I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society in 2009 and, when I happened to be in London the same year on business, I dropped by Burlington House near Piccadilly Circus, the location of the rather grand headquarters of the Society, to use its excellent library. The Royal Astronomical Society was established in 1820 to support astronomical research and, today, is a leading learned society publishing preeminent refereed journals, organising specialist scientific meetings, awarding scientific prizes and promoting the study of astronomy, solar-system science, geophysics and closely related branches of science. It has over 3'000 Fellows, most of them professional astronomers and geophysicists, including leading scientific researchers in universities, observatories and laboratories as well as historians of astronomy, a third of them based outside the United Kingdom. Take a look at some photos.
