Passer au contenu
Avoir des questions? Appelez le service client au 866-252-3811 (L-V 8h-17h CT) !
EXPLORE THE JUNE 2025 ASTRONOMY CALENDAR NOW!

Astronomical League Live VI

 

Transcript for Part A:

and we just have like this little
sharing screen
thing that we do those people get
seated
but our mics are still hot so which is
just fine
makes it more entertaining yeah that's
right
keeps it exciting i agree yeah
so normally normally we would have a
different show on today
we normally would have
dr daniel barth on and daniel
does a program called how do you know
but a dentist got after him today
and he can't talk so
that makes it hard to have a a program
you know so we could ask him questions
and he could just nod
you can just not that's right was that
right dr barth yes
yeah i mean just um i think he can grunt
i think he can still do that um
we already have some people logging on
we got richard grace on
and book davies and mike wiesner i don't
know if you guys knew
no remember mike wiesner from his
etx day i had a i had a ctx 90 first
generation i bought it in 1998.
i used to use his website all the time
yeah
that's right so yeah the etx is a great
starter
not just a starter shot it's just a
great telescope to have it was my
cheap quest star i couldn't afford a
questar right
exactly exactly so when
need was developing the etx of course we
had a questar there
you know and we wanted to do a starmap
uh tube we actually made some but
uh we learned that that was somehow
copyrighted like there was a design
copyright or something so we couldn't do
that
but um and then they made some that were
like
uh we met a company that
could do graphics in
anodized and they did a few of those but
i don't think they came out very well
i think the best look that they came up
with was kind of a deep violet purple
color but a secret is that john deeble
who was selecting that color was
colorblind
so he he struggled with that for a while
but that's
that's just one of the million stories
that i can tell you about
um well when i took over astronomy at my
college we had a we had one mead
as a really good solid telescope that we
could use it was a nice eight-inch uh
cst but
uh the secondary dropped to the first
time i tried to use it
and hit the primary and i was just
devastated
so we've managed to salvage it into a
workable student telescope but uh
yeah we invested in a few others
including a nice explore scientific 10
inch that we can take out
on good dark nights which is fun
i'm going to share this to the resc uh
now does the montreal group have its own
facebook group
we do we have a facebook page and a
facebook group so public side as well as
a member
side i can see the calgary one
and i'll have to join your
your other group definitely if you put
in a request i'll i'll approve it right
away
we're not approving scott
believe it or not i actually grew up in
edmonton so i know a little bit about
about the canadian group but it's been a
long long time
so yeah edmonton's actually in the
process
edmonton and calgary both have some nice
observatories there for their members to
use and for public events which is a lot
of fun
i love the graphics
oh it's just like going to movies yeah
oh yeah coming into monster oh there you
go
it's just like going to the movies
that's right whatever that was i can't
remember
hello everybody we had graphics before
but now i now i see scott pumping in
once in a while
that's right this is roberts and um
uh right now i'm joined with uh kareem
jaffer
and russell frelich from the montreal
center of the royal astronomical society
of canada
and we also have with us doug burger
doug berger
is the man who started astronomy day
back in 1973 and so um
you know the astronomy day has become uh
the now is called the international day
of astronomy or
the international astronomy day and it
has become a worldwide movement
there are untold numbers of planetariums
astronomy clubs amateur astronomers
outreach people that have celebrated
astronomy day all over the world and uh
so what what doug started um
i'm not i don't know if he had visions
of this thing becoming a worldwide
movement
but it is indeed a worldwide movement
and
uh has exposed so many people to the
wonders of the night sky
and all the the pluses and the good
things about astronomy so
um i think we'll start off with uh
kareem and and russell just to kind of
talk a little bit
about uh their plans for being the
special guest host of the 45th global
star party
in celebration of astronomy day so we
are
really excited to be part of this event
and to co-host it and to
showcase a little bit of what we do here
in the montreal center as well as what
some of our friends are doing all over
the world
and we've been starting to really
embrace
the international aspect of
international astronomy day a couple of
years ago we did a
fantastic event with our local
planetarium our student groups
including students who'd done stages at
observatories and programs in aerospace
and in space
sciences all over the world and we got
to showcase that to the montreal public
and in partnering with the explorer
alliance we're really excited to kind of
be able to reach a whole new audience to
reach the global audience and share a
little bit of what we do here at the
montreal center
so we've organized the evening in kind
of three separate parts so we're going
to
talk about our stories as amateur
astronomers professional astronomers
astrophotographers
and education and outreach specialists
so we're going to have
members students youth members
as well as some of the outreach people
that we work with talk to you a little
bit and share with
everyone our favorite little memories
are our favorite thing to
talk about when it comes to something to
share with the general public or even
with
our family our friends and our members
so we're going to start with observing
stories
we're going to do some outreach stories
and we're gonna share
our astrophotography imaging stories and
russell's actually
he's a relatively new member of our club
but he's actually embraced this imaging
part
taking it to heart just run with it so
i'll pass it over to russell to talk a
little bit about just
what we're hoping to share with you in
terms of these experiences
yeah sure thanks kareem yep as kareem
said uh actually i'm a relatively new
member
i used to do astronomy a long time ago
with the etx and stuff but i came back
uh
of course it was triggered by the
pandemic what to do in the backyard we
can't travel anywhere so i got lucky
it's a lot of fun and i really uh i
really learned to like the camaraderie
and the energy and the uh
the buzz of the montreal center group um
you know we're not like thousands of
people i guess
we're about 100 or 200 um
active members but when i say active
members are quite active
we actually have a group clubhouse
meeting twice a week and it's always
very well attended
so it's amazing and we have lots of
astronomy club i know that meets that
often so it's very cool
and sometimes it feels like it's not
enough because we'll meet on a wednesday
people will be talking about i did this
and then by saturday it's like
oh do you see what happened last
thursday night we haven't talked about
it yet and then
it's like it's very exciting so i really
really like that and we're really hoping
to be able to share that
the energy that we witness every week
and we hope to translate
with the stories that we're going to be
talking about as kareem said it's
observing and uh some of the education
outreach and and some
imaging as well so we have people who
have been imaging for
a couple of decades we've got people
like me who've been doing it for
many months many more
more than one yes that's right but we
have also awesome
yeah doing it for like two or three
decades very impressive and then
when i when i talk about cameras they're
thinking no no you have to use like uh
um you have to use hypered fujifilm or
something like that i said no that's
before my time and they give me the
grumpy look so
right right and i mean the global star
party audience is familiar with our most
esteemed member who's our honorary
president
david levy he grew up in montreal he
helped really kind of make this club
what it is
now and he's still whenever he's in
montreal and these days it's twice a
week we get to chat with you
yesterday right okay all right so i
i should have known so um david if
you're watching
um not sure if you are but uh we're
really excited about doing this this
weekend
and as i know you are um
and so let's segue a little bit over to
doug berger
doug has
we ran into each other at least once
at the riverside telescope makers
conference i
now that i he helped me kind of remember
um uh you know him and all the rest of
it but i'll be honest
i for a few years i've wanted to get in
touch with doug burger
okay because he's the guy that started
astronomy day
you know and and astronomy day is is
like christmas for astronomers i mean
and and it is celebrated probably it has
probably been celebrated by
millions of people around the globe and
so
uh not only did doug uh start this but
he's also a comet discoverer
doug can you just kind of give us a
little bit of background about yourself
and
some of the uh ideas that you had in
starting astronomy day
well um i'm basically an amateur
astronomer been building telescopes
since the
early 70s and um
astronomy day was pretty much a uh
a uh takeoff from this the group called
the san francisco sidewalk astronomers
which i'm sure pretty much everybody has
heard about
sure and uh it started back started back
in 73
uh locally in the with a group called
the astronomical association of northern
california
and that was a group i was the president
of at the time and so
the very first astronomy day was that
particular group
setting up telescopes around the san
francisco bay area and northern
california
and it pretty much grew from there all
right
so you know
i'm really kind of uh giddy about all of
this
and uh really i mean
i know that i can speak on behalf of
kareem and russell and
the audience uh doug we're all honored
that you're
uh spending time with us today and that
you're going to be
celebrating uh international astronomy
day with this on saturday so
absolutely right that's i mean it's a
huge circle to us
so um uh so kareem and russell what does
the schedule
look like so far on your side so we're
going to be starting at uh
6 p.m central time 7 eastern daylight
and 2300 utc
on international astronomy day may 15th
and we're starting with just a little
bit of
chatting banter and listening to david's
welcome and his poetry readings which
are always just so
motivational and listening from doug a
little bit of the history of kind of
where this this idea kind of took hold
because
almost 50 years this is fantastic to be
continuing to
be able to bring astronomy to the public
and
showcase it really showcase it
internationally once a year is just
fantastic
and then from there we're going to segue
straight into the observing stories
we're going to try to share if weather
allows
a live view of the waxing crescent moon
from here in montreal from one of our
friends trevor who's plateau astro he
does
urban astronomy here on the mountain and
in the plateau in
mount royal area we're going to try to
share a few observing stories
from both the perspective of people who
observe in different areas but also
those who build their own equipment so
we have
an individual who builds optical
equipment everything from telescopes to
spectrographs
and another pierre paquette who's a
local legend because he not only
is a real buff when it comes to the
history and the explanation of
where our naming systems and our
constitution everything's come from but
he's been building his own astrolabes
for the last few years
and so he actually builds the metal ones
by hand
meticulous handcrafted work so he's
gonna
share a little bit of that with us very
cool
very cool well i'm sure daig is a
telescope builder he'll be very
intrigued by that so that's cool
and then we're gonna segue over to
outreach and uh russell's gonna lead
that session
okay we're gonna have some uh youth
members as well as some of our local
outreach people
sharing a few of their stories and
specifically just
what why they do outreach like what is
it that motivates you to want to be out
in front of the public and share with
them
and then to end the evening we're really
hoping to be able to showcase some
really good astrophotography so we have
uh quatran who does urban
astrophotography
using fairly simple equipment that he
really just manipulates and really works
to i call him macgyver because the
solutions he comes up with are just
amazing and we have mark ricard who's
been doing astrophotography for decades
and just does amazing
work on globular clusters and nebulae
and
who does both urban astronomy and uses
remote telescopes
and we also have with us a couple of
international people yeah
sorry russell go ahead well it's okay
and ben also has his youtube channel
which is quite popular ben's
astrophotography so
exactly wonderful yeah that is great and
then as you said we've got our two
international ones uh
pete williamson from the uk who's going
to share with us a little bit of remote
astronomy that he does with the
slu observatory and he actually
processes nasa probe images
so he's been putting up perseverance
images as they come in
and processing them and just really
bringing mars to life
and then we have enrique gomez who does
sonification
and scott i don't know if you're
familiar with sonification but i'm just
in
awe of this idea it's just it captures
my imagination
tell us more it's bringing
astronomy into music so it's taking the
actual
oh the the photometry the the light that
you see
and turning it into digital sound
he does that with variable stuff that i
i've had
on one of our programs we had fiorella
terenzi on and she
is a astrophysicist she recorded
sounds of radio telescope
uh frequencies and you know from
these emissions from galaxies and stuff
and turn that into pop music and so
yeah it was um it was she did stuff with
thomas dolby
and all the rest of it and she came on a
program and danced and talked about
stuff and played some old videos and
stuff
it was pretty amazing you know so one of
our one of our directors here in our
center david schuman he's going to be
giving a talk on shuttle launches and
rocket launches because he's seen so
many of them
yeah but a couple of years ago for 2017
they did a trip down to see the total
eclipse and they made a documentary out
of it
and one of my students took sounds from
the galaxy from jupiter from the sun
and created a soundtrack for their
documentary
and so it really got me engaged in this
idea of communicating
science through art and it's just it's
something that we've embraced as a
center
we've been doing some work with the seti
program for uh
residence artists as well with bettina
forge who's the director there
fantastic that's fantastic that's great
well uh so it should be just an amazing
day
and you know we've got some people here
watching us right now that uh
on occasion will join us i hope they
join us on
saturday we will be starting about an
hour
earlier than we normally actually two
hours earlier than we normally do
we usually start at 8 pm central
we will be starting at 6 00 pm central
on this particular program
um but uh you know it it's to kind of
adjust for
all their activities going on in the
east eastern standard time
or daylight time i guess is what it is
right now yeah
you still believe in that so
um and uh you know we will
of course we'll be highlighting doug
burger along with our lineup of uh
speakers
i believe dave dave eicher from
astronomy magazine will be joining us
uh there may be a couple more surprises
