SKY AT NIGHT

A VERY distinguished guest, 2020 Nobel Prize Winner for Physics, Professor Reinhard Genzel, director of the Max Planck Institute of Physics in Germany arrived in Almeria City to be the first speaker at the eleventh Astronomical Conference of Almeria on Monday May 29.

His speciality ­ on which he spoke on the opening of the conference ­ is those mysterious black holes that almost everyone has heard of but few really understand.

This annual event, organised by Almeria City Council and the Provincial Council, attracts not just local astronomers and simple star gazers but a large number of enthusiasts from across Spain and it runs from May 29 to June 3.

There will be a total of five conferences, and apart from Herr Genzel, another fascinating guest will be the NASA engineer, Begoña Vila Costas.

The conference takes place at the Teatro Apollo from Monday to Friday at 8pm each night and admission is free until capacity is reached so, there is time to attend tonight (Thursday) to listen to emeritus research professor at the Institute of Astro ­ physics of the Canary Islands (IAC), John E Beckman.

The following night it will be the turn of the NASA engineer, Begoña Vila Costas, who currently lives in Washington DC, with her talk about the James Webb Space

Telescope Instruments. There is a related exhibition in the Patio de Luces de Diputación celebrating 24 years of the Astrohita Observatory in Toledo that you can visit throughout the week and there will be the tradi­ tional night of astronomical observation conducted at the facilities of the Association Orion in Retamar, from 10pm on the night of Saturday June 3 with the presence of Begoña Vila Costas and the added bonus of a picnic.