This year the Observer of the Year Award goes to Mike Noble—awarded posthumously, Mike having passed away in October. His passing was a shock to us all, if for no other reason than he was still posting Observing reports on Astro in August:

August 12 4:43 am

Hi Folks,
It’s now 4:40am and the NLC RA is now 345 to 040 and the altitude has grown to 10 degrees. The western half of this display has gotten brighter and is quite obvious to the naked eye. There is some dim NLC in the eastern side up to 15 degree altitude, but is a lot dimmer than the western end of this morning’s 37th NLC this season.

Michael Noble

He posted his first NLC observation on June 1st:

NLC #1 June 1, 3:45 am

Hi Folks,
It’s now 3:41 and tonight’s NLC display’s RA is now 320 to 100 and the highest point in altitude is 25 degrees. This an excellent display to start the 2022 season. I will probably go to 3:55 before I finish tonight’s capture of this display.

Michael Noble

Thirty seven sightings and recordings in 73 nights: you do the math.

Mike had previously been awarded Observer of the Year in 2015.

It is my honour to recognize his dedication and skill one last time with this year’s Observer of the Year Award for 2022. Accepting on behalf of Mike’s family is Alister Ling.

Our recipient this year is a visual observer with a difference: she makes meticulous logbook entries, including sketching what she sees at the eyepiece. And she shares them with us on Facebook, and on the Astro email group.

She does this for a noble purpose, right in line with our mission: as she said on a Facebook post on the Centre FB page exactly one year ago:

“I am thinking that this year I am going to start sharing my visual astronomy logbook entries in this site. I am hoping to motivate people new to the visual astronomy hobby by sharing my experiences. This way others can learn what is up in the sky, what can one see from the city etc … I hope that other visual astronomers will start sharing their observing sessions too.”

And so she did.

Keeping logbooks and sketching objects seen through a telescope has a long and honourable history, of course, going right back to Galileo.

Indeed, if Galileo were to come back today and become a member of our Centre—which he undoubtedly would—he would be amazed by our astroimagers, and I’m sure he would sign up for our Astroimaging cafes.

But he would want to go to dinner with the sketchers.

And sit right next to Berta Beltran.

It is my honour to present the 2021 Observer of the Year award to Berta Beltran.

Our center has a number of gifted observers. I read your reports on Astro or in Stardust and am impressed by your dedication and attention to detail, a skill that I must presume takes years effort to master. Of the reports I read one in particular jumped out at me, 2000 NCG’s. To accomplish that feat is something I could never imagine myself doing. This observer has also conceived and executed a Messier marathon – marathon where 110 objects are observed and running 42km in a single night. I have to sit down for a few minutes after just setting my scope up. So this year’s Observer of the Year award goes to Warren Finlay.

While it is said a picture is worth a thousand words, it takes a real talent to use words to paint a picture in one’s mind. While an observation can be a solitary thing, a well written report of an observation can be shared. For years now this award recipient has put his observations into such descriptive text, that the reader cannot help but see what the observer saw with their own eye. I have long admired the recipients writing of his observations, as they normally tell not just what was seen but why and how the subject observed came to be. I was very much in admiration of his report of daylight occultation of Venus by the crescent Moon on July 31 that, even though there was no photograph, was a first rate example of observational reporting, and for this and many more such reports I award the 2019 Observer of the year to Bruce McCurdy.

Janey Yu

It has been really fantastic seeing Janey’s skills as an observer develop over the last couple of years. She is an enthusiastic binocular and naked-eye observer. Lately she’s been viewing planets, moonrises, aurora, and atmospheric phenomena like light pillars.

At a time when telescopes are commonly computerized, and many people collect photons in their cameras instead of their eyes, it is refreshing to find someone who observes the cosmos without a CCD camera or a goto telescope. Larry Wood is legendary for his eagle-eyes and ability to identify faint fuzzies. Larry is a regular observer at Blackfoot, regularly brings his telescope out to the Victoria promenade for public observing, and answers all sorts of questions on the Astro email list.

I have known this member for almost 10 years, but I started to get to know him well at the David Thompson Bicentennial Star Party in Jasper when, observing through partly cloudy skies, we debated about the star Algieba (hence known as the great Algieba Fiasco of 2011). This person is an accomplished observer. In fact, this individual is a bit of a renaissance man – scientist, author, athlete, musician, observer, astroimager, and oh yeah, bagpiper. Over the years, this person has been the driving force for establishing a dark sky observatory for the Centre.

At one point during the 2015 Glacier Skywalk Astronomy Tour, the idea of combining a Messier Marathon with a running marathon came up. We were kidding around at the time, but it turned out this person was serious, because by March 2016, he and I found ourselves at La Perouse, Maui, Hawaii to conduct the first-ever Bimarathon – an event conceived by this person that combines the Messier Marathon (observing 110 deep-sky objects) and a regular running marathon (running 42.195 km).

Starting at sunset March 9, 2016, he began running and interspersed 6 running sessions with 5 telescope/binocular observing sessions, running a distance of 42.2 km and observing the required 110 deep-sky objects before local sunrise on March 10, 2016. He observed about half of the objects in a manually operated GenStar 10″ Dobsonian telescope and the remainder of the objects with binoculars, except for a handful that he observed naked eye.

For successfully completing this unique mental and physical challenge, it is my pleasure as a fellow observer, to award the Observer of the Year for 2016 to Warren Finlay.

This member challenged himself to observe and image as many nights as possible in 2015. Judging by his numerous posts to Astro, I would say he was out practically every clear night. He observes mostly with a camera, but Mike Noble is out just about every night putting on a lot of kilometers looking at something. During the 2015 noctilucent cloud season for example, he observed and imaged NLC’s on 44 of 49 nights during which NLC’s were present. His efforts to travel to clear skies and monitor the skies with digital cameras, yielded what is probably an all-time record for NLC sightings in one season. This avid observer also alerted many of us to auroral displays and routinely gave excellent descriptions of what he saw from many and varied places in Alberta. So, it is my pleasure to award the Observer of the Year for 2015 to Mike Noble.