Northern Sydney Astronomical Society

Although our speaker has had to cancel due to family reasons, and we have not yet found a replacement, we have a plan……After the GM, we will run an interactive forum on subjects of interest to the membership, and if we have time, there will be a Powerpoint presentation on Indigenous Astronomy. Come along and join in. Visitors welcome, of course, and the meeting will be, as usual, at Regis Hall, St. Ignatius, at 7:30 PM.

The NSAS March GM will be at Regis Hall, St. Ignatius, on Tuesday the 20th at 7:30 PM. Our speaker is Nickolas Seymour from CSIRO, and an abstract of his presentation follows:

“Imagine being able to look back to the beginnings of the Universe, find black holes, and test General Relativity whilst sitting at a computer. The massive and exciting changes in radio astronomy allow myself and other radio astronomers to do just that. Australia is at the forefront of these changes with its bid for the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and the currently under construction SKA Pathfinder (ASKAP). My talk will focus on my work with the SKA and ASKAP and how these cutting edge projects are changing the nature of how we understand the evolution of the Universe.”

As usual, visitors are welcome.

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.