Members Talks Evening

So, the final lecture of the 2013/14 Flamsteed season is over.... extraordinarily our 58th Flamsteed event since the start of the season in September. I'm going for a long lie down after this season is over!!

We were treated to some very interesting talks tonight. Brian Blake's talk about his recent trip to Brazil was a real eye opener. Fascinating to see how popular astronomy is in that vast country, and also wonderful to see how young the members of the astronomy society that he met were. Let's hope that we can build some links with some Brazilian societies and other astronomy representatives.

Chris Mann gave us a very interesting technical presentation on variable stars. A fascinating subject, given the number of different types of variable star that exists, and Chris gave us some very useful advice on how to observe them. Particularly interesting that it doesn't matter if you observe variable stars in light polluted skies... ultimately what matters is relative brightness when measuring variable stars, so this is clearly a task that can be performed even by urban astronomers.

Mike Dryland's talk about George Airy was absolutely fascinating. Those of us who attended his history of astronomy talk, at the inaugural meeting of that group, back in April 2013, had already seen much of this talk... but it was certainly worth repeating. Airy was a fascinating character, who was involved in a vast number of projects, but Mike managed to distil this information into a superb short talk, which everyone thoroughly enjoyed.

There will be no 'members talks' evening next season, as we have such a packed programme... but the history of astronomy group will provide plenty of opportunities for Flamsteed members to give talks to the society.

What did others think about the evening?