Tue, Aug 11 – The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada’s Scott McGillivray talks about food being grown and eaten in space, the Perseid meteor shower, the newest photos of Pluto, and how astronomers say the universe is dying.
Source: http://globalnews.ca/video/2159851/space-talk-with-scott-august-11
The summer months are now upon us. We hope that you are enjoying the amazing hot weather and clear nights that we have been experiencing. Your Vancouver Centre has been rather quiet for the past month in regards to evening public events. This is due to the fact that in the months of June and July, the days are too long and the evenings not dark enough to warrant a large planned public observing event. Having said that though , there have been and will continue to be impromptu evening observing sessions held and we hope that you will continue to join us for those. Our next pre-planned evening public event will be on Saturday, August 8 and the event will be two-fold. Firstly, we will enjoy the annual Perseid meteor shower at the joint Metro Parks/ RASC event at Aldergrove Regional Park. Check out our page at Meetup for more details. Secondly, the August 8 event will be held in conjunction with our sister astronomy club —the Astronomica l Association of Jamaica. The Jamaica club will also be observing on the evening of August 8, and afterwards our two clubs will share details and photos. Your Vancouver Centre was paired with the Astronomical Association of Jamaica in February of this year through the Astronomy Without Borders Pairing Program. To date, our communications have been restricted to email and Skype but with this first- ever joint observing event, we hope to solidify this pairing. If you haven’t already, please join the Vancouver Centre Meetup group for email notifications of all of our events at www.meetup.com/astronomy-131.
Clear skies,
Suzanna Nagy, Vice President
8,000 – that is how many people SFU estimates attended the joint International Astronomy Day and Science Rendezvous festivities on Saturday, May 9. If you were there, then you know what a great success it was.
RASC’s contribution to the day included 19 tables of activities and displays. The Moon Phases with Oreo Cookies was so successful that I had to make a run to the nearest grocery store to buy more Oreos. One of our craft tables ran out of paper by the end of the event. The Solar System Toss to Pluto was a huge hit and Astronomy Bingo was enjoyed by both children and adults alike.
We hosted seven short lectures that were well attended with a good variety of topics, including “New Horizons and our First Visit to Pluto” by Scott McGillvray, “Are We Alone? The Search for Extra Terrestrial Life” by Stanley Greenspoon, “The Global Space Community” by Ken Lui, and Ed Hanlon’s Northern Lights slideshow to name just a few.
The weather was spectacular (the first time in 3 years we did not have rain on Astronomy Day) and RASC took full advantage with three solar telescopes set up beside the new Trottier Observatory for solar viewing.
A big thank you goes out to Vancouver Telescope and Pacific Telescope who donated an 8 inch Dobsonian as a door prize. The winner was the Chan family with children Carina and Colton from Burnaby, BC.
Canadian Telescope also donated solar viewing glasses, umbrellas, and binoculars which were given away throughout the day.
I can never thank our volunteers enough for all of their efforts. 40 RASC volunteers gave up their Saturday, many of whom were there all day — some arriving as early as 9:00 am to start setting up and stayed until 6:00 pm for take-down. I wish to acknowledge their efforts by naming each here:
Staff at Vancouver Telescope
Staff at Canadian Telescopes
UBC Astronomy Club and Ronan Kerr
Planetary Society and Ken Lui/ Catherine Lui
Karl Miller, Gordon Farrell, Doug Montgomery and their solar telescopes
Howard Trottier for opening up the Trottier Observatory for tours
Ted Stroman for his Moon and Apollo Mission display
Jim Bernath and his hands-on science displays
Adrian Mitescu, Phil Lobo, Pomponia Martinez and Bob Parry for helping Jim Bernath at his six display tables
Mark Eburne and his Light Pollution display
Stanley Greenspoon and Sarang Brahme at Craft Table #1
Benjamin Joseph and his son Mark as well as Jennifer Kirkey at Craft Table #2
Judy Zhou, Anca Datcu-Romano and Irena Datcu-Romano at the Moon Phases/Oreo Cookie activity
Scott McGillvray at Astronomy Bingo
Eimi Anazawi and Samer Aabedi at the Solar System Toss
Alan Jones who coordinated all seven lectures
As well as Muguette McDonald, James Smith, Kyle Daly, William Fearon, Ron Jerome, Michael Levy, Terry McComas, Jeremy Van Den Driesen and Leigh Cummings.
