Movies at Macquarie special double feature - Solarmax and Descent to Titan
Solarmax
Every 11 years the sun's poles reverse with unimaginable violence. The peak of the storm is called a solar maximum. The hottest film under the sun, Solarmax is a breathtaking exploration into the awesome vastness and mysterious power of our closest star. Take a unique journey through time and space, and experience the sun's severe force and beauty.
Descent to Titan
This is the gripping story of the Huygens probe's journey to Titan, Saturn's enigmatic moon. Never before had anyone attempted to land a spacecraft on such a distant world and the tension mounts as the final dramatic moments of Huygens' descent begins.
Following the movies a panel of experts from CSIRO and Macquarie University (Quentin Parker, Graham Town and Chris Phillip) will discuss solar maximum and other astronomical phenomena as well as the feats in engineering that made the creation of the movies possible.
Who should attend: general public
Date: Sunday 19 August
Time: 6pm
Location: Macquarie Theatre, Macquarie University
Cost: free
Further enquiries: contact Emma Norton 02 9850 6079, emma.norton@mq.edu.au
Quentin Parker
Associate Professor Quentin Parker obtained a BSc(Hons) in 1982 and a PhD (1986) from the University of St.Andrews in Scotland. He joined the faculty at Macquarie in April 2002 as the joint AAO/Macquarie lecturer in astronomy. Prior to that Quentin worked at the Royal Observatory Edinburgh (1986-1992), Anglo-Australian observatory (1992-1999) as an instrument scientist/astronomer and as a senior research fellow at the Institute for Astronomy (1999-2002). Quentin was responsible for helping to develop and manage the FLAIR-II fibre-spectroscopy system at the UKST and had also worked extensively with the new 6dF robotic fibre system that replaced FLAIR-II. Quentin was also P.I. for the UKST H-alpha survey. His research activities are mainly but not exclusively associated with Wide Field Astronomy, including large-scale redshift surveys and the new Macquarie/ Edinburgh/ Strasbourg Catalogue of Galactic Planetary Nebulae. Quentin is currently Chair of the IAU working group on sky-surveys, is a member of the 6dF Science Advisory Group and heads both the H-alpha international survey consortium and the associated Planetary nebulae team.
Graham Town
Associate Professor Graham Town is an academic electrical engineer with 8 years experience in the Australian electronics industry and over 17 years experience in tertiary education and research. He was responsible for setting up Macquarie University's first engineering program, and is currently the BE Program Director. His experience is diverse, including work on microwave and antenna systems for telecommunications and avionics, construction of an NMR imaging system, medical imaging, and more than ten years experience in fibre optics and photonics research for applications in telecommunications and sensing. Graham leads the Guided Wave Optics and Photonics Research group, is a member of the Macquarie University Centre for Lasers and Applications, and part of the University's Centre of Research Excellence in Lasers and Photonics. His current research is in the areas of polymer guided-wave optics and broadband optical fibre sources (e.g. continuum generation, multiwavelength lasers) and their applications.
Chris Phillips and the Huygens Probe
On 14 January 2005, CSIRO's radio telescopes took part in a unique international experiment to track the European Space Agency's Huygens spaceprobe as it landed on Titan. CSIRO's radio telescopes at Parkes, Narrabri and Coonabarabran were part of an international network of telescopes measuring the speed of winds in Titan's atmosphere. This was a difficult experiment, because the spaceprobe's signal was extremely weak-about as weak as a signal from a mobile phone on Venus.
Seventeen telescopes tracked Huygens' position as it parachuted through Titan's atmosphere to its surface. The aim was to pinpoint the probe's location to within 1 kilometre, at a distance of 1.2 billion kilometres, and to follow its path as it descended.
The tracking used a special technique called Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). VLBI combines the signals from several telescopes to make more precise measurements than a single telescope can. The experiment was coordinated internationally by JIVE, the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe. The other telescopes taking part were from the University of Tasmania and institutions in the USA, Japan and China.
In Australia the experiment was coordinated by Dr Chris Phillips of CSIRO. Dr Phillips is a research scientist who specialises in combining signals from radio telescopes separated by large distancesÑ a technique called VLBI (very long baseline interfermetry). In the past, VLBI has been done by recording signals at each telescope on tape, then processing the tapes together. But now Australia and other countries are moving to "eVLBI" where the data from each telescope is streamed in realtime to a central location across high-speed data networks.
Dr Phillips has been responsible for developing eVLBI within Australia over the last three years. Prior to that he spent five years at the Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe, where he played a major role in commissioning and developing the major VLBI data processor for Europe.
"Macquarie - Centre of the Universe" is a joint project between CSIRO and Macquarie University for National Science Week and National Engineering Week, 2007.