Meteor showers forecast

The Leonid meteor shower peaks on the night of 17/18 November. The S Taurid meteor shower peaks on 5 November and the N Taurid meteor shower peaks 12 November. Jupiter rises well after midnight in Leo and has a double shadow transit November 1. Venus and Mars will be just ¾ of a degree apart in the morning sky with Jupiter only 6 ½ degrees away on November 2. Between November 4 and 9 the Moon will be close to all three of these planets in the dawn sky. Uranus and Neptune are well placed in the evening sky in November. The nearly full moon occults the first magnitude star Aldebaran at 1:56 AM on November 26.

At 7:30 PM, 13 November 2015, at the Sunshine Coast Art Centre, 5714 Medusa St., Sechelt, the SCC presents Dr. James Di Francesco of the National Research Council, Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Centre, Victoria. His topic will be: ALMA and the Art of Planetary Formation. In recent years, extrasolar planets have been detected in abundance throughout the Galaxy. In this talk, Dr. Di Francesco will describe a new instrument, the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (ALMA), operated by a consortium of twenty nations (including Canada), consisting of 66 high-frequency radio antennas that can be fused together electronically into a single telescope of unprecedented sensitivity and resolving power. ALMA is able to detect distant disks through the faint heat emitted by their dust particles. He will describe how ALMA, though just beginning operations, has already produced the most stunning images of planet formation yet acquired by humanity, and what these images suggest about the formation of our own Solar System. Donations are gratefully accepted at the door.

Our SCC Observatory is open for public viewing on 14 November, weather permitting. Check our our website for updates and schedules: www.coastastronomy.ca