Coming up at the Royal Observatory

Silver-Screen Science Fiction:
Tron (1982) (PG)
Saturday July 7 – 6.30pm– 8.30pm
Price: £10.30 adult; £9.30 student or senior; £8.20 child
Members receive 10 per cent off all ticket prices.

Enjoy screenings of vintage, cult and blockbuster sci-fi movies in our planetarium, followed by a short talk on the science behind the fiction by a Royal Observatory astronomer.

With groundbreaking computer graphics for its time, Tron depicts a fantastical imagining of computer programs forced to follow the ruling of the MCP (Master Control Program).

Security program Tron (Bruce Boxleitner) and haphazard digitised human Flynn (Jeff Bridges) work together to try and bring down the MCP and find a way for Flynn to get out of the digital world and back to the real one.

After the film a Royal Observatory Greenwich astronomer will talk about how computer graphics help astronomers visualise the universe and how the computing world is bracing itself for the next big thing: quantum computing.

This event is part of the Royal Observatory Greenwich’s Universe Unseen season which runs until September.

Fantastic Voyage (U)
Saturday, July 14 – 6.45pm-9pm
Price: £10.30 adult; £9.30 student or senior; £8.20 child
Members receive 10 per cent off all prices

Starring Raquel Welch, Stephen Boyd and Donald Pleasance.

This 1960s science fiction fantasy film explores inner space instead of outer space. A mixed bag of crew members are shrunken and enter the human body.

Magnificent special effects magnify their bizarre and terrifying journey.

After the screening Royal Observatory Astronomer, Affelia Wibisono will explore how far our shrinking technology has come in real life, touching on nanotechnology and the medical physics available today to give us the latest insights into the human body.

Astronomy Adult Day Courses
Saturday, July 7 – 10.30am–2.30pm
Price: £30.80

This course will begin with the basics of how a star functions, from its power source to its internal structure, and use simple physics to go from these on to how the entire life of a star progresses.

It will explore the evolution of stars from their birth on to their sometimes spectacularly violent deaths and look at how star’s composition or the presence of nearby neighbours can greatly change a stars fate.

Throughout, the course will highlight the many techniques astronomers across the world are using to understand these extremely important objects and highlight active, cutting-edge research in this exciting field.

The course includes 30 minutes break for self-facilitated lunch.

The course tutor is Dr. Gregory Brown.