Thursday 1 October 2026 · 5 pm
How to Get to Neptune
Eat the Italian Way, 1 St Andrew’s Road South, St Annes. Free.
Space physicist · Speaker · St Annes, Lancashire
Abigail
Rymer.
I study the worlds beyond Earth and the questions that take us there. These days I also bring those questions into rooms where everyone can join the conversation.
01 / Science
Across the
Solar System.
I’m a space physicist. For more than 20 years I’ve worked on NASA-funded missions, including Cassini at Saturn, Juno at Jupiter and Europa Clipper, now on its way to Jupiter’s icy moon.
I led Neptune Odyssey, a NASA mission concept study prepared for the Planetary Science and Astrobiology Decadal Survey. We designed a mission to explore the Neptune–Triton system: an ice giant and a moon that may hold an ocean beneath its surface.
I’m interested in the science itself, and in how an ambitious idea becomes an actual mission.
02 / In person
Science is better
out loud.
My talks range from the Sun and the search for habitable worlds to the decisions behind a journey to Neptune. I like the moment a difficult question becomes a conversation.
Tuesday 13 October 2026 · 5 pm
What’s in a Name?
The importance of logos in art and science. The first Penny University conversation at St Anne’s Urban Arts Centre.
Past talks
2 July 2026 · St Anne’s Urban Arts Centre
The Search for Habitable Worlds
A journey through the Solar System in search of places where life might find a foothold.
4 June 2026 · Mabel’s Coffeehouse, St Annes
Living with a Star
The Sun, our place in its environment and the ways we have come to understand it.
03 / The Penny University
Ideas deserve
a room.
The Penny University is a live conversation series I host at St Anne’s Urban Arts Centre. Art, science and the people behind them meet around one question at a time.
Join us on the second Tuesday of each month at 5 pm. The first conversation, on 13 October, begins with a deceptively simple question: what does a logo do to an idea?
04 / Writing
Work in progress.
I’m writing Grounded, a book about the distance between the vast scale of science and the intimate scale of a life. More here as the work develops.