UPDATE July 9th: Due to a couple different factors, we are canceling the viewing set for this weekend.  We apologize for any inconvenience.

The next public viewing is scheduled for Saturday, July 12 from 9:45-11:00PM. If the weather is unsuitable on that date, we will try to re-schedule the viewing on Sunday, July 13 at the same time.

This viewing is scheduled at a later hour and with a shorter duration because the sun is setting quite late as we have recently passed the summer solstice.

Everyone is welcome to attend public viewings.  To do so, meet in Memorial Hall in room 417 and you will be guided up to the observatory when it is available.  It is necessary to climb the stairs one floor up to the observatory, however the elevator can be taken up to the 4th floor before doing so.

Public viewings are co-hosted by the UPEI Physics Department and the Charlottetown Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC).

I’ve been doing a bit of an office clear-out and would like to get rid of some of the extra astronomy texts that are taking up shelf space. Some of these books are a few years old, some are relatively new, but all go over the basics of astronomy and often cosmology.

So if you’re interested in learning more about the night sky, our solar system, or other galaxies and beyond, come to the UPEI campus and pick up a book. I’ve piled them up in a stack outside my office, Duffy Science Centre room 415, so you can come by at any time whenever the building is unlocked (i.e. weekdays from very early to very late, sometimes on weekends).

What happens when the laboratory technicians are assessing the equipment in the physics storeroom and notice a long wooden box on the top shelf? 

They open up the box and find a telescope.

It may seem strange to not know that we had this telescope, but a combination of changing astronomy instructors with a departmental move (that causes equipment to end up in new unknown locations) can result in an item getting forgotten.

This telescope is a 6-inch Newtonian reflector. I’m not sure how old it is – it sort of has a ’70s look to me. Perhaps this was the first telescope that UPEI Physics had in the 1970s, when observations took place on the roof of the Duffy building. It does have homemade replacement dust covers, which would fit with the story of how the original dust covers blew off the roof during a windy observation session.

The telescope was made by Anchor Optical Co. which now seems to exist as Anchor Optics (a division of Edmund Optics) that makes specialized lenses for research and educational applications.

Given the telescope’s size, it should be great for field work. We have material to build a solar filter, so this will probably also become our solar telescope.