SAO News (not maintained)

  • 2024: SAO students receive 55 hours of telescope time on the Very Large Baseline Array (VLBA).
    SAO students Terrence Duff and Andrew Murphy will observe the unusual binary pulsar PSR J2108+4516, which contains a Be star. Their student project, a mock telescope proposal for SAO Unit AST80018, became reality thanks to SAO instructor Professor Adam Deller and his PhD student Bailee Wolfe.

  • 2023: Former SAO student, Trevor Barry, wins international amateur astronomy award
    Trevor Barry is the recipient of the Walter H Haas Observer's Award from the Association of Lunar and Planetary Observers. You can read about it in the ABC news.

  • 2023: Swinburne ranks among the top-300 Universities in the World
    Read about it here, and other rankings here.

  • 2022: Trevor Barry shares in the Astronomical Society of Australia's 2022 Berenice and Arthur Page Medal
    The award is given to amateur Australian astronomers who have contributed significantly to astronomy-related science. You can read about it in the ABC news and at Space Australia, and in the Barrier Truth.

  • 2019: Dr Chris Benton (SAO Masters Graduate) wins Beaumont Prize
    Dr Christopher Benton wins the Beaumont Prize for the best article in the Journal of the Auckland Astronomical Society.

  • 2019: SAO student publishes text on Solar System imaging
    John Harrington profiles many of today's leading amateur solar system imagers in a monograph (digital version). The book’s goals are not only to explain the technologies and techniques that these imagers use, but also to describe the passions that motivate them and the contributions they’ve made to solar system science.
    Harrington, J. (2019), Shallow Sky: Imaging our Solar System with the Masters, Kindle edition.

  • 2018: SAO Student has photograph projected onto capital city bridge
    Slawomir (aka Suavi) Lipinski had one of his astronomy images projected onto Brisbane's William Jolly Bridge as a part of "Stargazing Live, 2018". You can read more about it here.

  • 2018: SAO alumni appears in 'The Australian' and publishes in Icarus
    SAO alumni Trevor Barry is the subject of a 24 Jan. 2018 article in the Australian newspaper. Trevor has also just contributed to an Icarus paper (vol 302, p499-513) A planetary-scale disturbance in a long living three vortex coupled system in Saturn's atmosphere

  • 2017: SAO student helps Aotea/Great Barrier Island to be given International Dark Sky Sanctuary Status by IDA
    SAO student Nalayani Brito (N. Davies in the IDA submission) has helped Aotea/Great Barrier Island (New Zealand) to be given International Dark Sky Sanctuary Status by International Dark-Sky Association (IDA). Here is a summary and you can read the IDSS application here. Congratulations to Nalayini and her co-authors. This assures future generations will be able to enjoy a true dark sky.

  • 2016: SAO alumni co-authors Nature Communications paper
    SAO alumni Trevor Barry is again a co-author on a research paper that uses his observations from his Broken Hill Observatory. The article is Nature Communications, 7, 13262 (2016) "An enduring rapidly moving storm as a guide to Saturn's Equatorial jet's complex structure" by Sánchez-Lavega et al. Trevor is a contributor to the The International Outer Planet Watch (IOPW) Team. Well done (again) Trevor!

  • Swinburne graduate becomes President
    Congratulations to recent Master of Science (Astronomy) graduate John Drummond who has become President of the Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand. John has wide experience in observational astronomy, working with NASA and Ohio State University as well as being the President of Gisborne Astronomical Society (NZ). Congratulations John.

  • SAO on Twitter
    SAO commenced a Twitter feed at @onlineastronomy.

  • SAO on Facebook
    SAO now has its own Facebook page at FB: Swinburne Astronomy Online.

  • Top 75 in world for physics
    Swinburne Vice Chancellor Prof. Kristjanson discusses the recent ranking of the university in the top 400 by the Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) and top 75 in the field of physics.
  • SAO student co-authors Science paper
    SAO student John Drummond (Possum Observatory Complex, Gisbourne, New Zealand) has contributed to observations that have discovered an Earth-like planet in a binary star system located 3,000 light-years away. The planet (named OGLE-2013-BLG-0341LBb) orbits one of the stars in the binary system at almost exactly the same distance from which Earth orbits the Sun. The resultant paper by Gould et al. is in Science, vol 345, (6192), p.46-49 and the abstract is given here: https://www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1126/science.1251527?cookieSet=1

    See more via the New Zealand Herald news.

