Activities and displays by location at the Space Centre. Events run continuously. The RASC program is
free of charge. Events hosted by the Space Centre are with admission.

Main level (no admission required)

Main Level (with admission to Space Centre)

Lower level (no admission required)

Upper level (in the Hubble Gallery) (no admission required)

• Solar system display

Outside near GMS Observatory (no admission required)

• Solar telescopes (weather permitting)

EVENING PROGRAM AT SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY, BURNABY CAMPUS
FREE AND SUITABLE FOR KIDS OF ALL AGES!
Campus map with parking and event locations

8PM (Room C9001, south concourse of the Academic Quadrangle):

• John Nemy presents “Island In The Stars”, a tour of the night sky from the Milky Way to the edge of the universe, and “The Stargazers”, a visual and musical presentation of the best of amateur astronomy! Prepare to be entertained & inspired!

9PM (Lawn just east of the Academic Quadrangle):

• Star party, weather permitting!

We are asking $50 each, or best offer, with the buyer responsible for pickup.

There are 4 identical units. The dimensions of each unit are 86 inches high x 48 inches wide x 13 inches depth with a shelf that extends 9 inches. There are glass doors on top and closed wooden doors on the bottom, all doors have locks. The shelving is in excellent condition, they are very clean and solid and would be ideal for an office setting.

The cabinets are shown in the pictures below.

Contact Scott McGilllivary at publicrelations.rascvancouver@gmail.com if you are interested.

The cabinets must be moved out of the GMSO on or before April 28th.

It is a Intes 6″ f/6 Maksutov/Newtonian telescope exact model is the MN-61.

I took this to the observing session at the forest in Maple Ridge when RASC had a star party there and the people that looked through it comments to could see more with this scope than a 5″ APO nearby made by Takahashi

Visually, this scope is superb. In the Trapezium, you can easily see the a to f stars with a 41mm Panoptic. With a 5mm Nagler, g and h are visible with steady, dark skies. It holds collimation extremely well as I have only needed to adjust this once. It also splits a number of very close multiples including Sirius A-B in December of 2011.

Photographically, it can reach focus with my 7D with a 2X barlow but will need a shorter focuser in native mode.

The paint has a few scrapes (built in 1993 or) but the optics are clear save dust inside which will be cleaned before final sale.

It comes with a custom wooden case built by myself. It is of beech and maple, all brass handles, hinges, latches, facing and ring washers securing the top. This case won an award at Mt Kobau under “Best Astronomical Equipment”

The price is $1200 delivered in Vancouver. This includes a set of felt-lined ring clamps. They are drilled for a plate mount (my mount doesn’t need a dovetail). If you are a CURRENT RASC memeber, I will give you $100 off this price.

I will bring it to the table set up by Vancouver Telescope in late April for Astronomy Day.

John H Neufeld

604 921 6283

604 815 6802

- Brent

These pictures were taken from inside my office through a double-paned window. All, except the first two were taken through breaks in the clouds. The second picture shows the incoming clouds. The last picture was obtained just before the clouds covered everything for the remainder of the eclipse. The 5th and the 7th (last) pictures show the star iota Tauri below the Moon. The detailed description of the pictures can be seen here:

http://www.penmachinedad.blogspot.com/2011/12/december-2011-lunar-eclipse.html

If you are reading a hardcopy of this edition of NOVA, then you quite likely picked it up
at our first public lecture of the year, which is being held at the UBC Hennings Physics
Building. We will be hosting Prof. Ray Jayawardhana, Professor and Canada Research
Council Chair of the University of Toronto, for our January 12 lecture. Prof. Jayawardhana’s
presentation is entitled Rocks, Ice and Penguins: Searching for Meteorites in Antarctica. Be
sure to look elsewhere in this edition of NOVA for a backgrounder on our speaker, who has
been hailed by Wired Magazine as “a rock star” of astronomy!

This lecture promises to be just the start of another year of presentations by A-list
speakers, on a diverse range of topics! Our top-flight speaker program is one of the great
strengths of RASC Vancouver’s programming, but is just one of our many services that
benefit our members, and which contribute to the community at large.

If you are a member of RASC Vancouver, then you probably already know the broad
outlines of the other priorities that council has set for our 2012 programming, which we
have carefully chosen in order to effectively concentrate our efforts in four key types of
activity: Public outreach; Observing Programs; Membership Building; and Web Presence.
Council has set specific goals within each of these four areas, whilst we keep on the lookout
for other opportunities that may arise during the course of the year.

For outreach, we intend to invest in our partnerships with the SFU Observatory (coming
soon to a Burnaby campus near you!) and the BCIT Planetarium, including using these
venues to reintroduce our very successful “What’s Up?” program for newcomers to
astronomy (especially young ones!). The “What’s Up?” program was established last year
as an “add-on” to our monthly lecture series, but will instead be offered this year a series of
special events, independent of our speaker program, so as to better serve a young audience.

