Astronomical League Live II

Transcript:

Kaitlyn Are you hearing music or?
Nope in my own little world over here, yeah, that's completely fine. We're we go
along with that too. Alright, speaking of being in your own little world um uh I think I
mentioned it before, but I bought like one of those um uh
Oculus Quest VR headsets, Oh goodness that is amazing that is amazing uh that um the
planetarium program that uh they were talking about yesterday uh with the. The um a
nice guy network uh called big astronomy uh they are streaming that in live three well, the
stream live. It's it's recorded Planetarium show, but it's in 360° and so one of the apps in
the Oculus Quest is YouTube 360 and so you get to I can't wait.
I can't move this program in 360. It's gonna be cool. Oh wow. Did you ever hook that up
through your telescope? yet I did. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, I would love to see that. Yeah, it's
definitely well worth it. So you have some um viewers
checking in we got uh Richard Grace and Bergman Scooter from Stockholm Eduardo Simone Aloha.
Martin I'm watching I'm awaiting the wind to come so I might open my dome to do some
work and some play I now have this yay that rhyme Martin.
That's that's good.
Yeah, I know.
Yeah, Richard Uh you should look into the Oculus quest um
uh Mr watching for Malaysia.
Last time you had somebody from Malaysia, they had gorgeous skies. Really, you are there on
the when we what was that? um? yeah, That was the grand
conjunction wasn't it. That was the Asian edition of the global. Yeah that they had
amazing skies.
So David are you getting are you getting some good observing in Arizona? or is it been
cloudy? or no? It's very clear tonight. I'll be out for a
little bit this evening, although the moon is starting to come back. That's what David says every time he's always
saying there's clear skies. not where I live. I'll tell you, I think we all need to move to be
next door. Neighbors to David Levy. I should do that uh that
we're all getting confused on. Time zones today This is time
Zone Day. It's twilight Zone Day. Yes, let's see so today is
the fifteenth. And right now, they say that
Uranus is stationary.
My dog keeps coming in to get keep me company Nice tater. Yeah, taters just walking out
the door. She has a way of coming and
nudging my arm as soon as I get on there and try to speak and I'm trying to keep her do
without pay attention to me. That's it right. Is she a
member of the lake? yet she's an after a dog? Yeah. She keeps me company every time I'm out
if I go out the door she has to go out right before me. Martin
says. I'm clear in central zone, Texas and the wind is blowing twenty to thirty miles an hour. Oh wow won't open for
me now I I I was observing a very cold weather with high wind uh a week ago uh huh and.
As sitting at the telescope, I'm on a tarp that's locked down with tents, okay and all
of a sudden the north end of the tarp, both of the metal tent states flew at me like
bullets hit the telescope in the entire tarp rolled over the top of me and the telescope has
done a good enough. Not good. Yeah. That's a sign. That's a
sign. It doesn't stop me and how you challenge right you you
know my old astronomy club, we would have called you a Viking, you know rough. Tough they can
stand anything you know so well. last year, I did an 11 hours in minus two. so wow, you
are definitely an astro Viking just have a dress for it.
That's not Celsius either is that that was minus three stay under both temperature
Fahrenheit That's my record. I don't wanna repeat it or break
it. Eduardo said that's a micro burst. No I guess experiencing
a micro bar, he says. It's time to go. Oh, no. I'll be okay.
Some water
Scott did you get the address that I did. I did I sent you
wanted my league address. Okay.
Did you ever respond back to that? I want to make sure it was coming through? Okay? I
would say no, I didn't that's okay uh.
No wait a minute I see that from your personal address.
Yeah um for summary and that's what it's set up. I guess to go through my personal address
that way it comes right in through my email. I say that if
I reply to it, it's just gonna I'll reply. It's gonna go. okay uh check the email that has
that email address within it and do it that way. let's see if I can do it.
I tried to email myself and I couldn't I couldn't get it to work. I know Carol you would use that email address and it
worked fine um so it should work for everyone. really. I'm not sure what it is. Yeah, I
couldn't send it to myself or at least it didn't seem to send to you. I just said, Okay, the
secretary address. Okay. I'm going. I think the problem before because I also tried to
use it and I couldn't make it work. So oh, really yeah so there maybe something in.
You're forwarding or something like that that's stopping that
kid. Okay. get Mitchell. Yeah. uh actually I have the email from Scott. Yeah. James
photographer This looks like says that looks like I might get an hour or so break in the clouds after 830 to nine
eastern, I might actually get to see some stars tonight. It's raining right now, though,
Martin says, I just watched a YouTube that showed La Palma under a heavy snow and the dome
is frozen closed. Oh my god Marco weather.
Yeah now. Check you. Cold weather I like the long winter nights, you know ton done you
know 11 hours of darkness. It's fantastic. so I like to take advantage of them. Yeah.
Every now and then I had one night uh not long ago when I was just totally overwhelmed with frost, I mean it was
there, but icicles hanging off the telescope. I've had that before too, that is
determination. Yeah definitely uh it's a bit of a test for the heaters.
I'd like to find one of those electric suits at the uh guys at Mount Wilson and Palomar
used to wear. I think it was. I don't know if they used them, Matt Wilson but certainly at
they did.
Brad says yeah, but uh but the skies have to be clear well.
Yeah, that's a bit of a problem. Aims the photographer
says they are great when they are clear. I'll wear a multi layers. I was in Cleveland and
the mall on time watching uh in the middle of the mall and I looked over at the store and I saw a coat hanging on the
window. It's a full length down coat with hood. Yeah, and I said to the people I was with
excuse me. I'm gonna go buy that coat now. I'll be right back. I mean II didn't even ask
at the minute. I saw it. I knew it had to be mine. It is fantastic you simply cannot get
cold in it.
Are there earthquakes on Mars or rather Mars quakes quakes on earth happened many times a day
largely due to continental plate shifting as they float on the mantle below that's called
plates Mars doesn't seem to have plays, but other things can make the ground shade too,
like cracking caused by contraction from cooling magma moving and creating pressure on
the ground or even meteorite impacts. Quakes at anytime since seismic waves around and
through the plant, scientists can study others waves bounce off layers deep under ground to help understand what the
planet's interior is like Nasa's inside L carries a super sensitive instrument to measure Mars and could detect dozens of
enduring mission. Each one can tell us a lot about what's going on inside the mysterious
red planet. or maybe about how all the rocky planets came to be.
That was a nice brief little introduction there that wasn't it. Yeah. It's perfect.
I like that so everyone thank you for tuning in tonight. This is Scott Roberts from explore
scientific and the Explorer Alliance and we are here joined with the Astronomical League
and this is their second program. The astronomical elite live too and um uh we have uh a
uh great line up of people here already um uh with uh David
Levy uh Terry. Uh will be uh co hosting this uh program with me
uh Libby and the Stars John Goss is here with us from the
astronomically Chuck Allen here our keynote speaker Caitlyn Ers is here and uh the president of
the Astronomical League, Carol and excellent to have you guys on tonight again. I love this
program and um uh I love all the uh you know just a variety
that the uh Astronomical League brings to our community. so it's awesome um. Uh the um uh
we always start our programs um uh almost all of our programs, but in fact, I think one of our
programs with uh with David Levy, David uh shares his passion his love for the night
sky his uh love of literature um poetry, you know and the
emotions uh that uh only poetry can evoke about the night sky
in our you know and the astronomers love for it so um and no one does the. Better
than David and we are so lucky to have him. David. I'm gonna turn it over to you. Thank you
Scotty and uh welcome everyone to the Astronomical League live
number two event. I think number one event was yesterday and it was a uh very it's been
a very interesting time for those of you who living somewhere on Earth. It's been a
very tough year and and we're all for an improving year in 2021 for those of us living.
The United States, it's been a difficult start for the new year and we're also very much
hoping that the next few days will be peaceful and then we'll be able to go back to enjoying
the night sky and even before that to go outside and just watch the stars come out as
something that I really treasure something very special and uh I think I have to do
that because uh when I was a kid, I was going to be a professional astronomer I was
going to. Um do well in math and physics, so I went to
McGill where I flunked math and I flung physics and I did I failed pretty much everything with the possible exception of
English literature that I didn't do too badly and went to Miguel again and did the same
thing then then went to Acadia switched switched my to English
literature and did very well in that and uh then at Queens, I was able to get a master's
degree and then just a. I got my PhD, also an English
literature at the Hebrew University, so the poem that I'm and the uh I was told that
that there's no way into astronomy through English literature, but I was able to
prove that wrong because I think there's a very easy and fulfilling way to get to reach
for the stars through the poetry and pros of English literature. Tonight, my
quotation is going to be it is going to be. I think of all the hundred odd quotations I have
in my book, which is right here of all the hundred odd
quotations that I have in this book. uh this is Wendy's favorite and uh Wendy If you
wanna come and read this with me, I'd be happy to uh all be
happy to do it. It is from Ralph Hudson's, the song of a
published in 1913 and imagine that you're standing on top of
a just a White Hill, a small hill which up at the night sky
I stood and stared the sky was lit. The sky was stars all over
it. I stood I knew not why that a wish without a will I stood
upon that silent Hill and stared into this. Until my eyes
were blind with stars and still I stared into the sky thanks
and back to you. Scotty I've heard that many times and you
always deliver it so nicely. it's awesome. um okay so uh
next I would like to um introduce uh someone that this week needs no introduction
because she's been on with me all week long um Terry man, who is the Secretary of the
Astronomical League, Terry is a um. Former Two-term president of the Astronomical League and
someone who's made uh the better part of her life. I think devoted to the league uh well at least amateur astronomy
and uh to getting people of all ages, especially uh kids um and
girls uh with a focus on girls getting involved in science and
astronomy. Uh Terry has put together some amazing events. Uh for the league and um uh she
is uh she's an adventure, one of the most uh I would say
truly a brave person she she's someone that uh is adventurous
and uh has gone to a great links to uh uh witness and all
of its splendor, including uh going out to photograph Aurora. uh like you see like a shot
behind her right now um. And uh so it's uh turn over to you.
Terry Thank you thanks for allowing the explore alliance to uh present uh the
Astronomical League live programs Well. Thank you Scott for doing that. We are really
happy to be here and David Wendy Thank you very much you tell Wendy from all of us and
thank you both for reading that I love that I cannot. I just
like Kaitlyn was soon as you started. She just looked right up there. You know what is going to happen. You know which
direction to look so thank you. David welcome Oh, you're muted.
