Have you ever wondered what the Moon and planets look like up close and personal in a telescope, but never had to opportunity to see them? Perhaps you have an interest in stargazing and astronomy, but don’t know where to begin and what equipment you need. If so, this is the event for you!

The Hamilton Amateur Astronomers will be hosting a public sidewalk astronomy night from 8:30-10:30PM at Bayfront Park. All are invited out to come take a look at the Moon, Jupiter and Venus through our telescopes – HAA club members will be set up in the parking lot and offering views of the night sky, and will be happy to answer any and all questions you might have about telescopes, stargazing, and astronomy in general. 

This event is free of charge, and we welcome all interested to bring family and friends. 

The event is weather permitting of course, and should the skies be too cloudy or rainy to see anything, a cancellation notice will be posted to this event and the HAA website at 4:00PM on Saturday. 

We hope to see you there!

Our speaker this month is HAA member Jeff Parsons. 

Jeff Parsons is the HAA’s Loaner Scope Program Director. Having become interested in amateur astronomy less than 5 years ago during COVID, Jeff joined the HAA, and after borrowing one of the club’s loaner dobsonians, was instantly hooked. He purchased his first telescope soon after, and has been an avid and determined stargazer ever since. 

Join Jeff as he recounts his journey to the Atacama Desert last year – the Mecca of Astronomy. With his brother Dave, Jeff toured both the ALMA Array and Very Large Telescope, and will be sharing his stories from his trip to the world’s most renowned and remote dark skies.

Following Jeff’s 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. Zoom broadcast details are below.

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Hamilton Amateur Astronomers is inviting you to a scheduled Zoom meeting.

Topic: Hamilton Amateur Astronomers’ Zoom Meeting

Time: May 8, 2026 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

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Unfortunately tonight’s event will be cancelled due to Sky conditions.
as such the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers Will not be setting up Equipment at Bayfront Park tonight
Please keep an eye out here and on Facebook for future events

Have you ever wondered what the Moon and planets look like up close and personal in a telescope, but never had to opportunity to see them? Perhaps you have an interest in stargazing and astronomy, but don’t know where to begin and what equipment you need. If so, this is the event for you!

In recognition of International Astronomy Day, the Hamilton Amateur Astronomers will be hosting a public sidewalk astronomy night from 8:30-10:30PM at Bayfront Park. All are invited out to come take a look at the Moon, Jupiter and Venus through our telescopes – HAA club members will be set up in the parking lot and offering views of the night sky, and will be happy to answer any and all questions you might have about telescopes, stargazing, and astronomy in general.

The location for Bayfront Park parking lot is below:

https://maps.app.goo.gl/BKtEt1Wg7w1hipzYA?g_st=ac

This event is free of charge, and we welcome all interested to bring family and friends.

The event is weather permitting of course, and should the skies be too cloudy or rainy to see anything, a cancellation notice will be posted to the HAA website as well as our Facebook event at 6:00PM on Saturday.

We hope to see you there!

Our speaker this month will be Ryan Zhu, North American Sales Manager for Svbony, Retevis, and Retekess Canada. 

Ryan will be speaking to us about affordable astrophotography options available to amateur astronomers of all backgrounds and levels of experience, and how capturing stunning, high quality images of the night sky doesn’t have to break the bank. Focusing on new products and technologies available through Svbony, Ryan will demonstrate how budget-friendly and beginner level astrophotography setups can deliver great, professional results, without emptying your wallet. 

This month is also our Member’s Silent Auction. Reminder that this month the church hall opens earlier than our usual 7:00 – viewing for auction lots will begin at 6:45PM sharp, with bidding to begin at 7:05PM. So remember to show up early for a chance to acquire some of the awesome gear the club is offering. This auction is for members of the HAA only, and payment from auction winners for all lots must be given prior to the end of our meeting and can be done through cash, cheque, or e-transfer. 

As usual, our meeting will begin at 7:30PM, at which time bidding will be put on hold. After Ryan’s presentation, we will have our intermission wherein bidding will resume. Following this, there will be door prizes, as well as our Sky This Month presentation.