we'll see as we go along here but
um you know astronomy day is a very
special time
uh and uh we really want
uh us to put our best foot forward in
doing outreach for
uh you know during this still this time
of the pandemic
i know that uh for the our people in
canada
um that they are really i mean very
restricted
uh still on what they can and can't do
we still have a curfew some provinces
are still on lockdown
yeah yeah and that's it's a real
lockdown it's
in the united states i think we had
things that we were calling lockdown but
not really you know so uh we were still
able to
get out and go about and i think that uh
you know your curfew's pretty strict so
right so yes but but uh uh
anyways uh but we're not gonna let that
get us down
it's still astronomy day we're still
astronomers and we've got
we've got doug burger in the house too
so it's going to be awesome
and uh um you know and
david levy will be there all the people
that you love and know will
will be on this program and uh i
am so honored that the royal
astronomical society the montreal
chapter wanted to do this so
and scott one of the things we really
love about the global star party is that
the chat is so dynamic and there's so
many
wonderful comments and questions in the
chat and the after party oh
right so much fun to just get people to
come in and talk to us about
share their stories sure that's right
that's right and so we will be
we'll be including the after party link
like we always do
um some people i guess might be a little
nervous about coming on but you know
what
we're just we're all just uh friends and
and
amateur astronomers doing our thing so
come on in
and you know and
share your passion with us share some
stories if you've got
uh your first image i mean we've had
people show
very blurry uh you know
not great astrophotos but it was their
first image and
and that's very very important you know
to to
uh get that out there and to share that
because it helps you get to the next
level real quick so
yeah but um is there anything else that
you guys would like to share before we
uh
call it quits it's going to be a lot of
fun
so don't miss it yes the other thing i
prepare is to get people to encourage
them to go out and set up their
telescopes on astronomy day
it's coming and if that means finding a
street corner in your neighborhood
or finding a shopping mall where it's a
little bit dark
you know get your neighbors with
telescopes or your friends with
telescopes get out there and use them
exactly sidewalk astronomy it's it's
something that we can exactly we cannot
do that here in montreal because if
we're caught outside it's a one thousand
five hundred dollar fine
yeah everywhere so we so
in order to compensate for our lack of
ability please go out and do that
yeah and then come and tell us tell us
what you saw
please come here online with us and
celebrate it and share it
um you know you can share and subscribe
depending on
what what channel you're on we'll be on
the youtube channels
uh we'll be on the rasc's
montreal chapters channel as well
our channels so please
you know do what you can to share the
excitement and to join in
uh we have the astrophotographers that
might join us
uh hopefully they get some clear skies
and can share live views to their
telescopes that's always fun and uh you
know the
i i failed to mention uh uh the
uh astronomical league will also be
joining us you know so
uh they'll be hosting door prizes
and we've already been contacted by at
least one astronomy dealer that wants to
donate a door prize as well so
if we have more of them out there they'd
like to do that that just makes it more
fun
so cool sounds good there's something
for everyone on saturday night
that's right and i can show you my least
expensive astronomy gear ever it's free
it's a stick i use to
to scare off the raccoons in the
backyard
but it's part of my official gear very
cool
very cool very great um
all right well thank you very much for
watching uh again
uh we probably won't see daniel barth
come back on
uh until wednesday we're gonna give him
another
day or so to recover he's got a mouth
full of marbles right now so he can't
you know but um until then
uh you guys keep looking up uh and um
and we will see you uh tomorrow and
every day
leading all the way up to saturday so
take care and
wishing you guys clear skies bye
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]

 

Transcript for Part B:

and it gets dead silent doesn't have to get dead silent yes they
can hear everything we're saying but that's right yep
here we are you know that might put me to sleep
scott that's what it's meant to do
actually the the dots are binary encoded telling you subliminally to give me your
credit card number it's starting to work you're
[Laughter]
[Music] on from sweden stockholm oh right now great afternoon everyone
and happy friday yes it is yeah pekka is uh i think one of the
international members of the astronomical yes he is ah excellent
do you have any members from liechtenstein none that i know of [Laughter]
david i really love your sense of humor norfolk nor from san marino
i mean i still remember that from like grade school geography you know where they would teach you about those two
what are the smallest countries in the world the vatican's the smallest
i think san marino may be maybe second smallest isn't there another one san marino
liechtenstein and maybe not in the vatican okay
recently we've gotten hooked on the uh the volcanoes of iceland there's a major eruption been going on
for about a month on one of those and it's just so fascinating it's easy to get hooked on those
they are fascinating yeah i would love to see an eruption like that i haven't yesterday volcano
the closest i came was on maui my wife and i went to maui and we hiked around what you know the
previous volcano and you can see the lava fields still in the jungle area and it i could have pictured it flowing
downhill but never made it to the main island well
we've been watching online for about a month now and start up very small and of course there's mountains been
built up since it's been going on it's just it continues to have plenty of fuel so
who knows how long it goes on monaco's is the second smallest naruto's third tuvalu is fourth and san
marino's fifth sign the sixth so
there you are well there's a few more in there but i learned in my grade school geography what was that two below two
below tuvalu two blue okay not to be confused with tuba it's a pacific island
country pacific island yeah not sure it was in the history books
when i was going to school a hundred years ago i've been remaining two or three times 100 years ago
when i was in school the largest country was the mongol empire i think
oh man
well we're used to dealing with those uh uh large numbers as far as uh going back so many light years
and all this kind of stuff universal i guess that's fitting
is the astronomical club of akron uh a league club
astronomical let's see akron ohio
uh astronomy club of background
they should be if they're not we're sharing we're sharing to their club
shared to a russian a russian looks like russian um
astronomy group i shared it with the um aurora people too so
[Music] yep everybody knows after bob up there you guys are able to please share this
program this is an outreach program of the astronomical league
terry are you going to be joining and speaking at the next aurora summit you saw the note from melissa right yes
yeah i know i will be there um i did offer to speak or i will offer to speak
um but i'm definitely going to be there i'm like i said i'm ready i'm ready to go somewhere but that
sounds fantastic i've never been up in wisconsin there oh yeah well it's at least halfway to the
north pole so sounds good it's the right direction
yes some people out there are probably thinking we're crazy
that's okay that's what makes us such an attractive group
this travel test will explore how spectroscopy works and how it facilitates valuable
research with the nasa esa hubble space telescope including innovative research in the
study of exoplanets
while images of the universe excite and inspire the public spectroscopy is a fundamental tool that
astronomers use to study the universe
hubble's spectrographs provide scientists with the data they need to analyze the materials that make up
stars nebulae galaxies and the atmospheres of planets
hubble is equipped with two spectrographs the space telescope imaging spectrograph
which was installed on the telescope in 1997 and the cosmic origin spectrograph which
was installed in 2009
any object that absorbs or emits light can be studied with a spectrograph
to determine characteristics such as its temperature density chemical composition and
velocity once the light enters the spectrograph
it is split by a dispersive optical element into its different components or
wavelengths in order to be studied this element acts much like rain droplets that
disperse the light to form a rainbow this dispersed light is then focused
onto a detector and it is seen as a spectrum
the spectrum's pattern can be analyzed by astronomers to decipher what atoms and molecules are
present in the source this helps them to understand the various physical and chemical
characteristics of the sources in this way hubble's images tell us what
something looks like while the spectrum data tell us what it is and what it's made of
ultraviolet spectroscopy is one of hubble's most significant contributions
to astronomy positioned in orbit around the earth hubble is not obstructed by earth's
atmosphere which absorbs ultraviolet light the telescope is also equipped with
detectors sensitive to ultraviolet light spectroscopy has been the foundation of
many key hubble discoveries for example hubble has recorded a black
hole signature and its spectroscopic observations
fingerprinted the distant universe using the light from quasars to allow
astronomers to prove the raw materials from which galaxies form
spectroscopy has also become an essential tool for hubble's study of exoplanets
this is significant because when hubble was launched planets beyond our own solar system has
not yet been discovered using its spectrographs hubble has
provided the first direct detection of the atmosphere of a planet orbiting a star outside our solar system
and has detected organic molecules in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star
in this way the spectroscopy of the atmosphere of what are known as transiting exoplanets was pioneered
by hubble astronomers the exoplanets are studied as they pass
in front of their host star as seen from earth when chemicals in their atmosphere
leave their tell-tale signature in the spectra by filtering out certain wavelengths of
starlight in the search for signs of life
astronomers are looking for specific spectrographic signatures each
chemical element in the atmosphere of an exoplanet blocks light from the star at specific
wavelengths creating absorption lines in the spectrum of the star
this is how astronomers can identify the presence of specific atoms and molecules some of those being key
prerequisites for life such as methane water oxygen ozone
and others
for example during the lunar eclipse of january 2019 astronomers used hubble for a
special spectrographic experiment that tested how they will observe earth-like planets around other stars in
the search for life in the future our planet's perfect alignment with the
sun and moon during a total lunar eclipse mimics the geometry
of a transiting terrestrial planet with its star
in this innovative study hubble used the moon as a mirror that reflects the sunlight
that has been filtered through earth's atmosphere
spectroscopic observations of this light were able to detect the fingerprint of ozone in earth's
atmosphere a key prerequisite for the presence and possible evolution
of life as we know it on an exo earth
to date astronomers have used hubble to observe the atmospheres of gas
giant planets that transit their stars but terrestrial planets are much smaller
objects and their atmospheres are thinner therefore analyzing these signatures is much
harder that's why researchers will need space telescopes
much larger than hubble to collect the fecal signal as the starlight passes through these
small planets atmospheres during a transit a larger telescope collecting area will
allow for effective detection of these faint signals
the upcoming nasa esa csa james webb space telescope will be able
to penetrate deep into an exoplanet's atmosphere to detect methane and oxygen
if they exist there not only will the new observatory support
spectroscopic observations of exoplanets but it will also pioneer new
spectroscopy research in all areas of astronomy
well hello everyone uh scott roberts here with the explore alliance and it is
my special privilege to introduce the the movers and shakers of the
astronomical league uh with their special speakers that include david levy and
astro bob that's going to be on today i'm going to hand this over to terry mann who organizes this amazing
event that we're now into our sixth segment and um terry uh what's going on in your
universe lots of rain yes it's raining here too
it's been coming down like everywhere thank you scott and thank you so much
for broadcasting our astronomical league live we really appreciate it we've had so much fun with everybody
that has been on uh it's something i think we all look forward to every month so thank you scott we do appreciate
everything you do oh that's my pr privilege and honor thank you sure
and david uh yes sir you are it is so good to see you it's so nice to
keep seeing somebody that you haven't seen for years and now i'm finally able you know to keep up a conversation with
you um thank you for being here i hope you and wendy both are doing well
we are terry thank you it's good to be here thank you so how about if we go ahead
and let you start us off tonight why thank you terry this is david of the
astronomical league of the united states of canada morocco great britain
i like your shirt david it's cool okay definitely canada anyway um
i'm last present a poetic quotation to get things rolling
and today's is going to be a poem written in 1868 by sarah williams it's called the old
astronomer to his pupil reach me down my tico brahe i would know
him when we meet when i share my later signs sitting humbly at his feet he may know the law of all
things yet be ignorant of how we are working to completion working on from them
to now pray remember that i leave you all
sorry about that pray remember that i leave you all my theory complete liking only certain data for your adding
as is meat and remember men will scorn it as original and true
and the obliquely of newness may fall bitterly on you but my people as my people you
have learned the worth of scorn you have laughed with me a pity we have
joyed to be forlorn what for us are all distractions of men's fellowship and smiles what for us
the goddess pleasure with her meritus smiles and you may tell that german college
that their honor comes too late but they must not waste repentance on
the grizzlies of on state though my soul may set in darkness
it will rise in perfect light i have loved the stars too fondly
to be fearful of the night thank you and back to you terry
thank you david you know that's one of my favorite sayings i have a bracelet that says that that i can't help but to wear out
sometimes when i go out at night just under the milky way that is just one of my favorites saying
thank you so much appreciate that thank you you bet so carol
how about if we go to you and carol is carol org is the current president of the
astronomical league he's involved in many many projects and he is here to give us
