The poster is also available as a PDF document.
Our May-day Institute of Physics evening talk will be...
Planet Hunting
Dr Peter Wheatley, University of Warwick
Tuesday 1st May, 2012, 7-8pm
Chichester I Lecture Theatre, University of Sussex
Click on the image to bring up a PDF poster. Please feel free to circulate and advertise as you wish!
Our next Institute of Physics evening talk details are as follows...
Blasts from the Past:
Using cosmic explosions to explore the distant Universe
Prof Nial Tanvir, University of Leicester
Tuesday 24th January, 2012, from 7-8pm
Chichester I Lecture Theatre, University of Sussex
Click on the image to bring up a PDF poster. Please feel free to circulate and advertise as you wish!
It’s Star Gazing season again with the BBC, so why not join in with yourself and your students? See the BBC website for full details about their programming.
For school and college groups, we have star parties available throughout the winter – see our calendar for available dates!
We will also be helping out with the East Sussex Astronomical Society at the De La Warr pavilion in Bexhill-on-Sea on Friday 20th January – more details are available at this website.
And we will also be star gazing at the Moulsecoomb Forest Garden on Sunday 29th January – more details of that event are available online!
The 2011 Institute of Physics Schools Lecture will be given at the University of Sussex on the 22nd November.
The lecture, by Dr Michael Wilson of Birmingham University, will tell the amazing story of how physicists have developed sophisticated techniques to allow doctors to see inside the body without the need for surgery, by using x-rays, radioactive molecules and magnetic fields.
This inspiring lecture will be held throughout the day at 1.30pm, 4pm (for schools and colleges) and 7pm (for everyone!). To book a place for your school or college students, please email physicsoutreach@sussex.ac.uk
Click on the image to download a PDF poster for the event, which you can use to advertise the event as you wish.
We have some fantastic talks lined up for you for this season's Institute of Physics talk hosted here at the University of Sussex. They are...
Why string theory and why not:
Can we construct a theory of everything?
Prof David Bailin, University of Sussex
Tuesday October 18th, 2011
Chichester I Lecture Theatre, University of Sussex
From x-rays to antimatter
The science of seeing inside your body
Dr Michael Wilson, Birmingham University
Tuesday November 22nd, 2011
Chichester I Lecture Theatre, University of Sussex
Click on the following images to bring up a PDF poster. Please feel free to circulate and advert as you wish!
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As I write this, the Space Shuttle Discovery and the International Space Station have just closed the door between each other, as the Shuttle crew prepare to return to Earth. The two vehicles will separate at noon GMT tomorrow (7th March, 2011), and so on the evening of Monday the 7th March we will get the rare (and last?) opportunity to see the two spacecraft following each other in the night sky over the UK.
We will have two attempts to see them fly over the UK together on Monday...
The first past will be very difficult to spot, since the Sun is not setting until 17:50 - but you may just get a glimpse of the pair as they disappear in the East (it is sometimes possible to see the space station in daylight!)
The pair fly over the UK again 96 minutes later, but by then they only get 19 degrees above the horizon...
You will get another chance to see the Shuttle and Station on Tuesday 8th March, as they fly over the UK from 18:13 GMT in the west, peaking at 18:16 GMT in the South some 36° high, and disappearing at 18:19 GMT - but who knows how far apart the Shuttle and Station will be by then?
For more details, including live footage from NASA TV, see SpaceFlightNow.com.
We have two great public talks coming up, as part of the Institute of Physics South-Central branch activities. They are...
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On Tuesday, 12th October 2010, Prof. Roger Barlow (University of Manchester) will be showing
Starting at 7pm, in the Arts A lecture theater. [download PDF poster] |
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And on Tuesday, 23rd November 2010, Prof. Steve Biller (University of Oxford) will talking about Starting at 7pm, Lecture theater A of the Fulton building. [download PDF poster] |
Full details of how to get to the venue can be found here.
