cork amateur astronomy lecture meeting

Dr Michael Tremmel, Creating the Universe on a Computer, Mon 17 April 2023, 8 pm

A Cork Astronomy Club public lecture held in UCC’s Civil Engineering (Ashley Cummins) Building

Not all astronomy is done with a telescope. Large-scale computer simulations, run with the help of high performance computing facilities around the world, provide a unique view of the cosmos as well as crucial theoretical predictions that inform astronomical observations. Dr Tremmel, a lecturer in UCC’s School of Physics, will give an overview of how astrophysicists utilize simulations and conduct numerical experiments to better understand the formation and evolution of galaxies and the supermassive black holes at their centres.

The title of the lecture will be “Creating the Universe on a Computer ─ How simulations help us study galaxies”.

Above: Dr Tremmel rescues Schrödinger’s cat

Where and when

Venue: UCC’s Civil Engineering (Ashley Cummins) Building, near UCC’s College Road entrance. Directions here.

Start time is 8 pm prompt, so please arrive 10 minutes early.

This lecture is open to all. There will also be club announcements and a sky this month presentation, and if you are new to our Club you will get a feel for our activities.

When we finish at 9.45, you can stay and chat for a few minutes after the end of the formal meeting, with tea and coffee served.

Go to Events Calendar

James Quain, “The Sundial ─ the world’s oldest clock”. Mon 13 Mar 2023

A Cork Astronomy Club public lecture held in UCC’s Civil Engineering Building

Telling the time is one of the earliest applications of astronomy, and the sundial, the earliest device to tell time of day and divide daylight into hours. James Quain, a member of Cork Astronomy Club with a lifelong interest in sundials, told how these installations work and the astronomy they are based on.

James illustrated how time is depicted, and discussed the development of sundials from the earliest known examples.

Above: James with his Armillary Dial.

A sundial we learnt, consists of two parts: a gnomon to cast a shadow, and a dial plate. We found out things we didn’t know we didn’t know … the extraordinary variety of sundials … James brought his own replica of a portable wooden dial as used by shepherds in the Pyrenees, and a model of the earliest known sundial consisting of two stones ─ another portable device used by the Pharaohs in 1500 BC.

For most sundials (but not the shepherd’s dial) you need to know north. But a solar compass from 1835 works the other way round. It uses two very different sundials (image below), you turn it till they both agree, and hey presto, it’s facing South. The world’s largest sundial is at Jaipur in India, and the smallest consist of two metal rings that those who were rich enough in the 18th century kept in their pocket.

Finally James took grave issue with Hilaire Belloc who wrote “I am a Sundial and I make a botch, of what is done much better by a watch”

Workshop, April 15th

For Club members only, James will give a workshop with work in small groups to make a paper sundial, cut out components and assemble, set up & orientation.

Go to Events Calendar

“Space flight, the human factor” – Cian O Regan, Mon 9 Jan 2023

A Cork Astronomy Club public lecture

Cian O Regan talked about human factors in space flight, problems that arise and what is being done to learn how best to cope with them. Cian is a PhD student at MTU, and his thesis will investigate these questions.

Cian wears a pilot’s cap in an aircraft cockpit, at left of lefthand photo. The recorded behaviour of pilots in emergency situations provides useful data for his research. Right: a hypothetical Mars astronaut controlling a drone.

Sending astronauts to the Moon and Mars will pose huge challenges for the astronauts both psychological and physical, challenges which far surpass what is encountered on the International Space Station. How will astronauts respond and will their ability to perform their duties and to respond to emergencies be impaired? What can be done to mitigate the ill effects?

The 5 hazards of human spaceflight are radiation, altered gravity fields, hostile and closed environments, distance from Earth, and isolation and confinement. Human factors is a field of study to reduce error and increase productivity focussing on the interaction between the human and the machine.

Avoid the Norman door!

We heard about a Norman door, all too common in public buildings – where the design tells you to do the opposite of what you’re supposed to do, and there has to be a sign to correct it. Normanism is to be avoided at all cost in designing spacecraft.

There’s an optimum level of arousal to maximise human performance. Boredom at the low end (think of a 6-month journey to Mars) and strong anxiety at the high end both impair human performance. So is it worth sending humans at all, why not just send robots? Because humans are so much more productive than robots ─ for now, anyway.

Human factors is the field of study to reduce error and increase productivity focussing on the interaction between the human and the machine. For space agencies these are urgent questions and Cian described what has been done so far to address them, and his own research.

The lecture was live streamed over Zoom.

