Meetings
Our speaker this month is Dr. Alison Sills from the Department of Physics and Astronomy at McMaster University, who will be speaking to us on her area of expertise: stellar formation:
Secrets from Stellar Nurseries: The Early Lives of Star Clusters
We know that stars are born out of large clouds of gas and dust. Most stars are born in groups. But what happens next? Do the siblings stick together, moving through the universe together all their lives, or do they disperse and move out of their birth neighbourhood as soon as they can? What influence do they have on their nursery cloud? What if another family of stars is born right next door — do they get together? Using a combination of observations and simulations, I will explore what we know about the early evolution of star clusters.
Dr Alison Sills studies weird stars in unusual places. The stars that interest her have had a strange encounter during their life, such as a collision with another star or an interaction with their binary companion. These events happen more often in dense stellar clusters. Dr Sills uses a variety of computational tools to model the formation and evolution of these clusters and their stellar populations. Dr Sills grew up in Toronto and attended the University of Western Ontario for her BSc before studying at Yale University for her PhD. After postdoctoral positions at The Ohio State University and the University of Leicester in the UK, she returned to Ontario to take up a faculty position at McMaster University in 2001. A full professor at McMaster since 2012, Dr Sills has also served as Associate Dean of Science and Associate Dean of Graduate Studies, and is currently the Chair of Physics & Astronomy. She has published over 125 research papers with over 6000 citations, has supervised over 50 students & postdoctoral fellows, and has directly managed over $2M in research grants. Dr Sills is involved in the astronomical community at the national and international level, through her membership in Canadian Astronomical Society committees, the Canadian Institute for Theoretical Astrophysics council, the Canadian Telescope Time Allocation Committee, and an International Astronomical Union steering committee. She has reviewed grant, scholarship, and telescope time applications for granting agencies in half a dozen countries, and been involved with organization of 30 international conferences since 2000. Dr Sills also spends time on outreach activities to bring astronomy to the public, to support women and other underrepresented groups in STEM, and to bring scientists to elementary schools.
Following Dr. Sills’ presentation, we will have a short intermission, followed by door prizes, and then our monthly Sky This Month presentation.
The address for our meeting is the parish hall at St. Matthews-on-the-Plains Anglican Church, 126 Plains Road East, Burlington, ON L7T 2C3. Doors will open at 7:00PM, with the meeting beginning promptly at 7:30
We invite you to join us on Friday, January 9th at 7:30PM for our January monthly meeting.
Our speaker this month is our own Second Chair Chris Szaban.
Chris is a life-long astronomy enthusiast who has been dabbling in astrophotography using alt-az mounts on wedges for the past five years. Through sheer stubbornness, he has refused to listen to reason, and has instead plunged head first into this ‘wedge issue’.
Chris’ talk is entitled “The Biggest Wedge Issue In Mounts”
Wedges have been subject to scorn and ridicule from many in the astronomy community, especially among the astrophotography crowd. Discussion forums are filled with claims that wedges are very difficult to use, lousy at tracking, and a waste of time for imaging. Yet, the lowly wedge shares many similarities with other types of equatorial mounts, and many observatories and high-end consumer telescopes employ them. In this talk, we’re going to demystify the equatorial wedge. We’ll go over how and why it works, its pros and cons, and whether your alt-az mount could benefit from one.
Following Chris’ presentation, we will have an intermission, followed by door prizes, and then the Sky This Month for January.
The address for our meeting is the parish hall at St. Matthews-on-the-Plains Anglican Church, 126 Plains Road East, Burlington, ON L7T 2C3. Doors will open at 7:00PM, with the meeting beginning promptly at 7:30. Zoom broadcast details are below.
Our guest speaker this month is Dr. John E. Moores, Associate Professor at the Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science at York University. Dr. Moores will be speaking to us about his book, Daydreaming in the Solar System, taking a journey across the solar system and exploring what it would be like for mankind to experience each of our planetary neighbours.
Following Dr. Moores’ presentation, there will be door prizes and a telescope raffle, followed by our annual Christmas Social, where club members and attendees enjoy coffee and snacks and engage in fun conversation and comradery for the rest of the evening.
Copies of Dr. Moores’ book will be available for $40 (tax included).
We invite those attending to bring some snacks for all to share, as well as a small donation for Hamilton Food Share.
The meeting takes place in the auditorium of St. Matthews-on-the-Plains Anglican Church, 126 Plains Road East, Burlington Ontario. The event will begin promptly at 7:30 PM. This month is an in-person event only, there will be no Zoom broadcast.
