Society monthly meeting recorded on 20220921 at The Briars Mount Martha Observatory.

Meeting introduction and rundown of past month and upcoming events was given by the President, Dr. Peter Skilton.

The main talk was a public lecture by Dr. Michael Wong, Astrobiologist and Planetary Scientist, Carnegie Institution of Science, Earth and Planets Laboratory, on the topic of “The Science of Star Trek”. He was supported by EPL colleagues Dr. Samuel Dunning-Materials Chemist, Dr. Kara Brugman-Astrogeologist, Dr. Peter Gau-Astrobiologist, and Dr. Anjali Piette-Planetary Astronomer.

Vice President, Mark Stephens, then presented “Sky for the Month”.

Other educational videos were shown by Peter Skilton as follows:

“The DART impact”, presented by Dr. Becky Smethurst, Astrophysicist, Oxford University.

“The DART mission”, presented by Dr. Nancy Chabout, Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory.

“Behind the DART spacecraft”, presented by staff at JHU Applied Physics Laboratory. Specifically Justyna Surowiec-Public Affairs Officer, Dr. Kelly Fast-Observations Program Manager and Planetary Astronomer, Dr. Elena Adams-Systems Engineer, Michelle Chen-Engineering Navigation Lead, Dr. Andy Rivkin-Investigation Lead and Planetary Astronomer, and by Dr. Nick Moskovitz-Planetary Astronomer at Lowell Observatory.

“The Drake Equation”, presented by Dr. Seth Shostak, SETI Institute.

“The Current State of SETI”, presented by Prof. Frank Drake, Berkeley SETI Research Centre.

A musical closure followed, showing a video Timelapse of Every Nuclear Explosion Except the Last 2 in North Korea, courtesy of Isao Hashimoto, artist and museum curator. Audio is Thaxted, by Gustav Holst, from The Planets suite, Jupiter movement, performed by Kevin MacLeod, incompetech.com royalty free.