Transcript:
[Music]
and everybody gets so quiet when that message comes up that we're live
watch our p's and q's don't we yeah we try to [Laughter]
easier said than done i'll admit no no more cussing now yeah
john you're the arbitrator tonight you're you've got to accept examples
it's almost too bad that we don't have harlow shotley and
charles federer here to talk about their founding of the astronomical league so long ago or if
there's any recordings at all any place even little clips or anything along the way
there may be there i doubt it but they're ladies probably not
that would be a good thing for the league as we were kind of talking our meeting yesterday things that you know
could be added as we find historical data that we are videos or whatever that
we could add um to our file yeah well there's a few of them i i
never want added oh maybe that's where some other those
are that aren't supposed to be seen that that my curiosity is
is aroused from what john just said
you know it is a possibility that at some university or someplace where
these folks spoke uh in the archives in the there's a real-to-real type
recording and you know maybe at some point seriously we could put out the word if
you have anything and it might not seem valuable to you but if you were there for a specific meeting a national
meeting or something like that involving yale please let us know
are you fighting your cats molly yes [Laughter]
i noticed the cats were gone when you stepped away and when you came back the cats came back too yeah they followed me
hoping for more food yep
animals are like that and now he's rubbing his face on my monitor
you have astronomically perfect [Laughter]
it wasn't that funny i thought it was oh it was in the pond range you know for
sure
scotty has reset his watch yep
according to scotty we still have three minutes to go you started a little early on tuesday
which was a little surprising we were all ready but um it kind of jumped the gun
no i don't think so we were all set anyway
it does good to change things around a little bit every once in a while i don't think i think so everybody's on there
yep it's longer than one surprise
oh sorry i thought i hit the mute button y'all hearing me type away on my keyboard as i heard they put some more
slides together that's okay [Laughter]
gave us something to listen to besides us and someone who knows how to type
especially yeah that's true i've been uh i can't say that one finger
i didn't see that one finger typing oh no not not here uh i want to point out
real quick this is the posture he uh assumes when he's like wanting
additional food he stands up real tall and kind of points his head kind of toward the sky
like he's all regal and like waiting for my food
we type by the biblical system seek and ye shall find
i gotta tell that one to my dad looking toward the sky might be a sign that he's going to be an astronomer
sometimes a master kit are you gonna do are you gonna do
astronomy mr mr kitty oh he just said yes and now he's rubbing me so
[Laughter] yeah i just fed you go away
[Laughter] or like lay down or something please
you always have a way you're really busy and it's a beautiful animal
he's my bestest boy and he just needed i don't want him to go away i just wanted to lay down or you know go get occupied on you know
i don't know clean clean yourself one you do that thousand times a day why don't you work on that for a minute oh
he he's giving me a very judgmental look look right now do you see this face
[Laughter] he also knows when he's on camera and he
looks away my dog hates to have his picture taken
my cats they know they even i have my phone in my hands all the time they know
when i'm trying to take pictures and they stop doing whatever cute thing they were doing yeah
[Music]
[Music] humans have always wanted to learn about the sun but it's dangerous to stare at it with just our eyes so we built
structures to help us study it aristotle had his camera obscura
galileo used a telescope to document sunspots spectrometers came next allowing us to
study the spectrum 100 years later george ellery hale explored the magnetic nature of the sun
with a spectroheliograph next we launched skylab and it gave us our first high-resolution pictures of
the sun's surface the yoko spacecraft took x-rays of the sun then soho and hinode sent us even more incredible
images trace delivered the closest ever pictures of the sun in its magnetic fields
sdo images the sun in many wavelengths now with stereo we see the whole sun in
3d never missing an inch who knows what we will see next we will just have to keep looking up
[Music]
[Music]
well hello everyone this is scott roberts from the explore alliance and it is my pleasure to
kick off the astronomical league live number 14 i think is what it is
um featuring john goss he's got a great
presentation for you tonight and i think you'll really enjoy it
tonight we've got uh terry mann who is the host of the astronomical league live
programs uh she puts on all these programs and has done a fantastic job uh
joining her is uh david leady molly wakeling of course john goss our
featured speaker and carol org so i'm going to turn it over to you um
terry thank you very much scott it's good to see everybody oh yeah i missed i missed
one yeah so yeah that's right or pitt andre i'm sorry yeah so that's okay i'm the
one with the hard name it's easier to skip through me don't worry i shouldn't forget that once
just say it's maynard yeah that's right that's right yes so it was good to see everybody we
didn't have an ale live last month and so it's good to get everybody back
and see what's going on everywhere so i would like to welcome everybody
that's here and thank everyone that's also joining us to present tonight
so i would like to start with david levy and david it is so good to see you and you make sure you tell wendy hi i know
she can hear me in the background it's so good to have you here i know you
both have been so busy so thank you very much for joining us again well thank you terry and
wendy has heard every word you said and she's waving at you right now
92 years ago today at this very moment
a young clyde tombaugh was sitting in the office of the director of the lowell
observatory v m schleifer and he had just
walked mulched into his office without knocking sat down and he had just said dr schleifer i have
found your planet x so at this very moment 92 years ago
slifer is rising out of his chair like he's sitting on a spring
and the story of pluto paul's discovery begins at that
point excuse me so for my welcome quotation tonight i'm
going to quote from my own biography of clyde tombaugh and i'd like to tell you
a little bit of course when he discovered pluto and uh
the others suggested that he they keep it quiet he keep it quiet for a while so what clyde did as a young person
would do is he walked down through the snow and saw a movie
it was gary cooper in the virginian and at the end of the movie when they
had the gun fight he said clyde practically jumped out of his chair
partly in shock at the gunfight but partly because he didn't know how long he could keep it a secret about what he
had just found on march the 13th 1930 the discovery was
announced and it probably was about the best news of the year considering the great depression had
just begun a few months earlier so what happened to clyde
he continued observing with the 13-inch and
discovered a lot of other things including a variable star that
that i'm still observing every time chance i get called tv corvy or
as we nicknamed it tombos star but what was the award that he got for
discovering of pluta bill about 15 minutes years 9 minutes 15 years after
the discovery clyde was fired from lowell the director said that well we don't
have the funds and blah blah blah but it bothered clyde to the rest of his life and i remember
visiting with him and as he grew older and older he would talk to me about it
and how it deeply had hurt him that he had left lowell observatory
the ending of the chapter of the book where he leaves a level goes like this
it does it's not about him but about the telescope the telescope tomball was finally about
to leave remained at lowell it's non-long career not nearly over
years later director arthur hoag claimed that with with its many projects
the 13 inch had become one of the world's most productive telescopes
if it had consciousness it might have wondered what would happen without the man that it shared a life
with a man who had never quite given up searching just one more pair of plates
for hidden treasure a man who called himself a traveler going over the next hill with an eternal
hope and with that i give it back to you terry thank you
thank you david you know i visited lowell once and did the tour and was able to see that telescope it's it's
really amazing you feel like it is just so historic there everything is just so
amazing it's such a beautiful place so hopefully everybody will be able to go out and see that this summer i know
they were closed for a little while but i think i read where lowell is open again at least partially or for you know
a certain amount of people to visit lowell i think at this time so
thank you very much david i appreciate it it's always so good to see you thank you it's my honor
all right with that how about if we go ahead and go to carol org
uh president of the league and you can give us an update we had a very long meeting yesterday so carol
yes we did we kept everybody with us almost to the end so that was good david it is so great to hear from you
and i didn't know that this was the anniversary of that meeting in the
lowell observatory and what a fascinating uh uh rendition of that story i
