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Come and Join us at the Armagh Planetarium
The 2006 Annual General Meeting of the Association for Astronomy Education, which is held jointly with the British Association of Planetaria will be held in May at Armagh Planetarium. This meeting will also mark the 25th anniversary of the founding of the Association for Astronomy Education. The planetarium is situated in Armagh City, southwest of Belfast in Northern Ireland. The conference will begin on the afternoon of Friday May 19th and the main business will be on Saturday 20th. Alternative programmes have been arranged for Sunday: a visit to the Armagh Observatory; or a tour around the ancient Newgrange site in the Boyne Valley. Intending delegates, who must be members of AAE or BAP, should register early, especially if you would like to present a talk or demonstration. If you would like to make a presentation on Saturday please forward us details of the title, a brief outline and your equipment needs before May 5th. The presentations will be 10 minutes long, with 5 minutes for questions and changeover time. Details are needed by May 5th at the latest . To book your place, you should send full details to Eamon Rafferty at Armagh Planetarium (contact details below). The delegate fee for the joint AGM is £10 before April 30th, from then until May 5th a late fee of £20 is available. The deadline for all payments is May 5th. Cheques, postal orders and credit card payments can all be processed by Eamon. Please note that to attend the conference, you must be a member of the BAP. Armagh is a 50-minute drive from Belfast International airport (Easyjet) and from Belfast City Airport (BMI). It is about 75 minutes from Dublin Airport (Ryanair). If you are travelling by ferry to Belfast, the travel time to Armagh is also about 50 minutes. To get to Armagh follow the M1 south and stay on the Motorway to the M12 at junction 11, which is signposted to Craigavon, Portadown and Armagh. You could Google the AA route finder for the detailed instructions. The route is well signed. Delegates are responsible for their own accommodation arrangements. Details of hotels and guesthouses in the Armagh area, as well as appropriate websites are available from the organisers. An afternoon session will be included to cater for portable dome demonstrations, and will allow delegates to meet each other. Murray Barber has indicated that he would like to show the latest LTI star field projector, and we have time for other portable operators to offer presentations or demonstrations on Friday afternoon. Armagh’s portable dome (a French-made RSA model) will be available to use for demos. On the first evening of the conference we have been lucky to obtain Dr Mike McKay as a guest speaker. The title of his talk is “Are we the Martians?” He has been to Armagh before and is a lucid and entertaining speaker. He is the Head of the Advanced MissConcepts and Technologies Office and former Flight Operations Director of the European Space Agency. He has had over twenty-five years experience with the European Space Agency, from probing the far-flung corners of our universe with the EXOSAT observatory, to monitoring the fragile environment of our own planet with Europe’s ERS Earth Observation missions. The Saturday proceedings will open at 08:30. The first sessions at 09:30 will be in parallel for the business meetings of the BAP and AAE. Time is allocated from 11:30 to see the new Digistar 3 installation at Armagh, and delegate presentations will take place in the afternoon, commencing 13:30. Throughout the event there will be opportunity for delegates to browse and network. If you have any resources or information that you wish to display please send us details of your requirements (space needed, tables etc.) using the contact information provided at the end of this document. On Sunday, it has been arranged for delegates either to travel by bus to see the ancient sites at Newgrange which mark the winter solstice, or have a guided tour of the Armagh Observatory Buildings, founded in 1790 by Archbishop Robinson. The planetarium was the brainchild of Observatory Director Dr Eric Lindsay and opened in 1968, many innovative developments in Planetarium shows and equipment design were pioneered at Armagh. Contact: Eamon Rafferty, Finance Officer
eamon@armaghplanet.com Tel: 028 3751 2932 As usual, there will be a nominal charge to cover daytime refreshments and administration. Please help us coordinate this unique event by letting us
know as soon as possible your plans to attend / give a
presentation. It would be most helpful if you could give your email address. |
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