To reinvigorate our observing program, we will establish a regular series of observing
nights, using Twitter to link participants to these events in real time (more on Twitter
below), along with a series of clinics on telescope use, astrophotography, and other areas
of interest (looking to our members for direction here). We will also continue to improve
access to our valuable observatory, the AOMO in Maple Ridge.

To build our membership, we will survey members and our many non-member guests to
establish what we need to do to bring more value to our existing membership, and to entice
newcomers to our society. The June 5 transit of Venus promises to be a extraordinary
opportunity to showcase Vancouver Centre to a large public audience, allowing us to
highlight the expertise of our membership with appearances on local TV and radio
broadcasts, and in interviews by print media, and accentuating our capacity for community

engagement by a massive show of force on event day! We are already gearing up for
this fabulous occasion! If you are a member of Vancouver Centre, and are interested
in becoming involved in our public presence, there is no better way to do so than by
contributing to our Venus transit effort, and no better time to step forward than now! I
heartily encourage you to contact Vancouver Centre’s Event Coordinator, Suzanna Nagy, at
events.rascvancouver@gmail.com.

Turning to our fourth and final priority for 21012, which is to improve our electronic
presence, we will establish Facebook and Twitter as prime social networking tools (in
addition to our successful Meetup site), especially for linking our members in real time, and
we will increase content on our much improved web site, http://rasc-vancouver.com.

RASC Vancouver Centre also has an important new challenge in 2012. This concerns a
central part of our efforts, which, as I described at the top of this column, is to provide a
monthly speaker to our membership and the general public. Over the past 40 years, our
venue for these meetings has been the HR MacMillan Space Centre, where we were not
charged for meeting space. Owning to a difficult financial situation, the Space Centre will
now charge its standard rate for nonprofit organizations, of $640 per meeting. Council has
unanimously agreed we cannot afford this fee without serious compromise to the rest of
Vancouver Centre’s efforts.

Fortunately, we have much less expensive alternatives that we can use while we look for
a longer-term solution. We have already made ongoing arrangements with SFU and UBC,
which will provide us with meeting space at minimal or zero cost, and with BCIT, which
has economical rates, and which suits our priorities for this year. The Space Centre will
continue to offer us free use of the auditorium for speakers that they think will appeal to a
broad enough segment of their audience. The Space Centre has also pledged to revisit our
relationship once they return to fiscal health

At this point, we have established the venues for the first three lectures of 2012, which
all promise to be of outstanding quality, and on exciting and timely topics. Following
our January 12 lecture at UBC by Prof. Ray Jayawardhana, our Thursday February 9
presentation will be at the Space Centre, where we will host Dr. Ed Krupp, Director of
the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, and our Thursday March 8 lecture will return to
UBC, where will we host Dr. Catherine Johnson of the UBC Department of Earth and Ocean
Sciences, and a member of the MESSENGER spacecraft science team. For April and beyond,
locations will be announced as soon as we have determined the venues. Notifications will
be sent to membership by email, and will be posted on Meetup. In general, please consult
our Meetup site on a regular basis for more information, as it becomes available: http://
www.meetup.com/astronomy-131.

Finally, all of us council would like membership and our public to know that we are actively
working on an opportunity to establish a new permanent base of operations, one that may
turn out to be remarkably close at hand.

There is much to look forward to in 2012 at RASC Vancouver! All of us on council look
forward to you at more of our monthly lectures, and our many other events.

Howard Trottier
President, RASC-VC
Professor of Physics, SFU

This edition of NOVA rounds out our series for 2011, and so it presents a natural forum in which to take a look back on a year of astronomy at Vancouver Centre.

The first thing that I did in preparing to write this message was to go back to the first edition of NOVA for this year, and there, in my first President’s message, I found a list that I recorded of the goals that your council had set for itself, and our society, for the coming year (finding that list came as a bit of a surprise – which does not speak well for my memory!). Happily, I think I can say that we did very well, accomplishing almost all of what we set out to do, with one very important exception – a goal that will be first on our plate for next year (more on that at the end).

Top of the list in that article was to ensure a successful year of monthly lectures. Our Speaker Coordinator Barry Shanko set the bar very high with our first lecture of the year, when we hosted Dr. John Mather of the Goddard Space Flight Centre, co-recipient of the 2006 Nobel Prize in physics, for a talk on the James Webb Space Telescope. That January lecture was standing room only in the auditorium at the Space Centre! Although we did not fill the auditorium to bursting again this year, we had a series of top-notch speakers on a diverse range of topics, which helped to generate a consistently high attendance record, topping 150 people on two other occasions, and getting in the neighborhood of 100 on a few others. These other high water marks included our annual Paul Sykes lecture, held in October at SFU, when we hosted Jon Lomberg, astronomy artist and long-time collaborator with Carl Sagan; and Kaspar von Braun of Caltech, a world-leader in the exo-planet business, who we hosted at UBC.