David. Okay. Alright I would like to
introduce uh the president of the Astronomical League, Carol, or which has held many offices
done many things with the league uh another person that has spent many uh I won't say
many years has spent years too involved in astronomy and with
and outreach um you'll find out a lot of a lot of the people of the league do that and as I'm
sitting here, we have four. we have one president and three past presidents. Sitting here,
which is kind of unusual to see all of us in one group unless we're an Alcon at the banquet. um so it's great to have
everybody here uh Libby and Kaitlyn and everybody. Thank you for being here and Carol. I
think I will turn this over to you and let you go ahead and give a little bit of an update on the league. Thank you good
to be here. Thanks Scott for setting all this up. David is enjoying uh your comments and
he's good to be almost a standard fixture at our local club meetings uh once a month
as well. so that's good and never get tired of hearing about. Who would have thought a
year ago that we would be spending so much time on zoom and yet uh I know several of
our individual clubs and of course the league included in that thought with the pandemic
happening we can't do anything. We've got to stop not so I I am
so with the ingenuity people in this group of uh worked with and established, including
Scott uh because we've constantly uh come up. New ways
of doing things In many ways, we're reaching a lot more people than we ever could before. and so I think it's
going to be long term. a very good thing for us in fact, just today I got uh official uh uh
record there from John Goss but we are the National League is on YouTube. We have our own
channel as of today um so I would encourage everybody to go out there and check us out and there's already a post. John
all the benefits of the league many of the benefits and I see this as a real good uh platform
to uh work on uh in the future uh one of my goals uh earlier
in the year was to make sure we expanded our presence and yet another area and I think that
would be most beneficial so uh in addition to John uh being
responsible for that as officer uh. He's also uh since he
didn't have anything to do took a bomb. The project of the seventy-fifth anniversary celebration uh agreed uh we
didn't have to twist his arm too much to have that up and we're really appreciative that
John uh is amazing what we have found out as Chuck Terry and
others have dug into the history of our organization and
uh look at the giants who came before us uh whether it was. Uh
former officers or youth who were instrumental in making the
where it is today, so it's uh we're very appreciative that we're going to celebrate that
this year. Tradition we are very privileged to have been on
uh for about 4 months now with Scott's uh global Star party
has been extremely helpful and expanding our reach as well. Uh
explore on and it's really uh something that has helped
tremendously. Thank you Carol I'd like to say
just a little bit about our national convention coming up scheduled for the first week in August as many of you know, I
don't think any of us are uh under a rock and do not realize that we have a pandemic
worldwide, however, uh uh still very optimistic that first week in August, we will be able to
meet in Albuquerque and uh we may have to do some uh. Things
in order to make things happen it probably won't be uh convention like we've had before but strictly speakers on
site, there will be probably a combination of several things, but we wanna invite you to uh
stay tuned on that. we'll have more information as it becomes available. As I was uh talking
to Terry about who would be a good speaker for this event, the name that immediately came out with Kaitlyn and I was
looking back in the records. It does not seem possible that it's was 10 years ago that you
won the award. I don't remember what the location was for year,
but uh can't believe it's been 10 years well done and here you are uh freshly met PhD. How
good does it get? Recently, we made the decision
that our website the website need a little help so we're coming on nicely on that to
expand the capabilities for streaming on the website, as well as our other platforms. So
we'll keep you posted on that. we've been very encouraged by all of the people who have
stepped forward willing to help with that effort and I think it'll it'll pay off uh all of
God. It's a little behind, but we're we're doing there. And let's see I probably won't
forget some things, but oh, yeah the one at the top and it
looked right over uh thanks to explore scientific and Scott Roberts for taking up the
mantle for the imaging award. Uh we had a sponsorship from O
for several years on that one uh it's going to take us a while to get the uh everything
ironed out with that and make it a manageable program. uh. Uh
since we're expanding beyond the scope of just having award winners and that sort of thing, it's going to be a little
bigger scale. so we wanna get it right so we'll have a well machine, but it actually
announced we'll announce that in the first half of the year and Scott again, that is such a nice contribution. Uh we
appreciate very much. you can real honor. it really is and let's see.
I think that's about all of my comments for right now, I don't wanna take away from uh any of
our other speakers from the side. Uh Chuck will be talking about our uh variation award
programs and he'll go more in depth on that and John will be talking about our 75th
anniversary. so I'll turn it back to you. Terry Thank you. okay. Thank you. Carol appreciate that update. Um I am
going to explain a little bit about what we're going to do next. Um I'm gonna share my.
And bring up our we're gonna give away three door prizes tonight and they will will
three astronomical League calendars and if you've watched the global Star Party, we do it
a little bit different on the global Star party. um you will
tonight you will send your answer to secretary at Astro
League.org and what I wanna do is do the three questions now and you will answer. Online but
to that email and then after Kaitlyn gets done speaking, I
will announce the three winners so that way get your answers in as soon as you can because when
she starts, we will definitely be going over winners so we will have them figured out
after she gets done so as I said, tonight's door prizes are
three league calendars and these are fantastic calendars with a lot of information and.
All of the proceeds the revenue will go to Alcon junior for the
kids. so this is the first question What is a green flash?
Okay Next question What are the Nbc numbers the open cluster
known as the double impervious?
Okay and the last question what is the common name for the main
object that winds through I see 1396 and Cts now send your
answers as I said to Secretary of Astro League.org and we will announce the winners after
Kaitlyn is done so I am going to now turn this over to Chuck
Allen and Chuck Allen has been president of the league before he is current vice president
and he is a master. Observer uh if you wanna know something about the sky, Chuck knows it
as you some of them heard him talking earlier, he has spent many hours out under the Stars
and Chuck will be speaking about our observing program so Chuck I am going to turn it over to you. Hey, thank you
very much. Hello everyone um I do have the privilege of talking about something that uh
I believe is one of the major benefits of league membership, which is uh our very robust
system of observing awards and so if I can share. Now, I'll
begin that process. I'm stuck in here. Oops wrong one.
One second, please okay there we go uh our program uh have
been in existence for a long time as you will find out very soon. But before I talk about our observing programs, I'd
like to mention something about about the ways that astronomers observe because not all of it
is visual uh one of our past presidents Barry Beeman has made 20000 variable stars that
is his passion. Jim Fox. Uh our 2014 award winner for doing
photo metric work on the atmospheres of Neptune Uranus um we have young people like
Karen here who uh won the National Young Astronomer Award
in 2020 doing uh Radio astronomy research into the sort of x-ray resource that had
not been determined before uh many of you remember the Reverend Robert Evans, who
discovered forty-two supernova using a sixteen-inch uh
reflector and uh. Uh amazing uh card catalog that was
legendary, We have uh 600 asteroids were found by by amateurs working at point
Observatory in Kansas. uh something that's now being planted. unfortunately by satellites we have fundraising
come and discovers and David Levy, who's with us tonight is one of the most legendary comic
discovers in our midst and uh we're so pleased to have him with us. always a great supporter of the league. Um
unfortunately, comets too now seem to be falling into the per view of satellite discovery. many of you in the amateur
astronomy community engagement public outreach, which is key and if you're doing that, keep it up and of course, ask for
photography is risen to new levels with CD cameras. Here's an example of an eight-inch telescope image taken by a
member of my club in Evansville, compared to one taken with a 322 inch
telescope. So. Stunning Yes. Yeah. Okay. um so
but what if you're interested in visual observing what if you're interested in going out
and not observing the ring that be left with the 430 of time
you need some structure. you wanna see new things you want to be challenged in what you're pursuing you wanna learn from
this and boy this can do it uh the the elites observe structure your observing in
ways that I never even imagine possible and I'm gonna show you some numbers here and I'm not trying to impress anybody. I'm
trying to show you how stimulating these programs. Gift uh because they have led
me through thirty-seven programs to over 6300. 6360 observations um in my lifetime
and most of those as you will see later have occurred in the last couple of years um so let
me talk a little about these programs we have over eighty uh
observing programs in the astronomical League they provide uh each uh a list of
projects or observations that have to be completed, usually about 100 some as many as 400
some fifty or sixty depending on difficult. Um most of these
are pin programs, you've received a certificate and pin for completion and you've received national recognition for it. We have over eighty by
comparison to Royal Astronomical Society of Canada uh which is a wonderful organization, has only seven
and only five pin programs. so so this the most robust system of observing awards and
existence it started back in 1967 with the award of a club
certificate to Catherine and Delaney in 1960. Seven since then we have given out 16100.
16140 awards to over 5600 different people well. These
are the folks who run are observing programs uh doctor Aaron Clemson doctor Alan Ping
Lieutenant Commander, Cliff and Doctor Maynard Pitre is the executive Secretary of the
league currently uh Aaron is essentially the head of the ball game. Uh you know the work
he does is absolutely stunning. I don't know how he keeps up with it all uh he is
responsible for monitoring the activities and answering questions and keeping everyone on track uh running all of
these. Programs have some quite a few scores of coordinators um
and I am a coordinator of three of these programs, so I know how much work he does and that
they all do in keeping these programs afloat. You'll learn a
lot from pursuing these programs. you're not just looking at things uh our open
cluster program, for example, masks people to engage in the process of determining the
detachment and the the Trump of open clusters Our cluster program uh asks people to
estimate the shale Sawyer concentration uh of the
clusters, for example the alternate constellation program, which is brand new, asks people to examine uh
constellations that. Were invented in Europe and then have since become default or uh
constellations uh in the pathologies of different civilizations around the world, Aboriginal culture specific
Island cultures African cultures uh South American and Latin-American cultures and
Native American cultures in the United States and also Asian cultures. for example the saw
uh juice and and the three belt stars of Orion uh has three
boys in a canoe fishing with a line extending to fish uh that they were not supposed. Catch
uh the Nebula and because they caught this forbidden fish, they were cast into the skies a
warning to others to evade travel laws and down on the lower left at the southwest
corner of Library is my personal favorite constellation Buffalo the so there's a lot of
interest to be had in studying those we have three lunar programs you're very accessible
to people in cities The lunar Evolution Evolution program is our newest one and once again.
Educational because it asks the observer to observe fifty-seven different features on the moon
and to estimate the geological epic amount of six geological ethics uh in the women's
history uh as it relates to that particular feature, we have a dark sky Advocate
program in which people uh study lighting uh determine
different kinds of of lighting which are and unfavorable to uh astronomical research and
observing uh the legal issues surrounding. Of the effect on the wildlife and sky quality
determinations around the country and you see how badly it's deteriorated just since
the 1950s. The stellar evolution and carbon star programs key to a point in
recognizing color and stars that you never imagined you could have most people think they just see blue and white,
but once you do these programs, you start seeing colors you never dreamed of before you become more sensitive to it
because it asks you to do that Our solar system program covers a variety of topics from
eclipses uh to Jovi and satellite observations to come to Mars albino features outer
Planet Sun spots a wide variety of projects, some of which take six. Weeks to complete uh
multiple observations of Venus phases, for example, uh is one of them We have sun spot and H
Alpha programs for solar observing. Which, of course the
demands a great deal of uh care and interest in filter usage We
have a bright and Nebula and a dark Nebula program. uh some of the members sometimes refer to
the bright Nebula program as Sprite Nebula, art and dark that are, but they're a little
tougher than they may seem We have many programs now oriented toward high-resolution
observation of double stars multiple stars uh these are.
