At last, after three months of Coronavirus lockdown, we actually held a meeting! Not in the normal sense of a get-together at Coleshill Village Hall but on line, via Zoom – an authoritative, sparkling and witty talk by Dr Rachael Livermore about seeing the distant, and hence the very earliest, parts of our universe.
Seeing these galaxies requires big telescopes – big ones like those that sit on mountain tops in Chile and Hawaii for example. And, of course, the Hubble Space Telescope. The Hubble Frontier Fields program was designed to make exactly these kinds of faint, deep observations and use is made of gravitational lensing, a phenomenon predicted by Einstein in 1915, where a large foreground mass, like a galaxy cluster, bends and magnifies the starlight from background objects even more distant than the cluster. Rachael concluded her talk by describing the challenges faced by the James Webb Space Telescope whose launch is delayed till some time maybe next year. To be positioned at Lagrange Point L2 (to use the Earth as a shield against the Sun) it will be carrying out near-infrared astronomy, but can also see orange and red visible light, as well as the mid-infrared region. This new telescope will enable us to see yet more distant objects and peer even further back in time to gain greater insights into the origin and evolution of our universe.
37 WAS members dialled in to the meeting and were later able to ask questions. We look forward to having another lecture from Rachael in the near future - but in person please!
If you were unable to join the meeting by Zoom, the lecture was recorded and is available from a special Meetings Recording page. It is a password protected so users will need to enter a password to view it. Details to follow shortly.
Sandy Giles