Astronomy Cafe – April 13, 2026

• Intro – Marjie Welchframe
• Sidewalk astronomy observing the Moon video – Natasha van Bentum
• Artemis II mission – Randy Enkin
  • Slideshow highlighting the recent mission
  • This mission launched on the Waning phase, unlike previous lunar missions
  • Flight track – 10 days
    • Trans-Lunar Insertion burn to leave Earth orbit
    • Loop around the dark side of the Moon
    • Free return trajectory back to Earth – no rocket burn required
  • Earth Set over the Moon
  • 5 hours of human and photo observations of the dark side of the Moon
  • Photo from ISS of Orion’s re-entry
  • Splashdown!
• Vancouver Island Regional Science Fair – Randy Enkin, Jared Qin
  • Discover Hidden Galaxy Mergers – poster by Jared Qin, 10th Grade SMUS – 2nd place
    • Hypothesis – train machine learning classifier to find currently invisible galaxy mergers
    • Lots of mergers are bing missed by current studies since they are too massive
    • Used both actual (Sloane) and simulated data
    • Compared results with Galaxy Zoo
    • Key finding: AO/A ratio
    • See Jared at Astronomy Day on the display floor
• Events
  • Astronomy Day – April 25 – David Lee, Lauri Roche, Ben Spiller
    • New Displays this year
    • Artemis Missions – Chris Gainor needs 1 or 2 volunteers
    • Giveaways – from Sid’s storage – all free
    • Display loading 8-9AM before the event starts.
    • Volunteers should contact david@victoria.rasc.ca or lauri@victoria.rasc.ca
  • RASC General Assembly – May 2-3 – Lauri Roche
    • Register and pay $25 for members
    • May 2 Saturday – presentations
    • May 3 Sunday – workshops
  • Telescope Clinic at the CU – May 2 – David Lee
• Telescopic Asterisms – David Lee
  • Use small telescopes or binoculars to observe
  • Sky & Telescope article by Stephen O’Meara
  • RASC’s World Asterism Project
• Astrophotos – Dave Payne
  • Supernova remnants in Cygnus – SHO wavelengths
  • A tour of the celestial features in the photo
  • Still exploring what is going on in this photo
  • Dave’s online gallery

Peter Jedicke is hosting Astronomy Cafe next week. He will profile the RASC London Centre, but local input is also most welcome!

Video recording of meeting.