Very testy require good seeing conditions and an understanding uh of the uh uh. ability to
observe a high resolution We have a program we have also a
multitude of galaxy programs, which are my personal favorites. uh they start with the galaxies and the catalog
and the Caldwell catalog and move on to the hers 400 rehearsal two programs which have 400 objects each in them
mostly galaxies and the rest are pretty much. Galaxy programs to the view local
galaxy groups active galactic nuclear, which are the objects
in northern and southern art programs uh the Southern art program is a big challenge for
me here. I finally finished that you're observing thirteenth magnitude uh galaxy's on the deck. It's very
low um and so forth. so these are all great for for the
galaxy hunters in the midst the planetary Nebula. Requires a
lot of understanding of use of filters. And our visual meteor
observing program uh requires reporting uh official reporting
uh and learning how to do that how to evaluate the type color
speed train uh and magnitude of meteors when observed we have also of course a variable star
program and a binocular variable Star Program and Nova program, which uh require
reporting to the Avs and getting involved with them. Uh is. Positive experience because
you're contributing directly to the science of astronomy when you do this um one of one of
the of pursuing these programs is that tests your limitations. um one night I was observing
with a twelve inch um at Patoka Lake, It was a dark side. I was after rehearsal two object, Nbc
499 This is not uh the the sketch did not copy well. The
contrast is way too high here, but the galaxy was here. As I observed that I noted another
galaxy over on the other side of the field, Nbc 496 and it was just a little smudge moving
with the feel as I moved it to get a better handle on the shape and structure of 499 and
while I was sketching it, I noticed a little tiny smudge that was moving along between them, which turned out to be ng
um uh 498, which which was initially a magnitude 16.00.
It's actually 14.3, but that's a test uh in transition. Skies
for a twelve inch um and so it makes you much more attuned to seeing extremely faint objects
with whatever telescope you're using uh these programs push you to the very limits of your
capability with the telescope and you don't need a twenty-eight inch do to do these programs as I said I've
completed 37 of them using nothing larger than a twelve inch. so these are very
accessible programs and many of our programs require only binoculars or sometimes naked eye observation. Again, these
are some of the pins that are awarded along with the certificates that we give out they're beautiful. They make
nice a nice collection and they look nice on a wall. You also
if you complete a program, your name gets recorded in our observing Award section of our quarterly magazine reflector,
So you got national recognition for your observing work. We
have also become the organization that assigns Master observer status to
people who complete certain required programs and certain numbers of programs. Master
observer status is achieved by uh completing ten programs, including five core programs,
which are the binocular lunar Double star and her 400 programs. um once you complete
the basic observer requirement, you can move on to. Advanced Observer, which is a total of fifteen programs including five
additional courses, taken out of a list of seventeen master silver, which involves twenty
total programs with four more cores Master gold, which is thirty programs with five more
cores and master platinum, which is forty programs with five more core programs required uh we recognize our
master observers with plaques at our convention if they come to the convention to pick it up very nice to have we also have.
Program to recognize those who educate others our master outreach program uh has three
levels for five events of 2 hours each outreach at 60 hours of master outreach at 160 plus
a narrative about your experience with teaching other people astronomy Um I'm always
showing you this the number of objects observed per year uh in my lifetime to show you the
benefits of getting started in earnest with these observing. So I did this, I was taking
care of family members for a number of years and then in 2018 started into these
observing programs and got hooked and you see the last 3 years have greatly eclipsed any
prior year in my life in terms of observing, so they really do hook you uh become quite
addictive and that means you're out in conditions you'd rather not be out on um but uh you
have to take advantage of those clear nights when you get them whether it's a minus 2° or not.
Also a lot of paperwork to do but it's amazing how much learning goes on when you you go back log your observations
uh or you plan your observations in advance because one of the things you you learn when get into our observing
programs at a higher level is that you have to plan before you go into the field. You have
to know what you're going after and where to find it and what you're looking for some of them are challenging and if you go
just uh without that information in hand, uh your success rate drops
substantially I show this. I used to do a lot of mountain climbing and when people look
at into the face of a rehearsal 400 program or rehearsal two program with 400 objects, they
think there's no way I can't do it and what I tell them is the thing the same thing I used to tell young people that I took
on mountain climbs, I said, Do not look at the summit. look at the fifty feet in front of you
worry about that and just keep doing it fifty feet at a time fifty feet at a time and all of
a sudden the mountain melts away and you're on top and that's the way these programs work. so don't be intimidated.
By the number of objects in them, you will get there We have a number of advanced
programs that I have listed here. Uh I have the rehearsal 400 her two and a slightly
different shade because they're not necessarily difficult. It's just that there are a lot of objects 400 in each of those
programs, Some of the other programs um are quite challenging flat galaxy is very
difficult. The neo are difficult uh the advance Binocular Double star program
is surprisingly hard uh the planet. Program and it requires 110 observations out of a
possible 110 so you uh you have to be very vigilant in pursuing those and and some are quite
the intermediate programs we have uh are these cluster programs the lunar Programs
Solar System Sun spot uh variable star programs and so forth they are interesting.
They're fun and uh not brutally challenging at all uh but
time-consuming. Have to work them, but we also have a number of novice programs that are
particular interest to young people getting started um and here are a number of them uh
again some of these do not involve a lot of Telescopic work Some do uh some involve
all the binocular work um we have a master Binocular
Observer Award now for people who complete eight out of nine of our binocular programs.
There are only nine so if you complete. Eight of these nine uh programs that you achieve
master Binocular observer status with the Astronomical League. We also have a new
thing a master imaging award um and what we're doing here is
asking people to uh image all of the objects in particular
programs that are listed here Um you see the list uh generally you pick one from
each of these list and do a complete uh.
Photographic survey of that particular program. And finally, I'd like to show you a
couple of the programs that we think are really good for young people getting started in
astronomy uh the sky Puppies program gets people started with identifying constellations
and the brightest stars um as people observe five deep sky objects sketching Jupiter or
lunar crater identifying the North star and getting started with with logging beyond
Polaris program does similar things that it that it teaches uh Star Party etiquette uh logging. Skills and makes a
general introduction to a wide variety of different objects in the sky. um our universe
sampler program over him the right begins to teach people to star hop using charts and to complete the observation of two
object lists. Two of them are naked eye or you can do one on one with telescope and
binoculars uh with telescopes, you can start challenging what generally is the first program
that people do with the telescope and that's observed 100. Ten objects you're already
accessible to young people with their first telescope um we have a constellation Hunter
program to identify to identify and thirty-nine constellations. We have a binocular program uh
requiring people to observe fifty objects with binoculars, which gives people a wonderful
idea of the scale of these objects in the sky. Uh it also requires good chart usage and
finally we have a lunar program uh that requires. Of 100 litter
features sixty-four of what's gonna be done with the naked eye or with binoculars and so
those are uh that's our observing program regimen uh in
summary and uh at this point I will stop share and I believe
uh Scott will turn this over to a young person who can tell can tell us how she started in astronomy and maybe with
observing. Thank you. Scott. Yeah. sure that's my pleasure um the uh. Um uh the person I'd
like to introduce is uh is Libby. we call her Libby and the stars. Libby is AI think
she's still a 10 years old at this time is that right uh actually just turn to London so
he turned eleven. Okay. Alright so well. that's that's awesome.
Uh it's a great time in a young person's life um uh certainly I remember those years too. and
that's when I was really intensely interested in astronomy and just space exploration. So I totally get
you um the um uh Libby has uh
for a young for a young person. I think is really stepped out she has uh intense interest in
uh the stars in all aspects to Nebula planetary formation uh
um uh come uh asteroids uh you know the uh uh cosmology in
general um and um. Uh cheesy she's the only girl I know that
has read every book in her school library on astronomy. So that's uh I think that's a feet
in itself um and uh you know Testament to how interested she
is her brother even complain. That's all she ever talks about is astronomy and and the and
the cosmos, but uh I think that's a great thing to talk about so uh Libby um uh. I'll
uh I'll turn it over to you. Uh do you wanna mention anything about levy before we get
started? I get that big banner across
there um you are good and you are muted quit talking uh yes uh Libby is a member of the
astronomical League. uh we would love to have her comment on the observe program at some
point, look him over sometime. Let us know what you think and I had asked Ley to talk to us
about what got her interested in astronomy to start with so Libby I'll turn it over to you.
