Mercury Transit 9th May 2016

Come to Queen’s to watch our smallest planet Mercury travel across the face of the Sun. Get a close-up view of the transit through one the many telescopes we will have on site. Experts from the Astrophysics Research Centre will guide your observing safely together with the Irish Astronomical Association. Find us outside the Lanyon building with live streaming of the event if skies are overcast. Public live streaming will be after 3pm.

Michael West Lecture: Einstein’s Gravity From The Transit Of Mercury To The Detection Of Gravitational Waves

Professor Parick Brady, Center for Gravitation, Cosmology & Astrophysics, University of Wisconsin 
Monday 9th May, 8pm in the Larmor Lecture Theatre, QUB 

One hundred years ago, Einstein predicted the existence of gravitational waves. Scientists recently announced the first direct detection of gravitational waves from a pair of black holes that collided about a billion years ago in a far-away galaxy. These travelled across the Universe at the speed of light causing tiny changes in the curvature of spacetime that were measured using the LIGO detectors on 14 September 2015. This observation marks the end of a century-long quest to understand and measure Einstein's gravitational waves. It also marks the birth of gravitational-wave astronomy: a whole new way to observe the Universe. 

This talk will be free but registration is essential. Please register here.