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The Chesterfield Barnett Observatory

Our observatory is open every Friday from 8pm onwards until the last person leaves. We always give visitors a warm welcome so if you'd like to join us, please feel free to do so. You don't need to book your visit, just pop over to see us and we'll show you around and make sure you get the opportunity to do some stargazing too if the weather is with us. We rely on the generosity of the local community to keep the observatory open so please can you place a small donation of £2 in our visitors' pot when you visit.

Friday night is also members’ night and whilst we are always delighted to receive visitors please be aware that sometimes our members could be busy with their hobby which can require a high level of concentration so might appreciate it if you avoid interrupting them when using or setting up a telescope. Thanks for your understanding.

If you'd like to learn more about the observatory, click on the menu item 'Our Observatory' at the top of this page.

We very much hope that you will come and visit us on a Friday evening when we will make sure you have an astronomically good time 🙂

Our thanks to James for his time and for a very interesting talk that prompted lots of questions.

Mapping the Milky Way

On Friday 17^th February we received an excellent talk from Professor Rob Jeffries from Keele University all about the latest ESA space telescope, Gaia.

Gaia is a twin-telescope that will map, catalogue, size and age many stars. The baseline number of stars it will map is 1 billion all of a magnitude of 20 or greater representing around 1% of all the stars in the Milky Way.

Gaia will be working for 5 years and our first significant cut of data will be received in April 2018. It is located at Lagrange point L2 a million miles away from the Earth where it is in a very stable orbit.

Some of the key objectives of the project will be:

• To produce a stereoscopic (3D) map of the Milky Way
• To more accurately map out the distance to many stars
• To more accurately determine the age of many stars
• To identify thousands of asteroids and comets not seen previously
• Identify new exoplanets
• Discover new quasars

Gaia is set to boost our understanding of the Milky Way by such an extent that it should revolutionise astronomy.

If you would like to learn more about the Gaia mission, there’s an app you can get to keep you up to date on your phone:

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia/gaia-app

And you can learn more about this amazing project at:

https://gaia.ac.uk/

and

https://www.cosmos.esa.int/web/gaia

Our thanks to Rob who we hope will come back and update us in the future as Gaia unfolds some of the secrets of the Milky Way.

Thanks also to Marilyn for organising this.

Neutrino Talk - 27th January

On Friday 27th January we were treated to a talk by Jost Migenda of Sheffeld University, a PHD student of Dr Matthew Malek pictured above.

His talk entitled The Death of a Star: Observing Supernovae with Neutrinos was both interesting and amusing.

He explained Neutrinos are ghost-like particles that can literally “go through walls”. He had us laughing at his graphics from a Harry Potter film of a ghost scene.

He first gave us a brief but exciting history of neutrinos, describing how they can be used to look inside a supernova in the moment of explosion and what we might learn from this.  What fascinated me was the amount of time it took from a star losing its fuel to falling in under its own gravity - milliseconds.  When the heavy elements have fallen into the core of the star and compressed to when it explodes - 10 seconds.

Fascinating to  think it takes billions of years for a star to come to life, but its death occurs almost in an instant.  Of course the shockwave that comes afterwards initiates star formation in other interstellar clouds.  Thus we are recycled!!

He outlined what has already been achieved in neutrino detection and told us of a new detector to be built in Japan starting next year.  He is hoping that Betelgeuse will wait until the detector is ready in 2024 before it goes supernova.  I personally hope it will happen in my lifetime!!!

Marilyn

CAS Secretary

Our Christmas Party

22 members attended the annual party on Friday the 6th January.  There were crosswords on Astronomy and the traditional quiz compiled by Jim Fisher.  This year he was unable to attend as he was visiting family in New Zealand.  He had sent me the quiz which was a mixture of astronomical and general knowledge questions.

We divided into teams and began.  Some of the questions started discussions as to the interpretation and I asked members to refer queries to Jim!!  When it came to the answers there was more fun from members not agreeing with the answers - with good reason.  We have now established that Neil Armstrong and co landed on the moon on the 20th July 1969 but did not step onto the surface until the next day!!!  Thanks to Peter Davison as it was his birthday the day they landed so he should know.

There had to be a tie break as two teams finished with 17 and a half points.  The winning team as seen below when I presented them with the cup.

Out of the archives I had produced a quiz from 1992 - again one of Jim's.  This caused some discussion even from those of us who were old enough to remember life then.  The question causing most hair pulling, was 7 =  S on a F P P­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­.  OK if you want to be argumentative you can say 5 but you will have forgotten the front and back!!

This year we did not have loads of food left and members were good enough to take their own food home if it was left over.  We had a box of biscuits given to us by Maureen Jenkinson and these with other boxes of biscuits will keep us going for many a Friday to come.

I hope you all had a good time and I wish you a healthy and prosperous year to come.

Marilyn Bentley

Secretary

January 2017

Darkness visible:  The Hunt for the Missing Matter

On the 2nd of December we were once again treated to a talk by Dr Matthew Malek.

Although we had previously had a talk on Dark Matter it was interesting to get Dr Malek's take on things.  He did not disappoint.  His talk was full of humour and his presentation clear and precise.

He told us  "The 'Mystery of the Missing Mass' has been vexing astronomers and physicists for over eighty years. It all began in 1933, when Swiss astronomer Fritz Zwicky's observations of galactic clusters led him to postulate the existence of a 'dark matter'.  Since then, an ever-growing body of evidence supports the conclusion that over 80% of the mass of the Universe is undetectable by normal means.  We now know that dark matter exists, but what is it?  How was it formed? Why is it so hard to detect?"

In his talk, he reviewed the cutting edge experiments that are looking for dark matter right here on Earth, and what the prospects for discovery are in the next decade.  They are tantalizingly close.  He promised to revisit us with any progress in the future.

He was regaled with questions and said afterwards that he had enjoyed the exchange.  We kept him very late and when I emailed him the next day I apologised for this as well as thanking him for a very enjoyable talk.  He replied it was always fun coming to CAS.

Although we have had all three talks Dr Malek delivers, I am pleased to tell you that he is putting together a talk especially for us and will visit us next year.  Watch this space.

Article by Marilyn Bentley

Open Evening Saturday 8th October 2016

Despite the poor weather we had lots of visitors to whom we are very grateful. We hope that everyone enjoyed themselves and that we wil see you again soon.

How to Build a Universe - 7th October

A fascinating talk explaining how the universe was created was given by Dr Stuart Muldrew of Leicester University at the observatory on the 7th October.

Our secretary, Marilyn has written the summary below of this excellent talk.

Dr Muldrew gave us an informative talk on his work modelling the universe.  He told us observations of galaxies are constantly pressing to new depths, giving us a series of snapshots in time after the Big Bang.  Ideally we want to understand how galaxies evolve, linking the observed snapshots to produce a galaxy family album.

To astronomers, computers are becoming equally as important as telescopes in explaining the Universe in which we live.  Building computer models of how the Universe evolves allows us to explain evolution between the different types of galaxies that we observe.  He showed us current predictive computer models and compared these with the actual data.  They were strikingly similar.

He told us of the key ingredients that go into building a computer model of the Universe.  He then used this to explain how galaxies trace the underlying dark matter distribution, and are affected by the energy released from their supermassive black holes and internal supernovae.

The talk generated many questions from members and Dr Muldrew commented afterwards that he had enjoyed the exchange.  We took him into the Dome and Sue gave him a potted history of our telescope and he was very impressed.

Our thanks to Stuart for his time and his excellent talk in which he conveyed complex concepts in a very clear manner.