Astronomy: the next 200 years
In 2020 the Royal Astronomical Society celebrated its 200th anniversary. From the first meeting, when fourteen gentlemen sat down to dinner at the Freemason’s Tavern in London in January 1820, the Society has grown to a diverse membership of more than 4000 geophysicists and astronomers, both amateur and professional. Astronomy has come a long way in that time, and our understanding of the Universe has changed fundamentally.
What didn’t we know 200 years ago? Where is astronomy going next? Join me for a look at some exciting upcoming telescopes and future space missions, and some predictions for what we might discover in the next 200 years.
Speaker biography:
Dr Megan Argo is a Senior Lecturer in astrophysics at the University of Lancashire, where she studies galaxies in the nearby Universe with radio telescopes.
Megan has worked in the UK, Australia and the Netherlands, and has observed with some of the best radio telescopes around the world. She is a passionate communicator of science, appearing on the media and giving public talks and school workshops, delivered in locations from northern Scotland to outback Western Australia, among others. She was awarded the British Empire Medal in the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to Girlguiding, having delivered more than 60 planetarium shows to over 1400 girls around the country during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Megan is a Fellow of the RAS, and a member of the Institute of Physics and the International Astronomical Union. She also finds time to be president of Shropshire Astronomical Society, and to serve on STFC’s Advisory Panel for Public Engagement and the Office of Astronomy for Development’s Astronomy Awards panel, among many other commitments.