Thornbury

Astronomy

We meet in the Buckingham Room of The Chantry, Thornbury, on the first Monday of each month except August, when we take a break. The meetings start informally around 10am with coffee, biscuits and chat, and we sit down for the more formal proceedings at 10.30am. We finish around noon. Each member is expected to make a donation of £1 at each meeting to cover the costs of hiring the room and providing the refreshments.

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The membership varies widely in background and very few of us are telescope-owning observers. We are mainly a talks and discussions group and cover astronomy in the widest sense: observations, cosmology, space missions, history, and so on. We do not explore the subject systematically – every meeting is a stand-alone meeting with a main talk covering one particular topic. We are particularly keen on covering the latest findings in Astronomy as soon as possible after they are announced.

If you wish to know a little more about the group’s activities, you can consult our Astronomy pages on the Thornbury U3A website. In particular, a few days before each meeting a poster is placed on these pages advertising the meeting’s main talk. The "Past Meetings" page contains a collection of these posters and anyone interested in joining us can examine these to get some idea of what we cover. The group welcomes new members.

Contact the Group Leader, Peter Jackson, on 418050 or by email to Astronomy.

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Notice Board

• There are two meteor showers in December. The Geminids will peak on December 13th/14th. They wil be highest in the sky due South at about 02:00 on Sunday 14th. This will be a couple of days after Full Moon so there may be some limits to visibility. The radiant is in Gemini. Unlike most meteor showers, the Geminids are not associated with a comet but with an asteroid: the 3200 Phaethon.

• Later in December, The Ursids will peak around the 22nd/23rd. They will be highest in the sky in the North at about 08:00 on Monday 23rd. At this time the Moon will be low down in the SouthEast coming close to New. So, viewing conditions should be good. The radiant is in Ursa Minor. The Ursids are associated with the comet, 8P/Tuttle, also sometimes known as Mechain-Tuttle's Comet.