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.
If you have any comments about the web site, please sent an email to Webmaster.
Notice Board
- The Draconids meteor shower will peak on Tuesday/Wednesday the 8th/9th October. The display will be highest in the sky in the early evening of Tuesday. As the name suggests, the radiant is in Draco which will be to the North East on the early evening of Tuesday. Unfortunately, the moon will be approaching full so viewing conditions will not be ideal. The Draconids are caused by the debris left by comet 21 P/Giacobini-Zinner.
- Later in the month the Orionids meteor shower will peak on Monday/Tuesday the 21st/22nd October. It will be highest in the sky in the early morning of Wednesday. At this time, Orion, the radiant, will be in the southern sky. At the time, the moon will be in its third quarter. The Orionid meteor shower is one of two meteor showers created by debris from Comet Halley. The Eta Aquarids in May is the other.
| Dates for your Diary | |
|---|---|
| Mon Sep 2nd | Andrew, Eddie and Andrew will talk about whatever comes to mind - it may be astronomy related. |
| Mon Oct 7th | At the third attempt, and by popular acclaim, Peter Jackson will present a Jupiter Miscellany. |