The May lecture meeting is Monday 14th at 8pm.

We welcome Alistair Hamilton as our speaker on the wide ranging subject that today, affects us all.. RADIO COMMUNICATIONS.

8pm at Cranbrook School.  Contact us for a map, if you are not sure where.

Archaeoastronomy - 11th April 8pm with Charles Barclay

Join us at 8pm Wednesday 11th April 2012 for a lecture on Archaeoastronomy by Charles Barclay.  (free for members and under-16s, others £2 on the door)

We are delighted Charles has agreed to travel from Marlborough College, Wiltshire to give us his fascinating talk, so please come along to meet him and support CADSAS.

Here is a synopsis of the lecture:

Stonehenge and Avebury in UK are sites of global importance and at the focus of this lecture on 7000 years of inherited knowledge common to all Earth’s cultures and nationalities.

The Celestial Sphere was of overarching importance in pre-light pollution skies and the first astronomies and cosmologies brought some order to an otherwise tumultuous existence.

This highly illustrated lecture covers the multinational and multicultural development of astronomical observation and takes the audience on a voyage of discovery, suggesting meaning and significance particularly in Avebury, Stonehenge, Silbury Hill and other ancient sites around the World.

And a brief biography of the speaker:

Charles Barclay graduated from St Andrews University in 1986 in Astronomy and
Astrophysics. Since 2004 he has been Director of the Blackett Observatory at Marlborough College, Wiltshire, where he teaches astronomy and physics. He is an Academic Visitor in the Oxford University Astrophysics Department and an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford. At the forefront of UK Astronomy education, he chairs the Royal Astronomical Society education committee and is chair of examiners for Edexcel GCSE Astronomy and a Principal Moderator for Edexcel Extended Project at KS5. He is also a member of International Astronomical Union Commission 46 (Astronomy in education and development) and sits on the Science Council Education Programme Coordinating Group.

As astronomers and good scientists, we should keep our minds open.

So for our February monthly talk, we will tackle the subject of Astrology and cover some aspects you might want to know about, but are too scared to ask!

Our speaker team have views from “it’s total rubbish” to “science can’t explain everything yet”.

Should be interesting… see you at 8pm in the Lecture Theatre.

Special Offer:  Would you like your personal natal (birth) horoscope calculated for the talk?  If you will be there on the night and are happy to share, please say. Just send me your birth date and time (we will keep the year secret, if you prefer).

Interested to find out about the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva?  Come to our talk on Monday 9th January 2012 at 8pm.

Hear Dr. Colin Lally present an introduction to the LHC, plus some recent results achieved.

(Free for CADSAS members, Cranbrook School students and all accompanied under-16s. Others £2)

The next lecture meeting is Friday 4th November at 8.30pm (note unusual day and time) in the Queen’s Hall.

Please note: £3 per person admission (free for accompanied under-16s, CADSAS members and Cranbrook School students)

It will be an illustrated lecture about The Science of Fireworks by David Turner.

And be warned.. the last time he gave this performance, there were plenty of bangs.

We had a fun observing session tonight. Three from seven, non-Earth, Solar System planets: Jupiter (with moons), Uranus (blue-ish) and Neptune (small).

An achievement, yes?