Our 'Special Guest" appearing of the M.R.O AAIRC Service on Sunday 3.00Pm Australian Eastern Time will be non other than Professor Alex Filippenko.
An observational astronomer who makes frequent use of the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck 10-meter telescopes, Filippenko's primary areas of research are exploding stars (supernovas), active galaxies, black holes, gamma-ray bursts, and the expansion of the Universe.
He and his collaborators recognized a new class of exploding star, obtained some of the best evidence for the existence of small black holes in our Milky Way Galaxy, and found that other galaxies commonly show vigorous activity in their centers that suggests the presence of supermassive black holes.
His robotic telescope at Lick Observatory is the world's most successful search engine for nearby exploding stars, having discovered nearly 400 of them in the past few years. He also made major contributions to the discovery that the expansion rate of the Universe is speeding up with time ("the accelerating Universe"), driven by a mysterious form of dark energy -- the top "Science Breakthrough of 1998," according to the editors of Science magazine.
Further information regarding Alex is available here:
http://www.melitatrips.com/bios/bio_filippenko.html

On the day of the event, log onto http://www.darksky.net.au/aairc.html and follow the instructions on the page to log onto the service and join in what promises to be a fascinating conversation with the Professor.

Bert Candusio
Macedon Ranges Observatory
Australia Astronomy IRC Service