enjoyed that very much so we're about at the point as terry said
we didn't have a an astronomically glob last month so we've got some deadlines about to
happen here uh let's see if i can do the how's that how's that scott a little bit
okay better right that's better okay good thank you scott
uh so i thought tonight we would review some of the deadlines for the various awards are coming up so if i can share
the screen here terry
let's see
well i don't think this is going to work as if i've got it here i thought it all
geared up let's try once more here we go
all right and we just see uh panels as navigation
and two very small thumbnails i recommend that you share your whole screen because sharing individual apps
can be problematic are we good now no we're seeing a very distorted image
of of word uh okay let's go back here
all right um you'll need to stop sharing your screen and then reshare to share your whole screen
yeah there we go all right now we'll share it again and we will get on here
sorry about that and now we are
are we there now no um you haven't hit share yet
okay we're getting there sorry about this
that's all right
well this is really great curl so now you're giving us something to tease you about later on
don't push your luck now john okay all right
yeah and then make that word document or yeah there you go okay all right now let's uh
okay i'm an amateur this as well as astronomy so that okay here we go i believe maybe if you
uh start the slideshow from the beginning you'll get a full screen without the navigation thing
um yeah i'll hopefully take a second okay there you go
are we good now all right yeah okay and let me do one more thing
okay i don't want to be there let's go all right
i'd like to give a report of what's coming up uh just within the last few days
we have confirmed that there yes there will be an alcon 2022 the dates are july
28th through the 30th at the embassy suites in
albuquerque new mexico there is the uh link
uh it says there the website will be available by january the 14th however
there has been a delay and it looks like it will be about the end of
february before that is available but it's coming up there have been a few
issues on the website but it will be coming up
okay uh many of our league awards are coming up within the next six weeks
so i thought we'd go over those and just remind everybody uh of these astronomical league awards
starting with the youth awards and the first one one of our premier awards for youth is
the national young astronomer award generously supported by scott roberts explore scientific and scott's been with
us for i don't know how many years long time ago even in the meet days and we are so appreciative of all the support
you've given over the years and it's just amazing and incredible the kind of quality we get from
the high school-aged children uh it ranks up there with professionals in
many ways they do the research and they really and i know we keep hearing that education is dead in the united states
of america not true we get some very good applications each year
i don't know whether you can read the specific address there if not go to astrolake.org
and look under awards and it gives all the information each application has a form that needs to be
filled out to submit it to the uh the judges the other youth awards we have are the
horkheimer youth awards and those include the horkheimer smith
the horkheimer the arya and the horkheimer parker youth imaging
award as well as the horkheimer o'mara youth journalism award
and those are continued to be uh sponsored by the parkheimer charitable
trust uh jack horkheimer which most of you probably have heard of before uh
uh past about five years ago and all the words have been uh continued on and it's
interesting to look at the names of those awards because uh people who had been significant in jack's life is
how he named his awards the first one being horkheimer smith uh smith was the
founder of the astronomical league while the first presence and the art the aria award is uh
he was the founder of the winter star party in florida so that's how he
made that uh award there the name of the award and don parker who many know as
the apple person and the planetary sinus he was
given the name for the youth imaging ward and also uh the o'mara award is the
youth journalism award and i might back up a little bit and say each one of these awards have cash awards to go
along with them uh there's fairly significant and also uh the plaques and
the uh smith ward uh the smith winner gets a
expenses paid trip to alcon each year this year it'll be in albuquerque backing up to the national young
astronomer award for just a second scott has most generously as i said supported that program for
many many years and uh as part of the award that person that young person gets
a complimentary uh trip to alcon as well and a wonderful telescope from scott as well
so it's much appreciated and then we go to the
the uh adult awards from the league the first one is the sketching award
we best way to find this one is to go on
the lead website and look under sketching award uh it is no longer sponsored by
astronomic we are still looking for a sponsor uh but that has the information there has all the information on the
website in order to get that information there's a cash award along with that as well and we
have some very nice sketching each year it's amazing when we set up this award a few years ago
because at that point sketching had become almost a lost arch now we have a a program one of the
observing award coordinators uh observing award programs that actually is based on sketching and it's amazing
what can be found and what observed if you take the time to sketch what's going on you bring a lot more out so that's
one of our awards that we usually get several awards but we can all are several entrants but we can always use
more the next adult award is the mabel stearns newsletter award and this
doesn't have a formal application but the president and other officer of the individual
clubs can write a letter recommending the newsletter editor of
their club for that award and that is such an important uh award because that
person in each club is the one who really communicates with the club
uh members and keeps it keeps it going so that's very important and finally uh one of our newest awards
the well amena fleming award image award for women
that just came online last year we had some significant numbers of applications
and this year the other awards we've been talking about tonight are due on the 31st of march however
this one we have extended to the same deadline we had for its initial year
last year and that is may 31st so go to that website there that link and
that's the way you uh submit your application and that is also sponsored
by explorer scientific thanks scott for really bringing that award alive and we look forward to really expanding that
award uh because it's uh it's about time we're recognizing uh all imagers
including the ladies uh who do just as good if not better work than we meant so we need to recognize them
and if you have any questions about that email vice president at astrolege.org
vice president at astrolege.org and chuck allen our
vice president will get back with you with any questions you might have about the various awards and now gary back to
you thank you carol so molly are you
handy there there she is molly molly and i are going
to talk a little bit about the fleming award and molly i'm gonna let you uh go ahead and start off after you get done
eating yeah i was having myself a little snack i didn't get dinner tonight so
i figured the cat talked you into eating right well she's gonna say the cat uh taking
some of the dinner yeah that's true he may very well come and steal a chip or two but i've managed to distract him
with some dry food i think maybe so
he's gotten tired of trying to ask me for food they eventually give up so all right
molly you can take it away all right um so i thought i would uh since i won the
award last year the first year that it existed thought i'd come on in and talk a little bit about uh the award as well
as william fleming and her legacy um so i'm gonna
share my slides here i think they're gonna end up on the screen probably
when i hit share let's see there we go okay
um so yeah the uh uh i'm really excited that the william fleming imaging award
exists i think uh as we all know there's not a whole lot of women who are in astronomy and there's even fewer who do
astrophotography that's kind of reflective of women in stem in general
although i do find among stem fields astronomy seems to have the highest
percentage of women than any other stem field that i've interacted with
so i and i think that that's because of legacy of of women who were in astronomy
in the early days of it including william fleming and uh that's
there's there's a lot of uh that's that's all the time is also the place where i come across the most women who were in in science in the late 1800s
early 1900s which was a very early time so um
yeah it's so glad that this award exists and the i think it's really important to
have awards like this to show that there's recognition for
astrophotography and for women national photographers and i will hopefully start to build up that community in a similar
way that the sketching awards is kind of brought back to life sketching of astronomical objects
um so uh the award was established last year by the astronomical league as part of their 75th anniversary recognition of
women's contributions to astronomy including uh actually it's at my uh the calendars uh uh the astronomical league
calendar for this year is is all about not just uh the women astrophotographers whose images are
