Department of Physics & Astronomy and Mt John University Observatory - William Tobin Astronomy at the University of Canterbury Department of Physics & Astronomy and at the Mt John University Observatory Observatory Director: Dr M.D. Albrow Annual Report 2004 Report compiled by Dr William Tobin Report for the period 2004 January 1 to December 31 Staff with Dr Herve´ Beust on the interpretation of Mt John spectroscopy of the variable Ca II absorptions in the star Dr Michael Albrow continued as Mt John director β Pictoris. He participated in LAOG’s public-outreach until the end of the year when his term expired. Alan programme for the transit of Venus on June 8. He also Gilmore continued as Mt John superintendent with Pam contributed to the RSNZ celebrations and web site com- Kilmartin, Stephen Barlow and Nigel Frost as other per- memorating this event. During the year he gave talks manent staff at the Observatory. or seminars in Grenoble; at the Universite´ de Luxem- Professor John Hearnshaw remained on study leave bourg; at the Universite´ Tous Ages, Vannes; at the Musee´ until the end of July. In March he visited the National National de Techniques, Paris; and at the Royal Astro- University of Mongolia on behalf of the International As- nomical Society, London. tronomical Union (IAU) Commission 46 Programme Dr Karen Pollard continued as a senior lecturer. Group for the World-wide Development of Astronomy, In October Dr Jovan Skuljan left his fixed-term lec- which he chairs. He gave lectures and also visited Khurel tureship for an appointment at the Defence Technology Togoot Observatory near Ulaanbataar. The rest of his Agency in Devonport. study leave was spent at Lund Observatory where he gave seminars and continued work on a book on the theory Students and history of astronomical spectrographs. He gave sem- In December, Stuart Barnes submitteed his Ph.D. the- inars at Uppsala and Stockholm Universities and visited sis on the design and performance of high-resolution spec- Oslo University for discussions with IAU General Secre- trographs (supervisor Hearnshaw). He continued work- tary Prof. O. Engvold. During the year Hearnshaw served ing on details of the optical design of the High Resolution on various IAU Commission 46 committees, the Royal Spectrograph for SALT following successful Preliminary Society of New Zealand’s (RSNZ’s) Committee on As- Design Review in September (see below). tronomical Sciences (which he chairs), and organising Ph.D. student Malcolm Cropp completed his CCD committees connected with the IAU Regional Meeting in time-sequence photometry of three open star clusters us- Bali in 2005 and the IAU General Assembly in Prague ing the McLellan Telescope (supervisors Albrow and in 2006. He was Vice-President of IAU Division IX. He Tobin). The observations are now being reduced using was also invited to join the New Zealand Square Kilome- image subtraction methods. tre Array Committee which aims to facilitate collabora- Siramas Komonjinda commenced her Ph.D. on radial tion between Australia and New Zealand as part of the velocities in close binary stars under Hearnshaw’s super- Australian bid to host this multinational radiotelescope. vision. Associate Professor Peter Cottrell was reappointed by Veronica Miller began her Ph.D. project of search- the University as its Director on the Southern African ing for transiting extrasolar planets in the Galactic bulge Large Telescope (SALT) Foundation Pty Ltd Board. He (supervisor Albrow). She showed that pilot data collected attended meetings of the Board in Cape Town in May and in 2002 with the ESO 2.2-m telescope at La Silla is of November. He continued as Principal Investigator (PI) sufficient precision to detect transits. She has also im- for the High Resolution Spectrograph which the Univer- plemented a transit search method using a matched filter sity of Canterbury expects to build as part of its partici- convolution combined with a generic algorithm. pation in SALT (see later). Judy Mohr continued development of an active op- Dr William Tobin spent three months from mid-April tics system for the McLellan Telescope under the super- on study leave at the Laboratoire d’Astrophysique de vision of Cottrell, and Drs Richard Lane & Rachel John- l’Observatoire de Grenoble (LAOG), France, working son (both of ARANZ Ltd.). As part of this Ph.D. work, Page 1 Department of Physics & Astronomy and Mt John University Observatory - William Tobin an instument was constructed to measure the turbulence undertook computational work with a range of computer above Mt John using the SCIDAR technique (SCIntilla- codes for data manipulation, spectral data analysis, and tion Detection And Ranging). Preliminary results indi- spectrum synthesis for comparison with observational cate a high-altitude turbulent layer approximately 10 km spectra. above the dome with significantly stronger turbulence at Under Cottrell’s supervision, summer project student or near the dome. Early in the year an initial adaptive op- Clare Worley investigated the neodynium adbundance