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Jupiter is the most prominent object to see in the night sky during October, rising just before sunset it is visible throughout the entire night! Jupiter can be found to the East just after sunset, and due to the rotation of the Earth, it appears dues South at midnight. If you go somewhere really dark, you will be able to see your own shadow cast by Jupiter! I've seen that on a few occasions.
Take a look through binoculars or a small telescope, and see if you can spot the four bright Galilean moons that orbit around Jupiter. Our Moon is conveniently close to Jupiter in the night sky on the 19th & 20th of October, acting as a useful guide. The photo' below shows how close they were together last month.
The Moon begins its appear in the evening sky as a thin crescent on the 8th – a beautiful sight in the evening sky. The Moon reaches full Moon, when it is on the opposite side of the sky to the Sun, on the 23rd.
The summer triangle is still visible in October, despite its name, high in the South at 7pm. The three stars that make up the triangle are Vega, Altair & Deneb. Vega is the brightest of the three stars, and there maybe a planet like Jupiter in orbit around Vega (see the wikipeida entry). Altair is interesting because it rotates in just 7 hours! And Deneb is actually one of the brightest stars we know of – some 250,000 times bright than the Sun! The reason it looks fainter than Vega is only because it is much further away – Deneb is some 100 times further away than Vega. If Deneb was as close as Vega, it would be as bright as the Moon!
Mars and Regulus are just a degree apart in tonight's night sky. Their contrasting colours are a beautiful sight - so do take a look! But be quick, as Mars is orbiting the Sun, it is moving around the sky, and so it will only be close to Regulus for the next few nights. Here are a couple of photographs that I took last night with a zoom lens. In the night sky, the two are separated by the width of a few of your fingers at arms length! |
Summer begins this month, and because the Sun is not setting until after 9pm, darkness does not begin until 10pm. But there is plenty to see this month if you are willing to stay up a bit later.
As soon as it begins to get a bit dark, look towards the sunset, and by 10pm you will be able to see the planet Venus, very low in the sky. It looks a bit like an aircraft coming in to land… but if it is still there 10 minutes later, and hasn’t landed, then you have found Venus!
Look to the left of Venus, and slightly above it, and you will notice a red object – the planet Mars. During the month, Mars is close to the star Regulus, at equal brightness but not as red. On the 6th of June, Mars passes only 1 degree away from Regulus as it moves around the Sun and so moves around the sky.
Then look to the top left of Mars, and you have Saturn, which appears to be quite bright and slightly yellow in colour.
Venus is setting at about 11.30pm, with Mars following it an hour later, and then Saturn is setting an hour after that.
The positions of the planets can be seen in this movie below.
If you now look in the other direction towards the stars rising in the South-East (see graphic below, set at 22:30BST), you will see three bright stars – Deneb, Vega and Altair. Those three stars are known as the summer triangle of stars, and are fascinating in their own right. Vega has a dusty disk around it and maybe a planet; Altair rotates in just 7 hours, making it bulge around its equator; and Deneb is one of the brightest stars we know of. Deneb is over a 100 times further away than both Vega and Altair, but it looks equally bright because it is so big – at least 200 times the diameter of the Sun! If Deneb was as close as Altair, it would be almost as bright as the full Moon!
I will be writing more about what can be seen in this patch of sky over the coming months, as the Earth moves around the Sun to get a better look at this patch of the night sky.
Now is a great time to feel that you are part of the solar system. Venus, Mars, Saturn and the Moon are all visible in the evening sky. As you can see in the photograph I took a few nights ago (below), all the planets lie along a line called the ecliptic, which goes to show just how flat our solar system is. (Just hover your mouse over the image for labels)
Our solar system is like a big flat pancake! Imagine the Earth sitting on that pancake, along with the rest of the planets. The grid marks where that pancake (the flat plane of our solar system) goes out into space, and so where all the planets can be found. The constellations of Leo (top left) and Gemini (bottom right) are also shown.
The following animation shows just how it looks from the ground and from above the solar system.
