Dean Davidson’s Skywatch portable planetarium was thrilling children at Leigh Creek Area School and Marree Area School this week, followed by community astronomy night viewings. The famously dark skies of the Flinders Ranges availed excellent views of the Milky Way and the Dark Emu. Saturn and Jupiter were crowd-pleasers, as always.
Once you have registered your free Birdata account, read the instructions or watch the video. Download the Birdata app and take your smartphone or tablet outside with you and just record all the birds you seen in your space in 20 mins.
The Great Red Spot of Jupiter is appearing to unravel. Where once the great storm could encompass three earths, it is now diminishing to the size of one earth. The Great Red Spot is shedding a succession of jet streams as long as 10,000km long, as captured by an amateur astronomer.
Jupiter is currently rising in the constellation Ophiuchus, easy to find by association with nearby Scorpius.
This nifty little calculator will tell you what time the Great Red Spot transits into visibility at your latitude / longtitude.
April Astronomy night under the brilliant Flinders Ranges skies showcased a line up including the new moon, the Orion Nebula, some fabulous clusters, the Tarantula Nebula, globular cluster 47 Tucana, and a look at different types of star such as Betelgeuse and Sirius.
Millions of birds were spotted in around 70,000 bird counts this year in the Aussie Backyard Bird Count during National Bird Week. To help out backyard ornithologists, a useful Bird Finder page is hosted on the Birds in Backyards site.
Step 1. Grind up mineral-rich rocks found in the area, including Hematite, Galena and earthy Malachite and Azurite.
Step 2. Smelting. To smelt iron oxide, charcoal was used to covert the oxygen into carbon dioxide, leaving iron. To smelt galena, lead sulphide, heat alone released the sulphur, leaving lead (seen below).
After many months in the making, the new geological exhibit for the Leigh Creek Library is now on display.
The collection contains 99 rock and mineral specimens, primarily from the Flinders Ranges, Gammon Ranges and Strzelecki Track area, along with a handful of interesting samples from Broken Hill and WA.
A full catalogue of the collection is available for download below. The display can be viewed from 8:30 – 4:30 on weekdays, Friday evenings and Saturday mornings (closed until 1pm on weekdays during school holidays).
Download catalogue: LC.library.geology.catalogue
The Astronomical Society of South Australia (ASSA) will be hosting astronomy camps for members in May and August under the brilliant Flinders Ranges night sky. If you are a budding astronomer in the Flinders, check out the ASSA website for membership details.
The William Light Foundation, a not for profit organisation based in the Flinders Ranges, have nominated 33 native species (Birds and Flora) for listing under any of the categories specified in the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act).
The species nominated for protection are listed by the State Classifications of South Australia as Critically Endangered, Endangered, Rare or Vulnerable (South Australian National Parks and Wildlife Act 1972) but are as yet not listed under any of the categories of the EPBC Act.
They include 16 species of plant and the following 19 species of threatened birds:
Continue reading “19 Threatened Flinders Ranges Bird Species Nominated for Federal Protection”
On April 3-4th, 2018, 12 experienced birders with 5 spotting scopes, the usual binoculars and cameras with telephoto lens participated in a bird survey in waterways in the Copley Area.
69 species were recorded in two days.
Notes to accompany the Bird Record Forms attached:
Birds SA Reports
Copley – Leigh Creek Retention Dam 3 April 2018
Copley – Leigh Creek Retention Dam 4 April 2018
Copley – Leigh Creek Aroona Dam 4 April 2018
Copley – Leigh Creek Overflow 4 April 2018