Go to Events Calendar

Prof Paul Callanan on the European Southern Observatory, Mon 13 Feb 2023

A Cork Astronomy Club public lecture held in UCC’s Civil Engineering Building

Dr Paul Callanan, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCC and honorary member of Cork Astronomy Club, gave his annual lecture. His topic – “The European Southern Observatory at 60”. Based in Chile’s Atacama Desert, it’s where Irish and other European astronomers can observe the southern sky. Prof Paul Callanan was a leading campaigner for Ireland to join the ESO and showed many startling images, and outlined the leading role the ESO plays in adaptive optics, and intricate system for stripping out the twinkle from objects viewed by ground-based telescopes.

Above, Prof Paul Callanan in UCC’s Crawford Observatory, and right, an ESO image of an exoplanet and star.

Another field in which ESO leads is the prodigous feat of obtaining images of exoplanets, Paul told us, illustrated by the slide shown above.

Go to Events Calendar

“Satellites over-crowding the night sky? Be a satellite detective” – Frances McCarthy, 14 Nov 2022, 8 pm

A new development in recent years is the launch of thousands of low earth orbit satellites, with Elon Musk’s company Space X being the leader in the field. Frances McCarthy, Education officer at Blackrock Castle Observatory (part of Munster Technical University) will describe how this cascade of satellites has become increasingly unwelcome to astronomers both amateur and professional as they attempt to make observations of the night sky.

Frances, photo above next to a wide field image of the night sky showing satellite tracks, is a favourite speaker with Cork Astronomy Club members. She will introduce Satellite Detectives, a scheme developed by Blackrock Castle Observatory, and will encourage anyone interested in the night sky to help to catalogue and quantify the appearance of the satellite constellations.

Is this a legitimate concern? Are satellites more important than astronomy? What can be done to mitigate the effect on the night sky? Frances will address these questions and a lively discusson is likely to ensue.

Where and when

The venue is University College Cork’s Civil Engineering building. Directions here.

Start time is 8 pm prompt, so please arrive 10 minutes early.

This lecture is open to all. There will also be club announcements and a sky this month presentation, and if you are new to our Club you will get a feel for our activities.

When we finish at 9.45, you can stay and chat for a few minutes after the end of the formal meeting, with tea and coffee served.

Lecture will be live streamed over Zoom. To get the link, email info@corkastronomyclub.com before 5pm on day of lecture. Better still, sign up for our monthly guest bulletin .

Go to Events Calendar

“Tour of Duty in the High Desert at VERITAS”, Dr Josh Reynolds, 10 Oct 2022, 8 pm

Not all telescopes capture visible light. Dr Josh Reynolds, a lecturer in the Department of Physical Sciences in MTU, told us about VERITAS – a ground-based very high energy (VHE) gamma-ray instrument. It operates at the basecamp of the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory 1.3 km above sea level in southern Arizona USA, and consists of four 12 m Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov Telescopes (IACT) which use Cherenkov shower imaging to detect gamma-ray photons with energies above 85 GeV.

Josh covered the history and science of VERITAS along with a personal account of tours of duty to the observatory as a VERITAS collaborator, and didn’t neglect to tell us about the poisonous toads that inhabit the site.

Mirrors on one of the VERITAS detectors, and right, Dr. Reynolds in the VERITAS control room
in the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory

The lecture wase live streamed over Zoom.

About Dr Josh Reynolds

Dr Reynolds has been a member of the VERITAS collaboration since its inception in 2003 (as well as being a member of it progenitor, the Whipple Observatory collaboration) and a co-author of the publication that announced the discovery the Atmospheric Cherenkov Imaging Technique in 1989. He also lectures in the Department of Physical Sciences in MTU.

More about VERITAS

Dr Reynolds took this picture of VERITAS on a research visit at the beginning of September 2022

VERITAS (Very Energetic Radiation Imaging Telescope Array System) is an international astrophysics collaboration between the USA, Canada, Ireland and Germany, involving 9 founding institutions and 15 collaborating institutions (MTU is a collaborating institution). It operates a ground-based gamma-ray instrument at the Smithsonian Institution’s Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory (FLWO) in southern Arizona, USA. This is an array of four 12m optical reflectors that uses the Imaging Atmospheric Cherenkov technique to perform gamma-ray astronomy in the GeV-TeV energy range. Very High-Energy gamma rays are associated with exotic cosmic objects such as supernovae, pulsars, quasars and black holes. Expensive, space-based observatories are normally required to detect gamma rays as they are absorbed in the atmosphere, but VERITAS is able to use the Atmospheric Cherenkov Imaging technique to observe them from the ground. VERITAS has a prodigious research output, with 162 publications in peer-reviewed journals (44 over the last 5 years) including publications in Science, Nature and Nature Astronomy.

