some very popular lectures to us in the past. Greg stated that, had he given […]
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