President’s Message – April 2024

Posted by as President's Message

What else can I write about or even talk about other than that celestial event that took place on April 8?

I had seen the 1979 eclipse in Manitoba and the 2017 eclipse in Oregon. After 2017, all us eclipse addicts faced a difficult decision: where should we go to see the 2024 total solar eclipse? The decision wasn’t simple because of the path of this eclipse and the fact that April weather is more problematical than the August weather conditions in 2017.

In part because of the pandemic, I didn’t make arrangements for the eclipse years in advance as I had done for 2017. As 2024 dawned, I concluded it was too late to arrange a trip to Mexico or Texas for a reasonable price. I know many people in Toronto, but I felt that too many people chasing the eclipse in Hamilton and environs might complicate things. So I decided to go to Windsor, Ontario, just outside the path of totality. We have relatives there, and it would be relatively easy to cross the border there to chase the eclipse in Ohio if necessary. But it was still a big gamble, and I made sure I had other things to do to justify the trip.

As April 8 got closer, weather predictions called for clouds in southern Ontario, and when I arrived in Toronto on April 4, I was greeted with cold, cloudy and rainy weather. Two days before the eclipse as Audrey and I made our way to Windsor, the skies cleared. Things were looking more promising, but clouds were still predicted for the eclipse.

The night before, the prediction was still more promising for Ohio than the Windsor area, and Ohio locations were closer to the centreline of the eclipse, which promised a longer period of totality. I prepared to cross the border.

April 8 dawned in Windsor with blue skies. The forecast still called for clouds in the mid afternoon, when the eclipse was due to take place. The forecasts for Ohio called for longer periods of cloudiness in the afternoon, which I feared meant thicker clouds, and so I decided to stay in Canada.

Audrey and I, along with her sister and her husband, drove south from Windsor through Amherstberg into the path of totality. Many eclipse chasers in the area were already arriving in Point Pelee Park, which was closer to the centreline but involved very limited access, so I thought we might set up in Leamington. Before we got there, we found a great spot to watch the eclipse at Colchester Harbour and Beach. The RASC Windsor Centre had set up tents and telescopes there, a restaurant, coffee shop and other facilities were nearby, and scores of people were already settling in to watch the eclipse over Lake Erie.

Looking south across Lake Erie, we saw a bank of clouds that everyone hoped would stay where it was. But true to the prediction, the clouds moved our way and covered the sun as the partial phase of the eclipse began a little before 1 p.m. Fortunately, the clouds weren’t very thick.

Finally, at about 3:12 p.m., totality began. We were amongst the first to see totality that day from Canadian soil. The transition from needing eclipse glasses to full totality with the naked eye seemed to be prolonged to me, but finally we got our 90 seconds of totality and dark skies. Venus was plainly visible through the thin layer of cloud, but I don’t recall seeing Jupiter or any other celestial object. The incandescent but not overpowering glow of the Sun’s corona took centre stage.

In the moments before and after totality, the lighting of the area took on a strange hue. During totality, my viewpoint overlooking Lake Erie allowed me to see the approaching “sunset” to the west and the receding “sunrise” to the east. During this time, I took a couple of photos of the sun and of the light effects around the horizon with my iPhone, and I set up my iPad to film totality. I wanted to spend most of totality enjoying the view rather than messing with cameras.

All too soon, totality was over, and soon people started to leave. We remained for most of the rest of the eclipse to savour the incredible spectacle. By the time we got back to Windsor, all the clouds had disappeared. So had the crowds, and as a result we encountered no traffic jams.

The hours and days that followed became a gigantic debrief on this event. Who got a good view of the eclipse? Who got skunked by the weather? The evening of April 8 I joined many of you in an online Astronomy Café.

It turned out that Joe Carr, John McDonald and Bill Weir got a great look at the eclipse from their cruise ship, The Discovery Princess, and the poor weather in Texas inspired Leslie Welsh to stop in Arkansas to catch the eclipse. Thicker clouds in the Niagara region obscured the eclipse for Jill Sinkwich and Lauri Roche. Marje Welchframe saw parts of the eclipse through clouds in Kingston. The weather was much better in the Montreal area, to the delight of Randy Enkin, Chris Purse, and Brian and Nathan Hellner-Mestelman. Alex Schmid had clear skies in Sherbrooke. The clouds parted for Clayton Uyeda in New Brunswick.

