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Old 16-08-2005, 12:50 PM
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janoskiss (Steve H)
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Exclamation Oz astro talk in Melbourne 24 Aug

There is a seminar on next week that may be of interest to people from La Trobe Uni and all unemployed amateur (or pro) astronomers in Melbourne.

'Probing the Universe at 21cm'
Dr Lister Staveley-Smith,
Head of Astrophysics,
Australia Telescope National Facility, CSIRO
11:00 am, Wednesday 24 August 2005
La Trobe University, Bundoora Campus, Physical Sciences Building 1 (PS1), room 411 (level 4)

Dr Staveley-Smith will discuss the results of recent observations at the Parkes & Arecibo radio telescopes and what they tell us about our cosmic neighbourhood, as well as the structure of the early universe. He will also be outlining capabilities of new telescopes being built, plans for future Australian telescopes and the square kilometre array (SKA) project. It should be an interesting talk from one of Australia's top scientists.
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Old 31-08-2005, 08:35 PM
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summary of talk by Dr Staveley-Smith (head of astrophysics, CSIRO)

I don't believe any other Iceinspacers attended. I'll attempt to give the gist of Dr Staveley-Smith's talk... here it goes:

We have a good idea of the distribution of galaxies in our neighbourhood and a long way beyond thanks to visual observations. Exceptions are galaxies hidden behind the bright glow of the disk of the Milky Way.

Here is where radio astronomy, and the 21cm wavelength that corresponds to a hyperfine transition in atomic hydrogen, comes in. We can map/image the neutral hydrogen in the universe using large radio telescopes that are tuned to listen for the faint hiss of cold hydrogen atoms.

... And they found lots of galaxies and lots more structure in and around galaxies already seen with visual astronomy... (and there was graphs, pictures & 3D plots I can't show you)

Then we heard about the very long term project that is the SKA and got to look at a radio pollution map of the world which makes a convincing case for Western Australia. Other contenders are South America and Africa. (Also the US, but it's ridiculous based on the level of radio pollution.) We'll have to wait over a year to find out the location of the SKA. I personally hope it will be WA. It is by far the best site.
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