Meetings - Lectures
Stirling Astronomical Society meets from September to May during the year. Lectures are held generally on the second Friday in each month during that period, beginning at 7.30 p.m. The venue is the lecture room of the Smith Museum and Art Gallery, Dumbarton Road, Stirling.
These meetings are free and anyone with an interest in astronomy is welcome to attend, whether a Member of the Society or not. The current series of lectures is at an end for the summer break. Lectures will start again in September.
2011 / 2012 Public Lecture Syllabus
9th September 2011
Speaker - Sir Arnold Wolfendale FRS FRAS Emeritus Professor of Physics and former Astronomer Royal, Durham University
Title - "Intelligent Life in the Universe" - One of the great questions of our age is 'are we alone?' The lecture will examine historical attitudes to the question and then the science behind contemporary searches. The views of the audience will be sought and the speaker will give his own conclusions.
14th October 2011
Speaker - Dr. Alexander MacKinnon, University of Glasgow
Title - "Flares on the Sun and Other Stars"
11th November 2011
AGM & 2 short talk by members.
9th December 2011
Speaker - Mark Butterworth, Stirling Astronomical Society
Title - "Measuring the Universe"
13th January 2012
Speaker - Dr Bob Strunz, University of Limerick, Chief Engineer for the Great Telescope at Birr Castle
Title - "The Leviathan Telescope"
10th February 2012
Speaker - Dr Michael Hawkins
Title - "Black Holes as the Candidiate for Dark Matter"
9th March 2012
Speaker - Professor Simon Stewart, Herriot-Watt University
Title - "The Number of Impact Craters Left to be Discovered on Earth"
13th April 2012
Speaker - Ken Kennedy FRAS, Director of Observations, Mills Observatory Dundee and Director of the Aurora section of the British Astronomical Association
Title - "The Aurora Borealis"
11th May 2012
Speaker - Prof. Martin A. Hendry FRSE
Title - "Captain Cook and the Cosmic Yardstick"
