Astronomy in the City

We invite you to attend our programme of free public events, Astronomy in the City. Join us for stargazing, observing with portable telescopes, talks from our experts about cutting edge astronomy research, and your chance to ask them anything about astronomy!

The event will feature live exhibits developed by our group, presentations on "Exploring the Sky this month" and the main science talk, followed by a live Q&A session open to the public. According to weather conditions, observing will proceed on campus thanks to the help of AstroSoc and the Knowle Astronomical Society. In addition, we'll provide a live feed from the Wast Hills Observatory for some virtual observing.

Astronomy in the City events are strictly all ticket, and begin in the Poynting Building on our Edgbaston campus, within easy reach of local transport links.

2022/2023 Events
Thursday 03 November 2022
Thursday 01 December 2022
Wednesday 19 April 2023

Please join our mailing list to keep up to date.

Upcoming Events

Our next Astronomy in the City event is Wednesday April 19th 2023, 18:00 –20:00. Booking essential!

Each Astronomy in the City event will feature a talk on a different astrophysical topic connected to the research done at the University of Birmingham.

April Event: We will focus on the search for dark matter and the technologies that allow us to achieve this. As always, our experts will be there to answer all your Astronomy-related curiosities.

	April Programme
18:00	Talks begin
	1st Talk. Raoul Hasdell: Exploring the Night Sky in May
	2nd Talk. Denis Martynov: Technologies for dark matter searches
	Abstract: The Standard Model has been extremely successful in making experimental predictions in the past decades, yet leaves some key phenomena unexplained. In particular, it does not include gravity and does not explain dark matter. In this talk, I will review observational evidence for dark matter and how it connects different branches of physics. I will also discuss some of the recent experiments for dark matter searches, including the one built in Birmingham.
19:00	Panelist Q&A with our experts
19:15	Live link to the Wast Hills Observatory
19:30	Observing (Chancellor's Court, Poynting Physics roof)
20:00	End

Astronomy in the City is aimed at secondary school age and above (Year 7+). Younger children are welcome to attend the talks/observing on campus.
All under-18s must be accompanied by an adult.

Observing on Campus

Depending upon the weather, all visitors are invited to join members of AstroSocBAS and Knowle to observe with their portable telescopes from Chancellor's Court in the heart of our Edgbaston campus from 7:30 pm. Please remember to wrap up warm for the cool evenings.

Where to Find Us

The talks and refreshments will be held in the Poynting Physics Building (R13 on the campus map), with telescopes in nearby Chancellor's Court. The University's website has directions to the Edgbaston campus and how to reach the Poynting Physics Building; the lecture theatre, refreshments and demonstrations are on the second floor.

Disabled access is readily available on campus .

Tickets

Admission is only available with a ticket, which can be booked for free from Eventbrite.

Letter from the Observatory Director

Hello and welcome back to a new year of Astronomy in the City!

The biggest space science news of the summer was of course the release of the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope. Astronomers have been waiting with bated breath for this moment, in some cases for many many years. And we certainly weren’t disappointed! Since then, we have been treated to a flood of incredible images, showing everything from distant galaxies to solar system planets, and everything in between, in unprecedented detail. Most pleasingly for me, it’s been finding beautiful supernovae — without even trying!

More recently, a very different spacecraft has also made a big impact (literally). NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, deliberately slammed into the asteroid Dimorphos, successfully changing its orbit around its larger companion, Didymos. This was the first time planetary defence mechanisms to divert an asteroid have ever been tested. Scientists are still analysing the data from the collision, but some spectacular time-lapses of the collision have been captured by many observatories, including facilities used by Birmingham astronomers such as the ATLAS and ASTEP telescopes.

I hope you enjoy our event, and hearing about our research and the observatory in Birmingham. If you have any questions or feedback, you can get in touch with us at ubo@star.sr.bham.ac.uk.

Clear skies!
Matt

Dr Matt Nicholl, Director of the University of Birmingham Observatory

March Night Sky

Information about what you can see in the March night sky, as presented at our previous event on December 1st 2022, is available as a PDF.

Past presentations

Talk presentations from previous events:

Black Holes — Christopher Moore (December 2022)
Detecting Exoplanets: other worlds beyond our Solar System — Annelies Mortier (November 2022)
The Life and Death of Galaxies — Cressida Cleland (February 2022)
Aliens, Galaxies and the Big Bang: Introducing the James Webb Space Telescope — Natalie Williams (November 2021)
Fantastic bursts and where to find them - the brightest supernovae in the Universe — Matt Nicholl (October 2021)
Space, Spins and Very Dense Things: The Whirling Wobbliness of Precessing Gravitational Waves — Lucy Thomas (March 2021)
Gravitational Lensing: Space-time under the influence (of gravity) — Dan Ryczanowski (February 2021)
Mapping the sky with Einstein's invisible waves — Valeriya Korol (November 2020)
Somewhere in between astronomy and relativity — Davide Gerosa (January 2020)
Galaxy Clusters: the Universe's biggest labs — Matteo Bianconi (October 2019)
When Stars Explode — Tyrone Woods (March 2019)
Instruments: Gravitational Wave and Musical Alike — Aaron Jones (Nov 2018)
How Big are Stars? — Dorottya Szecsi (October 2018)
Is there life elsewhere? — Amaury Triaud (March 2018)
The death of stars: Neutron stars, black holes and beyond — Alejandro Vigna Gómez (January 2018)
Untangling Jellyfish — Callum Bellhouse (November 2017) [ESO tour video]
Discoveries of gravitational wave astronomy — Christopher Berry (October 2017) [PowerPoint version (with animations)]
Supermassive black holes — Alberto Sesana (March 2017)
The music of the stars and the search for new worlds — Tiago Campante (January 2017) [PowerPoint version (with sounds)]
Nature or nurture: The formation and evolution of galaxies — Sean McGee (November 2016)
A universe of colour — Nathan Adams (bad-weather talk November 2016)
Little green men & cosmic lighthouses — Hannah Middleton (October 2016)
Gravitational waves special — Alberto Vecchio, Christopher Berry, Conor Mow-Lowry, Walter Del Pozzo, Will Farr & Alberto Sesana (February 2016)
Massive black holes & tidal disruption of stars — Ilya Mandel (January 2016)
Gamma-ray bursts: The brightest explosions in the Universe — Carl-Johan Haster (November 2015)
Einstein's greatest idea — Christopher Berry (October 2015) [General relativity at 100]
How many Earth-like planets in the Galaxy? — Will Farr (March 2015)
The 12 astronomy highlights of Christmas — Christopher Berry, Keelia Scott & Graham Smith (December 2014) [explanatory article]
The world's biggest telescopes and where we build them — Keelia Scott (November 2014) [features Andean foxes]
Present and ultimate fate of the Milky Way — Felicia Ziparo (October 2014)
Kepler Space Telescope: Earth-like planets around Sun-like stars — Guy Davies (October 2014) [Kepler Orrery video]
The future of space exploration: a journey to Mars — Maggie Lieu (February 2014)

Contact Us

For any enquiries regarding this event or our future observing plans, feel free to contact us through our email, facebook and twitter. And please join our mailing list for news of future events.

Astronomy in the City is brought to you in partnership with the University of Birmingham Astronomical Society, the Birmingham Astronomical Society, the Knowle Astronomical Society, Solihull School and Circles of Influence.

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