“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them,”said Now UWinnipeg students can dwell in beauty and run with the stars like we have for millennium thanks to a telescope.
Celestron Super C8 telescope , ©UWinnipeg
Wanting to give back to his alma mater, John Pelleck (BA’73), has gifted UWinnipeg with a Celestron Super C8 Plus Telescope to view the stars. Thankfully, UWinnipeg’s physicist Don Campbell, and astrophysicist Vesna Milosevic-Zdjelar, whose research interests are galactic astronomy and astrophysical cosmology, will put the powerful telescope to good use, star gazing and viewing celestial objects in the night sky.
“We will use it for student exercises,” said Milosevic-Zdjelar. “As well as for events like Transits of Mercury, eclipses, sunspots, solar flairs, star gazing, observing neighbouring galaxies in Andromeda, and any other observation events for university and the wider community to experience this fine and valuable telescope.”
This portable telescope is housed in the Department of Physics. It will be used to star gaze without borders and help students learn and enjoy observational astronomy.
After completing his Bachelor of Arts in anthropology, Pelleck worked as the anthropology laboratory technician at UWinnipeg for a year before going to the University of Manitoba for graduate studies. Pelleck’s primary focus was on prehistoric rock art in the Canadian Shield area of Manitoba and Northwestern Ontario. Subsequently, he was employed by the Ontario Government, Office of the Regional Archaeologist, in Kenora, Ontario, where he worked on various archaeological surveys and excavations at both prehistoric and historic sites. After several years working as an licensed archaeological consultant Pelleck went to work for the Weyerhauser Company in Kenora, where he wrote technical manuals until his retirement in 2018.