Victoria Centre members’ photos of the 2024 Total Solar Eclipse.

Back in Victoria, David Lee, Kirsten Pedersen and others entertained a good crowd at a rainy Centre of the Universe during the partial solar eclipse here.

Before I came home, I heard about RASC Executive Director Jenna Hinds’ successful eclipse trip to Illinois. A few days later I attended a meeting of the RASC Mississauga Centre in person, and I heard about more experiences along the path of totality, including the troubled weather in Texas, which also affected our good friend Peter Jedicke from the London Centre.

So the viewing conditions for the 2024 total solar eclipse turned out to be less than perfect but better than most of us could have hoped for.

Now the question arises – when is the next one? August 12, 2026, in Greenland, Iceland and Spain. In North America, the wait will go on until August 23, 2044. How long will our waits go on? Those decisions are for another time.

President’s Message – March 2024

Posted by as Memories & history, President's Message

Usually Victoria Centre Presidents serve two years and then move on to something else. Right now, things are a little different. Randy Enkin has just wrapped up three years as President and shifted to other jobs in the centre, including editing SkyNews.

Chris Gainor on Observatory Hill
Chris Gainor on Observatory Hill

When I agreed to return to the Centre President’s job after having served in that position from 2002 to 2004, I reflected on what has changed and not changed since those days when we managed to get by without smartphones and social media. Many members from that time are still active, some have left us, and at least one prominent member of today wasn’t even born yet.

In 2002 I succeeded David Lee as President and two years later handed off to Scott Mair. Scott had come to Victoria in 2001 to open up the Centre of the Universe at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory, which during those years operated under the wing of the National Research Council.

Two decades ago, we had our monthly meetings in the basement of the Elliott Building at UVic, but we adjourned to the lounge on the fourth floor for our library, and coffee and cookies, as we still do. Astro Cafes took place at Sandy Barta’s place on Fridays and later in Bruno Quenneville’s basement. Sid Sidhu hosted beginning observers at his home in Highlands, and Bill Almond led astro imaging meetings at his observatory in Colwood.

Our Star Parties took place at the Victoria Fish and Game Association just off the Malahat. Our annual banquets happened in November at the Gorge Vale Golf Club. Astronomy Days took place at the Royal BC Museum. Many Victoria Centre members attended the 2003 RASC General Assembly in Vancouver.

Mars made its closest passage to Earth in our lifetimes in August 2003. We drew big crowds to Cattle Point for viewing the Red Planet that week. Blaire Pellatt brought sidewalk astronomy to the streets of Victoria. We lost Ernie Pffanenschmidt and John Howell in 2003.  

Celebrating RASC Victoria Centre's 90th anniversary in 2004 - George Ball, John Climenhaga and Chris Gainor cut the cake.
Celebrating RASC Victoria Centre’s 90th anniversary in 2004 – George Ball, John Climenhaga and Chris Gainor cut the cake.

Our Centre celebrated its 90th birthday in 2004 with a cake that was cut by myself and two Honorary Presidents who have since left us, George Ball and Prof. John Climenhaga. A big centre project that year was relocating George’s telescope dome and his equipment. Our Centre website had migrated the year before to a private ISP after having been hosted on the Victoria Freenet. Joe Carr succeeded David Lee as Webmaster.

In those years, the most popular discussion topic in the Victoria Centre was our desire to build a centre observatory in a time when real estate was already pricey. Early in 2004, talk turned to action when our centre formed an Observing Site Committee chaired by Dave Bennett, along with Bruno Quenneville, David Lee, Sandy Barta, and myself as members.

Four years later, the efforts of our members, including many not on the original committee, bore fruit when the Victoria Centre Observatory opened — with a big assist from the NRC — on Little Saanich Mountain near the DAO and the Centre of the Universe.

In a future message, I will discuss my involvement in the RASC in the two decades between 2004 and this spring, our Centre’s 110th anniversary. But in the meantime, my attention is shifting to a major celestial event that will take place on April 8.

