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~ Star Stuff event at Byron Bay 24th & 25th June 2017 ~

6/27/2017

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~ Beautiful posters for Star Stuff, I'm pointing to my favourite planet Saturn and Julie's with Dylan's latest Eta Carina image ~
All I can say is Wow…it really did take some time to come down from the natural high of having so many incredible speakers all together in the one place giving all the 400 people who attended such outstanding talks about our Universe.
 
I just don’t know how our SAS member Dylan O’Donnell managed to put this amazing event all together, it started out as an idea of bringing some real science to his area of Bryon Bay and ‘O Boy’…look at what it grew into and with the support from our club we were able to put together a wonderful event for everyone that attended.
Absolutely awesome!!!
 
SAS has put together a special edition of our e-newsletter called ‘Event Horizon’ please go to the website and download a copy at: http://sas.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/SAS-EH-July-2017-small.pdf
 
Below are some images of us in our bright yellow Star Staff t-shirts, we all had an fantastic time,
​but very busy…
So who were all these amazing speakers, first of all there was Dr Duane Hamacher who gave a very interesting and fascinating talk on ‘Aboriginal Astronomy’, http://aboriginalastronomy.blogspot.com.au
  
Then Mark Gee who’s a renowned New Zealand astro-photographer, who showed and explained how he takes his stunning wide field images of the night sky. http://theartofnight.com
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~ Mark Gee NZ Astrophotographer ~
Dr David Malin then gave us a bit of history into how humans have recorded what they see and how important it is for astro-photographers to stand out from the crowd with their astro-images. https://www.davidmalin.com
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~ Star-trail image taken by Dr David Malin ~
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~ Dr David Malin ~
Dr Fred Watson from Siding Springs Observatory gave a talk on light pollution; he’s also such a lovely man who took time out to be in a photo with us girls, we were all thrilled :-) http://www.fredwatson.com.au
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~ Dr Fred Watson with us girls from SAS ~
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~ Dr Fred Watson ~
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~ Q&A time with Dr Fred Watson ~
Then there was Dr Katie Mack, who had people a little bit scared of the future with her predictions,
​but assured us that the universe would be all Ok :-)
 http://www.astrokatie.com
And of course Dr Karl Kruszelnicki, well what can I say about Dr Karl, he’s just amazing with all his space facts that makes science just fun for everyone to enjoy. http://drkarl.com
There was also Dr Alan Duffy, who’s such a friendly down to earth astrophysicist with such a great sense of humour who just loved looking through the telescopes and thanked all us through a Instagram video at: https://www.instagram.com/p/BVvLoxABwph/?hl=en
Dr Alan Duffy's website is at: http://www.alanrduffy.com
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~ Dr Alan Duffy ~
And then there was Jamie Anderson from Gilmour Space Technologies from the Gold Coast, explaining the challenge of building rockets here in Australia. https://www.spaceflightacademy.com.au
 
Machaela Jeffrey gave us an overview of the current operations of ESA’s operation here in Australia with the same set of problems that Jamie has with getting support for the space industry here in Australia…hopefully it will change in the near future.
 
But that was not all; our own Dylan O’Donnell gave a wonderful presentation on how he takes his beautiful images and shared a lot of his knowledge with everyone with a few excellent tips and secrets to help people take better images of the night sky, great presentation Dylan! http://deography.com/byron-bay-observatory/
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One of the highlights goes to a young lady called Jade Rushwood from Bryon Bay High School, who gave an excellent presentation on ‘Jupiter and its moons orbits’ which was very inspirational, because she spent so much time observing and recording the events.

​Jade was rewarded with a resounding applause and given a brand new Australian Geographic telescope to help with her new discoveries in the night sky.

One of the local schools the Bryon Community Primary School set up an astronomy display that was lovely.
 Bryon Community Primary School: http://www.bcps.org.au
Some of the wonderful sponsors at Star Stuff, Celestron, BIntel and Australian Geographic
Australian Geographic http://www.australiangeographic.com.au
Celestron Telescopes: https://www.celestron.com
BIntel: https://www.bintel.com.au
Please find the link to my other blog that shows the solar prominence, which was on display during the Star Stuff at: 
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog/-solar-prominence-on-display-for-star-stuff-astronomy-event

​Is there going to be a Star Stuff2…you bet, Dylan has already locked in the date of Saturday the 30th June and Sunday the 1st July 2018. Please go to the Star Stuff website and sign up for Star Stuff2 updates at 
https://starstuff.com.au and we’ll see you all there again next year for another amazing ‘Out of this World’ event, Noeleen ;-)

Noeleen Lowndes (President)
Southern Astronomical Society (Gold Coast) QLD Australia
http://sas.org.au
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~ Solar prominence on display for ‘Star Stuff’ astronomy event ~

6/25/2017

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~ The Sun at Star Stuff event 25th June 2017 ~
The Sun put on quite a show today  (25th June 2017) at our exciting Star Stuff cosmic event being held this weekend at Bryon Bay.  Yay!!!…Thank you Sun :-)
 
Our astronomy club the Southern Astronomical Society, had a Lunt 80mm solar telescope and a few Coronado 40mm PST scopes on display for everyone to safely view the surface of the Sun in H-alpha, where a lovely solar prominence was firing away on the NW limb. The other small sunspot on the surface is AR2664.

