Sunday @ NACAA

[tonybarry]

Hi all,

It's Easter Sunday at NACAA 2016. University of Sydney Law Building. I'm in Lecture Theatre 104 waiting for Murray Forbes to spruik on 3D printing and astronomy.

A good crowd, around 40 people.

David O'Driscoll is advising on evac procedures. Follow the person in front, out the door and down to the coffee shop.

Tony Barry
WSAAG

[tonybarry]

Now on to DSLR photometry of variable stars in Centaurus and Scorpius, by Roy Axelsen of the AAQ and recipient of the Bereniece and Arthur Page Medal for 2016.

He gets flat fields by using a sheet of white perspex over the front of the C9.25 at dawn. Seems almost too easy !

Regards,
Tony Barry
WSAAG

[tonybarry]

More DSLR photometry, this time by Mark Blackford.

Apparently saves you a filter wheel. That's nice. But you have to defocus to get around that bayer mask.

Amateurs can do some good science here with minimal equipment. He uses a 400mm telephoto and Canon DSLR. And adds to the store of human knowledge.

Quote of the talk:- "Amateurs with modest equipment can photometrically measure stars that are too bright for professional telescopes."

Regards,
Tony Barry
WSAAG

[tonybarry]

The Star Of Bethlehem - a talk by Ray Johnston from the AAQ.

Not a discussion of belief. More about locating the star (if it exists).

[tonybarry]

Rob Horvat and the restoring of the Linden 30" telescope for public outreach.

Lots of pix of what is probably the biggest amateur use scope in the area.

[tonybarry]

Peter Eyland on "Women in Astronomy"

The lecture theatre is filling up - maybe fifty people. More women than I've ever seen at an astro event. Yes. There are women in astronomy. Even more than what Peter discusses.

[tonybarry]

Now we hear Steve Russell speaking on Scuba Diving In Indonesia.

Yes, you read that right. Part of NACAA. I am keen to hear how we can see stars from the bottom of the Indonesian sea.

[tonybarry]

Ah. Steve was discussing the Indonesian eclipse. Trials and tribulations (and expense) of eclipse chasing. The scuba diving is some kind of inside joke to avoid bad mojo following the presentation.

[tonybarry]

David Dunham speaking on Gaia's mission, an eclipse, a lunar occultation and an asteroidal occultation from 1970 on. This stuff was done when these things were not commonly done. David wrote the first programs to predict such events. Riveting.

[tonybarry]

Peter Lake, "The Career Path of a teenage asteroid hunter". Talk looks to be on science, tech, eng, math (STEM) and public education by AAVSO.

[tonybarry]

Well Peter has done what few presenters have done - sung a cover of "Vincent" by Don McLeod, with a few changes to make it more astro-centric.

[tonybarry]

TTSO10 - the tenth Trans-Tasman Symposium on Occultations.

Steve Kerr from Nth Queensland presenting on the June 2015 Pluto occultation of a 12th mag. star, 2 weeks before New Horizons flyby.

History of previous occultations of Pluto.
Atmospheric detection.

[tonybarry]

Dave Herald from Canberra - Overview of asteroidal occultations 2015.
The Big Story from Gaia - accuracy of predictions for asteroidal occs improve enormously.
The Lucky Star project from Paris Observatory - finding TNOs and tracking the big things out there. P9 from Brown and Batygin ? No answers as yet.

[tonybarry]

David Dunham reporting on an observation of Venus in occultation last year, seeking to elucidate the ashen light. Using video cameras the event was examined to see if there is any actual ashen light - or if the phenomenon is illusory.

[Robh]

My first time at NACAA. Great experience and interesting to catch up with people in person that I've only corresponded with by email.

Well organised and lots of variety in the topics presented. I like that you can cherry-pick which talks you want to go to on the day.

Regards, Rob

[Suzy]

Hi Tony,
I've just been reading through all your updates, very enjoyable and entertaining especially the Scuba one :lol:. Great job :thumbsup:.

[AstralTraveller]

Steve has been into scuba diving for years. This year he decided to combine a diving trip with the eclipse trip so he would at least get to see some unbleached coral even if the eclipse was a fizzer. Referring to only the scuba diving is the continuation of the very old joke about astronomers attracting cloud and rain. Back in the mesolithic, when Steve and I were young, we were members of the same astronomy club. The club had it's own observatory and so the youth section organised 'Observing Weekends', where it inevitably rained. So they were renamed to 'Social Weekends' to fool the weather gods. That failed. So they we took to discussing them as 'Hermit Wednesdays'. It still poured. None-the-less we still pretend to believe that not openly discussing upcoming astronomical events increases the chance of good weather. We've outgrown the chicken entrails, ritual dances and metaloid demi-gods.

[tonybarry]

Thank you Suzy, David for the comments.

I thought the first couple of days would have many posts on IIS - but not much coverage at all. So I thought - OK, I'll fix that !! for TTSO ...

TTSO / NACAA was a very good conference. The Sutherland guys did a great organise for it.

Regards,
Tony Barry
WSAAG

[DaveO]

I'm glad you enjoyed NACAA guys. Makes the effort well worth it.

The speakers are the stars of the show of course (pun intended).