The Vectis Astronomical Society have now taken the decision to cancel the talk in the light of the public health situation.

We hope to re-schedule the visit by Dirk Froebrich of the University of Kent as part of next year's programme of public talks.

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Title: The HOYS Citizen Science project

Abstract: The talk will introduce the Hunting Outbursting Young Stars (HOYS) citizen science project. I will first give a general overview on how stars and planets are forming. Particularly this will focus on how the stars gain their mass and how we can map the structure of the inner accretion disks around young stars - the places where terrestrial planets are forming. I will then explain how we are using amateur astronomer imaging data for our research and show how some recent results from the project.

Dr Dirk Froebich is Senior Lecturer for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Kent in Canterbury. His research interests include several aspects of stellar evolution including protostars and mapping stellar extinctions. The HOYS-CAPS citizen science project aims to work together with amateur astronomers in long term photometric monitoring of young stellar clusters to find outbursting objects for detailed follow up study. CAPS is the Centre for Astrophysics and Planetary Science which runs the Beacon Observatory. Dirk has presented the project to many astronomical societies around the UK.

The Vectis Astronomical Society meets on the 4th Friday of every month, except for December. This event is open for non-members to attend. The speakers come from all over the country and give a presentation for around 45 mins. We then stop for a break with tea and biscuits, which gives an opportunity to mingle and chat. The second half of the evening one of our regular members will give a short 20 minute ‘what’s in the sky this month’ presentation.

We have a suggested donation of £2.50 for Non Members of VAS.