Southern Sky Gems - Facebook Live
Frances AzarenAPRIL 12 08:30 UTC
Join us live on April 12, 2020 from 6:30 pm (08:30 UTC) until 8pm (10:00 UTC) as Sydney Observatory's roving astronomy educator chases clear sky for a live broadcast of Southern Sky Gems.
The host for the evening will be Geoffrey Wyatt the Education Program Producer (Science) for the Powerhouse Museum incorporating Sydney Observatory. Weather permitting, we will look at the brightest radio sources in the sky NGC 5128, which is thought to be the result of colliding galaxies roughly 16 million light years away. We will also see the most magnificent globular cluster of them all, Omega Centauri, the Jewel box, of course NGC 3372 Eta Carinae with its supernova progenitor and possibly the Tarantula nebula more than 200,000 light years away. We may even be able to look at the finest nebulae in the southern sky, M42 though it will be low in the west.
I began working at Sydney Observatory in 1986 while an undergraduate at the Sydney Institute of Education studying to become a physics and chemistry teacher. I love astronomy education so much I stayed and became the Senior Astronomy Educator, Acting manager and now, the Education Program Producer (Science) for the Powerhouse. I was the first person to win the David Malin Astrophotography competition twice and my images have featured on Space Weather. I also won the MAAS Staff development award and while trying something different for fun, the NSW TAFE State Medal for Conveyancing.
I have been invited to share my enthusiasm for astronomy extensively through NSW to school and community groups, in the Northern Territory, Hong Kong and Tianjin, China. I have been a contributing writer for the Japanese astronomy magazines Tenmon Guide, Gekkan Tenmon and CCD Astronomy.
