Public Lecture Videos

Women of the RAS
RAS public lecture, 12 January 2016 by Dr Mandy Bailey From its beginnings in 1820, the RAS, following the social habits of the time, only accepted men as Fellows of the Society. Despite this a number of notable women, including Caroline Herschel…
Colliding Galaxies
RAS public lecture, 10th November 2015 by Dr Megan Argo (Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics) Have you ever wondered what happens when galaxies collide? Join us for a multi-wavelength tour of the universe as we look at what a galaxy actually is…
Rosetta - The Story So Far
RAS public lecture, 13 October 2015 by Prof Ian Wright, Open University Writing in advance for a talk about Rosetta is necessarily fraught with uncertainty. For those of us involved with the mission (to rendezvous with, and land on, a comet) we…
The planet Mercury, newly revealed
RAS public lecture, 12 May 2015 by Prof David Rothery, Open University Many questions remain for ESA's BepiColombo to answer ten years from now, but thanks to NASA's MESSENGER (orbiting Mercury March 2011-March 2015) we now know far more about the…
The Unknown Universe
RAS public lecture, 14 April 2015 by Dr Stuart Clark It is less than a century since Albert Einstein gave the world the mathematical tools to understand the Universe. In that time, astronomers have developed the theory that our cosmos was born in…
The cosmic chemical cauldron
RAS public lecture, 10 March 2015 by Dr Helen J Fraser
The meaning of meteorites
RAS public lecture, 10 February 2015 by Dr Ted Nield, Geoscientist Magazine Incoming! - learning to love the dreaded thunderstone Thousands of tonnes of meteoritic material lands on Earth every day, mostly unnoticed. Occasionally in Earth history…
Light into dark: Eclipses of the Sun and Moon
RAS public lecture, 13 January 2015 by Ian Ridpath Eclipses of the Sun and Moon are among the most awe-inspiring natural phenomena. Most spectacular of all are total solar eclipses, when the Sun’s brilliant disk is completely obscured for a few…
Exploring the Universe using exploding stars
RAS public lecture, 9 December 2014 by by Dr Stacey Habergham, Liverpool John Moores University Massive stars, at least eight times the mass of the Sun, lead very short lives which come to a dramatic end in a huge explosion, a supernova.…
The heartbeat of the stars
RAS public lecture, 8th April 2014 by Prof. Yvonne Elsworth, University of Birmingham Our knowledge of how stars change and evolve underpins our understanding of both the far reaches of the Universe and nearby stars including our Sun. In recent…