RASC SPOTLIGHT
his past autumn, RASC archivist Randall Rosenfeld
approached me about taking a trip to Montreal to acquire
some telescopes.
RASC executive director Phil Grof and I decided it would
be an excellent opportunity to present at a Montreal Centre
meeting and visit Ottawa Centre executives.
Rosenfeld has been acquiring Canadian telescopes for the
soon-to-be Dorner Telescope Museum. While stopping
to acquire pieces, we met with two craftsmen: Normand
Fullum and Réal Manseau. Normand took us for a tour of
his workshop, showing us his massive vacuum chamber
where he coats his ultra-lightweight mirrors in aluminum,
and Réal showed us his armillary sphere constructed out
of brass.
Karim Jafer hosted us at Montreal Centre for a library
night, where RASC members and students alike are
welcome to attend for informal presentations, movies,
discussion and advice.
On our way home, we joined Ottawa Centre president
Mike Moghadam and national council representative
Karen Finstad for lunch outside Ottawa.
Everywhere we went we felt surrounded by kind and
welcoming people. We got to meet and speak with many
members of the RASC that we had not met before. hank
you to all who hosted us, and we look forward to visiting
more centres through 2020.he group discussed astrophotography processing prior to
our short presentations. It was incredible to see students
and members acting as elements of one single group. he
new Montreal President, Katherine Dulong, is a former
John Abbott College student.Following the meeting, the three of us stopped in the
parking lot of the school to take a quick look at the stars.
Even with light pollution from Montreal and plenty of
streetlamps to obscure the view, we got to see the Orion
Nebula and the Pleiades through binoculars. his was
Phil’s irst time out observing, and it made for a sponta-
neous and memorable end to an excellent evening.Phil Groff meets new Montreal Centre President Katherine Dulong.HAT’s off to teens using robotic telescope
As two students taking astronomy at John Abbott College,
we assumed most of our course projects would be theoreti-
cal or use second-hand research. As such, we were happy
to get a hands-on opportunity detecting an exoplanet
using he RASC’s Robotic Telescope.
To observe the exoplanet we used the transit method,
which identiies a dip in the apparent magnitude of a
star. his drop would mean that a planet crossed — or
transited — between the Earth and the star. With the
support of our RASC mentor Jenna Hinds, we tackled
this project in four steps.
We irst needed to select a candidate star to observe.
Searching a database from Swarthmore College, we found
a handful of targets, HAT-P-16b being our inal choice.
After selecting the target, the transit needed to be observed
and recorded. We used he RASC Robotic Telescope in
California. On October 23, 2019, Hinds recorded a sequence
of 480 images taken on a monochromatic camera.Originally, the scope of this project was overwhelming; we
had minimal knowledge on how to gather and analyze this
data. Hinds provided us with a library of video tutorials,
making each step clear.In the end, we didn’t just analyze information found online.
We produced our own data and conducted research based
on it. his task quickly became something we genuinely
wanted to succeed.We would deinitely recommend this project to any stu-
dents who enjoy astronomy and would like to delve into
its modern applications. While the task may initially seem
daunting, being guided when needed can improve the
process to make it not only a learning experience, but a
truly unforgettable and enriching one. •RASC outreach update
By Jenna Hinds, RASC youth outreach co-ordinator
By Chelsea Taiger
and Kristofer KaramSKYNEWS • MAR/APR 2020