Regulus Newsletter
The December 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for members only.
Thu 2008 Dec 11 20:35 EST

Fireball!
Member Hank Bartlett shows the value of bringing astronomy to the attention of relatives. His brother Andy recorded this video of a large fireball over Western Canada Thursday Nov 21st. CBC video.
Fri 2008 Nov 20 21:00 EST

Observer's Calendar
The 2009 RASC Observer's Calendar is now available from the Treasurer. They will be available at Centre meetings and KAON sessions until they are all gone. Every astronomer needs at least one and they also make great gifts!
Sat 2008 Oct 25

Tool Bag Video
Member Kevin Fetter's video of NASA's wayward tool bag has attracted the attention of news organizations around the world. Congratulations Kevin!

• BBC article
• Brockville Recorder article
• CTV News interview
• Slashdot.org article
• Spaceweather.com article
• Sydney Morning Herald article
• Toronto Star article
• YouTube video of tool bag

Regulus Newsletter
The November 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for members only.
Mon 2008 Nov 10 21:10 EST

Annual General Meeting and Elections
7:30-8:00pm
Friday November 14th, 2008.
Check November Regulus for details on agenda, positions and more.
2008 Nov 16:00:00

Board Meeting
Board members check your email for agenda and location. 5:00-6:30pm
Saturday November 8th, 2008.
2008 Nov 16:00:00

Gem, Fossil, Meteorite Sale
Gemstone, Mineral and Fossil Sale Miller Museum of Geology, Miller Hall, Queen's University Department of Geological Sciences and Geological Engineering 36 Union St. (Union at Division Street) 9am-5pm, Wednesday - Friday, November 5th, 6th and 7th 2008 **Meteorites** are also for sale with the other items.
2008 Oct 31

Regulus Newsletter
The October 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for the public.
2008 Oct 25

Regulus Newsletter
The October 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for members only.
Sat 2008 Oct 25

Equipment Loan Year-End Recall
It's that time of the year to recall all outstanding Equipment Loan items for inventory. I'll be contacting each of the equipment holders individually as well over the coming days and weeks.

Please arrange to return any and all RASC-KC Equipment Loan items to me by September 30th.

You can bring them to the Friday Sep 12th meeting or drop them out at our home outside Yarker Ontario most evenings or weekends (please call ahead or email to confirm a time).

Tue, 2 September 2008 10:15 EDT

Regulus Newsletter
The June 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for the public.
Wed, 18 June 2008 10:45 EDT

Regulus Newsletter
The June 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for members only.
Fri, 13 June 2008 9:45 EDT

The Sky is the Limit Festival

The Sky Is the Limit event has come and gone... Good experience, good turnout.

First a reminder to all potential volunteers to any event we sponsor. You must let the event coordinator know you are coming and what you can contribute. The event organizers only gave us a limited amount of tables, and there was some issues with organization and space management. We had people tell us in advance that they could stop in and help and thanks to them!

Moving on, we did get setup by 09:00 on the grass (at first it was to be on the asphalt) and the crowds were pretty slow for the first hour or two. Then the masses descended and it was pretty well nonstop until 2pm or so. We packed up at 3pm after a bit of sunburn and headed home.

Our best guess was approx 475 people stopped in to look around, pick up handouts and view the sun and moon through the scopes.

Scopes: we had:

• the RASC-KC 20cm LX200GPS with a subaperture baader film solar filter, running off the portable power centre and inverter.
• a member's PST (Personal Solar Telescope)
• a member's Coronado SOlarmax 40
• a member's Celstron C4.5 next (mostly watching the 3 day old crescent moon) and
• a member's 20cm Dobsonian mounted Skywatcher with full aperture baader film solar filter

Some more wisdom learned from this event:

• don't bring high end expensive equipment as the vast majority of our visitors are sub10 year olds with face paint, sticky and dirty hands that like to touch everything, including sticking their thumbs onto eyepiece surfaces and both hands onto a full aperture 20cm solar filter :( Do bring that old wide angle eyepiece that rattles a bit or you don't mind getting smeared.
• Handouts work better as a package of stuff. In the middle of the day we started handing out a skynews magazine with another stuff inside (usually planetary society) along with the star chart, whats up, colouring pages, satellite passes, etc also stuff inside. The thinking here goes is that no one will look at the material at the event as it is wayyy too busy and they are also more likely to lose multiple pages of paper it they are loose. The magazines helped. We disposed of all of our current stock of all old magazines that we have had since last year at Astro Day, KAON and other events.
• We do need something taller at the shade tent, like a tall flag or inflatable. One of our volunteers had to walk around the site a bit to find us (we had been moved from the original preplanning location).
• The bring one telescope per person rule showed it self again. Normally if you have a telescope at an event for viewing, it needs to be manned 100% or covered up and out of service. We were short, or time was divided between locations, two scope operators and it showed at times with attention being split.
• Always bring your own tables and chairs as the organizers may not get it quite right.
• The costco? purchased 2 step ladder with a handrail work great for short folk. Having the hand grip stops a lot of them from using the telescope for support. These are the same ones we now have at the KAON sessions.
• The nature of the event (families with little kids) meant that there was not a lot of time that anyone actually stopped and looked in detail at the displays. Most stopped for up to 30 or 60 seconds to look through the telescopes and were off again.
• The popup shade tent donated by Hal worked well. It kept the sunburn down to manageable levels and the new pegboard display held the posters up without any issues at all. Setup and tear down of this folding accordion style shelter was quick and easy.
• Thanks again to the volunteers: Hank Bartlett, Leo Enright, Steve Hart, Kim Hay, and Ruth Hicks. We had a couple of other members stop in and chat as well. Good to see you! Pictures from the event will be posted online later tonight.

