BAA Christmas Meeting 2022

Although this event is sold out, we expect to add a few places towards the end of the week. Please add your details to the waiting list if you are interested in one of these extra places.

All in-person attendees need to book in advance. If you book a ticket and subsequently find you are unable to attend then please cancel your ticket so another member may attend.

Once the meeting is fully booked, please add your details to the waiting list as we may get some cancellations. The waiting list is accessed from the ticket page, when you click to "reserve your spot".

Programme

14:00 Doors open with refreshments available outside the lecture theatre

14:30 BAA President - Welcome, Ordinary Meeting, notices and awards

14:45 Gordon McKay - Controversies in Astronomy

16:00 Tea

16:30 Simon Kidd - Asteroid Occultations....an observer's view

17:10 Nick James - Sky Notes

17:55 Close

18:00-20:00 Christmas Social - Additional ticket required

After the meeting, members are invited to our Christmas social, to take place at The Astronomer pub near Liverpool Street Station (The Astronomer pub, 125-129 Middlesex Street, London E1 7JF).

There will be one free drink per member, and free snacks provided.

There will be limited space for up to 35 people, so booking is essential.

The IOP are helping us to livestream the event on the BAA YouTube channel so members will be able to watch remotely without booking.

Trojan Colors Revealed (Artist's Concept)

New results from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Explorer, or WISE, reveal that the Jovian Trojans - asteroids that lap the sun in the same orbit as Jupiter - are uniformly dark with a hint of burgundy color, and have matte surfaces that reflect little sunlight. The results are illustrated in this artist's concept, showing both the leading and trailing packs of Trojans in orbit with Jupiter. Observations from WISE also confirmed the previous suspicion that there are more asteroids in the leading pack of Trojans (seen in the distance) than the trailing bunch.

The results are helping astronomers fill in missing pieces of the ongoing Jupiter Trojan puzzle: how and when did these asteroids form?

The data for this research come from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE survey, called NEOWISE.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

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