Chris Gainor, President@Victoria.RASC.ca

President’s Message – Feb 2024

Posted by as President's Message

Chris Gainor on Observatory Hill - May 7, 2022
Chris Gainor on Observatory Hill

This message marks my return to the presidency of the Victoria Centre after nearly 20 years away from the job. While it is not unprecedented for someone to serve separate terms as President of the Victoria Centre, it has only happened a handful of times in our 110 years of existence.

The Victoria Centre and the RASC in general have just gone through four very difficult years due to the COVID-19 pandemic and its after-effects.

We had to give up in person meetings and events for much of that time. Many in person activities returned in 2022, and last year, our monthly meetings at the University of Victoria and our annual banquet came back. One very positive legacy of the pandemic for our centre is the set of changes to our weekly Astronomy Café gatherings, which kept us going through the difficult days of lockdowns and can now can be attended in person or by Zoom.

Many people made it possible for the Victoria Centre to get through the past four years – including Reg Dunkley and Randy Enkin, who both served as President during that time, including an unprecedented three years in that office for Randy. They had help from many other people, many of whom still serve on the Centre Council. I would like to thank them all.

I’m very pleased to note that one of those members who has worked quietly and effectively in the background for many years – Alex Schmid – is receiving a long overdue recognition this year in the form of the Newton-Ball Award.

It can be argued that the Victoria Centre is now stronger and better than it was when the pandemic started in 2020. There’s Astronomy Café, much-needed updates to our constitution and governance, and continued improvements to the Victoria Centre Observatory. And many of our members, notably Lauri Roche, have worked hard to get the Friends of the DAO and the Centre of the Universe through the pandemic years.

I deserve very little credit for this great work at the Centre level, since I have been volunteering mainly at the National level over the past decade. As we all know, the pandemic landed a few direct hits on the National society that are still being absorbed, and I am continuing to help out there as Chair of the Editorial Board. Lauri and our National Reps are also doing a great job ensuring that our Centre is prominent in National affairs.

This year we can look forward to exciting events such as the April 8 solar eclipse and International Astronomy Day on May 18 at the Royal BC Museum, as well as challenges like our Star Party this summer.

I’m glad to be rejoining my many friends in the Victoria Centre as we carry on our work sharing astronomy with our community and with our own explorations of the universe.

President’s Message – October 2023

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It’s October! The nights are longer. The moon is higher. And lots of events are happening for our amateur astronomy community.

The big one is the Annular Solar Eclipse which will happen on the morning of Saturday October 14. The moon will nibble away at the sun starting at 8:07AM, half an hour after sunrise in the east. The maximum here will be at 9:19AM with a whopping 85% of the sun in eclipse. And the show is over at 10:38AM.

Ring of Fire - Cedar City, Utah on May 20, 2012

The Victoria Centre is not running any official viewings. Members are invited to help the Friends of the DAO with their Eclipse Breakfast at the Centre of the Universe. Note, we have 1,000 solar-viewing glasses to hand out, so we encourage members to go to good east-viewing sites (e.g., Clover Point, Cattle Point, Mount Tolmie) with a handful of these glasses. Contact me (email) or Lauri Roche (email) to get your glasses. Lauri will also be handing them out at the University on October 11.

What a great segué! Finally, after a 3½ year hiatus, we are back to holding monthly Wednesday evening talks at the University of Victoria. The first will be on Wednesday October 11, at 19:30, in the Bob Wright Centre, Lecture Theatre A104. We have a very exciting speaker, Christian Marois, who led the international team of astronomers that first imaged extrasolar planets. His topic is “The NRC NEW EARTH Laboratory, and the Quest to Develop the Tools to Find Life on Exoplanets”. Let’s have a big crowd join in this talk. And afterwards, everybody is welcome to chat in the Astronomy lounge in the Elliott building, and have access to our library for the first time since the lockdown. Many thanks to Alex Shmid and Reg Dunkley for organizing the event.

After a 2-week break, the weekly Monday evening Astro Café continues on October 16 with Jeff Pivnick as our host. Join online with Zoom, or better still join in person at the Fairfield Community Centre and enjoy the cookies!

