Northern Sydney Astronomical Society » General Meeting

NSAS Speaker for Sep GM

bobsastro — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:05:27 +0000

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 Events for September

bobsastro — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 03:02:19 +0000

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.

Guest speaker for August

bobsastro — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:34:47 +0000

Orsola De Marco, Associate Professor of Physics at Macquarie U. will be guest speaker for August. She will present a talk on the subject “Planetary Nebulae: death shrouds of lonely stars or aftermath of binary interactions?” “Might planetary nebulae be the result of binary interactions instead of the death throws produced by withering middle weight stars? Their shapes do suggest so. Come and learn more about this alternative evolutionary scenario for some of the most popular objects in the sky!” Orsola is a great speaker, as some of you who have been to Macquarie Open Nights are aware, so don’t miss this one on Tuesday the 17th, at St Ignatius, at 7:30PM.

NSAS Events for August

bobsastro — Sat, 31 Jul 2010 03:27:23 +0000

In August, the first NSAS event is the Theory Group on Tuesday the 10th, where this dedicated group will see further lectures in the series “Understanding the Universe”. The August General Meeting is on Tuesday the 17th, and the guest speaker is Orsola De Marco, Associate Professor of Physics at Macquarie U. She will present a talk on the subject “Planetary Nebulae: death shrouds of lonely stars or aftermath of binary interactions?”. See the separate post for an abstract. The New Astronomers Group meets Tuesday the 24th, and after the big turnout in July, we suggest anyone with a scope who has questions on how to set it up, use it, or observe, come along. All meetings are at St. Ignatius at 7:30PM.

NSAS Events for June

bobsastro — Fri, 28 May 2010 10:09:54 +0000

NSAS starts out in June with the Theory Group on Tuesday night the 8th. The lectures this month are ” Galileo and the Copernican Revolution”, and “Refinements to the Heliocentric Model”. On Tuesday the 15th is the June General Meeting. The speaker this month is George Hobbs of CSIRO and ANTF, who will speak on “Pulsars and Gravitational Waves”. “Observations of millisecond pulsars may provide the first means to detect the elusive gravitational waves that are predicted by General Relativity. If these waves are detected then we’ll have a means to study supermassive black hole binary systems and even probe the universe less than a second after the big bang. The Parkes telescope in Australia is providing the World-leading data sets for this search. I will describe our project, explain how pulsars are discovered and observed and how, using the pulsar observations, we will hopefully be able to detect gravitational waves.” Finally, if everything is sorted out, the New Astronomers Group meets Tuesday the 22nd, with the program TBA. Observing for the month of June will be on the Fridays 11th and 18th, with Saturday the 19th as backup.

NSAS General Meeting 18 May

bobsastro — Sat, 15 May 2010 04:43:22 +0000

The NSAS General Meeting will be on Tuesday 18 May at St. Ignatius, 7:30 PM. The speaker is Chris Hales from USyd and CSIRO, and his talk will be on Cosmic Magnetism.
Abstract: Chris Hales is a PhD candidate studying the as-yet unknown
origin of tenuous large-scale magnetic fields that exist in galaxies like
our own Milky Way. How do these weak fields remain undistrupted in objects
as complex as galaxies? How did they get there in the first place? And how
do you even “see” a magnetic field? In this talk Chris will outline his
research, as well as the future prospects for radio astronomy with the
upcoming EUR1.5b Square Kilometre Array.

May Meetings

bobsastro — Sat, 01 May 2010 05:33:20 +0000

May meetings are as follows: Tuesday May 11, Theory Group at St. Ignatius; Tuesday May 18, General Meeting at St. Ignatius, speaker is Minnie Mao from CSIRO who will talk about the Evolution of Galaxies; Tuesday May 25, New Astronomers Group at St. Ignatius. Members and visitors are welcome at all meetings.