Galway Astronomy Festival Jan 30/31 2009

Galway Astronomy club are pleased to announce details of their forthcoming Astronomy Festival to be held at the 4* Westwood House Hotel ( www.westwoodhousehotel.com ) from January 30 to 31st 2009. In recognition of the Centre for Astronomy at NUI Galway taking centre stage to co-ordinate the Irish activities of International Year of Astronomy 2009 , we at GAC are organising our most comprehensive AstroFest to date with no less than ten speakers. The talks are spread over a wide range of Astronomical topics that will hopefully suit all tastes. Getting to Here: Galway Airport (6 kilometres east of the city) has scheduled services connecting Galway to the other major airports in Ireland and with the new Motorway to Athlone, Galway is only a 2 hr drive from Dublin. Hope to see you there.

Entry fee's remain same as last year. Any Queries, Feedback and suggestions are most welcome and please email them to us at galwayastronomyclub@gmail.com

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Entry only €25, Festival Banquet(Informal)optional extra

Provisional Timetable:


Friday January 30th 7.30pm Westwood House Hotel

Offical Opening by Professor Mike Redfern - Director of the Centre for Astronomy, NUI-Galway.

To be followed with a talk by him on "The International Year of Astronomy 2009"

Professor Mike Redfern is the Director of the Centre for Astronomy, NUI-Galway, Secretary of the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Astronomy & Space Research, Chair and Single Point of Contact for the Irish Node of the International Year of Astronomy 2009 and a Member of the Institution of Electrical Engineers.

8pm: Robert Hensey, Department of Archaeology, NUI Galway:
"5000 Years of Ritual Astronomy and Archaeology: Cosmology in Prehistoric Ireland'

Robert Hensey is a PhD student at the Dept of Archaeology at NUI Galway. His interests focus around Megalithic monuments of Neolithic Ireland. The talk will focus on why archaeological monuments were aligned at all? What was the motivation? The discussion will necessarily involve a history of archaeoastronomy, a few famous sites, where alignments and orientations were sometimes wrongly concluded, and the often times fraught relationship between archaeology and archaeoastronomy. www.irishmegaliths.org.uk/galway.htm

Observing afterwards weather permitting at Barna Golf Club, (Dark sky site 5 minute drive from Hotel)
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Saturday January 31st: Main Hall Westwood Hotel

9.15-09.50am: Registration

10.00: Professor Luke Drury “The New Gamma Ray Sky"

Head of the Astrophysics section of the School of Cosmic Physics at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies.

A new observational window on the extreme non-thermal Universe has recently been opened by the development of the atmospheric imaging cherenkov technique. This allows astronomers do real astronomy at the unprecedented photon energies around a TeV. The window of TeV Gamma-Ray Astrophysics was opened less than two decades ago, when the Crab Nebula was detected for the first time. After several years of development, the technique used by imaging atmospheric Cherenkov telescopes like HESS, MAGIC or VERITAS, is now allowing astronomers to conduct sensitive observations in the TeV regime.

The talk will outline how this technique works, why it is significant and show some highlights from the last few years of observations by the HESS collaboration. He will also discuss the new Fermi Gamma-Ray Space Telescope launched in June by NASA. It is designed to study energetic phenomena from a variety of celestial sources and to understand how particles are accelerated in pulsars, supernovae, and active galaxies. He will also discuss prospects for the proposed large European project, the Cherenkov Telescope Array which will be an advanced facility for ground-based gamma-ray astronomy. www.fermi.gsfc.nasa.gov www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/hfm/CTA/



10.50: Gregg Hallinan, Centre for Astronomy NUI Galway: "Looking for a Pulse, the search for Radio Emissions from Extra Solar Planets"

For further info see astro.nuigalway.ie/ astro.nuigalway.ie/news.html#exoplindia

For a podcast www.nuigalway.ie/research/astronomy/documents/gregg_radio3.mp3

Gregg Hallinan is an Astrophysicist at the Centre of Astronomy at NUI Galway. His research interests include Magnetic activity in Planets, Brown dwarfs and Computational modelling of plasma emission processes. He is presently involved in searching for Radio Emissions from Extra Solar Planets. Recently in his research his team used all the 27 dishes of the Very Large Array (VLA) in New Mexico, the Arecibo dish in Puerto Rico, the Green Bank dish in West Virginia, the Effelsberg dish in Germany and the 10 dishes of the Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) spaced all over the USA simultaneously. Their target was the giant Jupiter-like planet orbiting Tau Bootis, a star 50 light years away in the constellation Bootes and visible to the naked eye. The planet, Tau Bootis b should behave rather like Jupiter does and was the first of the so-called 'hot Jupiters' to be detected, orbiting every 3.3 days and whizzing by the stellar surface at an astonishing 0.05 Astronomical Units, nearly ten times closer than Mercury is to our own Sun.

