Mississauga Centre RASC

68th Meeting

        Members’ Night

Day:                Friday, August 11, 2006

Speakers:         Laurissa Werhan

                         Terry Hardman  

      Randy Attwood

      John Marchese 

Astronomy Education

Laurissa Werhan is a high school teacher at Parkdale Collegiate and specializes in astronomy education. She interned with NASA and worked for the Canadian Space Agency. She has also witnessed 7 shuttle launches. As an educator, she feels that her job is to be a model to students and to inspire them to become explorers. Her activities for achieving this include making of space suits and helmets, mission patches, space songs and dances, involvement with tomatosphere, study of geography from space. She has been involved in secondary projects and real project solving as in examining a space arm/elbow movement problem, modeling science tasks on the ISS, studying breast cancer cells in space and other issues.  Laurissa showed her involvement with space videos such as the “Brain Bites” and Canadian space shuttle involvement, and children's resource guides of the CSA and NASA.

One of her projects involves atmospheric/cloud wherein students estimate cloud cover and compare them to ISS based observations.  Advanced students calculate orbits and velocities of the shuttle and its components as well as other projects.

Stargate and Black Hole

Terry Hardman talked about the series Stargate SGI and commented that it is finishing its run on TV.  He also showed a video of an eclipse of a black hole.

Astronomy Course, Solar Observing, Mars hoax

Randy Attwood is running a 4 week beginner’s course on astronomy at UTM. He spoke about the upcoming Starfest. Randy spoke about satellites observing the Sun with particular reference to the upcoming Solar Terrestrial Space Observer Mission (STEREO).  Finally, he discussed the hoax of the large Mars approach which seems to be a repeat of last year’s hoax.

Affiliate membership RASC

John Marchese encouraged MAS members to become RASC Mississauga members. He explained the process and the rationale for having an affiliate membership.

Submitted by Chris Malicki, Secretary  Chris Malicki, Secretary                               back to Miss Centre. meeting reports page
Mississauga Centre RASC