Fourth Annual RASCALS Star Party 2004

Friday 17th:

Did you know the Ancient Egyptians used stars to help build the pyramids and to predict the annual flooding of the Nile?

	12:00pm noon til dark - gates open, arrivals
	5:00pm-6:30pm - dinner time
	7:00pm - Heavens of the Pharaohs - Michael Shepard, NRC-HIA
	8:30 pm Viewing the night sky till dawn

Saturday 18th:

	8-10am - breakfast time
	Solar viewing - all day
	Nature walk - all day
	1:00 pm - Astronomy Swap Meet
	2:00 pm - Real time Imaging with the Stellacam EX - David Lee The Stellacam EX is part of a family of video imagers designed for astro videography. Using a Sony Ex-View sensor it is capable of imaging at very low light levels. A special feature of accumulating frames allows a maximum of 128 frames to be integrated forming an image every 2.5 seconds. This makes real-time viewing of globular clusters and deep sky objects a reality without the normal post stacking and processing required by traditional CCD imaging. I was amazed the first time M13 appeared on my MiniDV video screen getting progressively brighter as time passed. Real-time Imaging - Stellacam EX - online presentation Weather permitting, come and see the Stellacam EX in action tonight.
	5:00pm-7:00pm - dinner time
	7:00 pm - Polar Ring Galaxies - Prof. Linda Sparke

Professor Linda Sparke is a native of London, England. She watched the Apollo moonflights as a teenager, and later the close-up pictures of the giant planets and their satellites, from flyby missions. Amazed by the accuracy with which humans on Earth could calculate the flight paths of spacecraft, steering them safely to an orbit millions of miles away, she decided to study physics and astronomy. After undergraduate training in applied mathematics at Cambridge University, she went into astronomy as a graduate student at the University of California at Berkeley. Her interests focus on the many ways that gravity can act to produce the observed patterns of stars in galaxies. While gravity is supposed to be a simple force, matters can get very complicated in a galaxy of more than 100 billion stars, as well as the "dark matter", which is of unknown nature, but has more mass than all the stars put together. This research led her naturally to investigations of "polar ring" galaxies, of which NGC 4650A is a prime example, and she is a leading expert in interpreting the structures of these bizarre galaxies.

Prof. Sparke has held positions at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Institute of Astronomy in Cambridge, and the Kapteyn Astronomical Institute in Groningen (Netherlands), before joining the faculty in Madison. Her hobbies include cooking, quibbling, falling over in ballet class, and staring blankly into the middle distance.

8:30 pm - Viewing the night Sky till Dawn

Sunday 19th:

	8:00 am Breakfast
	9:30 am Site Cleanup
	12 noon - early departures please!

	A good sized camping area beside a small stocked lake
	Lots of parking - both on-field and parking lot
	Showers and Washrooms
	Large Clubhouse (seats 200 people)
	Food - Brenda's Kitchen will do the cooking for you.  Very reasonable prices, and the food is great! (Approximately CDN$20/day per person for 3 meals)
	Large field (complete with power on the field for your astronomy equipment)
	Large Outdoor Covered BBQ Grill
	And last but not least (a pretty good 360 deg. View of the sky)

Watch for the Big Black and White Stars Please contact Rich Willis (250) 881-7523 with your confirmation of attendance and with any ideas that will help to make this a great experience for all! PS. If you have any hidden talents that could be utilized ie: volunteering to help! It would be greatly appreciated! Keep Posted For More Information!

The Location: 700 Holker Rd.Cobble Hill BC N 48' 33.731' W 123' 33.749' Elevation 345, Meters Directions: Coming from Victoria … Turn Right on Holker Rd. just opposite of the Spectacle Lake turn off. Coming from Duncan area … Turn Left on Holker Rd. Just opposite of the Spectacle Lake turn off.