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
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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.
It’s About Time…It’s About Space! April 16, 2008
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Here is an event that should interest those of you in Sydney: Naomi is this year’s Powerhouse Wizard, a Science Leader at the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility and a great speaker. This will be well worth attending.
“The Powerhouse Discovery Centre at Castle Hill is hosting its next monthly Open Day on Saturday 10th of May 2008 titled It’s About Time…It’s About Space! The Open day program will include a range of activities themed around space, astronomy, and timekeeping, including, a very special behind-the-scenes tours of astronomy and timekeeping objects in the Powerhouse Museum Collection hosted by Sydney Observatory curator Dr Nick Lomb, solar telescope viewings, a free water rocket workshop for kids, and an illustrated lecture on the Milky Way by astrophysicist Dr Naomi McClure Griffiths. There will also be an evening of star-gazing from 6 – 8pm with the Sydney Observatory astronomers which will include complimentary tea, coffee, and pizza.”
International SKA Forum talks now available. April 16, 2008
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I spent a few days in Perth last week. The main purpose of my trip as to attend the International SKA Forum. This one-day meeting gave participants and up-to-date report on the Science case for this ambitious radio telescope, the Square Kilometre Array. Other sessions addressed engineering developments, business engagement and presentations from the two short-listed candidate countries to hot the SKA; Australia and South Africa, on their sites and pathfinder telescopes, ASKAP and MeerKAT.
My presence was due to the inclusion of a half-hour slot on the education potential of the SKA. This was a pleasing inclusion and generated lots of interesting questions and ideas from the audience. Hopefully this will spur continued education programs over coming years as the SKA is developed. All of the talks are now available for download from the AuSKA website forum page. They provide a useful introduction to the scale and scope of this exciting project.
Heritage Status for NSW Sky? March 27, 2008
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The Australian has an interesting report that the NSW National Trust is to give heritage status to the sky in NSW. I cannot find specific mention of it on the Trust’s website at present though it has a notice that it is undergoing a major upgrade due for completion in May/June.
I have to agree with these quotes from the article:
National Trust NSW president Zeny Edwards said the sky viewed from NSW had extraordinary aesthetic, historic, social and scientific significance for all Australians.
and
“A clear view of the sky is the right of every Australian and should be preserved.”
Dr Edwards said the Milky Way and Southern Cross were defining symbols for Australians.
“Our sky predates life on earth and is known to have been highly significant to the Aboriginal people who have depicted the sun, moon and stars in art and dreamtime legends,” he said.
I’m not sure as to how effective heritage listing of the sky will actually be or even if it has any legal standing but I admire and respect the symbolism. It will be interesting to see how this proposal develops and how people respond to it.
My first NACAA March 27, 2008
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So, how was NACAA? This was my first experience of this biannual convention of Australian amateur astronomers but hopefully not my last. I didn’t manage to attend the workshops on the Friday or Monday or the dinners on Saturday and Sunday but got along to many of the daytime sessions on Saturday and Sunday. Fortunately my talk about the PULSE@Parkes project was well attended and I received lots of positive feedback and comments. The panel session on the International Year of Astronomy 2009 on the Saturday afternoon also went well and generated lots of lively discussion and ideas from the amateur community. Due to the number of submissions for sessions the program ran parallel sessions for much of the weekend so of course I couldn’t get to all the sessions I wanted. Overall though I was very impressed with the event, the turnout and the mix of presentations. As is typical of any conference some sessions or talks are more relevant or interesting to an individual than others but there was enough to choose from and the fact that the presentation rooms were only a short distance apart made swapping between talks easy.. Over 100 participants attended which I believe is a record.
The conference began with a Keynote address by Prof Matthew Colless, Director of the AAO on the Future of Optical Astronomy in Australia. Australia’s contribution to the wider global community was clearly outlined specifically through the development of multi-fibre spectroscopy in instruments such as 2dF, 6dF and AAOmega. The challenges and opportunities of the next generation ELTs such as GMT are exciting. Antarctica also offers an outstanding site that will be explored using the proposed PILOT 2.4m telescope.
The funniest talk I attended (and the one that probably attracted most envy) was from Ray Johnston who runs the observatory on Hamilton Island in the Whitsundays. His Astronomer (to a) Royal was hot of the press or more accurately straight off the boat. The Royal in this case referring to the Cunard ship the QE2 which has just toured Australia on its final round-the-world voyage. Ray was jammy enough to get a berth on the Australia to Singapore leg as a guest lecturer!
Ian Maclean’s talk about his work with Aboriginal students and homeland schools in Arnhem Land was inspiring and encouraging. Visit his blog to see what he is up to. His work resonated with the Wildflowers in the Sky project I was involved with in outback WA last year.
Martin George, Immediate Past-President of the International Planetarium Society, Director of the Launceston Planetarium in Tasmania gave an interesting overview of planetaria of the world.
The plenary by Dr Arne Henden, Director of the AAVSO (American Association of Variable Star Observers) discussed the role of the amateur scientist in modern society, focusing on the fine work done by many members of the AAVSO with some examples of professional-amateur collaborations. Astronomy is one of the few areas of science where amateurs still make a valuable contribution and can make significant discoveries.
I was inspired by the willingness of amateur astronomers to develop new skills and push the capabilities of their instruments and techniques. One such example was David Gault from ASNSW who used his 10 inch telescope to take part in observations of an occultation of Pluto to study its atmosphere.
A large part of an event such as this is the chance to meet old friends, meet new people and discuss ideas over lunch or coffee. I was not disappointed in this regard at NACAA.
The 2010 event will be in Canberra. I’ll certainly try and get along.
