The Manitoba Museum is hosting a Dome@Home in honour of Manitoba Day.

On May 12, 1870, the Manitoba Act was created, and today marks its 152nd anniversary.

Dome@Home is a recurring weekly event that the Manitoba Museum puts on, and today they are focusing on Manitoban skies and local astronomical history.

The online show has slowly transitioned from centring on local constellations and where the planets could be seen to spacecraft history and explaining high-tech tools used today.

Scott Young, the Planetarium Astronomer at the Manitoba Museum, says, "As we approached Manitoba Day, we thought, well, what are the Manitoba space stories that we could tell? That's when we started thinking of the Churchill Rocket Range and talked to our museum colleagues and put together a little program on that."

The Churchill Rocket Research Range was the only spaceport in Canada in the 1950s and it was used to send rockets into space to study the northern lights. 

"There's this whole, sort of, hidden space story for Manitoba that a lot of Manitobans know nothing about," says Young.

On Sunday night, starting at 9:30 pm, there is also a total lunar eclipse, and even though the sky looks to be cloudy for the weekend Young is not worried.

"We're going to do a live stream for the eclipse no matter what, because we have friends all across the country who have also been doing astronomy shows online. We basically got arrangements in place that if one place is cloudy we can use the feed from, you know, we got friends out in New Brunswick, over in Edmonton, and out in Vancouver," says Young. "Wherever it's clear, somewhere it's going to be clear, and we'll get a feed to broadcast to our show."

Young says that the show is a great way to connect with others and to join a community of people who enjoy learning about space.

The Dome@Home show is available on the Manitoba Museum's Facebook page and YouTube channel.

The Manitoba Museum has other events planned for the summer months, find out more on their website.

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