Space exploration told through the medium of plastic model kits

Talk by Dr John Davies. We will also have the Sky in Septemember.

John will revisit his (and some of our) childhood memories of building spaceships made by Airfix, Revell, Monogram and others which tell the story of the prehistory and the first three decades of space exploration (up to the end of the Apollo programme). No glue or batteries required.

John is a retired astronomer from the ROE who has been interested in both model kits and space exploration since he was very young.

In 1982, John joined the astronomy department of Leicester University where he worked with a small group of solar system astronomers. John, with then PhD student Simon Green, searched data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) for moving objects. This led to the discovery of 6 new comets, a hitherto unknown dust trail associated with comet P/Tempel-2 and several asteroids including 3200 Phaethon (the source of the Geminid meteors). When the IRAS mission ended, John stayed at Leicester for a while helping in the UK preparations to observe Halley’s comet before moving, in 1984, to the Space Research department of Birmingham University. At Birmingham he helped with the testing of the Wide Field Camera, a British soft X-ray telescope carried on the German/US/UK ROSAT astronomy satellite. The ROSAT launch was delayed by the explosion of the Space Shuttle “Challenger” in 1986, but it eventually went on to make a very important survey of the sky at X-ray wavelengths.

John moved to the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh (ROE) in 1987 and joined the international team building ISOCAM, the Infrared Camera for the European Infrared Space Observatory satellite. At ROE John was responsible for a cyrogenic (ultra-low temperature) test facilty used to verify the performance of the optics for ISOCAM and was eventually made a member of the ISOCAM science team. As the ISOCAM test programme ended, John joined the group at ROE responsible for the support of UKIRT, the UK Infrared Telescope atop the 14,000ft high dormant volcano Mauna Kea in Hawaii. John was responsible for the UKIRT “service observing” programme which makes short observations for a variety of small projects, none of which require the award of a whole night of telescope time.

In 1993 John and his family moved to Hilo, Hawaii and John joined the team of astronomers at the Joint Astronomy Centre supporting UKIRT. As a “support scientist” John assisted astronomers who come to use the telescope and, from 1996 to 2001, he was also responsible for setting the telescope schedule. Like the other UKIRT scientists, he made frequent trips up to the telescope to support visiting astronomers during their first night at the telescope.

John’s personal research involves small solar system objects such as comets and asteroids. For this he uses both UKIRT and other telescopes including the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope in Hawaii and optical telescopes on La Palma, in the Canary Islands. In 2000 an small main belt asteroid, Minor Planet 9064, was named after him in recognition of his contributions to astronomy.