An amateur northern Manitoba astronomer is part of a 13-year, $200-million NASA project to study the aurora borealis across the Arctic, from Greenland to Alaska.
Delwin Shand is caretaker of the THEMIS (Time History of Events and Macroscale Interactions during Substorms) mission’s ground-based observatory in The Pas.
“It’s a camera system,” Shand said. “The University of Calgary’s astronomy and astrophysics department, in junction with NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the University of California at Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory are participating in a joint project. I look after their camera system and computer that controls it.”
Shand is the president of the Northern Lights Astronomy Club, which meets monthly in The Pas. He is also database administrator for University College of the North’s support personnel’s record system in The Pas.
– Thompson Citizen