This month is a great month for planets! If you go out on a dark night you can see and feel for yourself how we are part of the solar system.
Look low in the west, half an hour after sunset, you can see Venus - the brightest object in the sky after the Sun and Moon. Now wave your arms around in an arc going from Venus low in the west, over the south and then towards the south-east, and you will bump into two more planets in the night sky – the red planet Mars, and Saturn which is yellowish in colour.
Ancient people knew of the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn because they are all so easy to see with your own eyes - they are all bright objects that can even be seen through our light polluted skies. However, Mercury cannot be seen at the moment since it is too close to the Sun (Mercury passed between us and the Sun on the 28th of April), and Jupiter is above the morning side of the Earth, and so we can only see Jupiter very early in the morning.
But do take a look for Venus, Mars and Saturn, the bright planets in this months evening sky. They are forming a beautiful arc across the night sky, which really highlights that we live close to the centre of the very flat solar system.
The International Space Station will be visible flying over the UK for another week (before it starts flying over in daytime), so do take a look... and don't forget to wave at the six astronauts currently on board as they fly overhead!
The space station orbits the Earth every 96 minutes, but for us to clearly see it, the ISS needs to fly over at dawn and dusk. We see the space station thanks to sunlight reflecting off it, mainly off the huge solar panels the size of a football field. If it flies overhead in the daytime, the sky is too bright for us to see it; and if it flies over head at night, then the station is in the shadow of the Earth, and so we can't see any reflected sunlight.
For the next week, we are lucky - on some nights we can see the ISS fly overhead on two consecutive orbits, one 96 minutes after the other.
Date | Starts | Maximum height | Ends | ||||||
| Time | Alt. | Az. | Time | Alt. | Az. | Time | Alt. | Az. | |
| 5 May | 21:01:04 | 10 | W | 21:04:00 | 86 | NW | 21:07:00 | 10 | E |
| 5 May | 22:36:23 | 10 | W | 22:39:22 | 82 | N | 22:40:16 | 41 | E |
| 6 May | 21:26:09 | 10 | W | 21:29:07 | 73 | N | 21:32:05 | 10 | E |
| 6 May | 23:01:26 | 10 | WNW | 23:04:09 | 62 | SW | 23:04:09 | 62 | SW |
| 7 May | 21:51:11 | 10 | W | 21:54:10 | 83 | N | 21:56:30 | 15 | E |
| 8 May | 20:40:53 | 10 | W | 20:43:51 | 73 | N | 20:46:49 | 10 | E |
| 8 May | 22:16:10 | 10 | W | 22:19:07 | 63 | SSW | 22:20:18 | 31 | SE |
| 9 May | 21:05:51 | 10 | W | 21:08:49 | 85 | N | 21:11:47 | 10 | E |
| 9 May | 22:41:13 | 10 | W | 22:43:54 | 32 | SSW | 22:44:03 | 32 | SSW |
| 10 May | 21:30:45 | 10 | W | 21:33:41 | 61 | SSW | 21:36:19 | 12 | ESE |
| 11 May | 21:55:44 | 10 | W | 21:58:24 | 31 | SSW | 22:00:02 | 18 | SSE |
| 13 May | 21:10:07 | 10 | W | 21:12:45 | 29 | SSW | 21:15:22 | 10 | SSE |
Over the next few weeks, the International Space Station can be easily seen flying over the UK. Its solar panels are the size of a football field, allowing the space station to be easily seen from the ground as they reflect plenty of sunlight.
Times when the space station can be seen for the next week are below, or at either SpaceWeather.com, or on Heavens-Above.com. Although these times are exact for Brighton, the times will be within half a minute of these times for anywhere in the UK, or you can simply follow those links and type in a new location.
The table below gives the time and position of the International Space Station as it starts to fly over the UK, reaches the maximum height and the time when it disappears (ends).
