Distance Learning Courses in Astronomy | StudyAstronomy.com

Jeremiah Horrocks Public Lecture - Sun, Stones and Stars - Exploring ancient sky knowledge

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 18:30:00 GMT

Join us for a talk about ancient observatories with Emeritur Professor Clive Ruggles. The lecture is given at the Darwin Lecture Theatre at University of Lancashire.

In the 1960s Stonehenge and many other British prehistoric monuments were interpreted as “ancient observatories” — ideas that generated a huge wave of popular interest but also proved highly controversial among academics, pitting astronomers against archaeologists as they reached fundamentally different conclusions on the basis of the same evidence. More than half a century later, archaeoastronomy — the study of beliefs and practices concerning the sky in the past — is pursued by academics around the world, although for many it still remains controversial. In this talk I’ll trace the history of development of this intriguing but often turbulent field, focusing on prehistoric Britain and Ireland but also drawing upon examples from around the world (including my own fieldwork in Hawai‘i and Peru). I’ll also mention how archaeoastronomy relates to World Heritage and to dark sky places.

Speaker biography

As Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the University of Leicester, Clive Ruggles has spent a lifetime investigating ancient people’s knowledge of the sky and the uses they make of what they perceive there. A lot of this involves studying the astronomical orientation of monuments such as prehistoric temples and tombs in Britain, Ireland and Europe — Stonehenge’s alignment upon June solstice sunrise being a well-known example. But Clive has also worked extensively on Hawaiian and Pacific star knowledge and in Peru, where in 2005 he co-discovered the 2200-year-old monumental solar observatory at Chankillo, which became a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2021. In 2017 he was awarded the Royal Astronomical Society’s Agnes Mary Clerke Medal for a “lifetime of distinguished work in the overlapping areas of archaeology, astronomy and the history of science”.

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For more information look at the JHI Public Lecture website or email VPDebattista@uclan.ac.uk

JH Autumn Lecture - "A Small Unregarded Yellow Sun" - How did our solar system form, and how unusual is it?

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Tue, 30 Sep 2025 16:30:00 GMT

Join us for a talk by Dr. Kate Pattle about our unregarded Yellow Sun and find out if it is usual at all! The lecture is given at the Darwin Lecture Theatre at UCLan on 30 September at 6:30pm (refreshments from 6pm).

We often hear it said that our Sun is an ordinary, unexceptional star, but in fact, both it and our Solar System may be highly unusual. In this talk I will discuss what we understand about the still unsolved problem of how stars – both like our Sun and otherwise – form. I will show how astronomers use observations from Earth- and space-based telescopes to study both the clouds of dense gas that are the nurseries of new stars, and the discs around these stars which will one day evolve into solar systems that may be quite different from our own. I will discuss how common stars like our Sun and planets like the Earth may be, and the implications of this for the search for life on planets around other stars in our Milky Way galaxy.

Speaker biography

Kate Pattle is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at University College London. She gained her undergraduate degree at Oxford and her PhD at the University of Central Lancashire, and undertook postdoctoral work in Japan, Taiwan and Ireland before moving to UCL in 2021. Her research focusses on the role of magnetic fields in the star formation process.

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For more information look at the JHI Public Lecture website or email VPDebattista@uclan.ac.uk

JHI Public Lecture - How far is the Sun?

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 18:30:00 GMT

Join us for a talk about the Sun and determining distances by our Emeritus Professor Don Kurtz!.

The lecture is given at the Darwen Lecture Theatre at UCLan on 26 June 2025 at 6:30pm (refreshments from 6pm)

Everyone is taught as a child that the Sun is 150 million km away from the Earth. But how do we know that? Have a look at the Sun at sunset sometime. Is it obvious to you how far away it is? The Sun is half a degree in angular size, but then so is the Moon, which is only 384,000 km away. So, we cannot determine the distance to the Sun from just looking at it. Finding its distance was the major scientific challenge of the 18th century. This lecture will tell a story of a cold castle tower, a dungeon, a Great Dane, a hypochondriac, Shakespeare, a child prodigy, a genius, sea battles and voyages of discovery, royal observatories, a clockmaker, a gentleman returned from the dead, and even Dixieland jazz – all leading to the greatest payoff of all time.

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For more information look at the JHI Public Lecture website or email VPDebattista@uclan.ac.uk

Autumn Jeremiah Horrocks Lecture (1st Oct): How did the Universe come to look the way it does?