Go to Events Calendar

“JWST – what’s all the fuss?”, Dr Niall Smith, 12 Sept 2022

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is on the lips of every astronomer. Dr Niall Smith of MTU and the brains behind Cork’s Blackrock Castle Observatory told us why. Launched on Christmas Day 2021 JWST is sending back images of the universe in previously unimaginable detail. Crucially this telescope observes in the infrared, which is necessary when observing the early universe. Early means far away and moving fast from us, thus extremely red-shifted, hence undetectible in the visible spectrum where the Hubble Space Telescope operates. JWST will supply new information about the early universe, indeed already has done, which will change our knowledge of how it all began and where it’s headed.

Left, the galaxy group Stephan’s Quintet captured by Webb in never-before-seen detail.
And right, Dr Naill Smith with his brainchild, Blackrock Castle Observatory

One of our favourite speakers, we were delighted to welcome Niall to launch our new season of monthly lectures, which after a long Covid-induced absence, will once again be held in our old home of University College Cork’s Civil Engineering building.

The lecture was live streamed over Zoom.

Go to Events Calendar

“Birr Castle in the 19th Century – Mary Field & William Parsons and an Astronomical Leviathan”, John Burgess and Dr Bettie Higgs, 9 May 2022, 8 pm

After a two year absence, Cork Astronomy Club is back at University College Cork, and on 9th May we heard from two Club members about Birr Castle in the 19th Century and the Leviathan telescope. Built by the 3rd Earl of Rosse in 1845, this was for over 70 years the largest telescope in the world.

This lecture was in preparation for a Club members outing to Birr in June.

We used lecture theatre 1 in the Boole basement. We chose this mindful that our old room in the Civil Engineering building was sometimes full to its capacity of 100, and that some of our members and guests will be cautious about attending a crowded meeting. Boole 1 has more than twice the capacity of our old room. The Boole basement entrance is about 70 m north of the Civil Engineering building, see directions.

Lecture theatre 1 in Boole basement, UCC

Go to Events Calendar

“Gravitational Waves and the hunt for the missing Black Holes”, Prof Paul Callanan, 11 April 2022, 8 pm

Cork Astronomy Club is back at University College Cork! On 11^th April, after a two year absence, we are delighted we can restore our monthly lectures to UCC. And our first in-person lecture will be from Paul Callanan, Professor of Physics and Astronomy at UCC and honorary member of Cork Astronomy Club.

Left, Prof Callanan at UCC’s Crawford Observatiory. Right, the black hole image from the Event Horizon Telescope in 2019

Gravitational waves are ripples in the fabric of space-time predicted by Albert Einstein in 1915. Perhaps you can’t really visualise what “ripples in the fabric of space-time” even means? If so you’re not alone! Let Prof Callanan try to help you. He will describe how gravitational waves assist in the search for black holes, and what these mysterious objects are. And if you’re wondering how was it possible to capture that famous image of a black hole (above, right) where the pull of gravity is such that not even light can escape, he’ll explain that too.

We shall be using lecture theatre 1 in the Boole basement. We chose this mindful that our old room in the Civil Engineering building was sometimes full to its capacity of 100, and that some of our members and guests will be cautious about attending a crowded meeting. Boole 1 has more than twice the capacity of our old room. The Boole basement entrance is about 70 m north of the Civil Engineering building, see directions.

This lecture is open to all. There will also be club announcements and a sky this month presentation, and if you are new to our Club you will get a feel for our activities.

Start time 8 pm, and we aim to finish at 9.45. There will be an opportunity to stay and chat for a few minutes after the end of the formal meeting if you want to.

Go to Events Calendar

“What makes a comet Great”, Prof Alan Fitzsimmons, public Zoom lecture, 14 March 2022

Cork Astronomy Club looks forward to welcoming Prof Alan Fitzsimmons of Queen’s University Belfast. Some comets are predicted years or even centuries in advance, whilst others appear at only a few months notice. But in every case they are eagerly anticipated by amateur astronomers, and if taken up in the mass media, by the public at large. This anticipation is sometimes rewarded with an impressive show, yet often, in the event, a comet will disappoint. From his study of comets Prof Fitzsimmons will suggest what makes a comet great. His title is topical, as comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein, even now travelling toward the interior of the solar system, has been described as the largest ever observed..

This lecture will be held via Zoom, and is open to all. There will also be club announcements and sky this month presentation, and if you are new to our Club you will get a feel for our activities.

Start time 7.30 pm, and we aim to finish at 9.00. There will be an opportunity to stay and chat for a few minutes after the end of the formal meeting if you want to. The Zoom link will be sent to all Club members and also to recipients of our guest bulletins. If you are on neither list you can request a Zoom link by emailing us no later than 4 pm on the day of the meeting.

Not familiar with Zoom? If you contact us in good time, we may be able to help. Email us or (except on the day of the lecture) ring Peter on 089-2004553.

Go to Events Calendar