in tics system was tested using tip-tilt compensation. This Arcturus using Sneden’s MOOG spectrum-systhesis soft- system is far from ready for use in astronomical research, ware and revised transition probabilities from the Lawler but reveals the promise of tip-tilt compensation for the group. She derived the Nd II abundance with about half turbulence suffered at Mt John. In November she pre- the previous uncertainty. sented her results at the ‘Adaptive optics in Australia/NZ’ Hearnshaw was appointed external supervisor for workshop at the University of Sydney, accompanied by Fabiola Diaz, an M.Sc. student at the Universidad de Los Cottrell. In the same month she also presented her results Andes (Venezuela) who is working on spectra of an AGB at the Image and Vision Computing New Zealand confer- star which were obtained at Mt John. ence held in Akaroa. An anonymous donor has kindly provided trial fund- Extramural student Andrew Rakich continued his doc- ing for a scholarship for a young, first-year student. For toral work on four-mirror anastigmats (supervisors Hearn- 2004, this Aurora Scholarship was awarded to Michele shaw, Tobin, Norman Rumsey of Lower Hutt, and Dr Bannister from Waitara High School, Taranaki. Cottrell Craig Smith of EOS, Queanbeyan, New South Wales). acted as her mentor. At year’s end, and as part of this He won the Michael Kidger Memorial Scholarship in Op- award, she visited the Keck Telescopes in Hawaii; the Jet tical Design (administered by the SPIE) which was pre- Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena; the Very Large Ar- sented to him at the SPIE-Europe International Sympo- ray in New Mexico; and the Cerro Tololo Inter-American sium on Astronomical Telescopes in Glasgow in June. Observatory, Gemini South and the European Southern In November, David Ramm (supervisor Hearnshaw) Observatory’s La Silla site in Chile. She also attended submitted his Ph.D. thesis on precise radial velocities of the American Astronomical Society conference in San selected binary stars. Diego. Duncan Wright (supervisors Pollard and Cottrell) be- gan his Ph.D. on mode identification in QW Puppis, which Visitors is a γ-Doradus variable (a multiperiodic, gravity-mode Dr Chen Li (Shanghai Astronomical Observatory) nonradial pulsator). Wright is observing QW Pup with was hosted by the astronomy group for two months at the HERCULES spectrograph; contemporaneous photom- the beginning of the year. etry is being obtained. Since the periods are close to one In February Professor Chulhee Kim from Chonbuk day, a multisite campaign is planned for 2005. National University used the 0.6-m Optical Craftsmen Liz Wylie continued her Ph.D. work on heavy ele- telescope and the AAVSO CCD to obtain photometry of ment abundances in asymptotic giant branch (AGB) stars the SX Phoenicis star KZ Hydrae. (supervisor Cottrell), observing with the 3.9-m Anglo- In July Prof. Mike Bessell (Australian National Uni- Australian Telescope at Siding Spring and the McLel- versity) visited the group in connection with a report for lan Telescope. A significant milestone was an extensive the Ministry of Research, Science & Technology on New s-element abundance analysis of four giant stars in the Zealand’s National Observatory (Carter Observatory). Hyades open cluster. She attended the TRIUMF Summer The group welcomed Prof. Chris Sneden (University Workshop and presented a poster at the NIC VIII con- of Texas) as an Erskine Visiting Fellow between Septem- ference, both in Vancouver. She and Cottrell made oral ber and December. He taught the spectroscopy part of the presentations at the 7th Torino Workshop on AGB stars, 3rd-year observational methods course and gave numer- which despite its name was held at the University of Cam- ous talks in the Department. bridge. Other astronomical visitors to the group or depart- Under Albrow’s supervision, stage 4 student Mita Go- ment were: Professors Klaas de Boer (Universitat¨ Stern- pal studied the spatial distribution of blue stragglers in warte, Bonn), Andy Fabian (University of Cambridge), the globular cluster NGC 6637 using Hubble Space Tele- Eberhard Gruen¨ (Max-Planck Institut fur¨ Kernphysik), scope WFPC2 images. An overabundance of blue strag- Hugo Levato (Complejo Astronomico´ El Leoncito, Ar- glers with respect to main sequence stars was found in gentina) and Brian Warner (University of Cape Town); the core of the cluster, consistent with the hypothesis that and Drs Kent Cullers (SETI Institute), Graham Hill (Uni- blue stragglers are more massive than their below-turnoff versity of Auckland), Manfred Simon (Universitat¨ Siegen) neighbours. and Ewan Stewart (Korea Advanced Institute for Science Stage 4 student Katja Taute (supervisor Cottrell) un- & Technology). Prof. Yasushi Muraki (Nagoya Univer- dertook an analysis of stellar s-process abundances. She sity) and numerous other Japanese astronomers visited Page 2 Department of Physics & Astronomy and Mt John University Observatory - William Tobin Christchurch and Mt John in connection with the MOA project (see below).