some updates so carol take it away thank you terry thank you scott for
uh making it possible to have these uh situations and david sorry nice to hear from you as
well in your words of wisdom uh as i was uh last few weeks i've been thinking about
how the alcons our national conventions have evolved over the years and if we had thought
ten years ago that suddenly we would be doing an alcon online like we're going to later
and now we're still terry and chuck's thunder they'll be talking more about that a little bit later we said well you can't do that that
that's impossible we've always done it the other way we couldn't do that
whether in our past we've been the copper mountain we've been french lick uh we've been at the mecca
of astronomy uh in tucson and then the following year in 2011
we broke another barrier as far as what an outcome looks like and did a dark sky uh
convention in utah
and that was uh another first for us we actually contracted with the park service so that
was a different type of outcome and then the next year uh very
successful uh that event was then the next year we went to chicago and we're out on a on a lake uh
for a cruise uh then we went to yerkes so uh our travels and
we've had several people who have been almost all the outcomes over the years but each one are unique
and then uh we fast forward a few years and about five years before the
total solar eclipse in 2017 casper we decided well why don't we have a convention in
conjunction with a total solar eclipse had never been done well maybe that might work but easier said
than done on that one we started about five years early and we had a major event there
it was so refreshing at that one to see a vendor room full about 100 vendors and uh
it gave shades of what the neef convention in new york looks like
so we had a taste of what that was like then we've had other
similar events going forward and now we're breaking another barrier uh like i
said earlier we're going to have one virtually and many thanks to terry and chuck
they've really got a wonderful event planned uh something for everybody and uh we're
really looking forward to it oh as i was looking forward through the archives today in fact
at that 2017 convention i saw some scott roberts who was shown in the
vendor room and i thought that was him he hasn't aged one day since now i have
but not him but anyway that was uh one of our better attended conventions lately we almost
had a thousand people there so the virtual environment though
has potential to hit even more than that so that's why it's so exciting that we
are going to change the venue this year we'll be back in albuquerque in 2022
it will be our third try to have a live convention i think we're going to make it 2022 probably
so i think with that and david levy has promised us that he's going to make it to
albuquerque now he said he was going to be there this year and i'm sure he'll be there in 2022. so
david we're going to hold you to that yes absolutely i will be there i plan to
be there for a special reason not just that it is the astronomical league but also our
children and our grandchildren will be there and we haven't seen them in over a year and we miss them so much yes so you have several reasons
to be there and that's that's good well that's my comments back to you terry thank you
thank you carol appreciate that uh what i would like to do now i'm going to share my
screen and we are i am going to ask the three questions that we do for the door prizes
now we do three door prizes and this will be different than the star parties with this event
we um give away we give the winners at that time at this time so i'll see if
i can't there we go so tonight's store prices are going to be
the oops the tote you saw there real quick and the winners will win one
of those totes and you will need to send your answers to secretary astroleague.org
and please do it um i will we'll name the winners after astro bob speaks so please
send your answers to that address as soon as you can because i will do the
answers or give the winners right after astro bob's talk
as i just said there and the winners will be contacted by the president of the league carol org to
get any information shipping and that type of information that we need
so here are the questions for tonight
and as soon as i get everything out of the way here what planet will be closest to the moon
and i believe that's on may 15th
okay okay on may 31st another planet has an early morning
encounter with the moon what planet will that be
and the next one is name the constellation where you will find m57 and again please send those answers
as quickly as you can to secretary at astroleague.org
and that will take us to the answers i'm going to quit sharing all right
from there chuck and i uh chuck allen vice president of the astronomical league and i
as carol was talking about are co-chairing elkon virtual so we're going to just go over a
few of the details since this has never been done before and um kind of run you through what
we're thinking and then i am going to end with showing you the website that will that is we just made active a few hours
ago and i'm going to show you the website and how to navigate around it's very simple
so chuck if you don't mind why don't you start and i will discuss the website
when you get done and you jump in or i can jump in anywhere we want to do
great thank you terry very much and good evening everybody i'm going to share a screen also if i
may and take you through what we're planning at this point and bear in mind we're still in the planning stages but we're
well along in that process and so uh we'll start
with the date it's august 19th through 21st that's a thursday through a saturday
and we'll talk about the timing of the sessions in just a moment but i'd like to show you a little bit about
what we'll be doing first of all this is a typical afternoon session the evening sessions
look a lot like this they're bifurcated into an early and late
session uh each about maybe about 79 or 80 minutes long
and we'll have a break in the middle so this is an afternoon session at 3 p.m eastern daylight time
and again broken into two parts the evening session starts at 8 pm edt
and also is divided into two parts so we'll have four sessions a day for a total of 12
sessions we're going to have incredible speakers and tours and you really need to
look at all the sessions because they're going to be spread out over all 12 of them we're going to have
hopefully a member of the perseverance team perseverance team rather who will
be talking about that project we hope to have a vla tour live
we are going to have speakers david i hope you don't mind if i conscripted this photo i liked it and um uh he will be with us
we have uh speakers like dr cicadzar and caitlin aarons we're going to have a
major uh keynote speaker at the end uh hopefully maybe from overseas
uh our nile winners from 2020 and 2021 will be asked to present uh talk on their projects too
which is always interesting to see what young people are doing and i promise you it's incredible
we will have presentations at each of our sessions of awards some of these will be youth awards
such as our nile winner of national young astronomer award winner
this was scott roberts presenting the plaque and telescope prize to our winner 11 years ago we will have
also the awards of our horkheimer smith and daria service awards
with very large cash prizes we will have the presentation of our youth imaging
and omira journalism awards also with very large cash prizes for young people
we also have our regular league awards our astronomical league award presentations for 2020 and 2021
we will have our peltier award winners for hopefully the last two years we will
have award of the webmaster award for this year and last year and we will have the award of the mabel
stearns newsletter award for this year and last year and we're not going to bombard you with these awards there will just be
maybe two awards presented during each of the 12 sessions we also have the william meena fleming
imaging award which is brand new uh imaging competition that we are generating for female league members 19
and over uh the deadline for that is may 31st we hope to work out
with scott an imaging award for everyone in the league in conjunction with the
convention as well door prizes are very special in this convention we decided
not to go to vendors directly and ask for door prizes for usually this puts a
strain on the vendors and we don't want to go to them and ask for extra special treatment this year
because we approach them every year and our hosts at other conventions do so so we did something different we
approached the clubs league member societies and asked them to sponsor
one really nice door prize and what we're asking for are is a single door prize being
sponsored by a club or by an individual who wants to in the 150 dollar plus range
could be a gift certificate for example and it could be uh that when you present the prize
your club will get some recognition you'll have a couple of minutes three minutes to tell us a little about your club show us
some pictures of your observatory and your activities and get a little credit for sponsoring a
door prize for us here's the process we're looking for a prize in the 150 to 250 range roughly
again club and individual sponsors are welcome if you want to join in this process contact one of us terry or me
our emails are simply secretary or vice president at astralig.org
purchase the prize gift certificates are fine especially if you're going after things like solar filters or
objects that would have to be tailored to the size of a person's telescope send us your club logo and a photo of
the prize but hold on to it then be prepared to talk about your club for three minutes and then mail the
prize to the winner after we announce it and we'll provide you with a letter to transmit to them you'll be acting as an
agent for the astronomical league that way you can deduct the prize since you're giving it to us and simply
mailing it for us we'll also have a presentation of the library telescope giveaway
john goss is with us tonight a past president of the league and he's in charge of this program
we give away a library telescope to a club in each of the 10 league regions and to
a member at large each year that drawing will occur uh before the convention but the
selectees will be announced at the convention we're going to have special presentations
on a major theme of our 75th anniversary which is women in astronomy here helen
federer busy grinding a mirror of course one of the co-founders of sky and telescope
magazine and a very early president of the astronomical league
we will have other recognized women in astronomy henrietta swan levitt
being just one of many that we will be recognizing during this convention people who frankly were not given the
credit for the incredible work they did when they did it we'll also have a business meeting during
the saturday afternoon session most likely and the business meeting will be important you you'll want to tune in for
this we will have an announcement of our election results for this year we'll have of course
some information about the treasury and it's good news uh we'll have a report on any
significant events that take place during the council meeting in july a month before the virtual convention
we'll also be talking about future convention plans and have presentations from albuquerque about the convention that
they're planning for us in 2022 we'll have announcements of new
observing programs that are proposed by our national directors we'll also have an historical
presentation significant because this is our 75th anniversary so we'll be looking back over time at some of the early
people who made a huge difference in the development of this organization which is approaching 19 000 members and is the
largest pure astronomy organization anywhere on the planet we'll talk about many funny events and
odd events that occurred at the many conventions that have occurred across the united states over the many years that we've had them
and a couple of trips even outside the united states down there in florida as you can see uh
we'll even look at some convention photos that might be of interest to you including one that i'm stuck in from
1965 if you can imagine that so please
mark august 19th through 21st on your calendar 3 p.m sessions 8 p.m sessions each of
those three days alcon 21 virtual will be something special the door prizes will be extraordinary
we've had tremendous response already and we're looking for even more response and again individuals are welcome to
chip in with that so terry with that i will stop sharing and let you show the folks this
wonderful website that you and don nabba put together for us all right let me share my screen and i
will bring this up all right this is the website i need to
move everything out of the way so i can get to what i need to get to
this is our website it is honestly the front page what our plan is as you can see will be the people that will be speaking
at the conference right now we um these are the people we know are confirmed at this
point uh you can look there and watch them go by or you can simply put your mouse over
the bio and that will stop it if you'd like to read the bio but i should have started with first
that i would like to thank don knapp um he is a driving force and
had to show me a lot of things about this don did an incredible amount of work on
this website uh and then he took the time to teach me how to do
a lot of this too so i would really like to thank don nabb he he is the chair of merrell which
is the mid eastern region of the astronomical league and he's extremely active with his own astronomy club the
chester county astronomy club he has really worked hard on this and i
appreciate all the help he has given me to teach me how to do this and
i still lean on his expertise he has done an amazing job and thank you don
and thank your wife barbara too because i know she had to give up some time to
for you to help me learn this so thank you both i greatly appreciate all the help you've given me
so back to our website um if you scroll down you will see that we have the
announcement about the door prize and picture from casper at the bottom you can always go back
up to your home page now registration we are going to have registration but
registration will be just so you can win a door prize
as you can see uh it's your name and your email address this is purely to put you in the drawing
for the door prize that's why we're asking you to register so once you register for that if you win
a door prize we have a way to contact you so that makes that nice and easy
sponsors um again here we've got our first one of our first
um donations in from chester county astronomical society a
20 by 60 pair of binoculars by explore scientific which we greatly appreciate thank you
very much chester county astronomical society this will be the first door prize going
on the website we will add more you'll be able to scroll down and see
what door prizes have been added schedule as he just we don't have the
schedule up yet because we need we want more confirmations for people that are coming in and as we complete
the schedule we will add more and more to that the one thing that i did want to
talk about is we are going to have a global star party after the saturday night keynote speaker
that will start somewhere around 11 p.m edt so
we're going to ask anybody from around the whole world if you'd like to participate in this
to contact me contact the secretary of the astronomical league and that will not be until august 21st
