RASC eNews

Carol Lakomiak, veteran observer, BBC Sky at Night magazine's astrosketching columnist, and astrophotographer, shares her advice on how to draw what you observe through easy to follow tutorials of proven effectiveness! Our Observer's Handbook editor has used Carol's tutorials, and he won a lunar imaging contest after doing so. Carol's tutorials on lunar sketching and solar and DSO sketching now have a new home at rasc.ca.

Over the holiday weekend a problem was encountered with one of the Society's Domain Name Service (DNS) providers which meant that the Society's member and eStore portal at https://secure.rasc.ca was temporarily inaccessible.

This problem has now been resolved and Society services, including the Member's Area on the national website should be back to normal. If you encounter any issues, please contact the RASC webteam by using the Contact Form.

The 2012 June 5-6 transit of Venus (ToV) is over, and there won't be another one till 2117! Many RASC members successfully viewed the ToV here and abroad, and the RASC ToV team would like your help in constructing a record of our ToV experiences from across the country and beyond. Send us your images and stories, and we'll share them with the rest of Canada and the world on a dedicated rasc.ca page. Even if you were clouded out, but have stories (and images of cursing astronomers) we'd like to hear (and see) them.

The Great 2012 Venus Transit

Well that magical moment is almost upon us. The anticipation of witnessing the planet Venus crossing the face of the Sun has been the buzz in the astronomical community for the past few months. It was eight short years ago on the morning of June 8, 2004 that the Sun rose in the north east, sporting a huge black spot. From Ottawa, the transit was past the halfway point with Venus ready to exit an hour later.