After a two-year absence, the Sunshine Coast astronomy club is bringing the popular Astronomy in the Park program back to Porpoise Bay Provincial Park in Sechelt on Sat. Aug. 11, 1-11:30pm. There will be club telescopes and displays. Weather permitting. The first “star” of the day will be the sun and, with the club’s safe ... Read More »
Category Archives: Stargazing
Feed SubscriptionMercury, Venus and Mars visible in April
By April 1, Venus will be an “evening star”, setting nearly two hours after the Sun. Mercury will be about 4° above Venus in the dusk. On April 2 Mars will pass 1 1/4° below Saturn just above the constellation Sagittarius. On April 7 the waning moon will hang 1° above Saturn in the morning ... Read More »
Venus and Mercury visible in March
Venus is slowly climbing in the evening sky through March and by the end of the month will be setting nearly two hours after the sun. At dusk between March 2 – 5 Venus and Mercury will be passing close to one another, and on March 3 will be only 1° apart low in the ... Read More »
Marking 30 years of looking at the sky
2018 marks the 150th Anniversary of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC), the 10th anniversary of our Sunshine Coast Centre, and the 30th anniversary of our Sunshine Coast Astronomy Club. Neil Sandy and Merle Gerbrandt put out a newspaper notice in September 1988, and 28 people showed up at a local hall and soon ... Read More »
Interplanetary dust to be visible
Starting Feb. 2, zodiacal light, sunlight scattered or reflected by interplanetary dust, will be visible in western evening sky for the next two weeks. On Feb. 7 the last-quarter moon with be 6° northwest of Jupiter at dawn. On Feb. 9 the waning crescent moon will be 4° northeast of Mars, and Mars will be ... Read More »
Behold the Supermoon!
The New Year begins with a Supermoon on Jan. 1 as the full moon reachs its closest approach to earth (perigee) in 2018 (356,565 km) at 6:24pm. The Quadrantid meteor shower, which radiates out of the constellation Boötes (close to the Big Dipper) will peak at 1pm on Jan. 3 but unfortunately this is only ... Read More »
Largest full moon of the year December 3rd
The Winter Solstice occurs on Dec. 21. The largest full moon of the year, the Great Moon, will be Dec. 3. Mercury will be visible in the morning sky early in December, and in the evening sky at the end of the month. Venus will be visible in the bright morning twilight early in the ... Read More »
Venus and Mars visible
Mercury will be will be well placed in the evening sky in November, achieving greatest elongation on the 24th and making a wide pair with the Moon on the 19th and 20th. Mercury will be 3° south of Saturn on the 28th. Venus is still prominent in the morning and will be 4° south of ... Read More »
Outer planets in view in October
In October Saturn will be very low in the southwestern sky at sunset and will set early in the evening. In the evening of October 3, the Moon will come within 0.7° of Neptune. Neptune and Uranus will be visible for most of the night. On the 5th Venus and Mars will be only 0.2° ... Read More »
‘Re-arranging the solar system’
The Sunshine Coast Astronomy Club Centre welcomes Christa Van Laerhoven, whose topic will be “Major Migrations: Rearranging the Solar System”, Sept. 8 at 7:30pm at the Arts Centre in Sechelt. Van Laerhoven is a postdoctoral fellow at UBC. She gained her PhD from the Department of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona in May ... Read More »