Light and Colour.

Guest Speaker

Thursday, 13th February 2025 (19:45 - 22:00)

Venue: Meeting Room

"Light is the messenger and colour its message. The light we see with our eyes is only a tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum ranging from the X-ray to the radio, used by astronomers, to unravel the mysteries of stars, galaxies and blackholes. In this richly illustrated talk, we will first look at some of the new telescopes,which are, currently being built and then at the techniques used to obtain the images."

Light from astronomical objects comes in a wide range of colours, each corresponding to a particular kind of electromagnetic wave. Some of it, such as white light from stars, is visible light made up of the individual colours of the rainbow — such as when light passes through a prism. Telescopes can detect all the visible wavelengths of light plus some ultraviolet and infrared light and even further into the spectrum of electromagnetic waves which are not visible to human eyes.

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Speaker: Robin Catchpole

Robin Catchpole, recent Senior Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, currently works at the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge. He took a BSc at University College, London, before being posted to the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope. He received his doctorate from the University of Cape Town. In 1991 he returned to the Royal Greenwich Observatory, where he worked until it closed in 1998. He has authored and co-authored over 120 research papers and has used telescopes around the world including the Hubble Space Telescope. His research interests include the composition of stars, exploding stars, the structure of our Galaxy and galaxies with central black holes. He gives numerous popular lectures and radio and TV interviews.

Robin gives traditional lectures, richly illustrated with astronomical images, giving a mainly non-mathematical understanding of the current major ideas underlying astronomy. His research interests include the composition of stars, exploding stars, the structure of our Galaxy and galaxies with central black holes. While at Greenwich, he originated the design of the 33 ton bronze truncated cone at the new Astronomy Centre, completed and opened by the Queen Elizabeth II in 2007.