SAO Student News

For each SAO e-zine, we would like to share some of the exciting astronomy news stories from our students. If you have an item that you would like included in future e-zines, please let us know.

SAO Alumni spots Saturnian storm

SAO alumnus Trevor Barry of Broken Hill, NSW, reports on imaging of Saturn in February, 2008.

February 25, 2008: Last Saturday night I imaged a white spot in Saturn's southern belt. I have a sequence of images that track it's movement over a 50 min period. I have never imaged features such as this on Saturn previously from my observatory. I have seen Hubble images of similar features, but from what I have been able to glean, apparently they are relatively rare with about 20 such temporary features in the last two hundred years.

I dare say there are planetary scientists interested in studying these phenomena, and they are probably aware of this current event, but then again they may not. At the scale of my images this feature is about 12,053 km diameter. Below is an animation of Saturn showing the white spot moving in the southern hemisphere (and several Saturnian satellites!). The images are taken from my observatory in Broken Hill through a 16" F4.5 Newtonian reflector.



April 30, 2008: Georg Fischer from the Cassini RPWS (Radio & Plasma Wave Science) team contacted me this morning with the URL to the latest Cassini Imaging Team press release, that credits a certain broken down ex-mine worker and Swinburne University alumni from Broken Hill, for providing data to his team on the record long lived lightning storm on Saturn. http://ciclops.org/view.php?id=4963

Trevor has since received a lot of media coverage, including the ABC, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the Tech Herald. Well done Trevor!

SAO Student Publications & Presentations

We proudly announcement publications and conference presentations of our SAO students and alumni. Below is a list of some publications and presentations that we are aware of. Please advise SAO of you have any new work you would like mentioned in future editions of the SAO e-zine.

Papers Published:

• Vokrouhlicky, D., Higgins, D., Krugly, Yu., Gaftonyuk, N., Chiorny, V., Shevchenko, V., and Kaasalainen. M. (2008). Detection of the YORP Effect on Asteroid (1620) Geographos, 10th Asteroids, Comets, Meteors meeting, 2008
• Warner, B.D., Higgins, D., Pray, D.P., Dyvig, R., Reddy, V., and Durech, J. (2008). A Shape and Spin Model for 1600 Vyssotsky, MPBu, 5, p13
• Higgins, D. (2008). Asteroid Lightcurve Analysis at Hunters Hill Observatory and Collaborating Stations: April 2007 - June 2007, MPBur, 35, p30
• Warner, B.D. and Higgins, D. (2008). Lightcurve Analysis of 654 Zelinda, MPBu, 35, p32
• Thejll, P., Flynn, C., Gleisner, H., and Mattingly, A. (2008). Earthshine: not just for romantics, Astronomy & Geophysics, 49, p.3.15.
• Lenc, E., Garrett, M. A., Wucknitz, O., Anderson, J. M., and Tingay, S. J. (2008). A Deep, High-Resolution Survey of the Low-Frequency Radio Sky, ApJ, 673, p78

Presentations:

• SAO student Anousheh Ansari visited Swinburne on 9 May to present the first of the Chancellor's Centenary lectures. A podcast of her presentation is available here.