Ok, as Big Kev used to say "I'm Excited" and I thought this might be of interest to IISpacers
This weekend Qld BOSS team members along with Gregg Thompson (author of the Supernova Search Charts & Australian Guide to Stargazing) will have the pleasure of meeting with Nidia Morrell a Professional Astronomer from Las Campanas Observatory in Chile.
Nidia has provided much of the spectra follow up for many of our Supernova discoveries having access to the giant Magellan Telescopes and Dupont Telescope and working with the Carnegie Institute.
Nidia has been at an IAU symposium in Tokyo and is flying into New Zealand on Wednesday where she will meet and have dinner with BOSS team member Stu Parker and his wife Lynne. She will then fly into Brisbane on Sunday where Greg Bock and I will show her some of Brisbane before we have dinner with Nidia, our wives, and the rest of the BOSS team (Colin Drescher, Brendan Downs, Pat Pearl). On Monday Greg and I will take her for a tour of the Gold Coast before she flies out to head back to Chile.
This is a real honour and gives some indication of how valuable amateur contributions are regarded by professional astronomers as Nidia is going out of her way to come and meet us in Brisbane.
A short bio about Nidia Morrell can be found below where she is listed as a science team member of the Hubble Heritage Project.
In the past few months we have really refined and honed our searching techniques with input from Nidia and also professional astronomers from SALT (South African Large Telescope). Problem is the weather in SE Cloudland really doesn't give a hoot!
Just shows as amateurs we do still live in a golden age of Astronomy where you can contribute to the in many ways.
BOSS will be presenting a talk at the 2012 NACAA in Brisbane, along with many other amateurs who are very active in astronomical research. No doubt some of our talk will be rewritten after this weeekends get together.
http://heritage.stsci.edu/2007/34/bio/bio_primary.html
PeterM.
Wish I could be there for the NACAA talk if nothing else, another time! Hopefully there will be a DVD I can buy of the NACAA proceedings.