Okay, I have a slideshow for
some photos from space museums and We are presenting. Um
really pulled up Here's a second. I'm trying to pull this up um. So I've always gone to
spaces and I've always been very interested in weather and uh here's some of the spaces
I've been to I was at Kennedy Space Center and uh I've been to four out of five the spaces
in America so um I've been seeing a lot um I've always
been very interested in whether technology um before. In this
space I deeply into weather and I always watch the thunderstorms and I watch
weather channel and watch them talk about weather stories and I learned about that and I was
very interested in that. uh I have some very recent photos. some old photos and some new
photos um. So that was very fun to be able to go to all these
seasons and never thought that I would be uh interested in
space too much um and when uh I was always like I'm gonna be a
storm chaser and I'm gonna have a Jeep and I'm gonna go chase Thorns and take videos and
that's what I was like. I'm gonna do that. Yeah and um I was very surprised cuz there's
a lot more space and science involved in weather. Thing you would think so I started thinking about uh a space and
like the weather on other planets and how that could work together. uh this year last
year is very lucky to visit space camp in Huntsville, Alabama Uh is there any fun? It
was an 8 hour road trip down to Huntsville, Alabama, but it's very worth it. I got to do a
bunch of uh simulators. Here's something that uh. That there's
big space and one of those is at the bottom that Pathfinder and I thought that was so crazy
cuz it was such a big. It was such a big. uh it's it's like a
spaceship and it's like right outside my window. So if I I
looked outside, there's oh yeah, there's just a spaceship
just sitting out there um and so it's very cool to see uh
pathfinder at space camp and um. We got to do many
simulators uh we got to do a lot of simulators and um when I
got back home, I started I was deeply into researching more that I could do more activities
and with space and and thinking astronomy and cuz most of my
life, I've thought about Nasa history from going to museums cuz Nasa Nasa really talks
about history and not really about astronomy. So I started researching about astronomy and
what I could do um I got this this telescope of sixteen
telescope from me. it's right behind me um my mom got for me
after I got home from space camp and I would take it out to the yard and I would take it
out to the front yard and I would look at Saturn rings and I would be like Oh my gosh you
could see it's rings and it was so. Amazing to see Saturn because there's just like
rainbow rim around the planet and it was so amazing to see that uh the first time I saw
Scott he was doing uh um it was a lunar uh lunar outreach I
think and uh me and my mom went to it and I saw the moon and it
was a lunar eclipse and I and it was right in the square and I remember seeing it and so I
went. That night and uh I was thinking about the moon and how
does someone like hits on the moon and have the eclipse works and um and I was like well,
This is crazy and um I think outreach is important because
once I got my telescope, I took it out to the yard and I started showing my friends and I'll be like that. There's the
moon that's it and my friends didn't get really interested in it, but I was very glad. Able
to inspire them just a little bit, and I think that's why outreach is kind of important
because uh. God inspired me to do show me once I got my telescope, I started to try and
inspire my friends to do astronomy. so I think outreach is very important um so yeah
I'm slideshows pictures and you can look at uh this is space camp very cool to look back at
the photos cuz after the moment much fun, it really does. yeah
it was like being an actual astronaut. It was so much fun to go and. I got to do benches
simulators and I got to see concepts of astronomy and a
bunch of cool things and simulators over there. That's
uh the one on the bottom left. That's the multi access trainer and I felt like an astronaut in
that one uh and uh I got to learn about like the center of Gravity, not making you sick
cuz your the center of gravity so you won't get sick on the ride and I was kind of now they
were you. They're trying to like be like yeah, you won't throw up on the ride, but I was
just like well. That's cool how the center of gravity and it's pulling and then being spin
around crazy setting outreach is definitely important astronomy to inspire more
people inspire new generation I love sharing a question they want uh
Christy White wants to know. She said that they met let you look at the
telescopes at night uh actually they didn't have any telescopes at camp um most of the stuff at
space camp was Nasa history. So definitely yes, uh I wanted to
research astronomy and cuz I've learned a lot about Nasa history too at space camp they gave. The name and all the all
the kids sign their name on it and we gave the uh we gave it to the grave of wake up wake up
the space Monkey. I forgot her name We signed a banana and we put it by grace. so it's just
very fun to go to space camp and uh it's definitely very fun to inspire people to outreach a
lot cuz I feel like that is important. I know we talked a lot about outreach last night in my last live streaming, you
know. The new generation and um
I take my Tesco out to the front yard and I'll be like okay. That's the moon right
there I'm gonna put it in the lens of my telescope and we're gonna look at it and it's
always very fun to show my friends and take pictures and send it to my friends and be like that's I'm trying to do
outreach here. that is the moon and. Libby You are a member of
the Astronomical League uh now um and I know that you'll
probably probably get started of these observing uh awards uh what do you? what do you think you wanna try doing first with
the with the astronomical elite? well uh a couple of nights ago, I read the Messier
book I got uh with my astronomical stuff. I didn't get to read it and I read it
and there's a challenge in there on the Messier objects. And I was like you know what I'm gonna accomplish that this
year and I was uh when my ten-inch do and accomplish it, you know, I think he will. I
think he will that's great. I think you will too. that's amazing. We look forward to
hearing about your progress. Terry and Scott and I are up for just one second. I wanna apologize to Caitlyn that I'm
gonna have to miss her talk but it's uh Terry and Scott know I have to introduce the speaker of my club meeting tonight in
15 minutes. so I'm gonna need to go and. Apologize for leaving everyone, but thank you. God. Thank you. Chuck. We
always do uh take care. Thank you. Alright. Thank you.
Alright, Well, thank you so much. we really appreciate you being here and welcome to the
Astronomical League. You'll be a great addition to the big family. Thank you for having
me. It's very fun. Sure anytime alright I'm going to move on to John Goff now John is also
another pest president of the league. He has worn many hats just like so many more so many
others here so John um and as you heard, Carol say he is
heading up to 75th anniversary so John I'm gonna let you go ahead and take it away.
Alright, great. Thanks Terry. Yeah. I'd like to say a few words actually a whole bunch of
words about the seventy-fifth anniversary of the league um but first I'd like to introduce
or mention the people who are on the committee with me uh for putting some of the stuff together Uh we have a very
dynamic member uh named Peggy Walker she has uh outside of
the seventieth anniversary she has taken on this uh astronaut program in Alcon junior junior
is is a. Thing uh to be presented in our various icons by the name you can guess that
we're trying to get more young people involved in hammy through it. She's also been uh
instrumental in putting together our our our uh astronomical calendar, which is
being offered as door prizes. uh tonight, but this is uh an a new. This is the second year
for us, so it's still kind of a new thing and she's she's done a great job lot of work behind
this calendar um also recently um the details have. All been released yet, but she has come
up with a new award program called the UH Liam Fleming Award Imaging Award uh for
young um primarily women um to uh be introducing to the hobby
and be recognized for their efforts so she has put a lot of work into the seventy-fifth anniversary recognition
activities. Chuck Allen is also on the committee and he has done he has compiled an
exhaustive amount of deep. About league going going through an old reflectors
talking to uh old timers in the hobby trying to figure out what happened when and he's put
together uh a good history of um that spotlight is important programs uh events and people
in the astronaut over these past 75 years, Another person has made a pit Andre, who is
our current exam is Secretary Maynard has a um he likes
combing through old. Collectors and uh noting everything he can
so he comes up with a lot of interesting stuff dates times people uh for us not to forget
and to include in our in our histories. So um I like to point out that November 15th
1946, is the official date that they are began when the last of
ten clubs in the country agreed to become a member of the amateur Astro League. Well, that's not really
astronomically quite yet, but it's pretty much the same thing um. What I've been doing this,
what has struck me is looking at the hobby back then in the hobby today that the people in
the hobby back in back, then versus the people in the hobby today and II ask well, How have
we changed and I've come to the conclusion that we're all very similar people those back, then as as to us today, um so so let
me start with a uh philosophical approach in all this about history and the astronomical. Who we are and
what we are consider this We're a lucky bunch of amateur
astronomers. We have easy access to large aperture scopes and can use fantastic imaging
equipment all unheard of when the Astronomical league was in his empathy because of this, we surely must be affected
differently by our application than we're the first astro leakers back in 1946, judging
though, from articles and notices in the early editions of the Reflector are its precursor the bulletin, which
will talk more about this later. Uh we still have the same fascination and wonder the
sky as amateurs had in the late 1940s and throughout the 50s and 1960s deeper appreciation
of the the way it affects us personally has not changed indeed as the French author and
critic Sean PA's car philosophers philosophies in
1849 the things change the more they say the same. I know you've all heard that before.
Our equipment has certainly changed, obviously the darkness, our skies has sadly
changed obviously in the depth of our understanding of the universe has dramatically changed obviously, but our
interest in the interest in a four cornerstones are applications Foundation, The science of Astronomy number one
number two the art of observing number three the joy of outrage. We all talk about outreach quite a bit and number
four The coolness of well-crafted equipment we have some of the coolest. Around
anyway, that those have really haven't changed, We are still the same as believers at heart
as those folks who attended the 1946 and 1947 conventions and at the beginning, a name was
proposed for a new amateur astronomy organization The amateur astronomers League at the end and after after a name
change, the astronomical was born with $67 in his bank account and about 1600 members
spread across 31 societies in the United States. So. We definitely have grown um much
of the astro's business during the first 10 years after his interception was devoted to submitting together the loosely
net national organization first, a lot of attention, was given to organizing and implementing regional meetings
in the annual National Convention, Alcon second, the bulletin was quickly
established to to provide needed blue for the young organization, keeping its members informed about local regional and National Amateur
Astronomy News Third league. Officers held many discussions the member society has discover
how the league could better serve amateur so once that
happened, we had a lot of new benefits rapidly appearing and I'd like to show you a few of those now.
We have the astronomy bulletin that was long before um the
Reflector magazine came out the first woman was in uh was that say September 1949 about 3
years after the league uh was established, it was just a two-page affair. piped um I
guess it was somehow since they didn't have copy machines back then and sent out to members so
you can imagine what came after improvements year. Year The
Reflector magazine had a name change from the bulletin the Reflector in 1950.
Um and II just on the right hand side of the screen, there is a uh a blurb about the
winner who uh uh submitted the winning name uh from uh the
Louisville as society, which I believe is Chuck Allen's home society right now to be he's
left, but uh he left for for for his club meeting. But this is what happened in 1957 and
then uh that was a four page issue. So we're we went from two page. Just up to four now
today, we have the reflector of the full color Glossy magazine looks really good well done um
it is I have a copy in front of me. It is thirty-two pages now
and instead of having one person type it out we have a committee of maybe six or seven
people that work on this tirelessly really uh throughout the year when the issue is done
to the printers they start on the next issue of the following week. well, maybe 2 weeks later.
They get a little break well, we're also known uh as as Chuck was saying for um observing
programs well big event in our history was the very first award uh that was given and it
was for the club uh a member of the um Amateur Strong
Association of Pittsburgh Uh Catherine Delaney won this in January of 1967, so we uh 54
years ago but the brewer first time this was awarded and now I said just. One person we have
several thousand people across the country have earned this since 1967. One thing I've I
found by going back to some old reflectors in 1968 was the first time uh in the Reflector
mention was ever given to the serious problem of light pollution, But back then, I guess that what they what they
call it back pollution and that kinda makes more sense to me cuz uh it's the dark that's
being polluted and not the light but uh that was taken back in 1968 and you can
imagine that is now a big deal on everyone's mind. As we grew, we introduce new programs now
Chuck Allen again, who has just left was instrumental behind establishing our very first award program for young people,
The National Study Honors Award so that was in uh 1993 quick
how many years ago was that 3029 okay, That was uh some
time ago and we've been awarding these things ever since we picked up sponsors and we're grateful to have us our
Roberts Explore scientific sponsor this and I'm sure Scott. And talk about this a
lot too cuz we have uh awarded this award to a number of exceptional students You know
we we we talk about these words and young people getting this stuff Well it's here really
isn't to try to get them to become professional strong. I think more of the idea is to
encourage young people to look at what they can do uh to develop their interest and what
could be a lifelong to open their minds to where their lives may lead to open their hearts to for love of the
night, Sky and all these people. It will have that happen to them, They may not all become a professional
astronomers, but that's a pretty good award and uh you know. Thank you. Scott for uh sponsoring this. uh we have
other words for young people that don't the word um and that
was back in nineteen. I should know this off the top of my head 1998 and it started out
with uh a jack the the uh renowned um promoter of amateur
astronomy he wanted to uh recognize uh young people who
make uh an effort a special effort to um to bring uh astronomy to their community to
their club and so on so as for a service award for you astronomer that was one award back then but that. Has
expanded so we have a three four. We have four different
words today and for most of those there's a first second and third place so we uh really
want to recognize the young people who make an effort in through this award and through uh the National Award. Worth it
have come up since 1946, I mentioned the Reflector magazine observing programs We
now also have access to affordable life. excuse me access to affordable Club a
liability insurance. We have something called astronauts and do uh outreach downloads for people to uh look at and learn
something new about the night sky and help them observe. Of course, we have Alcon national condition every year, Library
Telescope awards program. That's a great program in which um. Clubs if they're lucky
enough to win a drawing, they'll get a telescope to present to their local libraries so patrons can check them out as they do books. We
have many recognition words. I only talked about the youth ones here, but we have the uh Leslie Award, which again I
wanna thank Scott Roberts for helping support that for us we have um with master we have the
Newsletter Award Newsletter Editor Award and Sketch awards.
