20 Oct 2026 Meeting ER 225 – Dr Ryan Ridden Uncovering the Changing Universe

Kia ora

This months meetings is in Ernest Rutherford Room 225 and begins with the New Astronomers session at 6:30pm discussing Telescopes. If you want, bring yours along to ask about any issues or tips.

Break and social time at 7:30pm followed by some brief messages and our guest speaker.

Dr Ryan Ridden – Uncovering the Changing Universe

The Universe is an active place, and only now do we have the instruments and analysis methods to reveal what happens on timescales less than a day. With the TESS space telescope and our world leading analysis methods we can now catalogue all flare stars, variable stars, and explosions in distant galaxies, like the newly discovered AT 2020afjz — an orphan afterglow created by the death of a massive star. Closer to home we are also building rotation and shape catalogues for asteroids within our solar system. In this talk we will see what is needed to search the sky at minute timescales and the first discoveries from our search.

Extra info for those curious:

Asteroid database (in development): https://cheerfuluser.github.io/tessellate_asteroid/index.html

Discovery and analysis of AT 2020afjz: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2608.17242