featured in it um but also the contributions of women to astronomy and i have that that calendar at my work
desk as opposed to my my home desk so i was gonna show it um so uh i was very honored to to win the
uh this award first place for this award the first year that it was offered and uh the plaque is enormous i put my thumb
in there to show you [Laughter]
um so i wanted to show some examples of images that uh not just my images but
i've got the uh um the the runners up as well to show
the quality of of the images as well as what other women astrophotographers can aspire to
to apply for this award so i think at some point later on uh terry was going to ask me more
specifically about the images that i took so i'll leave off the uh the specific details of these for the
current moment lynn peterson was the runner-up and these are her gorgeous galactic images
here including some really incredible title stream detail in the um my mouse
is on the screen in the sunflower galaxy uh the the actually somewhat hard to capture
hydrogen outflows from the cigar galaxy and uh just incredible beautiful color
and detail in at the m106 galaxy then of course uh we have with terry
mann with us tonight and uh she also had some incredible images here of the
northern lights the 2017 solar eclipse and just some great shots from from the great lakes
all right so uh let's talk about willamuna farming now in when i was doing research i found in
one place that apparently was actually pronounced william mina but i haven't verified this fact uh so
i'm going to keep saying it because i like it better but i uh
some verification is needed on the on the pronunciation of her name i think oh my cat's here to sniffing out my chips
over here um we'll see if he gets into those all right so she was born in 1857 in
scotland and married uh he's either called a banker or an accountant or something along those lines james or
fleming at age 20. and like many people in that era they a
lot of people were coming to america and they sailed to boston in 1878
and uh at this time her and she was only 21. her husband abandoned her and their
unborn child when they arrived in boston and um which is very tragic but
ultimately led her to do the incredible things that she did with her life
she worked as a housemaid for edward pickering and you might recognize of astronomical fame who was then the
director of the harvard college observatory now um there's various
reasons how she moved from that house-made job to working at the
observatory probably my my favorite one which may or may not be true but i want to believe
it's true that according to legend uh pickering had become frustrated with
the mail assistance that he had at the observatory uh who were doing a lot of the calculations and classifications and
things like that and declared that his maid could do a better job and
follow up on his words he hired her in 1881. um another source i read said that uh
pickering's wife noted that she had talents what the article said talents
beyond the maternal arts and uh so
recommended to her husband that she perhaps work at the at the harvard college observatory
so i got to do something a little more interesting than house cleaning so while she was at the observatory she
led a team of women computers since uh and there weren't machines doing a lot
of this mathematical work yet and while it may sound like yeah women doing math it was actually
relegated to women as a women's job because of its drudgery and how how turning the crank wheel
doing doing the mathematical tasks were uh so um these women computers were
stellar spectra from the observatory telescopes and these included names that
have gone on to astronomical fame including annie jump cannon henrietta swan levy and antonia amari
some of these things you might recognize us and while she was doing that work wilhelmina fleming devised a
new system to classify stars based on our hydrogen content which eventually evolved into the hertzsprung russell
system that we use today that i'm going to talk about in a couple of slides here
the first edition of the draper catalog of stellar spectra had many of her she was one of the main
driving force behind this catalog had 28 266 of her spectra of 10
551 stars on 633 photographic plates that sounds like an awful lot of work
more more work than i would want to do um she
also went on to uh she wrote edited and proofread research papers annual reports dated tables as well as the annals of
the astronomical observatory of harvard college she actually published some of her own work and was one of the few women to
attend research conferences at that time she made a number of discoveries of novi
and and other objects including the horsehead nebula which is a favorite of astrophotographers and is observable
visually as well with large enough aperture dark enough skies and a hydrogen beta filter
in 1899 she was promoted to curator of astronomical photographs which made her the first woman to ever hold a harvard
college title in 1906 she became the first american as well as the first scottish woman to be
elected for honorary membership to the royal astronomical society now she unfortunately died at the young
age of 54 while she was still shining bright with all these with all these discoveries due to pneumonia
which is very tragic so to to talk about the system that she
devised so the diaper catalog of seller spectra um henry paper wasn't actually responsible for any part of the catalog
it was it was um uh this was actually happened after his passing and his wife who was wealthy
from from his wealth uh was was uh funding the creation of a catalog
of solar spectra so that's how his name ended up on it uh fleming and pickering developed a
system of classification based on the hydrogen content of stars which was one of the main products of stellar spectra
uh i guess i should say what spectra are so when um so when with our eyes we can see
red green and blue light from across the whole visible spectrum
and what a what what spectroscopy does is you're looking
at the you're breaking up that swath of cellular spectra into
into smaller smaller segments and seeing what the intensity of of those smaller segments
of the spectrum are it's as if you had a thousand eyeballs each one tuned to a
specific segment of color and you were looking at how bright the light looked for each of
these different colors and so stars they have this particular emission spectra so where there's
elements that are in the star that are emitting light on a very particular wavelength due to some really
cool physics and it also absorption spectra where there are there's energies being
absorbed in order for these electronic transitions to happen in the electrons of the atom
so one of the prominent lines that's visible in a lot of the universe is hydrogen because there is so much
hydrogen in the universe and is the primary component of stars so basing a system of classification on
stars on their hydrogen content makes a lot of sense because that stars at different points in their lives are
going to have more or less hydrogen content as well as different uh different types of stars
so the original system has 17 different classes based on the intensity of these hydrogen lines
class a had the strongest absorption lines and class o had virtually no absorption
lines that were visible so on the on the left is an example of different types of
stars and what their absorption spectra look like i know you can't really read that text but the the top one is stars
such as sirius vega altair regulus which have very few absorption lines
and these are these are really bright blue oat and what we now call o-type stars
the second one there being stars like the sun pollux arcturics procyon stars that are more main
sequence and they have a whole lot of lines strewn throughout the whole spectra
and there's it goes on from there so this eventually led to the modern
classification system the the system that fleming and pickering had come up with was modified
by annie jump cannon and antonio mari and it was the precursor to the system
that we used today so uh they rearranged they dropped a lot of
letters and rearranged some of them so that o-type is the is
it's still it's still related to the hydrogen lines but now with a better understanding of the physics of that
star so o-type is the hottest and thus the bluest type of star
and m is the coolest type and we've now gone on to add two more letters l and t
for these very dim red dwarfs and brown dwarfs that are detectable now that weren't detectable back then
and then there's subgroups among those uh those spectral types as we call them and
so if you look at the spectral types there in in the chart on the right you can see there's kind of an odd order to
the letters they're not alphabetical so a mnemonic that we were taught back in in
undergrad to memorize the spectral type was uh oh be a fine guy or gal kiss me
so that's how you can remember the the order of the spectral types uh and i guess you could add on lt to be
like today or anything else you could think of so uh
there are subdivisions among those spectral types zero to nine being hottest hottest to coldest so just kind
of subdividing those and then their luminosities designated by roman numerals where one
and one a are or i and ia are super giants and hyper giants and then v are
main sequence stars and actually goes up to viii down to uh dwarf stars and and
such so with this classification system the sun is a type g2v
star which is a main sequence star that has a surface temperature of 5800 kelvin
so i've got a little chart down here showing how so the temperature of the star correlates with the color of that
