PUBLIC LECTURE, ARMAGH, 8.00PM, WEDNESDAY 9 FEBRUARY

"SPACEGUARD IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM"

Dr Brian G. Marsden

Director, Minor Planet Center,
Cambridge Massachusetts, USA

Wednesday 9 February 2000
8.00 pm, the Rotunda Theatre,
St Patrick's Trian, Armagh

During the past year or two there has been renewed interest in the danger the earth faces from the impact of asteroids and comets. This has come about partly from some publicized "near misses" and partly from two money-making movies. Is there any real possibility that life as we know it could, at any time, be snuffed out by such an impact --- and what, if anything, could we do about it? The lecture will explain what astronomers are currently doing to discover potentially dangerous objects and how they are assessing this hazard. Was 1997 XF11 a danger just decades hence, or shall we always be faced with false alarms? At what level should the problem of Near-Earth Objects be studied during the twenty-first century?

TICKETS FOR THE LECTURE ARE FREE, on application to;

Armagh Observatory,
College Hill,
Armagh BT61 9DG,
Tel: 028 3752 2928,
FAX: 028 3752 7174,
e-mail: ambn@star.arm.ac.uk.

Parking is available in Armagh close to St Patrick's Trian.

ABOUT THE LECTURER

Dr. Brian G. Marsden is an astronomer at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and specializes in celestial mechanics and astrometry, with particular application to the study of comets and asteroids. He was born in Cambridge, England, and educated at Oxford and Yale. As director of the International Astronomical Union's Central Bureau for Astronomical Telegrams (since 1968) and Minor Planet Center (since 1978), he is responsible for cataloguing all positional and orbital information on asteroids and comets. Among his honors are the University of Arizona's Van Biesbroeck Award for services to astronomy in 1989 and the American Astronomical Society's Brouwer Award for research in dynamical astronomy in 1995.

See also:
NEO Impact Hazard

Last Revised: 24th January 2000 WWW contact: webmaster@star.arm.ac.uk

Go to HOME Page