Cambridge University Astronomical Society

05/03/2023

Hi all!

The AGM is tomorrow (Monday 6th March) and starts at 7 pm in the Pfizer Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry. All CUAS members are welcome to attend.

If you are standing for election, but will not be able to attend the AGM, please let me know as soon as possible. Thank you to those who have already expressed interest in running for Committee.

We will be electing the next Executive Committee, consisting of a Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and a General Committee (consisting of seven members at maximum). Allocating specific General Committee roles will be a decision left to the new Committee.

The election will proceed in the order of Chair, Secretary, Treasurer, and General Committee, with blind voting due to take place. Before each election segment, all running candidates will be invited to talk briefly (~one minute, we are not expecting full election speeches) about their motivation for the role(s) and to introduce themselves, and may also be asked 1-2 role-specific questions by the current Committee.

Looking forward to seeing you all tomorrow, and good luck to everyone running for Committee.

27/02/2023

We are happy to announce that

1. Sign-ups for the 80th Anniversary Dinner are still OPEN and will remain so until midnight on 6th March – link here https://forms.gle/dGDtJkzurE5q5S9a9 - grab your ticket now! The dinner will take place in Sidney’s College Hall, on Thursday 16 March

2. The Annual General Meeting (AGM) is taking place on Monday 6 March (in a week’s time!) at 7pm in the Pfizer LT. If you would like to stand for election please email me as soon as possible to declare your interest, and if you would like to find out more about any of the roles, feel free to email us or catch us at the talk tomorrow evening! Thank you to everyone who has expressed interest thus far!

More details will be coming in the future notice.

The Cambridge University Astronomical Society is happy to host its annual dinner this year at Sidney Sussex College, starting at 7.30pm on Thursday 16th March 2023. This annual dinner this year is a special one as it is also the society's 80th Anniversary. The meal will be accompanied by wine and no...

27/02/2023

Hi all! Tomorrow evening (Tuesday 28 February, 7:30 pm) we will be welcoming Dr Anna McLeod to give a talk on

Massive stars and where to find them

As usual, this will be in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry.

About the speaker:
Anna McLeod is an Assistant Professor in the Centre for Extragalactic Astronomy at Durham University. Her research focuses mainly on feedback from massive stars, using data from integral field spectrographs to identify massive stars and observationally quantify their feedback. Anna is also a strong advocate for early-career mothers in STEM fields.

Zoom details:
Topic: [CUAS] Lent week 6
Time: Feb 28, 2023, 07:30 PM London
Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89185247077?pwd=ZGV1YVNISWZMZzRGeFNVVGJ2UEZFQT09

Looking forward to seeing many of you there!

13/02/2023

Hi all,

There is a talk this week! Prof Bence Kocsis (University of Oxford) will be in Cambridge tomorrow evening to give a talk titled

On the AGN Origin of Gravitational Wave Sources observed by LIGO/VIRGO

As usual, this will be at 7:30 pm in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre (Department of Chemistry)

Abstract:
With the detection of gravitational waves emitted during black hole and neutron star mergers, LIGO has recently opened the field of gravitational wave astrophysics. In this talk, I will review the astrophysical processes that may be responsible for the formation of the observed events. The event rate distribution with mass, spins, eccentricity and redshift may be used to discriminate among different processes that lead to black hole mergers. I will show that the standard astrophysical merger pathways are in tension with LIGO/VIRGO observations. New ideas may be needed to explain the origin of the detected sources. I will discuss the possibility that black hole mergers happen in active galactic nuclei where the interaction with a gaseous disk helps to form binaries, and a combination of dynamical and gas effects facilitates the merger of the binaries.

About the speaker:
Prof Bence Kocsis is a theoretical astrophysicist at the University of Oxford working on gravitational wave astrophysics using LIGO/VIRGO, LISA and pulsar timing arrays. He also studies the astrophysical dynamics of dense star clusters, astrophysical general relativity, black holes, accretion disks, and statistical mechanics. He is the PI of the GALNUC group, which investigates the dynamics of galactic nuclei. Before joining Oxford, he was a faculty member at Eötvös University in Hungary.