star due to some cool physics so uh o-type stars are blue and actually do appear blue like rigel it looks more
blue than arcturus for example when you look at it visibly in the sky so o-type is more blue m-type down toward the red
dwarfs is more red so i bet you weren't making on a science lesson today but there's your science
lesson for the day uh and a really cool shot of wilhelmina fleming superimposed on her discovery of
the horsehead nebula um she and other women early in astronomy really paved the way for women in the
sciences in general all the way up to me now being uh working on my phd
in in nuclear physics and want to continue to see more women in stem and
also more women involved in astrophotography and the group is growing i'm part of a group of women
astrophotographers around the world known as stella and we're trying to get more people into it
and we teach each other new techniques and things like that so uh it's it's growing and of course the
more women we have in it the more people we have in it in general and the more amazing astra images will get out of
amateurs as a result so that's what i've got
thank you molly while i have you online what i would like to do is to present
you with the wilhelmina or however you want to say it uh imaging award pin that every woman
that enters that competition will receive one of these pins whether you
win it or runner up whatever you are you will receive a pin just for entering so
i would like to present this to you molly uh let me see if i uh there we go
get it the right way let me and there you go molly
thank you oh look i have it it's magic
that's some internet magic right there right that's incredible
yeah yeah you know yep it is it's just incredible so uh a couple of things i do want to follow up
on as carol mentioned on this award um we are redesigning the website and it's
running a little bit behind so we will update the website um
probably with more information about all of the awards especially the wilhelmina probably i would say by the end of
february maybe beginning of march and the big changes i think for this year in the award
there will be categories there will be at least four categories and you will be judged in each category instead of an
across the board like for our first year uh we had three winners it was first second and third
and that was it this year we kind of with scott's help and explore scientific we have created some categories and
we're still ironing out a few of the details on that but we should have that up like i said at the end of next month
early march but a deadline has been extended till may 31st so you have
plenty of time uh even though we're running later on this and changing some of the rules a little bit you'll have
time to get your entries in and really look at what you want to enter and i think that'll be the big changes this
year for the wilmino award and i i'm also like molly it's great to see all these
women coming out and astrophotography it was really fun to get a group of us together that we can sit down and we
sound as geeky as everybody else we uh we're talking filters we're
talking equipment we're talking drives you know and it's great it's really great because it's fun to see everybody
has a different opinion just like with everybody what they want to work on what they want to see
the problems though that we run into a lot of the times many of them are the same so thank you very much molly i
appreciate it and congratulations on winning first place and from that oh it's me let's ask the
three questions that i'm going to ask as you know on every astronomical
um leagues live show that we do we give away three door prizes
and so i'm going to bring this up it takes my screen just a minute
to go to the larger as you can see this time the winners will
or the door prize will be a travel mug so three winners will be drawn each one
will win one astronomical league travel mug one of the things they wanted me to mention is we are having problems
shipping international it is taking forever uh to get these things shipped if you
have if somebody from outside the u.s wins we might run into some issues and we
might need to contact you to see you know what will help get the pro the door prize through so just to make you aware
if um you win something it doesn't show up for quite a while please drop me an
email or drop carol or anybody else on the league website an email and tell us
there's been a problem you have not seen your door prize so
please send your answers in the next 30 minutes in case you watch the gsp this is not
like the gsp we award the three prizes tonight so we need your answers in as
quick as you can get them in the winners will be announced after the last speaker which will be john goss
and someone from the astronomical league will contact all winners to get a shipping address
okay i'm going to go to questions for tonight please remember to send your
answers to secretary astroleague.org and again uh the last
gsp we had i did get some emails saying that the emails were
bouncing back from this address if that happens um [Music]
look at the league website drop carol try to drop somebody else an email uh to let us know that one of the people
that answered the questions had other emails some other emails of mine and contacted me and let me know right now
it does not look like there's any problem at all but in case it bounced back be patient uh i will accept the
answers clear up until not yeah this it would be this sunday
because we'll gsp will be on tuesday so set keep trying to send it if it does not go through but right now we are not
having a problem now with speaking about the fleming award
the first question is fleming's work at the harvard observatory was so outstanding
that pickering put her in charge of hiring and supervising a team of women to sort and study the immense collection
of photographs of star spectra over the next 15 years how many women
did fleming hire and please again send your answers to secretary
at astroleague.org
next question you're going to hear about this from john goss no man ever steps into the
same river twice this statement is an an out black
an analogy saying what what are they trying to say with that statement what are they referring to
and again send your answers to astro secretary at astroleague.org
all right my fingers are crossed we're going to see a nice comment at the end of april and maybe the beginning of may
what is the name of that comet and again secretary at astroleague.org
and we repeat this over and over just so you know because we've gotten comments we go through these so fast
that people don't have the time to read this and understand the quest and they'd like to have a few minutes or a couple
minutes to look at it so that's what we are doing and for now that is the end of
the questions um this time
let's stop my share all right maynard how about if we let you talk and
maybe you haven't seen a whole lot of maynard pitt and dre maynard pitt and dre is the exact secretary of the
astronomical league he's also uh the observer one of the observing
program directors so maynard how about if i turn this over to you
well thank you terry i appreciate it appreciate the time to be here tonight uh
i want to talk about a particular program in our uh astronomical league john goss
always comes up with the best ideas and he came up with this don't shake your head no john you know
you did this he comes came up with this idea and he presented it to a group called the national observing program
coordinators which is long title but it's a group of uh five of us who are charged with supervising all of
the uh observing programs and observing challenges and uh anytime anybody
proposes a new observing program like john did a few months ago it has to go
through our group and john's idea was to create an observing challenge
uh that would offer something of interest to amateur astronomers with a small telescope
as well as i think the more advanced uh astronomers will enjoy it as well
uh i will i'm looking forward to it because i've got a new small aperture telescope
and i want to see what this new smaller telescope can do now john's idea was
that galaxy season is is coming up in spring and uh this is when we have a an
opportunity to observe some special galaxies and he was thinking that
of a challenge that would just uh take a few months and not a whole
year or several years but just a few months and would be observable in what he called a small
telescope such as an eight inch reflector i got to tell you that that hurt me
because when i was a teenager and got a cave optical eight inch telescope i
thought i had the biggest telescope imaginable but that was pre-dob mount and the mount
themselves were about 100 pounds um nobody in
our group of uh coordinators um really debated whether or not this was a
good idea or not we just started on the bandwagon about listing possible targets uh for this
program now let me point out we had a question in chat a few minutes
ago about what's the difference between the awards that carol was talking about and the other observing programs
an observing challenge is its own category as well
and uh an observing challenge is open to anyone not simply members of the astronomical
league so if you're interested in this uh i think uh you know this is something
that you'll enjoy i'm going to share a screen now and talk a little bit
about um the uh this program
when spring comes the love of galaxies is in the air
well um the observing challenge um it starts march 1.
can't start working on it now and if you've observed any of these galaxies they don't count yet
so this it starts march 1 it ends june 30th short time frame and the deadline
for submissions is july 31st 2022.
