Skip to content

Star Power

Amateur astronomer Randy Sasyniuk takes photographs of the constellations during Saturday night's Messier Marathon put on by the North Bay Astronomy Club at the North Bay waterfront. “Wow… that’s amazing”.

Amateur astronomer Randy Sasyniuk takes photographs of the constellations during Saturday night's Messier Marathon put on by the North Bay Astronomy Club at the North Bay waterfront.

“Wow… that’s amazing”. That’s what you’ll hear when people are looking into the heavens through a 10 inch telescope. And there were several of the high powered devices set up along the city’s waterfront to allow visitors to star gaze during the North Bay Astronomy Club’s Messier Marathon and public viewing Saturday night.

Brendan Fawcett – who heard about the event through a friend - saw the rings of Saturn for the very first time through one of the telescopes. “It was really remarkable. I’d never seen them before and yeah with my own eyes it was really neat to see.”

The event had almost been cancelled due to weather. Most of the day had been overcast and dreary, impossible star gazing conditions. But just before supper time the skies cleared making way for a star studded night sky highlighted by a crescent moon.

Club president, Dave Roscoe, says club members were taking part in a Messier Marathon, trying to locate as many celestial objects - discovered by the 1700’s French astronomer Charles Messier - as possible.

“He was actually a comet hunter. And he would go looking for comets and he would see these fuzzy little things that look like comets. He observed them over a couple of nights and find that they were always in the same place relative to the stars so he knew they weren’t comets. So he’d just put them down in his catalogue saying that’s another one that wasn’t a comet and he catalogued a 110 of these.” explained Roscoe. “Some of them are actually other galaxies, some of them are globular clusters that are part of our own galaxy. Some of them are nebulas.”

He says near the end of March is the best time to see all of them, if you’re willing to spend the whole night at it. “We did a Messier Marathon in 2003 I believe and one of our members managed to spot 82 of them. It is rare for anyone to actually get all 110, but it has been done.”

Bob Chapman – owner of a 12 inch reflector telescope – scans the skies for deep sky objects. He shows me two clusters of stars, M – for Messier - 65 and M66, just smudges of light in the eyepiece. He had his telescope built based on Sir William Herschel’s equipment used in the late 1700’s.

Hershel’s was a 20 foot device requiring a ladder to observe the planets and galaxies. He went on to discover the planet Uranus and charted 4,630 of the over 5,000 deep space objects listed in the General Catalogue of Nebulae. Chapman has his own observatory on his 50 acre property in South River.

He’s also a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and responsible for starting the first observing sessions in 1986, now held monthly by the society. Now he participates in the Annual Algonquin Adventure. “Every September we have a star party. Last year we had 119 people attended, in Algonquin Park. You camp out and you bring your telescope finery. Now there it’s dark. Is that ever dark. Anybody can come.” said Chapman.

Anyone interested in seeing what the North Bay Astronomy Club is all about can go to their website.

North Bay Astronomy Club