Creates opportunity for AUTs Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research to establish a data correlation centre in Warkworth

Telecoms ICT services division Gen-i has donated a supercomputer to AUT University that will now be used to support student learning and boost important local and international research for radio astronomy.

The supercomputer had at one time been leased to Weta Digital for rendering work on feature film King Kong, but became surplus to Gen-is requirements a few years later.

Gen-i was then looking to either scrap or donate the equipment, which was worth around a quarter of a million dollars when new. While considering the options, a conversation with Professor Sergei Gulyaev, director of AUTs Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research (IRASR), led to the supercomputer finding a new home with the University.

Gen-i CEO Tim Miles says the donation to AUT was a fantastic outcome for Gen-i as well as for the University.

"We were faced with the reality that despite still being very viable equipment, this supercomputer was no longer of use to us," says Miles.

"Its always preferable that we donate rather than send equipment to be scrapped for parts, and in this case were absolutely delighted that this supercomputer will now be used to boost critical research projects as well as contribute to student learning."

Most of the high-powered equipment has now been moved to its new home in Warkworth, where AUT operates two radio telescopes at Telecoms Satellite Earth Station site. The remaining servers are located on AUTs City Campus where they will help students studying High Performance Computing at AUTs School of Computer and Mathematical Sciences.

Professor Sergei Gulyaev says the donation is a great example of collaboration between the University and industry.

"The supercomputer also opens up the opportunity for AUTs Institute for Radio Astronomy and Space Research to establish a data correlation centre in Warkworth. The centre would be used to gather data from several radio telescopes undertaking the same observations simultaneously from different countries," says Gulyaev.

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Donated supercomputer 'to supercharge NZ research'

Camille Saint-Sans (1835 1921) Saint-Sans [pronounced sah-soh] was one of the great Romantic composers. He had been a prodigy like Mozart, composing his first piano piece at four. Aged five, he played a Beethoven piece in his first concert. As a composer, his most popular work today is probably The Carnival of the Animals, which he refused to have publicly performed in his lifetime, as he felt people would consider him frivolous.

However Saint-Sans was also a very knowledgeable and prolific writer in such diverse disciplines as math, geology, botany and philosophy. It was almost predictable that astronomy would be among his interests. He was a member of the Astronomical Society of France, founded in 1887 by his friend Camille Flammarion (1842 1925). Although Saint-Sans had a telescope, he admitted that he wasn't a methodical observer, preferring simply to enjoy the beauty and serenity of the heavens.

Occasionally, Saint-Sans, probably in collaboration with Flammarion, organized concerts around astronomical events such as the summer solstice. I'm surprised that he never wrote any music inspired by astronomy.

Brian May (born 1947) More people have heard Brian May on guitar in the band Queen than know that he has a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College, London. Although he started music lessons when he was seven, he got interested in astronomy at an early age, too. He was inspired by astronomy popularizer Patrick Moore (1923-2012). May's 4-inch reflector was a telescope he and his father made long ago, as was his trademark guitar, the Red Special.

So would it be music or science? May played in a band, and he did a physics degree. He turned down a job at Jodrell Bank Observatory to stay at Imperial College because of the London music scene. The choice was finally made when the band Queen started becoming popular, and the PhD seemed to be running out of steam. It was decades later that Patrick Moore persuaded May to complete the PhD.

In addition to music and other interests, Brian May has co-authored two popular astronomy books and is a keen amateur observer.

By the way, Patrick Moore himself was a keen amateur musician. He said that he once played the piano to accompany Albert Einstein on his violin. Appropriately, the piece was from Saint-Sans's Carnival of the Animals.

Bernard Lovell (1913 2012) Bernard Lovell is one of the great names of radio astronomy. He founded the Jodrell Bank Observatory in Cheshire, England in 1945. Its iconic telescope later named the Lovell Telescope opened in 1957. It was then the largest steerable radio telescope in the world, though there are larger ones now.

Bernard Lovell and Jodrell Bank were pioneers in radio astronomy. The facility still contributes to developments in astronomy, including studying pulsars, quasars and gravitational lensing. It also did extensive Cold War tracking of satellites and spacecraft, sometimes being able to see areas of the sky which neither the Americans nor the Soviets could.

Lovell had already chosen science and used his abilities during World War II to develop effective radar. He then went on to radio astronomy. Yet he insisted that his real love was always organs and organ music. He was a church organist for forty years. In 2007 he said, I often wish that I had devoted my whole attention to music and become more of a professional musician. But it's unlikely that his contributions to music could possibly have equaled his contribution to science.

