The RASC's supplier of secure web hosting services experienced a hardware failure with their firewall facility which disrupted services on the RASC eStore and on the members-only area of the RASC website on Sunday. This issue has now been resolved and our supplier is investigating additional redundancy and failure-prevention techniques to prevent a reoccurence of the problem. The Society apologizes for any inconvenience this isolated event may have caused.

The RASC's main website at www.rasc.ca is now back on-line with a new look and feel. The biggest change that members will notice is that members-only content is now protected by a personalized username and password. This is the same password that you use on the Society's secure web portal at https://secure.rasc.ca. Here's what's new at www.rasc.ca:

 

The RASC's website will be upgraded beginning on Friday, November 18, 2011 at approximately 1:00 p.m. Eastern. This outage will completely replace the existing RASC website with a new platform.

This changeover will not affect the RASC's secure web portal at secure.rasc.ca, however, some links and other web components may not be immediately operational at the time of the cutover. Please bear with us as we complete the process of migrating the RASC website to a new and exciting web platform.

Dr. Doug Welch, a member of the Hamilton Centre and astronomy professor at McMaster University, has been awarded the McNeil Medal by the Royal Society of Canada.

The Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) officially designated Fundy National Park of Canada in New Brunswick as a new RASC Dark-sky Preserve through its National Certification Program on October 29, 2011. Fundy is the 14th Dark-sky Preserve in Canada to be designated by the Society.

 

It's high summer, the season of star parties, and the chance to show the public the Summer Triangle brightly set in the Milky Way, the radiants of outstanding meteor displays, and brilliant planetary conjunctions with your GLPs. With a little care we can all insure that the public remembers the celestial sights, and not GLP operator ineptitude leading to memorable but unplanned law enforcement interventions at star parties.

Today, the International Dark-Sky Association announced their 2011 award winners. The RASC is pleased to note that Jennifer West of Winnipeg Centre was one of the awardees in the category "Student Award" under the Dark-Sky Defender banner. More information is available on the IDA website at www.darksky.org