Tag Archives: Australia

Eta Aquarid Meteor Shower May 3-6

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Just a reminder that the Eta Aquarid meteor shower will peak this weekend and into early next week, this shower is associated with Halley’s Comet.

The Moon will be a very slim crescent by the time the Eta’s peak on the morning of the 6th May (Monday).

It is advisable that you try to observe at least the morning before and after the peak as the maxima is very broad for this shower and it is quite possible that rates can vary.

The expected Zenith Hourly Rate is around 65 meteors per hour, but realistically this may be much lower, this shower has shown good rates in the past.

Best observing time is from around 3:30am.
The meteors will appear to “radiate” away from the star Eta Aquarii, meteors closer to the radiant will appear much shorter and ones further away will leave longer streaks, of which you can trace the origin back to the radiant.
Any meteor NOT tracing back to the radiant is classified as “sporadic” or could be a member of another shower which might be showing activity.
Some meteors near the radiant will show as a rapid pinpoint flash of light indicating a “head-on” meteor, don’t worry they won’t hit you!

Look for fast (65km/sec) white/yellowish coloured meteors which leave a 2 to 3 second “train” (sometimes longer), ie: the streak left over after the meteor “burns” out.

There will be some early morning International Space Station passes in the NE on the morning of the peak (6th May) at around 4:21am but will keep low (17 degrees) above the horizon!

Thanks to my pal – Chris Wyatt for the reminder and chart!

Siding Spring Observatory Open Day – Saturday October 6, 2012

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On Saturday October 6th, the Annual Siding Spring Open Day will be held here at Siding Spring Observatory. A number of the telescopes will be open during the day to the public.

There will be a BBQ lunch available; a shuttle bus on site to help you move around and see all there is to see. You will have the opportunity to talk to astronomers and learn about what science is carried out here.

Solar observing will also be available and there will be talks in the Exploratory lecture theatre throughout the day.

The Exploratory cafe will be opened for a well deserved cuppa, Devonshire tea or light lunch from the International menu. Visit the various telescopes and listen to astronomers talk about the research they do. Take part in the trivia treasure hunt to win prizes on the day.

Entry to the event is free. The Open Day will start at 10am and run until 4pm.

Science in the Pub – the End is Nigh! or is it?

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Join for Coonabarabran’s Annual Science in the Pub

 This entertaining event starts the weekend off on Friday October 5th, 2012 from 6.30pm.  This annual debate is definitely entertaining and can be thoroughly outrageous at times as a group of astronomers from various backgrounds debate a topic of astronomical interest at the Royal Hotel, John Street Coonabarabran. This event has an entry fee of $5 and provides entry into the drawer for a variety of prizes on the night. Profits all go to a local charity. Food is available for sale on the night. Bookings would be appreciated. Vegetarian meals are also available. Enjoy Dr Fred Watson, Dr Amanda Bauer and Dr Bradley Schaeffer debate “The End is Nigh! Or is it?” and be a part of the fun in the Q&A!

Astronomy Events in Coonabarabran – October 5th-6th 2012.

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Annual Science in the Pub

This entertaining event starts the weekend off on Friday October 5th, 2012 from 6.30pm. This annual debate is definitely entertaining and can be thoroughly outrageous at times as a group of astronomers from various backgrounds debate a topic of astronomical interest at the Royal Hotel, John Street Coonabarabran. This event has an entry fee of $5 and provides entry into the drawer for a variety of prizes on the night. Food is available for sale on the night. Bookings would be appreciated. Vegetarian meals are also available. Enjoy Dr Fred Watson, Dr Amanda Bauer and Dr Bradley Schaeffer debating the topic; “The End is nigh.. or is it? Come along join in  and be a part of the fun!
Siding Spring Open Day

On Saturday October 6th, the Annual Siding Spring Open Day will be held here at Siding Spring Observatory. A number of the telescopes will be open during the day to the public.
There will be a BBQ lunch available; a shuttle bus on site to help you move around and see all there is to see. You will have the opportunity to talk to astronomers and learn about what science is carried out here.
Solar observing will also be available and there will be talks in the Exploratory lecture theatre throughout the day.
The Exploratory cafe will be opened for a well deserved cuppa or Devonshire tea or try a light lunch from their International Men.

Entry to the event is free.