Tue, 8 July 2008 21:30 EDT

When? Friday June 20th, 2008 from 22:00-24:00 EDT
Cloud/Rain Date: Saturday June 21st 22:00-24:00 EDT

Where? Queen's University Ellis Hall Observatory (4th floor)

What? 12 Members will have the opportunity to select a target, control and point the 40cm McGirr Family Telescope and expose a CCD image for up to 5 minutes.

How? Interested members must preregister their intent by contacting Kevin Kell (kevin at starlightcascade dot ca or 613-377-6028). Limited space available! Leave your name and telephone number.

Background: Many members have expressed interest in CCD imagery and the Queens scope. We have this limited opportunity to have the Observatory Coordinator, James SIlvester, to give us a 10 minute tutorial on the warmroom big screen, and then rotate through the registered members for 5 minute sessions each. Each person will be able to sit down at the controls with James there onhand to provide guidance and assistance, identify a target and drive the scope to that target. The object here is to get you hands on experience with the remote operation of a CCD equipped telescope.

The run will end at 24:00 as we do not want to impose an endless night of time commitment with James as he is busy with his Ph.D. and we don't want to distract him... too much :)

If there are fewer registrants than time slots (12 slots of 10 minutes, 5 minutes to find the target and rotate the dome shutter manually and upto 5 minutes for the exposures) then we will randomly, draw for slots in another round.

The registration is necessary to fill the slots and also to be able to issue a cancellation in the event of a cloudy night. If we are clouded out the decision will be made at 18:00 Friday night and I will contact registrants by telephone letting them know that the next night (Saturday) is a go. If it is cloudy Saturday as well, the cancellation decision will also be made at 18:00 and I will call.

Successful or clouded out, we will attempt to schedule another event later in the year.

Preparation:

1. Register with Kevin.
2. Choose 1 or 2 targets that you want to image. Ensure that they will be in the sky on that date and time.
3. Bring along a USB flash drive to take your image home that night, or wait until they are posted on the RASC-KC website the next day.
4. Arrive around 21:30 to give everyone time to settle in, get set up, chat, etc.

NOTE: Real keeners may want to peruse the Queen's Observatory User's Manual (1.3MB PDF). :)

Regulus Newsletter
The May 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for the public.
Mon, 13 May 2008 20:15 EDT

Regulus Newsletter
The May 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for members only.
Mon, 5 May 2008 09:10 EDT

IYA 2009
The IYA 2009 page has been updated, including the IYA trailer from YouTube. More.
Sun, 4 May 2008 20:45 EDT

Supernova 2008bw
After 11 months and 19100 images inspected, Walter MacDonald has discovered his second supernova. This is the official announcement:

Earth Hour
Earth Hour is on March 29, 2008. Everyone is asked that they shut off their lights and all nonessential electrical appliances to help out with greenhouse gas emissions, from 8:00 pm to 9:00 pm. However, we can also do some Light Pollution Studies ourselves at this time.
First Sara Poirier of the Toronto Science Centre would like everyone during 8:45 p.m. to 9:15 p.m. to observe the Little Dipper (Ursa Minor) and count how many stars they can see (naked eye), and submit their data at http://www.redshiftnow.ca/starwatch/ there is a star map provided to help you along.
As chair of The RASC - Kingston Centre Reponsible Lighting Committee, and member the RASC LPA Committee, I would like our members, and members across Canada to take SQM readings and submit them to me, so a graph can be done up locally and nationally, and we can see how the light levels change with all lights on , off or dimmed down, and back on again.
Readings are to be taken every half hour starting at 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. Take your readings at Zenith (straight overhead). We realize that it may in fact be too bright (too close to sunset) but it is a good exercise nonetheless.
Please send: Location (town, city, province) SQM readings at the times of every 1/2 hour starting at 7:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. weather conditions (cloudy, hazy, clear, temperature etc) type of local light fixtures (in your area your reading from) -provide images so we can have a collection of good and bad lighting, these will be included on the National LPA site.
Remember to send me your data, and images to kim (at) starlightcascade.ca with SQM in the subject line.
Thank you all for participating in Earth Hour and in Light Pollution Data Collection.
Kim Hay

Regulus Newsletter
Feb 2008 issue of Regulus is available online for Members and the Public version.
Sat 2008 Feb 16

Globe at Night
Observe the nighttime sky and learn more about light pollution.
Thu, 19 Jan 2008 11:00:00 EST

Back in the fall of 2007 I made mention of the Educational Presentations collection we maintain at http://kingston.rasc.ca/Secure/presentations/

Along with a list of ideas of presentations that are needed. There are several examples up already and they can be very simple as seen by: meteorites-rasckc.ppt

Please take a look at it and see if you would like to take a stab at creating an MS Powerpoint presentation (15-20 minutes duration) of some of the following ideas:

• The Planet Venus: historical, visual, spacecraft, future
• The Planet Mars: historical, visual, images, spacecraft, future
• The Planet Jupiter: historical, visual, images, spacecraft, future
• The Planet Saturn: historical, visual, images, spacecraft, future
• Sol: solar observing safety, tools, records, ALPO, animated sketches.
• Comets: historical comets of the last x years, photographic summary, orbital path summary, where to find info on them (star charts, etc)
• Fireballs: what are they, why we look for them, what to do if you see one, etc.
• Uranus & Neptune are back for observing.
• "Sagitarius, Observing the Galactic Core Region"
• Occultations: what are asteroidal occultations all about?
• The MOON: how it moves, surface highlights, etc
• ETU Certificate Program
• Messier Certificate Program
• Finest NGC Certificate Program

Rocket Fuel Dump Video
Congratulations to Kevin Fetter for his video on spaceweather.com.
Tue, 11 Dec 2007 09:00:00 EST