Society monthly meeting recorded on 20211020 while COVID-19 restrictions prevented an in-person gathering to be held at The Briars Mount Martha observatory.
Meeting introduction and rundown of past month and upcoming events was given by the President, Dr. Peter Skilton.
To mark the anniversary of Sputnik, the first artifical satellite in Earth orbit, a once-thought lost documentary then followed about “Sputniks, Bleeps and Mr. Perry” by John Gau Productions (1987)(spacecentre.co.uk). Also titled “Behind The Bleep”, this tells the story of science Physics teacher, Geoffrey E. Perry, and Chemistry teacher, Derek Slater, and the so-called Kettering Satellite Tracking Group of their students who, in May 1960 using humble amateur radio techniques, monitored and decoded the signals from a Sputnik craft in orbit and discovered a top secret Siberian launch site unknown to NASA and the CIA. The same group with later generations of students went on to track numerous other launches right up until January 2000 when Geoffrey Perry passed away.
Vice President, Mark Stephens, then presented “Sky for the Month”.
Other educational videos were shown by Peter Skilton as follows:
“How We Proved Earth Rotates”, presented by Stefan Chin from the SciShow YouTube channel.
“The Foucault Pendulum” by Prof, Jim LaBelle, Physicist, Dartmouth University.
“Recoating the Very Large Telescope Mirror”, by the European Southern Observatory.
“Volcanic Ash is Not Good for Astronomy” by Dr. Becky Smethurst, University of Oxford.
A musical closure followed, showing a video of sky timelapses taken at the European Southern Observatory’s VLT telescope in Chile, courtesy of ESO. Audio is of All Paths Possible by William Werwath.