Taking the Measure of Our Universe, by Dr Robin Catchpole - 2021-09-13
Channel: Cork Astronomy Club
Date: 2022-01-17

Dr Robin M Catchpole is an astronomer at the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge, having retired as Senior Astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich (ROG) in July 2004.

In this Lockdown Lecture to Cork Astronomy Club, given via Zoom, he talks about how we measure the distance to, and the position and motion of, stars in the sky and other objects in the Universe, and how the precision of these measurements has improved immensely since the first positional measurements of stars were made in Ancient Greece. Such measurements allow us to determine the physical properties of astronomical objects, an essential prerequisite in our quest to understand the nature of our Universe.

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Robin Michael Catchpole joined the Royal Greenwich Observatory (RGO) from Bryanston School in 1962. After obtaining a BSc at University College, London, he was posted to the Royal Observatory at the Cape of Good Hope, South Africa, (now the South African Astronomical Observatory). He spent the next 24 years first at the Radcliffe Observatory in Pretoria and then at the SAAO in Cape Town.

He obtained his doctorate at the University of Cape Town on The Properties of the SC Stars and the Chemical Composition of UY Cen, under the supervision of Prof Brian Warner. In 1991 he returned to the RGO in Cambridge, until it closed in 1998, when he moved to Greenwich as Senior Astronomer.

In 1981 Robin married the sculptor, the late Gill Wiles (1940-2014). He currently lives just outside Cambridge, UK.

Robin has authored and co-authored over 120 research papers and articles and used telescopes around the world, including the Hubble Space Telescope. His research interests include the composition of stars, exploding stars, the structure of our Galaxy, and galaxies with black holes at their centres. His current research interest is the structure of the Bulge of our Milky Way Galaxy, as shown by Mira variables.

Since 1996 he has given over 900 popular lectures in the UK, South Africa, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Spain, to over 44,000 people. He has also given 420 TV and Radio interviews and participated in a number of programmes relating to astronomy. He regularly lectures at the Cambridge International Science Summer School, and for Summer Schools at Downing and Pembroke Colleges as well as on numerous Cruise Ships and at Game Lodges in South Africa and Namibia.

(https://people.ast.cam.ac.uk/~catchpol/)