Episode: 2646
Title: HPR2646: Liverpool Makefest 2018 - Interview with Steve and Gerrard from the Liverpool Astronomical society.
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2646/hpr2646.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 06:58:06

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This in HBR episode 2646 entitled, Liverpool Make First 2018, Interview with team and
Karen from the Liverpool Astronomical Society.
And in part on the series, Interviews, it is hosted by Tony Hume, aka Tony H1212 and in
about six minutes long, and Karen McLean flagged the summaries.
In this episode I talked to team and Karen from the Liverpool Astronomical Society.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com.
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This is Tony Hume, aka public radio, and with me I've got...
Hello I'm Steve Southerner, I'm president of the Liverpool Astronomical Society.
We're here at Make First and with me is...
Good job Gilligan, on official of his story in Liverpool Astronomical Society.
Could you tell us a little bit about what you're doing here today?
Okay so we've been here ever since Make First started, so we've come every year to this.
And what we do is we're up on the fourth floor, and that gives us access to the flat roof
on top of the central library here in Liverpool.
And we've got solar telescopes, which are very specialised telescopes that can safely look at the sun
and let me say warning, don't ever look at the sun and don't put binoculars or ordinary telescopes up at the sun.
Always seek expert advice from the likes of the Liverpool Astronomical Society.
So we're here at Make First and what we like to do is show the public what the sun looks like through a solar telescope.
And that is there's prominences, sunspots and things like that that we can look through.
And prominences are solar flares and they will...
You can see them during the course of the day, you'll actually see them grow and grow and then detach.
And the sunspots, you can see little patches of sunspots on the sun service as well.
Or can I say normally you do that, but this year is quite a minimum.
So what a lot of people don't know is that the sun has a cycle and it goes from maximum to minimum.
And just at the moment we're at the minimum part.
So there's not a lot happening. However, there are a few solar flares for the public to look at.
And they all enjoy coming along and having a look at it.
When you talk about maximum and minimum, that's to do with the solar activity and the amount of electromagnetic magnetism that Sun's putting out, is that correct?
Yes, it is. I don't think we totally understand it.
We just know it cycles over 11 years maximum to minimum and then back to maximum again.
So we've got, during the course of the next few years, it'll get more and more active.
It's all about magnetism and plasma on the surface and things like that.
And we'll learn more and more about it all the time.
Thank you. Do you want to tell me a little bit about the history?
Yes, Liverpool National Society is probably one of the world's oldest provincial amateur astronomical societies in the world, founded in 1881, primarily by a reverend from west care beyond the world.
Thomas Espinole Espin.
Really, there is a need for allowing individual astronomers to come together to share their observations.
So Liverpool did exactly that from December 1881.
And for the first ten years of the existence, it was only second to the Royal Astronomical Society based in London.
There were a few occasions where some of the meetings were attended by 3,000 people in St George's All.
And they eventually became well-renowned and astronomers both amateur and professional astronomers more over the world, if they wanted to let everybody else know about what they were doing, what the observatories were doing.
They would send their papers to Liverpool to be read at their meetings.
And after a few years, there was a need for a national amateur astronomical association to be formed based in London and that happened in 1890.
So the parent society to the now British Astronomical Association is Liverpool.
And as I say, I'm here today to do a bit of research to do with the society's history.
Oh, that's really interesting.
Is there any particular discoveries that have been made in this respect that were centered around Liverpool?
Well, one of the most interesting things is that in June 1927, there was a total solar eclipse seen over Nordeningland.
It was only 30 seconds long, but it did generate quite a bit of public interest.
And the society organized a public meeting a few days before the actual eclipse took place.
And it was held in one of the central meeting halls in Coldwood Street here in the city centre.
And from the minute books I've been observing and looking at over the last few weeks, I found that that meeting was attended by 900 people.
And 200 couldn't get into the electrithetic as it was so crowded.
So it gave you an indication of the public interest.
Unfortunately, on the day the eclipse, the details for the eclipse, it was low down.
It was unlike today, it was completely the opposite, harder doubt.
But for people in North Yorkshire, around the town of Giggleswick, they actually saw it for a few seconds, right?
Thank you very much.
What about getting information off the internet? Have you got a website?
Yes, so the society meets at Peck's Hill in Cronton.
And every Wednesday from 7 to 9, our observatory up there at Peck's Hill is open to the public.
So anybody is welcome to come along between 7 and 9.
And if they check our website, www.liverpoolas.org, they'll find details of where Peck's Hill is,
a map of how to get there, and more about our events that we have throughout the year.
Thank you very much. I'll make sure that those details are in the show notes as well as on the recording.
Thank you.
Okay, you're welcome.
Thank you.
Thank you.
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