now i've got the uh the webpage address and it's going to stay on this
uh screen showing the the web page for how to find
this particular the instructions for this i've also just now put it in the chat
that we've got well one comment i'll make the astronomic league 50th anniversary we're in the 75th
anniversary am i that far behind no this is the 50th anniversary of the observing
programs that's commemorated by that
i've lost my place here unfortunately um
well y'all are getting previews of everything let me uh stop the share for a moment and uh
how do i stop the share uh you can use the scroll wheel to scroll back up or the arrow keys on your keyboard
okay all right thanks somebody got me out of
that mess yeah i was going to avoid a problem that
one of my colleagues had earlier now i've gotten right into it so
um if you use the the left arrow key on your keyboard you can back up all right
there we go there we go thank you very much i was i was pushing the volume button
you know when you get to my age you know i really ought to use these things better galaxies you know are
available throughout the year but april through june that's a prime time to observe uh some of these galaxies
and all of these galaxies on this list own a couple just a couple of uh
constellation they're rising in the east in the evening and it's just a great time to go out and observe some of the
wonderful targets now the question is where should i begin my trek through the galaxies and if you're new to observing
galaxies this particular observing challenge is for you
now the challenge is designed to be available to people in the northern as well as the southern hemisphere
and we have met john's goal i think and that all galaxies should be available
to be seen through an 8-inch telescope i kind of think that it they might be
visible with a you know if you got better eyes than i've got
i think they might be observable in some of the smaller aperture telescopes as well
now your challenge if you accept it is to observe at least 12
of the galaxies on the object list and the object list has a lot of choices for you
and as i say the objects have to be observed on or after april 1st and no later
than the end of june now go to telescopes are allowed
and remote telescopes are allowed and you can do this by
visually or you can do imaging work either way so there's you know it's um
it's got a lot of uh openness about uh the rules for this
uh observing challenge our purpose is to get you to start especially the uh the
newer amateurs to get them to enjoy observing galaxies
now this is what your your submission needs to include and don't write all this down all of this is on the web page
uh that i i've shared in the chat and they're on all of the other screens didn't have room for it on this screen
but you want to identify the number you put the date and time of your observations
seeing and transparency and because i cut and pasted it it says
for more information check out the definitions located here well you can't click that
uh link but if you were on the web page and you saw this list you couldn't uh click that link and it would take you
to how to define seeing and transparency your location and the instrument you
used and a brief description and a sketch if you don't do imaging a sketch is good
and i think it was carol who was mentioning that sketching had become a lost art for a while
and i'm glad to see that it's coming back the purpose of the sketch is that it really forces you to think about what
is it that you're seeing and so often when we take an image we don't really scrutinize all the the
different details of these objects there's a great value in sketching
when you make your submission you tell us who you are give us your address your club
affiliation your phone number all that and the name an email of where you want the reward set
and cliff whose information is here and it's on the webpage
for this observing program he is the coordinator for this particular program and he can
answer all of your questions and and he will review your submission and i
am sure that uh uh he will be more than happy to uh
um send you an award to receive your submission and uh
to answer any questions that you may have and um you know
i i i really meant it john when i said you come up with some of the best ideas you really do
and don't groan like that you know take this compliment like a man
you know uh and any of you who have uh proposals
not every uh proposal gets approved but a lot of them do
um you know if you've got a proposal be like john uh present it to the national
coordinators program uh group and uh we'll be glad to take a look at it but you know this is right
around the corner and this will be a good way to to
spend some of your evenings in the spring the first program that i did was meijer
objects and the way i started that i've been an observer already for 25 years at
that point and um i realized i was going outside and looking at the same objects every
night and um i got to thinking i'm not sure i've seen all the messier objects and i
looked at my observing notes and sure enough i haven't so i spent about a year
uh observing the the messier objects keeping careful notes of star hopping and things like that
and all of the observing programs for me one of the values is it teaches me
things outside my box but it also gives me some things to look at some of which
i've never seen before and and i've been at this for well i'm 67 so i started when i was nine
i can't do mathematics but you know you can figure it out
but this is a great program i think you're going to enjoy it and
so i highly recommend it any questions that anybody has or has any question come over the chat uh while i've been
talking actually maynard i do do have something very very quick that i found out today i
think on the website it says that the start date is april 1st but it really is march
1st so okay it's march first because and i think i think my slideshow said
that because uh yeah because of pulling those numbers but that's something i should have known
john but my eyesight's going bad i can't do math
and i can't remember anything so what were we talking about again
okay thanks john for clarifying this this is coming sooner than you expected
so get right on it any other questions or comments
uh somebody was um asking if i could post the uh link to
the challenge i'm doing that right now okay great there you go okay yeah
wonderful wonderful yeah i didn't think our chat got through to everybody but i
knew that scott could take care of everything somebody somebody hands it over
yes all right thank you very much maynard enjoy and this will be in the reflector
i think so there'll be more and more uh visible information about it but plan on it now
all right thank you sure scott how about if we take about a 10
minute break and we will come back with john goss okay we'll do that all right thank you
thank you
hey molly molly yep
that was a great exchange of pins there on the screen with that that new uh zoom feature i read about
yeah yeah it's the new uh zoom teleportation yeah the teleportation
feature it comes in handy like that yeah it does [Laughter]
you guys did that perfectly we did have a little bit of practice
yeah the problem is that if you try to stick your hand through the zoom uh feature and a fly is going in with
you it causes all sorts of trouble yeah yeah you get you get some paradoxes you
get some some transporter uh like uh
let's see i'm trying to think of a good star trek techno jumble for this transporter
malformation or something yeah a transporter malformation yeah
you now have people wanting me to deliver telescopes this way [Laughter]
ordered a celestron 9.25 inch edge back in september
and they haven't reached any of the vendors yet they're still in china somewhere so
keep your fingers crossed
well um it looks like we're back uh and um
now you muted it you were there a second ago [Laughter]
nope i believe in you scott
are we one esther streamer nope still don't have you
uh maybe check check your uh the microphone source in uh um
in the microphone settings make sure you got the right one selected
how about this there you go there you are okay all right
for some reason that knocked me out into mute so uh but we're back after our
10 minute break or 10 minutes and some seconds break and uh um terry it's i'm handing it back over
to you okay scott i thought you had a video here you were going to play
or maybe you weren't maybe i'm mistaken a cool transition kind of thing yeah like you said john would really like it
oh yeah the played that at the beginning oh we didn't see i didn't see it you
didn't watch it i could play it again if you like it was pretty cool
not the whole video not the whole video but like like the transition uh
with the cool logo oh there we were talking about it you saw that
we've got to see it well we will show this okay so i can do this one here we are let me um
i call this uh john goss on fire that's what i call it this one yeah
yeah that that was it yeah [Laughter]
oh it's literally him that's great i saw the logo that's cool
everybody that i've told this is very relaxed do we have a lot of fun you can see we actually do
all right john after you cool off you can start speaking if you like
oh okay well let me um let me start out by explaining what a
lot of this is about in november the league celebrated its 75th anniversary and we had an astronomical
league live in honor of that um and we each gave a little talk about it well what i'd like
to say tonight is kind of a part two of what i led in last time so it's kind of a continuation uh
um something a little bit different too i i hope and i'm just looking at the people in front of me on the screen from scott
molly and terry and carol and maynard who's checked out i don't know where he went but uh this may all have something
for each of you in here um you'll see so let me start and of course
i'll be apologizing all the way through this but let's uh see what i can do
uh
okay good thank you so i hope everybody can see my initial screen there
um always change that's the um the whole point of this of the league
been being in existence for 75 years all the change all is changed it's my own
personal view of how astronomy has gone about you'll see i gave some uh
strange sounding names from impressionism to post-modernism and i'll explain that in just a moment
but first i'd like to get the league off the hook that all these views are my own
uh and i have obtained these views from my many years of talking to different people about amateur astronomy and my
own personal experiences so um all the controversial views i will present here are my own there's nothing
controversial so we have all his change
um there have been a lot of variations of this saying over the years
the other famous one is no man ever steps in the same river twice but there's some other variations of
this the only constant is change and nothing endures but change so i want to emphasize uh the change
that we have experienced over the past 30 40 50 years and then into the future
