Welcome and thank you for coming out again.

Ahh, tonight we have a guest speaker from

the Lethbridge Astronomy Society.

He's gonna do about a 15 minute presentation.

My name's Tom Anderson.

and uh

if you can't see where you are

or if you can't hear me or if I mummble

ok, I don't wanna hear [unintelligible]

ok deal ok

Anybody hear about the Lethbridge Astronomy Society?

Have you ever heard of us?

No

Do you know where we are located?

Ya, out that door!

Pretty good eh.

Umm, I'll tell you a little more about how to find us later.

That uhh, I'm in our group of The Lethbridge Astronomy Society

and uhh,

The society started back in the mid 1980's.

Yo, I just started come on in and sit down!

Umm, ya so

30 or so years ago

is when we started the society.

umm,

Ya, so we started back in the mid 1980's,

and then in the 90's uhh

back when we first started it was basically a small club

half a dozen people in all kinda like you. Right.

and, uhh we just sorta went for

borrow, hold bakeries, bottle drives, all kinds of stuff

[unintelligible] and get a little bit of beer together

a lot of people who get together have their own beer of course.

uhh, it kinda blew from there uhh, in about 1992, 93

when we got incorperated as a body [unintelligible]

I'll tell you a little more about that later, and why thats important.

So, basically

The short story is that there is not a lot of that with which you can can aply to.

[unintelligible]

So, anyways thats our logo umm,

this is where we are located (the picture)

So if you drive down Univeristy Drive

on you way out of town [unintelligible]

go straight on past that and you're gonna take your first right.

and at the gravel road it takes you down into the coulees.

Umm, after you follow that road

then you just take the dirt left. That takes you down into the coulee.

Uhh, there's a dogwalking park an off leash dog park down here, we also have

[unintelligible] Center, so that's kind of neat to see ahh, the ecology that goes on there.

[unintelligible] down there

Umm, there's an old farm house Umm.

If you park in the [unintelligible] the [unintelligible] goes up. Umm.

So Um

This is the [unintelligible]. This here is the farm house.

And that's the main observatory.

[unintelligible] that um, ya! and

Uhh, we're basically open all the time.

Sometimes we keep the hours not open to the public. Though you can still get to it.

Umm,

Ok, there was the sign on the way in, and you can just see

the corner of the building down here. Umm,

So this is the obseving deck, so if you have portable telescopes you can bring them and put them on the deck. Umm,

It's concrete which is nice cause that means movement won't woggle around the scope.

Umm, and then there's a

I'm getting my, I'm getting my Uhh,

OK, Umm,

There's the main ahh, viewing telescope down here.

So, inside the main classroom, holds about 30, 40 people. Uhh,

We have a, uhh, member, a call member meeting every month.

Although we have, we hold that over the summer because it's so [unintelligible] by the time you start [unintelligible].

[unintelligible] Uhh,

That started in September about when we had our first meeting.

Ahh, right now our membership's about 45 people.

Umm, so then we deal with new registration when we have a meeting. Umm,

September 9 [unintelligible] membership [unintelligible]. Umm,

We also public observing, and that is the last Saturday of every month.

and it's free to get in, you're welcome to come. :) Ahh,

7:30 is when it starts, and it will go till around 9, 9:30,

and at the end [unintelligible] September [unintelligible].

Umm.

We do a lot of other education outreach, umm, often though we [unintelligible] unless it's a topic of interest.

We don't actually offer you education by presenting anything outside the club so,

you are the first. And me made an excepting just for you.

Uhh, we do the labs for the U of L, we have been 30 years. Umm,

students in Astrophysics they come down to the observatory there. Even in Astrophysics you never know, you never actually look through the telescope.

Till you come down to our place.

Ahh,

we've got a few of these programs going although

[unintelligible] other people. We've got a project that we're doing at the college. Umm,

We've got a magnatometer down at out site that they can use. Umm Ahh,

Then there's Bonny and Delora. Umm,

We don't often do funraising or [unintelligible] that much anymore,

because we got a better source of funding then we had in the past.

and then there's [unintelligible] which shows how larger [unintelligible]

Sometimes at at the club although we're [unintelligible] more remote locations, we can get better funding. K.

Ahhh,

Ohh,

So this is what it looks like in the summer time, uhh when we've had some rain

[unintelligible] this is down on the ground, right about the observing deck.

You can just see, this has nothing to do with astronomy but, you can just see the fain lines of an old railway that went through there.

Way, way, back like a million years ago.

and that railway was a bad idea, because [unintelligible]

Umm, here's a sample of some of the equiptment we have. This is a very old slide

so we have, we will actually have [unintelligible]

Umm, again another old photo

[unintelligible]. Uhh,

We've got a program, or had a program which not what we currently do

[unintelligible]

and we've got a [unintelligible]

[unintelligible]

Uhh, you have the aurora

[unintelligible] Earth

[unintelligible] 3 or 4 times a year they [unintelligible]