The Open Day will start at 10am and run until 4pm. Visit the various telescopes and listen to astronomers talk about the research they do.
Take part in the trivia treasure hunt to win prizes on the day.

Annual Bok Lecture
Saturday evening will culminate with the annual Bok lecture. This is a free lecture, held at the Coonabarabran Primary School in George Street, Coonabarabran.
The Bok Lecture is a light hearted look at astronomy and is accessible to even the most non-science mind. Dr Scott Croom from the University of Sydney will be speaking on the topic: “big Bangs, Big Crunches and Big Rips”.

This night is open to everyone and is free. The event starts at 7pm.
For more information on all these events or to make a booking please contact Donna Burton at Siding Spring Observatory on 02 6842 6255 or by email donna@mso.anu.edu.au.

HATSouth network discovers its first planet.

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The Hungarian-made Automated Telescope South project (HATSouth) is a network of six robotic telescopes located at three separate sites in the Southern Hemisphere, the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile, the High Energy Stereoscopic System site in Namibia and here at Siding Spring Observatory in New South Wales. The network is designed to search for exoplanets in the southern sky. It is operated as a collaborative project between the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy, Harvard-Smithsonian Centre for Astrophysics, Princeton University, the Australian National University, and the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile.

In a paper published on 8 June 2012, the HATSouth team announced the first planet discovered by the southern network.

The new planet is named HATS-1b, and the star it orbits HATS-1A – much more civilised than its previous name GSC 6652-00186. HATS-1A is a G-type Dwarf Star, very similar to our own Sun. It has a mass close to that of the Sun is only slightly warmer but is a little older at 6 billion years, compared to our Sun’s 4.5 billion years and is located about 988 light years from the Earth.

HATS-1b is a Hot Jupiter type planet, with 1.85 times Jupiter’s mass, orbiting HATS-1A at a distance of only 6.6 million kilometres about 4% of the distance between the Earth and the Sun, every 3.45 days. It is thought to have an average equatorial temperature of 1359 K.

Large planets close to their stars are the easiest to detect; their gravity exerts more influence on the star than smaller, more distant planets, causing the stars to wobble more pronouncedly, and those that transit their stars (such as HATS-1b) do so more often and obscure more of the star’s light. It is unsurprising, therefore, that the first planet discovered by the HATSouth survey should be a Hot Jupiter type planet. The discovery does, however, prove that the system is working, so more discoveries from HATSouth are to be expected. The 3 telescopes each contribute to the light curves of the discoveries as being spaced at the different longitudes they provide the ability to undertake continuous observations.

World’s Largest Telescope To be shared between Australia/New Zealand and South Africa

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Friday night, Australian time, came the decision that many expected. The battle for the world’s largest radio telescope ended in a draw – with no golden point time!

The site will be spilt between both Australia/New Zealand and South Africa. The Board met in the Netherlands on Friday and announced at a Press Conference at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam that the decision had been made to go with a dual site approach. This decision has been expected by many since the board met earlier this month and put together a working group to consider the option of a dual site solution.

Factors taken into account during the site selection process included levels of radio frequency interference, the long term sustainability of a radio quiet zone, the physical characteristics of the site, long distance data network connectivity, the operating and infrastructure costs as well as the political and working environment.

This agreement was reached by the Members of the SKA Organisation who were not a part of the two bidding consortia. (Canada, China, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom)

Construction will begin in 2016, and when it is completed around 2024, it is believed that the telescope will be able to image the early universe at the time when the first stars and galaxies began to form. It will be 50 times more sensitive than current radio telescopes and will be able to shed light on fundamental questions about the Universe including how it began, why it is expanding at the rate it is, what is dark matter and whether there is life beyond our planet.

Splitting the site may be politically expedient, but was certainly not the cheapest or easiest solution. Each of SKA’s thousands of elements will send 160 gigabytes of data per second. Even though that data will be further processed to reduce the bandwidth, both of the remote sites will need high-speed networking and powerful supercomputers, along with all the necessary infrastructure that goes along with it. These costs will increase the cost of the project significantly.

But it isn’t over yet – the member countries – Australia, New Zealand, Republic of South Africa, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, China, Canada and Italy still have to raise the financing for this major project. India is an Associate member of the SKA Organisation as well.