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Musical Astronomers

Hello, Deneb! S2 Daily Grind #42 Astronomy Soup JET plays SMP Minecraft
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The End of the Universe - Astronomy Discussion
http://www.astronomycast.com/ The End of the Universe Astronomy Discussion The end of life on Planet Earth and the end of the Universe.

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Annaliese Matheron, of Dash Astro astronomical society, stargazes in Darsham.

Andrew Hirst Monday, January 20, 2014 4:33 PM

A fledgling east Suffolk astronomy group has reported a surge in membership as part of a trend which has seen stargazing become one of the UKs fastest growing hobbies.

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The Darsham based group DASH Astro welcomed 50% more visitors to its latest session, which founding members have attributed to the increased media attention devoted to the subject.

Its very topical at the moment with programmes such as the BBCs Stargazing Live, said group secretary Annaliese Matheron. Ive also read that astronomy is one of the fastest growing hobbies, with (online retailer) Amazons section on astronomy equipment for sale one of its most rapidly expanding.

Ms Matheron also welcomed recent coverage in this paper which previewed a number of stargazing events held in conjunction with the Quantatids meteor shower in early January.

Although the Star Party held by DASH Astro was unfortunately a wash out Ms Matheron said it enjoyed bumper attendance at its following meeting thanks to the coverage, which highlighted the exceptional viewing conditions available in Suffolks rural areas.

The group, which held its inaugural meeting on the midsummer solstice, will be enlisting experts to increase members knowledge.

Its constitution states: Dash Astro will actively work to promote astronomy as an accessible science and worthy pastime through the education of its members and the community at large.

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Darsham: Astronomy society sees sky-rocketing member interest

The recent discovery of neutrino particles bombarding Earth from outer space has ushered in a new era in neutrino astronomy, scientists say.

Neutrinos are produced when cosmic rays interact with their surroundings, yielding particles with no electrical charge and negligible mass. Scientists have wondered about the source of cosmic rays since they were discovered, and finding cosmic neutrinos could provide clues about the origin of the mysterious rays.

In November, a team of scientists announced the discovery of cosmic neutrinos by the giant IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica. [Neutrinos from Beyond the Solar System Found (Images)]

"We now have the opportunity to determine what the sources are, if we are indeed seeing sources of cosmic rays," said Francis Halzen, principal investigator of the IceCube observatory and a theoretical physicist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "The big difference why it's new astronomy is that we are not using light, we are using neutrinos to look at the sky."

Cosmic visitors

Neutrinos are the social misfits of the particle world they rarely interact with matter. Produced in some of the most violent, but unknown, events in the universe, they travel to Earth at close to the speed of light and in straight lines, which reveals information about their origin. Supernovas, active galactic nuclei and black holes are some of the possible sources for these ghostly particles.

Until recently, scientists had only detected neutrinos beyond Earth from the sun or from a supernova in the Milky Way in 1987. No neutrinos from distant cosmic sources had been seen.

But in April 2012, IceCube recorded two neutrinos with extremely high energies almost a billion times that of the ones found in 1987 that could only have come from a high-energy source outside the solar system. After looking deeper into the data, scientists found a total of 28 high-energy neutrinos with energies greater than 30 teraelectronvolts (TeV), reporting their finding in the journal Science.

The finding opens the door to a new kind of astronomy that would "image" the sky in the light of neutrinos, rather than photons. "Each time we find another way to make a picture of the sky using gamma rays, X-rays, radio waves you have always been able to see things you never saw before," Halzen told SPACE.com.

The successful completion of IceCube and the prospect of other telescopes on the horizon have set the neutrino world abuzz.

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Neutrino Telescopes Launch New Era of Astronomy

Piero Madau, distinguished professor of astronomy and astrophysics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, has been chosen to receive the 2014 Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics, awarded jointly by the American Institute of Physics (AIP) and the American Astronomical Society (AAS) to recognize outstanding work in astrophysics.

The prize honors Madau "for fundamental contributions to our understanding of the era of first light in the universe, the ionization and heating of the intergalactic medium, and the formation and evolution of galaxies."

Madau's research addresses key events in the early evolution of the universe, including the dawn of galaxies, the formation of the first stars and black holes, and the reionization and chemical enrichment of the intergalactic medium. The detailed history of the universe during these early formative stages is crucial to understanding galaxy formation and evolution. In recent years, his team has carried out some of the highest resolution computer simulations of the halo of dark matter that surrounds the Milky Way galaxy.

"Dr. Madau's work has helped pull back the curtain on pivotal events in the history of the universe, including the birth of stars and galaxies and the evolution of black holes," said Fred Dylla, AIP executive director and CEO. "The Heineman award recognizes his lifetime of prolific, impressive and influential achievements."

