The RASNZ 2012 conference will be in Carterton, Wairarapa hosted by the Phoenix Astronomical Society. The venue will be the new Carterton Event Centre which opened towards the end of October 2011. Some information about the Event Centre is available on line.
The dates for the conference are June 15 to 17. The date has been chosen to follow the transit of Venus on June 6. Many astronomical societies will be planning for the transit. Affiliated societies and individuals are invited to present poster papers and images related to observing the transit. A forum on the transit may be held.
Following the end of the formal conference on Sunday afternoon, Professor Clive Ruggles will give the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lecture for 2012 . His talk's title is "Ancient Astronomies - Ancient Worlds". The lecture will be open to the public.
The RASNZ conference also follows the Third International Starlight Conference to be held at Tekapo, June 11 to 13.
Accommodation available in Carterton includes hotel, motel, B&B, farm stay and rented cottages. More details on the accommodation available are on the RASNZ conference brochure sent out with the December 2011 Southern Stars.
Wayne was born in Auckland but grew up in Christchurch and Sydney. While working at the CSIRO's
Division of Radiophysics he completed a B.A. Honours at the University of Sydney and then enrolled
for a Ph.D. On completing this he worked in other fields before returning to astronomy. In 1985 he
was elected to membership of the IAU, and was a Visiting Fellow at Mount Stromlo Observatory.
In 1988 Wayne moved back to New Zealand and eventually joined the Carter Observatory, becoming Managing Director. He returned to Australia in 2000, and after stints at the Anglo-Australian Observatory and the Australia Telescope National Facility joined James Cook University in 2005, where he is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Astronomy.
Wayne has been very active in IAU Commissions 40, 41 and 46, and he founded two IAU Working Groups. He conducts research on the history of Cook voyage, Australian, British, French, Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, New Zealand, South African, Thai and US astronomy, with emphasis on transits of Venus. Wayne also researches early radio astronomy; historic telescopes and observatories; asteroids, comets, meteors and meteorites; solar eclipses; and the amateur-professional interface. He has more than 300 astronomy publications, including a dozen books, and is the co-founder and Editor of the Journal of Astronomical History and Heritage.
Professor Orchiston will present two papers at the 2012 RASNZ conference. His principal paper is James Cook, Tahiti, the 1769 Transit of Venus and the Quest for the Astronomical Unit. His second paper is The 1885 Total Solar Eclipse and the Emergence of Solar Physics.
CLIVE RUGGLES is Emeritus Professor of Archaeoastronomy at the University of Leicester, UK. His is
apparently the first University Chair in this subject to be created in the world. Archaeoastronomy
is the study of beliefs and practices related to the sky in the past, and Clive trained as an
astrophysicist before switching fields and becoming an archaeologist.
Clive has worked in many parts of the world and has published books, papers and articles on subjects ranging from prehistoric Europe and pre-Columbian America to ancient Greece, Egypt, Polynesia and indigenous astronomies in Africa. He has ongoing fieldwork projects in Peru and Hawaii as well as various parts of Europe, and is a leading figure in a joint initiative by UNESCO and the International Astronomical Union to promote, preserve, and protect the world's most important astronomical heritage sites.
His work in South America hit the headlines in March 2007 with the publication in the journal Science of his work with Peruvian archaeologist Ivan Ghezzi on the Thirteen Towers of Chankillo, a 2300-year old solar observation site. His books include Astronomy in Prehistoric Britain and Ireland (Yale UP, 1999), Ancient Astronomy: An Encyclopedia of Cosmologies and Myth (ABC-CLIO, 2005), Skywatching in the Ancient World: New Perspectives in Cultural Astronomy, edited with anthropologist Gary Urton (Colorado, 2007), and most recently Heritage Sites of Astronomy and Archaeoastronomy, edited with technology historian Michel Cotte (ICOMOS-IAU 2010) and Archaeoastronomy and Ethnoastronomy: Building Bridges between Cultures (Cambridge UP, 2011), the Proceedings of the first IAU Symposium to be devoted to this topic.
Clive's website is www.cliveruggles.net.
Professor Clive Ruggles will be delivering the inaugural series of the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lectures. The title of his talk is "Ancient Astronomies - Ancient Worlds". The lecture will be open to the public and will take place at the Carterton confernce venue after the close of the conference on Sunday 17 June.
The Fellow's speaker for 2012 will be Dr Edwin Budding. The provisional title of his talk is
The Discovery of Planets and its implications.
The Fellow's lecture is usually given on the Friday evening following the conference opening.