Monthly Meeting March 2026 - How can AI help us find exploding stars and Hungry Black Holes?
2026-03-09 20:00 - 21:00 (Pacific/Auckland) | Stardome Observatory & Planetarium, 670 Manukau Road, Epsom, Auckland, 1345
Dr Heloise Stevance
Modern sky surveys can image the entire sky every night. In doing so, they discover new cosmic explosions – from stars collapsing to stars being devoured by black holes. But the sky is vast and the alerts are many – far too many for humans to keep up with. When the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) begins in 2026, millions of nightly discoveries will flood astronomers. Partnering with experts in sky surveys and applied machine learning, I am developing a Virtual Research Assistant that harnesses A.I. to help experts find the cosmic explosions that made the space dust we come from.
Dr Stevance is a Schmidt AI in Science Fellow at the University of Oxford working with international sky surveys (ATLAS, Vera Rubin) to find extragalactic transients (supernovae, tidal disruption events). She works at the interface between Astronomy and AI, developing “Virtual Research Assistants” to help astronomers find the needles in the cosmic hay stacks. She is an award winning science communicator and early career astrophysicist (Beatrice Tinsley Lecture Prize 2021, Caroline Hearschel Prize 2024), and her talk will be an updated version of her Caroline Herschel Prize Lecture.

Practical Astronomy March - The Autumn Night Sky
2026-03-16 20:00 - 21:00 | Stardome Observatory & Planetarium, 670 Manukau Road, Epsom, Auckland, 1345
This will be one of our seasonal Planetarium sessions. We will use the Planetarium to explore the Autumn Night Sky. This is a great way to improve your knowledge of the Autumn constellations and learn about some of the deep sky objects to be found in them.

Monthly Meeting April - Little Red Dots
2026-04-13 20:00 - 21:00 | Stardome Observatory & Planetarium, 670 Manukau Road, Epsom, Auckland, 1345
100 years ago this year, Edwin Hubble published the first conclusive evidence that there were galaxies beyond the Milky Way. This lecture, using new results from our latest space telescopes and ground-based instruments, surveys the diversity of systems that we’ve found since, from giant and beautiful spirals to mysterious Little Red Dots.
This lecture was recorded by Chris Lintott on 18th March 2026 at Conway Hall, London.
Professor Chris Lintott is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Oxford, and a Research Fellow at New College.
Having been educated at Magdalene College, Cambridge and University College London, his research now ranges from understanding how galaxies form and evolve, to using machine learning to find the most unusual things in the Universe, to predicting the properties of visiting interstellar asteroids. He was the founder of the Zooniverse citizen science platform, which provides opportunities for more than two million online volunteers to contribute to scientific research, and which was the topic of his first book, ‘The Crowd and the Cosmos’. His latest book is ‘Our Accidental Universe’.
Professor Lintott is best known for presenting the BBC’s long-running Sky at Night program, and as an accomplished lecturer. Away from work, he cooks, suffers through being a fan of Torquay United and Somerset cricket, and spends time with a rescued lurcher, Mr Max. He can often be found at the helm of Oxford’s science comedy night, ‘Huh, That’s Funny’.

Practical Astronomy April - Variable Stars
2026-04-20 20:00 - 21:00 | Stardome Observatory & Planetarium, 670 Manukau Road, Epsom, Auckland, 1345
Observation of variable stars has a long history with amateur astronomy. We will discuss the types of variable stars and how to observe them to obtain scientifically useful data. This is still a valuable activity even with the large survey telescopes, as amateurs can obtain data for stars that are too bright for the large telescopes, or for certain types of variable stars where changes are happening rapidly, the survey scopes cannot be dedicated for short cadence observing of a single star.

Practical Astronomy - The study of Occultations
2026-05-11 20:00 - 21:00 | Stardome Observatory, 670 Manukau Rd, Epsom, Auckland, 1345, New Zealand
In this meeting Michael Camilleri will give a presentation on Occultations and what can be learned from them.
An occultation in astronomy is an event where one astronomical object, such as the Moon or a planet, passes in front of another object, like a star, blocking it from view. Measuring precise timing from multiple locations of these events can reveal much information about the occulting object

Monthly Meeting May - Rocks from Space
2026-05-18 20:00 - 21:00 | Stardome Observatory & Planetarium, 670 Manukau Road, Epsom, Auckland, 1345
Rocks from Space
with Professor Jonti Horner
Jonti first became interested in astronomy at the age of five, after seeing the BBC TV programme ‘The Sky
at Night’, and soon became an enthusiastic amateur astronomer. He joined his local astronomical society
in the UK, WYAS (the West Yorkshire Astronomical Society) at the age of eight, and is currently honoured
to serve as the society’s honorary president. To pursue his dream of turning his hobby into a career, Jonti
studied a Masters’ degree in Physics and Astronomy at the University of Durham, before moving to the
University of Oxford to undertake his doctoral studies. Once his PhD was complete, Jonti worked as a
postdoctoral research fellow at the University of Bern and the UK’s Open University before moving to
Australia in 2010 to work at UNSW. In 2014, he moved to Toowoomba, to join the University of Southern
Queensland, where he is now Professor of Astrophysics. His research ranges from the study of our own
Solar system to the search for planets orbiting other stars, as well as trying to understand the different
factors that could come together to make one planet more or less suitable as a target in the search for life
beyond Earth.

Film Night May - Cosmos - 45 years Later - The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean
2026-05-25 20:00 - 21:00
The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean
Subject: Introduction to the scale of the Cosmos using the “Ship of the Imagination”; cosmic calendar; Eratosthenes and the Library of Alexandria; humanity’s place in the universe. 45 Years Later:

Hubble Space Telescope (1990–) and JWST (2022–) have mapped billions of galaxies and precise cosmic distances; universe age refined to 13.8 billion years.
Discovery of cosmic microwave background anisotropies (COBE/WMAP/Planck) and accelerating expansion (dark energy, 1998).
Exoplanets: from zero in 1980 to >6,100 confirmed; billions likely in the Milky Way alone.

Monthly Meeting June - The NASA Psyche mission: First Journey to an Unknown World
2026-06-08 20:00 - 21:00
The NASA Psyche mission is on its way to orbit a small but immensely ancient world in our asteroid belt: A metallic object, the first humans will ever have visited. When our solar system was in its infancy, thousands of planetesimals (tiny planet-like objects) formed in less than a million years. Many planetesimals later melted, allowing metal cores to form inside rocky mantles. One of these metal cores may be revealed in the asteroid (16) Psyche. Dr. Elkins-Tanton, the Mission Lead, takes us behind the scenes in planning and carrying out this remarkable mission of exploration, which launched in 2023, and updates us of where we are over two years post-launch.
This is a rebroadcast of a Silicon Valley Astronomy Lecture.

Practical Astronomy June - The Winter Night Sky
2026-06-15 20:00 - 21:00 | Stardome Observatory & Planetarium, 670 Manukau Road, Epsom, Auckland, 1345

Film Night June - The Cosmos - 45 years later.
2026-06-22 20:00 - 21:00 | Stardome Observatory & Planetarium, 670 Manukau Road, Epsom, Auckland, 1345
One Voice in the Cosmic Fugue
Subject: Evolution by natural selection; Heike crab story; origin of life; DNA and the unity of life. 45 Years Later:

Genomic sequencing revolution (Human Genome Project 2003; thousands of species sequenced); horizontal gene transfer and RNA world hypothesis strengthened.
Laboratory synthesis of self-replicating RNA and protocells; complex organics detected on comets (Rosetta) and asteroids (Ryugu samples).
JWST detecting prebiotic molecules in protoplanetary disks.
