The Sep New Astronomers Group will be next Tuesday the 28th at 7:30, at St. Ignatius. This month, Geoff Unsworth will talk about a couple of interesting subjects, as he describes in his abstract, below. As usual, anyone with telescope issues can bring their scope along for support, or any other question, for that matter. Come out and support the NAG, as no-one wants to see it go away!
The Sep General Meeting will be the coming Tuesday 21st at 7:30, at St. Ignatius. The speaker will be Dr Dan Zucker from Macquarie University, who will speak on “Building Galaxies in our Backyard”.
The weather for both friday and saturday night look good for observing. Unfortunately all of our observing officers are unavailable to attend NTGC either tonight or tomorrow night so we have had to call OFF the planned sessions for the weekend.
As a result, our next planned observing session will be at NTGC in a few weeks time on 1st October.
As the cloud is not expected to clear for tonights observing session at NTGC, we will cancel the session tonight and try again next friday night.
We will add the new observing dates to the site during the weekend . The dates have been changed to make better use of the New Moon.
Title: Building Galaxies in our Backyard
Abstract: Most astronomers believe that large galaxies like the Milky
Way and M31 (Andromeda) form by the merger and accretion of smaller
systems, and that evidence of these processes can be found in the
stellar streams and the surviving satellites surrounding each galaxy.
The advent of large-area astronomical surveys like the Sloan Digital Sky
Survey (SDSS) has revolutionised our ability to find and study
incredibly faint Local Group stellar structures, yielding a wealth of
information about the process of galaxy assembly and giving tantalising
hints about the properties of dark matter. These capabilities are
expanding, with numerous projects now underway or starting in the next
few years. I will give an overview of the flood of recent stream and
satellite discoveries in the Local Group made with data from SDSS and
other surveys, and present the results of detailed follow-up
observations with both ground- and space-based telescopes.
Biography: Daniel Zucker is an observational astronomer who studies
resolved stellar populations and nebulae in the Milky Way and the other
galaxies of the Local Group, in order to understand the processes by
which galaxies form and evolve — both nearby and in the universe as a
whole. He holds a joint appointment as a Lecturer in Astronomy and
Astrophysics at Macquarie University and a Staff Astronomer at the
Australian Astronomical Observatory. Daniel received his undergraduate
degree from Harvard College, and went on to work at the
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, prior to obtaining his PhD
from the University of Washington in Seattle. Before stepping into his
current position, he held postdoctoral fellowships at the Max Planck
Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany, and the Institute of
Astronomy, Cambridge, UK.
NSAS starts off September with the Theory Group on Tuesday the 14th at 7:30, with more lectures in the “Understanding the Universe” series. Murray Suters will chair. The GM will be on Tuesday the 21st at 7:30, followed by our September speaker, Dan Zucker from Macquarie University Physics Dept, whose presentation will be “Building Galaxies in our Backyard”. See the separate abstract. The New Astronomers Group follows on Tuesday the 28th at 7:30. Roy Jordan will announce the agenda later in the month. All meetings will be at St. Ignatius, and as usual, visitors are welcome to all the meetings.
Observing will be the Friday nights, 10 and 17 September at North Turramurra, with Sat the 18th as the weather alternate.
NSAS is pleased to be a major supporter of Macquarie Open Night on Saturday May 18th at Macquarie University. Details...
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