Annual General Meeting
and Volunteer Appreciation
Star Party
Want to join us on the Hill? Get tickets on eventbrite.
Want to join us online? Watch us on Youtube.
For general info, see the Schedule and Map. Note the modified schedule below. The map is the same, though.
Note
The gates open at 6:30pm for this Star Party.
There is construction ongoing on the road up the hill, so please use caution when driving up.
Modified Schedule:
- 6:30 - 9:30 Gate Open
- 7:00 - 7:30 Children’s Program
- 7:15 - 7:45 Shortened Dome Tour
- 7:45 - 8:15 Kids Dome Tour
- 8:00 - 8:30 AGM
- 8:20 - 8:40 Kids Planetarium Show
- 8:30 - 8:45 Volunteer Appreciation
- 9:00 - 9:30 Talk #1
- 9:00 - 9:45 Dome Tour
- 9:15 - 9:30 Planetarium Show
- 10:00 - 10:30 Talk #2
- 10:00 - 10:45 Dome Tour
- 10:15 - 10:30 Planetarium Show
What's Happening in Space Astronomy Now?
abstract
Space Astronomy has the advantage over ground based observations of being able to collect data in wavelength ranges that do not penetrate the Earth's atmosphere. While the international astronomy community launched many worthwhile missions to deploy telescopes into earth orbit to study the sky in Gamma Ray, X Ray, Ultraviolet, and other regions of the spectrum invisible from the ground, Space Astronomy really took the public imagination with the Hubble Space Telescope launched in 1990. Hubble was one of four Great Observatories launched in the last decade of the 20th that continued to explore the sky in the Infra-red, visible, ultraviolet, X-ray and Gamma-Ray wavelengths, all of which made major discoveries and became precursors of the current and future space astronomy missions, the list of proposed missions stretching out into the next 15 years.
It is however impossible not to focus on the NASA/CSA/ESA's latest greatest achievement, the successful launch and deployment of the James Webb Space Telescope on December 25 2021. This talk will review the early release results from JWST and present some of the more recent data. The comparisons with what has gone before will help us see why this new instrument is so spectacular.
bio
Ben Dorman came originally from London, England. He studied Mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge and then went on to graduate work in astronomy at Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, and the University of Victoria, becoming a Governor-General's Gold Medallist in 1991.
After doing astronomical research in the evolution of stars and stellar populations at the University of Maryland, the University of Virginia specializing in space-based stellar astronomy, he had a 10-year stint at NASA's Goddard Spaceflight Center. At NASA Ben became a software engineer, initially working on the world's most popular software for understanding X-Ray objects in space.
Along the way, he and his wife Catriona raised 3 children, including Asher who has autism. This took him into the worlds of public advocacy and non-profit organization, being elected nationally to the board of the Autism Society of America in 2001. After returning to Canada in 2009 and hearing a few years about the closing of the Centre of the Universe at the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory (DAO), he, Catriona and former public outreach coordinator Don Moffatt, with support and encouragement from former observatory directors founded the Friends of the DAO in 2015. The Friends is an organization dedicated to public outreach at the observatory, to bring the general public, school students, and visitors to Victoria to know the rich heritage of the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory and the world-class research performed there. He has been chair of the Friends since its inception.