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

With Artemis II bringing humanity back to the Moon, what better time to head out under the night sky and see our nearest celestial neighbor for yourself, up close and in detail?

This public event is meant to give the beginner stargazer, or anyone interested in seeing the Moon and the planets the basic information they need to get some up close and personal views of our solar system neighborhood. 

The event features four short presentations by HAA members:

1:30 – Observing the Moon and Lunar Landing Sites by Chris Szaban

2:30 – Introduction to Telescopes by Matthew Mannering

3:30 – Introduction to the Night Sky by John Gauvreau 

4:00 – The Moon and Planets This Winter by Kevin Salwach

In between the presentations, members of the HAA will have their equipment set up and will be happy to answer any questions you might have about telescopes and stargazing in general, and provide you help with any issues you might be having with your own telescope, binoculars or other astronomy gear. 

There will also be a Moon themed kid’s coloring station, so bring the whole family! 

HAA members are invited to bring out their scopes, equipment and anything else they want to show members of the public, as well as other club members!

The event is located in the program room at Valley Park Library, 970 Paramount Drive, Stoney Creek, ON L8J1L8. Public hours are from 1:00-5:00PM, while HAA members have access from 12:00PM onwards to set up their equipment. 

We hope to see you there!

Our speaker this month is astrophotographer Keith Mombourquette, who will be speaking to us about how to automate your astrophotography to save yourself a lot of time and headaches under the stars. 

Keith’s talk is titled: “Imaging Automation: How To Get Some Sleep While Imaging”

Are you a sleep-deprived astro-imager? Perhaps its time for you to consider automating your data collection so that you can get a good night’s sleep while your system operates to your pre-programmed instructions collecting data on the target or targets you want to capture. This can range from things as simple as determining when to autofocus and doing a focus run, to a fully automated system that will monitor the sky conditions and start or stop automatically when conditions allow. In the last 3 years, Keith has gone from sitting beside his camera and lens on a tracker to sleeping through the night while his two and often three telescopes are happily collecting photons without worrying about changing weather conditions or power failures. Whether you are a beginner or an advanced imager there are likely things that could be automated in your workflow that would make imaging easier and encourage you to take images when you might not otherwise. 

Keith came to Astrophotography late in life. It started as an extension to his nature photography one night in March of 2022. On a whim, after photographing the northern lights he decided to turn his camera to the sky to see if he could capture an image of the Orion Nebula. He was delighted when he got home and stacked the 10 frames he had collected and was able to see the nebula. The next night he was out under the stars with his camera and lens mounted to a star tracker to try for a better image. From that point on, he was hooked. Keith is a Professional Engineer who loves to apply his engineering skills to many aspects of his hobbies. He has used those skills to design and construct a roll-off-roof observatory which he uses any time that the sky is clear – even if only for a few hours at a time. Keith’s images are well received by family and friends, and the local community, with whom he regularly shares them. 

Following Keith’s presentation, we will have our usual intermission, followed by door prizes, and then a second guest speaker in place of our usual Sky This Month. Our second speaker is the HAA’s very own Fiza Mehfil, who will be talking to us about her team’s upcoming submission to the CANSAT project. 

The CanSat Design Challenge invites teams of Canadian secondary school students to design and build a “CanSat” – a small psuedo-satellite the size of a pop can. Fiza and her teammates will be doing just that over the coming months and will be competing in Lethbridge, Alberta this April with other teams from across Canada. She will be speaking to us during the second half of our meeting to us more about her team, Aphelion 5, and what their project is all about!

The Sky This Month will still be uploaded to our YouTube channel as usual the day of the meeting so you can all watch from home. 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: 

https://www.johnemoores.com

Book: https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049290/daydreaming-in-the-solar-system/

Amazon link: https://www.amazon.ca/Daydreaming-Solar-System-Adventures-Exploration/dp/0262049295

Indigo link: https://www.indigo.ca/en-ca/daydreaming-in-the-solar-system-surfing-saturns-rings-golfing-on-the-moon-and-other-adventures-in-space-exploration/9780262049290.html

Podcast link: 

https://popcornscience.ca