Monthly Members’ Night - second Wednesday of each month except January.

Tonight - A presentation, followed by informal chat over tea or coffee. Telescope viewing possible afterwards depending on weather and availablilty of scope operators.

Tonight’s Talk

The DEpth of the Night Sky

Speaker: Jonathan Park (from Hamilton Astronomical Society)

Can you guess what these stars might be? The dots don’t represent size, just position and relative brightness from the viewing point. Here’s a clue: the lower left star is our Sun, and the upper right star is 455 light-years away from us.

When we look up at the night sky, our brains want to tell us that all the stars are placed on a great celestial dome above us. But in reality, they lie at vastly different distances, scattered across space, some near and others many hundreds of light-years away. In this talk, we will look at some familiar groups of stars, using graphics to travel away from Earth to view them from different directions. This will help you to get a feel for these distances. We will also look at why the speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second (no more, no less), and how this leads to an exact definition of a light-year. You will also learn a little about some of these stars - are they binary, or triple, how big and hot are they, do some of them have planets? Can you guess the stars in the picture?

This talk considers a handful of familiar stars visible to the naked eye, and is aimed at all ages and levels of astronomy knowledge. It may even change how you think about the stars you see at night.