Astrofest 2004

The annual Astrofest was held at Marsfield on 8 December 2004. With 14 engaging presentations on a wide range of topics, the day was interesting and educational for all. The day was kicked off to a scintillating start by Lucyna Kedziora-Chudczer and Jim Lovell, who both presented interesting new results on interstellar scintillation. This was followed by a brief foray out of the Milky Way by Eric Wilcots, looking at the nature of lopsided galaxies. After morning tea we learned of recent developments in pulsar research at Parkes from George Hobbs, Aris Karasteriou and Joel Weisberg. Joel presented the first ever detection of maser emission stimulated by a pulsar. It was evident when it came to question time that the minds of many people in the audience were racing to consider the exciting possibilities for follow-up studies.

After lunch it was time for extragalactic astronomy again, with discussions of current major survey projects by Ray Norris (Compact Array deep field), Lister Staveley-Smith (ALFA deep field) and Baerbel Koribalski (LVHIS). Wilfred Walsh provided much needed further input to the question of whether or not the fine-structure constant varies.

The final session began with a talk from Maxim Voronkov about new masers in GL2789, followed by Jim Caswell discussing the use of supernova remnant polarisation in determining the structure of the Galactic magnetic field. This was followed by Chiara Ferrai who told us about star formation in merging galaxy clusters. Tara Murphy rounded off the day with a discussion of the AT online archive, processing and visualisation systems. This stimulated a lively discussion of the technical and political aspects of virtual observatory projects. The proceedings were rounded off with cheese and biscuits.

Altogether a stimulating day of presentations. Thanks to everyone involved.

Russell Edwards and Juergen Ott
(Russell.Edwards@csiro.au, Juergen.Ott@csiro.au)