Peter Francis Williams is an amateur astronomer

Amateur astronomy

Amateur astronomy, also called backyard astronomy and stargazing, is a hobby whose participants enjoy watching the night sky , and the plethora of objects found in it, mainly with portable telescopes and binoculars...

 from New South Wales

New South Wales

New South Wales is a state of :Australia, located in the east of the country. It is bordered by Queensland, Victoria and South Australia to the north, south and west respectively. To the east, the state is bordered by the Tasman Sea, which forms part of the Pacific Ocean. New South Wales...

, Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. He specializes in early detection of declines in R Coronae Borealis

R Coronae Borealis

R Coronae Borealis is a yellow supergiant star, and is the prototype of the RCB class of variable stars, which fade by several magnitudes at irregular intervals...

-type stars and the long-term monitoring of several southern Mira variables and eclipsing

Eclipse

An eclipse is an astronomical event that occurs when an astronomical object is temporarily obscured, either by passing into the shadow of another body or by having another body pass between it and the viewer...

 binary stars. He was the first person who detected the naked-eye

Naked eye

The naked eye is a figure of speech referring to human visual perception unaided by a magnifying or light-collecting optical device, such as a telescope or microscope. Vision corrected to normal acuity using corrective lenses is considered "naked"...

 Nova

Nova

A nova is a cataclysmic nuclear explosion in a star caused by the accretion of hydrogen on to the surface of a white dwarf star, which ignites and starts nuclear fusion in a runaway manner...

 Velorum 1999 and seven years later he discovered the Nova Ophiuchi 2006. Both discoveries brought him the Nova Award of the American Association of Variable Star Observers

American Association of Variable Star Observers

Since its founding in 1911, the American Association of Variable Star Observers has coordinated, collected, evaluated, analyzed, published, and archived variable star observations made largely by amateur astronomers and makes the records available to professional astronomers, researchers, and...

. In 2007 he received the Amateur Achievement Award of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific

Astronomical Society of the Pacific

The Astronomical Society of the Pacific is a scientific and educational organization, founded in San Francisco on February 7, 1889. Its name derives from its origins on the Pacific Coast, but today it has members all over the country and the world...

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