The last point I am pleased to make is that the Victoria Centre Observatory is up and running better than ever. Use the wonderful telescopes up there or bring your own, and join the community looking at the sky together. Note that you must be on the “Active Observers List” to be allowed up to the VCO (Members Only). Contact our Membership Chair, Chris Purse (membership@victoria.rasc.ca) to get on the list. Members on the Active Observers List get emailed when the sky is predicted to be clear and one of the Members in Charge opens it up.

We are so fortunate to have such a vital community in the Victoria Centre. Do seize the opportunities.

And as always,
Look Up!
Randy Enkin (email)

President’s Message – March 2023

Posted by as President's Message

Randy Enkin
Randy Enkin

I’ve been something of an amateur astronomer since I was little. I like to say it was the Apollo missions that sparked my interest – all my friends wanted to be astronauts – but I thought the astronomers on the ground had the really interesting jobs. My observations of lunar phases started back in 1990 and I have dabbled in other astronomical projects since. After the 2017 Solar Eclipse, I decided to buy a better telescope, and then another, and now we’re at a dozen!

But the biggest thing that happened after the eclipse, was getting invited to give at talk at the Victoria Centre Astro Cafe. And I got to meet this wonderful community – this set of interesting and entertaining people. And then, two years ago, you elected me President of the Victoria Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. There’s nothing like being president to get to know people and learn what’s going on in a group! Fortunately, our community is strong with enthusiasm and volunteerism. We get stuff done!

We successfully made the transformation to online events and then to hybrid events. We have continued outreach events, such as the International Astronomy Day, the Saanich Fair, and the Fall Fairfield. We have started new programs like our Special Interest Groups and the Sky Darkness Survey. We have combined our star party with the Cowichan Valley Starfinders’ star party to develop a unified Island Star Party, which we hope can thrive for decades.

We have successfully developed and ushered in a new set of bylaws, to bring our community into the electronic age and provide for a smaller, more supple board of directors. And we have a promising set of executives and directors nominated to lead us into the future.

Thank-you for two excellent years. I often feel more like a cheerleader than a leader. But mostly, I feel I have found my people. I look forward to seeing photos and sketches of the sky: in emails, social media, and in SkyNews. I love learning about the sky at Astro Cafe. I love having people with whom I can share my learning about astronomy.

As we look forward to the new year of the Victoria Centre, we also remember to Look Up!

Look Up,
Randy Enkin, President@Victoria.RASC.ca

President’s Message – December 2022

Posted by as President's Message

We are members of this venerable institution because we share a bond of fascination with the wonders of the sky. I don’t think any of us joined the Centre to worry about the details of how it runs.

These are the opening lines of an email I sent on December 10 to all the Members of the Victoria Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada. We are proposing a new Constitution and Bylaws to run the Victoria Centre. Did you receive it? Please read it! I hope we explain well enough why the amendments are necessary and how they will make our centre operate better.

Randy Enkin using his sextant
Randy Enkin using his sextant

The Victoria Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada was founded in 1914. We’ve been through a lot! But all organizations need to ride with the times. The fact that we now communicate electronically has to be acknowledged and embraced by our bylaws. But once we opened the doors to an amendment, then it became clear that there are many other issues to modernize or fix.

Fortunately we have some remarkable members in the Victoria Centre, who understand how constitutions and bylaws are supposed to be worded. The committee which produced the amendments was chaired by our vice president, Dave Payne, who has experience running non-profit organizations. The other members of the committee are our secretary, Jill Sinkwich, who had previously worked for the Ministry of Finance on the BC Societies Act; our Membership Chair, Chris Purse, who participated in writing the previous version of the bylaws and is a font of institutional memory; Dan Posey, who has experience writing provincial legislation; and me, president and cheerleader for this group of awesome hardworking members.

We request that you read and provide comments on the draft Constitution and Bylaws by January 15, 2023 to Secretary@Victoria.RASC.ca. We particularly need to know if there are issues that would prompt you to vote against adoption of the bylaws at the upcoming Special General Meeting, which will be scheduled in February. The Bylaws must be passed with a special resolution of the centre by a 2/3 vote.

We know they are not perfect, but we feel that they are a significant improvement over what we are currently working under.

