Quarky Science
8550 East Saanich Rd V8L 1H1 Victoria, BC, Canada

A pallet of SkyWatcher telescopes arrived today, so we have some more collapsible 8" Dobsonian reflector telescopes looking for a good home. The weather was very accommodating and waited until I brought the telescopes in before the next downpour started. ABF Freight are always a pleasure to deal with. Their drivers are great, my telescopes arrive safely, and I get another pallet to add to the others: as material for a future yard project. https://quarkyscience.ca//collapsible-dobsonian-reflector/

Another shipment of Celestron accessories arrived at the shop today, including: powertanks, Omni Barlows, neutral density moon filters, and some zoom eyepieces. https://quarkyscience.ca//celestron-zoom-8-24m-eyepiece-1/

Lots of Celestron astronomy accessories have begun coming in over the last week, including more of these lithium power packs. Sadly, while the moon filters have arrived, we're still waiting on a much anticipated shipment of XCel LX Barlows. https://quarkyscience.ca/shop/powertank-lithium-lt/

A massive earthquake has occurred off of the Aleutian Islands. At least one sensor buoy off the Alaskan coast is showing data that indicates the possibility of a tsunami there. It will be a while before we know if this will affect the BC coast, but if you're working close to shore or hanging out at the beach, you might want to to start watching emergency services updates a bit closer for the next few hours.

I took this photo last night of the smoky Moon, using a 203mm Schmidt-Cassegrain telescope as a very large camera lens. When you don't need a Moon filter to look at a full moon you know you're not going to have the best results. As we get closer to the Mars opposition on October 13th, it's worth going out on any clear night to have a look. Unlike the Moon, Mars isn't tidally locked to us and rotates at a different speed so we are continually seeing a different view of Mars.

The Quarky Science showroom hours for October and November are 10am-4pm, Monday to Saturday. We will likely be returning to longer hours for December.

if you're looking for some astronomy tonight, there's an online presentation from the Astronomy Department of the University of Victoria, with Dr. James Di Francesco of the Herzberg Institute giving a talk on possibility of extraterrestrial life from a scientific perspective (not to be confused with something you might have seen on the History Channel). Details on attending the Zoom meeting are below.