now i came across another quote by charles darwin which of course has nothing to do with the astronomical league but it kind of does
it's not the strongest of the species that survive nor the most intelligent but the one most responsive to change so
that's kind of speaks to the astronomical league that for it to continue on in amateur astronomy and
being what it is it has to change with the times and we know that that that's that's not an issue here but it's
something always to keep keep in mind so i got a little chart here i'd like to
explain a little bit about it right now um i broke um i was looking at the history
of amateur astronomy and i broke it up into different sections of course i had to get names of these sections so i chose names in art history
some of these you may recognize that minimalism impressionism modernism post-modernism and so on
and i'd like to start out talking about uh the era of minimalism and some of that's kind of obvious here
what we're talking about back in the 30s and 40s amateur astronomy was more of a
do-it-yourself hobby there was a lot of amateur telescope making but there were some commercial
instruments available most of those were fairly small refractors and part of the reason why i
put the disclaimer at the beginning about these are my own views because i don't want to make it sound like i'm putting anybody down by any of this
stuff a two to three inch refractor is what they had back then and they tried to do the very best of
what it was so as you well imagine what a two inch
reflect refractor or reflector or anything two inches could do it doesn't do a whole heck of a lot only the brightest objects are what you could see
but also think about the cost of some of this stuff why amateur telescope making was so
um into it back then well a small refractor back then
110 dollars 230 dollars something like that uh of course that was money then so what
does that mean uh for comparison purposes well ford model t which is a pretty substantial logic was
roughly twice the amount of what a small refractor would would cost so you can imagine that hey
not too many people actually bought these things some people did
oops oops sorry
there we go 1940s now i like i just i kind of poke around with this one because this is a
talking about this as a portable refractor was you all know this is not a refractor this is a reflector and it's
pointed in the wrong way which always gives a good lap because we're so smart nowadays
okay let's move up to impressionism my own view of that um impressionism was
was really uh kind of at the at post-war first world war post world war
ii um there were a lot of um i call it impressionism because they were impressions of deep sky optics
not really very good views but it gave you a hint an indication of what was really out there
um looking at some of the nebula globular clusters and such you can only see the brighter ones but you didn't really get
to see any real detail in them telescopes this time were again three to
four inch refractors uh some small refractor reflectors were coming into being
amateur telescope making again with was still still still going on uh if you look at
the magazines um especially sky and telescope magazine you will see plenty of ads
for uh telescope making supplies and equipment such as these right here well that was back in the 1950s
and i'm sure most of you the older people here will
remember edmund scientific that had just about everything you needed for amateur telescope making uh and they
did sell at that time small uh telescopes as well so this is what the amateur was really
involved in in the age of impressionism my first telescope was a four inch
dynoscope reflector and yes i remember it really did cost 49.95 because that was about
three months of my paper route salary to uh pay for that baby and i really liked it i still have it
it's up in my attic now um it was it was a good introduction to amateur astronomy but you couldn't
really see a whole lot with it four four inches now i don't know
you also might remember refractors unitron now these are interesting i like looking
at these simply because of all the stuff they have on it you know this is still only like a three inch perhaps a four
inch refractor but you got everything you've got camera mounts on it you get counter weights at the front you've got
counterweights on on the equatorial mount you have a a finder scope
you have a guide scope you have a wheeled eyepiece uh that
contains what this has five different eyepieces you can you can put in there uh
these this is the era of the famous um solar filter that fits on the eyepiece
that we uh we don't miss anymore for that uh this has
probably some filters toss in there and of course there's got to be a borrow lens someplace but this had a lot of
stuff with a lot of gear and a person my age back then would have
really thought this was the coolest thing to have
how did we find stuff back in the age of impressionism well um there wasn't there weren't too many
uh star chart star atlases around but this is probably the best one that you could get your hands on easily printed
by sky publishing at the time and it would it would show you about everything you're gonna find now with a three inch
or four inch telescope this shows you a whole lot more and it gets your hopes up only to be dashed by reality that you
couldn't see half this stuff on there then comes the era of modernism
uh just like in art history we have modernism we have an early stage and a late stage now the early stage would be
more like for an era of of a six inch reflectors coming into
being uh the first steps of um of uh schmidt cass coming into being
and the late portion of their modernism would be larger uh dobsonian-based reflectors
in this area uh the telescopes were large enough that you could actually see stuff get get some real detail you could
see uh individual stars and globular clusters you could see um
oh interesting stuff in a lot of nebula orion nebula m8 m17 m16 and all those
and and some galaxies and um you could see actually some some detail of of the
closer more larger galaxies so this is an an era which a lot of people got into the hobby
um and got got something out of it lasted what for about 20 years i don't know about 30 years actually until
post-modernism came along well now let's let's go back and talk about modernism still a little bit
uh dinoscope six-inch steinoscope you can start seeing some pretty good stuff with this
uh take some astrophotos but i don't know i don't know about those extra photos though they were pretty hard to grab
back then but 200 would would get you this uh celestron c8 the very first ad was i
think 1972 in in sky and telescope this was the first ad and you know the ca
has gone through many changes many improvements uh but it's still eight inch and it you
still see the same stuff in it now here's maynard's favorite telescope
he'd like cave optical uh they had a number of very fine telescopes back then and they were
from my paper up salary uh these were pretty pricey
but uh it was something to want and that's what a lot of people got and people who have these telescopes still
have them today i'm sure and they treasure them another one that i know that mainernet
is has is a quest bar this is sort of the jewel box of telescopes and that you can carry it
around like a microscope and see stuff in the sky again it's not a very big aperture but
yeah okay it is pretty cool looking pretty cool
back then how to use your telescope well this kind of summed it all up you know you you get this six inch uh telescope
you don't know how to use it this is a pretty basic book and it tells you everything you know and how to get going in amateur astronomy
star atlases again then not all that great not all that detailed
but there was one norton's on star allies and that contained quite a few uh
objects that you're probably never going to be able to find but it was interesting um
we have i can't get that okay uh the startlist had very very basic stuff in
it you could see some nebula and some star clusters double stars and such that got you on
the right track the moon well moon maps weren't all all that all
that great back then um of course that's when exploration and moon really began with the apollo apollo
missions a lot of you probably have this
particular item from national geographic the moon map the earth's moon
and showing both the uh near side and the far side all all the important craters
at least a lot of detail on how the moon's orbit works and and just fascinating
things about about the moon so things are now changing again um
we now have gone from these small refractors to a small um i guess
reflectors and increased the size of the reflectors that when the dobsonian era came out
now we're going into post-modernism which is what we're into right now
and i predict it's going to be a few more years before we go into the next phase
so what is post-modernism well now you can really really see details in nebula
and many galaxies this is the era of ccd imaging
large reflectors you know it used to be a time in which if you saw a reflector larger than
12 inches that would be really something but that's kind of ho-hum now a reflector larger than 24 inches now i
might get to get your attention so things have really increased in size and capability especially with the ccd
imaging incredible stuff here for proposed in post-modernism which we we're into
well we're we're into now but we're going to be leaving it in shortly in
a few years what we have access today
um we have you know just redone the list we have lightweight travel scopes solar scopes
uh long focal length scopes fast scopes large apertures binoculars astrographic
scopes and many others i didn't even talk about um radio telescopes for amateurs but those
are out there now so we have everything that we want today we have it
so we're in a pretty lucky spot you know one of the things that you hear about is that we're we're living in the age or
the golden age of amateur astronomy and that's true but that's always true
because uh astronomy is really a fairly fast-changing field advancing it's it's
not regressing at all so each year you're if you're on the forefront of it well you're in the golden age
um we'll have to see how that turns out in a few years from now where we headed off for that so today you go out and
look what do you use for uh starless as well sky and telescopes uh pocket sky atlas
is very popular and it has a lot of the same detail that the um skull knight atlas back in 1955 had
but this is much more suitable for amateurs today get more information from various books
stars and planets i'm sure you've all seen this one now this is one of my my favorite books
uh it's it's more into history now for me uh burnham celestial handbook it's a
three volume series i have a friend who is a playwright
and he's a pretty good player playwright and i've been trying to convince him to do a try to play about this about the
life history of robert berna of course it would be a tragedy but