Another major goal for 2011 was to strengthen our partnerships with other regional groups committed to astronomy outreach, and we vigorously worked this objective throughout the year! Our major partners were Metro-Vancouver Parks, Simon Fraser University, the International Lunar Observatory Association, the NRC/Herzberg Institute of Astrophysics, the Vancouver Telescope Centre, and Canadian Telescopes. In particular, we held multiple events with Metro-Parks all across the greater Vancouver area, from Pacific Spirit Park on the west side, through Deas Island Park in Delta, and out east to Aldergrove Lake Regional Park (where we held our very rainy Astronomy Day in May). All of our collaborative efforts were in addition to our own very active program of community-based outreach, which included multiple presentations at the Roundhouse in Yaletown, at the Maple Ridge Public Library, and at malls, schools and community centres across town.

These events represent the collective work of council members and volunteers from the membership at large, are were managed under the direction of your outstanding Events Coordinator Suzanna Nagy, who deserves special mention for her creative and tireless work, including her successful efforts to enlist new volunteers. Another particular mention goes to your Education Chair, Bill Burnyeat, who this summer once again travelled to numerous provincial parks and campgrounds throughout BC, to bring observational astronomy to the public under dark skies. In addition to support from council for this effort, Bill received a prestigious grant from NSERC PromoScience, a federal government agency that promotes science outreach initiates (and I can tell you from personal experience that they don’t fool around when it comes to allocating support!).

Council also set the goal of reaching novice astronomers, especially young ones! To this end, we instituted a new “What’s Up?” segment, 20-minute presentations that were held before many of our monthly lectures. These were very successful, turning out many newcomers to Vancouver Centre, thanks in part to Simon Fraser University’s extensive contacts with parents and teachers who have attended its grade school oriented astronomy workshop program. (As an aside, for 2012 council intends to pick a few monthly meetings to devote entirely to a “What’s Up?”, rather than staggering short segments ahead of our lectures, as we did this year, since our presentations are generally too tough for a young audience.) Our “What’s Up?” segments included practical tips on observing the night sky, and educational morsels (light but filling!) on a variety of topics, from what amateur astronomers actually do, to unsolved mysteries at the cutting-edge of astronomy and space science, and a light-hearted hands-on, do it yourself expanding universe !

In connection with our efforts to reach young people, a very notable development this year came in the form of a new sponsor: Canadian Telescopes. Babak Sedehi, the owner of this very successful startup in the business of on-line telescope shopping, was an enthusiastic and very generous supporter of just about every one of our activities that were directed to young people. This included a telescope door prize at every one of our “What’s Up?” segments, and a top-quality 8” Dobsonian telescope at our Paul Sykes lecture (only kids were eligible!). But Babak didn’t stop there. He generously subsidized publication of NOVA for much of the year, insisting that this include four pages in colour! And he offered new members of Vancouver Centre a $20 gift certificate from CanadianTelescopes.com.

Rounding out the goals that we set and met this year, we continued to develop our web site, which has a professional look, a well-organized structure, and new content, thanks in particular to our Webmaster and IT Chair Harvey Dueck; our LPA Chair Mark Eburne made substantive progress on this important issue, working his contacts in the media and municipal government; and good progress was reported at the AOMO, including work on a guide scope, and increased use by members and the public, thanks to co-Chairs Leigh Cummings and Mark Eburne.

We fell down on our goals in only two areas: establishing a Twitter presence, and a Biggie: membership. Our numbers are down this year, despite the many new faces that we’ve seen at our many events. Tackling the dual challenges of retaining our existing membership, and attracting new ones, will be job #1 for 2012. Bearing this in mind, at our annual planning meeting in October Council established a short but carefully chosen list of priorities in which to focus our efforts and resources for next year (this process owes especially to the leadership of your Webmaster and IT Chair Harvey Dueck, and your Secretary Alan Jones) – details on our 2012 priorities will be found in my President’s message in the January 2012 edition of NOVA .

I think there is much cause for optimism for a successful 2012 at Vancouver Centre, including for a strong return on our planned all-out assault on the membership challenge. My optimism is further stoked by the fact that there will be eight newcomers to council for 2012. Some familiar faces will be stepping down from Council, some after very many years of service, and I want to record here the deep indebtedness of Vancouver Centre towards these dedicated members – in alphabetical order: Doug Montgomery, Gavin McLeod, Pomponia Martinez, and Wayne Lyons. In their place, the eight incoming council members have chosen to follow the example set by the outgoing councilors, in the service of the membership at large, and our public – and I can tell you, the newbies are full of beans! Introductions will have to wait for ratification at the December AGM . I can’t wait!