Detection of radio emission from Tau Bootis b would be the first such detection from another planet orbiting another star in the galaxy. This would allow us to ask many questions about the conditions associated with this particular exoplanet, such as the rotation rate of the planet and the strength of its magnetic field. More importantly, it would open up a new way to explore planets using radio astronomy, and considering that one of the key ingredients for a planet to host an environment suitable for the development of life is a stable magnetic field,

11.40: Patrick Browne Dept of Mathematical, NUI Galway: "Celestial Mechanics"

Patrick Browne is a PhD student in the School of Mathematics at NUI Galway. He has a BSc in Mathematical physics and has interests in both amateur astronomy and the mathematical models of observable phenomenon.

His talk will show how basic mathematics along with Newton's Law's gives us the laws that we have used for centuries to determine planetary motion, and predict many stellar events (e.g. transits, close approaches of planets, etc...). This talk should be of interest to anyone especially to those with an interest in stellar maps focus specifically on showing the following points. www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celestial_mechanics

1 That the planets do indeed orbit in a plane

2 To show how some of Kepler's Laws are derived


3 That the planet's orbits follow elliptic paths


12.30 -2.00.: Lunch. Food served in bar


(1.00-1.40): Astronomy Workshop:

Frank Ryan Jnr "Digital Astrophotography- An Artistic Approach"

Frank is the current secretary of Shannonside Astronomy Club and is an avid amateur astronomer and astrophotographer. He first became interested in astronomy around the age of 10 during the time of the first shuttle launches and this interest soon turned into a lifelong obsession with all things astronomical. A graduate of the Limerick College of Art & Design, Frank specialised in printmaking and fine art. Three years ago he took up astrophotography and in that time a lot of his images have been printed in astronomical and scientific magazines. Frank recently had a full page image of his published in Sky & Telescope.See his superb images @ www.frankryanjr.com/


2.00: Dr Andy Shearer, Centre for Astronomy, NUI Galway: "What we don't know"

Dr Andy Shearer is an astronomer from the Centre for Astronomy NUI, Galway. His main research interest is in the area of pulsars and particularly optical observations of pulsars and magnetars. He has also worked on computational models of pulsar magnetospheres in an attempt to understand how these end-points of a star's life work. His other research interests include developing techniques to enhance medical rays based upon astronomical processing techniques.

Most speakers concentrate, understandably, on what they have just discovered that is what they now know. Yet the driving force behind research is what we don't know. This talk will look at what don't know in astronomy, but are likely to find out in the coming decade using the next generation of astronomical telescopes including the James Webb Space Telescope, Giant Magellan Telescope & the European Extremely Large Telescope. The things we don't know include: When did the first galaxies form? What is Dark Matter? What is Dark Energy and does it exist? How many Earth like planets are there and is there life on them? And finally to bring it back to his own research, to how do pulsars work? www.jwst.nasa.gov www.gmto.org www.eso.org/sci/facilities/eelt



2.50: Dr Tigran Khanzadyan Centre for Astronomy, NUI Galway:

"Looking at the Universe through Infrared Spectacles"

Dr Tigran Khanzadyan a native of Armenia and is currently a Post-Doctoral Researcher in the Centre for Astronomy at the National University of Ireland in Galway (NUIG). He graduated from with a Diploma in Physics from Yerevan State University in 1997 and went on to receive an MSc in Physics & a PhD in Astrophysics from Armagh Observatory. His research involves massive star formation along with molecular clouds and their environments and is currently involved in a multi-wavelength study of the Cygnus molecular cloud region using many world leading telescopes like Subaru, JCMT, UKIRT and others. Previously he has worked at observatories including the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope, Spain, ESO - NTT at La Silla and the BAO 2.6m telescope, Armenia.

His talk will look at all possible ways to explore the Universe through the Infrared wavelengths including SPITZER, ISO and IRAS based on past and current achievement in the field. For the future prospective he will touch upon the possibilities with successer to the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) the Infrared James Webb Space Telescope to be launched in 2013. www.spitzer.caltech.edu www.en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infrared_astronomy


3.40- 4.00 Tea/coffee break/sale of raffle tickets

4.00: Dave Mc Donald "Celtic Rock - Hunting for Asteroids”

Dave McDonald of County Kildare regularly contributes asteroid data to the Minor Planet Center and the JPL (Dawn Mission) from J65, Celbridge Observatory. As well as running ad-hoc supernova searches and producing light-curves for extra solar planets, Dave is keen to promote science to youngsters in his role as a Science Ambassador for Discover Science and Engineering. Dave recently discovered the second asteroid from Ireland (2008 TM9) - the first was discovered from County Sligo by Andrew Graham in 1848. So, as well as having an asteroid named after himself (21782 Davemcdonald), he now has a discovery which he can name himself



4.40 Professor Mark Sims, Space Research Centre. Leicester University UK: "Is there or Was there Life on Mars"

The problem of whether there was Life or might still be Life on Mars will be examined by reviewing what we know about Mars from the various space missions and what the limits of carbon water based Life might be. Future missions that may answer this question will be briefly reviewed. The problems associated with answering the question will be addressed.

