Balmoral Hotel, Blacks Road, Dunmurry, Belfast BT10 0NF 11:00 am (tea and coffee from 10:15 am). The speaker is Prof. Alan Fitsimmons who has entitled his talk "Defending the Earth from Asteroids".

Asteroids and comets hitting the Earth are a staple of science fiction. In reality, we now discover thousands of new Near-Earth Objects every year and are in the middle of the first test of asteroid deflection by NASA and ESA. This talk will explain how potentially dangerous asteroids are discovered and tracked every day. Asteroids and comets posing a risk of future impact are targeted for further observations, and possible mitigation of an impact can be planned for. Alan Fitzsimmons has worked in this field for over 20 years. He will describe the current state of the art, and how new observatories coming into operation will help this effort over the next decade.