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Mon, 23 Sep 2024 16:22:51 GMT

Join us for a talk by Prof. Arif Babul from University of Victoria, Canada, about how the Universe came to look the way it does. The lecture is given at the Darwin Lecture Theatre at UCLan.

How did the Universe come to look the way it does? Human beings have been asking such questions since the dawn of civilisation. Today, by combining state-of-the-art physical models that leverage powerful supercomputers with exceptional data from cutting-edge telescopes like the Hubble and the James Webb Space Telescopes, cosmologists stand at the threshold of being able offer compelling, verifiable answers to such questions. And what we discovering is nothing less than astounding: We have learnt that everything we see has emerged from tiny ripple in the early Universe some 13 billion years ago; that galaxies – like our own Milky Way – are in fact dense collections of billions of stars held together by gravity; and they come in myriads of shapes and sizes. We now know that galaxies are not in fact isolated islands scattered across the vast cosmos as was once imagined. Instead, they are like sparkling dewdrops arranged along networks of filaments that look like a three-dimensional spider’s web. Galaxies breathe – in a sense – and in the process, exchangematter and energy with their environment. Consequently, their observed properties are products of ongoing competition between internal physics (nature) and environment (nurture). And the list continues. In this lecture, I will describe the major advances towards a comprehensive model of the Universe. I will highlight this model’s remarkable successes and describe the challenges, some of which we are still struggling to overcome. Finally, I will conclude by reflecting on what the path forward looks like.

Prof. Arif Babul is a Distinguished Professor at the University of Victoria in Canada. He received his PhD from Princeton University in 1989. He is a recipient of several prestigious awards for his significant contributions to the study of cosmic structure, including galaxy formation. Most notably, early in his career, he held a NATO Science Fellowship at the University of Cambridge and was elected U.S. National Academy of Science Kavli Fellow. He was recently elected Fellow of the American Physical Society, and he currently holds both the prestigious Infosys Visiting Chair Professorship at the Indian Institute for Science and a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship at the University of Edinburgh.

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Student Prizes 2023/2024

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Thu, 18 Jul 2024 14:46:45 GMT

This year we have eight Honours graduates.

The BSc (Hons) Astronomy Prize is awarded to:

Timothy Hurton from the UK with the highest overall APM.

The Astronomy Dissertation Prize is awarded to:

Kelly Al-Dakkak from the United States.

Each year students obtaining the highest marks the most popular University Certificates are awarded a Prize.

This year we have one prize for Outstanding Achievement across all three modules.

We are delighted to announce that there is one prize winner for this year.

Paul Murphy from the UK who achieved the highest grades on:

University Certificate in Astronomy

University Certificate in Cosmology

University Certificate in Sun, Earth, and Climate

Jeremiah Horrocks Lecture: The Extremely Large Telescope-The Biggest Eye on the Sky

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Tue, 30 Apr 2024 10:18:30 GMT

Join us for a talk by Ruben Sanchez-Janssen about the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which is the world's most ambitious ground-based optical-infrared astronomical facility. The lecture is given at the Darwen Lecture Theatre at UCLan.

The Extremely Large Telescope (ELT) is the world’s most ambitious ground-based optical-infrared astronomical facility. When it achieves first light in 2028 the sensitivity and spatial resolution provided by its 39m diameter primary mirror will dwarf those of existing facilities. In this talk I will provide an update on the construction of the ELT and its innovative instrumentation suite, and I will highlight some of the key science cases that will make this facility truly transformational—from searches of biomarkers in nearby exoplanets to detailed spectroscopy of individual stars in the Galaxy and beyond, to characterisation of the most distant galaxies at the edge of the observable Universe.

Ruben Sanchez-Janssen is an Astronomer at STFC’s UK Astronomy Technology Centre (UKATC). He leads the development of scientific instrumentation and facilities for ground- and space-based astronomy from the ultraviolet to the near-infrared, with a particular emphasis on widefield astronomy and future missions. He is Principal Investigator for the UK ELT Instrumentation Programme as well as Project Scientist for MOSAIC, the multi-object spectrograph for the ELT. His research programme revolves around galaxy evolution, with a focus on low-mass galaxies and star cluster systems in the nearby Universe.