I don’t think that I missed anyone but in the event I did, please accept my heartfelt thanks.
And finally, a very special thank you to Simon Fraser University and its amazing staff for allowing rasc Vancouver to hold International Astronomy Day in the Academic Quadrangle and all fees waived. A special relationship has developed between RASC Vancouver and SFU and with the opening of the Trottier Observatory, we are looking forward to many more years of astronomy-related activities at SFU. From my lips to God’s ears— here’s hoping for many clear-weather night skies.
By Mark Eburne
Welcome all the visitors to the annual RASC Vancouver Centre Astronomy Day held in conjunction with SFU’s Science Rendezvous here at Simon Fraser University.
Every year, the RASC Vancouver Centre and its dedicated volunteers deliver outstanding displays and talks centered on the science of astronomy and the impact it has on everyday life here and around the world. This year is no exception.
You can always find something in the astronomy world to spark an interest in your mind or perhaps your children’s minds. Whether it is looking back in time or into the future of space travel, there is something for everyone.
In today’s world of high-powered telescopes imaging the depths of time or huge super computers building scenario models of what is going to happen, we can all enjoy the results of the thousands of dedicated astronomers and scientists making it simple for us to understand. Perhaps you just want to lay down in a dark area and look up into the night sky and wonder or peer through the eyepiece of a portable ’scope in your back yard. Whatever your astronomy hunger is, you can feed it here at Astronomy Day.
Please take the time to ask questions. All of our RASC members and volunteers here at SFU love talking astronomy. Who knows, you could start yourself on a new course of discovery. It’s all here. Enjoy the journey. Clear Skies.
by Howard Trottier
Simon Fraser University’s Trottier Observatory and Science Courtyard had its official opening on Friday April 17, with a morning ribbon-cutting presided over by SFU’s President, Andrew Petter, and an inaugural public star party that evening which drew almost 2,000 people! This day was also a watershed moment in the long partnership between SFU and the Vancouver Centre of the RASC, which has now entered a new and exciting phase, centred around the exploitation of the observatory for public outreach, for student education, and for use by members of the Centre. Vancouver Centre’s major contributions to sfu’s astronomy outreach program over many years, as well the Centre’s participation in the development of the observatory and science courtyard, were formally recognized at the official opening in speeches by sfu’s President Petter, Vice-President of Advancement Cathy Daminato, and Dean of Science Dr. Claire Cupples. Vancouver Centre’s very own Vice President and Events Coordinator Suzanna Nagy also gave an address at the opening in which she highlighted the collaboration between the two institutions, and the exciting possibilities for future joint efforts that will be made possible by the observatory.
The collaboration between SFU and the Vancouver RASC took off in 2009 with an intense year-long effort that brought the International Year of Astronomy to SFU’s Burnaby campus (among the Centre’s many other iya events), where we hosted thousands of kids and their families at nearly a hundred daytime astronomy workshops and evening star parties; with the support of the Vancouver Centre, SFU also donated about 85 small refractors to schools and families that year. In the years since the 2009 IYA, the partnership between SFU and Vancouver Centre has grown ever stronger and our collaborative efforts have diversified considerably. As our members know well, the Centre now routinely hosts our monthly public lecture, as well as our annual Paul Sykes Memorial Lecture, at SFU , with SFU providing meeting space and AV services free of charge. Vancouver Centre also hosts its annual Astronomy Day in concert with SFU’s annual Science Rendezvous event, which draws thousands of young families every year.
The new observatory at SFU houses a state-of-the art 0.7m aperture telescope on a fully robotic alt-azimuth mount; this turnkey CDK700 system is built by PlaneWave Instruments, located in Rancho Dominguez, California. The observatory has a 20-foot diameter Ash Dome, with an electronic dome control system built by ace Instruments. The remarkable optical design of the CDK700 produces razor sharp stars over a huge 70mm imaging circle, and we will take full advantage of this capability with our 16-megapixel high-resolution cooled camera, built by Finger Lakes Instruments, complemented by a complete set of high quality broad- and narrowband filters supplied by Astrodon.