We're personnel We have imaging awards so you get the idea. So we have quite a few things uh
in the uh astronaut these days that we're we're proud to to
share with people I like to conclude by um reading something off to you. What will
the Astronomically be the astronomically may have a national reach, but there's
still a small non-profit organization it strength and successes are directly tied to
the efforts of its over 100 volunteers um members who
actively participate in the league have a great opportunity to influence the direction of how this nationally respected
organization who engage amateur astronomy as you learn about astronomy. share this guy with
others, gay his opponent and intriguing celestial object are carefully and. New Please know
that the astronomical League, it's here for you the absolute leader just as it was in 1946.
Wonderful thank you. John was don't wanna join the astronomical league now I don't
know what Oh thank you John lot of good information there. We've had a lot of history.
We've learned really a lot about the league in the last few months because of all the work that I've been done for
our 75th anniversary and I'm looking forward to hearing even more um about our past because
it's made us what we are today. So Scott. how? Taking a 10 minute break before we bring
Kaitlyn on alright, this sounds fine. Okay. so um we'll do that
well. Thank you very much. Yup. Thank you.
Here we go.
Well, we are back um and uh I'm gonna turn this over to uh
Terry man to introduce uh our keynote speaker um Kaitlyn Ers
and um uh Terry uh.
You've got the stage. Thank you very much God here we go uh I
have known Kaitlyn um we've talked about this last night for quite a while or couple of
days ago. My days are blurry. I've been here a while um she has been one of those people
that probably many of you have looked at a younger person at some point and said Wow, I
can't wait to see what she becomes. I mean you could just tell her. Her focus was just
amazing and yet she still remain normal and you know like a normal kid would be, but she
was amazing. I mean it was just something that you knew um and
she's always been a real treat to know she's always been full of energy so many ideas so
interesting to talk to him and as we heard earlier, she was a 21 of of the uh astronomical
League climber Peoria Youth Winner Award when one of the
awards for the horror. Which toy Peoria was an amazing person uh quite a few of us
knew him and he has passed away that he was probably one of the he was all about astronomy. I
really learned a lot from him so to have Kaitlyn win an award after him too is is really
cool. So let me tell you a little bit about Kaitlyn Kaitlyn is a graduate of West
Virginia University with Bachelor of Science Degree in geology and physics.
Astrophysics her background includes theoretical psychology mineral analysis on the Martian
surface and Radio astronomy in spring of 2020 she received her
PhD in space and planetary sciences at the University of
Arkansas on her simulating Pluto conditions in her lab to
create various light ice faces and researching plutonium
glaciers Currently Kaitlyn is a Nasa Post program Fellow. Nasa
Goddard Space Flight Center working on ice and impact craters Kaitlyn's also produced
the radio show called scratching the surface, and it will soon be a podcast and is a
solar system ambassador with Nas for Nasa. uh she does many forms of astronomical outreach
across the nation. I can vouch for that she uh this girl knows what she's doing. She also
earned in 2018 She was named. The ten outstanding young
Americans so Kaitlyn Thank you for being here. I really
appreciate this. I'm sure you're gonna wow us all so you
have the stage. uh thank you so much for that amazing introduction. Thank you so so
much and thank Astronomical League for having me here tonight. I saw a little
anecdote uh when Terry first emailed me about this event. I was gonna attend anyways
because I've been a part of astronomical League through uh
through my own uh astronomy club back in West Virginia, the central Astronomy club and I
would not miss uh an anniversary uh celebration and then when she emailed me, hey,
would you wanna give a talk? I am and what not? I was like? Oh
yes. so we started plotting uh what uh what possible topic to
uh to entertain all you fine folks out there to. So we settled on a planetary
psychology, so hopefully you will enjoy that I'm gonna figure out how to share my
screen. Gotta love technology.
Alright fantastic. Alright so welcome to shake rattle and
roll psychology of the solar system. so let's get started with a little bit of basics
going on here so I planetary size biology I do wanna I put
in the context here that this is not necessarily astro psychology. Astros is actually
it's it's very own branch. I believe it or not our own. And
stars out in our beautiful galaxy and beyond I actually
produce their own uh waves uh internally and that's still to
be a mystery. That's still to be researched to I uh over and over again by far and so that
in itself is astro psychology is the seismic uh interactions uh within star systems and even
our own son with Helio physics. So specifically tonight, I'm gonna talk about planetary
seismologist so planetary psychology uh is very.
Interdisciplinary so you can have certain seismologist that study planets, you can have
certain planetary planetary scientist studies cosmology and it has to has to be a
interdisciplinary process, though, so you can have people specifically looking at the
mineral you need to know what kind of rocks and minerals are on the surface of planets and
moons uh and even asteroids to be able to figure out the geophysical and then the
geophysical can then stem to thermodynamics and the. What
makes the faults? what makes it shake in the interior? I then you really need to stem that
from the chemistry, which also ties back to the mineral. What are you dealing with rock? Are
you dealing with salt? Are you dealing uh with different kinds of ice? Uh there's plenty of
different kinds of ice in the outer solar system and I'll get to that here in a bit and then it all comes down to if we were
to explore because wonderful planets and asteroids uh and
moons. It all comes down to the engineering. How can we engineer instruments to better
study the interior interior of these planets moons and asteroids so quick basic
definitions? Uh we're gonna start with the earth. Uh we base a lot of our understanding
of the planets and moons and asteroids based on the earth, but rather I not all
comparisons are what they seem so I.. You'll find that out by the end of this talk, how how
actually difficult it is to compare everything else to the earth so basics of earthquakes
we found out actually not too long ago uh that we have an inner core outer core uh a
mantle and a crust uh so our our crust is variable thickness. It depends upon
where you are uh around the earth so but essentially the very thin outer rocky shell and
then you have the mantle just below that it's uh it's a flow. It's a very. Solid interior and
then you have outer core, which is a liquid iron and then an inner core that is solid iron.
so the thing how we knew about these layers essentially is that you have an earthquake
happen and the sheer seismic energy that comes out of that
earthquake uh rips essentially through the mantle and the core uh of the earth, but it does
some really weird stuff notice that with this diagram that the seismic waves do not just go
cleanly through the earth they actually. Bounce uh around they bounce off of that inner and
outer core, and because of that uh we've learned much earlier
on those kinds of bounces and then with earthquake science
that we have the three fs uh we have the friction the forces and the faults so first off we
have friction where you have some sort of dynamic going on you want to have essentially uh
some sort of a. Rebound uh some sort of high friction uh fault,
but then there's different kinds of faults that'll get here in a bit There is forces
uh where how and how yeah pretty much how I would that
propagation of energy go. How would it flow again it goes back into uh the the type of
rock the type of mineral uh that we're dealing with here if we were just dealing with pure
solid rock is it. Hard enough rock that is just gonna break and snap and be brittle or is
it gonna be soft and squishy and poorest, and then the
energy is gonna barely through. It's it's gonna be practically muted uh so forces are very
important uh and then certainly faults if there are any to be seen uh that becomes an
interesting question on certain moons and planetary systems that I'll talk about later uh
but we have some. Beautiful faults all over the earth. I'm
certainly the San Andreas fault is the most notable that is called a transform fault. uh where you essentially have
what's called strike slip and you have two blocks just rub against each other. uh like so
and it can create some uh pretty decent size magnitude
earthquakes from there, then you have divergent and you can have different kinds of divergent as well and the sub
categories of divergent where you. The two blocks of crust going away from each other. And
then you can have uh this kind of convergent uh with seduction
zones uh so you can have three different types. There's ocean Ocean Ocean continent and then
cotton continent and again this still boils down to what kind
of crust we're dealing with if it's a very dense uh squishy
crust or can it be a dense pores Uh crust is it brittle uh
and so on so if the dynamics and theology and chemistry really come to play with a lot
of these fault systems here. And then back to the
engineering, How do we actually detect earthquakes? so what the whole uh method of detecting
earthquakes and certainly the use of uh my grams and whatnot has really improved through the
the years. so this diagram certainly not to scale by any means, but you haven't
earthquake happened uh and essentially you have a piece of seismic equipment that is
somewhat buried down uh couple meters into. Surface and it's supposed to feel that vibration. It's supposed to
it's catch uh and signal back to an array of computers and go
like hey, we detected this amount of energy from this location. It's an earthquake.
