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.

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.)

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.

UPDATE: This event has been cancelled due to the closure of the UPEI campus as a result of the storm Fiona.

The Department of Physics is going to participate in the Atlantic Veterinary College (AVC) Open House once again, but this time instead of setting up a table with physics activities indoors, we’re going to bring our solar telescopes.

On Saturday, October 1, from 10:00am to 2:00pm, we’ll be set up outside the north end of the AVC building with our hydrogen-alpha and white-light solar telescopes so that you can observe different features of the sun, our nearest star. We’ll also have a few activities related to the sun and sunlight for you to try.

If it’s too cloudy, we won’t be able to view the sun, so we won’t set up anything. However, the rest of the AVC Open House will still be running with lots of fun, interesting activities for people of all ages.

UPDATE: August 25 viewing CANCELLED due to cloudy weather

UPDATE: August 18 viewing CANCELLED due to cloudy weather

UPDATE: August 11 viewing CANCELLED due to cloudy weather

We are back for public viewings! It was winter of 2020 that we last had an event at our observatory and August of 2019 when we last had a viewing with our solar telescope. We plan to return to events at the observatory in the fall, but during these long summer days we’ll make use of our solar telescope set up on the ground.

For these viewings, we’ll have our hydrogen-alpha solar telescope set up, which will let you view the atmosphere of the sun safely. We’ll also have our new “Sunspotter” telescope set up, which will let you see any sunspots on the sun’s surface via a projected image.

We’re tentatively scheduling solar viewings for every Thursday in August, 12-1pm on the UPEI campus. These events are weather dependent, so this post will be updated if we have to cancel due to cloudy weather.

• August 4 – Successful viewing with over 30 people attending.
• August 11 – CANCELLED due to cloudy weather
• August 18 – CANCELLED due to cloudy weather
• August 25 – CANCELLED due to cloudy weather

The telescope will be set-up outside of the FSDE building. That’s building 30 on the campus map. The nearest parking lot is the MacLauchlan Arena parking lot.