Off to the USA – ASP/AAS Joint Meeting May 30, 2008
Posted by astroed in Astronomy, Education.1 comment so far
I’m about to fly across across the Pacific to St Louis, Missouri for a joint meeting between the Astronomical Society of the Pacific and the American Astronomical Society. The theme for the ASP meeting is Preparing for the International Year of Astronomy, a Hands-On Symposium. This starts on Saturday 31 may with two days of IYA-related workshops then three days for the actual ASP meeting. The AAS conference runs from Monday to Thursday. I’ll be attending the weekend workshops and the four days of meeitngs. I have a poster paper about ATNF Education Initiatives plus a 10-minute oral presentation on Tuesday about PULSE@Parkes.
I’m looking forward to this trip! I’ve been to few ASP meetings, the last in Tucson three years ago, so it will be good to catch up with some American colleagues and meet many new ones. It will be my first AAS meeting though so this should be interesting. ATNF has a display in the exhibitor’s hall so we should get lots of visitors.
Hopefully between long days and conference dinners and evening events I’ll get a chance to post some useful and interesting educational and astronomy items.
Sydney Observatory celebrates 150 years. May 29, 2008
Posted by astroed in Astronomy, ICT, Physics.1 comment so far
Sydney Observatory’s time ball was first dropped at 12 noon on 5 June 1858. To celebrate this the Observatory has a series of events over the next few weeks. A new flagstaff will be officially opened on the 7th. The Observatory plays a key role in communicating astronomy and science to the public and has a stunning location at atop The Rocks, overlooking the harbour and the bridge.
- Monday 2 June at 6:30 pm – A talk on the history of Sydney Observatory by Nick Lomb – “Rise, fall and rise again: the tale of Sydney Observatory”
- Thursday 5 June – media preview of the new Observing the weather exhibition, the reinstalled giant flagmast and the renovated Fort Phillip Signal Station
- Saturday 7 June, Sunday 8 June & Monday 9 June Open weekend with the anniversary speeches, the anniversary dropping of the time ball and the ceremonial raising of the flags on the Saturday morning
- Friday 13 June 6:30 pm – A talk by Fred Watson – “Why is Uranus upside down?” – followed by telescope viewing
- Saturday 14 June – seminar on the history of Australian meteorology – Target Theatre, Powerhouse Museum
- Sunday 15 June – seminar on the history of Australian astronomy – Target Theatre, Powerhouse Museum
- Friday 4 July and Saturday 5 July from 6 pm – the annual “Festival of the stars
The seminars on the 14th and 15th of June include a great range of speakers and cover a diverse range of topics including Aboriginal astronomy by Ray Norris from the ATNF and the history of The Dish at Parkes.
Thanks to Nick Lomb from Sydney Observatory for these details.
GLAST Due to Launch May 26, 2008
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This has been a big day for space missions. Earlier today Phoenix landed successfully on the arctic plain in the northern polar region of Mars. It is alrady sending back some wonderful images from the Martian surface.
Now news comes through confirming a rumour I heard earlier today. The GLAST (Gamma-Ray Large Area Space Telescope) is due to launch from 3 June. This is great news! I’m involved in a project, PULSE@Parkes, which allows Australian high school students to control the 64m Parkes radio telescope remotely over the internet to observe pulsars. The students analyse their observations to determine properties of the pulsars and compare their results with those obtained by other schools. The observations that students obtain also suppprt other programs undertaken by ATNF astronomers including the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array that is seeking to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves. The other key program are observations in support of the GLAST mission. One area of interest to the GLAST team is the study of pulsars that are glitching, showing sudden increase in their rotation rates. Radio observations of pulsars will alert the GLAST team as to potential targets for observation with GLAST. Perhaps some Australian students will make an observation that triggers observations by this new space telescope!
There is a useful and diverse range of educational resources developed by the GLAST Outreach team based at Sonoma State University. Topics include black holes, supernovae and active galactic nuclei.
NASA TV Now Live with Phoenix Landing May 26, 2008
Posted by astroed in Astronomy.5 comments
NASA TV has just gone live with the Phoenix landing. You can also add your own comments on the mission blog site.
Phoenix Mission to the Arctic Plain of Mars May 23, 2008
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NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander is due to touchdown on the Martian surface in just over two days and 18 hours. There will be a wealth of coverage for this event including live coverage on NASA TV. For those of you in Canberra the Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex at Tidbinbilla will be holding a free public event starting at 8.30 am on Monday 26 May to coincide with the the landing. They expect to receive confirmation of the landing at 9.53 am AEST and will be screening live coverage from NASA TV, providing talks about the mission and showing images as they become available.
If things go smoothly with the entry into the Martian atmosphere and the descent then hopefully the lander will look like this moments before touchdown.
Visit the Phoenix website to view an animation of this process.
WorldWide Telescope released May 13, 2008
Posted by astroed in Astronomy, Education, ICT.1 comment so far
Microsoft Research have now released WorldWide Telescope.
I haven’t had a chance to use it yet as the system requirements are beyond my four-year old desktop PC at work and I don’t have Windows running on my Mac either. A pity as it certainly looks engaging and powerful from the visualisations provided on the website.
It appears that the developers have approached it very much as an educational tool. I’m impressed with the simple (Flash) homepage with the three sections: Telling stories, The visual experience, and Context. The download seems pretty hefty and 10 GB of hard disk space is recommended. For Windows PCs they suggest: 3D accelerated card with 128 megabytes (MB) RAM; discrete graphics card with dedicated 256-MB VRAM recommended for higher performance.
Hopefully I’ll get a chance to try it in the next few days. No doubt there will be lots of discussion on various sites. I’m interested in seeing how practicable it is is the average school.
Now, all I need is more time to play with this and Google Sky to get a better feel for them.