Howard Trottier

President, RASC-VC

Professor of Physics, SFU

Ciel Clair

Summer is a unique season at RASC Vancouver, at least as measured by the number of our members to be found close to home, and at our July and August public meetings.

Many of our members heed the clarion call of the celestial treasures of summer, with the Milky Way tracing a glorious arc through the zenith as the skies darken, and take advantage of summer vacation time to get under dark skies far from city lights. Some feel an almost instinctive draw to the Mount Kobau Star Party (this year’s 28^th edition running from dusk July 30 until dawn August 7), and the Merritt Star Quest (running August 27 to September 3).

Not that our Council and member volunteers let up on public engagement during the summer. This summer, RASC Vancouver will be participating at the New Westminster Grimston Park “Summerfest” on July 16; at the Metro Parks Deas Island Regional Park “Starry Night” on August 13; and at Metro Parks “All Night Stargazing” at Aldergrove Lake Regional Park on August 19. Details on all these events will be posted on our Meetup social networking site www.meetup.com/astronomy-131. Your Council has also been keeping itself very busy with July and August council meetings chock full of important business, including some items of long-term importance for our Centre (a full report on that is coming this fall!).

But the general summer interlude seems like a good time to update our membership and our public readership on “What’s Up?” lately with RASC-Vancouver, including for those of us who may read this NOVA from afar.

First, if you have been reading NOVA in printed form, for any length of time, and have picked up this edition in hardcopy, then you will immediately ask yourself, how did the outer pages of NOVA end up in colour?

This development owes to our newest sponsor, Canadian Telescopes! Not only did Canadian Telescopes come forward with an offer to cover the full print cost for this and the remaining editions of NOVA 2011, but insisted as well that we quite literally add some colour to our digest. Your Council was only too happy to comply!

Canadian Telescopes has also generously come forward with two other methods of sponsorship. One is to offer a $20 gift certificate for any new member of RASC Vancouver (see our website http://rasc-vancouver.com for details). The other is to donate a telescope as a monthly door prize at RASC Vancouver’s newest public outreach offering, literally called “What’s Up?” (young people up to and including high-school graduation age in attendance are eligible for the door prize).

“What’s Up?” is a 20-minute segment that we have been offering since February, in association with our monthly public lecture at the Space Centre, on the second Thursday of each month. “What’s Up? begins at 7:00PM, just ahead of the 7:30PM lecture, and is tailored to newcomers to astronomy, especially young ones (though more experienced astronomy fans might well find something of interest too!). “What’s Up?” is meant to cover a variety of introductory topics, including what to look for in the night sky, all about telescopes and other astronomy gear, and non-technical Introductions to cool topics and breaking news in astronomy and space science.

“What’s Up?” has been successful in bringing many newcomers to our meetings, notably many young families with kids from tots to teens. Attendance at some of these segments has topped one hundred!

At the inaugural “What’s Up?” in February, I got our audience (young and old!) to use a hands-on, do-it yourself expanding universe, to come up with answers to three “deep” questions about the cosmos. Since then, we’ve taken a look back at “Tales from Four Apollo Missions” in March (also by Yours Truly); we were treated to a warmly personal segment in April, “Navigating the Night Sky”, thanks to Treasurer Wayne Lyons; in May, we participated with our Webmaster Harvey Dueck in awe-inspiring visualizations of why, for the universe and its contents, “Size Matters”; and in June we heard an impassioned plea by AOMO co-Chair Leigh Cummings for young people to help all of us to explain “Ten Solar System Mysteries”.

Indeed, the ultimate message of Leigh’s “What’s Up?” segment is the ultimate reason behind our efforts to attract young people to RASC Vancouver events, including with programs such as “What’s Up?”. Of course, young people represent the future of RASC Vancouver, as with all regional centres and the RASC nationally, and only by expanding and deepening our commitment to public outreach, particularly to young families, can we ensure the continued vitality of our treasured Centre. But the loftier goal towards which we aspire when, as RASC Vancouver volunteers, we engage the public, is to inspire the next generation of scientists, and to enhance public understanding of science.

Owing in part to the summer interlude taken by many of our members, your Council has decided to turn our July and August public meetings at the Space Centre over entirely to the “What’s Up?” program. Instead of the usual public lecture, we’ll devote the full hour from 7:30PM-8:30PM to the “What’s Up?”. On July 14 Bob Parry, well known to our members as a past President and Director of Telescopes, will take our audience on a tour with “Robots of the Solar System”. For the August 11 meeting, we are working with some young people to them take over the “What’s Up?” presentation itself (details to appear on Meetup).

So here’s to clear summer skies, and more time under the stars, with membership and the public!

Howard Trottier

President, RASC-VC

Professor of Physics, SFU