NACCA stands for the National Australian Convention of Amateur Astronomers, and over the Easter weekend Sydney hosted the 27th congress
http://www.nacaa.org.au/2016
My chief reason for heading north of the boarder and attending was that I wanted to find out what I could achieve with my current AP rig with respect to being able to become involved in doing some 'real astronomical research' - both for myself, and for the students in the Astronomy Club at my school - and the abstracts for several of the sessions in the NACCA program looked like they might meet my needs. In particular the use of DSLR cameras for studying variable stars.
Friday morning I was up early in order to catch a 6am flight from Melbourne to Sydney and upon arrival catch a train from the airport into Sydney's Central station, something Melbourne desperately needs out to Tulla'! As a venue Sydney Uni was an excellent choice, good facilities and excellent connections to public transport.
Friday's programmed sessions (10 in all) were all to do with the Variable Stars South Symposium 4. The papers presented covered a variety of topics including: the Eclipsing Binary Stars Project, specific variable stars like EF Velorum, RW Velorum, V854 Centauri and others, the use and limitations of computer software to determine the maxima, minima and periodicity of light curves, and a particularly interesting session given by Hristo Pavlov on how to use video cameras for observing eclipsing binaries.
Across these sessions during question time and breaks for food and refreshment, I had the opportunity to meet and introduce myself to a number of the VSS members who were without exception friendly and willing to share their knowledge as they answered my questions - if they didn't have the specific answers they introduced me to someone who did. (
Thank you all so much for your generosity and patience).
Saturday morning's keynote address was delivered by Professor Joss Bland-Hawthorn of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy. The title of Joss' address was 'Fireworks At The Heart Of The Galaxy' and was about what we know, and what we hope to gain by further study of the black hole at the centre of our Milkyway Galaxy. His talk was engaging, humorous and enlightening with respect to the physics involved.
The rest of the day consisted of six sessions on a variety of topics - but the two sessions of most interest to myself were those given by Paul Floyd on 'The need for an Australian Astronomy and Space Science Education Network' and Jacinta Den Besten and Mike Thompson on 'The Australian Variable Star Hunt' as both sessions provided insight as to how I might better be able to engage more of the girls at my school in actively engaging in scientific research, and in this particular instance astronomy.
Saturday finished with the conference dinner which featured an after dinner talk by Professor Fred Watson titled 'Trollops, Tyrants and Telescopes'. Roy Axelsen was presented with the Berenice and Arthur Page medal for excellence in amateur astronomy in Australia and its territories for his work on the delta Scuti stars V1338 Centauri, V1430 Scorpii and V1307 Scorpii.
Sunday was again jam packed with a variety of excellent papers that were fitted into two different lecture theatres ( I managed to get to eleven of them, and there were a couple of times where it was very hard to choose which presentation to go to!) However, the two presentations that I'd particularly come up from Melbourne to see were Roy Axelsen's paper on 'DSLR Photometry of the High Amplitude delta Scuti stars V1338 Centauri, V1430 Scorpii and V1307 Scorpii' and Mark Blackford's talk on 'DSLR Photometry Highlights'. Donna Burton's talk on being able to 'Date Active Young Stars' was also very interesting.
At the end of the day I was able to sit down and chat with a few of the folk that I gotten to know over the three days before jumping back on the train to the airport and flying home late on Sunday night - by which time I felt mentally NACCA'rd
by all that I'd listened to, and tried to take in and process. Hopefully someone else will add a summary of Monday's sessions to this post to provide a more complete picture of what took place.
To the Programme and Local Organising Committees, and in particular David O'Driscoll, Mark Blackford, Sandy Galos and Maree Emett thank you for organising such a marvellous and professionally well run conference. The venue was excellent, the food great and the company exceptional. To each of the presenters; thank you all so much for the time that you put into preparing your presentations and for your enthusiasm and willingness to share what you have learned.
Finally a personal thank you to Bernard Heathcote, Mark Blackford, Tom Richards, Roy Axelsen, Gordon Clarke, Peter Williams and David O'Driscoll for your friendship, all your answers to my many questions this weekend, and for your kind and generous offers of help as I start down the exciting road that is amateur astronomical research!
Will I be back in 2018 for NACCA XXVIII in Ballarat? Circumstances notwithstanding - absolutely!
And for those of you who are looking for something else to do in addition to the visual observing or AP that you already do, and you have never been to a NACCA conference before, keep the Easter weekend in 2018 free and book yourself into NACCA XXVIII - you won't be disappointed.
Paul
PS I can hardly wait for the next night of clear skies to get started, in the meantime I have reading to do!
