Mississauga Centre RASC 95Th Meeting Members’ Night
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Mississauga Centre RASC 95th Meeting Members’ Night Day: Friday November 30, 2007 Chair Jim Jackson Speakers: Randy Attwood Bob Anderson William Callahan Vic Cooper David Dunlap Observatory and Observatory Park Initiative Randy Attwood gave an update on the DDO and the work that the RASC is doing to try to preserve the Observatory. The University of Toronto considers the DDO to be surplus and is looking into bids for selling it. Randy gave a brief history of the site and Dr. Chant’s efforts to have an observatory built near Toronto. He showed pictures of the observatory, administration building and historic house of Dr. Chant. Some astronomers believe that useful research can be done here. Amateur astronomers are passionate to preserve the observatory as are many residents of Richmond Hill. The city has declared it a heritage site. Denis Grey, President of the Toronto Centre approached Randy to co-chair a committee to fund a company to come up with a report for a feasibility plan to preserve the site for astronomy. In addition to these two, the working group consists of Ian Shelton and Kirsten Vanstone. The Observatory Park plan consists of raising $50,000 for a feasibility plan, followed by a business plan and meeting with stakeholders. Randy encouraged donations form the centre to this project and pointed out the website. The History and Future of Canadian Observatories Bob Anderson noted that astronomy in Canada had an early start with John Cabot who used surveying instruments in Newfoundland in 1497. Champlain, founder of Quebec in 1608, required explorers to know the stars and calculate latitude. By 1618, Jesuits were sending reports of comets and eclipses. Jean Bourdon in 1634 was the first Canadian to own a telescope. The role of astronomers was to tell time accurately. Fr. Joseph-Pierre de Bonnecamp in Quebec set up the first observatory. In 1848, Dr. James Tollery set up an observatory in New Brunswick and another 7 major observatories were established in eastern Canada from 1850 to 1900. The Dominion Observatory had a mandate in 1905 to tell the time in western regions of Canada using star transits (over 28,000 observations), and a high precision clock in 1929. Other clocks in the country were set electronically based on the time of this instrument. At the DAO, a 1.83 meter mirror was for several months, the largest in the world. A second 1.22 meter telescope was added in 1962 for spectroscopy. Once the DDO was established in 1935, Canada owned 2 of the 4 largest telescopes in the world. A notable observation of the DDO was the photography of a star by the asteroid Portlandia on Dec. 7, 2003. The Algonquin Radio Observatory started out with Arthur Covington scanning the Sun daily at noon at a wavelength of 10.7cm. The 46 metre disc was also used at 2 cm to study galactic and intergalactic sources including quasars. Interferometry with a baseline of over 3,000 km was possible in conjunction with the DAO in B.C. With the use of two dishes in Algonquin, observations were carried out at 21 cm to map out the Milky Way. Instead of refurbishing the old Algonquin observatory, Canada put money as a co-operative venture with other countries, into the James – Clark – Maxwell Radio Observatory. Bob also mentioned the Alberta Rothway Astrophysical Observatory with its 1.8meter telescope and Mont Megantic near Sherbrooke, Quebec with its 1.6 meter which can use an IR camera in the cold of winter, and the U of BC Liquid Mirror Observatory. Canada is a participant in the cosmic Background imager, an array of 13 parabolic mirrors in Chile to study the cosmic background radiation, and will take part in the Atacama large Millimeter Array scheduled for 2011. The Canada – France – Hawaii telescope established in 1979 has a 3.6 metre mirror operating in the visible and IR. In 2003 it received a better camera– the most powerful in the world enabling very high resolution images and being the first to use adaptive optics. It discovered 3 moon around Uranus and 8 around Saturn. Another observatory that Canada participates in is also located on Mauna Kea with a twin on Cerro Pachon in Chile. These are the Gemini North and South Observatories. They have pistons to adjust the 8.1 metre mirrors and image in the visible and infra-red. Canada is active in space astronomy. We participate in FUSE (Far Ultra violet Space Explorer), with 4 mirrors studying UV sources not visible from Earth. Canada contributed 20% to the Odin Space Observatory, launched in 2001 to study molecules around extra-solar planets. The MOST mission (see Nov 21, 2003 meeting), Canada’s first scientific satellite in 33 years, studies microvariability of stars. Canada will build in the engineering for the James Webb Space Telescope with its 6 ½ meter mirror. Underground, the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory uses heavy water to capture and study these elusive particles. Observe the Universe Certificates Randy Attwood presented “Observe the Universe Certificates” to Leslie Strike, Jack Jackson and William Callahan who successfully completed the program. Barnard’s Nebula, NGC 281 William Callahan and Vic Cooper described the HII emission nebula NGC 281 in Cassiopeia discovered by E.E. Barnard in 1881. It is an active star forming region containing Bok globules and an open cluster. William and Vic pooled together their telescope and Hutek modified Canon 350D to image this nebula, stack and process the images using Deep Sky Stacker and Photoshop and noise reduction with Noise Ninja. They also showed their images of M13 using a light suppression filter which helps prevent moisture form getting inside the camera, Comet Holmes and the North America Nebula as an unguided piggyback image using the Canon 360D. Submitted by Chris Malicki, Secretary .