Daydreaming in the Solar System: Exploring the Planets with our Five Senses – Our ancestors experienced the five classical planets of our solar system only as points of light in the night sky that appeared to wander amongst the fixed stars. Today, we know these places (and even a few more that our ancestors did not) as worlds in their own right through the data returned from our robotic explorers over the past 62 years. How would those planetary environments appeal to our five senses if we were to visit them in person? In this talk, I will draw on the research and storytelling from my book, Daydreaming in the Solar System, to help us tour the solar system and understand what it would be like to see, hear, touch, smell and even taste immersed in the environments of our planetary neighbors. Through this journey, we will obtain a keener understanding of our universe at a human scale that will deepen our appreciation for our own home, the Earth.
Dr. Moores is an Associate Professor in the Centre for Research in Earth and Space Science at York University. He is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists, a recipient of the Canadian Aeronautics and Space Institute’s McCurdy Award and served as the Science Advisor to the President of the Canadian Space Agency from 2022-2024. John holds a BASc in Engineering Science from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Planetary Science. An author on over 100 articles in planetary science, John has also been a member of five NASA and ESA-led space mission teams.
Webpage:
Book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049290/daydreaming-in-the-solar-system/
Amazon link: https://www.amazon.ca/Daydreaming-Solar-System-Adventures-Exploration/dp/0262049295
Podcast link:
The latest issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available for download!
In this issue you’ll find;
- Announcements
- HAA Explorers 2.0 — Careers Among the Stars: Jobs in Astronomy!
- The Sky this Month for November 2025
- Eye Candy
- Upcoming McCallion Planetarium Shows
- Upcoming Events
- Plus More
Download the latest issue or visit the newsletters section for past issues.
Photo credit: Comet C/2025 A6 (Lemmon), by Bob Christmas.
Please join us on Friday October 17th for our monthly meeting. The meeting will begin as usual at 7:30 pm at St. Matthew’s-on-the-Plains Anglican Church at 126 Plains Road E. in Burlington.
Our speaker this month is Matteo Statti. Matteo is a student at York University and he will be speaking about an antique telescope that he purchased in 2022. His presentation includes how he found the telescope, the process of cleaning the lens and how he determined who the maker of the telescope was. The maker, Revered Daniel Brand Marsh, was a significant Canadian Astronomer who contributed to the astronomy world in the late 1800’s and was in fact the founder of the Hamilton RASC.
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Please join us on Friday September 12th for our monthly meeting. The meeting will begin as usual at 7:30 pm at St. Matthew’s-on-the-Plains Anglican Church at 126 Plains Road E. in Burlington.
Our speaker this month is Dr. Chris Jillings Senior Research Scientist at Snolab. Dr. Jillings’s talk is entitled “How to Tell the Sun from a Hole in the Ground”. His talk will include a discussion of the solar neutrino puzzle and how we know with quite good precision exactly how the sun shines.
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The latest issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available for download!
In this issue you’ll find;
- 2025-2026 Event Dates
- 2026 HAA Calendar Image Submissions Are Now Open
- Other Announcements
- HAA Explorers 2.0 — The Moon’s Influence on Tides
- The Sky this Month for September 2025
- Report from Starfest 2025
- Eye Candy
- Upcoming McCallion Planetarium Shows
- Upcoming Events
- Plus More
Download the latest issue or visit the newsletters section for past issues.
Photo credit: Eagle Nebula (M16), by Ken Leedham.
The latest issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available for download!
In this issue you’ll find;
- 2026 HAA Calendar Image Submissions Are Now Open
- Other Announcements
- The Sky this Summer 2025
- NASA Night Sky Notes
- Eye Candy
- Upcoming McCallion Planetarium Shows
- Upcoming Events
- Plus More
Download the latest issue or visit the newsletters section for past issues.
Photo credit: NGC 4631 and NGC 4656, by Marc Fitkin.
The latest issue of the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Event Horizon newsletter is now available for download!
In this issue you’ll find;
- The 2025 HAA Dark Sky Star Party
- Announcements
- The Sky this Month for May 2025
- NASA Night Sky Notes
- Eye Candy
- Upcoming McCallion Planetarium Shows
- Upcoming Events
- Plus More
Download the latest issue or visit the newsletters section for past issues.
Photo credit: Crab Nebula (M1), by Bob Christmas.
Please join us on Friday April 11 for our monthly meeting. Doors open at 7:00 pm and the meeting will begin as usual at 7:30 pm at St. Matthew’s-on-the-Plains Anglican Church at 126 Plains Road E. in Burlington.
Our speaker this month is Dr. Samanthan Lawler. Dr Lawler is a professor of astronomy at the University of Regina in Canada. She completed degrees at the California Institute of Technology, Wesleyan University, and the University of British Columbia, followed by postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Victoria and NRC-Herzberg Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Centre. She studies the orbits of Kuiper Belt objects as well as light pollution from satellites. She has been advocating for regulation of satellites as her research telescope data and her dark prairie skies have increasingly filled with bright satellites over the past several years, and recently helped to publicize two separate SpaceX debris falls that occurred in Saskatchewan.
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