National Astronomy Meeting

National Astronomy Meeting
Simon White addressing the 2012 National Astronomy Meeting
Genre	Academic conference
Frequency	Annual
Venue	Varies, usually within the British Isles
Years active	69
Inaugurated	1948 (1948)
Previous event	June 2016, University of Nottingham
Next event	July 2017, University of Hull
Participants	approx. 600
Activity	Astronomy, solar physics and related fields
Organised by	Royal Astronomical Society
Website
www.ras.org.uk/events-and-meetings/ras-meetings

The National Astronomy Meeting (NAM) is an annual scientific conference of astronomers, usually held in the British Isles. It is sponsored and coordinated by the Royal Astronomical Society (RAS), and functions as the primary annual meeting of the society. NAM is one of the largest professional astronomy conferences in Europe, with typically around 600 delegates attending.

Each NAM includes a variety of plenary and parallel sessions discussing the latest research in astronomy (and related fields), public lectures, community sessions and a press office to promote the results presented at the meeting to journalists and the public.

The meetings began when the RAS decided to hold some of its scientific meetings outside London, where the society is based. Known as the 'out of town' meetings, the first was held in 1948. The meetings ran in most years until 1966, when they were discontinued.

The RAS resumed the series in 1976. An expanded format was adopted from 1992 onwards; to reflect this broader remit the name was changed to the 'National Astronomy Meeting'. Since 1976 the meeting has been held every year, except in 2000 when the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union was held in the UK instead.

The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) was formed in 1820, and from the very beginning one of its major activities was to host scientific meetings. Typically eight meetings each year were held at its headquarters in London (a practice which still continues). The growth of astronomical research throughout the UK and concurrent increase in the number of RAS Fellows beyond the London area lead to a demand for meetings outside the capital. Although occasional meetings were held in other locations to mark special occasions, no regular programme of meetings outside London was instituted until after the major disruption to RAS activities caused by the Second World War.

The solution was to move one of the society's meetings outside London each year, terming them 'out of town' meetings. The first of these was held in Edinburgh in 1948. There was reluctance to move any of the regular eight meetings, which ran from October to May, so the 'out of town' meetings were held as an additional ninth meeting during the summer break in the academic year. They were held in the summer or early autumn in most years until 1966, when the RAS Council decided to stop asking groups to host them. The subsequent lack of meetings outside London was unpopular with Fellows, so the 'out of town' meetings were reintroduced in 1976, but moved to April. They replaced the usual monthly RAS meeting for that month, and were usually held during universities' Easter holidays.