Shannonside Astronomy Club - 2004 Whirlpool Starparty.

albertw

Shannonside Astronomy Club - 2004 Whirlpool Starparty.

The 18th Whirlpool Starparty in 2004

The annual Whirlpool Star Party for 2004, the premier astronomical event for all astronomers in Ireland, will take place on the 17th, 18th and 19th of September. Next year's event will again be held in Doolys Hotel in the square in Birr. This is an easy walking distance from most town accommodation and from the castle itself.

For those who have not been at one of our Star Parties before, the format is as follows.

* Registration (Euro50 in 2003) starts on Friday evening accompanied by a wine and cheese reception.
* Registrations continue on Saturday morning with the lectures starting at about 10.30AM following the Earl of Rosse who usually opens the proceedings.
* Speaker's presentations are then spread over the next two days.
* Lunch time on Saturday gives you time for a tour of the Birr telescope, the excellent new Science Center and gardens (the admission price to these is included in the registration fee).
* Dinner on the Saturday night at 8pm. is optional and has to be paid for separately before lunch time on Saturday.
* An astroquiz is held after dinner if observing is not possible.
* Observing sessions will be held on Friday and Saturday nights, weather permitting. We are, as always, very grateful to Lord Rosse and his family for their support and use of the castle grounds for observing (and for turning off all the lights in the castle. We have been very lucky so far with clear skies for six out of the last eight years. What other Starparty in the world can boast the accompaniment of a working 72" Newtonian telescope and occasionally the opportunity to actually observe with it?

As usual, we will have club stands, a stand for secondhand items, and usually a few trade stands including one from the Armagh Planetarium.

This years speakers:

Simon Conway Morris - Simon is a biologist, author of 'Life's Solution; Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe'. The title says it all, and this is a very unusual position for a biologist to take.

Stephen J O'Meara - Stephen is presently working in Hawaii. He is the author and editor of many astronomy books including Deep Sky Companions: The Messier Objects, its companion book, The Caldwell Objects and Deep Sky Wonders.

Steve Beckwith - Working on the Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) the replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope. Steve will bring us up to date on the latest developments and expected advancements that NGST will bring.

Cor Berrevoets - Imaging with the humble Webcam has caused a revolution in planetary imaging recently, but the driving force behind this is the clever software used to tease the detail from hundreds of individual frames of a video. By aligning, stacking, combining and processing, the final images are stunning. Cor is the authour of the popular Registax software program.

Michael McKay - Born in Belfast, Michael was Ground Segment Manager and Flight Operations Director with the European Space Authority for the SMART-1 and Mars Express missions.

Kevin Kilburn - Kevin relays the story behind the rediscovered Star Atlas compiled by Dr. John Bevis who intended it to have been published as the URANOGRAPHIA BRITANNICA in about 1750 but tragically it became lost to science. Manchester Astronomical Society have an Atlas Celeste, the only complete, 1786 atlas, bound in its original, unfolded, format as intended by Bevis. For details click here. MAS also have reproduced and put on to CD-ROM this historical atlas

Storm Dunlop - Storm Dunlop, Author and Translator with interests in the physical sciences, such as astronomy, meteorology, geology, books and dogs! Visit his website for more info at http://www.btinternet.com/%7Estorm.dunlop/

For more information visit the Shannonside Astronomy Club web site at http://www.geocities.com/shannonsideac/ Shannonside Astronomy Club is a member of the Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies, www.irishastronomy.org.