Throughout his career Professor Mark Sims has worked on all steps in the design, construction, test, flight and data analysis of space instruments. Mark has been part of the team for eight space missions including the Spacelab-1 STS-9 flight. Most recently he worked as mission manager for Beagle 2, Europe's first planetary lander. He held a Royal Society Industry Fellowship with EADS Astrium a key partner for the European Space Agency's (ESA) major scientific programmes and the company that designed and built Mars Express, the craft that carried Beagle 2 to Mars and also lead the industrial team involved in building Beagle 2. As Mission Manager for Beagle 2 Mark had responsibility for the instrument procurement and interfaces along with the Flight Operations planning and execution. Recently he was appointed as chair of the UK Aurora Advisory Committee helping to shape the European Space Agency's programme of space exploration and define the case for UK participation in Aurora, taking account of UK expertise, science priorities and technology developments . He is now working on instrumentation for future Mars rover missions such as NASA's planned Astrobiology Field Laboratory and ESA’s ExoMars mission.
www.beagle2.com/ mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/ en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExoMars


5.30 Closing address and Raffle Results


6.00: Tour of NUI Galway Telescopic/Radio Observatory with Professor Mike Redfern

This is Galway's window on the Universe, a dedicated observatory with optical and radio telescopes sharp enough to spot planets orbiting distant stars outside our solar system. The telescope is a 40 cm from Astroptik in a proper dome. The optics are by Lomo (St. Petersburg). It is a classical Cassegrain with a 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! The city might not be the best place to site an observatory, but quality work is done with real scientific measurements being made.

The radio telescope has a three-metre dish, compact but still able to make credible readings. It is sufficiently large tO detect the hydrogen in the galaxy and the Doppler shift in the hydrogen.The observatory is dedicated to Prof Frank Imbusch, recently retired professor of experimental physics and long-term stalwart of the subject nationally.

8.00: Galway Astronomy Festival Banquet


8.45: Carl O' Beirnes "An Evening with the Sky at Night"

Carl O'Beirnes is from Balbriggan in Co Dublin and has been an amateur astronomer for many. His passion is for is Astrophotography and uses C14 telescope at his backyard observatory. His ambition is to venture to Australia to see Southern Milky Way and Orion upside down.. While his biggest achievement so far was being twice asked to participate in the BBC Sky at night television programme with Sir Patrick Moore. See Carl's images at www.webtreatz.com

Carl and his friend Dave Grennan a fellow Astrophotographer will be telling us all about their trips to Selsey for the recording of the popular TV series that has been running since 1957 and which is non-controversial, goes out late and unlike any other regular programme, has a faithful following. Sky at Night website is at www.bbc.co.uk/science/space/skyatnight/


10.00-1am: Observing at Barna Golf Club (Hot refreshments Tea/coffee etc available) or Astro Table Quiz

Hope everyone likes the Program

Ronan Newman galwayastronomyclub.blogspot.com/

Hi Ronan,

I’m Looking forward to going to Galway. I always enjoy the astrofest and the crack at the event. Myself and Dave have some great interviews and much more with the Sky at Night crew. All will be revealed at the event see you there.

Carl O’B

Hi

Yes look forward to your talk Carl sounds interesting!

Possibly to the annoyance of the serious Deep sky guys we are condidering changing the viewing venue to a different location on the outskirts of Galway, where skies are only dark to the west and north, Light pollution comparable to Birr but only 5 minute drive from Hotel.

Last year we went to Brigits Garden past Moycullen 20 minute drive, so would ye rather to go back there if weather allows for pitch dark skies?

Again if anyone has an idea for a stand please email us. We have a busy schedule planned, Hope to see you there

Ronan Newman
Galway AC

Discover Science and Engineering kindly published this (see below) on the their website.

As well as being Irish, I'm now also officially "young"

Good luck with the event Ronan - its a great looking line-up and we'll see ye there!


www.science.ie/index.cfm/section/news/pa...ewsPage/news_key/708

Ronan

I guess for what it worth I would prefer to go to the darkest skies available. It seems such a waste to go all that way just to observe in light polution comparable to the back garden.

Just my opinion of course..


DB

Thanks Dave for posting the info on Science.ie

To DB, the option is there if ye would prefer going out to the dark sky location as with last year, I understand your point of having to come a long way, well only 2 hrs from Dublin.

But as there is no Moon interference this year and if weather conditions are favourable then we would venture out there, The idea of a closer venue was to try and accommadate everyone else.

The offical opening will be held on the Friday evening by Professor Mike Redfern - Director of the Centre for Astronomy at NUI-Galway. To be followed with a talk by him on "The International Year of Astronomy 2009"

He is Secretary of the Royal Irish Academy Committee for Astronomy & Space Research, Chair and Single Point of Contact for the Irish Node of the International Year of Astronomy 2009

Ok that is 11 seperate talks over the course of 24 hrs, someone asked is that not too many, well not really the concept is based around the excellent BAA/IAS weekend last September talks limited to 45 minutes, a great idea, just this event is not themed and covers as many interesting Astronomical topics as possible.

Ronan Newman
www.galwayastronomyclub.ie/gaf2009.html