Programme 2010

Queensland Astrofest Opens

Honored Guest: Trevor Barry

"From Broken Hill to the Keck's"
Trevor would talk about his introduction to astronomy and how he came to do a Grad Cert Sc in Astronomy with Swinburne, his serendipitous discovery of an electrical storm on Saturn and the things that flowed on from that following the official recognition of his contribution to the Cassini mission by NASA. Culminating with the Catalyst TV special and his observing trip to Hawaii with the Keck's.

Workshop/Presentation: David O,Driscoll

The GRAS Project

Workshop/Presentation: Terry Cuttle

The 2012 Total Solar Eclipse

Workshop/Presentation: Bill Castleman

Imaging Potpourri of a Wandering Floridian

Workshop/Presentation: Laurie Billman

Telescope Drive Systems

Workshop/Presentation: Greg Bock

Fundamental Image Processing

Workshop/Presentation: Jonathan Bradshaw

Robotic Observing Project

Honored Guest: Dr David Wiltshire

"Dark Energy and Cosmic Structure"
A decade ago two teams of astronomers discovered that distant supernovae are fainter than they would be in the standard model of cosmology if clumped matter is the only stuff present in the universe. It appears that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, requiring the existence of "dark energy" - an enigmatic repulsive substance in the vacuum of space.

Dark energy has been hailed as the greatest fundamental mystery in physics today, and is supported by many independent observations. However, there is a coincidence that the strength of the dark energy is such that the expansion only starts accelerating relatively recently, at the same time that huge structures - voids, walls, and filaments containing clusters of galaxies - are observed to start forming. A number of cosmologists have questioned whether "dark energy" simply reflects the inability of the standard model to properly account for the average evolution of such complex cosmic structures. I will present the arguments, and my view as to why resolving the mystery of dark energy may be even more interesting than most physicists have dared to imagine.