Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers

This free public stargazing (Friday, June 19, 2015; 6–11 pm) was organized by Dr. Donald Lubowich, Coordinator of Astronomy Outreach at Hofstra University. The Astronomy Festival on the National Mall (AFNM) featured solar, optical, and radio telescope observations of the Sun, Moon, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn; hands-on activities, demonstrations, hand-outs, posters, banners, and videos; a planetarium show with a portable blow-up dome, speakers from scientific and educational organization. Unfortunately this year the weather was unfriendly.

The Stanford University campus is in Silicon Valley south of San Francisco. The satellite image below shows the northern portion of the campus from 4 km altitude. The Physics and Astrophysics building, where the 2015 SARA Western Conference was held, is just left of center, barely distinguishable at this altitude. Just out of view to the south is the huge open area populated with radio research facilities including the 150 ft diameter dish antenna that SARA Western Conference attendees toured in 2010 and 2012. The main campus is about 33 square kilometers (8 180 acres). Imagine paying California property taxes on that each year.

The following papers will be presented at the annual conference at NRAO in Green Bank, WV. Check back for late additions.

Author: Professor Duncan Lorimer

Title: Pulsars, flickers and cosmic flashes: the transient radio universe

Abstract: I will describe a brief history of discovery and some exciting recent developments in the world of pulsars and fast radio bursts. Pulsars, rapidly rotating highly magnetized neutron stars, were discovered in 1967 and continue to surprise and delight astronomers as powerful probes of fundamental physics and astrophysics. Fast radio bursts are millisecond-duration pulses of currently unknown origin that were discovered in 2007. Both pulsars and fast radio bursts have great promise at probing the universe on large scales and in fundamental ways...

Green Bank, WV National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO), USA

The Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers (SARA) solicits papers for presentation at its 2015 Annual Conference to be held 21 June - 24 June 2015.

    The Radio JOVE group, the INSPIRE Project and the Society of Amateur Radio Astronomers will have an exhibit in the Ball Arena booths 0421 and 0420 at Hamvention in Dayton, Ohio on  May 15, 16 and 17, 2015.

    Representatives from each group will be there to answer questions and explain radio astronomy observations. There will be displays of past observations. Due to the high radio frequency interference (RFI) of the convention, real time data will not be able to be displayed.

    SARA plans to have SuperSID units available for sale as well as Radio JOVE kits and INPSIRE kits available for purchase.