Above: Solar viewing through the clubs solar telescopes at Star Stuff.

I managed to get some time to set up my camera and show people how to take images of the Sun with the DSLR camera attached to the Lunt solar telescope.

​The solar image above is a composite, one set of images for the disc and one set of images for the faint prominence, because you need a longer exposure to capture the faint gases of prominences.
 
Images taken with a Canon 700D and a 3x Barlow lens, the disc image was ISO200 and 1/160th second, the longer exposures images was for 1/20th second and ISO 400. Both images were combined in PS CS4.
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'Star Stuff' Astronomy Event at Bryon Bay 24th & 25th June 2017

6/20/2017

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Well the Star Stuff Cosmic event is nearly here…. with less than a week to go!
 
Please come along for a wonderful weekend of astronomy and space…don't forget to get your tickets at: https://starstuff.com.au and view all the incredible speakers that will be there to enrich your knowledge of our Amazing Universe.
 
This event is fully supported by members from the Southern Astronomical Society from the Gold Coast in QLD.
 http://sas.org.au/sas-supports-star-stuff-2017-at-bryon-bay/
 
Why has our SAS member Dylan O’Donnell the organizer and coordinator of this event called it Star Stuff?
 Because one of the most famous visionary scientist and astronomer of all time Carl Sagan once said:
 
The cosmos is within us.
We are made of star-stuff.
We are a way for the universe to know itself.
~ Carl Sagan ~
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~ We are all made of Star Stuff ~ Words by Carl Sagan, image by Noeleen Lowndes :-)
To read a biography of this amazing astronomer please go to biography.com at: https://www.biography.com/people/carl-sagan-946919
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~ The Sun on the 18th June 2017 ~

6/19/2017

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The Sun has been ever so quite over the past six months, but today the solar surface showed two small Sunspots AR2262 & AR2263, a couple of large filaments and also two prominences on each side of the solar limb.
 
The image was taken with a 80mm Lunt solar telescope and a Canon 700D camera with a 3x Barlow lens attached.
 
Exposures were 1/200th second and ISO400, 15 images were stacked in Registak6 and processed in PS CS4. This time I played around with the Hue/Saturation in Photoshop to obtain the more natural golden colour of the Sun instead of the usual red colour as seen through the H-alpha telescope :-)
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~ TEDx Event at the Helensvale Library 2nd June 2017 ~

6/3/2017

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I was invited by the lovely people from the Helensvale Library to give a TEDx talk on how I learnt all about the night sky as it may inspire other people to go outside and look up to discover there night sky…I hope it does!
Happy Stargazing :-)
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~ Starry Starry Night ~
Look up and discover your night sky
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The theme of the event was called ‘Make It’ and there were seven wonderful presenters who volunteered there time and story’s to make people think about the topics that everyone was so passionate about.
 
I must say that I have given thousands of talks, but this one was completely different because I had to give a bit of my personal experiences for the story, which is something that I don’t usually do, but I did enjoy sharing those special moments :-)
 
I also discovered that a TED talk is not a talk where you teach, its purpose is to bring one really great idea to the audience that may help, challenge or created a desire for somebody to try something new in there lives, and to present it all in under 18minutes or less!!!
 
Also, it’s quite scary standing on that red circle, but the whole experience was just so exciting and fun. I would like to thank all the incredible people who helped out on the night, especially Karen Gunnarsson and Dani Watson the organizers of this wonderful TEDx event, for making the evening such a wonderful success for everyone that attended. I will post the link to the video here as soon as it’s ready...

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~ The beautiful set for TEDx Helensvale Library event ~
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Yes, I did it...a TEDx talk :-)
​The whole event was just awesome!!

Please find the YouTube link to my TEDx talk below and I hope you feel inspired to go out outside in your garden, Look up and discover your night sky :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkaXnghax8c
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~ Message Board ~
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Please find below a copy of all the other speakers, every single one of them were just amazing...and the audience were incredible,  thank you :-)
tedxhelensvalelibrary.pdf
File Size: 63 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

~ TEDx Helensvale Library Event ~
Gold Coast Bulletin E-News Article on the 2nd June 2017 
​by Suzanne Simonot

gold_coast_tedx_talk_to_see_karl_smith_aka_the_lyrical_swap_rapping_for_public_speaking_|_gold_coast_bulletin.pdf
File Size: 630 kb
File Type: pdf
Download File

Link to article at:
http://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/entertainment/gold-coast-tedx-talk-to-see-karl-smith-aka-the-lyrical-swap-rapping-for-public-speaking/news-story/765c74f4d7646fb2ffda6ae94eca16cd
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    Author

    I just love being under the heavens, come on a journey with me and I’ll share some of the amazing wonders of the Universe with you. Noeleen :-)

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For all current observations of the night sky please go to my Astro Blog:
http://www.mystardustobservatory.com/astro-blog

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