About NACAA XXVII (Sydney 2016)

Sydney skyline

The Sutherland Astronomical Society hosted the 27th NACAA over the Easter 2016 weekend, celebrating 50 Years of NACAA. It was an outstanding success, with over 120 people attending and more than 60 presentations and posters covering the diverse range of amateur astronomy in Australia and beyond.

Venue

The venue for most of NACAA XXVII was the New Law School Building Annex at the University of Sydney — a state-of-the-art venue with several lecture theatres and multiple breakout rooms for workshops and other meetings. The venue was wheelchair accessible, with underground car parking at $6/day over the Easter weekend. NACAA was grateful for the support of the Sydney Institute for Astronomy in obtaining this venue at a discounted rate.

Activities

  • Professor Joss Bland-Hawthorne’s keynote address on Fireworks at the heart of the Galaxy
  • Padma Yanamandra-Fisher talking about the role of Amateur Astronomers in Planetary Science
  • An entertaining after-dinner talk by Professor Fred Watson on Trollops, Tyrants and Telescopes – Tales from Astronomy’s Underbelly
  • The Perdrix Address, delivered by Brett McMillan
  • The 10th Trans-Tasman Symposium on Occultations, broadcast to the world
  • The 4th Variable Star South Symposium
  • Workshops on Pro-Am Collaborative Astronomy (PACA) and PixInsight image processing software
  • A tour of the historic Sydney Observatory

The 2016 Page Medal was presented at the convention dinner to Roy Axelsen for his work on photometry of variable stars. The Astral Award for best presentation went to Donna Burton who spoke on Dating Active Young Stars.

NACAA is very grateful for the generous support of our sponsors: Sydney Institute for Astronomy (venue hire discount), Australian Sky & Telescope (event promotion), Bintel (attendee satchels), Quasar Publishing (programme booklet), and Prominence Training (web and comms infrastructure).

Accommodation & Transport

See the Programme page for the full schedule of sessions.