So many Good Reasons to Join
the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada centre in Ottawa
Join our community of astronomy enthusiasts. The only equipment required are your eyes . The only investment to make is a love of the skies!
When you join, you are both a member of the National organization and are affiliated with the Ottawa Centre with access to the Ottawa member benefits.
Why join us? Just look at these tempting offerings:
You’ll meet so many motivated and knowledgeable people – members and invited experts. Each shares your enthusiasm for all things astronomical, and they are all willing to share their expertise, experience and enthusiasm. Astro-imaging. Visual astronomy. Planetary science. Sketching. Advanced research. Astrophysics. We have a nerd for every occasion.
Learn more about what our meetings, speakers and presentations can offer you.
RASC Ottawa members can access to our very own members-only rural observing site – the Fred Lossing Observatory (FLO) out near Almonte. Bring your own gear or learn how to use our advanced equipment.
Chat with and learn from other observers
Members may borrow from our extensive telescope loan library. Telescopes, binoculars, eyepieces and other gear from our Ted Bean Telescope library. At no cost! Check out a beginner scope to start your astronomical journey. Borrow advanced gear to evaluate before spending big bucks.
The Stan Mott Library contains hundreds of books and DVDs for members to borrow.
It is located in the auditorium at the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum (CASM), the site of RASC Ottawa’s monthly meetings. Members can access the library by meeting up with our librarian during the break or at the end of each meeting. The library contains DVDs as well as printed material.
Members receive several publications from RASC each year.
- Ottawa’s own monthly newsletter AstroNotes, full of local and community news;
- the bi-monthly Journal of the RASC, which includes current star maps and articles of interest to the science and astronomical community
- the world-famous annual RASC Observer’s Handbook.
RASC observing certificate programs are designed to inspire observers – novices, visual observers, advanced astro-imagers – to develop and hone their skills and earn serious bragging rights.
RASC Ottawa members have free access to the Pro version of Astrospheric, a great app helping observers to assess 5-day forecasts for seeing, transparency etc. based on 5 models from EnvCan. Normal license cost is ~$60 Canadian per year. It’s gotta be a bargain, right?
Members of RASC Ottawa are entitled to join our Discord server and take part in many free-wheeling and informal channels amongst observers, astro-imagers, sketchers, flea trainers and polyglots.
We’re all over social media like herpes – facebook, meetup, reddit.
Just click below and you'll be whisked away to the RASC national website where you can join up and select Ottawa as your local centre and be the envy of all your friends and neighbours!
