The Science Museum’s Cosmos & Culture was a ‘temporary’ exhibition opened in 2009 with the International Year of Astronomy to commemorate 400 years of telescopic astronomy. It has proved so popular that it’s still running in 2016 although scheduled to close before the end of the year. Curator Alison Boyle, who is Keeper of Science […]
Imagine being at a gathering where the guest list includes Galileo, Copernicus, Isaac Newton, Edmond Halley, Caroline Herschel and John Flamsteed. That’s pretty much what it felt like as 16 members of the Flamsteed attended our third visit to the remarkable Royal Astronomical Society library at Burlington House in Piccadilly. RAS librarian Dr Sian Prosser […]
On the 10th October 2015, around 20 members of the society enjoyed a tour of the Mullard Radio Observatory at Lord’s Bridge, near Barton, a short distance to the west of Cambridge. Our guide for the tour was Peter Doherty, a member of observatory staff. Peter began by outlining the fascinating and at times secretive […]
Report by Mike Meynell As the main Flamsteed season comes to an end, the month of June has traditionally become a time when we try to arrange trips to sites that are of interest to our members. We were in the fortunate position this year of being able to arrange a tour of the University […]
Brian Blake kindly arranged for us to visit the impressive Royal Astronomical Society Library where we were met by librarian Sian Prosser. Sian gave us a short introductory talk about the RAS and its activities. The RAS was founded in 1820, partly in response to the tyrannical rule of Sir Joseph Banks over the Royal […]
With the help of Bernard Bryant (Store Manager) and Louise Devoy (Curator of the ROG) we were able to take two dozen FAS members to see behind the scenes at Kidbrooke, a secure storage site not normally open to the public. Bernard greeted the group with a short history of the site (it began life […]
Report by Mike Meynell In truth, the Flamsteed don’t need much of an excuse to organise a trip to Herstmonceux, the second home of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. However, it was a bit of a surprise to find that it had been 6 years since our last visit, back in June 2008. It was the […]
Report by Mike Meynell There can’t be many astronomy societies that can boast of having arranged two trips to CERN in Geneva within a year! However, following on from the huge success of our first trip in September 2013, we decided to run a second trip in order to meet the obvious demand from Flamsteed […]
The History Group was very fortunate to be offered a visit to the Museum’s LTE Store on October 25th. LTE is a secure storage site not normally open to the public. It holds most of the RMG’s collection of art, textiles, ceramics, and paper items including globes. Our visit was hosted by Store Manager, Sarah […]
Report by Mike Meynell The first thing you notice on arrival at CERN is the large number of overhead power lines which seem to be heading into some rather unassuming buildings on the Franco-Swiss border near Geneva. Other than this, there is very little hint of the extraordinary things that are going on 100 metres […]
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