on a saturday night at 11 o'clock edt will be approximately the time
we will start that and that will actually close alcon virtual for this year when we do
that whenever we end up so you can watch for that and we'll put another announcement up
about that and i'll send out an announcement to the global star party and anybody else that's interested
contact me val events now basically that's the events we're doing right now
uh if you want to see when the astronomical league live events are you can look at the schedule here
they all start at 7 p.m edt and we have
alcon virtual is on here and you will see we usually do it on friday but on monday
november 15th that is this league's 75th anniversary so we will be doing a special program
for the league's 75th anniversary then we go to the image gallery now
that's a lot of the images that chuck had in his presentation a lot of the really cool thing i love this
she is in a dress and in heels that just amazes me uh you know times were just different
then but i think that is such a great picture and again john goss um taking uh
probably at the bank what it looks like our crews we had a cruise in 2019 to the
bahamas that was unbelievably fun and so you can see we just have a lot of fun
at alcon there's always something going on and we look forward to going to albuquerque next year
and contacts if you've got any questions uh please contact us through here if you
send this email it will go to both of us so please any questions comments you've
got send them to us we will answer and donations um you can click here and
if you'd like to donate to the league it goes to the page on the league store or you can go back
and um let me see there's i must be covering
something up nope anyway you can go back now
from that let's see if i can do it this way donations let's do it that way this will
also go to the league store and a pin has been designed for uh the astronomical league's 75th
anniversary and for alcon virtual when that is in stop stop we'll put a
link to that if you would like that you'll be able to come here and go directly to
that on the front page i would like to say our facebook page if you click facebook you will link
right to our facebook page and there we are that's it's a little bit behind being live but that's our
facebook page right now you can go to our youtube channel which
john goss has done some great interviews at our youtube channel and so you can go
there you can also go to explore scientific right here
for all the appreciation scott has put in so much time and helped the league so much with everything um
and doing all the broadcasting for alcon 2021 virtual and we greatly again
appreciate that our website address is alcon virtual.org
it is live right now so from now on anything you want to see what's going on to alcon virtual
please just check out our website uh see what's going on if you have any questions contact chuck and i
and beyond that have i forgotten anything chuck i don't think so it looks pretty
thorough to me i would say that there are a lot more door prizes that will be going up very soon
and uh also a lot more speakers that we were just waiting for bios and photographs and things of this kind
right it's a lot further along than it looks yeah right now and we didn't want to put
anything on until everything is right where we need it and
like i said we have quite a few speakers as chuck said we have quite a few door prizes
that are in the process but i wanted to get this website online early enough so
people could start watching and get an idea of what's going on and get the dates
marked off on your calendar because this will be a lot of fun i guarantee it so with that um
john gus i'm going to turn this over to you john is a past president of the
astronomical league he is also the chair of the 75th anniversary for the league
and he is going to talk to us i think if i'm right about if you can only observe one
celestial event what would it be john is the guy that creates all these maps for our website
and does an excellent job of that so john if you would
all righty well thank you terry yeah sharing here there we go okay there
there we are uh it's good to see everybody i really had a chance to say hi to anybody out there but uh out there in cyber
space nice seeing you all uh yes it's you've heard this over and over and over we're in our 75th year and we're having
a a number of things that we're trying to do to and to spotlight the league and to try to
get people out under the stars i am guilty of something which i bet you
a lot of you are too and that is inertia uh you have a nice night come up you
think well should i go out or shouldn't i i don't know i don't know if i'm gonna do this and i i felt you know
it'd be good to try to get more people out under the stars and not really under a big program or time
constraints but just to get them under stars and having having them look up so we've been
promoting something which terry just mentioned um if you can see only one astronomical
event this month look at this one and so hopefully that will get people out at least for one
event during the month to see what's what's going on so what we have chosen this
this month well i can find it is the planet mercury
this all starts with a story of mine a number of years ago i was at a in a big city and i won't
tell you which big city because i don't want to embarrass anybody here but we were listening to the radio as
we're leaving it and they had a star um
star calendar in which they were going over what could be seen that night and the guy was talking about mercury oh
mercury is going to be big and bright tonight now i i knew what mercury was like in the sky and i
thought there's no way it's going to be big and bright so i started looking into this and in a
way we were both right and um right now mercury demonstrates that effect it's not really bright
comparatively but it is because mercury is so close to the sun it is always seen
uh not long after sunset or not long before sunrise when it is in the bright twilight so
if mercury it has a a rather bright magnitude and it's in the bright twilight you're not going
to see it very well but in the month of may especially this month right now
tonight uh over the past few nights and lasting for the next week and a half or so you'll be able to
see mercury in the on west northwest uh right after sunset about 40 minutes after sunset
it'll be a yes believe it or not a bright looking object it won't be the brightest thing in the sky but it'll certainly be noticeable
uh so go out about 40 minutes after sunset it'll be about 10 degrees above the horizon now
an easy way of figuring out what how far 10 degrees is is sticking out i'll stretching your arm
and looking at the angular diameter angular size of your clinch of your fist and that is about 10
degrees so you place that right on the horizon and mercury will be right above your hand
um about 40 minutes after sunset so you do that over the next 10 nights or so you'll see that
mercury moves a little bit each evening so why why are you doing this well it it
helps you understand what's going on in the solar system get you outside get you thinking about astronomy um
notice i didn't say anything about looking through
of course one you can try looking through a telescope and you'll see the little planet go through its phases over the next week and a half for two
weeks or so so this is a good opportunity to discover a little bit more about the night sky each month we we
like to do this excuse me last month we were talking about mars uh when mars was particularly
close to the m35 star star cluster um a great binocular target um you could
see that so it helps to get you outside and looking at the night sky so over the next few months you'll be seeing more of these um
and always keep in mind that this is the 75th anniversary of the astronomical league
we are uh we're unlike any other organization in
the world you know uh terry and chuck and carol i have told you a little bit about our
benefits and all that and i think when you look at some of these other amateur astronomy
organizations they don't quite offer the extent of the benefits that the league does and this is one of them
uh looking uh uh at something each each month uh trying to get outside and enjoy yourself
under the stars so with that i i could go on and on about this for a long time but i'll i'll
close it up here so uh maybe not tonight since you're watching this program tomorrow night if it's clear go out and
look at mercury all right john i have one more thing one more thing chuck
maybe one more a quick thing here
here we go okay this is mercury last night it is
uh it was forecast to be about minus 0.6 magnitude yeah it's
bright it you know yeah it was very easily easily seen and it will be about like
that tonight and tomorrow night but it starts to dim but still it'll be easily visible
um chuck did you have something to say yeah can you go back to that previous slide
maybe i can find it that's why i was trying to interrupt you a little bit
that's another one sorry yeah yeah
i don't see it well let me let me just comment about it i think everybody who saw it
noticed that the uh ecliptic the plane along which we see the planets
move in the sky is very vertical to the horizon in the spring at sunset so if you live in the dark sky
area there we go notice how vertical this is it isn't always like that sometimes it's very slanted so
the elongations of mercury are very low on the horizons there's a favorable elongation of mercury as john pointed
out but if you live in a dark sky area this is also the favorable season for
observing the zodiacal light because it extends along the plane of the ecliptic and will
be very vertical and therefore very high in the sky so if you live in a nice dark sky area you might want to take a look for the
for that as well this is the perfect season for it at sunset in the fall sunrise is the best time to
do that that's it okay well i like to jump in again
and add something else i think you're going to see i hope this is the one about the moon
um very thin moons are challenging to see and they're challenging because they're
in the bright twilight and they're so close to the horizon but because of the uh steeply inclined ecliptic this month and
then next week you'll have a chance to see a very very thin moon uh it'll be even next to venus so
that'll help help point it out this is a great thing to look at through binoculars um it's just
something that people don't see much of very often okay that's all i got i go
i go on and on so i'm gonna stop here thank you john well while we were
talking about what you can see in the night sky i did happen to notice that there is going to be a rocket launch from wallops
flight facility in virginia scheduled for 802 i believe tomorrow night yeah 802
tomorrow night and they are saying at least in my area and i'm in around dayton ohio 90 60 to 90 seconds
after liftoff we might be able to see it so they're saying most of the east coast should be able to
see this rocket launch and this is one that it will release the varian vapor vapor uh with two green violet
violet green violet clouds that should be visible for about 30
seconds and a reminder the vapor is not harmful to the environment or to the public so
if you get a chance if it's clear tomorrow night and you're on the east coast of the us uh 802 right the one when i copied this
was the time of the launch 60 to 90 seconds later and it is to if i remember right east to
southeast uh that we would be looking to see this
so if you get a chance tomorrow night go out take a look i'm going to if i can have
if we have clear skies and no rain so uh anybody else got anything that's
exciting happening in the sky or any last minute comments before we go to a break
i i'm just going to be trying to see something out there so yeah i don't dougie it's raining like
crazy right now so i know the weather has really been bad around here too
so i tell you what let's um if nobody else says anything at this point let's take a 10 minute break and we are
going to come back with astro bob okay thank you
so
yes
you
hmm
well we're back um and uh wanted to
get us back to all cameras here here we are
and uh so uh i hope you had it enjoyed a good 10 minute break maybe
stretch your legs and uh got something good to drink and um uh terry mann will introduce uh bob king
otherwise known as astro bob thank you thank you spot that was not like
bells and whistles okay oh it is with great pleasure
that i am going to introduce astro bob alias bob king or maybe it's the other
way around bob king fell in love with the night sky
and astronomy when he was a kid growing up in illinois and he loves to share
this passion with people of all ages bob worked as a photojournalist and a
photo editor at the duluth minnesota news tribune for 39 years before
retiring in 2018. these days when he's not chasing comets
he's out chasing the northern lights bob writes for sky and telescope's
website and magazine and maintains the astro bob astronomy
blog he taught community education astronomy classes at the university
of minnesota duluth planetarium for many years his book night sky with the naked eye
and wonders of the night sky you must see before you die describe the joys of sky watching while
urban legends of space examine science versus pseudoscience in astronomy
now after bob adds the greatest wilderness is the one right over your head all you
gotta do is look up so as i said it's with great pleasure i introduce astro bob
well thank you uh so much terry that uh that was fun so and i have unfortunately
i have a roof over my head but at least i can walk out the door here this evening and we're going to have clear skies here
in duluth where i'm speaking from duluth minnesota and i hope those of you who are listening and watching
also have an opportunity to get outside tonight and as you heard earlier mercury is
visible and so is venus i even saw it here from duluth a couple of nights ago
we are going to talk about meteorites today and to me you know there's i've got a
lifting one right now when people talk about ufos and extraterrestrials i say the best way to
meet an extraterrestrial is to simply own a meteorite which is a chunk of rock from the
asteroid belt in outer space that happened to fall to the earth and it's
the oldest thing you can hold in your hand and it takes us way back in time so it's a wonderful
vehicle it's a way to sort of travel through time and that's why to me
these rocks that are made out of metal this one is called campo del cielo it
fell in argentina several thousand years ago that's why these rocks have this sort of magical
ability to take us back through time to the early solar system or if you care to just on a journey out
to the asteroid belt so with that i'm going to share my screen
and if you do have questions during the presentation i'm not sure what the format is exactly but do feel free to ask them
you can put them in the chat box and if i get too wound up in the presentation someone can then
call out say hey bob you got a question so we can do that and we'll share here and start
from the the picture this is not what i photographed it's a beautiful picture of
a meteor let me show you my specular work there oh look at that meteor this was
taken on may 5th which some of you it might ring a bell because may 5th was
the peak of the ada aquarium meteor shower and i went out for about an hour and a half here from three to 4 30 in the
morning set the camera up it kept clicking away picture after picture and i laid back in the chair and looked
and in that hour and 20 minutes hour and a half i saw just one ada aquarium meteor
which was fined by me but i figured my camera certainly had to have captured one
