Over the years I have spoken to in excess of 10,000 people at public events, youth groups, festivals and other assorted events. Below is some of the feedback I have received from the organisers and audiences at some of these events.

August 2024 – BBC appearance: spoke to a local radio station for their breakfast programme about a space industry story, and one of the team emailed me afterwards to say “people mentioned your name in our post-show debrief as one of the highlights of the show – really interesting so it was great getting you on!”  I also did a CNS local radio round the same month, with the following feedback from the journalist who booked me: “Megan thank you so much for coming on you were fab as always! You made it an even better story than it was!”

August 2024 – Underneath the Stars festival (Yorkshire): I delivered a “Make a Moon” workshop for children, a family talk on Constellations, and organised some stargazing in the evening.  Feedback from the festival’s artist liaison: “I popped my head into the workshop tent but you were mid flow so didn’t want to interrupt.  You had everyone in the palm of your hands just as I knew you would.  The Bonnie Bairns stewards said that the Star Tent was well attended too.  Brilliant!  And to be able to see stars, well that is rather special. Megan, it’s always such a pleasure to have you on site and to bring the actual stars to the audience in such an engaging and accessible way.”

July 2024 – Destination Blackpool (Star Trek convention): delivered a talk on the Science Stage about what 24th Century astronomy might have in store for us.  Feedback from the person organising the Science Stage programme: “Thank you so much for coming along and giving such a wonderful talk! It went down so well!”

September 2023 – BBC local radio round: round of BBC local radio stations talking about asteroid Bennu and what the sample return mission will hopefully tell us.  Feedback from the BBC CNS journalist who booked me: “Thank you so much for today. You were brilliant, particularly given some of the mad questions that some of the presenters threw at you!”  Another journalist at CNS who booked me for another round of interviews provided this feedback aftewards: “A huge thank you again for your time today Dr Argo, you were really fantastic on air – will definitely be giving you a ring to chat about future space stories (if that’s ok with you)!”

June 18th 2018 – Space Camp (Welshpool): Organised by hi-impact and Air Products UK, there was a week of STEM activities for 60 year-eight pupils from schools around the country.  I ran a workshop on the Monday evening, using LCO data to plot the light curve of an asteroid and find its rotation period.  One of the teachers commented later “I’ve never seen anyone get a room full of kids so excited about an Excel spreadsheet!”

May 31st 2017 – Chester Astronomical Society (Cheshire): Feedback from the organisers following the evening: “On behalf of the society thank you very much for the wonderful lecture which you gave us on Wednesday night. The turn out was excellent which gave a measure of the interest in the subject. In fact I suspect from the number of extra chairs we had to put out you probably got a record attendance. All the comments I heard both during the break and after the lecture were extremely positive. For myself, I particularly enjoyed seeing the contribution made by using different parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. I’m certain that every member of the society, from the most seasoned expert to the most recent beginner was impressed by your clear delivery of the subject and masterly handling of the questions posed at the end.”

December 2016 – Widnes SciBAr (Cheshire): Following the event, the organisers emailed me feedback received from an audience member: “I was very impressed by the talk last evening on “When Galaxies Collide”.  It is fascinating to see how science is progressing in the pursuit of ever more knowledge and learn about the new techniques and technologies employed to reveal it. The speaker, Megan Argo, clearly knows her stuff and puts it over in a clear easily understood way, so I’m sure she will do well in her new teaching career. “The Sky at Night” and “Horizon” do a good job in explaining science and technology to the curious, but she painted the clearest picture I have seen yet of the past and future history of our universe.”

16th July 2016 – Lecture (Shropshire): Supernovae, at the Shropshire Astronomical Society’s summer social.  The society emailed to say: “Just a short note to say how much we all enjoyed your Talk on Saturday.  It was pitched just right! We very much look forward to seeing you again before too long.”

20th June 2016 – Lecture (Cheshire): Around the Universe in 60 minutes (and back for last orders) at the special Barnaby Festival SciBAr, Park Tavern, Macclesfield.


Also in the audience were one one of my professors from the undergraduate physics course in Manchester, and my high school physics teacher who pushed me to excel in the A-level astronomy module 20 years ago!

18-19th June 2016 – Live observing (Cheshire): Live observing with LCOGT telescopes in Hawaii and Australia for Macclesfield’s Barnaby Festival.

11th June 2016 – Teacher training: new teacher subject day for the Prince’s Teaching Institute (Greater Manchester): Lecture and workshops with new secondary physics teachers, on the theme of “Exploring galaxies at the highest resolution: the global future of radio astronomy at the heart of Cheshire”.
Christopher Pope, co-director of the institute, said “Thank you for taking part in our New Teacher Subject Day event.  You will be pleased to know that the day was very well received by the participants attending.  Thank you again for your support of the Prince’s Teaching Institute.”

