Links to the Gresham College Astronomy Lectures given by the author.
These lectures will be added to over the next two years and will eventually cover much of the material covered by the book.
(1) Watchers of the Skies.
This shows how our understanding of the universe has grown over the centuries and covers some of the material of Chapter 1.
(I apologise of the rather long introduction - but it does get to my lecture after a bit. One can use real player to view the video as a full screen image as shown on the page.)
(2) Colour in the Cosmos.
This covers some of the material of chapters 2 and 6 and shows what we can learn from the colours that we see in the in the heavens .
(3) 50 years of the Lovell Telescope.
This covers some of the material of Chapters 5, 7 and 8. It charts the history of the 76m Lovell radio-telescope but also gives an introduction to radio-astronomy (chapter5) and talks about neutron stars (chapter 7) radio galaxies and quasars (chapter 8).
(4) Beauty in the Heavens.
Describing some of the most beautiful astronomical sights - The Aurora and Eclipses of the Sun and Moon. It thus covers some of the material of Chapters 2 and 3.
(5) Proving Einstein Right!
A discussion of Einstein's Special and General Theories of Relativity and how we can test them. This covers some of the material of chapters 1 and 6.
(6) The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence in the New Millennium.
This covers some of the material at the end of Chapter 9.
(7) Ageing Stars.
This covers much of the material of Chapter 7.
(8) Our Island Universe.
This covers much of the material of Chapter 8.
(9) The Invisible Universe
This covers much the material about Dark Matter and Dark Energy in Chapter 9.
(10) The Search for Other Worlds
This covers all the material of Chapter 4 including the additional material relating to visual and Infra-red observations.
(11) Harbingers of Doom?
This lectures fills out the material on Comets in Chapter 3.
(12) Its about Time
This lectures expands on the section on "Time" in Chapter 1.
