11-10-2008 Whirlpool Star Party (Article 158)

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Simon Kenny
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Joined: Tue Feb 12, 2008 9:17 pm
Location: Shannon, Co. Clare, Ireland

11-10-2008 Whirlpool Star Party (Article 158)

Post by Simon Kenny » Tue Dec 30, 2008 8:44 pm

Whirlpool Star Party 2008: Award to Irish Amateur Astronomer. (Article 158)

The Shannonside Astronomy club has once again organised a very successful Whirlpool Starparty in Birr from 26th to 28th September. The club patron, Lord Rosse, opened the proceedings of the 24th Starparty on Saturday morning. Unfortunately the news was not good on the refurbishment of the Great Telescope and it is unlikely it will be working again - certainly not in the near future.
Registration and the cheese and wine reception on the Friday evening was very well attended, as was the observing session in the Castle Grounds which went on to about 3 AM. Some fantastic views were seen through participant’s telescopes.
Ian Ridpath opened the formal sessions, on Saturday morning, with a very informative talk on the history of the constellations; he traced their evolution from Babylonian times in the area around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers in what is now Iraq, through ancient Greek and Roman cultures to the present day, which has seen the number of constellations increase from 48, published around AD 150 by the Greek scientist Ptolemy, to settle on the 88 we know today.

Deirdre Kelleghan and Sally Russell gave us an artist’s view of sketching through the eyepiece. It is certainly not for the faint hearted — trying to capture the detail while ensuring that the subtle shades of grey were correct when sketching the moon. Deirdre and Sally’s workshop was a big hit.
A highlight of the weekend was the award, by the International Astronomical Union, to Dave McDonald for his efforts in promoting amateur astronomy in Ireland. Asteroid (21782)davemcdonald orbits between Mars and Jupiter.
Damian Peach is internationally known for his spectacular images of the planets. He gave us a fascinating insight into how he does it, while making some very interesting comparisons between images taken by professional astronomers, using the very large telescopes of recent times, to images built by present day amateur astronomers using only modest size telescopes, CCD cameras and some image processing software.
Saturday was rounded off with a very sociable Whirpool dinner which included the David Lunt after dinner memorial talk given by Aaron Golden on how the existence of life on another planet could be determined from filtering and analysing the spectrum from the planet. He predicted that the science of Astrobiology would play a major role into the future.
The Watcher Robotic Telescope at Boyden, South Africa was Lorraine Hanlon’s topic. Professor Hanlon is the lead in a collaboration base in UCD. The main purpose of Watcher is to capture the light from Gamma Ray Bursts (GRBs) after the locations are obtained by satellites such as HETE-II, INTEGRAL and SWIFT. GRBs are of very short duration, mostly seconds; therefore watcher has to respond extremely quickly.
Dr. Niall Smith spoke on the fantastic work going on in Blackrock Castle, Cork, especially their efforts in outreach programmes.
Professor Judith Pipher is a veteran of space related scientific research having worked on the Spitzer Space Telescope since its inception. Her talk covered her specialist area of infrared detection and especially her efforts in constructing the required detectors. Judith was able to show us the amazing detail and the beauty of the images captured by Spitzer which when combined with the visual give a much greater understanding of what is actually happening in the lifecycle of stars, nebula and galaxies.
Roll on WSP 2009

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