Free Range Films @ Warrambeen Film Festival

Start Date: Saturday 3rd of March 2012 - 12:00 pm
End Date: Saturday 3rd of March 2012 - 06:00 pm
Venue: Warrambeen Film Festival
Address: 'Warrambeen’, Rokewood/Shelford Rd, Shelford

Free Range Films @ Warrambeen Film Festival was a celebration of all things scientific with these extraordinary films made for the big screen. We entertained families with our hand-picked selection of short Scinema films, including winning entries from 2010 and 2011. Audiences enjoyed a stunning feature length documentary, In the Shadow of the Moon, introduced by CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory scientist John Sarkissian.

Listen to the podcast: Introduction of the movie ‘In the Shadow of the Moon’ by John Sarkissian

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Who is John Sarkissian

John Sarkissian is an Operations Scientist at the CSIRO Parkes Radio Observatory. His main responsibilities are the operation and systems development at the radio telescope, and the support of visiting astronomers with their observations. In addition, he is involved in pulsar research – an exciting field of radio astronomy.

John is a member of the Parkes Pulsar Timing Array (PPTA) team which is endeavouring to use precision pulsar timing to make the first direct detection of gravitational waves. He is also a member of the small, informal team searching for the missing Apollo 11 slow-scan TV tapes. From 1998-1999, John acted as a technical advisor for the feature film, “The DISH”. He came to Parkes in 1996 to support the Galileo Mission to Jupiter. He managed the Galileo spacecraft tracking operations at the observatory and performed 1/3 of the daily tracking duties.

John has received NASA Group Achievement Awards for his work on “The Parkes Radio Telescope X-band Upgrade Task Team” in 2004 and the “Huygens Probe Earth Detection Team” in 2005.

John has also received official NASA commendations for his Galileo support in 1997 and for the search for the missing Apollo 11 SSTV tapes in 2010.