Next Meeting: Wednesday May 14th at 8:00pm Light Bending in the Sky Alan Heavens

HAG Membership details: •£10 per year - renewable at end of July* •Non-members £2.00 first 3 meetings then annual membership subscription due pro rata for remaining meetings. •Free to under 18s and full time students. Proof of status may be required. •Under 16s must be accompanied by an adult.

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Visitors welcome - £2.00 per meeting

2024-25 Programme (subject to change)

Wed, Sep 11

Roger O’Brien

Distance Scales

Wed, Oct 9

Sam Rolfe

Raman Spectroscopy and the search for life in the Solar System

Wed, Nov 13

Robert Connon Smith

So Simple a thing as a Star

Wed, Dec 11

Jill Stuart

The governance of the "Final Frontier"

Wed, Jan 8

Martin Lewis

Planetary Imaging at the Edge

Wed, Feb 12

Quentin Stanley

The Art of (Numerical) Modelling

Wed, Mar 12

Mike Foulkes

Eclipses.

Wed, Apr 9

David Southwood

A Decade as an ESA Director

Wed, May 14

Alan Heavens

AGM followed by Light Bending in the Sky

Wed, June 11

Jerry Stone

Is Pluto a Planet?

This meeting will be held at: University of Hertfordshire Lindop Building College Lane Hatfield AL10 9AB (What 3 words: stars.stones.energetic) and simultaneously on Zoom. There is plenty of parking space around the venue which is free after 19:00

The wonderful views we get of the night sky are imperfect for many reasons, one of which is that the light doesn’t come to us in straight lines - it is bent by gravity along the way, according to the laws of General Relativity. Those imperfections are full of information, about dark matter, dark energy and about gravity itself. They can tell us what the fate of the Universe will be, and if we live in more dimensions than we think we do. Alan Heavens has been Professor of Astrostatistics at Imperial College London since 2012, having previously been at The University of Edinburgh for many years. His research focusses on careful statistical analysis of patterns in the sky, to learn about cosmology. He has been awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Eddington Medal, and The Gruber Prize with the Planck Team. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and founded Blackford Analysis, a medical imaging company, based on algorithms from astronomy.

Visitors most welcome at meetings or on Zoom

ZOOM

Visual Observing Sessions Our visual observing group is now up and running. You can learn more here or if you want to jump straight in then just complete the Visual Observing Response form below and we’ll let you know when we are next meeting. Next session - To be announced