RASC Regular Meeting
TELUS World of Science – Zeidler Dome
FREE and open to the public.

7:00 PM Pre-meeting mix and mingle.
7:30 PM Guest Speaker

“From Aunt Effie’s Farm to the Moon: The Apollo Program in Context.”

Dr. Robert Smith 

In December 1903, Orville Wright, in the presence of a small group of people, piloted the Wright Brothers’ experimental airplane for a flight of around 12 seconds in length that had carried him roughly 120 feet. Brief though it was, this was the first successful flight by a heavy-than-air flying machine. A mere 66 years later, in Jul.y 1969, as part of the Apollo Program, humans were walking, in view of many hundreds of millions of people around the Earth, on the surface of the Moon. In this talk, Robert Smith will examine how and why this astonishingly rapid development came about, as well as discuss the overall significance and place of the Apollo Program in history.

RASC Regular Meeting
TELUS World of Science – Zeidler Dome
FREE and open to the public.

7:00 PM Pre-meeting mix and mingle.
7:30 PM Guest Speaker

Photometry at Jasper Place High School        

Photometry is the study of variable stars.  These are stars that change in brightness for a variety of reasons including transiting exoplanets, star spots or intrinsic instability. At Jasper Place High School we have been observing variable stars and using a number of different tools to create light curves for some of them. Using Skynet, Muniwin, and AAVSO resources we took photos, identified variable stars and processed images of BL Cam. BL Cam is a rapidly pulsating variable star in the constellation Camelopardalis with a period of less than one hour. We already have plans for future projects to observe exoplanet transits! We can’t wait to share what we’ve learnt.