In the decision, it was announced that the ASKAP and MeerKat dishes will be incorporated into Phase I of the SKA. These alone will deliver more science for the radio astronomy community than we can now do.

It was announced that the majority of SKA dishes in Phase 1 will be built in South Africa, combined with MeerKAT, while further SKA dishes will be added to the ASKAP array in Australia. All the dishes and the mid frequency aperture arrays for Phase II of the SKA will be built in Southern Africa while the low frequency aperture array antennas for Phase I and II will be built in Australia. The decision means that they can now get on with the job of building this – the world’s largest telescope.

The Square Kilometre Array will be the world’s largest and most sensitive radio telescope. The total collecting area will be about one square kilometre giving 50 times the sensitivity, and 10 000 times the survey speed, of the best current-day telescopes. Thousands of receptors will extend out to 3, 000 km from the centre of the telescope.

“SuperMoon” this Sunday

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The biggest and brightest full moon of the year arrives tomorrow as our largest natural or otherwise satellite comes a little closer than normal. It will, at least from our perspective on Earth appear a bit bigger – a good experiment – take a photo tonight and take one next full moon in the same place and see if it is true.

The term ‘Supermoon’ is a nickname for a perigee full moon, this is the when the Moon is  closer to the Earth than usual in its orbit. Apogee and perigee refer to the distance from the Earth to the moon. Apogee is the furthest point from the earth while Perigee is the closest point to the earth and it is in this stage that the moon appears larger. Looking at the moon in the sky without anything to compare it to, you wouldn’t notice any size difference. But the difference in size can in fact be quite significant.

full moon at apogee and perigee

If you were to take a picture when the Moon is at perigee and again at apogee using the same camera and lens you would notice the difference.

The full Moon occurs at 1:35pm (AEST) Sunday May 6th in Australia. It is predicted that the moon will about 14 per cent brighter than usual.

Sunday’s event is a “supermoon,” the closest and the biggest and brightest full moon of the year. At 1.35 p.m., the moon will be about 356,956 km from Earth. That’s about 24,653 km closer than it is on average.

That proximity will make the moon appear about 14 percent bigger than it would if the moon were at its farthest distance, however, the difference in appearance is so small that you will find it hard pick it with your unaided eye.

The moon’s distance from Earth varies because it follows an elliptical orbit not a circular one.

Like any full moon, tomorrow’s moon will look bigger when it’s on or near the horizon rather than higher in the sky, thanks to an optical illusion. The full moon appears on the horizon at sunset. On the East coast, for example, that will be a at 5.07pm.

The last “supermoon” on March 20, last year was about 380 km closer than this year’s will be. Next year’s will be even a bit farther away than this year’s. Each year there is a perigee and an apogee Moon and the distances vary.

One effect that can be noticed doesn’t affect me where I live, but coastal folks are very familiar with the tides and how their height varies over the course of a month, again, due to the Moon not always being the same distance from the Earth. As the Moon’s orbit brings it in closer proximity to our planet, its gravitational forces can increase by almost 50%, and this stronger force leads to high tides. Likewise, when the Moon is farther away from the Earth the tides are far less spectacular.

The Moon’s influence can also be balanced out by the position of the Sun – if the Sun and the Moon find themselves 90 degrees apart in relation to an observer on the Earth, then high tides are not as high as they normally would be. This is because despite its greater distance from the planet, the Sun’s mass allows it to exert enough gravitational force on the oceans that it can negate some of the effects of the Moon’s pull. This phenomenon of lower high tides is called a neap tide. In the same way, when the Sun lines up with the Moon and the Earth, as during a Full Moon, then the Sun can act to amplify the tidal forces, drawing even higher tides. These are known as spring tides, named not for the season, but for the fact that the water “springs” higher than normal. The variance in the height of the world’s tides also depends on the local geography of the coastline and the topography of the ocean floor.

David Malin astrophotography competition – entries open April 2, 2012

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Entries open on 2 April and close at midnight on Friday 15 June 2012 (AEST)

More info:  http://www.parkes.atnf.csiro.au/news_events/astrofest/DMA/

The Central West Astronomical Society is proud to announce the 2012 CWAS “David Malin Awards”. Click to download the Conditions of Entry.

