Upcoming Events at the Mississauga Centre – Royal Astronomical Society of Canada

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Members Night – Friday April 12, 2013

Tonight at 8:00 pm

The next members meeting of the RASC Mississauga Centre will be held this 
Friday April 12 from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. at The University of Toronto,
Mississauga Campus, in room 1140 in the Communication, Culture and
Technology Building (around the corner from the Davis building).



Park in lot 9, close to the CCT building. (Parking rate: $2 per hour.) Look
for the Mississauga Centre sign in front of the lecture room.

Members meetings typically include short presentations made by Mississauga
centre members. All of our meetings at UTM are free and open to everyone.



HOST: LESLIE STRIKE



PRESENTATIONS



LESLIE STRIKE: Pictures from her trip to Alaska.



SIMON CLAUGHTON: The Story of Motorola - An Interesting Radio Company.



Started with an idea in 1929, from the mid 1930`s through to today Motorola
has been and is still one of the leading suppliers of consumer and
commercial radio equipment. During the hey-day of the 1950s to the 1970s
Motorola was the leading radio communication company in America. It
pioneered many of the technologies that we take for granted today.



--- BREAK ---



ANDREW OPALA – Finding Star Parties and planning trips in North America

VIDEO: The UNIVERSE. (John Percy talked about this last meeting).

 NAtional Film Board - 1960

“A triumph of film art, creating on the screen a vast, awe-inspiring picture oft the universe as it would appear to a voyager through space, this film was among the sources used by Stanley Kubrick in his “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Realistic animation takes you into far regions of space, beyond the reach of the strongest telescope, past Moon, Sun and Milky Way into galaxies yet unfathomed.” After the meeting, join us at Crabby Joe's at the South Common Mall for more
fun.


Upcoming Events at the Mississauga RASC

/

Members Night – Friday April 12, 2013 8:00 pm

The next members meeting of the RASC Mississauga Centre will be held this
Friday April 12 from 8:00 to 10:00 p.m. at The University of Toronto,
Mississauga Campus, in room 1140 in the Communication, Culture and
Technology Building (around the corner from the Davis building).



Park in lot 9, close to the CCT building. (Parking rate: $2 per hour.) Look
for the Mississauga Centre sign in front of the lecture room.

Members meetings typically include short presentations made by Mississauga
centre members. All of our meetings at UTM are free and open to everyone.



HOST: LESLIE STRIKE



PRESENTATIONS



LESLIE STRIKE: Pictures from her trip to Alaska.



SIMON CLAUGHTON: The Story of Motorola - An Interesting Radio Company.



Started with an idea in 1929, from the mid 1930`s through to today Motorola
has been and is still one of the leading suppliers of consumer and
commercial radio equipment. During the hey-day of the 1950s to the 1970s
Motorola was the leading radio communication company in America. It
pioneered many of the technologies that we take for granted today.



--- BREAK ---



Andrew Opala – Finding Star Parties and planning trips in North America

VIDEO: The UNIVERSE. (John Percy talked about this last meeting).

 National Film Board 1960

“A triumph of film art, creating on the screen a vast, awe-inspiring picture oft the universe as it would appear to a voyager through space, this film was among the sources used by Stanley Kubrick in his “2001: A Space Odyssey”. Realistic animation takes you into far regions of space, beyond the reach of the strongest telescope, past Moon, Sun and Milky Way into galaxies yet unfathomed.”

After the meeting, join us at Crabby Joe's at the South Common Mall for more
fun.


If you are a member and would like to make a presentation at an upcoming 
members meeting, please contact our members meeting coordinator, Memmtg@mississauga.rasc.ca.

We hope to see you there on Friday.



UPCOMING MEETINGS / EVENTS



Please note the room change for meetings at UTM in April, May and June: Room
1140 in the Communication, Culture and Technology Building, The closest
parking is in lot 9.



Tue Apr 16 or Wed Apr 17: Public Star Party at the Riverwood Conservancy.

 8:00 - 9:30

Fri Apr 26: Speaker at UTM - Dr Ray Carlberg U of T, 8:00 pm

Title: The Startling Speedup 
of the Expansion of the Universe


Starting with some very simple ideas Einstein built up a theory of gravity which dethroned Newton. Applied to the whole universe Einstein's theory predicts that it is either expanding or contracting, which Hubble found to be expanding. The theory also predicts that the matter in the universe should be causing to the rate of expansion to slow. New ideas of the early universe introduced in the 1980's indicated that the expansion could be accelerating, which Einstein had allowed in his equations. In 2011 the Nobel prize for Physics was awarded for the 1998 discovery that the expansion of the universe was accelerating.

Fri May 10: Members at UTM.

 8:00 pm

Tue May 21 or Wed May 22: Public Star Party at the Riverwood Conservancy.

 8:30 - 10:00

Fri May 24: Speaker at UTM - Dr. Michel Fich U of Waterloo 8:00 pm

Title: Observing the Universe
 from the High Atacama Desert



The most active branch of observational astronomy today is the far-infrared/submillimeter waveband. Water in the Earth's atmosphere blocks this light from reaching most of the Earth's surface but this can at least partially be overcome by observing at very high and dry sites. Currently nearing completion on the high plateau of the Atacama desert in Chile, ALMA will be a "world observatory" capable of seeing incredible detail with amazing sensitivity. Some recent results with ALMA will be highlighted in this talk. However the next generation giant submillimeter telescope, CCAT, will be main focus of the talk this evening. Canada is a major partner in this exciting new project. This talk will show why CCAT will be so powerful and a perfect complement to ALMA. Fri Jun 7: Speaker Night at UTM Note: the lecture will take place in lecture hall 110 in the Instructional Centre.

David Levy

Title: A Nightwatchman’s Journey: My adventures as a comet discoverer and skywatcher.

Local total solar eclipse visible in eleven years!

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Eleven years from today - April 8, 2024, Mississauga and the rest of Southern Ontario will be thrust into darkness during the mid-afternoon.

At 3:18, the Sun will appear as a very thin crescent with the Moon covering 98.6% of its face. The Moon's shadow will appear in the south over Lake Ontario blackening the southern sky. People south of the lake, around Niagara Falls and Buffalo will experience a total solar eclipse. Totality will last approximately 3 minutes 45 seconds.

Those interested in seeing a Total Solar Eclipse before 2024 can travel south to the central USA in August 2017.

Members of the Mississauga Centre of the RASC have been discussing forming an organized expedition to see the August 21, 2017 eclipse. No details yet but it would involve meeting at a prescribed location along the centre line to watch it as a group. The path crosses the continental USA with maximum eclipse taking place in Kentucky.

This total eclipse will last approximately 2.5 minutes. This history of this eclipse is interesting. Solar eclipses occur with some regularity in a sort of a petter called the saros cycle. Every 18 years or so the same eclipse path is traced out on the surface of the Earth, but at a different longitude. This eclipse in 2017 is of the same saros as the August 1999 eclipse which was seen in Europe, the July 1981 eclipse in Siberia and the July 1963 eclipse which was seen in Canada.

Here is a film (without audio) of that eclipse.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCKsYS8bK68

From Hokkaido to Halifax some astronomers raced across Canada in the DC-8 jet to get a longer view of it. All observers saw the two spectacular effects known as the "diamond ring" and "bailey's beads." The diamond ring effect which comes just before and after the total eclipse is when the last or first sunlight shines from a valley on the moon. CBS News Archives.

So start to make plans for the 2017 and 2024 total solar eclipses.

And lets us know which total solar eclipses you have seen.

Randy Attwood Earthshine