Mount Stromlo Public Astronomy Night

Mount Stromlo Observatory in conjunction with the Canberra Astronomical Society invite the Canberra community to attend our public observing nights of 2017. Come and see the rings of Saturn, the craters of the moon as well as beautiful star clusters and nebulae. On the night attendees will be taken on a ‘tour of the universe’ with talks by astronomers from Mt. Stromlo Observatory and observations on several telescopes.

Prof. Paul Francis's popular lecture series has almost 1 million views on YouTube!  He is an award winning astronomy educator, and has worked on comets and quasars.  Come along and bring questions about your favorite objects, no matter how big or small!

Geraint Lewis is a Professor of Astrophysics, a cosmologist who studies dark matter, dark energy, and the evolution of the universe. Luke Barnes is a Postdoctoral Researcher who studies galaxy formation and the fine-tuning of the universe for life. They are authors of “A Fortunate Universe: Life in a finely tuned cosmos”, and work at the University of Sydney’s School of Physics.

Oliver James studied Physics at Oxford University, and graduated with a First Class Honours degree and joined Double Negative as Research and Development Supervisor in 2004.  Since this time he has been involved in developing high-end technology to realize some of the most demanding visual effects in film, including developing color pipeline, photogrammetry pipeline, 2.5D camera projection framework, lens distortion analysis, virtual overlay of CGI on video-assist, virtual muscle system, 3D reconstruction from photography and facial motion capture.

As Dneg Chief Scientist, Oliver was instrumental in the creation of the Double Negative Gravitational Renderer which enabled us to produce Oscar and BAFTA-winning visual effects for Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.  In 2014, Oliver, Dneg VFX Supervisor Paul Franklin, Dneg CG Supervisor Eugénie von Tunzelmann and leading astrophysicist Professor Kip Thorne, co-authored and published two scientific papers based on Interstellar.

Bookings essential. Entry by gold coin donation. Warm clothing is recommended. Southern Cross Stromlo will also be open to serve cold and warm drinks, snacks, and hot soup and roll.

In the event of cloudy/bad weather, star gazing will be cancelled and the cafe may be closed (the talks will occur regardless of the weather). You can check out the weather at Mt Stromlo using our all sky camera.

2017 Dates: 21 April, 5 May, 2 June, 30 June, 28 July, 18 August, 15 September.