The competition this year will have three sections of entry -

  • General Section,
  • Open Themed Section
  • and a Junior Section (18 and under).

The general section is divided into five categories;

  • Wide-field (camera shots),
  • Deep Sky (telescope shots),
  • Solar System Objects – Hi-Resolution (<30′)
  • and Wide Field (> 30′)
  • and a category for Animated Sequences.

The Junior Section will have one open category and entries can be of any astronomical subject.

Open Themed Section – “Symmetries”The “David Malin Innovation Prize” may be awarded, at Dr Malin’s discretion, for a striking astronomical image that shows exceptional imagination, innovation or an unusual approach in any of the categories.

The Open Themed Section is open to all astrophotographers. They are invited to compete together to see who can be the most creative in evoking the theme, which this year will be “Symmetries” – pictures that emphasise symmetries between objects in the sky, between the sky and the land or water (or other reflective surface), or that in some way suggest or evoke such symmetries through imaginative concepts and ideas.

As always, the content must be dominated by an astronomical object (or objects). The images must be single exposures, not a composite, except for High Dynamic Range (HDR) and panoramic images. The intention is to encourage people with vision, imagination and creativity, using simple equipment, such as a tripod and ordinary camera, to make attractive images that evoke interesting symmetries in the night sky.

Entry payments can be made by cheque, money order or direct deposit. For the entries to be accepted, the payments must be received by the deadline. Entry fees are $15 per entry.

The photographs will be judged by world-renowned astrophotographer, Dr David Malin. During the course of the judging process, Dr Malin may invite, at his discretion, the views of other distinguished international astronomers to aid him in his deliberations, with Dr Malin’s decisions being final.

All entries will be judged without David being aware of the identity of the photographer, and to preserve anonymity, the submitted image files should not contain identifying metadata. The winners will be notified and presented with the “David Malin Awards” during a special ceremony held in Parkes in the presence of invited dignitaries on Saturday, 14 July 2012.

A selection of the finest astrophotographs received will be professionally printed and exhibited for the entire year at the CSIRO Parkes Observatory’s Visitors Centre. In addition, a second set will tour the country in a travelling exhibition, organised by the Powerhouse Museum, to selected venues beginning with Sydney Observatory in August.

There is a limit of five (5) entries per category per photographer, but all photographs must have been taken no more than 2 years before the closing date of entry, and no re-entries from previous DMA competitions will be accepted. All entries must be submitted in electronic form via a dedicated submissions web site.

It is not just technical skill that Dr Malin will be looking for, but a memorable picture that reflects and captures the beauty, inspiration and interest of astronomy. All images will be judged by this criteria.

Canon Australia is supporting the competition with significant prizes for both the category winners and honorable mentions.

EASTER School Holiday Activities at Siding Spring Observatory

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The Siding Spring Observatory and Café/Visitors Centre will be open over the Easter holidays from 9.30 am to 4 pm Monday to Friday and 10 am to 4pm on Saturday, Sundays and Public Holidays. CLOSED GOOD FRIDAY

Walking Tours of the Mountain:

Take a closer look around Siding Spring Observatory. Join our Guide and explore this special astronomy site and learn about the importance of this area to astronomical research and the natural environment. Enjoy a walk with breathtaking views of the Warrumbungle volcano. Minimum number of people per tour group is 15.

Prices are: $10.00 for adults, $7.50 for children and Seniors, and $30.00 for a family (2A,2C) Prices include entry to the Exhibition area.

 April 2012
The dates and times for the Easter Holiday Period tours are as follows:

Tours usually take about 1½ hours.

Saturday   7th   10.00 am & 2.00pm
Monday    9th  10.00 am & 2.00 pm
Wednesday 11th Astro Talk 2.00pm
Thursday 12th  10.00 am & 2.00pm
Saturday  14th  11.00am & 2.00pm
Tuesday   17th  10.00am & 2.00pm
Wednesday 18th Astro Talk 2.00 pm
Thursday 19th 10.00am & 2.00pm
Weather permitting – solar viewing will precede the 2pm tours and the Astro Talks.

If you have a group of 15 or more people coming on another day and wish a tour – please contact the Visitors Centre to see if it can be arranged.
Bookings are required as numbers are limited per tour.

More information and bookings can be obtained from the Visitors Centre on 6842 6211.