Look Up,
Randy Enkin, President@Victoria.RASC.ca

President’s Message – October 2022

Posted by as President's Message

It has been five years since the astronomy bug caught me big. After the August 21, 2017 solar eclipse, I started looking for a telescope to replace my old Tasco refractor. I was close to buying a used C8 Schmidt Cassegrain, but couldn’t figure out how I could fit it in my house (or life). My first “new” telescope was an adequate little Newtonian, and since then I have acquired many telescopes, mounts, and accessories; never spending more than $150 at a time, to make a Frankenscope that works for me.

During that exciting autumn of 2017, I met Lauri Roche at a science outreach event and she invited me to give a talk at the RASC Victoria Centre Astro Cafe about a “gizmo” I developed for my telescope. Soon after, I joined the Society and made friends with many of you at Astro Cafe. With the Pandemic, our online events became important social activities for me. We’ve been doing outreach and in-reach events together. We have been a wonderful supportive community, which I now treasure.

In the autumn of 2020, our then president, Reg Dunkley, sent out a desperate plea for new council members, and in particular somebody who would step up to be our next president. I felt I was still a newbie, but the community was important to me and I did step up. I’ve been having a wonderful time working with this group, and I’m looking forward to many more roles I can take to keep our programs going and growing. But I am approaching the end of my second year as president and according to our bylaws, we need a new person to put their name forward as president. We have several other Council positions to fill as well.

So here is my plea – my desperate plea: please volunteer for our council! The roles are not onerous and we have a strong volunteer base to get things done. The past executives are all very helpful and supportive, so no one needs to feel they are all alone. But our society cannot function without people in the key positions and I know there are several of you reading this not thinking that you could be one of them. You can.

You should directly contact Reg, who as Past-President (pastpres@victoria.rasc.ca) is in charge of council nominations. But we know that few people ever volunteer on their own initiative. Please don’t be surprised or unhappy if you get a call from one of us. We need you. We appreciate you. We’ll have fun with you!

Look Up,
Randy Enkin, President@Victoria.RASC.ca

President’s Message – August 2022

Posted by as President's Message

Summer Outreach

Saturn
Saturn

I had the pleasure of spending a Saturday evening with Sherry Buttnor, demonstrating the 16 inch reflector up at the Centre of the Universe. It is humbling being in the dome with her, as Sherry has been operating and demonstrating the 16 inch since 1987! For most of the time, we had the telescope trained on the moon. Once the moon got too low, we moved to M13 – the Hercules cluster. Everybody who looked in the eyepiece exclaimed some version of “Wow!” Sherry often told the people, “You’ll never look at the moon the same way from now on.”

Brock Johnston that night had one of the 8″ Dobsonians set up behind the Plaskett Telescope, with a steady stream of people coming for a glimpse of Saturn. A woman who had never before seen Saturn through a telescope said she was in tears afterwards, she was so awestruck.

Astronomy outreach is fun! The people who come to star parties and other
outreach events are keen to learn, and they appreciate our efforts to help them see the sky. Sometimes it feels like a lot of work, but once you are at it, it is a real high.

So make the decision to help out at our outreach events!

  • We need people for Saturday nights at the Centre of the Universe (contact Garry Sedun, vp2@victoria.rasc.ca); especially if you are willing to set up your telescope.
  • We need volunteers for the Vancouver Island Star Party, an hour north of Victoria at Bright Angel Park, August 26-27 (contact Dave Payne, vp@victoria.rasc.ca). Also, plan to go to the star party – Dave has been working with the Cowichan Valley Starfinders Astronomy Club to create an excellent program of speakers and events.
  • We need volunteers for the Saanich Fair at the Saanich Fairgrounds, September 3-5 (contact Lauri Roche, roche.lauri@gmail.com).
  • We need volunteers for the Fall Fairfield, Sept. 25, right outside our Astro Cafe venue at the Sir James Douglas School yard (contact Reg Dunkley, pastpres@victoria.rasc.ca).

At these events, you can typically take a shift of a couple of hours and answer questions from the eager public. I have seen members with the whole range of background and experience taking on these roles, and everybody has done well. Just show a bit of the enthusiasm that I know all RASC Victoria Centre members have.

