Sign me up for this workshop
Astronomy Tools of the Trade
September 1
3:00 p.m.
- 9:30 p.m.
(includes dinner)
$85.00
This presentation is a follow-up of the first one (“From Back Yard
to Black Holes”, Aug. 25) but can be enjoyed separately. Being aware
of the unimaginably cold, dark vastness of space can help us value the
beauty of our fragile Earth and our role on it. In this presentation we
will explore some more detailed facts and thoughts when we try making sense
of the universe. Much of this presentation will be accompanied by high-resolution
photographs and videos projected on a big screen. We’ll explore the
following topics:
· The basics, terminology, sizes and distances, the strange properties
of light.
· Next, we’ll get out the Star Charts to understand their
purpose and workings.
· It’s all in the glass: Optical Telescopes, what they can
and cannot do.
· Tune in to Radio Telescopes -more than meets the eye…!
co-ordinator: Randy McAllister
Sure Randy McAllister has a day job; but it’s during the dark hours
that he gets really active as his alter ego Astrorandy: Owner Operator
of the Thunder Bay Observatory, a local facility he almost single-handedly
designed and built. The observatory aims to educate, entertain and do
research in the field of astronomy, with a special interest in photographing “deep
sky” stellar objects. There are tens of thousands of these, from
planets and moons to stellar clusters and super novae – and anything
in between.
Born and raised right here Randy soon found out that Thunder Bay is also
a great place to be for an astronomer: this area is one of the very few
that has virtually no light pollution from big urban centres. In other
words: up here we can still see the stars, and lots of them, too. In order
to keep it that way, Randy is an environmental advocate primarily by campaigning
to reduce the carbon-dioxide (CO2) gasses in our atmosphere so we can
keep seeing things clearly.
Randy is has been an amateur astronomer for about 21 years now, and is
currently president of the Local Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
astronomy club. He likes his nights crisp and clear.
www.ThunderBayObservatory.com
