In this exciting session you asked the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, Professor Catherine Heymans, your serious space questions. From big telescopes to Scotland’s role in our future in space, to what an astronomer does all day, we talked about it all!
About Professor Catherine Heymans
Catherine Heymans is Scotland’s 11th Astronomer Royal, and the first woman to hold this title in its 200-year history. She is a Professor of Astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, and is a pioneering researcher, mapping mysterious dark matter and energy across the Universe.
Her amazing research has earned her many awards, including the Royal Astronomical Society’s William Herschel Medal and the Max Planck-Humboldt Research Award.
Catherine works with scientists all around the world, on projects like the Vera Rubin telescope in Chile. This enormous telescope, with the world’s biggest digital camera, will make a movie of the changing night sky, looking for exploding stars in distant galaxies and for asteroids closer to Earth.
She is often interviewed on BBC radio and television, to explain exciting astronomy news, and her popular science book “How to Design a Universe”, will be published in September 2026.