And uh and I wanna share a little bit about the evolution of our earth knowledge. So like I said this in the grand scheme
of things that really hasn't been that long ago so back in 1900 I Richard old him uh
observe the PS and surface waves on his milligram. so all those cute little squiggles
that you see on a piece of paper uh that's uh love to sift through and that's that's where
it all started is 1900s though, but uh same 119. Six realized
that uh the primary and secondary wave arrivals I there
was some discrepancies. I they realized that it okay these waves should not be going
straight through the earth. What in the world is going on and therefore it confirmed the
Earth's core, But in that case, it wasn't just a single core. I
now you're having to deal with how long it takes for the energy waves to go through. so
that was in 1907, Then you have the theory of. Tics uh by Wagner in 1912, but that wasn't
accepted until the 1950s in the geologic community. So that's uh that was uh a huge uh debate
that went on for quite some time. uh back to travel times so how the travel times of the
primary and secondary waves I ripped through the interior of
the earth I led into like oh well, okay depends upon where you're at or. On the earth, uh
then you know how do these times correlate with each other, Finally, rich and and
only 1935 doesn't develop the Richter scale uh that we now have our wonderful scale scale of magnitude of earthquakes and
then finally uh lemon in 1936 showed that it's not just a
single core. There is a solid inner core that's been making all these beautiful uh primary
waves just bounce off like crazy. Uh so the Richter scale
we actually use uh somewhat in the planetary sciences, though, but now we're starting to
realize that the Richter scale is uh it should probably stay on Earth I and you know can't
we come up with almost like our own uh scaling system for like the moon and Mars. It'll pretty
much be somewhat the same, but Richter scale you have I you
know like five magnitude and seven magnitude and goodness gracious nine magnitude kinda
deal where. The most you're gonna get almost planets and
asteroids and moons or are gonna be maybe four five if you're really lucky. so the
scaling could get a little interesting though uh but it's essentially a scale of how much
energy is being released from that event, so having a some sort of magnitude scale would
be incredibly important. uh for the the planetary So now we're
gonna jump right into planetary so I'm gonna take you on a lovely tour of uh bits and
pieces of the solar system at least and in it. Regards to psychology Eyes so again
keeping in mind that all these interdisciplinary uh topics uh must be applied as we're as
we're uh exploring here so keep those in mind So first up is
the lovely mercury So with mercury that we never had a lander, we never really had
exactly a size on the surface of mercury that would be amazing if we did, it's way
into the future at some point, but the thing about mercury is that. Still has some really beautiful geology and one of
the really interesting geologic features of mercury is certain wrinkle ridges. so these
wrinkle ridges and certain faults are in certain orientations on the planet to
the point where scientists are now realizing. Oh, my goodness mercury is actually shrinking
now the actual shrinking I don't mean I something out of
uh like uh like uh like a buck Rogers uh cereal going on where
you know someone shrinks down to the size of an or something like. But I as funny as that would be, but now mercury is
actually just slowly shrinking because the uh the mantle system within mercury is
actually slowly cooling and because it's cooling and heating and cooling and heating
I so slowly the crust is also kinda undulating in itself as
well, but since the crust is so brittle in that regard, uh it's
not gonna squish like usual. it's gonna. It's very brittle so because of that tension it's
going to uh create these wrinkles uh and here's another beautiful example of a uh
wrinkle here. let's see if my cursor can maybe show up here.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. so beautiful Wrinkle Ridge there. Alright so
onward to Venus uh this is an elevation map of Venus so by all means uh if I were to show
you a real picture of Venus, it would just be clouds uh so we had to have a lot of uh like
radio uh radar systems going around Venus to give us this beautiful elevation map of
Venus here. So what you see here is that the white and red areas of Venus, especially
around the equatorial region. Here are the very high parts high elevations. A Venus and
then the darker blue and Purple black areas here are the lowest elevations, but what's cool
here is that uh elevations are great, but what's interesting is that there are over 400
volcanoes on Venus, so you would think okay that many volcanoes uh whether they're
active or inactive is still under debate uh still gives rises to like okay. There's
gotta be some sort of tech. activity uh without necessarily. Plates either So
this is uh another beautiful, uh example of some of the volcanic planes going on Venus
so a lot of this uh what looks like white scratch marks I promise you that is not your screen getting all scratched up
here. uh what all these are is just a little itty bitty faults just crisscrossing each other
like uh like clusters and they can uh go on for kilometers and
kilometers and kilometers. uh across the surface. They can change directions. I some areas
of Venus have more of these clusters more than others, so this is still very much under
uh a lot of research uh studies right now as to is there, rhyme
and reason uh to a lot of these orientations and clusters of
faults. And then also there's uh a particular question here
could Venus have deductions zones even without having active tic plate system so they
uh the illusion trench on Earth, which is uh this is around uh Alaska uh here on
earth so this trench matches pretty the curvature uh and
elevation uh of uh Artemis Corona on Venus So now the next
step that uh we're hoping to do on Venus in this regard is just more of the elevation uh and Is
there any volcanic systems around this Corona so that is still being still being worked
on. Onward to the moon so
everybody loves the moon. We've done a lot of studies with the moon and we are still continuing to do so uh we hope
to do a at least more geophysical research with the moon a mission that we hope to
deal with at some point is something called the lunar Geophysical Network uh which
you would have an array of essentially semo grams and different kinds of uh site like
miniature seismic instruments I. Scattered across uh bits and pieces of the moon and then try
to give us a better idea of what exactly is going on with the moon because the thing
about the moon is that we're we're aware of the theory that a Mars like sized object would
have hits the earth uh sometime in Earth's early geological history and all that baby earth
crust uh essentially accredited outward and then gravitational pulled into the ball that we
now know is the moon and because. Of that, though, because of that we still do not
have a 100% clear idea as to what in the world Does this interior look like uh we do
realize that it is uh a baby earth crust because of the minerals involved uh all across
the moon. But what about the interior uh that is still uh to
be determined though, but the moon's surface certainly gives us a lot of geological clues as to what is. Like going on I as
far as the interior versus the exterior uh of the surface goes
so you can have uh a lot of disjointed faults going on here. So what I mean by
disjointed is that you would have uh a crack going on and then it would almost look like it shifted. It's broken apart.
uh it's not exactly a straight line. Some of them can be very uh curly. You can have what's
called Robbins where Robbins are just very uh fairly shallow, but they're wide very
wide. uh almost looks like a worm going across the lunar
surface here uh but there are plenty of them that go uh across the moon, though we're
hoping to have uh a better map of a lot of these cropping systems. hopefully soon, but
mapping does take a while uh but we have had seismic experiment uh experiments on the moon all started with the
Apollo Eleven passive seismic experiment so this. Essentially did detect lunar moon quakes uh
this was the whole objective was to uh study the propagation of seismic waves through the
moon and whether this means uh is something going on the interior of the moon Can the moon essentially create its own
moon quakes or is it essentially through uh
meteorites uh hitting the surface and so far we have recorded about 100 to 200 hits
of meteorites during the lifetime of this experiment. Uh we. Had return data uh for just
3 weeks, but from that uh passive seismic experiment we've improved the
instrumentation and uh much more advanced size thermometers were deployed uh with Apollo
twelve fifteen and sixteen uh at those landing sites, so we
still definitely have all that data archived as well. so a
little bit about the configuration of this uh of this wonderful instrument,
though, so it's actually quite a simple setup though it's uh you have. Antenna for our
communications to send back the seismic readings you wanna make sure that your um your whole
setup is uh very much laying down onto the ground and
pressed as much as possible when you have your solar panels uh going on as well, Make sure
it's all it's all powered on. I am from that we were able to
figure out, okay, what's considered noise and background I oscillations of the of just
the moon itself versus actual uh meteorites striking the surface and what in the world
is going on. so on the left here you have normal. So this is just the normal noise the
normal shaking uh going on uh so that's considered background shallow impacts so you could
either have just a very distant impact really not that. Uh of a
meteor that could hit so just a very shallow one but it gave us a signal and then certainly a
major impact. so luckily those don't happen all too often I or
at least uh uh as far as the goes, but that's I for the
purpose of presentations. This is the best uh diagrams that
they can give us to show otherwise the data actually quite noisy. Uh Mars Mars has
given us a lot to think about with planetary psychology, especially in the past 2 years
uh and I'll I'll talk about the Mars insight uh lander here in a bit though, but beautiful
Mars uh you have uh some of the largest volcanoes in the entire solar system on this planet you
have uh the magnificent marinas uh ripping across uh the
surface here of Mars as well. So you know that there's just so much dynamic going on Mars
whether it was from its geologic past. And certainly uh and it's uh and it's present. I
so by all means I could probably spend a whole hour just showing you images of Mars
and certainly the geology of Mars and the techs uh of Mars
and so on and so forth so trust me. I'm I'm limiting to at least some of the images that I
find uh very interesting as far as psychology goes. So here's
here's just a of crisscross Robbins and fault systems going on here I. Width of this uh
particular image is about three kilometers so very up close and personal on the surface of
Mars. These images were were taken the Mars reconnaissance Orbiter High-rise camera. so
thank you high-rise. I hear you have a bunch of smaller faults,
essentially the surface here is cracking under some sort of pressure and stress going on
here uh most of the stress that happens on Mars, it can be uh a
whole slew of different ideas. Uh so whether it's uh Volcan here in particular, it's Vulcan
with uh certain lava flows I cracking the system or cracking
the surface rather and sometimes it could be a landslides it can be um
seasonal uh cracking. It's all over the place. Mars is very
interesting uh here though you also have just a bunch of much smaller faults I coming out of
some smaller crater systems here you have some mineral deposits that maybe influencing
the direction of uh of some of these faults going on here though some mineral does take
into effect, especially on Mars.
I'm sorry. Oh no. okay. I got my screen froze there for a minute so let me talk about
insight, though so insight is uh is a beautiful mission and
uh and as with uh Nasa we love our acronyms so get ready for a
very long acronym of insight so insight stands for interior exploration using seismic
investigations uh odyssey and heat transport so landed on
Mars and the uh a region November 2018. I it was
designed to be a lander so did not orbit uh the planet. It's
not roving around or anything. It's simply just to stay put and do his job uh so we did
design it somewhere to the Phoenix lander uh except the Phoenix lander did more climate
uh in sight is supposed to supposed to do more
thermodynamics and so uh a good portion of those interdisciplinary topics. I
talked about earlier it does have a camera. Has a heat probe called a mole and certainly a
size monitor. So here's the actual schematic of the entire mission, and it does seem a bit
daunting at first, though, but I it does come in different parts and each section of this
lander uh has its own team so uh at the bottom left here you
have the size uh this is the size experiment and go figure
though uh off to the right. Here you have the HP Cube uh which is the heat probe it
stands for heat and physical properties package. That's why it's called heat HP Cube uh but
I've from now on. I'm just gonna call it the heat probe or the mole. This is essentially the mole I attached to it
though, and then you have twins, which is the temperature and wind. we we wanna make sure
the winds aren't affecting thermometer in any way uh and also we really need to know
better about um the wind and climate. In that particular part of Mars as well now, I'll
talk about twins. I here in a bit though, and then you have rise. Oh Yep there's rise so
rise uh is there uh radio and communications I and what's
cool about rise is that it's also not only supposed to do communications uh back to
certain Mars orbits and certainly back to earth, but it's also supposed to give
communication time delays as well. This is actually really cool and important because the
time delays. Uh could also give us a lot about the planetary rotation and if uh Mars
actually wobbles Uhm and uh and
it does not not a lot of uh results have been released yet
though, but it is really quite cool. Uh so this is uh some of
it's um it's sensor pads, hitting the surface though trying to get ready and you can
already tell it's getting a little. In this particular picture, uh this is part of its
camera system, so it would take pictures of sunrise and sunsets to get a better idea of um of
just you know why not. it's pretty pictures on Mars either way uh but it does give us an
idea of some of the climate going on here uh certainly the haze uh you would hardly be
able to see a beautiful starry night on Mars. for sure, it's always dusty. It's dust the
sand. Uh so here's uh here's a video of some of the clouds.
This was actually interesting. This is the size monitor uh but while the camera system was
going, there was some beautiful cloud systems going by and I and there was a part of the
insight team actually wrote a paper just on the cloud system that they took on the video
from this uh because again cloud systems on a completely different planet. It's like oh goodness like what does that
mean for like the climate? How would the clouds would have originated and planetary
weather systems is a completely different uh branch of
planetary science, though, and it's very fascinating. So I just really wanted to show you
this video uh but this is when insight pretty much first landed. So it's it's beautiful.
