Northern Sydney Astronomical Society

The NSAS February General Meeting will be next Tuesday, location for this meeting only to be the Fr. Mac Pavillion (old sports pavillion we previously used). The time is 7:30PM, as usual. Our speaker this month is Franceso di Mille from the AAO and Las Campanas Observatory. His abstract follows:

Highly collimated gas ejections are among the most dramatic structures in the universe, observed to emerge from very different astrophysical systems—from active galactic nuclei down to young brown dwarf stars. I will present the discovery of a giant, highly collimated jet from Sanduleak’s star in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). With a physical extent of 14 parsec at the distance of the LMC, it represents the largest stellar jet ever discovered, and the first resolved stellar jet beyond the Milky Way.
I will also talk about the Las Campanas Observatory and the Magellan telescopes.

Next Tuesday the 15th is the NSAS November GM. If you haven’t been making it to the GMs, maybe you want to make an exception for this one, as David Malin, the man who invented modern three-colour astrophotography while a scientist-photographer at the AAO, is our guest speaker. Those of you who have heard him speak before know that he is a very entertaining and knowledgeable speaker, and will have points of interest for anyone who is an amateur astronomer. David will be speaking to NSAS on the history of astrophotography, and I recommend everyone in the Society who can get to Regis Hall next Tuesday to make it for this exceptional event. As usual, visitors are welcome, and the GM starts at 7:30 PM. See the home page of our website for directions if you haven’t been before.

NSAS will have the June GM this Tuesday night, at 7:30 PM, and in our new venue, Regis Hall (see the website for directions if you didn’t get them previously by email). If it’s a cold night, dress warmly, as there is no heating. The speaker this month is Dr Jonathon Horner, a post-Doc at Uni of NSW. His presentation is “Jupiter: Friend or Foe”, and his abstract follows:

“It has long been believed that the planet Jupiter has played an important role in the development of life on Earth. Without the particular size and placement of Jupiter, it is argued, the Earth would have experienced a greatly enhanced flux of impacts from asteroids and comets, hindering or entirely preventing the development of life. Despite the vigour with which this belief is held, very little work has been performed to examine the effect of Jupiter on the terrestrial planet impact flux. We have now completed the first detailed study of the effect of Jupiter’s mass on the impact rate of the three types of potentially hazardous objects – the Near Earth Asteroids, the Short Period Comets, and the Long Period Comets, and have found that the situation is, at the very least, significantly more complicated than was previously thought…”

All members and visitors are welcome.