BAA Winchester Weekend

The BAA Winchester Weekend for 2024 will be held from Friday 12th to Sunday 14th April. It will include the Equipment & Techniques Section meeting.

Booking will open at 9am on Monday 8th January and will close on Thursday 21st March (please note the closing date has shifted to a week earlier due to requirements from the venue). Please note tickets for this event often sell out quickly. Tickets for the full weekend cost £275 and tickets for just the Equipment & Techniques Section meeting are free. (If you book for the full weekend then you do not need to separately book for the Equipment & Techniques Section meeting.)

Booking is available to BAA members via a special code you can access here when logged into the website.

To book your place please visit our Ticket Tailor booking page.

Documents for delegates (downloadable and printable)

Information and instructions: https://britastro.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Winchester-Instructions.pdf

Directions to Sparsholt College: https://britastro.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Winchester-Directions.pdf

Sparsholt Campus map: https://britastro.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Winchester-Site-Map.pdf

Programme: https://britastro.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Winchester-Programme.pdf

Biographies and abstracts: https://britastro.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/Winchester-Bios-Abstracts.pdf

BAA song: https://britastro.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/BAA-Song.pdf

Programme

Friday April 12
15.00 – 18.00 Reception – book in at Hampshire Rural Business Centre
19.00 Dinner
20.15 Welcome and Introduction – Alan Dowdell
20.30 The SMILE (Solar wind Magnetosphere Ionosphere Link Explorer) mission – Dr Colin Forsyth (Associate Professor, UCL Millard Space Science Laboratory)
21.30 Observing if clear or visit the bar

Saturday April 13
07.30 – 09.00 Breakfast
09.15 The BAA Archives: Past, Present and Future: Part 2 – John Chuter (BAA Archivist)
10.00 The ExoClock Project – Martin Crow (Crayford Manor House Astronomical Society)
10.45 Coffee/Tea break
11.15 A cluttered and noisy sky: the impact of satellite mega constellations on astronomy – Dr Robert Massey (Deputy Executive Director, Royal Astronomical Society)
12.00 Dark Energy and the Expansion of the Universe – Prof Nick Evans (Professor of Particle Physics, University of Southampton)
12.45 Break
13.00 Lunch
14.15 Equipment & Techniques Section meeting – Organiser: Dr David Arditti (Section Director)
Welcome David Arditti
14.20 Demonstration of the Alnitak/BAA remote telescope – David Arditti
14.30 In the shops – survey of the latest technology for amateur astronomers – Grant Bowskill and Gary Palmer (First light Optics)
15.20 The Questar Maximum Resolution Solar Spectrometer on the Carl Zeiss Telementor – Bill Barton
15.45 Tea Break
16.05 An alternative astrograph – Mike Casbon
16.30 Building and Using a Star’Ex Spectrograph – David Boyd
17.00 Building an equatorial platform for high-resolution planetary imaging – Martin Lewis
17.25 Closing remarks – David Arditti
17.30 End
18.00 Dinner
19.30 The Alfred Curtis Lecture
The Digital Telescope Concept – Prof Don Pollacco (Professor of Astronomy, University of Warwick)
21.00 Observing if clear or visit the bar

Sunday April 14
07.30 – 09.00 Breakfast
09.15 The astronomy of Stonehenge – Simon Banton (Archaeo-astronomer)
10.00 Black Holes: Unlikely Sources of Enlightenment – Prof Marika Taylor (Professor of Theoretical Physics, University of Birmingham)
10.45 Coffee/Tea break
11.30 JWST – Prof Gillian Wright (Director of the UK Astronomy Technology Centre, Edinburgh) (to be delivered remotely via Teams)
12.30 Break
13.00 Lunch
14.15 Members’ session
Your opportunity to talk briefly about what you’ve been doing during the past year. Includes the following:
Dr Stuart Eves – Archaeo-astronomy – Orion and the Milky Way
The BAA Song – David Arditti will lead the first performance in 100 years of the song first sung at the 1924 BAA Annual Dinner by Prof. H. H. Turner. Everyone is invited to take part!
16.00 Coffee/Tea and Goodbyes