Harley Wood Public Lecture
Advanced Engineering Building, St. Lucia Campus @ Wed 10 Jul 2019, 7:00PM - 8:30PM
The Harley Wood Public Lecture will be held on Wednesday 10th July at 7pm in the GHD auditorium (room 200) of the Advanced Engineering Building at the St Lucia campus of the University of Queensland. It will be given by Kirsten Banks from UNSW; details of the talk are below. This event is intended for the general public, but conference attendees are also welcome.
Registration for this event is mandatory, but free and open until the event starts or is full. To register please use this link.
TITLE: 65,000 years - the rich history of Aboriginal Astronomy.
ABSTRACT: Humans have been looking up to the stars for a long time, but for how long? You may think that astronomy started with the Ancient Greeks with the formulation of the modern constellations we see in the sky today, but what if I told you that astronomy has been practiced in Australia for the last 65,000 years? Aboriginal Australians have been surveying and using the stars for tens of thousands of years. The utility of the stars is endless, find out how Aboriginal Australians have used and still use the stars with this engaging and passionate presentation.
BIOGRAPHY: Kirsten Banks is a proud Wiradjuri woman with an undeniable passion for space and astronomy. She dreams of sharing her passion with the Universe and strives to become a famous Science Communicator so she can do just that. From a young age, Kirsten was fascinated by the skies. She first dreamed of becoming a meteorologist in Primary School before graduating from the clouds to the stars in High School after watching the Hubble documentary. Despite her love of astrophysics and the night sky, she is surprisingly afraid of the dark! Kirsten has studied Physics at UNSW for the past 4 years and is now completing an Honours program there, studying the evolution of the biggest and brightest galaxies in the local Universe and strives to continue this research during a PhD program in the coming years.