Astronomy

Never mind the poster boy of physics, Prof. Brian Cox, Suffolk's got its own super-astronomer, our member Tom Boles, who has an observatory at Coddenham. Tom (who is a Scot, by the way) will be one of the speakers at the Edinburgh Science Festival, together with The Astronomers Royal, Lord Rees and Professor John Brown, Sheffield University's Professor Hughes, and others. The event is free. We'd like to organise an outing to Edinburgh, but we've already had a private presentation from Tom, and it is a long way. However, if you're in Edinburgh in April, why not go and hear him?

Suffolk Humanists & Secularists newest committee member Tom Boles was on BBC Look East yesterday, filmed at his Coddenham observatory with BBC presenter Richard Daniel. They were there to talk about the partial eclipse of the sun but there was too much cloud cover to see it, so they talked about Tom's achievements instead. Tom set a world record last year for spotting more supernova than anyone else.

You have a few hours left to see the interview, about 22 minutes into the programme, if you click here.

If you missed Tom Boles' talk about the Hubble space telescope and what it's revealed about the universe at our July meeting, this might give you an idea of what you missed.

On Tuesday 14th July I offered Suffolk Humanists & Secularists an "Introduction to the Cosmos".  I'm from Coddenham Astronomical Observatory, and I used images from the Hubble Space Telescope and other space and ground based telescopes to describe the Universe in which we live. The talk began in our local neighbourhood and introduced the sizes and distances of the planets in our own solar system. As the Earth shrunk in relative size the journey took us out from the rocky inner planets to the cold gas giants most distant from the Sun. The planets were contrasted in size to the Sun, our nearest star. At this stage the Earth was quickly becoming smaller and less significant.

The situation was further emphasised as larger and larger stars were discussed. Some were so large that the Sun and its entire family of planets could orbit inside them. The distances here were even larger. If the sun were to be represented as a grain of sugar then the next nearest star would be another grain of sugar just over 4 miles away. From the room where we watched the show the grain of sugar would be typically, at Capel St Mary to the south or, towards the north, the bus station at M&S in Ipswich. Pictures of the Hubble ‘Deep Field’ were shown. These showed the most distant galaxies ever photographed.

Our member Tom Boles will boggle our minds with a talk about astronomy, referring to photographs from the Hubble Space Telescope. Come prepared to be awed.

We'll be in the lounge at the Pinewood Community Hall - see map. You'll find directions with the notice of the May meeting in the calendar.