The Ashcroft Manor Teahouse &  The Kamloops Astronomical Society Proudly Presents

FREE Public Astronomy Viewing Saturday, July 20th

Special Dinner Menu featuring:
Ribeye or New York Steak, Chicken Breast or Fresh Salmon

Dinner starts at 7:00 pm with astronomy viewing starting at 10:00pm

Profits from the Dinner will be donated to the Kamloops Astronomical Society

Call 250-453-9983 for more information

There will be a beautiful grouping of Venus, Jupiter and Mercury in the evening twilight in late May, with the tightest grouping occurring on May 26th. The best observing will likely be about 30 or 40 minutes after sunset.

Here's a link to more observing  information courtesy of Sky & Telescope

The KAS is planning on hosting a public observing night to celebrate Astronomy Day, and we intend to set up several telescopes at Albert McGowan Park in upper Sahali.

As we're reliant on the weather to cooperate for observing, we'll be making the attempt to observe on one of these two nights... Friday April 19th or Saturday April 20th, after 7:30pm.

Check back here for updates and confirmation as the date gets closer and the weather report is nailed down. Let's hope for clear skies on one of those nights so we can all have a look at Saturn and Jupiter!

Unfortunately the weather hasn't been very cooperative to try to catch a glimpse of Comet PanSTARRS, but it will be located due West in the twilight just after the sun sets. You'll need a low Western horizon and binoculars to catch this elusive comet.

Click here for a viewing guide if the clouds should clear!

From CBC News:

A Canadian telescope bigger than six NHL hockey rinks is expected to help scientists understand the expansion of the universe and the role of mysterious dark energy.

The $11-million project is being built at the Dominion Radio Astrophysical Observatory southwest of Penticton, B.C., where the official groundbreaking took place this week. The radio telescope will use components from the cellphone industry to capture and turn radio waves emitted six to 11 billion years ago into a massive three-dimensional map of a quarter of the observable universe — the biggest such map to date.

Read the full article here:
http://www.cbc.ca/news/technology/story/2013/01/25/tech-bc-radio-telescope-chime.html

From NASA:

PASADENA, Calif. - Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted what appears to be a miniature, extraterrestrial likeness of Earth's Nile River: a river valley on Saturn's moon Titan that stretches more than 200 miles (400 kilometers) from its "headwaters" to a large sea. It is the first time images have revealed a river system this vast and in such high resolution anywhere other than Earth.

Scientists deduce that the river, which is in Titan's north polar region, is filled with liquid hydrocarbons because it appears dark along its entire length in the high-resolution radar image, indicating a smooth surface.

"Though there are some short, local meanders, the relative straightness of the river valley suggests it follows the trace of at least one fault, similar to other large rivers running into the southern margin of this same Titan sea," said Jani Radebaugh, a Cassini radar team associate at Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah. "Such faults - fractures in Titan's bedrock -- may not imply plate tectonics, like on Earth, but still lead to the opening of basins and perhaps to the formation of the giant seas themselves."

The new image is available online at:
 http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/pia16197.html .

From Bad Astronomy:

Astronomers have announced they have found a planet orbiting one of the stars making up the most famous star in the sky: Alpha Centauri, the closest star system to our own! At 4.3 light years distant, this is far and away the closest exoplanet known… and of course, it has to be.

Alpha Centauri is triple-star system, composed of a binary star, two stars much like the Sun – one slightly larger and hotter, called Alpha Centauri A, and the other slightly smaller and cooler, called Alpha Centauri B – orbited themselves by a red dwarf (called Proxima Centauri) much farther out.

The planet orbits close in to Alpha Cen B, and is technically called Alpha Centauri Bb – planets have lower case letters assigned to them, starting at b. Its mass is only 1.13 times the Earth’s mass, making this one of the lower mass planets yet found! But don’t get your hopes up of visiting it – its period is only 3.24 days, meaning it must be only about 6 million kilometers (less than 4 million miles) from its star. Even though Alpha Cen B is a bit cooler than the Sun, this still means the planet is baking hot, far too hot to sustain any kind of life as we know it, or even liquid water.

Read the whole article here.