Transcript:
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[Music]
well hello everyone this is Scott Roberts from Explore Scientific and the Explore Alliance and we're here this is
I think the 46th Astron 48th okay all right so okay uh
with um uh the Astronomical League and you're watching Astronomical League live
uh with special guest Kevin Schindler from LOL Observatory
um Carrie why don't you go ahead and take it from here and uh anyways it's great to see everyone and um uh we're
happy to be hosting Astronomical League Live again well thank you Scott we really
appreciate the fact you are broadcasting Astronomical League Live so thank you very much i know you've been on the road
quite a bit so uh we really appreciate you being here actually quite a few people here have been on the road just
got home so uh why don't we go ahead then and start tonight david Levy will
be joining us just a little bit later so John why don't I go to John Goss he's
past president of the league and our current media officer so John how about
if you kind of take it away all right uh thank you Terry um you know
it's it's been a couple months I think since we've had had the program uh last month April everybody
was focused on the Northeast Astronomy Forum which takes a lot of energy and time to to get that through it's it's a
great time to see people up there fortunately this year I couldn't make it so I didn't see anybody there but uh may
maybe next year um I'd like to talk a little bit tonight about volunteerism
but before I do there is a um an event I'd like to
share I
think see am I allowed to share Scott yes it's because I'm not sure excellent
there you go yeah well thank you uh you might see there is a nice slide on here um talking
about the the full moon it occurred to me last night is when I threw this together that this
month's full moon is a little unusual well first of all uh it's it happens on
midday on the uh on the 12th which is Monday but really on the 11th it's only
16 hours before full moon uh the fullest full moon when it rises so um you might
want to look at it then and and I I I remembered that hey when the full moon
or almost full moon is right above above the horizon at sunset or right before
sunset you can see some interesting stuff and an interesting phenomena so that's what I pul pulled together here
on Sunday night Mother's Day night uh right at sunset in fact five minutes
before sunset go outside look to the south to look to the east southeast and
you will see the the full moon rising creeping above the horizon but at the
same time as the sun sets you will also see the Earth's shadow start rising
along with the full moon so you'll have the the full moon which will be fairly muted because the sky is
still fairly bright you'll have that um low above the horizon within Earth's shadow and how do you know it's a shadow
well it's kind of a dark or darkened gray blue band that's in the east or
southeast at this time as the sun drops lower below the horizon that shadow
rises somewhat and it starts to dissipate because the sky itself is is
darkening so that's that is something really I think cool to look at a lot of people see this and they don't
understand what's going on they don't give two thoughts about it but Sunday night see see if you can spot it and
there's another phenomena uh called the belt of Venus which has absolutely nothing to do with the planet Venus it's
supposedly uh taken from uh uh if I can remember this right the
Greek goddess Aphrodati wore a belt and that is supposed to be the belt going
around the earth of kind of a pinkish reddish orangish glow so you'll see that
just above the dark band of the Earth's shadow go outside Sunday night see if
you can see this on other nights it's not so evident or the full moon or the moon won't be there because it'll be
either high or above the horizon out of all this muck so to speak or below the horizon you can't see it so that's
that's something to think about that's a little project for for you to do on on on Sunday night got to have clear
weather obviously but that's not why I'm here i'm here to talk a little bit about
volunteerism as you know I've given a number one a number of these talks throughout the past couple years and I'd
like to explore this a little bit further tonight start out by saying you know you
never volunteer for anything well you know what that's that's completely untrue because volunteers are are what
what are needed to make hobby clubs work if no one volunteered then you know
we're all we're all sunk so um we would we'd uh cease to exist
pretty quickly if we didn't have the volunteers so I'd like to look at this a
little bit further on why why why people volunteer um and I know a lot of the past membership or past leadership they
have their own stories and I've I've talked to a number of them and I've managed to plop them into different categories here number one camaraderie
now it's kind of neat you're you're part of an organization uh astronomical league perhaps or perhaps your own uh
astronomy club in which you have a number of people who come together every month or every so often and discuss the issues and try to get things going and
it's kind of fun doing that because you're you're right in tune with what's going on in the world of astronomy
amateur astronomy plus just by doing this you uh learn something new you're you're always in the forefront talking
to to new people and they're telling you things that you don't know and it that's that's kind of it expands your horizons
as far as this amateur astronomy goes and that falls in line with being part of something even greater uh
astronomically wise you know we're we're we're across the United States we stretch into other countries so it's
kind of fun you you meet people across the United States you would you wouldn't know or in in other countries
but I I think this is my opinion probably the most important reason to get involved in all this because is by
influencing young people trying to get them interested or not really trying but
try uh helping them in their interest in amateur astronomy uh expanding it making it more worthwhile than themselves
letting them know that this avocation is is certainly worthwhile and it can be a
lifelong pursuit it could it could be a lot of fun in their lives
so spare us a little bit more don't worry I'll come back to a little bit what I what I what I just said i like to
say a little bit more about volunteerism you know I I talk about signing up and helping out what does it take to be a
good volunteer well basically three things really uh you got to have the
ability to do the job okay well uh you got to have the time you know we're all
stretched for time these days um but you got to have it because you got to put time in actually do whatever needs to be
done and you got to have the desire you really want want to do it or otherwise you're kind of go well yeah yeah yeah so
but if you have all those three characteristics you you'll be a good volunteer and be able to to help out uh
your community and your astronomy club or astronomical league whatever you'll be able to do that really
well so here's another way of looking at if you've kind of thought about you know may maybe I should volunteer
well I'm considering looking at these people right here you know
Let's say you have been a club officer and you really liked it uh and you want
to help more you want to be to do uh to work with more than just just your club