AAS President David Helfand recalled an evening meal he once shared with the now renowned researcher: "When I was on sabbatical in Cambridge about 20 years ago, I had Piero to dinner. We had an interesting conversation about brick-laying, a subject in which he has some expertise and to which he thought he might return if this astrophysics thing didn't work out. Well, over the past two decades, brick-laying he has done -- in most areas of modern cosmology -- and the Heineman Prize is an apt recognition of his many contributions."

Madau earned his B.S. in physics at the University of Florence and his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the International School for Advanced Studies in Trieste, Italy. He spent several years as an astronomer at the Space Science Telescope Institute in Baltimore, and he served as assistant director of research at the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge, before joining the UCSC faculty in 2000.

The Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics was established in 1979 and is funded by the Heineman Foundation. The prize, which consists of an award for $10,000 and a certificate, will be presented at a future meeting of the AAS.

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Piero Madau Wins Dannie Heineman Prize for Astrophysics

Deidre Hunter, longtime astronomer at Lowell Observatory, has been chosen as the 2014 recipient of the American Astronomical Society's (AAS) Education Prize.

The AAS awards this prize annually "to recognize outstanding contributions to the education of the public, students and/or the next generation of professional astronomers." Hunter was chosen "for co-founding and successfully running for the last 17 years a science and astronomy education program for 5th-8th grade Navajo-Hopi students and their teachers (of Arizona, and New Mexico), a historically underserved and culturally isolated population."

Hunter, who in addition to her duties as an astronomer serves as Lowell's Deputy Director for Science, has worked at Lowell since 1986, primarily studying the nature and behavior of tiny irregular galaxies. Not content to simply carry out research, Hunter has long been a proponent of education and in 1996 founded the Lowell Observatory Navajo-Hopi Astronomy Outreach program -- with colleague Amanda Bosh -- to reach underserved Native communities.

Hunter lists the specific goals of this program as twofold: to help teachers get Navajo and Hopi children excited about astronomy and to help teachers of Navajo and Hopi students learn about astronomy and astronomy activities so that they will be better able to incorporate astronomy in their classrooms.

Hunter responded to news of the award, "I'm stunned. There are many people working very hard at astronomy education and people doing incredibly innovative things. This is just one program. But those of us carrying out this program appreciate the encouragement this award means."

She added, "Over the past 17 years 21 astronomers and about 75 teachers have partnered under the Lowell Observatory Navajo-Hopi Astronomy Outreach Program. Many other people at Lowell have helped with the teacher workshops. These people make this program what it is."

The AAS was founded in 1899 and is the major professional organization in North America for astronomers. It has granted a prize for education since 1992, when Carl Sagan won the inaugural award.

Lowell director Jeff Hall said, "I'm delighted the American Astronomical Society has given Deidre the honor of one of its major annual prizes, and appreciate the Society's recognition of her many years of effort designing, seeking funding for, and carrying out an outreach program that has gained renown nationwide. She's an inspiring science educator, and I look forward to seeing the program continue to thrive in years to come."

The AAS also awarded former Lowell research associate Emily Levesque with the Annie Jump Cannon Award, given to an outstanding female astronomer within five years of receiving her Ph.D.

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Lowell Observatory's Deidre Hunter Wins Prestigious Education Prize

Space Fan News Live in 2014
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Kepler Observations Confirmed; Hubble #39;s 1st Frontier Field; JWST Mission Status
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John Dobson, a former monk and self-taught stargazer who developed a powerful, inexpensive telescope that almost anyone could build and showed thousands how to do it during five decades as one of public astronomy's most influential evangelists, has died. He was 98.

Dobson died Wednesday at Providence St. Joseph Medical Center in Burbank, said Bob Alborzian, coordinator of the Burbank chapter of Sidewalk Astronomers, an international organization that Dobson helped found in 1968. Dobson had been in poor health since a stroke a few years ago.

Called the "Johnny Appleseed of amateur astronomy," the lanky, ponytailed Dobson started building telescopes in the 1950s when he was a monk at the Vedanta Monastery in San Francisco. His passion for the hobby led to his expulsion, freeing him to become a roving ambassador for the simple joys of studying the nighttime sky.

"He really wanted to just share viewing the sky with people," said Anthony Cook, astronomical observer at Griffith Observatory. "He created a hobby and a type of telescope that ensured that people could build their own and look farther across the universe than was possible for most people before his time."

Dobson used cheap or salvaged materials such as ship portholes and cardboard tubing to make his telescopes, the most radical feature of which is a simple, sturdy and highly effective wooden mount that allows users to easily point the scope at any spot in the sky.