no unfortunately it captured a sporadic meteor which is a random meteor but that's okay too because it sort of
fits right in with the topic today when you do go out and you see a meteor what you're seeing of course is
generally a piece of comet dust all right and in the case of the ada aquarium meteor shower which is still
active you see pieces of halley's comet dust or objects the size of
apple seeds or m m's or chocolate chips they're not very large and they tend to vaporize incinerate
when they strike the atmosphere so on most nights when you're out looking at the sky
most of the meteors you see generally will be from comet dust whether it's a known comet or
not when we don't know we call it a sporadic meteor otherwise it's a shower meteor
bigger brighter meteors and i bet some of you have seen just life-altering
fireballs i always i've got a few friends that say oh i was out last night and i saw this
unbelievable did you see it and my answer is inevitably no i'm sorry i did not see it i was
looking that way or it wasn't out or whatever it was but they do happen these really really
bright meteors and sometimes they're so bright you can see them in the daytime as uh back here on april 22nd and i didn't put
the year down pardon me i believe this was 2012 though there was a daytime fireball that dropped meteorites at sutter's
mill california that was a bright one these brilliant fireballs especially the
ones that drop meteorites these come from a different source they do not come from comets
rather they come from asteroids and uh here's some pictures of asteroids
it's just amazing that we have there's a few comments in here too down at the bottom of the screen you can see
comet borelli temple well i wish i had a comet levy down here somewhere
but these are all taken uh during various space missions and you can see these
irregular shaped generally rocky objects and they're located out in the asteroid belt
which is uh there are two asteroid belts the one we're really dealing with and talking about today
is the main belt which is located between the planet jupiter and the planet mars
and as of march of 2021 we have data on 930
000 asteroids which is just incredible when you think about that and yet i feel like we barely scratched
the surface there are millions of asteroids out there so there's still a lot of work to do
here's a very favorite and famous asteroid right now this is bennu look at this beautiful
incredible object it's just 0.3 miles across
you could walk across this thing in one room
that's how small this object is and it's just a rubble pile of rocks
interestingly just by timing coincidentally the nasa osiris-rex probe which is successfully obtained samples of this
asteroid is going to be returning to the earth with them and it departs on may 10th so it leaves
for earth on monday and it will return and finally scientists will be able to see those
samples and it was it was a successful mission as far as what it was able to grab
for rocks off the surface and hopefully it will reveal much fascinating information about
asteroids look at that surface that close-up when i see this picture of bennu i think
wow look at all those potential meteorites that could be landing on the
earth look at it's just amazing to me because when we see a space rock it has come through the
atmosphere and so at least the exterior of that rock has been altered by the heat
from the friction with the air and it melts just generally the first millimeter or
two but here is what they look like just sitting around on an asteroid and
that's bennu so how do meteorites get to the earth how do these
objects find their way from the asteroid belt which is many tens of millions 100 million miles
actually more distant from our planet well the primary way is over the history of the solar system
asteroids have collided with one another at various times and they've created smaller asteroids
littler chunks and these little chunks get spread out across the asteroid belt
now to get them to earth they first have to find a special place so that jupiter can give
them a little bit of a lift towards our planet there is a jupiter as you see right here there's
the sun in the middle jupiter affects the asteroid belt
it clears out certain zones in the asteroid belt because it's in resonance
with the the uh those particular areas of an asteroid belt so
if an asteroid is goes around the sun three times for every one time jupiter
goes around that's called a resonance a three to one resonance and jupiter because they line up
uh partly they line up based on uh fractions of jupiter's orbital period
simple fractions when that lineup happens jupiter gives that asteroid a little bit of a
tug and then the lineup happens again three orbits later and it gets another
tug there are other simple resonances here every five orbits for every two of jupiter
seven orbits for one of those asteroids that's there uh for three jupiters and so on
so what happens that these asteroids get tugged on by the planet when one of these resonances happens and
eventually the orbit of that asteroid changes instead of being close to a circle
jupiter is constantly pulling on it stretches it out it increases its what we call the
eccentricity of the orbit which is a wonderful word it stretches that orbit out so it's more
like a cigar and it becomes elongated so that at one end of the orbit
that end gets closer and closer to the inner solar system and potentially could pass the earth
and over time as the earth revolves around the sun its path can intersect with that
asteroid and when that happens it could be a small object just maybe the size of a desk or it
could be a quarter mile across but when it happens that asteroid enters the atmosphere
and this happens all the time there are at least generally seven to ten meteorite falls
witnessed every year from i guess what you would call very tiny asteroids that over time have been moved out of
where they originally formed in the asteroid belt because they have wandered in to one of these resonance
spots one of these places where jupiter is going to give it the boot ultimately by changing its orbit into a much longer
ellipse how does an asteroid or
when an s two asteroids collide how do those pieces find their way into those resonant spots
well we have this really interesting thing that happens it's subtle it takes time but over time it adds up
it's called the yarkovsky effect and here we have two different asteroids this one is
moving and they're both moving in the same direction around the sun this one is spinning counterclockwise
can you see that arrow in a counterclockwise direction this asteroid is spinning
in a clockwise direction we call this prograde motion this is retrograde motion now that
the sun down here off to your right the sun heats up the daylight side of the asteroid or the
fragment from a collision and that side gets warmer and warmer and warmer
until by the time it's late in the afternoon it's reached its hottest temperature and it's radiating
heat into space that heat actually pushes the asteroid it pushes it forward
slightly increasing its speed in which case its orbit expands outward
so it moves a little bit further from the sun just the opposite happens on one going
in the opposite direction then the asteroid is hottest on this
side and it pushes itself backwards slowing it down and dropping closer towards the sun so
just the effect of the sun's heat on an asteroid or on the pieces resulting from a collision
of two asteroids can move those asteroids into different parts of the asteroid belt some are safe
but some happen to align with jupiter to make those resonances and those
particular areas those resonances are called kirkwood gaps and if one of these asteroids enters a
kirkwood gap well [Music]
you can see jupiter has cleared up objects that move into those gaps
and this asteroid is about ready to get moved to into a longer orbit that eventually two
things could happen it could as it as its orbit changes it could crash into other asteroids
and make smaller asteroids and they could move into kirkwood gaps into the resonance points
or the orbit could drop down to the inner solar system eventually that asteroid could strike
the earth or venus or whatever planet in the inner solar system so jupiter is kind of a bad guy in this
regard so if we do get a big asteroid that comes and strikes our planet someday chances are
this planet had something to do with it when those asteroids do approach the
earth uh astronomers have there's various programs uh for looking for these for potentially
hazardous asteroids as they're called uh they have to be a certain diameter around a kilometer they have to approach
within 4 million miles or so of the earth to be classified as potentially hazardous
that means that that sometime in the future not necessarily in the next 100 or 200
years but sometime in the future the earth might encounter that object they'll the two will intersect
and it will come through our atmosphere break up into pieces and land hopefully as meteorites not as a huge
object that will destroy a city this is a classic here this was just uh
back in april of 2017 the asteroid 2014 jl 25
came relatively close to the earth and they were able to get some wonderful radar images showing how it rotates
the best and fairly recent example of a potentially hazardous asteroid we
didn't even know about because it came at us from the direction of the sun so no one could
like discover it beforehand because it was in the daytime sky was the chelyabinsk meteor or
meteorite bolide whatever you'd like to call it and this was the most recent really huge impact
of a meteorite on earth that did some damage at the time here's the orbit that was
determined for the chelyabinsk impactor
no doubt it began out here you can see this is the asteroid belt and its orbit was gradually elongated by
jupiter because it moved into one of the kirkwood gaps perhaps through the yarkovsky effect then on february
the 15th 2013 uh it was love at first sight and the two embraced
that meteorite that thing came crashing down through the sky uh
thankfully at that time there were lots of this is over in russia near the euro mountains and it was early
in the morning and dash cams were really popular i'm sure they're still popular in russian cars
and many people were driving to work they had their dash cams on and they got spectacular footage of this
enormous fireball basically this small asteroid that arrived
on earth and an interesting thing happens when an asteroid strikes the atmosphere thank
goodness we have an atmosphere because our atmosphere protects us
from these objects frequently even if it's a large object this thing
was 66 feet across okay before it hit the atmosphere so it was about
the size of a five-story building when it hit the atmosphere it came
raging through heated up and then at an altitude of about 14 miles the air was dense enough and it was
moving fast enough for it to explode in a huge air burst which created an enormous shock wave
which you kind of get a hint of down below the big flash that burst and shockwave
was a blast equivalent to 4 to 500 kilotons of tnt and it's a good thing
this did not make it to the ground and our atmosphere served as a barrier
but the shockwave blew out all kinds of windows and it also injured a lot of people who
happened to see the bright boley the brilliant meteor and they were watching from a window
so when the windows blew out when the shockwave arrived some seconds later you know after the
sight of the meteor people were unprepared for that and so people a lot of people went to the hospital that day the main fragment of the
meteorite from chelyabinsk in russia punched a nice hole in lake chabarkal
which isn't too far from the city and later that summer they got a bunch of
crews divers and they went down and they hauled out they looked and found the biggest
fragment of this meteorite it's so big i mean when something's five stories tall it's hard
to call it a meteorite right that's like you're getting to be an asteroid by that point
442 pounds is what that weighed it was so big that it broke when they
put it on the scale and i think it broke the first scale that they use too
however the impact in the atmosphere did not allow
only allowed for a few larger chunks to make it through most of the chelyabinsk ended up like
this like the size of peace just small here i've got a little one here you might be able to see it
right there just a small object like that and they were out there
by the thousands and people were looking through the snow they would just look through holes in the snow
go down there and see a black rock and they found themselves a meteorite so
most of it shattered on the way down into smaller pieces like you see here
what is amazing is that when these uh space rocks break apart and fly through
the atmosphere the heat is quite is is very tremendous it's really hot
but only very briefly so as i say only the first millimeter or two of a meteorite
actually melts to form what's called a fusion crust and look at this
you can see not only the fusion crust but because it was flying down towards the earth at high speed the
meteor i think entered at around 40 45 000 miles per hour
you can also see that it's flight oriented it has a shape like a shield here's the
smooth end and that's like the bottom of a re-entering space capsule right
and that melted on the bottom and here's the back end that's not as much melted and smoothed out but
it's actually oriented as we say by its flight through the atmosphere the other amazing thing is it can affect
rocks only that big this is only one like three or four millimeters that's a penny
it's sitting on which is pretty incredible as i said meteorite falls
happen all the time they do average some years you get about five or six sometimes you can get up to about a
dozen these are witnessed meteorite falls as they're called and that's because someone saw and they
might be able to find it if they can triangulate you know from several different observers
where it likely fell and then meteorite hunters will go out to that spot and look for dark stones
that may pepper the path you know the fall path of that meteorite other times
nowadays people use doppler weather radar because if it falls in an area where there's a doppler
weather radar station doppler can actually pick up the fragments as they're falling
and it can show you if you know how to read the doppler data it can show you very clearly
the track called the strewn field of the meteorite where it fell and then you get in your
car you head out there you can use a metal detector some do that others just look for fresh
black rocks because they're looking for that fusion crust that's very diagnostic of
fresh meteorite that blackened exterior sometimes the exterior is a matte finish and sometimes
it's really shiny the chelyabinsk meteorites were kind of on the shiny side
now we've seen a lot of falls it's very rare even with all those falls per year again
those are the witness ones there are many more meteorite falls that no one witnesses that happen in the middle of the ocean say one of
the most famous and one of the best documented
and one of the only documented cases of a person being struck by a meteorite
occurred back on november the 30th in 1954 in style calgary and i hope i'm
pronouncing that right if there's anybody from georgia listening uh or alabama pardon me i've got it as
georgia the silent caga meteorite and it weighed eight and a half pounds
and it crashed through the roof of anne hodges that she was renting this
home with her husband it crashed through the roof of the home went through the ceiling there he's got
