Date: June 1   Time: 18:00 - 21:00

First Fridays at the Castle is an action-packed open night on the first Friday of every month with activities for visitors of all ages.

18:00-20:00 – Workshops to learn about the solar system through football and space

Four half-hour hands on family friendly sessions with our in-house teacher and astronomer, Frances McCarthy.

Kids and parents can learn about the size of the solar system through football and space. Which player would be which planet….great prep for the Euros!

18:45 -19:45 (sharp!) – Cork Science Café

Join Cathal Garvey for the Cork Science Café in the cosy Lodge of the Castle Café for ‘Synthetic Biology’

We’re all familiar with the prior decade’s endless debates about Genetic Engineering. Fewer of us are familiar with the issues raised by newer technologies in this field, which fall under the blanket heading ‘Synthetic Biology’. In this talk, Cathal aims to introduce Synthetic Biology, and to express his belief that this new avenue of research could help to address not only our well-founded concerns with ‘traditional’ genetic engineering, but also help to solve some serious world problems in otherwise unattainable ways.

He’ll be discussing his personal passion: DIYbio, the art of biotechnology as a hobby and giving details on how to be a ‘biohacker’ with mostly household equipment, plus info on taking your first steps towards creating something amazing with the oldest technology on earth: Life.

A little bit about Cathal….

Born a biologist, Cathal Garvey studied Genetics after years of studying life science at home. He believes that Biotech is the birth right of humanity, and should return to the community from which it was derived.

He loves DIYbio, and sees it as the best chance for synthetic biology to rapidly become mainstream as electronics has done. He dreams of changing the world for the people who profit-driven biotech has failed to help and wants to ensure genetic freedoms for everyone; freedom to explore your own DNA, that of nature, and to create new genetic solutions to intractable world problems

20:00 -21:00 – Lecture

Join Prof. Brian Espey for “Where do we come from? Stardust and star death or… a positive side to nuclear waste!”

Supernovae are the showy endpoints of massive stars, dying in a massive explosion that is seen far across the Universe. However, these stars are but the tip of the iceberg, and relatively uncommon compared with the bulk of the stars in a galaxy. Brian will discuss how stars such as our own Sun contribute the bulk of the building blocks required for making future generations of stars, planets, and even life. Although the process of how this material gets out of stars into the interstellar medium is relatively poorly understood, he will explain how we can use the Hubble Space Telescope and other instruments to provide a detailed insight into this process.

An insight into Brian…

Brian received a B.A. (Mod.) in Experimental Physics from Trinity College Dublin in 1983. After working two years for the UK’s Science & Engineering Research Council, he went on to obtain a PhD in astronomy in 1990 from the University of Cambridge, followed by a year in the Netherlands on a Royal Society Leverhulme Fellowship. He then moved to the Pittsburgh in the US in 1990 to work on the Hubble Space Telescope Absorption Line Key Project, before becoming an Associate Research Scientist with the Hopkins Ultraviolet Telescope at the John Hopkins University in Baltimore. He participated in the Astro-2 Space Shuttle astronomy mission, then moved to the Space Telescope Science Institute in 1995 to work as an Assistant Astronomer funded by the European Space Agency. In 2001 he finally returned to Dublin to take up the first staff position in astrophysics at Trinity College Dublin, and is now an Assistant Professor there.

Note – BCO members enjoy priority seating.

Stargazing will return during the Winter months