Annual Roundup and Quiz
A speedy account of HLCO achievements through the year followed by ….
… the annual quiz. Colin Hay will entertain and challenge us with his usual flair.
There may be prizes, there will certainly be mince pies to go with the tea/coffee.
From Apollo to Artemis
Mark Holmes will give an account of Man’s journey to the Moon from the Apollo missions in the 1960s up to the Artemis II flyby earlier this year.
Images: Wikipedia & NASA
Sunsets on other planets
Dr Jamie Dumayne has been involved in events all over the north west, from planetarium shows to talks at astronomy societies to organising his own science festival. He will talk to us about sunsets, but not like you’ve seen them before.
Jamie says “A blue sky seems natural to us, but anyone living on another planet would find it quite unusual. From the yellow haze of Venus to the pitch-black of Mercury, the skies across the solar system are stranger than anything on Earth. Discover the science behind these, before exploring beyond the solar system where things get even weirder.“
Sunset on Earth (Kevin Griffiths), sunset on Mars (NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS/Texas A&M University)
The origin of life
‘It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of the origin of life …’ (Charles Darwin 1863)
This quote comes from a letter written in 1863 by Charles Darwin to his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, a British geographer and explorer. In the context of the letter, Darwin was expressing his scepticism towards the speculative theories on the origin of life which were prevalent at the time. Darwin expressed his view that there was no scientific evidence to explain the origins of life. In the 163 years since Darwin wrote his letter, has anything changed? Do Darwin’s words still hold true in 2026?
Emeritus Professor Philip James will review Darwin’s 1863 statement in the light of current scientific knowledge, a time when our understanding is being shaped by advances in experimentation, observation and theory.
In this talk Professor James will explore changing definitions of ‘life’ and the implications this has for understanding the origins of life and the search for life on other planets; discuss the genesis of rocky planets and the process that resulted in the Earth becoming habitable; examine how knowledge gained from the analysis of meteorites, samples from Bennu, and interstellar space is shaping our understanding of the precursors to life; and set out the current ideas on the origin of life on earth.
Our Upcoming Solar Eclipse
There’s an eclipse coming up on August 12th and it will be visible from High Legh – weather permitting, of course.
The path of totality will cross Greenland, Iceland, Spain and a small area of north eastern Portugal. Other parts of Europe – including the UK – will see a partial solar eclipse. In High Legh we should observe 92% of the Sun’s disk covered by the Moon… unless the clouds and/or trees get in the way ☹
Image from timeanddate.com
In anticipation, this month’s talk will be a brief overview of eclipses followed by the detail of the August event.
Exoplanets – planets outside our Solar System
To date, NASA has recorded over 6200 examples of exoplanets. Most of them orbit other stars, but some are free-floating exoplanets, called rogue planets, and are untethered to any star.
Mark Holmes will give us an overview of this fascinating topic..
Something different this month…
We’ve all heard rumours that the Moon Landing was faked because of “anomalies” like flags waving in the breeze, no stars being visible in the photos, and so on. Can any of these claims withstand hard scientific scrutiny… or even just a common sense evaluation?
Whether you’re a believer or a doubter, join sceptic, cartoonist and graphic novelist ‘Polyp‘ for a fun, audience-led discussion covering ANY of these claims you want carefully examined… while learning some of the fascinating basic science involved, e.g. why WOULD anyone want to cover a lunar lander in ‘tin foil’?!
You can find out more about Paul (aka Polyp) at his website at polyp.org.uk, though one thing he doesn’t mention there is that his degree is in the History and Philosophy of Science. It promises to be a fun session!
Gary Gilbert, a member of the Wincham, Pickmere & District Astronomy Group, will present a talk on Neutron Stars – giving us some history, some facts and some uses for these amazing objects.
GAIA – Global Astrometric Interferometer for Astrophysics
Gaia has spent a decade mapping the Milky Way by making three trillion observations of two billion stars.
In a welcome return visit, Dr. Steve Barrett of the University of Liverpool will explain how this was done and what will we learn when all the data is analysed.
Image credit ©ESA–D. Ducros, 2013
Following his excellent talk, Steve offered a couple of links:
Slides of the talk be downloaded from https://www.liv.ac.uk/~sdb/Talks/Gaia-HLCO.pdf
and a video recording of the talk is on YouTube at https://youtu.be/NmaogYK4uqU
AI in Astrophotography
… how Artificial Intelligence enhances space imaging
HLCO Steering Group member Eric McElroy last spoke to us in July 2025 when he described his personal journey into astrophotography. He now returns to describe the various uses of AI in the field of astrophotography, drawing the distinction between AI-generated data and AI-enhanced data to show how AI can be used in an ethical way to improve data capture while maintaining data integrity.
If you have ever wondered about the difference between scientific and artistic images, and their relative merits, Eric may help you decide.