Look Up,
Randy Enkin, President@Victoria.RASC.ca

President’s Message – July 2022

Posted by as President's Message

Randy Enkin - Luna Cognita
Randy Enkin – Luna Cognita

The first science images from the James Webb Space Telescope were released to huge fanfare last week. I’m not surprised that my social media was filled with the news, commentary, analysis, and silly memes. My favourite is the melding of Van Gogh’s Starry Night into the SMACS 0723 galaxy cluster. What surprised me was how much the images caught on with the general public. The images are indeed beautiful, and the public relations teams know how to get the message right. But there is a clearly a desire, a fascination to follow the story of this telescope and its potential.

I used to be “the general public”. When they went to the moon during the Apollo missions, I realized I had to learn all I could about astronomy. Most importantly, I decided to become a scientist. And through good fortune and a fair amount of work, I got to make a career as a research scientist – in geology rather than in astronomy, but my fascination with astronomy never left.

Is astronomy important? I really don’t know. But science and science literacy certainly is, and quite possibly the James Webb Space Telescope will attract the general public to find out more. People will look at the beautiful images and ask what is going on. They will learn about how 30 years of science and engineering went into producing the images. They will find out about the scientific edifice which has built up over millennia to place the new research in context.

The first batch of images masterfully span the range of subjects that the space telescope will research: the birth of stars, the death of stars, the structure of galaxies, and the early universe. The fifth image, or actually spectrum, reveals an application that could only have been dreamed of when the
instrument was designed – composition of an exoplanet spectrum.

Exoplanet: WASP-96 B

They weren’t even sure that exoplanets could be located when the space telescope was first designed.
We amateur astronomers get to play an important role as more space telescope data get released. Let’s keep up with the research and help our wider community understand what it means. Let’s help with outreach events whenever possible. Let’s do astronomy.

Astro Cafe Logo

On that note, the Victoria Centre Astro Café went virtual for two years. It was a tonic to our isolated lives during the worst of the covid-19 pandemic. Many thanks to Chris Purse and Joe Carr for their devoted work to keep Astro Café up and running so well! In May, we ran our first attempts at hybrid meetings, in person at the Fairfield Community Centre and online over Zoom. The response has been very positive, and we will continue the hybrid Astro Café format every Monday evening (except statutory holidays) at 19:30 starting September 12. WE NEED VOLUNTEERS. The roles are not onerous, but they are essential. Each evening we will need a host and a tech. Please be brave. Please be generous.

Look Up,
Randy Enkin, President@Victoria.RASC.ca

President’s Message – June 2022

Posted by as President's Message

This week, the citizens of the Earth were given a wonderful present. The Gaia Data Release 3 was publicized at 9 UT, June 13. And yes I was awake at 2 in the morning to watch the event. The Gaia satellite has been mapping 2 billion (!!!) points of lights in the sky – stars, galaxies, quasars, and solar system objects. They are measuring positions, distances, motions, colours, and spectra. For an Astro Café talk I prepared about the Gaia Data Release 2, I displayed a plot of the number and angular precision of catalogued stars. From the Hipparchus’ catalog of 1000 stars in 150 BCE to the best Earth-based collections from last century, there was a continuous but slow improvement. But with space-based measurements over the last 20 years, the catalogs have improved by orders of magnitude! And Gaia should continue collecting data through to 2025 to continue this trend.

Gaia Data Release 3 - group photo
Gaia Data Release 3 – group photo

The branch of amateur astronomy pejoratively labeled “armchair astronomy” sounds very passive, but we delight in the personal journey to discovery, which the professional astronomers afford us by collecting and analysing these extreme data sets. One of my passions is following the trajectory of knowledge from the early astronomical observations to the present. For example, I love to learn how the first stellar spectra measured in the 19th century led to Annie Jump Cannon’s stellar classifications (Only Bad Astronomers Forget Generally Known Mnemonics), leading to the Hertzsprung-Russell colour-magnitude diagram, and further leading to amazing insights such as the age of stars. And now such analyses can be extended to hundreds of millions of stars with the public release of the Gaia data.

The Gaia mission is akin to a gothic cathedral. It is a huge edifice, erected with major societal investment that was accomplished by many, many ordinary people who each do their small part. This edifice is a public good which inspires, and makes us bigger and better human beings.

Look Up,
Randy Enkin, President (email)