It's clean. There's the beautiful solar panels and now it's all dusty. So it's uh you
know it's still doing its job but I it got it. Within just the first month it got a nice
dust bath if anything else. I now the thing about it getting
dusty and everything though I-2 months in I do wanna talk about the mole so the reason for the
mole is going back to that and thermodynamics uh aspects of
planetary psychology. Yes thermometer is doing its job. It's telling us about the
interior but again we need to understand the materials at work here. Uh what is the
material science behind Mars So the thing about the mole is. It
got stuck I within the first 2 months, it's objective was to
reach about sixteen feet into the ground. That was its purpose and uh we ran a lot of
laboratory work that you see pictured here um a lot of this was done at uh precaution
laboratory, but we also have laboratories uh basically all over the nation uh solving this
problem of okay. I you know how. The mall uh drill itself
down how would we have the sensors going on and uh and so
on and so forth The problem, though, is that we can only go so far as to guessing what the
material of Mars is we've had numerous Rovers and Landers uh
on Mars, but it can only give us so much data to go off of uh
so again the objective of the mall was supposed to go down sixteen feet uh within the
first 2 months and unfortunately that entire time. Went fourteen inches, Oh, so
not sixteen feet by far. So what you also see here though
is uh you know back to the lab uh they replicated the mold
they replicated at least half of the rover in its entirety to figure out like okay. So how do
we unstuck the mole and then how do we reapply the mold back
into the surface and uh and uh they had a solution. And at one
point uh back in uh mid 2019, uh there's a scoop uh handle
that's attached to uh the lander as well. Now the scoop was supposed to essentially uh help start the whole for the
mall. uh and now they're wondering Oh, could the scoop essentially help push them all
uh into the ground a little bit uh further though I so I'll get
back to the fate of the mall here pretty soon uh by April. 2019 We got our very first Mars
quake uh so we got Mars to make sure that we are not hearing uh
noise it just gets rid of all the background and everything now and then finally uh we got
our likely Mars quake and since that time since April 2019, uh
we have at least over fifty if not over seventy uh Mars quakes
by now, I'm pretty sure we're we've actually reached over the hundreds. I may have put it in my car. Yup Okay for 480, I
just looked up this number yesterday I'm now going into
the uh hundreds region of Mars quakes uh the official analysis and results aren't gonna be
released. I until like uh March later in March, I think uh so
I'm really excited to hear about the results of that. So we're we're loving an interesting times for sure uh
but since then I now we're we're realizing. Oh okay. So. Is what a Mars quake looks like
uh since then uh Mar's insight has also realized what dust devil uh signatures look like
it, but dust devil were to be nearby. What kind of vibrations could the ice pick up? uh as
well? Unfortunately, Jessie yesterday, Nasa has made its
decision to uh to completely just get rid of them all and so unfortunately, the mole has
ended uh it's it's wonderful sixteen or no fourteen-inch
journey into Mars. And unfortunately, the heat probe was just not able to gain the
friction that needed to dig uh so that happened just yesterday. so so so rest in
peace, uh now here's the thing though. yes, we're we're sad and disheartened by this, but
because of uh of only going down fourteen inches, I am what
not just because it is uh it didn't quite do its main objective. We still learned a
lot. And it goes back to the beautiful buzzwords I've been
saying this whole time here is the mineral thermodynamics and the reality of the surface of
Mars that we do not have a 100% clarity of what the surface of
Mars is actually uh up to yeah we now we get Mars quakes that
we're having a better understanding of the interior of but now we're realizing oh
the surface of Mars the actual material science uh of. Mars uh
can be a little bit more compact than what our board
couldn't handle so rest in peace. Alright so onward to
series so serious beautiful asteroids some beautiful geology all over the all over
the place The dawn mission. I got a series that gave us some beautiful low orbit uh images
and to our wonderful surprise some beautiful images of some very interesting crater systems
and all. Some fault systems uh as well so especially around
the drooling uh crater so uh and are very young craters. Uh
we could tell that they're young by how sharp their rims are and also some bright uh
deposits on the walls of these craters as well typically means that it's at least freshly
excavated material and from that we see uh what appears to be an interesting fault that has been disrupted uh. Not
going through uh some of these uh craters and also some
beautiful threeD images have recently come out uh of series as well. So uh you have some
interesting fault streaks and fault wrinkle ridges very similar to mercury, but may not
necessarily be the same process as mercury so we don't for sure no no is serious drinking We
don't know we hope that that would be weird and. And onward
to Europe now at Jupiter and beyond now, we're dealing with no longer rock now we're
dealing with ice and ice is a completely different uh certainly a different chemical
by all means by a completely different uh mechanical system if anything so you have even
different types of water fun fact, there's actually seven different types of water ice on the outer solar system and you
thought. Water ice was boring in your freezer or well not anymore. uh outer solar system
got you covered and uh into our happy surprise. It's not just water ice in the outer solar
system. You're also dealing with frozen carbon dioxide proteins uh carbon monoxide
nitrogen methane ammonia I could also uh place some interesting parts in this as
well. So we're gonna hop over to your rope here so um. Been
imaged quite a few times I was supposed to get some interesting images of Europe from the Juneau uh extended
mission so that will be uh pretty exciting uh but through the Hubble space Telescope, we actually have uh at least very
pixelated uh water signatures coming out of the south uh south Polar region Southern
Hemisphere of Europa. uh so that has at least confirmed okay. There is plum there's
blue action going on well if there is plums going on that means something is going on in the interior. So. The interior
of your look like well, we still don't know uh, but the surface can certainly tell us a
lot of what in the world is going on uh so you have all these uh complete chaotic
terrains going on and interestingly enough geologist I have tried to label
everything and anything under the sun uh but you get a geologist to look at this and
you're like Yep that's chaos and uh that's. What we call this type of terrain is chaos
terrain. We don't know how better else to describe it. It's just pure chaos. so you
have these uh all these uh ridges all these crisscrossing
all over the place it would take forever to map all these these bumpy high knobs the
knobby terrain uh that we like to call him here uh is still I.
being researched right now is to is it something being deposited on top or is it? From
the interior and it's bubbling uh essentially it's it's kinda oozing uh up to the surface and
again what the world is going on in the interior to make stuff ooze and crack at the
same time and practically the same areas. I onward to IO IO
is also posted to get some beautiful images from the Juno uh extended mission as well and
IO has been a very entertaining moon to say the least it's been imaged anything from uh the
Galileo mission uh all the way to the new Horizons mission when it flew by Jupiter turned
on its cameras and looked at IO and kept seeing plumes all over the place. So there is constant
Vulcan going on. I am beautiful plums going on on IO. We think
maybe all the time, but it's it's still uh hitting miss if you point the camera at the right angle in the right time
by as far as Vulcan on Iowa goes, we still need to figure
out what in the world is going on. how is ice and sulfur being
mixed together to create this very uh squishy looking
volcanoes all over Iowa and yet still I cracked the surface and have all these interesting lava
flows and called Dara Pitts. And uh you know like uh the one on the right here. uh the image
to the right here, though that clear cracking fracture right across one of those uh volcanic
structures that it's how can you be squishy and brittle at the same time. So IO is definitely uh a theo dynamics a
thermodynamics dream and nightmare and then onward
to Titan, which is Saturn's largest moon. It is uh quite an interesting. Moon to say the uh
the unfortunate part about is that uh somewhere to Venus it has a very thick atmosphere so
getting any kind of images. In this case we had to resort to a lot of infrared uh and uh and
different kinds of wavelength imagery to even just barely peer through the clouds very
thick haze of tight but all this dark region you see here uh is a mixture of different
kinds of lakes. You have dunes, I it's. Uh it's a beautiful
moon, but we just do not have enough images uh to really figure out what is going on now
an interesting geologic feature on Titan is what's called labyrinth so labyrinth are very
strange. so imagine if you will close your eyes if you will if you want to imagine this uh and if you're a game of Thrones
fan, you'll you'll appreciate this though. But imagine a great ice wall uh towering
above you and it's just amazing. Uh that that stretches
for uh for miles and miles and miles, and for all, you know there may not be a solution to
get a way out uh to say the least, but that's essentially what labyrinth are just these
giant ice wall Ice mazes that are just scattered across the surface of Titan and in that
regard, how would those have formed and we're thinking maybe
tally? But then how can you have this kind of futurist without having plates? I could
there? Some really weird fault systems going on Titan to make
it I maze like that could something be coming up from the
interior of Titan and cracking the surface in such a maze like way.
So it's such a mystery I Ariel I pour Ariel is uh a very
neglected moon. unfortunately of Uranus, though, but Ariel is such a beautiful moon uh full
of. Faults and certainly some of them is beautiful faults in
my opinion uh very much in my opinion. A lot of people can uh can argue with me on that uh
but just all of the uh how uh thick a lot of these uh faults
are for such a tiny moon. How most of the faults are actually uh what looks to be more toward
the bottom part of this moon though, but unfortunately with Ariel, I am most of well. Yeah
most of the moon. Of Uranus in that tune, we only got barely half of the surfaces. image of
these moons from the Voyager missions and have never been imaged since so, this is as
much as we can go on uh unfortunately, but some beautiful uh faults going on
there as well. You also have Miranda Miranda is what's what we're lovingly nicknamed The
Frankenstein moon uh this uh this poor moon. Goodness gracious it looks like someone
had a paper doll cut her up and uh tried to poorly poorly paste
back together. I mean part, Miranda looks like had I had an interesting geologic history uh
battle scars galore and so all this and you may think. Oh,
that's that's gotta be uh a bug in the image. that's gotta be my screen is weird or anything.
Nope. What you're seeing is correct. It is very angular uh. Angular almost looks smooth uh
going on here, though, and how that came to be is still uh again still a mystery uh but we
call this Corona uh or Chevron
uh depends upon uh who you talk to though, but certainly some weird I interior and exterior
uh processes going on there and then uh onward to Pluto so
Pluto New Horizons got the Pluto in the summer of 2015 and. Gave us a at least a good
portion of Pluto surface to be imaged and thankfully we got in my opinion the prettier side of
Pluto, though um so just looking at this image though
the first thing that you probably come to mind besides the giant smooth hole off to the right here, though, is that
how many beautiful different colors there are and that's the interesting weird part about
Pluto is that every different color you see here is a different type of ice, essentially. Welcome back to
the chemistry the thermodynamics combine it all
uh and certainly with the geologic and neurology aspects of it, too. I now we're
realizing okay if you're dealing with different types of ice, they're all gonna have different types of chemistry. They're all gonna have
different types of they're all gonna break differently. They're all going to squish
differently. They're all gonna heat differently. Uh so uh. Having different kinds of
faults all over Pluto has certainly been uh a bit of a research project of mine as
well. Uh so this is near the northern hemisphere of Pluto. So what you see here is uh some
decently sized uh almost looks like branching out start with the one larger branch of uh of
a fall and then it branches out too much smaller uh squiggly vaults there, but then. The
further south you go uh the more intense a lot of this uh cracking goes so you have uh
this huge uh this this huge cluster going on here. so this
is part of the uh virtual faucet eye complex here and
then the again extending from virtual Foss. You also have her
her Mod, I extends quite extensively uh going from south to. Here and then you have a
cluster of faults all the way down in the in the southern hemisphere here uh so this long
uh skinny one here that has a red interior because of all this gunk. It's called falls by
the way uh it's called. And then I wanna share real quick
about uh carrying though so Karen is a is the largest moon
of Pluto uh and you can see here. We almost call this The jaw breaker moon uh teasing
because the uh the northern part of Karen and then the southern part of Karen look
completely different uh moons you have a more degraded almost
crunchy looking exterior on the northern part and then a more smoother I slightly. Definitely
crater area though, but definitely smoother I uh southern hemisphere there, but
I definitely the more uh noticeable feature besides the
Fred bold spot that it has on top there name by the way for all you lord of the rings fans
right there uh it has a giant canyon in the middle of it and so uh so this particular canyon
and I has actually just had a paper published not too long ago. That has some interesting.