His design was eventually embraced by commercial manufacturers, who advertise the telescopes as "Dobsonians." They remain "one of the most popular telescopes on the market," said Dennis di Cicco, senior editor of Sky & Telescope magazine.

Dobsonian telescopes have made important contributions to astronomy, including the discovery in 1995 of Comet Hale-Bopp, the farthest comet ever discovered by amateurs. One of its namesakes, Tom Bopp, was using a Dobsonian.

Alborzian, who had known Dobson since 1968, said he once urged Dobson to patent his design. Dobson refused. "He said, 'These are gifts to humanity,'" Alborzian recalled. "His goal was to open astronomy to the common man."

Dobson had his critics. He did not, for instance, subscribe to the big-bang theory but favored the idea of a "steady-state" universe with no beginning and no end. "I'm not interested in just the stars," he told The Times in 2005. "I'm interested in the whole ball of wax."

Although the steady-state theory has been widely discredited, Dobson was an unwavering supporter, which caused many in the astronomy establishment to dismiss him.

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John Dobson dies at 98; former monk developed easy-to-make telescope

CLARKSBURG The Central Appalachian Astronomy Club and Dominion Resources held Astronomy Day Saturday afternoon at the Gaston Caperton Center Fairmont State University Clarksburg Campus.

This annual event takes place every January and welcomed all ages to come out and enjoy the wonders of the sky.

Joe Gonzales, one of the founding members of the club, said this was the 14th year for the event, and the turnout continues to increase.

One of the featured speakers was Mark Indy Kochte, operation specialist for the Messenger Mission, with an inspiring presentation of "Comets Messengers from the Depths Of Space.

Comet is derived from Greek, and means long-haired star, Kochte said.

Kochte added the Messenger is a spacecraft orbiting Mercury.

Time-lapse photography is one of Kochtes hobbies that he does for fun on the side.

The videos normally take a couple weekends to put together, Kochte added.

Kochte has attended Astronomy Day for the past 12 or 13 years and said it is a great opportunity for people to learn something about space that they do not already know, and they can learn from someone who has direct experience in the subject.

Depth and detail are key when providing information, Kochte said.

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Astronomy Day turnout on increase

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A Star Party contest for high school students will highlight the government's celebration of National Astronomy Week on Feb. 17 to 21, state astronomers said.

PAGASA acting administrator Vicente Malano said the Star Party contest is open to 12 public and private high schools and will be held Feb. 21 at PAGASA in Diliman, Quezon City.

"The contest will be open to high school students, both public and private from Metro Manila. The maximum number of contestants is six students who should be members of their school Science Club and one Science adviser," Malano said.

He said the winner will take home P20,000 while the runner-up will get P15,000. The third placer gets P10,000 while the nine others will get consolation prizes of P2,000 each.

PAGASA said National Astronomy Week is observed every third week of February.

"This year, the occasion will be celebrated on 17-21 February 2014 with the theme 'Building Bonds: Connecting People through Astronomy,'" Malano said.

PAGASA is mandated by Presidential Proclamation No. 130 to head the annual celebration.

Other activities lined up for National Astronomy Week include:

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PAGASA readies activities for Astronomy Week on Feb. 17-21

KEY WEST

Looking at the stars

Larry Halstead, an amateur astronomy for more than 20 years, will return to the Key West Library for three Wednesday evening programs about astronomy.

The programs are free and open to the public and take place from 6:30 to 7:30 p.m. in the Library Auditorium, 700 Fleming St. Weather permitting, following each session time will be devoted to actual observation at a nearby open area using your eyes, binoculars and a good amateur telescope.

On Jan. 22, the program covers an introduction and basic astronomy; Jan. 29, telescopes and how they work; Feb. 5 observing tips, etiquette and special topics.

KEY WEST

Sunrise Canal dredging

City commissioners Tuesday will consider approving a $53,000 contract to dredge 375 cubic yards of submerged material from the Sunrise Canal in New Town.

Originally dug at 9 feet, the Sunrise Canal "is obstructed and the canal water quality has deteriorated due to its inhibited ability to flush," city engineer Birch Ohlinger wrote in a memo to city staff.

Commissioners meet at 6 p.m. Tuesday at Old City Hall, 510 Greene St. The city has already received the permits to dredge. Of five bids received, city staff recommends the lowest one, from Florida Dredge and Dock of Tarpon Springs.

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Mile Markers

Holoien et al. (2014): OSU Astronomy Coffee Brief
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Learn about Orion the Great winter constellation january 2014 astronomy
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