I’ve an MSc. in Astronomy from Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne. One of the benefits of that is that I got to work with the Parkes telescope a pictured above while doing research into pulsars for the (then) proposed Square Kilometer Array.
Closer to home I’ve been involved with local and national astronomical Societies – The South Dublin Astronomical Society (now defunct!) and the national Irish Astronomical Society. For a while I was the chair of the Irish Federation of Astronomical Societies which is an umbrella group of most of the astronomy clubs and societies around Ireland.
The main group I’m still active with is Dark Sky Ireland which I co-founded back in 2003 and has now expanded to become a national and cross-border partnership of stakeholder groups across the island of Ireland. With a common goal is to raise awareness of light pollution in Ireland and promote the use of responsible lighting through education and the development of a national policy and strategy in the absence of legislation.
Ireland now has two internationally recognised Dark Sky Places in Kerry and Ballycroy (with more in the pipeline!) and the team have worked with local government and industry to improve the streetlighting being installed around the country to reduce the number, timing and temperature of streetlights where possible.
I built and operate Cademuir Observatory which has the designation Z72 from the Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union. The observatory has modest equipment – a Celestron 9.25 CPC telescope, ASI and ATIK cameras, various filters and automation. These are used (when I get the time these days!) to observe asteroids for the Minor Planet Center; though with a limiting magnitude of approximately +18 the setup is limited to reporting confirmations and providing additional orbital data for already discovered Near Earth Objects. It’s unlikely that Z72 will ever make a discovery, but I did have the privilege of confirming Supernova 2014as which was discovered by my friend Dave Grennan in Raheny Observatory. It’s quite a special feeling to see a star exploding in a distant galaxy and know that you are only the second human to see it.
The observatory started working with the American Association of variable Star Observers (AAVSO) a few years back but unfortunately I never found the time to dedicate to serious variable star observing.
Some blog posts on the construction of the Observatory are at:
Part 1 The Plan. And starting to get the site ready.
Part 2 Building the floor
Part 3 Getting the walls up
Part 4 Now with a roof!
Part 5 Shed done! Now for the pier
Part 6 A pier appears!
Part 7 First light!
A small selection of images taken from the observatory are listed on astrobin at https://www.astrobin.com/users/albertwz72/ Some of these images features in the “Images Of Starlight” exhibition that toured the country a few years ago.
A little of the software that I used to tie things together is at https://github.com/albertw/AutoSkyX and https://github.com/albertw/pyskyx (the latter is in use in Georgia Tech for assisting their automation)