Zoom details if you prefer to join us online:
Time: Feb 14, 2023 07:30 PM London
Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82535037212?pwd=TmtIeUFUdzNUSXNFNU4xU2U3WnZodz09

In case you missed Amy’s talk on planetary systems around white dwarfs, you can watch it here: https://youtu.be/tPLX2t11VXk

Apologies for the short notice this week! Hope to see many of you there!

29/01/2023

Hi all,

The talk this Tuesday will be given by the IoA’s Dr Amy Bonsor on

Planet-eating White Dwarfs

Dr Amy Bonsor is an astrophysicist based at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. She studies planet formation, using our understanding of the Solar System to further the understanding of exoplanetary systems, and at the same time using exoplanets to further the understanding of our own planet’s evolution. She is particularly interested in planetary systems around white dwarfs, which gives clues about the effect of the star’s evolution on the evolution of its planetary system. Amy is currently a Royal Society University Research Fellow and is also part of the Leverhulme Centre for Life in the Universe and the Cambridge Exoplanet Research Centre.

7:30 pm in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry!

22/01/2023

Hi all!

We’re kicking off Lent term with a Tuesday talk by Prof James Binney FRS, on

What sets the scale of the most massive galaxies?

Professor James Binney FRS is Emeritus Professor in Astrophysics at the University of Oxford. In a career spanning 40+ years, James's research focused mainly on the structure, dynamics and formation of galaxies. Currently he works on developing tools to interpret data from the Gaia satellite, as well as understanding fluctuations in stellar systems. For his work, James has received the Maxwell Prize and the Dirac Medal (amongst many others) and was made Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society, the Royal Society, and the Institute of Physics. He has also published textbooks on galactic astronomy.

As usual, this will be at 7:30 pm in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry. Looking forward to seeing many of you there!

22/01/2023

Welcome back to Cambridge! Here is our new termcard for Lent. For our first talk of the term, we will be welcoming Professor James Binney FRS to give a talk on

What sets the scale of the most massive galaxies?

More information regarding the talk will be in our next post. The termcard will be updated as more details come in. More details about the Annual Dinner and the Annual General Meeting (including elections for committee) will be released soon. We are looking forward to seeing many of you at our events!

22/11/2022

The adventures of a CUAS tie – to Antarctica and back

For those who can’t make it the Zoom link is

CU Astronomical Society is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Week 7 talk
Time: Nov 22, 2022 07:00 PM London

Join Zoom Meeting
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89442333414?pwd=MTduQlN2VWN0Mi9tL0hkM1NTc3FQdz09

Meeting ID: 894 4233 3414
Passcode: 170832
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20/11/2022

Hi all!

Steven’s talk last Tuesday was an in-depth treatment of Kerr black holes; this week we’ll divert slightly from our usual astronomical-focused agenda in welcoming our very own Senior Treasurer, Jon Shanklin, on

The adventures of a CUAS tie – to Antarctica and back

Jonathan Shanklin is a long-time member of CUAS, having been Obs Sec and Chairman as a student and is now Senior Treasurer. After his degree, he joined the British Antarctic Survey, and his work there led to the discovery of the Antarctic ozone hole. He has made 20 trips down to Antarctica, and this talk will show some of the astronomical and meteorological sights that he has seen there. He will also talk about the latest observations of climate change and the ozone hole in Antarctica and draw together some of the other environmental crises that affect our planet.

That’s this Tuesday, 7.30 pm, in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry. As usual, the talk will also be live-streamed on Zoom, the link for which will be sent out early on Tuesday.

One more thing – TCSS have got another astronomy-related talk lined up for MONDAY (not Tuesday!) with Prof Ewine van Dishoeck on ‘Building stars, planets and the ingredients for life in space’, 7.30 pm in the OCR in Trinity College. For more details follow this link:https://mcusercontent.com/cf448e66aa628f62b72fb8921/files/86a4a767-bc09-780d-64a4-1ff66efee429/Prof._Ewine_van_Dishoeck_Talk_Abstract.pdf

We hope to see many of you on Tuesday!

