Dr. Amanda Bauer from the Australian Astronomical Observatory:
"A Long Time Ago in Galaxies Far, Far Away"
My desire to hear some of the world's top astronomers speak at the Macarthur Astronomy Forum is as strong as ever but my appetite for blogging about it afterwards has been diminishing for some months. I'm not sure precisely why this is so but I started the series a couple of years back in articles written for the Macarthur Astronomical Society's monthly magazine, "Prime Focus" by taking notes during each talk and I seem to have graduated to taking photographs of the slides instead. "Prime Focus" has ceased publication and now without the notes, my brain does not record enough detail to write an accurate summary of what has been said and I also tend to aggravate the problem by leaving it too long before starting to write. : ((
I don't want to do a disservice to the astonishing astronomers we have welcomed to the Forum by glossing over too much. Amanda Bauer is one astronomer whom I had been looking forward to meeting and hearing for a long time. (In fact one night under the stars a couple of years back I suggested to John Rombi that I would like him to invite her here and he obviously did). However, I am finding it harder to recall sufficient detail of these talks to do them justice.
One of the things Amanda talked about was the doppler effect on electro-magnetic waves, caused by the expansion of space itself:
One of the most interesting things I learnt was about star formation and how the rate of formation was very high in the early Universe and has slowed down to around three stars per year per galaxy at the current time:
I was certainly not disappointed by Amanda's talk. She is one of a series of lady astronomers to visit MAS over recent years and the first of four this year. It was a pleasure to be invited to dinner before the meeting and to talk informally with her.
However, I no longer have the heart to accurately summarise the great talks we get from clever astronomers like Amanda.
Amanda is the Outreach Officer for the AAO and she showed an interest in exploring ways of future collaboration with MAS. Her blog site is http://amandabauer.blogspot.com.au/ and you can find her on Twitter as @astropixie.