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Past Events
15th March 2011
The general meeting on Tuesday March 15th will feature a talk by Prof. Jeremy Mould. For anyone interested in cosmology and the expansion of the universe, this is an event not to be missed.
parameters of astrophysics and cosmology. What changed this situation
was the order of magnitude increase in resolution of galaxies
provided by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. In a key project for
HST our team was able to discover hundreds of Cepheids in some
25 nearby galaxies and measure their distances. We were then
able to calibrate scaling relations for galaxies, such as the
Tully Fisher relation, the fundamental plane, the supernova Ia
standard candle, and surface brightness fluctuations. These
relations converged on a value of H_0 of 71 +/- 6 km/sec/Mpc
and an age of a flat Universe of 13 +/- 1 billion years.
These results have been confirmed recently in a general
cosmological solution by NASA’s WMAP microwave background satellite.
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15th February 2011
Stefan Oslowski
The February general meeting was held on 15 February and was very well attended. Our guest speaker was Stefan Oslowski from Swinburne University.
Stefan’s talk was on Pulsars and his current research on them. Pulsars are quickly spinning, dense, magnetised stars that are considered to be the Universe’s best celestial clocks. Some of them are as good as the atomic clocks! Stephan described how he observes pulsars with the radio telescope in Parkes, NSW, and what can be achieved by doing that. Our goals can only be met if these celestial clocks really are as good as we think they are.
Stefan spoke in particular about the difficulties in analysing the data acquired during pulsar observations and the techniques used in overcoming them. He also talked about the mechanisms thought to be causing some of the irregularities in pulsar signals.
The talk was followed by questions from the enthusiastic audience and Stefan answered them very clearly. Following the Q&A, our president Bob Fuller presented Stefan with a gift from the society to express our appreciation.
Q & A
Bob presents Stefan with a gift
16th November 2010
At the November general meeting, PHD student Tui Britton gave a talk on Star Formation.
Tui’s current research is in star formation, although in the past she has also worked on the search for exoplanets. She has worked with groups that used microlensing (University of Auckland), transiting (UNSW), and direct imaging (UNSW) techniques to detect exoplanets. Her MSc in Physics was obtained at UNSW on this subject. She is currently affiliated with the CSIRO Centre for Astronomy and Space Science, where most of her work now is conducted using radio telescopes. She is using methanol masers, which are very bright spots, to probe massive star forming regions. Tui also works at Sydney observatory, teaches physics labs and tutors Indigenous students at Macquarie University.
Tui has kindly provided us with powerpoint presentation for posting here (link below). The slides in this presentation have been edited from the originals found at at http://www.chem.unt.edu/~roberts/Pics/Spring/. Original author unknown.
PowerPoint: 2010-11-16-Tui-Britton-StarFormation
,17th August 2010
Orsola De Marco speaking at NSAS on 17th August 2010
Orsola De Marco, Associate Professor of Physics at Macquarie University was the guest speaker for August. She presented 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.
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20th July 2010
Our speaker for July is Bob Roeth who is the Vice-President of Northern Sydney Astronomical Society. Bob spoke on the topic ” Kepler : From Aristotle to Copernicus”
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15th June 2010
George Hobbs of CSIRO and ANTF was the guest speaker for June and presented the topic “Pulsars and Gravitational Waves”. He discussed the project he was working on and explained how pulsars are discovered and observed. He also explained how these pulsars are used to detect gravitational waves.
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18th May 2010
Chris Hales from the University of Sydney and CSIRO was the guest speaker for May. Chris presented the topic “Cosmic Magnetism” where he talked about the large scale magnetic fields that exist within galaxies like our own. He also discussed future prospects with the Square Kilometer Array project.
20th April 2010
Dr Ray Norris from the CSIRO presented the topic “How Australian Radio-Astronomy will solve the origin of galaxies,life,the universe and everything else”. He also spoke about the $100 million Pathfinder Telescope which is being built by the CSIRO in Western Australia. Dr Ray Norris also talked about black holes and what existed before the Big Bang.
16th March 2010
Our speaker for March was Dr David Frew from Macquarie University who presented the topic “The Taxonomy of Planetary Nebulae”. He discussed the main findings of a new volume-limited sample of planetary nebulae (PN) centred on the Sun and how this census of >400 objects is being used to answer long-standing statistical questions regarding the overall population of planetary nebulae.
16th February 2010
Dr Helen Johnston from the University of Sydney was the guest speaker for February and she presented her topic on ”"The Private Life of a Proton”. Helen’s research interests are the study of neutron stars and black holes in binary systems as well as in the center of galaxies.
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26 September 2009
,,Link:
Link : Willoughby Council Spring Festival Star Gazing Evening (26 September 09)
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