there would be a lot of really interesting twists and turns along the way one of these is is this this is this
book here you know he uh when he signed this book deal
he had a a deal for with dover books and he get certain amount of royalties
well dover books turned around and turned it into the book of the month club so
selling it for a dime so robert burnham got a very small
percentage of that dime and i feel kind of bad because that's how i got this so he didn't get much royalty from this
book at all sorry to say that's a classic
and also in this time of post-modernism we have astronomy gatherings all over the place
um star parties conferences expositions and so on
which we'll look at some of these uh go to neef on northeast astronomy forum a lot of people have been to it it's i
think it's the largest in the country it's a gathering of astronomy vendors of all types from all over the country
selling all types of stuff obviously here's celestron now here's something that's near
roberts um a lot of stuff there you know he's responsible
for that's the signature trailer there but uh you know a lot of companies a lot
of people go to neve and this is where they meet greet people and do networking and buy and sell and all that pretty pretty cool stuff television is there
all types of telescopes um [Music] here's some larger dubstone telescopes
the smaller dobsonian ones you really would not take much notice at any more because they're you're getting pretty common but the large one you sure would
you go to these conferences you see stuff like this this is all pretty common eyepieces
boy i'll talk about more about eyepieces in just a moment but there are all types of
of pretty pretty cool equipment out there explore scientific eyepieces included
the whole range of of quality uh y field wide angle eyepieces
so what type of uh books guides do we have now in our postmodern into the post
modernism time now this is a nice one observing handbook and catalog of deep sky optics
which is one of my favorite i've always enjoyed looking at this it gives you a pretty good breakdown of
what's in the nice guy and a good description of it i'll go through all of course this is probably a big a big seller uh
the night sky observer's guide i think it comes in three volumes it contains just about everything and it
has detailed descriptions of both drawings sketches with uh some photographs and some charts to help you
find these things so today amateurs can find this stuff pretty easily
30 40 years ago it was tough for people to find this stuff because you didn't know exactly where it was or
you didn't know what it would look like so you had a hard time trying to understand what you're seeing in the eyepiece
we have ccd imaging now this whole talk could spend an hour in ccd imaging
but today you know we have these fantastic fantastic
um 20 30 or so let's say 20 years ago a lot of these just just weren't there
uh 30 40 years ago now these images you see right here would beat out observatory photographs from 30
years ago 40 years ago pretty incredible stuff that amateurs get today now i'd
like to mention something about advancements in accessories and i just want to talk about two
two types you have the finder you know back then
in the other areas you had your uh finder scope which might be a an 8 by 30 or or 10 by 50 which is what
this finder is on the left hand side and they were they were useful but boy
when when the tail red came out uh so-called the the reflex finder red dot
or unit finder because it doesn't magnify anything uh that was a real real advance it's so
simple it made finding things in the sky really easy or putting them in your eyepiece really
easy and the other thing that made it easy with it was the ultra wide angle eye pieces
um such as by uh negler they all have them now neglear need explorer scientific has a very very nice
nice uh array of those they're they've got great great views it makes things easier to find easy it
makes your enjoyment of the hobby so so much more that's what we have today
now going into the future i call it abstractism
simply because we are entering a time
of more remote automated observing
we're entering a time in which imaging will will be taking a big hold
right now imaging is pretty important in the hobby visual observing is still there and it it might may be the the
most uh popular right now but the imaging is going to be increasing more and more it's becoming easier to do
so let's go down to uh abstractism really it's now you're observing photons
that don't really reach your eyes you never see the stuff in person it's always on a camera
that could be in your backyard on your telescope or it could be on a some remote observatory
um speaking of remote observatories um we have commercial automated systems
now which you've probably all heard of of the slu system um itelescope inside
observatory and there must be plenty more in which you rent telescope time and
then you have that that telescope uh find the object and automatically image it for you
or you just download uh their own um pre-obtained data
and manipulate it yourself to get an image and adjust the image the way you want
something like this is is just changing the hobby pretty fast and i'm going to tell you
why in just a moment a friend of mine uh did this he belongs
to the club that i belong to and he commonly takes pictures like this this is from a telescope in in new mexico
but this system also has telescopes in australia uh well around around the world and for
i know this might have been costing 30 bucks for telescope time to get this image
now that's pretty incredible you couldn't have done this 30 years ago
another one the horse said nebula okay uh william fleming may be impressed with this but
you know that's what that's what people get good today so what's
after abstract the abstract abstractism the abstract era well i don't know
but i can make some guesses at what's going to be happening here you know we have
the future it's truly an undiscovered country for you star trek fans so you might
recall what this is all about it's from shakespeare handles to be or not to be
sold soliloquy in which he is um
contemplating the meaning of death well it could also be contemplating the future
nobody knows what the future is the only way you're going to find out about the future is to go there and that is where
we're going i have one more point which i'd like to make and something to think about
uh over the next few years i'm calling it the age of egalitarianism
what that really means is that finally just about everybody who is interested
can pursue an active hobby of enjoying the night sky of imaging the night skies but
experiencing the nice guys now why is that well because
because of remote observing just think about this what remote observing does now light pollution is a big problem
well with remote observing light pollution won't be a problem traveling to a suitable dark sky
location won't be a problem either um the weather should it shouldn't be a
big deal at all you don't have to buy expensive sophisticated equipment
but i think what's what's really going to come up is this is this uh fifth point
so ty societal attitudes towards women injuring a man's field will not be as much of a factor as it has been
anybody can can do it uh imaging uh remote imaging anybody from any country
as long as they have the suitable internet and computer capabilities which is not that big of a deal anymore
anybody can do this then maybe the most important thing which i think a lot of people
have felt at times is that they worry about the hazards of observing alone at a dark secluded
location at the bottom of this there's a picture of a footprint that my wife took about a
month ago in the snow out front we do have bears and one walk by and i
can tell you i don't want to be outside observing through my telescope when a bear is walking by
but uh with remote observing you won't really have have that that that problem
um so with that i that really concludes what i have to say and i i want you to think about some of the stuff that i
said about how we have uh progressed in um amateur astronomy
um let's get off this there we go
there i go okay um you know where we have progressed in
amateur astronomy over the years you know we started out with these these two three-inch refractors we've gone to the
larger um four to six inch reflectors and a little bit of refractors in came the scts in
came the dobsonians in came the ccd in came uh remote imaging now this whole
hobby has progressed where everything is changing right now things are changing so rapidly
a lot of these times all these areas which i was talking about were lasting 30 or 25 years something like that well
things are happening so fast now we're just like talking like 15 years 10 years down the road it's hard to see
what's how things are really going to be but amateur astronomy is changing it's a great it's a great hobby but i i know i
know people like like scott who are on this because they they see the products coming out every year every day
uh they see the good stuff and the bad stuff that come out but it's all changing it's all there and
the league has to change with it and we are as you you know we've got the william fleming imaging program
uh we have another other imaging programs we have um of course the all the different types of observing
programs which it's all about but all this stuff is changing because the equipment is is advancing
incredibly fast and you know as you saw with some of these images i didn't even show you the best
images the imaging is changing so fast that it's really uh kind of kind of mind-boggling in a way
unless somebody has any questions that that's pretty much what i have and think of the future and that's where
we're all going to be thank you thank you john
i'll let scott look and see if there's any questions
well what i hope that people would start thinking about what i said and and and how it all all plays out in the hobby
how the past is of affecting our present how our presence is going to affect the future yeah yeah you brought up some
interesting points um you know it was really nice to look back because my very first telescope was a
six inch rv uh reflector and actually i ended up buying it from
used from somebody that eventually within about six years joined a club i was in
and he looked at me and said you bought my telescope i said yeah i didn't buy it i still have and i still have it it's
like you said you kind of hang on to something like that and when you showed the pictures my very first picture
through that telescope was of the moon and i'll never forget it was six below that night and i couldn't wait to put a
camera on that telescope and i drug it out in the garage and i had so that way the wind wasn't hitting me and i took my
first picture of the moon with that and you know for that at that time i was extremely happy with what i had
you know so it's interesting to go back and look at this because i'm sure everybody maynard and you know the