15/11/2022

Join us now!

Useful and exact orbital solutions for accreting Kerr black holes

For those who can’t make it the Zoom link is

Time: Nov 15, 2022 07:30 PM London
Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87379840732?pwd=aXkrTmNqdGZ4dGg5NjlNc0FCbjQ0UT09
Meeting ID: 873 7984 0732
Passcode: 709549

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13/11/2022

Hi all!

We hope you enjoyed last week’s talk with Emma, I certainly did! I will be putting up the video shortly for those who couldn’t make it last Tuesday – definitely worth watching.

This Tuesday we will be welcoming Prof Steven Balbus (Oxford) to give a talk on

Useful and exact orbital solutions for accreting Kerr black holes

That’s 7.30 pm on the 15th at the Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Department of Chemistry. Free for members and £2 otherwise. We also stream our talks on Zoom. The link will be sent out early on Tuesday.

About the speaker:
Prof Steven Balbus is the Savilian Professor of Astronomy at the University of Oxford and a fellow of New College Oxford. His research is in astrophysical fluid dynamics with a focus on the behaviour of magnetised gases.

Steven did his undergraduate at MIT and his PhD in theoretical astrophysics at UC Berkeley. He took up postdoctoral appointments at MIT and Princeton, then joined faculty at UVA and the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris, before moving to Oxford in 2012. In 2013 he was awarded the Shaw Prize for his work with the late John F. Hawley on the magnetorotational instability (MRI) while at UVA. He has also made contributions to the theory of thermal processes in magnetised dilute plasmas and a theory of the Sun’s internal rotation. He was awarded the 2020 Eddington Medal by the RAS, and the 2021 Dirac Medal and Prize by the IoP.

06/11/2022

Hi all!

I am pleased to announce that we will return to the Wolfson LT once again this Tuesday after two weeks of online talks. Joining us is Dr Emma Chapman from the University of Nottingham on

First Stars and Sensationalism: Early Universe Research in the James Webb Space Telescope Era

That’s 7.30 pm in the Wolfson Lecture Theatre, Dept of Chemistry (Lensfield Rd), free for members and £2 otherwise. Snacks and drinks will be provided. For those who can’t make it we also stream our talks on Zoom – the link will be sent out early on Tuesday.

Abstract:
In understanding how the Universe began and grew up, we have found ourselves in the dark ages, both literally and figuratively. Empty of life and structure, space suddenly illuminated with the light of the first stars, as they roared to life 200 million years after the Big Bang. This time represents the start of the diverse and crowded cosmos we experience today… but there is a missing billion years in our understanding. What did these first stars look like? How are they different from our Sun, and are they now an extinct species? Over the Summer of 2022, astrophysicists woke up to new records for the farthest galaxy almost daily, and JWST has now seen light emitted from stars only a few hundred million years after the Big Bang. I will showcase the implications of the new era of JWST for our understanding of the early Universe, and informally discuss how the public and scientific community treat and accept new discoveries.

About the speaker:
Dr Emma Chapman is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Research Fellow at the University of Nottingham. Her research uses radio astronomy (in particular LOFAR – the Low-Frequency Array telescope) to investigate the epoch of reionization, the time in the universe when the first stars began to radiate light. She was awarded a Royal Astronomical Society Research Fellowship in 2013. She won the Institute of Physics Early Career Woman Physicist of the Year Award in 2014 and was awarded the Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship by the Royal Society in 2018. Emma is also a popular science author, having released her first book, ‘First Light’, in 2020.

This is also a reminder that if you’d like to view any past talks from last year or this year, you can find them on our YouTube channel. Link: https://www.youtube.com/

Hope everyone is staying sufficiently warm and dry as the temperature drops and the rain clouds roll in – see you Tuesday!