Dear fellow astronomers,
Irish astronomy is going from strength to strength lately. I am sure at this stage that the name Eamonn Ansbro is known to every member of this forum and indeed the far wider astronomy community, It therefore gives me great pleasure in announcing the following…
Amateur astronomer Eamonn Ansbro was awarded this month a research degree from the Planetary Space Science Research Institute at Open University, UK. This work provided a contribution to Solar System studies involving the use of the main 0.9m telescope at Kingsland Observatory, Kingsland, County Roscommon over a 10 year period. He previously had been awarded Master’s degree from an Australian University on studying two of the major planets in the Solar System.
Eamonn lives in a remote rural non light polluted part of County Roscommon. This is where he had to create his own laboratory before embarking on this recent research degree. This was a follow up on previous research requiring a better understanding of the formation of the Solar System and thereby to carry out a major survey of the outer Solar System.
He was aware that the big international government telescopes had teams searching the outer Solar System along the ecliptic region for faint enigmatic minor planets. However, because of the constraints of telescope time they were not able to survey at high ecliptic latitudes and especially from high latitudes from the Earth at 54 degrees north like in Ireland. Eamonn has had lots of people who have helped him, so he persisted and succeeded in carrying out a large scale survey at high ecliptic latitudes.
This required making the largest operational robotic telescope in the British Isles. This alone took 3 years to develop which then was used to survey the sky for 5 years and to successfully finding a number of enigmatic faint minor planets at high ecliptic latitudes. Part of another survey of another 4 years resulted in finding 43 suspect large planets outside the boundaries of the Solar System. This survey alone is still been carried out to the present time and there is every indication that there is a large planet there. This research alone, if successful, will mean that our Sun has a companion Brown Dwarf revolving around it.
Although the research has been challenging, it’s resulted in improving what we know at present about the formation of the Solar System. In July this year, the New Horizons space probe will be the first probe to reach Pluto and the Edgeworth Kuiper Belt and this may result with further understanding of the outer Solar System and its relationship with the early formation of the Solar System.
I would like to take this opportunity to wish Eamonn the very best in his future endeavours, well done Eamonn you are an inspiration to the wider Amateur Astronomy Community.
Mike
I83 Cherryvalley Observatory
After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say; "I WANT TO SEE THE MANAGER".
And why not say it, you would deserve it !
