RASC London Centre

07/25/2026

Getting ready and set up for the Star night at Dalewood Conservation area!

06/29/2026

In Saturday's Globe & Mail, science writer (and 2017 Simon Newcomb Award winner) Ivan Semeniuk presented an excellent — and entertaining — introduction to asteroids and how they get their names. Our Honorary President Peter Jedicke and RASC Kingston Centre President Malcolm Park were both mentioned in the article. Very appropriate, ahead of International Asteroid Day, which is tomorrow, June 30.

06/19/2026

Dr. Parshati Patel giving our Monthly Meeting talk about the Artemis II Mission!

06/04/2026

This amazing image is APOD for today! It is based on data taken by JWST and analysed by Western U astronomer Jan Cami. Then our club member Katelyn Beecroft processed the data to finalize the image. Impressive work, everyone!

Today’s NASA Astronomy Picture of the Day is brought you by Western astronomers!

The image, collected by Western University astronomers Jan Cami, Els Peeters and their team is of the Planetary nebula Tc 1, located more than 10,000 light-years away. Captured by the James Webb Space Telescope, the image shows the structure of a planetary nebula first linked to carbon molecules, known as 'buckyballs.'

Learn more here: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/astropix.html

06/03/2026

We salute our youth member Siddharth Patel, who triumphed at this past weekend's Canada Wide Science Fair.

04/13/2026

Our regular monthly meeting will take place on Friday this week, April 17. Our Guest of Honor will be Chris Beckett. Chris will give a briefing about "Building a Visual Observatory in the Imaging Age."

We all want to do more astronomy. Whether it’s looking through our telescopes or taking photos of the universe. But free time is all too rare and the weather conspires against getting out and doing what we love. In this presentation Chris Beckett details the construction of an observatory for observing and sketching.

Chris Beckett has been an amateur astronomer for over 30 years and has volunteered with the RASC much of that time. He has served as the National Observing Chair, been a centre president and taught dozens of non-credit astronomy courses. He coordinates astronomy events with Grasslands National and is currently the RASC Observer’s Calendar Editor. Chris is also the co-host of The Actual Astronomy Podcast.

Please join us in person at 19:30 at the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory on the campus of Western University. You can attend in person at the Cronyn Observatory on the Western campus, or join us via Zoom. Non-members are welcome. We will post the Zoom link on Friday

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01/07/2026

Update: a video of Marks' memorial event 2026-01-17 is now available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=eeHEqhH3Tac

We are heartbroken to share the news that Mark Tovey, our 39th London Centre President, lost his battle with cancer on Tuesday 2026-01-06. Mark was a multi-talented person who worked hard on a wide variety of projects and made many friends along the way. He did his undergrad at Western U and earned a PhD in Cognitive Science from the University of Ottawa in 2011. He was History Curator at the Hume Cronyn Memorial Observatory, our local partners in astronomy outreach. In 2023, Mark published "A Cosmic Treasury," a compilation of astronomy poems gathered by Beatrice W. Welling in 1944, to which Mark added appropriate selections of artwork from museums all over. In 2025, London Centre nominated Mark for an Ontario Volunteer Service Award. Asteroid (178088) MarkTovey is named in his honour. You can follow his asteroid here
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/tools/sbdb_lookup.html #/?sstr=178088&view=VOP
Here is Mark's obituary: https://harrisfuneralhome.ca/obituaries/mark-tovey/
Note: the photo we originally posted here was taken just a few months ago. We have replaced that photo with this one because Mark left word that this is the one he preferred.