The 2024 RASNZ (Royal Astronomical Society of New Zealand) Conference and Annual General Meeting were hosted by the Nelson Astronomical Society (NAS). The conference took place in Nelson from May 24th to May 26th, 2024.

Key highlights included various presentations and workshops, such as a session on countering long-duration spaceflight bone-loss by Chris Benton and an analysis of chemically peculiar stars by Quin Aicken Davies, a UC Postgrad. Attendees also had the opportunity to present their latest research findings and ideas through poster presentations. Key elements of New Zealand's astronomical history were reviewed in a special workshop.

The conference also featured a unique opportunity for students with a passion for astronomy (SWAPA) to attend and solidify their interest in the field.

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The 2024 RASNZ Conference featured an impressive lineup of keynote speakers, each contributing unique insights and expertise to the field of astronomy and space science. Here's a brief overview of the keynote speakers:

1. ​Geraint Lewis, Professor of Astrophysics at the Sydney Institute for Astronomy, part of the University of Sydney's School of Physics. Exploding stars, supermassive black holes and time in the early universe
   Einstein’s universe, underwritten by his general theory of relativity, is a weird place. One key prediction from his mathematics is that we should see the distant universe run in slow motion, with time running slower the further back we look. But the hunt for this cosmic time dilation in some of the brightest objects, supermassive black holes known as quasars has failed to find this effect – until now!
   In this talk he presented their latest work on the cosmological time dilation of quasars, revealing what we found and what it means. As well as confirming that we live in an expanding universe, these findings hammer nails into the coffins of more outlandish cosmological ideas.

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2. Fellows Talk: Professor Richard Easther, Department of Physics, University of Auckland. Richard was elected as a Fellow of RASNZ at the 2023 AGM in Auckland.When Richard was a high school student in Hamilton in the early 1980s, he built a wooden mount for his telescope on his parent’s lawn outside Hamilton. These days he works on developing connections between New Zealand and global science collaborations. It might look like there is a straight line between these two things but it has been a curved and complex path.Richard moved to Christchurch to study astronomy as an undergraduate, and eventually left Canterbury with a PhD in physics in 1994. From there he went to research positions in Japan and the United States, before spending eight years on the faculty at Yale University. He moved home with his family at the end of 2011, to take up a professorship in physics at the University of Auckland.As a scientist, Richard works to understand how the universe evolves from the Big Bang through to the present day. To do this, he uses ideas in theoretical physics, computer simulations and observations of the sky to develop new approaches to testing theories of the very early universe.He suspects his five-year-old self would be pretty happy to learn how things have turned out.

These speakers brought a wealth of knowledge and experience from academia, research institutions, and industry, providing engaging and informative presentations on a wide range of topics related to astronomy and space science. Their contributions undoubtedly added significant value to the conference, offering attendees an exciting and enlightening experience.