Everyone is invited to join us and Durham Skies on June 23 for stargazing at the edge of Lake Ontario. Take a free look through different kinds of telescopes (including solar-filtered scopes) to get close-up looks at sunspots, craters on the Moon, brilliant Venus, giant Jupiter and Saturn with its rings. Peer deep into space and try your hand at spotting faint star clusters and nebulae. You can even bring your own telescope along and we'll give you expert advice on how to use it better.

To the Moon and back! Show the Earth’s only natural satellite a little love by taking its picture with your smartphone or digital camera. As the second-brightest, regularly visible celestial object in our sky, photographing the Moon is a snap. (See what we did there?) Participate in an astrophotography workshop, take a tour of the night sky using a telescope, engage in hands-on, Moon-themed activities, find out about the latest in lunar science and learn about mathematician Katherine Johnson, whose calculations helped put the first humans on the Moon.

Hover above the moon like an astronaut and get eye-to-eye with the planets. Find colourful stars, star clusters, bright nebulae and even another galaxy. Our monthly City Star Party is the place to catch universe from within the city limits at Bayview Village Park. If you don't have a telescope then you will find many astronomers who would love to share a view. If you are thinking of buying a telescope, viewing with other people's equipment is the best way to make a good choice. If you have a telescope or binoculars, please bring it!

See the milky way and galaxies with the unaided eye. Point your telescope to find the many dim deep space objects that sprinkle the sky. Away from Toronto's light polution, there is so much to see. We observe from the Long Sault Conservation area, an hour outside of Toronto. We meet around dusk once a month in the parking lot for views only seen in dark sky conditions. We hold this event on the first clear night of our week-long window, so the date and time are determined closer to.

Visit the website for event schedule, tour registration and details.

Join us for our June AstroTour, starting with a talk by Dr. Rachael Alexandroff at 9:00pm on June 7th! After the talk, we will have planetarium shows, telescope observing (weather dependent), and more astronomy activities. Planetarium tickets will be available on a first-come first-served basis outside MP 103 (limit 5 per person) starting at 8:45PM. Any remaining tickets will be available after the talk.

The June 7 Monthly meeting will feature guest speaker David L. Clark, who is a software developer, technical director and astronomy researcher. In his talk he will provide insight into a number of areas of solar-system research in which he is involved: small body dynamics including mini-moons, parent body associations, serendipitous imaging of meteoroids, and large-scale meteoroid stream modelling.

PixInsight has become a popular image processing software package in recent years, especially for deep-sky astrophotography. Ron Brecher has used PixInsight for all of his deep sky processing since 2009. In this demonstration, Ron will show you how you can reveal the hidden treasures in your deep-sky images with just a few processing steps: crop bad edges, correct gradients, balance the colour, supress the noise, “stretch” the histogram and adjust colour, brightness and contrast.

International Observe the Moon Night (InOMN) is a NASA-hosted annual worldwide public event that aims to celebrate our appreciation and understanding of Earth's nearest neighbour through art, culture, and science. Join us as we celebrate InOMN at the David Dunlap Observatory. We are planning a range of activities geared for all age-groups including a short talk on the role of lunar missions in understanding the Moon better, Moon viewings through telescopes, and craft activities for children.

The Perseids are the most reliably visible meteor shower at the most favorable part of the summer, the weekend of August 11th, at New Moon. If you have ever seen a shooting star, during a meteor shower you can expect to see many of them, appearing to radiate from the constellation Perseus in the northeastern sky. The meteors are created by particles of comet dust left in this part of Earth's orbit by a passing comet. Peter Millman, one of the first astronomers to work at the DDO, made the study of meteors like these the subject of his Harvard Ph.D. in 1932.