Isle of Wight What's On Guide: 2024 Events OnTheWight

Vectis Astronomical Society Free

Friday 25 7.30pmJuly
2014

Talk

St Thomas' Church (Newport)

St Thomas' Square
Newport
PO30 1SG

This event has now finished

Vectis Astronomical Society Free

Source http://www.wightastronomy.org/

Exoplanets

Jakub Bochinski "From Pole to Pole"

A short tale of exoplanets and how we find them. The talk will take the audience on a journey around the globe, exploring the main methods used to find and characterise new planets outside the Solar System and highlighting the people and instruments responsible for some of the major discoveries achieved to date. Weather permitting, a remotely controlled telescope PIRATE will be demonstrated as well.

Speaker: Jakub Bochinski is a PhD student in the astronomy group at the Open University. He specialises in exoplanetary transit surveys and photometric follow up campaigns. His current research concentrates on short period transiting exoplanets undergoing rapid mass loss, such as WASP-12 b or KIC 12557548 b. He is also involved in the SuperWASP follow up programme as a core member of the PIRATE telescope team, having contributed to discoveries of WASP-54 b and WASP-56 b among others. In addition, Jakub Bochinski is an avid and frequently awarded astronomy populariser, chairman of the OU Astronomy Club and a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society.

For this month only, the talk is in St. Thomas's Church, Newport Square

The Vectis Astronomical Society meets on the 4th Friday of every month, except for December. This event is open for non-members to attend. The speakers come from all over the country and give a presentation for around 45 mins. We then stop for a break with tea and biscuits, which gives an opportunity to mingle and chat.

The second half of the evening sees a presentation by one of our regular members showing us what to we could see in the sky over the coming month.

This always involves some great pictures projected onto the large screen. Entry to the event is free of charge, although as we run as a charity, donations are always welcome.

Newsletters are available at the entrance for a suggested donation of £2.00

Please see our website for contact and membership details.