Sees as to how this canyon may have formed and what maybe going on is uh the interior of
would have had to essentially I almost float the blocks uh of
material up and then almost like an island just kind of uh
extend them outward. and so we have some interesting uh research in the works. so by
all means there are uh a ton of mysteries and I've certainly named off uh probably a million
mysteries and. More questions for US planetary scientist to still I still research though,
but we have the European Clipper, which is still in uh in what we call storyboard uh
modes so we're still trying to figure out uh we have a better idea of what instruments we wanna have on Europa Clipper
but would any of them uh help with a lot of theology and a
lot of the interior that could be going on. We're hoping so we're hoping to have at least some uh at least some sort of
therma. Imaging going on and maybe and hopefully a magnet magnets can actually really
help with the interiors uh as far as cores go and uh and how fluid and fluctuating the
interior can actually be which would be nice and then certainly we have the
dragonflies a Dragonfly is a much anticipated mission I out of um out of many Nasa centers,
but specifically Goddard Space Flight Center. I I'm very. In
the drag, which is the Dragonfly geophysical of meteorology instrument, so this will be built some way to
insight, but the thing about Dragonfly is that it is not necessarily a lander but rather
a lander so it'll land on the surface, do its thing. It'll
it'll take a very quick little size. wheat reading it'll uh hopefully it'll have like a
little scoop where it'll actually eat. I it'll have it like a little little stomach
compartment. It'll eat bits and pieces of the tight surface. Uh it'll have lasers hopefully uh
inside of its stomach to analyze uh the theological I am
neurological properties of the surface of Titan uh spit it back up and I have like little
propeller copter drone like uh copter wings going on and just kinda hop around the surface
and just keep doing that uh over and over again. So it's uh it's a very. Interesting
certainly uh an engineers dream and nightmare as well. I'm sure
I do not envy the engineers whatsoever but good luck to the engineering team uh for making
this happen, it will be certainly a mission uh and one for the books but I'd be happy
to answer any questions. anybody may have a uh planetary sociology and certainly the
interiors of planets that we may or may not really have a full understanding of. But
thank you so much to the astronomical League for having me here tonight Well, Oh thank
you Kaitlyn my gosh, you know it's amazing to me to listen to that information that you gave
and then to actually be able to look at images so clear uh you
put those together your information and the images that was amazing. Thank you very much. Yes. well. Thank you um
my gosh. Uh are there any questions yet? Scott Martin uh
asked early on into Caitlyn's um presentation what kind of
heat and cam mix for minerals? uh so she was talking about um
uh I guess the mineral Okay. I have a tough time saying it,
but he said he was a minor geology 50 years ago, so he's just kinda curious about that.
Can you speak? Caitlyn sure should I
stop sharing my screen uh well, we'll see if my computer has
temporarily uh stop figuring stuff out here we go. okay. Hello. I'm back now. uh yes. so
that's the interesting part. so Mars is probably our best uh a little bit of the moon too,
though, but Mars certainly we have uh a much better idea as far as the chemistry mineral mineral of a complete.
Different world and theology and chemistry is quite
different than on earth within the past 10 years, we've actually found um three
completely new minerals that have never been found on Earth. We have no idea how to even
elaborate them, but we found them on Mars. We found them through Martian meteorites and so having that completely mind
boggling that there are minerals out there that like oh. Okay, we have no idea what
what kind of chemistry but dealing with though, but neurology and chemistry is certainly I need to be combined
interdisciplinary here uh because if you have small grains versus core grains
larger grains uh of minerals that can affect uh how the faults are formed. uh how the
energy of those Mars quakes would have propagated. I then
you can have um there's actually different kinds of heat pockets on Mars as well, which is a completely
different. Headache and so uh you have different heat pockets around the volcanic areas uh of
Mars so Mars quakes around volcanic areas versus ancient
uh river deltas I couldn't have completely different um there's
different iron content iron, I can certainly be very dense uh
but uh like dried River deltas the one that that uh perseverance the Perseverance
River is going to crater. Definitely a beautiful. Delta system there a lot of clay, so
it's gonna be much more squishy uh much more soft minerals going on there instead of a lot
of iron or we don't really expect a lot of iron content there so may not be as brittle
either. We don't know yet, hopefully perseverance can help us answer a lot of questions
there Couple of comments here uh book, Davies says. I'd like to see a crater or something my
Mars. He write something like that in my honest opinion um.
Uh comments, he says we have an expert that puts up a raise of satellites that could wind down
to the surface in the net to be the resource to measure from uh I'm sure he's eluding to Elon
Musk and the uh starlink um uh satellites and putting up a ray
of satellites um let's see. A
joke you can use in the future if I crack under pressure, is it my fault? Okay?
Yes, yeah and people were asking questions about the mall
uh of course, uh I remember reading about it today uh poor
poor that just happened yesterday to we think it hit a rock, you know. Yeah, you're in
Arkansas. I mean how far would you go before you hit limestone? I mean it would be
West. Virginia is the same thing. Um how far can you hit
before you hit coal? Well, you have that far? how far that's
right? um uh in Martin uh comments again, he says. In the 90s he met a Nasa scientist
flying cross country uh since I work for a massive oil service
company, I was in high tech at that time, I mentioned his problem on drilling in planets.
he mentioned this problem in drilling on planets so. Yeah,
drilling is certainly a different debate, not necessarily in the ways of like
fracking where we're not gonna hit oil Benny means I any extent of the imagination on
planets and asteroids but asteroid mining is still a
possibility um but now the problem is because of the mold problem now do we have a clear
understanding of how to build these drills? maybe not. But also uh specifically for Mars
and the moon, It's not as easy to go. We wanna drill there because now there is there is
an astro significance uh with the moon and certainly with Mars as well, we wanna make
sure we're not contaminating anything. I certainly the water
deposits on the moon and certainly any deposits on Mars uh there could be there for
others, bacterial or even fossilized bacteria on Mars. So if you're just. Uh point somewhere and go Oh, that will
be a good place for a drill. Mmm No, it's not quite not yet
you know we were very specific on how the mold was going to uh
sift through the ground and be careful about it, but if you were gonna if we we know where
the water is uh so if you wanted wanted to drill where is then that's that's gonna be a
completely interesting issue cuz we still need to figure that out right. Well, there's a
comment here, another comment and I've I've really felt your enthusiasm. come out. I mean
you're uh we know that you love this. okay just know if ants uh
and Jeff, we says, I love how much she enjoys the subject matter. So I think that's uh
that's something that um you covered a lot of material. you made it very interesting and
you explained it. I think in the way that anybody could understand and so that's awesome. Thank you. Thank you.
Well, thank you so much Kaitlyn I really appreciate you being here um we'll have to have you
back again sometime and thank you again um uh before we do in
this. I don't see it looks like we are left um I do want to give the answers to the
questions. Okay, so I am going to share this. I find it.
Okay, our first question was what causes the green flash um
and I'll let you read this as I'm reading off the winner. Our winner is James Hubbard. So
what causes a green flash? it's caused by a um that's kinda
refreshing of light roast travel to the eye over a long path through the atmosphere. It
happens rarely as the sun disappears from view at the end of the day shorter wavelengths
refract more strongly than longer wave lengths. I'm losing
the trip. Yeah and uh separation of colors lands of.
You to the last visual message of the solar disc. I'm losing
the black print and the black and the green. So that is what
causes the green flash. How many here I've seen the green Flash twice. Yeah you too.
Carol. Yeah. it is actually I've got pictures. It is
amazing I-1 time uh when I was at the Observatory with David Levy uh. We just finished
dinner we go outside and he says Scott. you see the moon setting over there. you know in Arizona has really transparent
skies and the moon setting, and he says I want you to watch for
the green Flash for sure the green flash from the moon setting is oh wow it was that
is amazing. I've never seen that. I've always heard you could see that, but I have never seen that and you know I
expected the green Flash to be not to be. So noticeable and I
watched it over the ocean and it was noticeable. I just set my. yeah. I just set my camera
up to just continuously run and I stood there and watched it and I mean it does happen fast
but it you can definitely see it. It's amazing to see so
congratulations James Hubbard question two. What are the ng C
numbers for the open cluster known as double cluster and Percy, and that is ng. 869 and
Ng C eight four and congratulations Mark Hilton.
And our last question is what is the common name for the main
object that winds through I see 1396 and the elephant trunk
that's uh that is amazing and there's the elephant trunk. whoops wait a minute That's not
the elephant. That isn't the elephants. Yeah, it is I'm
reading down Yeah the elephant train. I'm losing it here uh
and congratulations. Cameron Gillis Uh I think that's I love that picture that is amazing.
so congratulations to all of our winners. you'll probably be hearing from our president. He'll probably be sending you a
congratulations letter and getting your address um so
thank you everybody for being here. We really appreciate it and thank you to our contest
winners and all of you our speakers. Oh my gosh. we've had some great talks tonight um if
there's anybody else wanna say anything before we sign off here. Yeah. Martin is uh very
uh conversational tonight. he says that I've seen the sunset
twice uh I guess in the same day it dropped over the edge of the water and then the
reflected image appeared uh and the. Jillian and quite yeah quite Marshall Islands. Oh,
wow. it's cool. that would that would be something to say yes.
Thank you everybody for watching tonight. Uh Terry Thank you and in the
astronomically uh Kaitlyn Ers it was um honored to have you on Libby if you're listening uh
thanks again for coming on um and David Levy uh as always a pleasure and. Until uh until
Monday, uh we've got uh more coming and on Tuesday, we have the next global Star party um I
will uh um also mention that we
have um uh we will be doing um the broadcast of the Winter
Star Party. That's coming up February 8 and uh so that's going on for several days. uh
so that will be exciting and um I in the word. Is a global Star
party um uh that would be co-hosted by Astronomy magazine
and its editor. So I think that would be just tremendous as well. so uh lots of exciting
stuff to come uh hope that uh you guys are warm and healthy
and uh maybe you're getting some clear skies here and there um and we'll see you soon.
Thank you. Scott. Thank you again everyone. Thanks. Thank you everyone. Thanks. Buh bye
Good night Good night.