it in his hand that's the chief of police there and there's the mayor celica
it she at the time was resting underneath a quilt on a couch
the meteorite came through the ceiling bounced off the radio console
and then right up to her and gave her a huge bruise right there as you can see it was not a
happy day exactly for her then another interesting fall occurred on
december 10 1984 and this pardon me that was in claxton georgia and this is
the special delivery meteorite because it landed right on a mailbox
right there it damaged the mailbox and i know someone had purchased that mailbox for many thousands of dollars because
it's now sort of one of these artifacts connected with this very famous fall and there you see the person
holding on in the media right there by the special delivery mailbox this was a close call
this occurred in park forest illinois which is a southern suburb of
chicago back on march 26 2003
we have here robert garza he's sitting on his bed he was nearly struck by a large
meteorite that weighed over five pounds it came through the ceiling up above it smashed down here on the windowsill can
you see the damage right there it's bent it bounced off the middle of the room where his
father had just stood minutes before wishing the kids good night and
it was a frightening experience a close call and there he is describing it right there
this meteorite um causes a lot of damage
the father's name is noah garza and the insurance company would not pay for
the damage and so he he was facing the prospect
of having to repair the roof replace all of that material which would cost a
lot of money you could imagine as a homeowner well the who pay brothers who were
meteorite hunters at the time paid noah a visit and they offered him enough
money to not only take care of the repair but also to buy himself all kinds of new
things and to pay off all of his bills and so they took care of it
while they were there they collected some of the debris from the impact and for a while they
created these kits i know you're probably you're just seeing a small image but as a meteorite impact artifacts
box from the hupei brothers back in
2003 march 26 2003 was when that fell and what it has in it's got little
bits of wood it's got some plaster some glass and then a tiny shard of the meteorite
itself of course sometimes they really make big
holes on the ground right and these are pretty rare would
you get something this large to strike the earth obviously there are many more smaller impacts
many more smaller meteoroids as they're called when they're out in space they're meteoroids
when they arrive in the atmosphere and create the streak in the sky they're meteors and if it's big enough to survive the
plunge and not be disintegrated by the atmosphere you have a meteorite this one we can go
and visit if we want in the united states it formed about 50 000 years ago it's called meteor crater it's not too
far from flagstaff east of flagstaff it's about 3 900 feet
wide and it was created by an iron nickel meteorite impactor this object though wasn't just
you know five pounds or six pounds this thing was a hundred and yeah like my arms could
show you as if it was a hundred and thirty feet across and made of iron iron and nickel all the
other ones i've showed you were stony meteorites which are the most common pardon me the most common but this was
iron and nickel so it had a little extra impact and probably uh yeah when it struck the
earth and it carved out this amazing crater and
much of that meteorite melted the pieces that blew off of it much of
it just melted even vaporized into tiny droplets and smaller chips of meteorites
but so there is no big mass sitting there down at the bottom of the crater
the biggest meteorite to land on earth we don't have any historical record of
it but you can go visit it it's also uh an iron nickel meteorite and that one is near the city of i can't
pronounce it but grout fontaine namibia in africa and that is called the hoba
meteorite and it weighs 60 tons i would love to visit it someday do kind of a circle around it little
meditation maybe about what it might have looked like coming down
striking the earth many thousands of years ago
there are lots and lots of different types of meteorites i'm just going to show you the basic
kinds the one i showed right at the beginning was one like this that you see in the
photograph these are very heavy and traditionally this is what people think of as a
meteorite it's called an iron meteorite it's made of a combination though
of iron and nickel kind of alloyed together and you'll also find other things many
different kinds of elements and very trace quantities inside iron meteorites but
often most frequently at least that i've seen you'll see patches of soft gray rock
between the iron parts and that soft gray rock is graphite the same material that's used to make
pencils not that i'm advocating using meteorites to make pencils there are far better
uses for them for science trust me when you cut open
one of these meteorites and you look inside the iron nickel one
and you polish it well on polishing it just looks like a shiny metal mirror
but if you etch it with acid you can use uh radio or the etchant they use for chip
making but you can also use nitric acid mixed with alcohol when you etch the surface the polished surface
it reveals the crystals it's almost like watching back in the old days when you could watch a photographic print
slowly emerge on a piece of paper and a tray of chemicals remember those days it's like watching a photographic print
emerge except you're seeing the actual crystal structure of that meteorite right before your eyes
and it is a beautiful and unique pattern it's called the whitman statin
pattern and it's unique to meteorites if you find a hunk of metal
and you think it might be a meteorite you can cut it you can etch it and it shows crystals like this there's a good chance you've got a
meteorite i think the most sought after most popular meteorite
are the palace sites and palestines i've got the composition over here on the right for you too
and i'll have that for each one of the meteorites the palacites are made out of two basic ingredients
it has a matrix here of shiny iron and nickel just like the iron nickel meteorite you
saw and interspersed are these crystals
green crystals of olivine and that's a silicate mineral olivine is a
magnesium iron silicate mineral you will find olivine on the earth
too it's right beneath your feet there's tons of it on the earth but most of it's
in the upper mantle below the crust so earth is also rich in olivine but not that it's easy to get at
necessarily but you'll find a ton of it in parasites and if you cut that slice thin enough
you can make it translucent or transparent and here's another palace site here for
you to see they have a beautiful texture and lovely crystals
then you have another class of meteorites called the mesocyterites and their composition is right once
again the familiar iron and nickel and then they have a matrix here of silicate
minerals like olivine and pyroxene again materials you would find in the
earth's crust and they're an interesting mix of metal and kind of rough looking rock mesocyrites and what's fascinating
is how they likely formed astronomers think that a metal-rich asteroid collided with
a stony asteroid and the heat produced by the impact melted the metal from the
one and blended it with the rock of the other and became a mesocyterite of course to
get those meteorites to the earth something that had to strike the
asteroid this formed on split it apart so that those pieces would eventually find their way
to the earth so there's always lots of impacts involved when you pick up a meteorite
you're looking at something that formed by impact and got here through some kind of a
collision generally between two asteroids
to me these are the most beautiful meteorites and kind of on the enigmatic side the
stony chondrites chondrule is a greek word it means seed
and these are the most common meteorites of them all they're just like they sort of look like earth rocks almost stony chondrites and they
feel like rocks but they're a little heavier than earth rocks because in addition to having silicates of
olivine peroxine they also have specks of iron nickel in them too the same sort of iron nickel as
you found in the iron meteorites and they also have iron sulfide and they contain these beautiful little
spheres here we see the meteorites face cut right so we just see a cross-section of these
chondrals but here's what they look like if you picked them out isn't that cool
our solar system was playing with marbles way before we invented them look at
these little guys you can see that they're only a few millimeter maybe a millimeter to a few millimeters across i think
generally the largest chondrals are about 10 millimeters in size
and astronomers believe there's two competing theories as to their origin but the one most uh meteoritis subscribe to
is that they represent very primitive material from the dawn of the solar system from four point actually all
meteorites are four and a half billion years old approximately nearly all of them vast majority
but the chondrules formed four and a half billion years ago from the original dust okay the dust in the solar nebula
that ultimately formed the sun and the orbiting planets and some sort of an event occurred
repeatedly in that solar nebula it could have been flashes of energy from the young sun
it could have been some sort of lightning bolts you know shooting through this dusty
material but it flash melted the dust and when since it's in outer space the dust when
it melted congealed to form tiny spears chondrules those were the original solid things
right after the dust and those chondrules were then incorporated into meteor into the
first tiny little uh precursors of asteroids the planetesimals that ultimately built
uh the planets so we have the precursor dust ball here boy that is an interesting drawing isn't it melted through some
sort of flash heating event perhaps a flaring type activity from the sun they solidified
into chondrules there are many different kinds of says
as i say chondrals to be preserved for that long generally can't be heated very much on the asteroid they
formed on otherwise they blur and they lose the nice divisions their shapes
as they have in this piece of meteorite where they're sort of blended in and that's because the
asteroid this came from was heated to high temperature and so the chondros are sort of mixed
together and molted melted together but you do see lots of iron in this one it really sparkles so this
is an h chondrite which means high metal there are also l chondrites which means low metal still
has metal but just not as much also when you cut open some of these
meteorites you will see the signs the history of previous impacts
these are shock veins in a slice of a chondrite where the collision
produced so much heating and energy that it melted some of the interior of that asteroid
and little vanelets of liquid began to flow through it of melted rock then it cooled and solidified then
another impact happened right that ultimately sent that asteroid to the earth to land as a meteorite and you
sliced it open and you've got a little bit of history right here i'll show you another
this uh i hope you can see this this just fell uh recently on february 1st
2019 this is from cuba it's called vinales and it's a chondrite
it doesn't have a lot of giant chondrules or anything because it was heated on its asteroid
so it's not as primitive as they say not as pristine but look at those shock veins in that
thing whatever struck that asteroid the original one it melted just melted
and created the baiting there i love to see that history to me when i
see shock veins in a meteorite i think oh man i can actually imagine
the impact happening almost like but not quite like when the comet shoemaker levy nine
i knew we'd bring a david levy comet and struck jupiter back in 19 i want to say
1994. i hope i got that right david it struck jupiter's cloud tops and
um we saw it explode and create these dark scars so we actually experienced the impact
looking through our telescopes holding a meteorite you get to go back in time when this was commonplace when things were just
crashing into each other all the time as far as an origin for these chondrites especially
the h chondrites the metal rich ones they point to the asteroid
which is one of the larger asteroids 186 kilometers across
astronomers look at the light reflecting from and it has a very similar spectrum to the light
that reflects off of a chondrite so something must have struck hibi in the distant past
created little heavies and some of those eventually found their way to the earth we have
another class of chondrites that are really fascinating they're called the carbonaceous chondrites they are composed of silicates like
we've seen in other meteorites sulfides and they also have something really different they have clay-like minerals
and carbon and lots of them have organic compounds it's believed that carbonaceous
chondrites carbon rich not only delivered some of the essential carbon to our planet early in its history but also
water to the earth it appears that the water carbonaceous chondrites appears to be a a fairly good match to
the water that we have here on our planet and here you can see some chondrules spread throughout
the matrix finally as far as old well this is about as old as you're
going to get in this solar system of ours here's a slice of a meteorite called allende
fell in 1969 and you can see the chondrules i pointed out for you here
but then there's this weird what is this thing it looks like a shrimp or i don't know what that is a seahorse shaped
object that is called a calcium aluminum inclusion and astronomers
chemists have studied this right down to the molecular level and have determined that this was the
first stuff you're looking at it right there the first solid material to form in the solar
system and its age is very easy to remember i love the age four
five six seven four point five six seven billion years old
and that cai calcium aluminum inclusion was incorporated along with
the chondrals into an asteroid and eventually a piece of that asteroid
came to earth in 1969 so we could discover this amazing secret
then we move on to the a chondrite meteorites a chondrites are igneous rocks basically
in other words they're volcanic material that's been altered by high temperature again the chondrites some of them where
they lose their shapes of the chondrules those are heated the ones we really see the chondrules
clearly less heat these guys have been fully melted and processed just like a
volcanic lava on earth like that volcano in iceland their composition is
peroxine um and plagioclase and they don't have chondrals sometimes they got little
specks of metal but they're no chondrules here those are all erased in the heating and this particular one uh erupted on
the surface of vesta this is the really interesting thing about achondrites
many of them particularly the classes called the ukrites and the howardites
and the diogenites there's a lot of names there don't worry about remembering that but a whole bunch of
different kinds of meteorites that fall to the earth actually originate from vesta and we
know it for a fact because the dawn spacecraft which orbited vesta
uh what was like 2011 2012 some type in that time frame the dawn
spacecraft examined the surface with its spectrometer and found that it it was almost a perfect match to these
meteorites that have been falling on the earth for centuries so you can actually hold a piece of
