infonews.co.nz
INDEX
BUSINESS

Meet the Team at Stardome

Wednesday 26 July 2017, 12:56PM

By Beckie Wright

121 views

Paul is one of the Zeiss Telescope volunteers at Stardome and on clear nights he gives tours of the night sky using the impressive Edith Winstone Blackwell telescope. Paul has been volunteering at Stardome for nearly 20 years, beginning as a courtyard telescope volunteer and then in 2003 completed the Astronomical Society’s training programme to use and demonstrate the large Edith Winstone Blackwell Zeiss Telescope. As soon as he completed his training, the Zeiss telescope was taken out of service for an upgrade of the dome, so he was not able to start hispublic sessions until 2004 when Mars made its closest approach with Earth.

There were stunning views of Mars through the half metre Zeiss, showing the polar cap and on one particularly fine night, clouds over Olympus Mons. Next year Mars again has a close approach to Earth, not quite as close as 2004, but Paul is looking forward to some stunning views again.

Paul says the best part about being at Stardome is he is in a building where cutting edge research is taking place and meeting the people doing that research on exoplanets and gravitational microlensing events. Being in the Zeiss dome and knowing that researchers had used it to discover new asteroids, and others had been part of an international team to confirm that Pluto had an atmosphere in the 1970s. But the very best part is showing people faint fuzzy objects a long way away when they give out an “ahhh” when they see the actual photons from that object that has taken possibly thousands of years to reach just for them.

He has several favourite astronomical objects, including Mars, and transits of the Galilean moons across Jupiter are great to show the public, then you tell them that is not the moon they can see, but the dark shadow on the cloud tops and this can lead to a better understanding of solar eclipses here on Earth. The rings of Saturn are as open as they will get this year in their fifteen-year cycle, after explaining the cycle to people he then tells them they must come back at least once every year until they have viewed the whole cycle of Saturn.

Paul has written a small book called Naked Eye Wonders which can be borrowed from most libraries and contains more information on many other exciting objects such as Te Mangoroa, the long white shark of the milky way. As I said at the beginning, too many to mention! Finally, Paul’s favourite quote is from Neals Bohrs, “There is no underlying reality.”

For more information on Stardome and their function venues in Auckland, party venues in Auckland and kids’ birthday party venues in Auckland please go to http://www.stardome.org.nz .