Alumni Stories

We are privileged at The Gap State High School to have such a wonderful community of businesses, people and families. 

Peter Anderson, a Gap resident for over 50 years, and his three children, attended The Gap High School. Now he and his wife Evon, have a grand-daughter and grandson attending.  

Both Peter and Evon are experienced publishers and lectures with Evon’s interests in History and Peter’s lifelong interest has been astronomy where he has had an observatory for over 40 years.  Peter is a highly experienced astronomer who built and maintains the Taylor Range Observatory, one of the few private observatories around the world that undertakes meaningful scientific research.  Though he has had an active interest in practical amateur astronomy for many years, since 1975, he has been contributing timings of lunar occultations of stars - over 10,500 to date, and to a lesser degree, asteroidal occultations. As well as written observational contributions and assessment of amateur equipment, he has an enduring interest in the astronomical history of the south-east Queensland area.  

A number of articles published by Peter are available via: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Peter-Anderson-54

You may already be aware of a forthcoming eclipse and made appropriate plans. If not, Peter has been kind enough to draw our attention to it in this power point, which he has created and shared with our Science Faculty and subsequently our students, and is attached for you to view and share with your family. 

This PowerPoint can serve as a practical demonstration of the upcoming eclipse which happens to be occurring very conveniently in the mid evening.  In preparing this power point, Peter drew from his own images from the last such eclipse that occurred in the early morning hours of 8th September last year.  The PowerPoint then ends with a demonstration of the effects of parallax that Peter happened across serendipitously when submitting his observations of last September’s eclipse, and he also gained permission to use the other two images.

We would like to thank Peter very much for sharing his incredible knowledge and experience with the school community.  So, please keep an eye out for the next Total Lunar Eclipse in the evening of the 3rd of March!