scopes that he's gotten carol and molly scott i mean my gosh everything that
we've all worked with you covered a lot of what every one of us probably at one time or another has worked with
yeah john uh as you mentioned i i have a lot of those telescopes unitron kind of wore out they
had the old wooden tripod the questar is as new today as it was and i've carried
it all over the country and other countries as well it's so portable but
it stays in good shape and i was redoing my will recently to update it
and so i was saying who gets my different telescopes
and it occurred to me that my grandson will get most of my
telescopes and he'll look at them as obsolete
no no no i mean if he's going into imaging yeah a lot of this stuff will be obsolete but the visual observers will
always be out there they will always want to go under the stars with their own eyes and look up and have a good
time so that's right there's nothing like an eye to the eyepiece everybody that sees a telescope wants to
put their eye to the eyepiece and actually see the photons coming through it so even me
i do kind of laugh i still like to look through telescopes
yeah you know when you're between images uh you can always have that second stop and actually see what it really looks like
fourth or fifth but yes third or fourth or fifth or tenth or twentieth
but you just go look through other people's skies there were some comments here that are
worth uh uh mentioning here i don't know if i'll get everyone here but uh
um jeff wise who i know has a lot of telescopes was uh remarking about
getting his first giant magnet from edmond scientific so i think that showing some of the ads and stuff made
people nostalgic you know for what it was you know if you're if you've been into it for that long um
i'd like to interject there with i too got a giant magnet from edmund scientific and that was because i was
playing playing with the pinball machines and i wanted to grab that ball with him
oh wow okay so um but uh jeff said that he is getting a primoluci um
uh i guess he's getting a radio telescope or is thinking about it anyways uh he's got so many telescopes
in his yard that he's going to have trouble fitting it in though
the problem to have that's right
people were taught you showed uh you talked a little bit about some of the events and stuff that people could go to
and um uh you know the advanced imaging conference kind of is one that uh really
is uh indicative of how important imaging now is to uh the
lifestyle of astronomy you know so um uh
you know so there's uh there are people who know that go ahead
there are a lot of conferences every year now if if you look back in the magazines from the 1970s
you'll see just a handful including the astronomically convention was one of them but today you know you
can go to a conference every weekend from may through october
or maybe even april through october you know there's always something all over the country so it's they aren't that
rare anymore amateurs like like to get together and uh you know kick the tires
of different telescopes so to speak that's right um
and uh yeah i mean norm hughes wants to thank all of you for a great presentation
um uh people were marking uh the miracle of
uh plate solving okay that is uh that is an amazing uh
uh you know feature that is now sometimes available i guess largely for
free you know this amazing technology so you think about all the the multi-million dollar
technology that just got turned over to uh amateur astronomy you know over the
years it's really incredible so i don't even i don't even align my mounts anymore i just get them polar aligned
and then i let plate solve and get me on target like yeah what better way to do that
it's it's easier than standing out in the cold and aligning it right that is right
yeah um but we had a great audience today and
lots of interesting comments all along the way there incredible terry you do you always do a
great job in putting together a very very interesting group of people
you know i'm not going to include myself in that because i'm just connecting the wires here but you know it is it is a
lot of fun to watch it go down so uh you know that's very cool thank you john you did an awesome job
oh thank you absolutely well you know it i'll tell you it's it's
hard to miss when you go down memory lane because you know you're looking at terry
she's nodding her head maynard's nodding his head when we're talking about the the the estrola telescopes the rv6 or
or the c8 and and all that you know we all remember all that stuff and we still have at least
a lot of it but yeah i still have my norton sky atlas uh
it's almost a complete uh uh book
yeah i got it right here yeah well at least your bonding is intact
and to show you how far imaging has gone i i still i still
i keep a 8 by 10 inch plate from mel wilson observatory of the moon oh my gosh
oh wow yeah and that was yeah through the 100 inch so that is
and this stuff you know this dated 1924 this stuff doesn't uh
doesn't fade away i mean [Laughter]
that's great and i have my old star charts of course and uh glass and optics and telescope gear in
general uh can keep going on generation after generation if it's cared for so
yeah but i think it's something to keep in mind though about what i was calling the uh egalitarian nature of our hobby
at least what we're going into because with imaging anybody can do it and
um you well who has internet um and i can see a lot more people just
jumping into it and half those people who jump into it are going to be women
so you know where you should see a lot more females in our hobby
um i guess that's good we do we actually do and so it's it's certainly the fastest
growing part of our community that's for sure
yep all right good job
yes thank you very much john appreciate that that was really interesting
so all right let's go back and i am going to give the answers to the questions
oops um i got to listening to jon's talk and almost did not get that done all of a
sudden i realized he was wrapping up and i still had some work to do
all right i have to put a shot in between my
powerpoint so i don't accidentally go ahead and show the answers when i i write after i ask the
questions so here's the answers for tonight fleming hired 20 women
and norm hughes is the winner of a travel mug
and everyone got this right the belief that everything is changing that's what that statement means no man ever steps into
the same river twice every moment is unique and i think we can all agree with that
and jason wallace has won a travel mug
all right yes and my fingers were crossed hopefully everybody else is as too uh the name of the comic that hopefully
at least we can image if we can't see it naked eye let's get some images of it at the end of april beginning of may is c20
2103 pan stars and michael overracker will be traveling with a new travel mug
and i would like to thank everybody scott roberts ceo and founder of explore
scientific and broadcast genius there you know you might not see
once you anybody enough hours of practice you become an expert and scott broadcasts like 24 hours a day
seven days a week that's right right yeah [Laughter]
david levy we are our poet on our author carol org the astronomical league
president and i was going to you know there are so many things i could say about carol i thought
he does it all you know he's right now he is president and keeping all all of us in line and that is a big job
we have our days mater pitt andre again maynard you're
not the observed program one of the observed program directors uh let me try
this you're the executive secretary of the astronomical league but say you are the observing what
what's your title oh you're muted
it's one of the directors okay that's what i was thinking observe okay so he is one of the directors john
our media offer uh officer he is also our lunar lunatic which i
have not forgotten from the halloween party oh my gosh the past president of the astronomical
league and molly molly wakeling i've been for a few years now astro imager speaker all around good good girl
she knows all kinds of stuff she's one of those that you can talk to ask questions and she is always willing to
help uh helping more women helping more people into the hobby so thank you all i
appreciate everybody being here terry you you forgot somebody who's that
terry mann well yeah i'm gonna do like scott does i'm gonna
say i'm gonna you know leave that one out there too but thank you no no no no you you
certainly deserve credit uh you're you're a past president of the astronomical league you're a current current secretary uh you've been
involved in this and many uh aspects in amateur astronomy and popularizing it and in the great lakes
region um are you still the ch you were the chair of the great lakes yeah i still am you
still have so you you've been in this ida work with dark skies uh work with youth uh you've been
involved in this hobby ever since i've known you terrible ever since in addition she was co-chair of
the alcon 2021 live online and she and chuck
did a fabulous job thanks to scott for helping well with that as well but
they did a fabulous job it it and it wasn't an easy job it's something that had to be done
i mean if you made a mistake you know you had 2 000 people know it immediately so you
know you had to make sure things were going right and terry speaking of change blazing a new trailer
that that's true well thank you thank you all for those kind compliments i appreciate that uh yeah but you know uh
astronomic or al the alcon virtual was a whole new thing yeah definitely part of
the change uh and uh what we'll see is part of a change again this year at albuquerque we will be
trying to figure out how to broadcast part of the ask of alcon uh we don't you know we have to work
with scott and see exactly how we're going to do that but more change you know and it's like john said we have to
keep up you know and the league does keep up we have a lot of members we want to try try to help them as much as we
can and so that's something we all work out everybody on this program is a fantastic
support of amateur astronomy so thank you all again and as you will see i
thought there it went um mike shaw will be our speaker on march 11th for uh
astronomical league live he is an amazing photographer and so we look forward to having him here on this
show on march 11 at 7 pm eastern standard time
and scott
am i blasting off my phone is sorry
that's okay you know yeah whatever my ringtone so if anybody else has anything they else
they'd like to add say please jump in right now i see molly's showing her cat
there's apollo he's he's joined us tonight and orion who is a supermodel
he finally gave up his quest for food and settled onto my lap
oh my gosh all right well thank you everybody and scott i think i will turn that over to
you if you can if i can
no okay there we go all right
i think they'll they'll wrap it up then that'll wrap it up all right take care
thanks everyone thank you for joining us everybody
good night everyone
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