November 24th - GAIA - The Mission to Map a Billion Stars.

[MPOLE]

The next meeting of the Long Eaton Astronomical Society is on Thursday 24th November at the usual time of 7:00pm. The speaker will be Mr M Perkins FRAS of the school talking about "GAIA - The Mission to Map a Billion Stars (a non-parallel universe)."

 

GAIA is a European Space Agency mission that launched in 2013 with the aim of mapping out stars in the Milky Way. The hope is that by understanding the structure of the Milky Way we can begin to understand how the Universe has developed.

 

The talk will start at 7pm with refreshments available form 6:30pm. All are welcome, under 16's must be accompanied by an adult please. Members free and guests for a suggested donation of £2. After the talk there may be opportunity for some observing in the observatory if the weather allows. Last time we had wonderfully clear skies and did some double star hunting. 

Edited November 17, 2016 by Perkil8r
Edit for senior moment over dates.

[BAZ]

I'll see if I can make it this time.

 

[Sheila]

sorry wont make this one as am currently at kelling for Winterfest

[philjay]

A good talk by Mr Perkins (FRAS) last night, theres some fascinating stuff coming from that mission and still more to come

[BAZ]

A talk by the esteemed Mr Perkins, (FRAS) was very interesting and some of the statistics are impressive. This will be a great mission.

[Perkil8r]

Thanks for the kind words. Pitty it was such a small turnout this month but there were a number of reasons for this locally which didn't help. For those interested the full data release document I used can be found here: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1609.04172v1

 

I warn you now though, it is pretty technical stuff and it took me a good while to extract some meaningful info!