At the start of this summer, I saw an ad for a public lecture at a local astronomy club. It was just one of many different types of events to celebrate “Canada 150” – the 150th anniversary of Canada – taking place all across the country throughout the year.
What intrigued me about this one was that the club was going to allow members of the public access to the very large telescope inside its observatory… to view the rings of Saturn, and maybe some other celestial bodies, if the sky wasn’t too cloudy.
Named the Bellevue Observatory, this club has a Meade LX200 14″ telescope inside a 10′ dome. They built it in “the darkest area on the island of Montréal”(1), which happens to be a short drive from where I live.
So I talked my husband into coming to the public event with me, and we enjoyed the whole evening – more than we thought we would! The lecture (indoors) was really interesting, and we loved seeing a couple of planets through the club’s observatory; it was worth having to line up for a few minutes!
The observatory telescope was set up to first view one object, Saturn to start, and then folks would line up to see that. Then they’d move that large telescope to view another celestial body, and so on…
A few weeks later, this local branch of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC)(2) had another public event for Canada 150. This time, not only would we be able to look through their observatory telescope, but members of the RASC Montreal Centre were going to allow visitors to look through their own telescopes.
Different club members brought their telescopes, and set them up to view different celestial bodies, so visitors would be able to see many more objects than through the observatory.
This time we brought a friend who was visiting from the US, and we all tried several different telescopes; a well as the large observatory telescope. One couple had just bought a second-hand telescope, and had it set up to view the moon.
I was completely amazed by the quality of the images, surprised that I could see such detail of the moon with a portable telescope. Later that week, I joined the local chapter of RASC, so that my husband and I could attend their non-public lectures and events during the year.
And I mentioned to my husband that it would be nice to try to find a second-hand telescope when we retire. Once you buy the equipment, there’s no cost in viewing the sky – not like going to see movies!
When he won a few hundred dollars a few months later, he offered to use it to buy us a telescope; as a combined Christmas gift. Our new ‘toy’ was delivered last week, and the sky was clear enough to try it out for the first time tonight – right on the little balcony off our dining room!
We’d already decided not to put it away for Christmas, because it’s too big to wrap 🙂 We’re still not used to properly focusing the telescope, and I soon realized that it’s going to be a challenge for me to adjust it without using my right hand (which is affected by a rare disease called CRPS (Complex Regional Pain Syndrome).
Like much else about living with a rare disease; things you used to do, without even thinking about it, become challenging. After we were finally able to focus the telescope on the moon, we were again amazed by the views of its surface.
To give you an idea of what we could see, I held my phone up to the eyepiece and snapped a photo. The photo’s blurry because I was shivering (it was cold out!), so it doesn’t do justice to the view we had from the telescope. But it gives you an idea of what we could see.
And, Murphy’s Law, the weather service is forecasting rain and clouds for the next few nights; we’ll have to wait a few days before we can use the telescope again!
References:
(1) RASC Montréal Centre: http://www.rascmontreal.org/moon/about-us-3/
(2) Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC): https://www.rasc.ca/