A group of us recently attended the British Astronomical Association (BAA) Comet Section Meeting. This was held at the fantastic Greenwich Maritime Museum and organised by the Flamsteed Astronomical Society (FAS).
| Start | End | Speaker | Subject |
|---|---|---|---|
| 09:00 | Doors Open | ||
| 09:30 | 09:45 | Nick James (FAS) | Welcome From BAA & FAS |
| 09:45 | 10:15 | Walk to Greenwich Planetarium | |
| 10:15 | 11:00 | Planetarium (Meteors & Comets) | |
| 11:00 | 11:30 | Walk from Planetarium | |
| 11:30 | 11:45 | Nick James | Comet News |
| 11:45 | 12:15 | Dr. Richard Miles | Update on Mission 29P |
| 12:15 | 12:45 | Helen Usher | Comet chasers & pro-am |
| 12:45 | 13:45 | Lunch Break | |
| 13:45 | 14:15 | Jonathan Shanklin | Comet Analysis |
| 14:15 | 14:45 | Thomas Lehmann | Comet magnitude estimation using AIRTOOLS |
| 14:45 | 15:15 | Robin Leadbeater | Dissecting Comets using Spectroscopy |
| 15:15 | 16:00 | Break | |
| 16:00 | 16:30 | Dr John Mason | Comets & Meteoroid streams |
| 16:30 | 17:30 | Prof. Alan Fitzsimmons | Exocomets |
| 17:30 | 18:00 | Closing discussion |
Following the introductions the group walked up the Greenwich Observatory Planetarium for a presentation. Unfortunately even though the resident astronomer did an interesting talk, the comfy chairs, lack of sleep and early start meant quite a few eyes started to close !
All the talks were informative ranging from Helen’s talk on her outreach efforts working with schools and enabling the students to submit their comet observations and as a result being cited on publications. The talks on Comet analysis, estimating magnitudes to the techniques and equipment used to perform spectroscopy on the coma, ion tail and dust tail.
The final section of talks was covered the charismatic Dr John Mason talking about predicting the future meteor storm intensity based on the earth passing through different dust clouds of past comet passes.
Professor Alan Fitzsimmons talked about the recent efforts and discoveries made on exocomets using new observatories like TESS and JWST.
Our gratitude goes to the BAA, Flamsteed Astronomical Society and the fantastic Greenwich Museum staff for providing us with a great day.
Hopefully at some point in the near future the talks will be found at the BAA’s Youtube channel.