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Our next meeting of 2019 season will be on Monday 4th March, it starts at 8pm sharp in our usual venue of Ballyclare High School Lecture Theatre. Directions can be found here.
We are really happy to have Ronan Newman coming up from Galway again this year to give us a talk titled 'Noctilucent Clouds: Ice at the Edge of Space'.
Noctilucent Clouds (NLC) also known "night shining clouds," are some of the strangest cloud formations you can see with their characteristic blue colour. These clouds are normally too faint to be seen by the human eye-unless illuminated by sunlight from below the horizon while the lower layers of the Earth's atmosphere are in Earth's shadow. They are, in fact, the highest clouds on Earth, forming on tiny crystals of water ice and dust particles near the edge of space some 50 miles above our planet's surface.
In the talk the speaker Ronan Newman will be a giving a serious examination from an amateur astronomers standpoint into the various manifestations that have to come together to make a Noctilucent cloud display.
To start he will look at possible NLC observations in the mid 19th century and will go on to examine the giant volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883 and how this affected the upper atmosphere as well as examining NLC's and there connection to greenhouse gases & Climate change.
Other topics will include the how the Solar cycle affects NLC formation, a possible upcoming Deep Solar minimum, similar yet strange high atmospheric phenomena and finally a look at recorded observations of NLC displays from Northern Ireland during the 19th and 20th century.
Please note: Under 16's are very welcome but due to our child protection policy, we ask that they are accompanied by an adult.
As always we will have refreshments available after the meeting, a donation bucket is available at the door if you wish to support us in our work!
Hope to see you all there! |
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