  • AST80006 wins biennial OUA 2014 NOVA award
    The SAO team is delighted to announce that our unit AST80006 Galaxies and their Place in the Universe won a 2014 NOVA Award for Online Learning Excellence sponsored by Open Universities Australia.

    For more details: https://saoastronews.wordpress.com/2014/05/30/sao-wins-nova-award/

  • SAO wins prestigious Citation Award from Australian Government
    SAO has been recognised for teaching excellence and making an outstanding contribution to student learning with a prestigious Citation Award from the Commonwealth Government. The Australian Awards for University Teaching are designed to recognise quality teaching practice and outstanding contributions to student learning. The award specifically recognises Sarah Maddison, Chris Fluke, Matthew Bailes, Virginia Kilborn, Andrew Jameson, Artem Bourov and Glen Mackie from SAO/CAS and Anne Davis, the FICT Manager of Students and Programs.

Old News of Interest

  • SAO wins 2012 Vice-Chancellors Teaching prize
    SAO recently won the SUT Vice-Chancellor’s Teaching Award (Higher Education) in recognition of the Team’s highly successful astronomy online program, which uses multi-pronged practices to influence, motivate and inspire students through the:

    • creation of opportunities for people throughout the world to engage in postgraduate level study in astronomy;
    • design, development and utilisation of outstanding delivery strategies and materials for online education in astronomy;
    • provision of ongoing support for a highly-engaged international network of astronomy students and alumni, thus fostering a sense of global community.

  • New Faculty of Science, Engineering and Technology (FSET)
    As of Jan. 1, 2014 SAO will be part of the new Department of Physics & Astronomy (DPA) and the ongoing Centre for Astrophysics & Supercomputing (CAS) in the new Faculty of Science, Engineering & Technology (FSET).

  • Excellence Awards for 2013
    Excellence Awards, which lists the top SAO students for each SAO program, has been updated for 2013. Congratulations to Rober\ t Miller, Philip Cash and Philip Hall!

  • World University Rankings - SUT goes up into the top 400
    Swinburne University of Technology has been promoted into the world's top 400 universities in the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU) [formerly the Shanghai Jiao Tong index) released today (15 Aug. 2012). Vice-Chancellor Professor Linda Kristjanson said Swinburne was entering the top 400 university rankings for the first time, having been in the top 500 since 2009. Swinburne is now ranked equal tenth among Australian universities and third within Victoria. Swinburne is also ranked in the top 100 universities in the world in Physics.

  • Change of SAO Coordinator
    After 12 years at the helm of SAO Sarah has retired as program coordinator. During this time SAO has grown into a comprehensive program offering 18 units (containing 4 Major Project units). Glen takes over as program coordinator from Sarah, but is happy to note that she will continue to teach into SAO! Thank you Sarah! We wish you well in your future astronomy endeavours.

  • SAO Alumni co-authors Nature paper!
    SAO alumni Trevor Barry is co-author on a Nature research paper (Volume 475, 71. 7 July 2011) "Deep winds beneath Saturn’s upper clouds from a seasonal long-lived planetary-scale storm" by Sánchez-Lavegahas et al. Trevor is a contributor to the The International Outer Planet Watch (IOPW) Team. For details visit here. Well done Trevor!

  • SAO Alumni tracks Saturnian Storm for NASA!
    One of Swinburne Astronomy Online's former students, Trevor Barry, has made the headlines by observing an electrical storm on Saturn from his telescope in Broken Hill. Trevor is one of only four amateur astronomers supplying regular images to the NASA Cassini team. For details visit here and here.

  • Swinburne excels
    In Melbourne: SUT top ranked University for teaching and graduate satisfaction. In Australia: SUT excels in university quality report.

  • SAO student goes into orbit!
    SAO Masters student, Anousheh Ansari visited the International Space Station on 18 September 2006.

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