Monthly Members’ Night - second Wednesday of each month except January.

Tonight - A presentation, followed by informal chat over tea or coffee. Telescope viewing possible afterwards depending on weather and availablilty of scope operators.

Tonight’s Talk

Life in the Solar System:
Building Blocks, Extremes, and Possibilities

Speaker: Jonathan Park (from Hamilton Astronomical Society)

Are we alone, or might we share our Solar System with microbes? Tonight, we’ll explore one of the most compelling questions in science: could life exist elsewhere in the Solar System?

If we do find life beyond Earth, it's unlikely to be anything more advanced than single-celled microbes - though the possibility of simple multicellular life can't be ruled out. We'll begin by asking the deceptively simple question: What is life? From there, we'll examine the building blocks of Earth life and whether they are present beyond our planet. We'll also consider how life may have started here on Earth, and briefly highlight extraterrestrial environments where some Earth microbes could, in principle, survive. Extremophiles - microbes that thrive in environments lethal to most organisms - show us that life can adapt to astonishingly harsh conditions. This opens the door to the possibility that microbial life could survive in places once thought to be uninhabitable.

Putting this all together, we will examine the evidence for ancient microbial life on Mars and consider whether life could exist there now.

Looking ahead, in November we’ll continue this theme by diving into some of the many alien oceans of the Solar System - some of the most promising places to search for life.

As daylight saving will have started now, the start time is 8:30 pm.

The gates and doors will be open from 8:10 pm.

Back to normal in October!

Important: September’s members’ night will NOT be at the observatory. Please keep an eye out for emails regarding the venue.

Tonight’s Talk

Stellar & Exoplanetary Spectroscopy

Speaker: Dr Chris Benton (from Auckland Astronomical Society)

Tonight, you will learn how astronomers read the light from stars to measure their temperature, composition, rotation and much more, plus the atmospheres of distant exoplanets.

We start by explaining how and why atoms absorb and emit light at specific wavelengths before discussing how a prism splits light into its various colours to determine a star’s many properties. This will include a demonstration of a prism and calculating our Sun’s surface temperature, plus images and step-by-step analysis of spectra taken with a local amateur spectrograph. Our discussions will then delve deeper into measuring magnetic fields and surface gravity of stars using this simple technique, before discussing the process and frustrations with analysing the atmospheres of planets beyond our solar system.

Event for new members - this event has been posponed.

HAS Members - please see email newsletter for details, or the members’ section of the website. We will advise of a new date as soon as possible.

This is the Hamilton Astronomical Society 2025 Annual General Meeting.

We hope as many HAS members as possible will come along. We will begin the formal meeting at 7:00 pm. After the meeting we have a guest speaker.

Date:
Wednesday 13th August 2025

Time: 
AGM starts at 7:00 pm.

Location:
Hamilton Astronomical Society, 183 Brymer Road, Hamilton, NZ

AGM Guest Speaker

A History of the Moon Landing Hoax Delusion

Dr. Alista Fow (from the University of Waikato)

The Moon landings of the late 1960s and early 1970s marked a high point in human exploration and technological achievement. However, a group of people don't believe that they ever happened. This talk examines the history of the Moon Landing Hoax Delusion. Where did the hoax come from? And why does it still exist today?

Monthly Members’ Night - second Wednesday of each month except January.

Tonight - A presentation, followed by informal chat over tea or coffee. Telescope viewing possible afterwards depending on weather and availablilty of scope operators.

Tonight’s Talk

The DEpth of the Night Sky

Speaker: Jonathan Park (from Hamilton Astronomical Society)

When we look up at the night sky, it’s easy to imagine that all the stars are placed on a great celestial dome above us. But we know that they lie at vastly different distances, scattered across space, some near and others hundreds of light-years away. In this talk, we'll look at some familiar groups of stars, using graphics to travel away from Earth to view them from different directions. This will help you to get a feel for these distances. While on the topic of how far away these stars are, here's an interesting fact: the speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second (no additional decimal places, no uncertainty), and this means we can now define a light-year to 100% precision! You'll find out how this works tonight. We will also learn a little about some of these stars - are any binary, triple, or more? How big and hot are they? Do some of them have planets? One is a fascinating system of at least five stars orbiting each other in a very complex pattern.

This talk includes a selection of familiar stars visible to the naked eye, and is suitable for all ages and levels of astronomy knowledge. It may even change how you think about the stars you see at night.

Matariki Morning Viewings Cancelled This Year

Unfortunately, due to poor weather, we are cancelling all of our morning Matariki viewings this year - Friday 20th and Saturday  21st (the backup morning). Looking at the forecast, it seems unlikely we’ll be able to see much on either morning, so we hope for good weather in 2026.

The evening lecture has now been moved to Wednesday, July 2nd (our July public night), starting at 7:30 pm. The lecture is on the history and astronomy of Matariki and will be delivered by Richard Croy (committee member of the Hamilton Astronomical Society).

For more details about our public nights, including entry fees, please click here.