Published Date:
24 February 2009
BALLYMENA men are once again among the front runners, this time in a race for space.
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The Northern Ireland Amateur Astronomy Society will be holding their next meeting on Monday, March 2 and the guest speaker will be Dr. R.T. James McAteer from Ballymena.
Indeed one of the founding members of the astronomy club is Robert Dick of Dicks Chemist on Bridge Street. In 2006, the Ballymena Times reported on Dr McAteer's role in one of the most important scientific breakthroughs in recent years in space exploration.
From the Times article:
James McAteer is part of a NASA team which is launching a new spacecraft STEREO, which will provide 3D images of the Sun and help us to understand how our nearest star effects our life on earth.Ahead of the launch today (Wednesday) the former Diamond Primary School and Ballymena Academy pupil told the Times how he came to forge a career which is quite literally out of this world!
"After school I went to Queen's University Belfast from 1996-2000 for a masters and then from 2000-2003 for a PhD in astrophysics.
I had spent some time during my PhD working at NASA in Washington DC and made some contacts with whom I wrote a successful grant program to come and work here in Spring 2004 for two years.
"After this I started another post working for the STEREO team preparing for this mission launch and getting ready to exploit the data.
"I'm based at NASA Goddard Space FLight Centre which is in Greenbelt, Maryland, just outside Washington DC. Most of our spacecraft which we use to look at the Sun are programmed from here and all the data is archived here.
"My job consists of three main strands. First of all, and most importantly, doing science with the data. I have a number of my own projects and international collaborations which are constantly ongoing. This involves looking at images of the sun and trying to explain what we see in terms of existing theories."My second task is monitoring the Sun in realtime, looking at the latest images as they come from the spacecraft and predicting when solar storms will be earth-directed.
"The third part is getting ready for the new data from STEREO, so scientists can access and use the data as quickly as possible after the launch.
"When I get the data it is in the form of images, similar to images from a digital camera but by taking images through different filters we can look at different layers of the Sun, a bit like peeling back an onion."
Looking forward to the forthcoming meeting, Philip Matchett from the Club, who is of course a Ballymena man, said: "We have quite a lot of members in the Ballymena area; in fact Robert Dick of Dicks Chemist on Bridge Street is one of the founding members. The club holds it's meetings in Ballyclare High School and details on this event and location can be found on our website www.niaas.co.uk "
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Last Updated:
24 February 2009 11:00 AM
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Source:
n/a
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Location:
Ballymena
