Talk

An occultation is when one body covers or ‘hides’ another. Asteroids, planets and moons can occult stars, the Moon and occult the planets and even solar and lunar eclipses are occultation events as well. These events can tell us much more than how big or what shape an asteroid is or, in the case of lunar occultations, how well we know the orbit of the Moon. They can help to refine the orbit of an asteroid; if it has a satellite or is a double asteroid; if the position of the star it occulted was known accurately and they regularly result in the discovery of new double stars. Occultations involving Pluto are particularly valuable at the moment as the New Horizons spacecraft approaches the distant dwarf planet, monitoring the state of Pluto’s atmosphere and even keeping a check on where Pluto actually is!

The first occultation observers did their work with time beeps from short-wave radios and tape recorders. Now there are integrating video cameras allowing observers to push beyond the visual limits of their telescopes and video time inserters allowing timings to be made with millisecond precision. The video occultation manual “Observing Occultations Using Video: A Beginner’s Guide”, aims to help interested observers understand where to look at the right time, what equipment is needed and how to report their results after the observation has been made. Even experienced observers will find this document useful for improving the quality of their observations and their accuracy.

The goal of Project ExoPlanet is to observe and measure the light curve of a transiting exoplanet.

An extra-solar planet, or exoplanet, is a planet outside our solar system. For many years their existence was hotly debated in astronomical circles. The first confirmed exoplanet discovery came in 1992, when several planets orbiting the pulsar PSR B1257+12 were detected. Over the past few years, the number of confirmed exoplanet discoveries has exploded to almost 1000.

In 2013, the ASV Junior Section wanted to get involved in "real science" projects and chose Project ExoPlanet as its first project, scheduled to complete by the end of the year. This project will attempt to locate the parent star of a known exoplanet, image it using professional-grade equipment and measure the changes in its magnitude as the exoplanet transits its face. This is a challenging project as it requires careful research, planning and preparation to ensure that imaging runs capture the transit precisely. Then, once the data have been collected, processing the data to get an accurate result. And we will have observed a planet in another solar system.

The talk will include various comet observing techniques, observation reduction and submission, setting a platform to help newcomers start observing comets and be part of a national and worldwide collaboration by contributing to Comet Science in the best way that amateurs know how.

The presentation focuses on the formation of neutron stars when high mass stars exhaust the nuclear fuel in their cores.

Over 22,00 crater timing observations made over 170 years have been collected, archived at Vizier, and analysed. Many NACAA participants will have contributed to the observation dataset, by way of their participation in the program run by the late Byron Soulsby. The presentation will provide an overview of the results of the analysis.

The Jamuna-Keith Astronomy Research Centre is working to promote astronomy in Nepal, and I am working in central region of Nepal. In this talk we will discuss about Astronomy outreach and current position of central region of Nepal.

Captain Henry Evans Baker was one of the first telescope makers in Australia. Captain Baker embraced and introduced new technology onto the goldfields of Victoria. He was also instrumental in helping others to do so.

At the age of over 70 years, Captain Baker embarked on his greatest and lasting work, the 26" Great Equatorial Telescope, now called "The Baker".

The combination of humid coastal weather and a huge increase in light pollution at Wellington Point has made photometry of variable stars difficult. Also, the Losmandy G11 mount cannot cope well with the increase in weight when the C11 telescope was replaced with a Celestron EdgeHD 14. Furthermore, the meridian flips during a time series run on eclipsing binaries often caused a magnitude offset, which lowered the accuracy of the photometric determinations.

The solution has been to lease 4 square metres of land at John Salini’s farm (Salileo’s Farm) at Glen Aplin, purchase a second hand Sirius observatory, upgrade it with a dome rotation system and install it there with a Mathis Instruments 500 fork mount.

Salileo’s Farm is at 750 m altitude on the Granite Belt south of Stanthorpe and far enough inland not be influenced by coastal humidity. A critical process was ensuring that the north-south alignment of the pier was within 1 degree of the south celestial pole to allow azimuth adjustment of the mount’s polar axis. John’s dog, Boss, took a keen interest in the construction. Some examples of time series photometry of eclipsing binaries at Wellington Point and Glen Aplin will be shown.

Many of the targets in the Variable Stars South programme on southern eclipsing binaries have not been studied in detail since discovery, or only partially with data from the ASAS project. When I started on targets in 2011, I could not find minima at the times predicted as the errors in epochs and periods had resulted in large changes over the intervening years. After three years work by the SEBP team, the ephemerides have been greatly improved. However, other problems have been found: puzzling variations in magnitude of the variables and /or their reference stars. For some of the targets, the original recommended comparison stars were found to be listed in the GCVS as New Suspected Variables. For others, the comparison or check stars were found to be variable, but no records of their variability could be found, indicating that these were new variables yet to be described. Several new variable stars, found in the fields around V0594 Car, ST Cen, AS Car, V5552 Sgr, are being studied in more detail.

Clarke's Third Law states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." The author has been reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's wisdom on multiple occasions while managing the NACAA web site.

As happens in most organisations, people are quick to complain when things on the NACAA web site don't work the way they expect. The problem usually turns out to be unrealistic expectations: to many users, the web site is "magic", so all things are possible with no more than a wave of the webmaster's magic wand. Alas, that's not true.

This talk will present why the NACAA web site had to be upgraded for 2014, the trials and tribulations of achieving this, and the interesting problems that still remain. Hopefully the talk will explain some of the "advanced" technology involved, and demystify some of the magic.

The author also hopes this talk will encourage one or two apprentice wizards to step forward and help maintain and upgrade the magic ... sorry, technology.