vesta in your hand and when vesta is visible one of the funnest things you can do is go out there and hold a piece and look at it
through the telescope i know it sounds crazy but i've done this it's like i've got a piece of vesta right here and i'm
looking at you right now here's vesta for you it's 329 miles
across no surprise we should have pieces of vesta because it's south polar region
it was just whacked off by an enormous impact just pulverized you could see the
mountain the central peak remaining so you can see that bulge down there and around it is a concavity
that's the crater the thing virtually it almost blew up the whole asteroid but it created a
family of vestoids vestas family and it sent some of these things flinging towards the earth ultimately
with jupiter's help of course finally we have meteorites that are not
from the asteroid belt but that come from the moon this is nwa11474
nwa stands for north west africa basically
the sahara desert across countries like mauritania libya morocco and so on
and in recent years this has been an incredibly rich hunting ground for meteorites they're well preserved
there obviously they're in the desert where there's very little rain rain and oxygen will just tear apart
meteorites ultimately it's why here in northern minnesota even though we have a lot of dark rocks
we also have a lot of rain and a variable climate so finding meteorites is next to
impossible not as much so in the sahara interesting thing i want to point out
look at that that is a moon rock and we know it's a moon rock because it's composition and the relative
amounts of minerals like plant geoclase and the silicates and the titanium
they match what we brought back from the apollo missions so we have a very we have a basically an
identical match and earth rocks do not have the same kind of chemistry and mineral composition as moon rocks so these do
stand out as being very different and distinct from the earth and again
having been to the moon six times and brought back samples we have the real stuff to compare it with
but here's what i wanted to point out you know that the moon has just been trashed by asteroids and meteorites over
the what four point some million billion years of its history and it has been crushed so many times by
so many impacts and that rock has been mixed together through that impact that the moon's surface is largely made
of breccia all right pieces of rock that have been melded together through these successive impacts and you
could see the preciated britiated texture right here look at all those pieces
each of these pieces resulted from some kind of impact maybe the same one maybe multiple
impacts over time and were gradually welded together through impact and heat to form a moon rock that then
when a especially large asteroid struck the moon liberated it blew out a crater and sent
material into orbit out from the moon some of which then landed on the earth same with mars
large impacts over the history of the solar system have launched material from mars out into the
solar system some of those pieces have landed on the earth i mentioned i saw it let me see i
have it up here today we have 452 different lunar meteorites that have
been discovered primarily in uh the deserts of northwest africa
uh and in the arabian peninsula and especially in antarctica where they're well preserved
in ice we also have 302 different kinds of
martian meteorites that have been discovered this one fell on the earth back in july
2011 in morocco it's called tissent and composition is silicates again
plagioclase it's basically a volcanic rock for mars so
and we know that it's from mars by age a mineral composition some of these mars
rocks they come in and they're if you can get them while they're fresh still after the fall
you can bore into the meteorite and sample mars atmospheric gases that are
trapped still trapped inside that meteorite and it turns out that they match the
gases that we see measured on mars by the various over the past decade and a half so
there's a definite relationship there there's proof that these really do come from mars as wild as that might
seem meteorites kind of build a story
together all right of asteroids parts of which arrived from all
different kinds of asteroids but each kind of meteorite represents
a particular part of an asteroid and so if we look at many of them and
study their composition we can get a sense of where they came from
what part the chondrites are what they say what they describe as primitive
from kind of like asteroids that haven't been processed so much that have been sitting around
much like they were at the beginning of the solar system iron meteorites come from
so pardon me they come from the surface the chondrites do the rocky surface just like the earth a lot of these
asteroids have a rocky surface and the larger ones have an interior where the iron and
nickel is like the earth the iron meteorites derive from the cores of asteroids
you've got to imagine the amount of force it must take to bust apart
an asteroid that's large because you need a large asteroid to have an iron core in the first place
imagine the force to break the whole thing apart in order to uh liberate that iron for in the core
and then it arrives on the earth so that just must have been an unbelievably spectacular catastrophe the palestine
meteorites are believed to come from a layer between the silicate mantle
and the iron nickel core of an asteroid because they are a nice mix of both olivine
and iron nickel and finally we have the eight chondrites and they can come from surface lava flows or from hot processed
mantle type rock just beneath the crust so we build this amazing picture of
early asteroids from the little pieces that just drop on the earth willy-nilly
without even needing to go to an asteroid we just wait long enough and something amazing an amazing rock falls from the sky
this is just a graph showing you where we find most meteorites antarctica is number one
followed by the sahara australia the arabian peninsula and so on
but you know what you don't have to go all the way to antarctica to uh pick up an extra terrestrial
friend it's far easier to go to ebay and check out some of the sellers
i don't know if any of you have ever purchased here you may think i'll never buy anything from ebay again in your
life i would understand but it is a surprisingly good place if you know
the people who are legitimate sellers people who know their stuff who belong to the imca which is the
international meteorite collectors association they'll often put that there's a little logo
that you'll see so they're vetted basically and
after purchasing a number of meteorites on ebay over the years and having really about
99 good luck i compiled the list for you a contemporary list of people you can
look up on ebay who sell meteorites all the time
flat top rocks ww matt this guy here really into lunar
meteorites he has got some of the most beautiful lunars and some are small enough you can afford like 60
maybe something like that msg sahara gems this guy fujima he lives in hawaii uh he's a
great guy this guy lives in colorado and so on but these are all legit if you want just
take your phone and you can just take a snapshot of of this page
if you'd like to we also have a couple of online stores there's a number of them but the
people that are consistently offering really nice samples of meteorites are
poland met this is uh in poland and when you get your meteorites through ups
he uses ups shipping and he is a 100 percent upstanding guy does spectacular
polishing and finishing on his slices well worth it and then this guy his name is eric he
lives in a la in juneau alaska and he's run this is probably the oldest
website meteorite meteoritemarket.com i could recommend him too and he has a
huge variety of different meteorites at all kinds of different prices so
i would encourage you to uh uh go to one of those places if you'd
like to buy a meteorite because they are really fun for the reasons i described in the beginning
here's another one this is from the sahara i'll show you this is a little more of the show-and-tell part right now
this is kind of a monster this is a chondrite look at that that's been sitting around in the desert
for 20 000 years and if i catch the light right look at
the metal in that it's otherwise a dull surface but look at the sparkle this is
very diagnostic of a meteorite too if people will say bob i've got this
rock i'll send you some pictures and i'll look at it and maybe it's a meteorite but my first thing to say is take a diamond file all right that you
could pick up at a hardware store take a diamond file and file off part of it you know a patch
if you can see on that cut surface sparkling iron like that pure metal i'm
not talking crystals you can see sparkling iron i'm interested there's a good chance you've
got yourself a media right there another one i mentioned this earlier but
now you can see it a little bit better this is a palestine meteorite that's the one with the olivine
crystals and the iron nickel this is from russia it's called brahim beautiful and let me
show you some gorgeous chondrals here let's see if i can get that
i don't know maybe you can see those just some really nice chondrals yes and uh one i think i've got just one
final one here and if you have any questions feel free to ask but this is one from meteor crater and
it was cut in half an individual and then etched and pilot i
etched it with nitric acid and you could kind of make out that pattern of crystals in there and those two gray
patches on the left side that's graphite but otherwise it's almost pure
iron nickel so with that that's the end of my presentation and i hope i didn't go too long and that
there is time for some questions so fire away if there is
yes bob that was just excellent thank you very much but i'd like to ask
you can you tell us a little about a bit about pairing of meteorites
um yes well a pairing is uh
someone finds a meteorite gets it classified and we have all the information on it
then someone else goes out to the same area maybe or close finds
basically the identical meteorite and says this one is paired with this one that's
been classified now chances are if it's a legitimate seller dealer
meteorite researcher but it really is the same thing but for me i never write down
and say but that's its actual name but it's a classified meteorite until i know but that's classified
or until sometimes you will see yeah until it's got a number on it like
nwa whatever or a name then that's always tentative that's how i view pairing so yes it
could be the identical material and i'll show it to someone and say this is a lunar meteorite from the sahara
desert it's paired with this one we think it's the same but is that does that answer your
question yeah there's always a little uncertainty with pairings
but how are how are mars or lunar meteorites classified i
understand the lunar more than the martian i guess they're not all going to have detectable gas i would assume
yeah they're classified they're broken down like the mars group is broken down into
a group called uh suregotites chessignites and i'm sure i'm pronouncing that wrong
and knock lights uh not glides are the rarest source in cigna it's actually the most common are the sugartites
and they have a different mineral composition some are young and some are
older and i can't go beyond that just right now but each one is classified according to
a little bit different composition and formation but those are the three basic categories and as you said you know about the moon
most of the lunar meteorites let's see if i've got one here darn it i didn't i didn't bring
i didn't bring one up but most of the lunar meteorites are called false bath
bretches because like the slice i showed you they're retreated broken into little pieces and they're
they're heavy on feldspar a particular type of called a northite and a northite is what
you find in the lunar highlands when you see the moon and you see those white areas of the moon those are made up of a lot of a north
night and orthosite which is a type of plagioclase feldspar and so since a lot of the moon is
that ancient white crust so many of our lunar meteorites that we've recovered
are false pathetic wretches but they're also mari lunar mari meteorites too you know that
are darker and that are basaltic so that's a separate classification from the
feldspath ones does that help i hope it does and that's like thank you
great thank you any any other questions hmm i i have wait i see there's one
two in the chat well yeah i mean it was just uh people were fascinated uh lots of
great comments um is that really a piece of meteorite
of course he showed all genuine meteorites here um yeah someone had a question
asking where if you could buy a meteorite but you showed uh where you could buy them on ebay but
there's other places of course uh reputable dealers
out there and the tucson gym and mineral show is a great place to
go i think right it's like you might have in there so yeah if if folks want to you know i
could put that picture back up if needed so you could photograph it because it had a list of sellers on ebay and it also
had two websites to go to as well i might mention that a really wonderful area for a lot of
discussion about meteorites is on facebook and there's a group there called
tektites meteorites and i sh and i apologize for not looking this up and taking a screenshot of it
for you but there's always ongoing discussion and there are people that are constantly
selling meteorites who are legit on this list so that's another place you can find them on facebook
and i'll look that up here uh for you in just a moment um there's a question here oh is this
for me terry or for someone else's me yeah i'm curious the fusion crusted
meteorite that you showed is that also called a button a button meteorite um do you mean just
based on the shape i think it would because i remember holding a button meteorite and i was
amazed because it actually it does kind of look like a button because of the way it's curved over on the edge yes well the
reason why it looks like a button is because as i was mentioning it's uh it's become oriented through its
flight remember it's got that heated flight so it's like a spacecraft entering the atmosphere
so the bottom part the part hitting the air is melting and flowing back to form a
gumdrop shape so yes it does look like a button sometimes terry that meteorite
it can melt long enough as it comes through the atmosphere so that the flow goes all the way back
in back of the button and forms these little like black icicles behind the button
and those are really rare but you can sometimes find those meteorites too but yeah it's
because of striking the atmosphere and sure you could refer to it as a button meteorite just by the shape if you like
i was amazed at how expensive the button meteorite was that i saw oh really yeah it was very expensive um
but it was amazing just to see that shape i never thought about you know traveling through the atmosphere and all
the burning that happens it really makes some unique kind of shapes and just
looking at what you have the different shapes around i mean the one of the questions i had
the chondrals the ones that was that like look like little marbles yes those were the chondrals
how in the world would anybody even know if you saw something like that it looks like gravel to me and some of those
but it's hard i was amazed at how some of that even
looked like hot tar because it just had so many bubbles and black and
it is amazing what all they look like and how in the world could you ever tell them apart now i know somebody like you or somebody
