Category Archives: Spacecraft and Spaceflight

Monthly Meeting: Dr. Steve Barrett – Christmas Short Talks

Our guest speaker for November 2024 was to be Mr Gary Palmer – Introduction to Deep Sky Imaging however ill-health means that the planned talk will need to be rescheduled. Dr. Steve Barrett has kindly stepped in, and will be giving two shorter presentations in place of one long one: Continue Reading »

Monthly Meeting: Dr. Julian Onions – “Crazy Interstellar Rockets!”

About This Meeting Our guest speaker for April 2025 is Dr. Julian Onions, of the University of Nottingham, and he will be giving us a talk about: Crazy Interstellar Rockets! What sort of rockets or spaceships could we use to go to the distant stars? We will explore some of the crazier designs that have been proposed over the years, most of which have some possibility of working? The future may be nearer than we think! Continue Reading »

Monthly Meeting: Prof. Philippa Browning: “The weather in space – how do solar flares affect the Earth?”

The October 2025 monthly meeting of Liverpool Astronomical Society for the 2025-2026 session will be held on Friday, 17th October from 19:00 to 21:00. Members of the public are welcome to attend (for free), but please consider joining our Society if you attend more than two monthly meetings. Donations are always welcome but are not required. About This Meeting 19:00 – 19:20 – Meeting opens with Society business19:20 – 20:00 – Lecture20:00 – 20:20 – Tea break in the communal area followed by raffle in the meeting room.20:20 – 21:00 – Lecture continued followed by Q&A and the Vote of […] Continue Reading »

“When NASA Went to the Moon” – Apollo 17 50th Anniversary Event

Liverpool Astronomical Society in association with Liverpool Central Library and Liverpool World Museum would like to invite everybody to join us on Saturday, 10th December 2022 for a day celebrating the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17 – currently standing as the final manned mission to the moon. This event is taking place simultaneously in two prominent city centre venues, conveniently located next door to each other – Liverpool Central Library, and Liverpool World Museum, both on William Brown Street, Liverpool, L3 8EW. Entry to the activities and information desks in Central Library is free. Talks being held at the World […] Continue Reading »

Monthly Meeting (Presidential Address) – Mr. Steve Southern – “Focus on Zeiss Slides from the Gemini/Apollo Era”

The first Monthly Meeting of Liverpool Astronomical Society for the 2022 – 2023 (139th) session will be held on Friday, September 16th from 19:00 to 21:00. Those of you wishing to become members may do so at this meeting (see below for more information.) This meeting is our Presidential Address, and as such our speaker is LAS President Mr. Steve Southern, whose lecture is entitled: Focus on Zeiss Slides from the Gemini/Apollo Era Zeiss produced slides in the early days of the NASA Gemini and Apollo missions. The Society has obtained a set of these. My talk describes the slides […] Continue Reading »

Monthly Meeting: Dr. Steve Barrett – “Fiat Lux III”

The November 2021 monthly meeting of Liverpool Astronomical Society for the 2019 – 2021 (138th) session will be held on Friday, November 19th from 19:00 to 21:00. Our guest speaker this month is Dr. Steve Barrett, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Physics at the University of Liverpool, whose lecture is entitled: “Fiat Lux III” ‘Fiat Lux’ (Nov 2019) was a talk/demo on the nature of light. ‘Fiat Lux II’ (Nov 2020) looked at how the nature of light influences the design and construction of optical telescopes. The final talk in this trilogy describes a new telescope that will […] Continue Reading »

Monthly Meeting: Members’ Talks (Winter 2021)

The December 2021 monthly meeting of Liverpool Astronomical Society for the 2019 – 2021 (138th) session will be held on Friday, December 10th from 19:00 to 21:00. The tradition is for the December monthly meeting to have speakers from our own Society. As such we will continue with that tradition and we have three very interesting talks from three of our very own well known and respected members. Our speakers this month and the titles of their talks are as follows: Name Talk Title Mr. David Galvin FRAS Imaging Neptune’s Moon, Triton Mr. Gerard Gilligan A Tale of Two Observatories […] Continue Reading »

Monthly Meeting: Mr. Sam Walton – “Space Weather”

The September 2021 monthly meeting of Liverpool Astronomical Society will be held on Friday, September 17th from 19:00 to 21:00. Normally this meeting would have been the Presidential Address we haven’t yet been able to have the AGM, we’ve opted to do this meeting more like a ‘normal’ one, albeit online. Our guest speaker this month is Mr. Sam Walton, of the Space Plasma Physics Group, in the Department of Space & Climate Physics, in the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, whose lecture is entitled: “Space Weather“ The Sun is an essential ingredient for life on Earth, […] Continue Reading »

Informal Talk: Dr. Jackie Bell – “Preparing for Astronaut Selection”

This informal and/or short talk will take place on Friday, April 23rd from 19:00 to 21:00. These informal talks are for LAS members only. These talks will be much less formal than the main meetings; there won’t be any Society Business section at the start, and they won’t be minuted. The exact format will depend on the individual talk itself. Could you be the next European Space Agency astronaut? Join Dr. Jackie Bell, mathematician and theoretical particle physicist as she shares her unique experience as a candidate on the BBC documentary series “Astronauts: Do You Have What it Takes?” (iPlayer […] Continue Reading »

Monthly Meeting: Dr. Kevin Bowman – “Apollo 13: Lucky for Some?”

The February 2021 monthly meeting of Liverpool Astronomical Society for the 2019 – 2021 (138th) session will be held on Friday, February 19th from the earlier time of 18:40 to 21:00. This month’s meeting is going to be structured a little differently than normal – it’s not so much a lecture as a cinematic documentary experience. Our guest speaker will be Dr. Kevin Bowman of the University of Central Lancashire. Kevin’s presentation is entitled: “Apollo 13: Lucky for Some?“ On April 13th 1970 the Apollo 13 spacecraft was headed for the Moon, passing 200,000 miles from the Earth when an “incident” […] Continue Reading »