As part of this year’s Exmoor Dark Skies Festival, we are thrilled to welcome Professor Roger Davies to Quince Honey Farm!
Join us to explore how the galaxies, collections of hundreds of billions of stars, were formed and what shaped them into the giant spiral galaxies and the red elliptical galaxies we see today. We’ll see how the smallest ripples in the early Universe give rise to the cosmic web and how these large structures affect galaxies. In the last 30 years we have discovered `supermassive’ black holes at the centres of galaxies with masses from one million to ten billion times the mass of the Sun, a discovery that led to the award of the 2020 Nobel Prize. What is their role in shaping galaxies?
A warming autumnal supper of chicken hotpot with homemade focaccia and root vegetable crisps will be served in our Nectary Restaurant to start the evening off, before the talk starts at approximately 7pm. Vegetarian and vegan options will be available.
If the skies are clear, at the end of the talk Professor Roger Davies will lead some stargazing with the naked eye in our Nectar Gardens.
Tickets can be purchased online HERE (booking fee applies), or by phone on 01769 572 401, or in person in our shop. Ticket sales close on Sunday evening, 26th October. Please note the timings below:
- Doors open: 6pm
- Supper served: 6:30pm
- Talk starts: 7pm
- Talk finishes: 8:30pm (approximately)
A bit more about Professor Roger Davies…
Roger Davies grew up in Scunthorpe in north Lincolnshire and studied at UCL and Cambridge. He is an astronomer and emeritus Professor at the University of Oxford. His research interests centre on cosmology and how galaxies form and evolve. He worked in Cambridge, California, and Arizona before returning to the UK where he has held professorships at Durham & Oxford. He has observed at many of the world’s leading observatories including those in the Canary Islands, Hawaii, Chile, Australia and the United States.
As part of the “7 Samurai” team he worked out a new way of measuring the distances to galaxies and discovered the “Great Attractor”, a huge concentration of galaxy clusters in the southern sky. He has a longstanding interest in astronomical instruments and telescopes. In recent years he has pioneered the use of a new class of astronomical spectrograph to measure the masses and ages of galaxies, as well as search for black holes in their nuclei.
Roger has a passion for communicating astronomy to the public, speaking regularly at schools, clubs and events. He has led tours to observe both the Northern Lights and Solar eclipses, most recently in Mexico in April 2024.
Please note:
- The event is suitable for beginners, those new to cosmology and stargazing, for adults and older children age 12 years +.
- Tickets must be booked in advance and cannot be purchased on the door.
- Please ensure you specify any dietary requirements at the time of booking, and arrive in good time ready for supper which will be served at 6:30pm.
- Doors open at 6pm, supper starts at 6:30pm, and drinks and refreshments will be available to purchase from the Nectary Restaurant between 6pm – 7pm. The event will finish at approximately 8:30pm.
