On January 27th 2007 the Galway Astronomy Club will be hosting the now renamed Galway AstroFest at the Westwood House Hotel on the on the outskirts of Galway City. Last year our speakers were split with two science and two historical talks. So this year our talks are aimed primarily at the cutting edge of science with some of the best astronomers from NUI Galway and the University of London. .
Speakers and Talk titles
Dr Lucie Green
“Living in the Sun’s Atmosphere"
Dr Lucie Green is a Research Fellow for Solar Physics based at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, which is the Space & Climate Physics Department of University College London. Her research area is the study Coronal Mass Ejections and activity in the atmosphere of our nearest star, the Sun. In the media she also works in TV and radio and co-presents the BBC2/Open University astronomy programme Stardate, which has covered some of the major events in astronomy and space physics over the last 2 years. Lucie has also contributed to discussions on space and astronomy on the radio and in the news on BBC 1, BBC News 24, GMTV, carried out science demonstrations on the CBBC programme the Xchange, discussed solar physics and solar observing on the Sky at Night and written popular science articles for astronomy magazines as well as publishing 16 scientific papers.
Professor Chris Dainty
“Adaptive Optics for ELT”
Chris Dainty is a Science Foundation Ireland Professor of Experimental Physics at The National University of Ireland, Galway. Very few people in can speak as enthusiastically on the subject of adaptive optics as he can, as he is a leading authority on the subject who has come to Ireland to continue his research in this fascinating area. Adaptive Optics (AO) enables astronomers to sharpen the normally blurred images that the world's largest telescopes produce due to the distorting effect of the Earth's atmosphere.
Dr Aaron Golden
“Observing in the Twilight Zone at the Sub Stellar Boundary, are Brown Dwarfs Stars, Pulsars or Planets?”
Dr Aaron Golden is a lecturer in the IT dept. of NUI Galway. He has degrees in Experimental Physics, Computational Science and Astrophysics, and has been involved in the Scientific Computing Group there since its foundation. He has worked previously at the Max Planck Institute for Gravitational Physics and at the Space Sciences Laboratory at UC Berkeley. His scientific interests include various topics in Astrophysics. With colleagues at NUI, Galway and in collaboration with the Space Telescope Science Coordinating Facility & the European Southern Observatory he have been leading a project on the long term study of optical variability of a number of recently discovered brown dwarfs. This projects objective is to find variations in brown dwarf luminosity - a consequence of episodic dust formation events in their atmospheres or starspot cycles
Professor R.N Butler
“The Origins of Life on Earth from Meteorites and from Titan”
Professor Dick Butler is Director of the Chemistry Dept at the National University of Ireland Galway. He has had over 200 papers published in refereed international journals and has previously been awarded Boyle Higgins Gold medal from the Institute of Chemistry in Ireland for recognition of his outstanding work in Chemistry. Professor Butler is a well-known speaker around Galway and has enlightened us on many occasions with his wonderful talks. This up-coming lecture will focus on aspects of the Origins of Life and how studies of meteorites and particularly Titan will play a role in our understanding of how life came to Earth. He will also focus on the dramatic discoveries of the type of world that Titan is.
Dave Grennan and Jed Glover
Most people on the irishastronomy.org website has seen their amazing colourful images of celestial objects, during the lunch break they will host an imaging workshop on aspects of Digital Astrophotography using Camera’s and web cams.Se there work at
www.webtreatz.com
List of invited Exhibitors
AOP (Advanced Observing Programme)
Saturn Observing Campaign, Galway Branch
Variable Stars Observers Group
NUI Galway Astrosoc
IAA
Terry Moseley Books
Andromeda Optics
North Down Telescopes
Noel Gorby/Iveragh Mosaics
The NUI Galway Observatory will again be open to the attendees by Professor Mike Redfern. The observatory consists of a ‘state of the art' Semi-automated Cassegrain with high quality instrumentation. There is also a 3 meter radio telescope on the observatory grounds.
The telescope is a 40cm (16") from Astroptik, in a proper dome. The optics is by Lomo (St Petersburg). It is a classical Cassegrain with 3-element field flattener. The mount is a huge German equatorial, also from Astroptik. It has an Apogee 1024 x 1024 CCD camera with an E2V thinned, back illuminated chip. The finder / solar viewing scope custom-mounted on the main telescope is a LIDL 70mm Skylux refractor! For anyone new to the Astrofest is a “must see”. As with last year if the skies are clear we intend to do some viewing. So bring your big telescopes along again.
There will be an after Dinner talk later in the evening presented to us by John Flannery of the South Dublin Astronomical Society that will focus on his visit to the giant Riverside Star Party that he attended earlier in the year. To Finish off the day there will be a table Quiz for anyone with any energy left.
If Clear on the Friday night I will enquire as if we can do some observing at the Observatory.
Ronan Newman
Secretary
Galway Astronomy club
If you would like to download a copy of our current "Skywatch" newsletter see
www.galwayastronomyclub.ie
  