NAG – 27th July : PowerPoint Presentation

27 07 2010

The PowerPoint presentation that was going to be shown tonight at the New Astronomers Group has now been uploaded to the website. Unfortunately technical issues resulted in the short presentation not been shown at the NAG tonight, however you can now download the file and view it on your own computer.

If you do not have PowerPoint on your computer , you can download a free PowerPoint Viewer off the Internet which will allow you to view the file.

The PowerPoint presentation contains screenshots showing a number of objects that you can see from Sydney for the month of August. The screenshots were taken of the night sky as it should appear around 9pm for the next few week or so.

The presentation also includes a sky chart for August 2010 whixh is available from the Sydney Observatory website. Each month you can download the chart for the current month from the observatory and print it out for use in the field.

To download the PowerPoint Presentation  file, click on the following link.

NAG Presentation 27th July 2010


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : NAG, News

NAG – 22nd June : Powerpoint Presentation

23 06 2010

Tonight was a pretty good night for NAG with a good turnout of members.

I am adding tonight’s powerpoint presentation to this post for you to download and view at your leisure.

Some of the points reviewed tonight:

:- A technique of using barlow lenses and extension tubes to increase magnification and improve your view of objects with a better eye relief.

:- Brief coverage of the Personal Solar Telescope by Coronada which allows you to view features of the Sun such as prominences , filaments, spicules and of course sunspots…….. without costing you an arm and a leg.

:- View of the Milky Way using an H-alpha filter

:- A sample of objects  you can see in the skies over Sydney in the next 4 weeks.

:-Covering the June 3rd fireball seen on Jupiter as well as the reason for the Southern Belt disappearing .

:- Attaching digital cameras to your telescope using adapters……. including iPhone Adapters

Click on the link to download the Powerpoint Presentation       NAG Presentation June 22


Comments : 2 Comments »

Categories : NAG

New Astronomers Group – 22nd June

21 06 2010

We are hoping to have an observing session on the night…… however the weather forecast for tomorrow is not looking good. But there are some signs the weather may improve but this will not be known until Tuesday morning’s forecasts. We will update the website if observing will be held on Tuesday night.

If the NAG observing session is cancelled, we will have an alternate program in place.

Program is as the following.

1. Bring in your telescopes if you need help with resolving any issues or want to learn how to use them better. Bring them in even if the observing session is on .

2. A  trick you can use with barlow lenses to improve your view of the night sky. See the rings of Saturn with a 32mm lens and experience good eye relief.

3. Demonstration of connecting digital cameras to telescopes.

4. How to observe the Sun safely and see images like this without spending a fortune

Viewing the Sun without spending a fortune (Click to Enlarge)

5. We look at some of the interesting objects to see over Sydney in the next 4 weeks

6. We look at the current changes in  Jupiter

7. Our Observing sessions for the next 4 weeks.

8. Question and Answer Section. This is where members and visitors can ask questions or make suggestions on anything astronomy or club related.


Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : NAG, News

NSAS Events for June

28 05 2010

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.


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : Events, General Meeting, NAG, Observing, Theory Group, Uncategorized

Some objects to look at at Observing in May

13 05 2010

At the last New Astronomers Group session , I gave a presentation showing some of the many objects that are visible from Sydney for the month of May.

This presentation has been updated to show some of the objects visible tomorrow night which is promising to be a very good night for observing. Plus we are having a free sausage sizzle so it should be a fun night.

The presentation  is a powerpoint presentation file. If you do not own microsoft office or do not have other suitable software able to view powerpoint files, you can download a powerpoint viewer from Microsoft for free at the following link.

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=048dc840-14e1-467d-8dca-19d2a8fd7485&displaylang=en

The Powerpoint Presentation (10 megabyte file) showing visible objects for tomorrow night can be downloaded at the following link   14th May 2010 Objects


Comments : 1 Comment »

Categories : NAG

May Meetings

1 05 2010

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.


Comments : Leave a Comment »

Categories : General Meeting, NAG, Theory Group, Uncategorized