In the table, Alt. refers to the altitude of the space craft as it flies overhead (90° is directly overhead, and 0° is the horizon); Az. is the Azimuth, or direction, of where it will be at the given time (0° being North, 90°: is East, 180° is South and 270° is West).
Date | Starts | Max. height | Ends | ||||||
| Time | Alt. | Az. | Time | Alt. | Az. | Time | Alt. | Az. | |
| 29 Apr | 21:41:07 | 10 | SSW | 21:43:40 | 26 | SSE | 21:44:24 | 23 | ESE |
| 30 Apr | 22:05:51 | 10 | SW | 22:08:45 | 53 | SSE | 22:09:58 | 29 | E |
| 1 May | 20:56:20 | 10 | SSW | 20:58:54 | 27 | SSE | 21:01:30 | 10 | E |
| 1 May | 22:30:59 | 10 | WSW | 22:33:57 | 89 | SSE | 22:34:54 | 40 | ENE |
| 2 May | 21:21:03 | 10 | WSW | 21:23:57 | 55 | SSE | 21:26:52 | 10 | E |
| 2 May | 22:56:14 | 10 | W | 22:59:12 | 73 | N | 22:59:26 | 67 | NE |
| 3 May | 21:46:08 | 10 | WSW | 21:49:07 | 89 | N | 21:52:05 | 10 | ENE |
| 3 May | 23:21:28 | 10 | W | 23:23:44 | 48 | WNW | 23:23:44 | 48 | WNW |
| 4 May | 20:36:08 | 10 | WSW | 20:39:03 | 58 | SSE | 20:41:59 | 10 | E |
| 4 May | 22:11:21 | 10 | W | 22:14:19 | 73 | N | 22:16:22 | 18 | E |
| 5 May | 21:01:12 | 10 | W | 21:04:11 | 87 | N | 21:07:08 | 10 | E |
| 5 May | 22:36:31 | 10 | W | 22:39:30 | 82 | N | 22:40:24 | 41 | E |
| 6 May | 21:26:22 | 10 | W | 21:29:20 | 73 | N | 21:32:17 | 10 | E |
| 6 May | 23:01:39 | 10 | WNW | 23:04:22 | 61 | SW | 23:04:22 | 61 | SW |
Speaker: Professor Steven Cowley, Director of Culham Laboratory.
Date & Time: 7pm, Tuesday 4th of May, 2010
Location: Pevensey 1, theatre 1A7, University of Sussex
In a decade, the international fusion experiment ITER will start operating in the south of France. This historic experiment will generate up to 500 megawatts of fusion power and provide a proof of principle for fusion energy. Fusion has the potential to provide a large fraction of our energy for millions of years. In this talk, Steven will describe the scientific progress in fusion, from Sir Arthur Stanley Eddington's prophetic predictions in 1920 to the remarkable results that have lead to ITER, and the challenging problems that must be solved to make fusion power a commercial option.
Travel: http://www.sussex.ac.uk/aboutus/findus
Contact:s.j.m.peeters@sussex.ac.uk or 01273 678128
During the course of a year, as the Earth orbits the Sun, the position and timing of the Sun set changes. Below are two photographs, taken exactly a day apart and then superimposed on one another, that illustrate just how much it changes!
Remember! Never look at the sun directly, and it can result in blindness.
It is now impossible to see the planet Mercury in the evening... Until it orbits around the Sun again. But I did manage to take the following photograph last Thursday, of a beautiful alignment of the Moon, Mercury and Venus.
Mercury orbits the Sun in just 88 days, and over the next week, you can see how quickly it moves in relation to Venus.
I took the photograph to the left on Monday the 12th April, at about 9pm, and you can see Mercury and Venus side by side (Venus is the bright object; Mercury the fainter object to the right of the image just slightly lower then Venus in the evening sky). But over the next week, as Mercury orbits around the Sun, it will rapidly move away from Venus to be in line with the Sun on the 28th of April.
So, if you want to see Mercury for yourself, the next few days would be a good time to look...