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For more information email VPDebattista@uclan.ac.uk

Winter Jeremiah Horrocks Lecture: Exploring the Dark Universe with the Euclid Space Telescope - 6 February 2024 6:30 pm

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 14:17:33 GMT

Join us for a talk about the Euclid mission, where early results will be presented that showcase the stunning image quality of the telescope, with Dr Alex Hall. The lecture is given at the Darwen Lecture Theatre at UCLan.

Roughly 7 billion years ago, the expansion of the Universe began to accelerate. It continues to accelerate to this day. Why this is happening is one of nature’s great mysteries and has big implications for our Universe’s future. To address this question, the European Space Agency has created the Euclid space telescope. Euclid was launched in July 2023 and is expected to revolutionize our understanding by mapping the ‘dark Universe’. In the talk, Dr Alex Hall will describe the Euclid mission and present early results that showcase the stunning image quality of the telescope.

Dr Alex Hall is a Royal Society University Research Fellow and academic staff member at the Institute for Astronomy, University of Edinburgh. He obtained his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 2014 before moving to the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh. His research interests are in theoretical and observational cosmology, and he is one of the core science leads for the Euclid mission.

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For more information email VPDebattista@uclan.ac.uk

JHI Public lecture – An Afterglow and a Dust Cloud – The Story of a Forming Planet Jeremiah – 4 December 2023 6:30 pm

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Fri, 01 Dec 2023 15:13:27 GMT

Join us for an awe-inspiring journey into the birth of a planet, filled with radiant afterglows and swirling dust clouds with Dr. Zoë M. Leinhardt. The lecture is given at the Darwen Lecture Theatre at UCLan.

Planets outside of our solar system are common. Thousands have been observed using a variety of detection techniques. These planets are amazingly diverse – with a broad range of planets that are not represented within our own solar system. Although we have found many planets it has proven much harder to observe the process of planets forming. In this presentation I would like to present the strange and wonderful story of star ASASSN-21qj which seems to be a rare example of a star in the midst of forming a planet.

Biography: Dr. Zoë M. Leinhardt is an Associate Professor in the School of Physics at the University of Bristol. She received her BA in Physics from Carleton College in Minnesota in 1998 and her PhD in Astronomy from the University of Maryland in 2005. After a postdoc at Harvard University, she moved to the UK in 2007 where she held a PPARC Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Applied Maths Department at Cambridge University. In 2010 Zoë moved to the School of Physics at the University of Bristol where she became an STFC Advanced Fellow. She is now a permanent member of staff and leads the Astrophysics Theme, a vibrant and diverse group of 40 students, research fellows, and faculty who study a broad range of astrophysics topics from observations of planetary atmospheres to the physics of black hole accretion.

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Student Prizes 2022/2023

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Tue, 11 Jul 2023 15:33:21 GMT

This year we have 12 Honours Graduates.

The BSc (Hons) Astronomy Prize is awarded to:

David Liddicott from the UK with an APM of 79.24%.

The Astronomy Dissertation Prize is jointly awarded to:

Jennie Dunn from the UK with a mark of 87%, and

Mark Trapnell from the UK with a mark of 87%.

Each year the students obtaining the highest marks in the most popular entry level modules are awarded a prize.

We are delighted to announce the following prize winners for this year.

AA1051 Introduction to Astronomy:

Paul Scott from the UK with a mark of 94%.

AA1053 Introduction to Cosmology:

John Maisey from the UK with a mark of 93%.

AA1059 Introduction to Astrobiology:

Gavin James from the UK with a mark of 90%.

JHI Public lecture – From launch to first science, a JWST year to remember – 7 December 2021 6:30 pm

ucastro@lancashire.ac.uk — Tue, 06 Dec 2022 16:22:01 GMT

We are holding our next JHI Public Lecture online on Wednesday the 7^th December 2022 at 6.30pm on the new spaceborne telescope, James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) The lecture is given at the Darwen Lecture Theatre at UCLan.

If you would like to register for ticket(s), please click this eventbrite link.

Since its launch from Guiana Space Centre on Christmas Day 2021, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has been amazing the world with its technological brilliance and revolutionary science. In this talk, I’ll talk about the path that got us to where we are today, making stops at construction, launch, and commissioning before arriving at some of the amazing science already achieved with this amazing space telescope.

The lecture is given by Dr. Pamela Klaassen, a Project Scientist at the UK Astronomy Centre in Edinburgh. She has been part of the MIRI team for the last
eight years, and studies the formation of the most massive stars in our Galaxy.