From: <pge_at_email.protected>
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 13:54:31 +0900 (JST)

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 ASIA PACIFIC TELESCOPE Newsletter no. 3 2005-nov-04

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IAA AWARD TO VSOP TEAM

The International Academy of Astronautics (IAA) awarded its Laurels
for Team Achievement Award for 2005 to the VLBI (Very Long Baseline
Interferometry) Space Observatory Programme (VSOP) Team. The award was
presented at the 56th International Astronautical Congress in Fukuoka,
Japan, on October 16th. The award is a tribute to the efforts of entire
VSOP team, including many colleagues at APT observatories, who made it
possible to realise a radio telescope bigger than the earth.

FIRST FRINGES TO NEW ZEALAND

Efforts to build a radio astronomy capability in New Zealand took a
big step forward with the first successful VLBI experiment between
New Zealand and Australia. The 1.6 GHz observation of PKS 1921-293
took place in late July, between a 6 m telescope in New Zealand and
the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA), with the data being
correlated on the Swinburne University of Technology's supercomputer.
These VLBI "first friNZes" follow 6 months of intense development and
testing of the systems with the support of a number of institutions,
led by the Auckland University of Technology, the Swinburne University
of Technology, and the CSIRO Australia Telescope National Facility.

As a historical footnote, these are the first fringes *to* New Zealand,
but not the first fringes *in* New Zealand; fringes were observed in
1948 with the sea interferometer of John Bolton and colleagues. The
New Zealand observations were combined with those from Dover Heights
in Sydney to provide accurate radio positions which, in turn were used
to establish the first optical identifications of radio sources
Taurus A, Virgo A and Centaurus A.

UPCOMING CONFERENCES

Registration for "Molonglo 1965--2005: A symposium celebrating 40
years of science at Molonglo" closes on Friday, November 4th.
The one-day symposium is being held at the University of Sydney
on November 17th, and is followed by a BBQ on site at Molonglo
on the 18th (http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/astrop/molonglo40).

November 7th is the deadline for abstracts for the International
Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) meeting "Astronomical
Telescopes and Instrumentation 2006", to be held from May 24th to
31st, 2006, in Orlando, Florida, USA. The call for papers is at
http://spie.org/conferences/calls/06/as/

November 8th is the deadline for submission of abstracts for the
4th General Meeting of IVS (International VLBI Service for Geodesy
and Astrometry), to held in Conception, Chile from January 9-13, 2006.
The keynote of the meeting is "Next Generation VLBI2010" and all
speakers will be asked to address the keynote in their presentations.
The meeting website is http://ivscc.gsfc.nasa.gov/meeting/gm2006/

The Grote Reber Memorial Conference, "New Techniques and Results in
Low Frequency Radio Astronomy" will be held in Hobart, Australia,
from December 6-10, 2005 (http://www.phys.utas.edu.au/reber/).
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APT website : http://www.vsop.isas.jaxa.jp/apt/
APT News editor : Phil Edwards (pge_at_vsop.<!--nospam-->isas.jaxa.jp)
Contributions by : S. Tingay
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Received on 2005-11-04 15:55:05