The RASNZ 2012 conference was held in Carterton, Wairarapa hosted by the Phoenix Astronomical Society. The venue was the new Carterton Event Centre which opened towards the end of October 2011.

The dates for the conference were June 15 to 17, chosen to follow the transit of Venus on June 6. A short soap box on the transit was held.

Following the end of the formal conference on Sunday afternoon, Professor Clive Ruggles gave the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lecture for 2012 . His talk's title is "Ancient Astronomies - Ancient Worlds". The lecture was open to the public.

Astronomy Outreach Workshop

As well as the usual conference features from Friday evening to Sunday, an Astronomy Outreach Workshop, convened by the RASNZ Education Group took place all day Friday before the conference opening.
For more information contact Ron Fisher,

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Professor Wayne Orchiston, 2012 Featured Speaker

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 presented two papers at the 2012 RASNZ conference. His principal paper was James Cook, Tahiti, the 1769 Transit of Venus and the Quest for the Astronomical Unit. His second paper was The 1885 Total Solar Eclipse and the Emergence of Solar Physics.

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Professor Clive Ruggles, the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lecture

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 delivered the inaugural series of the Beatrice Hill Tinsley Lectures. The title of his talk was "Ancient Astronomies - Ancient Worlds". The lecture was open to the public and took place at the Carterton confernce venue after the close of the conference on Sunday 17 June.

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Dr Edwin Budding, Fellows Lecture for 2012

The Fellow's speaker for 2012 was Dr Edwin Budding. The title of his talk was The Discovery of Planets and its implications. The Fellow's lecture was on the Friday evening following the conference opening.

Ed Budding will be well known to many members of the society. He has been a member of RASNZ since 1982 and edited Southern Stars for many years. Dr. Budding was made a fellow of the society in 1996.

Dr Budding graduated at University College London and received his doctorate at Manchester University. Members will remember Dr Budding as Deputy Director at Carter Observatory from 1982 to 1996 where he is still an honorary research fellow. After a spell as professional research fellow at the CIT in Upper Hutt he was a visiting professor at the Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University (COMU) on the southern shore of the Dardenelles in Turkey. He is currently a research fellow at the Victoria University Wellington and in the Physics and Astronomy department at the University of Canterbury.

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David Hancock, after dinner speaker

David has had more than 20 years in tourism including travel agent, tour guide, airline trainer, hotels and local government. In December 2011 he moved to Wairarapa as the general manager of Destination Wairarapa the regional tourism organisation. Operating as an incorporated society, Destination Wairarapa has a membership base of 250 local tourism businesses.

The title of David's talk is "Niche Tourism".

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Details of other papers submitted with speaker names titles and abstracts.