Through a collaboration between Randy Attwood, Peter Jedicke, and James Edgar, National Council Minutes from the early years of the Society are now on-line.

In the past few days, Minutes from 1910 to 1934 were placed in the National Web Site to join part of the on-going project where historical archives are being scanned, put through an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) process, proofread, and then saved in both html and PDF format for easy access by all.

After a long and cloudy winter and spring, we've finally found time to get the Saskatchewan Summer Star Party 2006 (SSSP'06) website up and running.

Mission Ridge Country Estates, located in the RM of Aberdeen, requested advice on limiting light pollution since they were interested in creating a country atmosphere where estates were not lit up like living in the city.

As as result, they adopted, verbatim, recommendations we provided.

Old minutes now on-line!

Through a collaboration between Randy Attwood, Peter Jedicke, and James Edgar, National Council Minutes from the early years of the Society are now on-line.

Arne Henden, Director of the AAVSO, took Vance Petriew by surprise when he asked him to come forward for a special Director's Service Award at the Banquet of Astronomy Roundup 2007 in Calgary, Alberta.

Vance took on the challenge of amassing and converting over 70,000 records at the AAVSO. Here is their write-up from the AAVSO Web site, www.aavso.org/aavso/about/volunteers.shtml

As part of the continuing rollout of our new website's features and capabilities, we are pleased to announce that access to the on-line edition of the Journal and the private area of the RASC website is now available from the RASC Web Portal at secure.rasc.ca. In fact, it is only available this way.

Beginning 2009 Jan 9, members are invited to use the new RASC Secure Web Portal to browse and update their membership profile on-line. Visit the new portal at https://secure.rasc.ca. Using the portal members can:

• Update their address, e-mail and personal information
• View your current membership status and outstanding dues payable (if any)
• Update your National Options
• Assign a personal password and login

Here is a quick overview of the key features of the new web  portal:

In 1935, the David Dunlap Observatory (DDO) was presented to the University of Toronto by Jessie Donalda Dunlap as a memorial to her husband. Its goals of astronomical research, training of students at the University, and the fostering of public interest in astronomy have been met effectively since its inception. In the fall of 2007 the University of Toronto decided to sell the property and it was sold in July 2008.

The December 31 deadline is fast approaching for applications to the Centre Projects Fund.

The Centre Projects Fund was created by National Council in February 2006 with the intention that it provide funding for special initiatives at the centre level. Revenue comes from Sustaining Memberships and donations directed specifically to the Centre Projects Fund. The Centre Project Fund Trust Declaration clearly details the intended uses for these funds as well as the expectations of centres who receive grants.