We invite you to visit the Earl L. Wonnacott Observatory this fall and look through our telescope. We will be pointing our telescope at various objects of interest: the moon, planets, stars, nebula, and galaxies, depending on the date and sky conditions.
We will once again schedule viewings every two weeks this semester, anticipating that at least half of the events will be cancelled by cloudy weather. We’re going to try a mix of Thursdays and Saturdays.
In the event of cloudy weather, this post will be updated to indicate if a viewing is cancelled.
The dates and times that we’ve scheduled are below. Note that the event times shift earlier as the dates get closer to the winter solstice (and that the times jump much earlier in November after Daylight Saving Time ends).
Saturday, September 28, 8:00-10:00PM – attended by 94 people!
Thursday, October 10, 8:00-10:00PM – cancelled due to staff work-load
Saturday, October 26, 7:30-9:30PM
Thursday, November 7, 7:30-9:30PM
Saturday, November 23, 6:30-8:30PM
Thursday, December 5, 6:00-8:00PM
Saturday, December 21, 6:00-8:00PM
If you’re coming to our event, meet us in room 417 of Memorial Hall. We’ll have some astronomy activities and information for a variety of ages that you can peruse while you wait for your turn to go up to the observatory.
Accessibility: You can take an elevator up to room 417, but it is necessary to climb stairs up one floor to the roof and into the observatory to reach the telescope.
UPDATE (9:30AM Sat Sep 14): The weather forecast looks good, so we’re going ahead with the event.
September 14 marks this year’s International Observe the Moon Night. We will join people around the world who are viewing our natural satellite. We invite you to join us at our observatory from 8:00-10:00PM for a magnified view of the moon’s features through our telescope.
This event is weather dependent; if the sky is completed clouded over, we won’t be able to view the moon. If it’s partly cloudy, we might be able to go ahead since the moon is such a bright object and thus easy to find with our telescope. In the event of a weather cancellation, this post will be updated.
If you’re coming to our event, meet us in room 417 of Memorial Hall. We’ll have some moon activities and information for a variety of ages that you can peruse while you wait for your turn to go up to the observatory.
Accessibility: You can take an elevator up to room 417, but it is necessary to climb stairs from there up to the roof and into the observatory to reach the telescope.
If you can’t attend our event, you can still view the moon yourself the same night, or any night. Check out NASA’s viewing guide for tips on how to get the best viewing experience whether you’re using just your eyes, or binoculars or a telescope. NASA’s interactive Daily Moon Guide is also a great resource to show you what moon features you can see on any day.
An example view of the moon through our previous observatory telescope (Meade RCX400) by then student Andrew Clark. You can expect equally impressive views through our current telescope.
It’s been a big year for the sun on PEI: we had the solar eclipse in April, and Northern Lights caused by solar ejections in May. We invite you to get a more detailed view of the sun (than eclipse glasses or a pinhole projector can provide) by looking through our solar telescopes.
We will be having public viewing sessions with our solar telescopes on the following dates (every second Friday) from 12:30-2:00pm.
May 31 Cancelled due to cloudy forecast
June 14 Cancelled due to cloudy forecast
June 28 Cancelled due to cloudy forecast
July 12 Cancelled due to cloudy forecast
July 19 – Successful viewing with about 25 people attending
July 26 – Cancelled due to cloudy weather
August 9 – Cancelled due to cloudy weather
August 23 – Cancelled due to risk of thundershowers
August 30 – Going ahead!
Based on our experience, we anticipate that we will have to cancel at least half of the above dates due to cloudy weather. If it’s too cloudy to see the sun, then we will cancel that day’s event. This post will be updated in the event of any cancellations.
What you can expect to see
We will offer you views of two of the sun’s atmospheric layers, showing features caused by the sun’s dynamic magnetic activity. With a white-light solar filter on our observatory telescope, you will get to view the sun’s photosphere, which is currently showing many sunspots (see example image below). Through our hydrogen-alpha solar telescope, you will view the sun’s chromosphere – a dimmer atmospheric layer than can only be seen by filtering out all the light except the red emitted by hot hydrogen. The chromosphere shows prominences and filaments, which are protrusions of plasma. A web-like pattern covers the chromosphere, outlining supergranules. You may also see plages, which are bright areas usually surrounding sunspots.
Sunspots visible on the photosphere of the sun, as imaged by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) on May 14, 2024.The sun’s chromosphere (viewed through a red solar filter), showing dark filaments and bright plages on the solar disk, and prominences protruding along the edge. Image captured using UPEI’s hydrogen-alpha telescope on May 14, 2024.
Meeting area
The meeting location for this event will be the grassy area between Memorial Hall and Robertson Library (see photo and campus map below). There you’ll find our hydrogen-alpha telescope that you can look through. We’ll direct you on how to find your way to the observatory when space is available. (Due to the observatory’s small size, we have to control how many people can go into it at once.)
The event meeting area is this grassy area next to Memorial Hall. This photo also shows our observatory on top of Memorial Hall.
The event will be held between Memorial Hall (building 9) and Robertson Library (building 15) and is marked with a yellow star on the campus map above. Parking is available in campus lots A, (ungated) B, D, and the MacLauchlan Arena lot.
Accessibility
To reach our observatory, you must be able to climb stairs, because the building’s elevator can’t take people beyond the fourth floor, and the observatory is one storey above that. However, our ground-based telescope is accessible for people who are not able to climb stairs.
Age to attend
We welcome attendees of any age; however, to fully enjoy the viewing experience, anyone attending needs to be able to follow directions regarding how to look into a telescope eyepiece, what they can touch, and what they can’t touch. We leave it up to parents/guardians to assess whether their child is capable of the above tasks. We will also have our Sunspotter telescope at the event, which shows sunspots and doesn’t require looking into an eyepiece.
Our Sunspotter telescope provides a view of sunspots on the photosphere that can be viewed by people who have trouble looking through a telescope eyepiece; for example very young children.
All our eclipse information pages can be found by selecting the “2024 Total Solar Eclipse” option from the menu bar above. The drop-down menu will let you navigate to a page on a specific topic.
We will once again schedule viewings every two weeks this semester, anticipating that at least half of the events will be cancelled by cloudy weather. We’re also switching our viewing night to a weekday evening (to work around the early building lock-up that happens on weekends).
The dates and times that we’ve scheduled are below. Note that the event times shift later as the dates get closer to the spring equinox (and that the times jump an hour later in March after Daylight Saving Time begins).
Thursday, February 1, 7:00-9:00 PM CANCELLED due to cloudy weather
Thursday, February 15, 7:00-9:00 PM CANCELLED due to cloudy weather
Thursday, February 29, 7:30-9:30 PM CANCELLED due to cloudy weather
Thursday, March 14, 8:30-10:30 PM CANCELLED due to cloudy weather
Thursday, March 28, 8:30-10:30 PM CANCELLED due to cloudy weather
In the event of cloudy weather, this post will be updated to indicate if an event is cancelled.
If you’re coming to our event, meet us in room 417 of Memorial Hall. We’ll have some astronomy activities and information for a variety of ages that you can peruse while you wait for your turn to go up to the observatory.
Accessibility: You can take an elevator up to room 417, but it is necessary to climb stairs from there up to the roof and into the observatory to reach the telescope.