that deals with it easily could for a person like me that i pick something up i can recognize i
think an iron meteorite just the weight the way it's dimpled you know you can right right
these are called these are the regma glyphs that's what those dimples are called and those are that's another diagnostic
sign for a meteorite too regular glyphs but it has to be in conjunction with a couple of other things and if i was to
just tell you one thing to look for so that you could distinguish a meteorite from an earth rock
is going back again is to cut it or grind it with a diamond file
and if you see shiny pieces of iron what's really metal that is you
don't find raw metal in almost all earth rocks that's in some couple of rocks you do on earth but
generally iron nickel they combine with minerals but in meteorites you still have it
in that elemental pure form so if you see specks of shiny metal when you cut open
that rock you call me and i'll check it out i think you'll have a meteorite terry i'm
sure the one thing not to watch for at
meteorites and what's most often mistaken is meteorite is slag and you know from
industry and slag can be attracted to a magnet as many meteorites because they have
iron in them no surprise you dr you take a magnet it'll snap right to the meteorite
okay because a magnet is attracted but and slag sometimes we'll do that too
but meteorites generally don't have melted textures they don't have a bunch of holes in them where the air is
popped through or something but slag does so the most frequently mistaken
meteorite is slag because it fits our idea of something that has melted keep in mind that when a space
rock comes through the atmosphere it's only coming through it's it only spends such a short time
through the air that only the outer millimeter or two are melted it gives it a nice it takes
care of the rough edges you know like you saw in that picture on the asteroid it rounds out the edges but it does not
generally create a bubbly surface with holes in it except occasionally it makes these
dimples as you call them which is a perfect description and that's where softer materials have ablated away
or melted during the fall okay yeah let's see was there a fusion cross
button meteorite okay uh bob i have a question yeah glenn what would you say is the most uh uh
prevalent state as far as instance of discoveries of meteorites
can you repeat that what's the most problem uh most prevalent state uh the one who has the most that are
traditionally uh discovered in those oh in the in the states you mean which one has the
most well arizona's doing pretty good because all you know for the similar reason as
uh uh well arizona actually the best places that is a really good question by state
i would say definitely not the northern states not the east coast not the southern states
but where a lot of meteorites have been found okay we're not talking falls because falls you know a witness fall
could happen anywhere where many have been found are in the midwest and west
and southwest yeah we have had some in the state of kansas that farmers have
accidentally found them and actually verified that they are in fact meteorites so it's i love kansas for its
meteorites there is i think kansas is like one of the number one states for meteorites that have been
found because so much of it has been tilled right it's been worked over and people have found and they're not
traditionally rocks found in these soils so if you happen on one hey an odd heavy rock that's worth
looking into kansas has produced and texas has produced quite an enormous number between those
two states and new mexico a very large number of meteorites over the past hundred years
i don't know for a fact but i would put money down that kansas and texas number one number two somewhere in there
for states that's a great i like your perspective thanks for bringing that up thank you
let's see here i wish i brought a lunar meteorite i didn't think to bring one but that picture
does describe what a lot of those lunar meteorites look like and when you go online on ebay
and you check out that guy whose first name is matt you'll see some of his beautiful lunar
bretches like you saw in that picture i think i'm probably like the rest of the world i
like the palace sites yeah quite a bit of palestine jewelry that is
gorgeous okay and i'm going to assume a palestine is going to look just like any other
meteorite on the outside when it it's going to be a burnt it's not until you cut it open that you
actually could probably tell what type of meteorite that is well palace sites are a little different that
way because uh they are a mix all the way around
and uh chances of finding one that's got fusion crust is pretty small
but one that's been sitting around for a while a lot of these meteorites that are just found like the ones in
kansas or palace sites or iron nickel they're often covered in a patina of rust
because they've been laying around on the ground so that's also a tip off that you've got a meteorite if you found something in a stream
that's nice and smooth that looks like a meteorite but it's perfectly gray and there's no staining on it from rust that
is not a meteorite but if it's got rusty spots on it that's also diagnostic that's a good sign that
it could be and pallicites because of the mix if you look carefully and you turn just a rock that
you found on the ground you turn it over in your hand you will see crystals here and there between the
rusty spots of iron so they i think a pale site would actually show uh the crystal part anyway
yeah i don't think i've ever seen a palestine from the outside one that was not you know already sliced
i don't think i've ever eaten a whole palace that would be interesting yeah there i have there's not i haven't
seen a lot of them myself too because people tend to slice it because they want to wear them around their necks
yeah or for earrings or whatever you know they're they're so so beautiful right now i can give you a
tip though terry if you uh there are some people that are selling uh there's a relatively
inexpensive palestine that's available from some dealers on ebay called i would
steer away from the ones that have been dipped in plastic to preserve them but there is a
relatively inexpensive palestine called seraco which is s-e-r-i-c-h-o
that's a recent discovery from kenya and there's a lot of this kind of going around right now these big rocks have
been sitting in this location for a long long time and that someone said hmm i think i'm going to have these
analyzed and it turned out to be a beautiful palestine oh wow well thank you i'll check that
out yeah check out ceraco is what to look for s-e-r-i-c-h-o
i'll do that all right does anyone else have any questions or i do okay
there was um in 2011 there was a meteorite called yamato 691 uh that
was discovered during expedition to antarctica and they found a new
mineral that's not found anywhere on earth called wasanide the have you learned anything about that
at all mom i've only heard of it i've heard of wasanite i'm sure they must have named that after john wassen who's
a meteorite researcher that's a great have your name in a mineral scott i think
you know you're ready for that after all the meteorite kits you created but um i don't i don't know any
specifics about that particularly you're right yeah sorry research myself well
the the other question i would have uh uh is you know is there a list
anywhere of of uh you know minerals or crystals uh
found in meteorites that are not found on earth um you know is there like any kind of
periodic table of that anywhere yeah uh there are some good meteorite books that have it
and i'm sure i haven't looked for that list online but i'm guessing that that would be online as well and there
it's a pretty good sized list of minerals similar to minerals on earth but not
found on our planet so yes we are i often will get the question in groups and they'll say like well have they discovered any new
elements in meteorites and of course the answer is no but they
we have discovered a bunch of new minerals in meteorites minerals that would only have formed
on a small body cooling out there in the asteroid belt and that goes for those that iron nickel
mix too you know that's unique to something that's in outer space from small body you know also
of diamonds i guess very tiny diamonds or whatever being found in some meteorites as well yes uh
murchison meteorite the one that fell in 1969 to carbonaceous chondrite in australia has
diamonds micro diamonds and there are even tiny diamonds uh inside
the meteor crater canyon diablo sometimes it's called some of those slices i've heard from
people that attempt to slice them and the sawing is going just fine and then they hit
one of these little like carbonato or diamond bits in the meteorite and it just ruins
their song so uh there's there's always surprises in these
these things yeah but yeah they're just so many beautiful different kinds of i
wonder uh i wonder if i could show one maybe i
don't want to take too much time i know you have a rest meeting to go through but um i've got a melted one
the interior is melted and maybe you can see it this is called an impact melt chondrite
i bet you can't that's pretty it's pretty it's you can see the metal
but i don't know if you can see the swirls there's a bit of a swirliness to it you see that yeah great i'm so glad you
could see it and these to me again are fascinating because i like shock veins like you saw
on that other photo but this thing the impact was pretty strong because it melted the body of the
meteorite and it turned into a pool of liquid rock and then it solidified
and here we have a slice of it so it's what they tell us what they reveal and that
connection because you can touch these things it's that connection that you can make that
you can almost never make in astronomy when you're looking through television that's a different kind of
connection but to actually touch a meteorite and sort of make that physical connection to the asteroid belt
is quite thrilling yes i agree that's very cool it is yeah
definitely all right all right bob thank you that was amazing oh well
gee thank you it was fun it was great thank you for having me here i appreciate it yeah that that that
taught me a lot that i sure didn't know and that to actually see those i have not you know i've seen some but
the variety of meteorites you have is a nice variety to help us understand
what it is you're explaining so thank you so much i definitely appreciate it uh
you're welcome to come back anytime you like oh thanks a lot you know another if i could just make
one little tiny point further is one other and i think scott would has
probably already done this many times but another reason to own the meteorite it's not just a a personal
connection that you make but if when you're doing groups you know you're talking with other people in the days that will come
when we can finally meet each other face to face you can hand out that meteorite you give
someone you give someone an iron meteorite like this and they put it in their hand and they're like
whoa you know it's a nice woe moment for them so they're always great to bring to
share with other people too so that's why i encourage amateurs to to
get a meteorite you know inexpensive one is perfect or you could do like david did and you know
if you get married have one made out of gibeon like that's another meeting right then you could just say touch my ring
[Laughter] all right all right awesome thank you
everyone i am going to wrap up with the door prices so
i'm going to share my screen
all right and so the answers for the questions
takes it a minute is what planet will be close to the moon on may 15th the answer
is mars and cameron gillis answered that correctly second question
on may 31st another planet has an early morning encounter with the moon what planet is it and that is saturn
and norm hughes answered that one correctly all right and the last one is name the
constellation where you will find m57 the answer is lyra that's the ring
nebula and dodie reagan has was the correct answer with that
so thank all of you that did answer
thank you scott and there's a few people back there that
wanted to collapse i appreciate that carol org will be
in contact with you uh to get your address to mail the door prize
and again remember alcon virtual will be coming up august 19th through the 21st
alcondvirtual.org is the website information and
please come back with us june 11th for astronomical league live number
seven we will be back at 7 p.m eastern daylight time and thank you all
for watching and thank you all that are here online with us and bob thank you especially that was an
amazing talk thank you very much for having me terry
i appreciate it barry oh it really was bob thank you yes it was god well you're you know it's
it's always nice to talk with people you know who are astronomers uh amateur
astronomers so and then how do the other people like those people with the contest are they
uh picking up a feed somewhere is that how that works yes this program is simulcast
on um on several facebook pages uh youtube um
and twitch and twitter and so we we have we have try to cast a a wider net
uh you know because this is an outreach event and um then we have uh uh on those feeds
uh people can chat they see they're able to talk to each other or talk to us you know through the chat and
so i tried to send over links that would be of interest to them but we have a nice following of you know
loyal following and and that makes it nice this program will also be available for
replay um so it's it's recorded if if you want to refer back to it and you
can find that back on the astronomical league's official facebook page
that's uh that's great thank you for uh answering that what i'm going to send you if you want
another link is i'm going to find that page i've just found it and i'll put it in the chat box for you
i'll show you it's truly is a wonderful place where people can ask questions too
about meteorites and it's called just to give it the name it's called meteorites
tektites impactites and ephemera
great word huh don't you like words sometimes ephemera and then here's the it's sort
of a giant looking link but there it is maybe you want to shrink it down or something but it's i often go there and
there are people who if a new meteorite falls there are
people in this group that immediately get on airplanes and fly to the site and start looking
and within two or three days they will have their stuff already up
they'll be offering to sell part of what they find it's just amazing so that sounds like it
or we're trying we're trying to ship a one-time media right out of brazil and having some legal troubles right
exactly did you jump yeah so some i remember bob
hague does anybody know him the arizona guy the meteorite man from the 1980s he tried to get a hold of the
he bought the largest meteorite from the campo del cielo fall the iron nickel one i showed you 37 tons
and tried to get it out and you know he couldn't do it it's still down there it did not move
but you know it's all legitimate but that some with the government would not allow
him to take it out that was from argentina argentina yeah that's the biggest one i've heard
someone started to take out of country and did not succeed no all right well
again all right all of you for being here and thank you everybody for watching we really
appreciate it and we will be back on june 11th so thank you very much thank you terry
all right thanks for a great program mark thank you very much thanks good night good night
bye-bye good night
oh
reviews
See all reviews