Eager to assess the imaging potential of this exciting system, I shot this image of the Whirlpool Galaxy at the end of the first full night of operation after the observatory opened—not too shabby, considering that this was only twenty minutes of exposure through a luminance filter, shot through cloud that at times obscured the stars in the handle of the Big Dipper! (Full disclosure: I didn’t get around to imaging through the colour filters that night, so I colourized the luminance using the very first—and very crude—image that I took at my own observatory in the Okanagan, which also happened to be of the Whirlpool). Soon to come is a high resolution echelle spectrograph on order from Shelyak Instruments, in France—with this instrument we will be able to measure the periods of spectroscopic binary stars, produce Hertzprung-Russell diagrams of star clusters, and possibly measure the redshifts of the nearest quasars, among many other applications.
It may come as a surprise that the largest part of the capital cost of the project was not taken up by the observatory, but by the science courtyard that it anchors. While the project was originally conceived of as a variation on the traditional university teaching observatory (albeit with a large teaching space devoted to science outreach for public schools and home-schooled families), it was transformed into a high-profile public space when the university generously provided an extraordinary site, immediately adjacent to the centrepiece of the Burnaby campus, SFU’s iconic Academic Quadrangle, an architectural masterwork by Arthur Erickson.
The site is meant to serve a new focal point for campus and community life, and is a very visible statement about the importance of science to society. While the observatory is the most prominent structure on the site, the space is filled with architectural landscape elements, big and small, that represent the science of astronomy, and which allude to the beauty and mystery of the universe as revealed by science. One of the largest and most novel architectural elements is a set of two huge concrete walls that are meant to represent an ancient observatory with a fixed slit view of the heavens, such as existed in Mesoamerica thousands of years ago. The walls are adorned with huge, realistic, seasonal star charts that are illuminated at night.
The observatory will support and enhance SFU’s very successful astronomy outreach program, called Starry Nights @ SFU, and will be used by students from across campus to explore the universe. We will also make telescope time available to schools throughout BC, by inviting them to submit proposals for observing projects—the observatory can be run remotely, and we will give the keys so to speak to schools whose projects are selected for observing time. Finally, as long promised, 20% of the observing time will be reserved for use by members of Vancouver Centre. At the telescope with my brother, Lorne As we look ahead to using this exciting new observatory, I’d also like to acknowledge the many other volunteers who have made Starry Nights @ SFU so successful—they come from all parts of SFU’s campus community, from the arts to the sciences, and include students, staff, and faculty, along with volunteers from the broader community, including of course the Vancouver RASC. SFU’s community outreach program is itself a community effort. Finally, but most importantly, I want to thank my brother Lorne, his wife, and my sister-in law, Louise, and their daughters Claire and Sylvie, for their astounding generosity, without which none of this would be possible. I can only hope that this facility will bring even a small fraction of their passion for science, and their commitment to science outreach, to the communities that we serve
Paul Sykes was born in Hummelston, Pennsylvania USA in 1918. He acquired his interest in astronomy at an early age. During his teens he published his own monthly astronomical column and gave at least one lecture.
He was an officer in the United States Air Force, served in the Pacific during WWII attaining the rank of Captain. He was awarded a Presidential Unit Citation, the U.S. Air Medal, the Oak Leaf and Cluster and the Bronze Star. Following the war he attended UBC earning a degree in Physics in 1948. He rejoined the United States Air Force and attended the Oak Ridge School of Reactor Technology, studying nuclear physics. He worked on the NERVA Project, a nuclear rocket development effort and rose to the rank of Major.
Paul was appointed a lecturer and administrator in Physics at UBC and remained there until retirement in 1983.
Paul actively pursued his interest in astronomy, attending conferences and joining the R.A.S.C., where he became a Life Member.
Paul Sykes passed away in October 2005 at the age of 87 and left the Vancouver Centre a generous gift.