Speaker profile

This lecture covers the types of radio astronomy projects amateur radio astronomers can do at home and gives participants an idea of how to start. Dr Thornett is happy to be on hand to help participants after the session with advice.

Mapping the Milky Way’s arms and demonstrating Dark Matter from your garden. Would you like to replicate the science behind much of the astronomy headlines? This talk will tell you how to do this for around £200 using readily-available off-the-shelf components. No electronics or amateur radio experience required!

Have you considered doing astrophysics in your own study? This lecture will tell you how you can detect muons - and then prove time dilatation occurs (where very fast moving objects cause time to slow down).

Why not 3D-print your own serious bit of astro kit? So you have printed focusers, brackets and other similar kit. That's all great - but how about 3D-printing a device to image the Sun?! The Sol'Ex project is one such project designed to allow amateur astronomers with minimum experience or knowledge to create for themselves a high resolution device to rival those sold for thousands of pounds professionally. The project is supported by Shelyak who offer optics for sale designed specifically for it. If you don't have a 3D-printer (like me) then there are experienced 3D-printing firms who will do this work for you. I have no personal relationship to the project or any companies involved but believe it offers an exciting alternative for amateur astronomers who want to explore our Sun in a way they have never done before. The design of the project is such that the solar spectrohelioscope can be converted with a little extra effort into a low or high resolution spectroscopy for night time spectroscopy of stars.

Did you know that it is quite easy to record meteors (shooting stars) using radio through a tachnique called METEOR SCATTER. This is one of the cheapest and easiest and most effective projects that amateurs can do. Once you have completed the project, you will be able to: 1. Observe by radio meteor scatter real time meteors/shooting stars night AND day, regardless of how dark the sky is or whether it is cloudy, raining, snowing, etc. 2. Plot the rise and fall of meteor numbers during meteor showers. 3. Observe lesser known meteor showers for the first time from your location. 4. Plot the exact time of the peak of each meteor shower, even if it is during the day. 5. Upload your data to a central location used by observers all over the world to allow others to share in the experience with you. 6. I will also share a technique with you for allowing others to see the meteors you are observing real-time from their own computers at home. The technique uses Youtube, so you do not need your own website (or can link it to your own website).

This lecture covers the theory and practical aspects of detecting solar flares, as they hit the Earth, and plotting them on a chart of ionospheric power amplitudes, using signals in the Very Low Frequency part of the electromagnetic spectrum sent to nuclear submarines. Don't worry - we won't be breaking the official secrets act!! This project is particularly compact - and the aerial and receiver can be kept on bookshelf in a room in your house. The disturbances of the atmosphere of the Earth produced by solar flares, and recorded by this project, are called SUDDEN IONOSPHERIC DISTURBANCES.

A new lecture, starting a new series - the art and science and magic of spectroscopy. Spectroscopy involves splitting up the light from stars and nebulae, in order to find out information about the elements and molecules within them, and from that information, age, velocity, molecular composition, and a whole host of other information can be determined. It is true to say that modern astronomy exists because of spectroscopy! And you can do it at home - from a simple cheap filter to a complex expensive instrument, there are a wide range of options open to amateurs. This talk will introduce you to the science and practical aspects of doing spectroscopy at your place, and open a whole magical world to you that you may never have known existed!

There are some aspects of astronomy which even seasoned and very experienced amateur astronomers have probably never heard of - and this is definitely one of them. But it is not something that should be ignored. Using clever software to analyse high definition spectroscopic data from the sun, it is possible to create images of the solar disc that shown incredible detail and contrast - and to do it at ANY wavelength covered by the spectroscopic instruction. So far, I have described a clever idea that used to be available only to amateurs with lots of money and in-depth knowledge and understanding of the subject. BUT everything has changed. The design of a spectroscohelioscope (the spectroscopy instrument used for this project) that you can 3D-print yourself at home (also options to get it printed by professional 3D-printing companies for reasonable price exist) by Christian Buil in France has revolutionised this topic - now ANYONE can make and use one of these, and there is an every growing community of excited amateurs who have done just this! Would you like to join them? Andrew will tell you how!!

This lecture is designed to complement to the other lectures in this series on radio astronomy, and will look at projects not previously covered, including: Listening to Jupiter and the famous RADIO JOVE project for schools by NASA. 1. Making your own cloud chamber 2. Listening to radio conversations between ISS and Earth 3. Building a magnetometer 4. Listening to lightening hundreds of miles away from your location. 5. Downloading weather photos of Earth from satellites to your own computer. If desired, individual components in the above list can be presented as a stand-alone lecture in more detail – contact Andrew to arrange.

I love observing and photographing the sun, especially now we are at solar maximum! The view is ever-changing and blows my mind! I will tell you in this talk how you can do it too and the options for equipment and techniques available to you, from the simple and cheap to the complex and expensive!

I started my astronomy journey as a passionate observer of the night sky through the eyepiece of my Dobsonian telescope, am instrument that gives the best bang for your buck on size of mirror and light grasp, but which requires the user to develop an expert knowledge of the night sky and techniques for finding their way around it. In this talk, I will share some of those techniques - and aim to enable you to spot many of the key parts of the night sky for yourself, what the time of year, and whether you are using your naked eye, binoculars or telescope. This talk is a must for all astronomers, regardless of experience level.