March 2021 Member's Meeting 

Halifax Centre

Halifax Centre's monthly meeting is Saturday, March 6, 2021 at 1 PM Atlantic (12 PM Eastern). Our agenda includes Paul Gray’s monthly photo montage, Paul Heath's latest poem in Food for the Soul, Dave Chapman's What’s Up in the March Skies? and Judy Black’s News from the Board. plus two special guests.

Speaker's Night: Planets under construction; how to study a million year process (ONLINE)

Wednesday, March 17, 2021 - 7:30pm to 9:00pm

Speaker: Dr. Nienke van der Marel, Banting Fellow, Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Victoria

The Moon at Noon: Review and Apply

Did you manage to find all the targets? We'll go over everything you need to know to apply for your pin and observing certificate! Who doesn't love a pin and certificate?

Do you want to share the program with your friends, or go over targets at another time? Easy peasy. We'll talk about how to redo the program using the recordings of all our sessions.

The Moon at Noon: Q-2

It's Apollo day! Finally, we get the chance to find both the first and last Apollo landing sites. Bring your questions about the Moon landings! We encourage you to share any annular eclipse photos you may have gotten from this morning as well.

The Moon at Noon: Q5 and Q6

Next week there will be a partial solar eclipse! In some places it'll even be an annular eclipse. We'll be spending this session talking about eclipses. How come they don't happen every new Moon? How come only some places can see them? Why are Earth's solar eclipses so special? And finally, how can we observe the eclipse next week?

The Moon at Noon: Q-1

Today's targets will be more morning observations, and include the Apollo 16 landing site! Apollo 16 was the second Apollo mission to land in the highlands (all the others landed in the seas), and discovered some really cool stuff about mountain formation on the Moon. In honour of this mission, we'll talk about lunar geology.

The Moon at Noon: Q1

We have some niche topics today, including how to use math and your own photos of the Moon to measure the depth of craters. We'll also talk about lunar libration and how to observe some unique objects on the edge of the Moon by looking at the right time!

The Moon at Noon: Q0

We have a whopping 19 targets to cover this session, so we will spend lots of time focusing on how to find them! These include some optional lunar mission targets, like Luna 2 and Apollo 15, the Apollo mission with the first use of the LRV (so astronauts could do donuts on the Moon, instead of in abandoned parking lots). 

The Moon at Noon: Q3 and Q4

For the first time in this series, we'll be looking for the Moon in the morning (or really late at night, if you're a night owl). We'll spend some extra time on how to observe the Moon during the day, including which direction you should be looking and at what time you'll get the best view.