A few weeks ago, I was looking for the Andromeda Galaxy in a loaned night vision monocular and a pair of “Navy SEAL-style”night vision goggles from my backyard on the outskirts of the small town of Port Hope, ON.

While out there, I figured I’d take our 3-year-old miniature schnauzer, Winston, out for his final business transaction of the night. At the same time, our 3-month old mini, Frankie Jenkins (Above, also known as “the trainee”) decided to hop out into the yard for a tinkle… Continue reading “Fun with night-vision: 5 unconventional uses” »

Five years ago, when I really started exploring the night sky from Canada’s wild spaces, I started looking for the ultimate portable telescope. What I found wasn’t a telescope but two telescopes (really small ones at least) enhanced with the same gyroscope or electronic-optic-steadying technology used in camera optics. Continue reading “5 reasons to get image-stabilized binoculars” »

A month or so ago, when I took possession of a suite of Sky-Watcher telescopes supplied by EfstonScience of Toronto, the notion of how I would use any of these instruments was farthest from my mind (my first thought was to take the largest of the set and go on an “observing spree” of normally-faint deep space objects.) Continue reading “Test-driving a wilderness astronomy dream-setup” »

If someone had asked me last week where you should go if you hate seeing things like stars, planets, nebulas and galaxies, I would have told them to head to BC’s Kootenay mountains.

But after years of trying to go stargazing from Canada’s largest, least crowded, least stinky hot spring, the clouds parted for more than a few hours and we FINALLY Continue reading “Holiday stars over Canada’s best hot spring” »

Back in June, I was in Cypress Hills Interprovincial park on the Alberta/Saskatchewan border to research an upcoming column for Sky News magazine – a column (“Wilderness Explorer”) that you can now read and see imagery of in the current issue of the magazine Continue reading “Canada’s newest public observatory” »

I had the chance a few days ago to use some of my latest goodies from Telescopes.ca in an interactive astronomy session I did at the 2011 Latornell conservation symposium Nov 16.

The astronomy event was attended by a total of approximately 80-100 people as part of a slate of evening activities at the symposium, which regularly attracts more than 1,000 delegates from conservation authorities from around Ontario and Canada Continue reading “Exploring the water of our solar system” »

I was feeling a bit melancholy at the end of this month – and not due to the end of the warm season here in Ontario, or the ominous approach of Halloween (which I actually really love.) I was mourning the end of what felt like one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments – Like a kid at the end of a great season of summer camp, not knowing if they’ll ever be back:

(Above: The river widens at midnight below Jasper’s Athebasca Falls (click for full-res to see the extent of stars. Image: Peter McMahon) Continue reading “A month in the world’s largest “astronomy park”” »