13th January 2016 – Lecture (Shropshire): Lecture about the Square Kilometre Array at Telford and district Amateur Radio Society.
Chairman of TDARS, Eric Arkinstall, said: “On behalf of Telford and District Amateur Radio Society, I would like to say a big thank you for a very interesting talk last night. As you are probably aware, by the rate of enthusiastic questions that were thrown at you, everyone was interested. We would definitely be interested, if you were to consider giving a similar talk, sometime in the not too distant future.”

8th June 2015 – SciBAr (Bollington): @DaveNicoll said on Twitter: “Great explanation of when galaxies collide with a super Q&A afterwards. Thanks @AstroMeg”

23rd February 2015 – SciBAr (Macclesfield): “When Galaxies Collide!” at the Macclesfield SciBar, the Park Tavern, 6.30pm. @EntropyEvents said on Twitter: “Enjoyed a fascinating, enlightening & engagingly passionate SciBar talk on galactic collisions from @AstroMeg last night at @MaccParkTavern”. Peter Nolan, organiser of the Macclesfield SciBAr, sent the following feedback: “May I, on behalf of all of us here at the Macclesfield SciBar and the Park Tavern, thank you for your wonderful presentation last Monday. I normally leap in after 45 minutes and call a break but you had reached such a tempo and level of engagement with the audience that I decided to let it go right through to its natural conclusion. This has never happened before but it was obviously due to the level of interest in your talk and your skill as a communicator.” Another comment received following this talk: “[the] talk on ‘When Galaxies Collide’ was one of the finest we have experienced.”

24th November 2014 – SciBar (Manchester): “When Galaxies Collides!” at the Salutation, 5.30pm. A blog post by James Redfern, the host for the evening, said: “the hypothetical torch was passed to Dr Megan Argo, presenting her Tour of the Universe.
Megan brought her enthusiasm and love of all things space in an hour-long slide show of stunning images to help us explore the universe, and more interestingly, what would happen if two galaxies were to collide… Interspersed with examples of her own research, Megan was able to capture the imagination of the 30-strong crowd. Upon finishing, Megan was keen to answer the many questions from the audience, sharing yet more facts and info from her day-to-day job as a researcher working with Jodrell Bank (many of which were from me!).
The Tour of the Universe was a great way to see out SciBar Hulme’s first three months, and with a strong line-up in the pipeline, SciBar Hulme will be back on January 23rd 2015 for more scientific exploration in a pub. See you there!” Read the rest of the post.

1st September 2014 – SciBar (Knutsford): “When Galaxies Collide!” at the Knutsford SciBar, Knutsford Sports Club, 7.30pm. Feedback forms returned by the audience said (where 1 = very poor, 5 = excellent): Informative 4.84, Enjoyable 4.7, Stimulating 4.7, Participation 4.7, Overall 4.5. Comments included “A very successful and entertaining evening”, “WOW!”, “excellent”, “superb presentation”. When asked what they liked most about the evening, five people put “the speaker”.

4th May 2014 – Tea & Talk at ArtSpace (Macclesfield): “When Galaxies collide!”, over tea and cake at Artspace, Macclesfield. Poster artwork. Here is a review posted to the ArtSpace blog after the event:
“Dr Megan Argo, astrophysicist from Jodrell Bank, amazed and wowed us with a brief traverse across the universe taking in the processes of stars being born then dying and galaxies forming and then colliding, all with some stunning illustrations from optical and radio telescopes – our heads were spinning (like the stars it seems) – only the tea and cakes kept us down to earth!” (read the rest)

20 February 2014 – Kid’s star party (Macclesfield): Tour of the Universe talk and solar system activity at the Macclesfield Astronomical Society Kid’s Star Party at Macclesfield football ground. “Dr Megan Argo will kick off the evening with an interactive talk called “Around the Universe in a Flash”. Megan is a skilled speaker with experience of inspiring children through her outreach activities to schools, brownies, cubs and scouts!”
Event feedback: “It catered for all ages and abilities with an interest in astronomy. The speaker had a passion which came over and made her very easy to listen to. My granddaughter and I both really enjoyed it and she hasn’t stopped talking about it.” “My 5 year old was gripped from the start he sat and listened for 30 mins and asked questions to his grandad (who he went with) when the talk had finished” “Informative and interesting talk followed by great activities lead by enthusiasts”