Beatrice Hill Tinsley LECTURE - 2026
We are thrilled to announce that this year, the Hamilton Astronomical Society will again be hosting one of the Beatrice Hill Tinsley (BHT) Lecture Series. This will be on the evening of Thursday 5th February. The 2026 BHT Lecturer is Dr. Samantha Lawler, an astronomer at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. Dr. Lawler’s headline talk, "Astronomy vs the Billionaire Space Race", promises a lively, thought‑provoking look at how private space ventures are reshaping our skies and the future of astronomy.
Date: Thursday 5th February 2026
Time: Doors open at 7pm, lecture starts at 7:30 pm
Venue: Hamilton Observatory.
**The Lecture is Free, but registration is required.
PLEASE NOTE: We have just about reached capacity for this evening! This means there may no longer be seats available when you submit the form. HOWEVER, THERE MAY STILL BE LAST MINUTE CANCELLATIONS. So you are welcome to fill in and send the form via the link below any time up to 7pm and we will email you back asap to let you know if we can sort out seats for you.
Lecture Title:
Astronomy vs. the Billionaire Space Race
In February 2024, hundreds of pounds of potentially lethal debris from a SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk from a private astronaut mission fell on farmland near Regina, Saskatchewan. Later in the year, a piece of a SpaceX Starlink satellite was found in a lentil field in another part of the province. In September 2025, one of the handful of Starlink satellites reentering every week was witnessed burning up across the entire western half of Canada, with the reentry ending over Saskatchewan. Dr. Samantha Lawler of the University of Regina has been studying the proliferation of satellites in orbit over the past few years, and has been stunned to learn how often space debris falls so close to her home. Come learn why Saskatchewan is the best place in the world to find space debris, and what happens when you find space debris on your farm and silent SpaceX employees show up in a rented truck to be greeted by an astronomer and a dozen of Saskatchewan's finest local journalists. The billionaire space race is well underway, and this has important implications for international law, the continued operation of satellites in Low Earth Orbit, atmospheric pollution, and the future of astronomy.
About our Speaker
Dr. Samantha Lawler is a professor of astronomy at the University of Regina in Saskatchewan, Canada. She completed degrees at the California Institute of Technology, Wesleyan University, and the University of British Columbia, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Victoria (Canada) and NRC-Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre. Dr. Lawler’s discoveries in the Kuiper Belt and predictions for satellite pollution have been featured by BBC, CBC, CNN, NPR, BBC, Scientific American, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Wired Magazine, Nature, and many other international news outlets. She lives on a farm outside Regina and deeply appreciates the beautiful prairie skies.
About Beatrice Hill Tinsley LECTURES
Beatrice Hill Tinsley was a Professor of Astronomy at Yale University when she died, aged 40, of melanoma in 1981. Until she came on the scene, people believed that galaxies were fixed, immobile and unchanging in the universe. She discovered (among many other things) that galaxies are both changing and interacting with one another. She proved that the universe is still evolving.
Born in England, her family came to New Zealand when she was 5. She was educated first in New Plymouth and then at the University of Canterbury. In 1961 she married Brian Tinsley. In 1963 they travelled to the USA, where they remained
Beatrice was celebrated for her work as a synthesiser, the bringing together of apparently unrelated and individual scraps and strands of knowledge and theory, to help create a whole.
These Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lectures are our way of celebrating the life and work of this extraordinarily appealing and altogether remarkable young woman.
The Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lectures are administered by the RASNZ Lecture Trust.
(The above information is from the RASNZ website)
Hamilton Astronomical Society and the BHT Lectures
The guest lecturer for the BHT lecture series travels around New Zealand to give their lecture, and are hosted by various Astronomical Societies thoughout the country. Most years, Hamilton Astronomical Society has the priviledge to host one of these evenings. Previous BHT guest lecturers in Hamilton have included the following.
In 2025 Professor Anna Scaife from the University of Manchester, presented “How Artificial Intelligence is changing the way we do astronomy - and why that's not necessarily a bad thing.” In the talk Professor Scaife described some of the ways that AI has recently been used very effectively in astronomy, why we need to continue developing new AI methods, and how these changes can lower the barriers to more people becoming involved in research.
In 2024 our guest speaker was Professor Lisa Kaltenegger, the Director of the Carl Sagan Institute for the Search for Life in the Cosmos at Cornell and Associate Professor in Astronomy. The topic was “Searching for Alien Earths”, and was enjoyed by all who attended, with all ranges of knowledge.
Our 2021 speaker was Dr Heloise Stevance. Heloise was originally from France, and moved to the UK to study Physics and Astronomy at the University of Sheffield. She obtained a PhD studying the 3D shape of Core Collapse Supernovae. In July 2019 she joined the University of Auckland as a Research Fellow to research the evolution of massive stars to better understand how they die and produce Supernovae and Kilonovae.
In 2019, Babak Tafreshi, photojournalist and science communicator, founder and director of The World At Night program was our guest. Babak’s leture included some incredible photography that we will remember as some of the most amazing astronomy and related photographs we have seen.
Watch this space in future years!