Report from Astrofest 2026
European Astrofest is an annual event held in London and features top speakers spanning the fields of professional and amateur astronomy. This year it was held on Friday 6th and Saturday 7th February and seven BAS members co-ordinated their travel, sharing cars, while two others took the bus to the event which has taken place in Kensington Conference & Events centre for many years … so I am told.
We travelled up on Thursday and met in the Copthorne Hotel Bar at 6.00 pm then popped over to a nearby Thai restaurant for a lovely evening meal. At 8.00 am on Friday we met in the hotel foyer and off we went to a local café for a substantial breakfast before joining a busy crowd in the exhibition area of the conference centre.
Some wanted to buy that important item of kit at conference prices and others tried to avoid the temptation but most had succumbed by the end of the conference. At 10.00 am we went into the conference hall and were treated to seven excellent talks during the day, interspersed with coffee breaks and lunch consisting of a meal deal from M and S. During the day we stumbled across three other members from BAS.
Friday evening the rain continued so we decided to take the easy option and stay in the hotel bar to have a meal there, also taking advantage of happy hour tickets, a two for one deal, some taking more advantage than others.
Saturday was much the same except most of us cut down on the big breakfast. It was time to make up our minds on what to buy before conference closed.
The talks were all of a very high standard and pitched at just the right level not requiring any great knowledge of General Relativity, Quantum Mechanics or Tensor Analysis. Some talks I would class as inspirational. One notable talk was that given by Sir Brian May, Profesor Derek Ward Thompson, and J-P Metsavainio, a Finnish Astro Photographer. This was a combined ’team’ talk about stereoscopic 3-D imaging and their new book Islands in Infinity.
Sir Brian May has a strong interest in Stereoscopic imaging and introduced the topic with some great examples. An old 1977 photograph taken of Freddie Mercury when using a Polaroid camera was rejuvenated in stereo. An image taken by the Rosetta mission in orbit around Comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko popped out of the screen and made me want to duck out of its way!
Profesor Derek Ward Thompson studies and teaches astrophysics at the University of Central Lancashire. He showed several examples from the book backed up with his expertise on galaxies admitting we still don’t fully understand the spiral structures we see.
J-P Metsavainio describes his work as both science and art and provided the technical expertise for creating the stereo views in the book. He gave another talk the following day on his work including an 18 year project to image the milky way that blew my socks off. Combining stereo with video motion was stunning. Details of his work can be found at his studio web site https://www.jiipee.art/.
Conference closed at 6.00 pm and we all got home safe and sound.