All Blog Posts (105)

The Nanaimo Astronomy Society's direction and day to day management are provided by a dedicated group of volunteers who serve on the Board of Directors. Without them, the club would cease to exist.

Due to other commitments, we have a number of Board Members who are unable to continue helping on the board, so we are in need of some additional volunteers board members, both for now and for our upcoming June election.

We are looking for creative,…

GLOBE at Night program is an international program that asks people around the world to measure their night sky brightness on certain dates and submit their observations online. 

This provides awareness of light pollution and also creates a database of observations to track light pollution over time.

The…

Here is a picture taken by Cassini of Saturn's moon Dione from 112,636 kilometres away. Click on the picture to see it full size.

Notice the rings and asteroids in the…

Planet Kepler-22b is the smallest planet outside of our solar system found in the habital zone so far.

This image compares our own solar system to Kepler-22. The habitable zone of a solar system is the zone where water could be found in liquid form. It doesn't automatically mean it is livable.

The planet is bigger than the…

Checkout this development in New Mexico! Granitegap.com A dedicated astronomy 'preserve'. We've just brought an RV plot down there!  We got  a 99 year lease for a 1/3 acre RV lot + a 1/4 acre lot to build an observatory on. All fully serviced....for just $2500+utility bills! Bargin. This is my retirement pad :-) 

Hello.

I have a an Orion 10 inch Inteliscope dobsonian (go to) for sale. I purchased this scope new in 2007 from Vancouver Telescope Centre and have only used it 6 or 7 times. I have never even hooked up or calibrated the Go To system. I have a lot of accessories that come with it.…

Saturn's Cassini probe has brought us many stunning pictures, but these blew me away.

These are newly released images from Cassini of the huge storm in Saturn's atmosphere late last year.

This storm was so large it eventually went all the way around the planet - 300,000 kilometres!

Mind boggling to think of a storm covering more than 3/4 of the distance from the Earth to the Moon.

To see all the pictures, follow this…

A Russian Mars probe is stranded in Earth orbit when the engine intended to send it on its way to Mars failed to ignite.

The Phobos-Grunt probe was intended to collect rock and dust samples from Mars' moon Phobos and return them to Earth for study.

The spacecraft is also carrying China's first Mars satellite, Yinghou-1.

Scientists…

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's story of Victor Frankenstein's monster is a classic of horror and science fiction, spawning many books and movies.

Mary Shelley was only 18 when she wrote the story.  The idea supposedly came from a gathering with her future husband, Percy Bysshe…

Apparently 3 years ago, researchers at CERN observed that netrinos in a stream they created were arriving earlier than expected, actually exceeding the speed of light.

It took them three years to thoroughly check it out before releasing the…

The predicted uncontrolled re-entry of NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) is expected to happen late tonight or early tomorrow. There is a very slim (but not zero!) chance that someone will hurt by the falling debris - but not in Nanaimo, as the defunct satellite passed over the vicinity of the city (just 10 degrees over the horizon) after 2 a.m. last night and not going to come back again. Now it seems that it may reenter over the United States - well, watch the skies over…

So the family vacation this year was in the desert bound Osoyoos and Lake area. I took the opportunity to book us into Jack's Observatory B&B for a couple of nights.

Jack if you didn't know is Mr 'SuperNova' Hunter, having discovered 75 of them, well known in the astronomy community, written several books, has his work regularly used by Nasa, and recently got time on the Hubble Space telescope to photography a particular SuperNova!

His home, custom built high…

Once again this year, the Nanaimo Astronomy Society will have a Christmas fundraiser (December 8) to raise funds for our clubs outreach programs.

Our outreach programs are used to teach kids and adults around Nanaimo about the night sky.  Many people see the moon, planets and deep sky…

My wife and I stopped a few weeks ago at Westwood Lake at night and noticed how dark it was, with the mountains and trees cutting most of the lights from the city.

Constellations were easily visible, so I decided to organize an outreach there.

Our first "Starwalk" at Westwood Lake was on Friday, Sept 2 and was run by Jeff, Rich and I.  We had two green laser pointers and used them to point out constellations, stars and other objects in the night sky along with…

Here is a shot of the upper ring assembly of the big 'scope. The chair will give you some idea of the scale.  It lacks the eyepiece mount and focusser assembly, as well as the spider.

 …

Starting with our September 22 meeting, we are going to set up a telescope "swap and shop" table at our regular meetings. 

As our members upgrade and buy new telescope equipment,  previous equipment is sometimes no longer needed but still in great shape.  At our regular meetings, our members can bring in…