well think about being a volunteer in the astronomical league if you're an officer and maybe your term is nearing
completion well you'll have some time freed up maybe you want to continue maybe you want to share your talents uh
your your organizational talents to help not only your club but the region you live in or the or nationwide um think
think about volunteering for the astronomic league we we have uh 10
different regions that the league is divided into and each of those regions has a set a subset of officers you know
obviously we have our national officers which you know president vice president treasurer and and so on but each region
has a similar set so you might want to start out there and start thinking about it now I know right now there are three
of us which are volunteers and I'd like to ask a few questions and I'll start
with with myself so everyone knows where I'm coming from on this so uh John what
got you into volunteering for the Astronomical League i'm glad you asked that a number of years ago uh past
league president Bob Jent was at a uh regional conference here in Charlottesville Virginia i attended and
he got up and talked about the astronomical league and its need for volunteers and kind of went through a short list of what had to be done and
said at the end you know if you're interested in helping out please come up and see me and everyone in this room
there's probably about 50 60 people you they're just kind of you know not not really biting at the
chance and I started thinking well you know he's asking for secretary of the M East region of the astronomical lake you
know I I can do that it doesn't take too much time and I can certainly write down
notes and do correspondence and stuff like that so after the meeting concluded I uh I volunteered my
services and unfortunately fortunately uh that was my start and I progressed up through the
Mel organization and into the national organization and so on now I we I see
two right there and I'm going to pick on Don Nab first don C can you tell us tell
tell the crowd here why or what got you into volunteering uh maybe at the am at
the regional level or your local level or or what do you have to say about that Don well I've been volunteering at the
local level boy it's going to be soon be 20 years i guess that kind of dates me but I've been a observing chair and
treasurer for longer than I probably should be but I actually was able to shed the observing chair to some other
uh good members of our club who are helping out i'm still treasurer but uh
as the Mid East region I uh I was at a Star Quest Greenbank Star Quest a
absolutely wonderful gathering of astronomers and amateur and professional uh that was 2019
i just retired a couple years before that and was still trying to find my sort of find my new groove and a really
nice man terry Trees was the chair at the time and I was attending my first ever annual M East region annual meeting
and maybe 25 people in the room perhaps and uh Terry uh Terry made the
announcement after he went through the meeting that he he had to step down he was having some serious health issues he
had to deal with and he was looking for someone to uh that might be interested to take over the uh chair position well
as you said everyone in the room was sort of hunkered down and you know him high and no one stood up i know the look
i know the look i didn't stand up um certainly didn't hadn't occurred to me
before until Terry said that but but he planted the seed you planted the seed at that meeting and then uh then with
during the during the rest of the uh the event I know I spoke with you out in the camping field they asked you know what
is this about what does the chair of the mid region need to do so Terry planted the seed and I think you poured some
water on the seed and helped to germinate and so I thought about it for a few days and then I then I contacted
Terry by email and we exchanged a few emails i said you know Terry I'm willing to step up and give this a try mh and uh
you know that's six years ago now uh time is probably not too far off when I should look at passing baton to someone
else just keep things fresh it's it's good to do that but I I I never for a
moment have regretted what I did uh I'm I'm so glad to be part of the league um
as you said the people I've met through the league it's been amazing i mean in my local astronomy club I have made
lifelong friends at my local club people that are like brothers to me and uh hey
I think that's that that's one one good thing is you do make friends uh that you
certainly wouldn't have have if you didn't join if you didn't participate and you know the friends are uh for us
or Don and I are both members of the Mid East region uh you know we we now know people all over these uh Virginia and
Pennsylvania and Maryland and West Virginia and so on Delaware uh you know
we know people all over and it's it makes it a lot a lot a lot more fun I think I I really enjoy that well thank
thanks Don i want to move on to Terry terry man because she is our current uh national vice president and she has been
president before and I think you're the chair of the Great Lakes region as well
and that's probably a few of the things I don't know about what what what got you involved in what have you gotten out
of it i mean why why volunteer in in your
opinion you're muted you're muted Terry terry
because I love astronomy i mean astronomy is something I've done since I was a teenager and and I came into this
a little bit different than you guys did i didn't know anybody from the league i had been a member of the league through
the clubs that I belonged and I had been president and vice president you know and held offices in local clubs and I
wanted to do more and I wanted to kind of get involved so I called uh they I
picked up the reflector and there was the call for nominations for officers and I called Barry Bean and I said
"Barry I would really like to help." And he said "Hey we need a secretary." And I
said "Oh my gosh." and I ended up running for secretary and that's how I came into the league but oh you know
over the years you meet so many interesting people and you learn so much it is worth every minute of it the one
thing I would say is depending on where you're at the most important thing is to
enjoy what you're doing but have the time if you volunteer have the time to
do the job um you know that's something once you volunteer you'll meet so many
great people and have such a good time that you'll you'll find time is there
because you make the time because you do like what you're doing so much and you
know and that's what took me to be chair of the Great Lakes region um you know
I've met so many people and it's really nice to go to a conference somewhere or
go into another astronomy club that you don't know and you sit down and immediately you feel we're right at home
because everybody's so nice and that's pretty much been my experience yeah yeah
yeah i I agree with that you know I'm looking at these characters I'm seeing on my screen right now Scott Roberts all
the way down these people i I would not have met known any of you people you
know w stepping forward like this over over the over the past few years and it's it just goes nationwide you know
all all the different regions you you tend to meet a lot of different people i think well so what but one of the things
that you you learn from everybody you know somebody in in Colorado is is going
to be do doing things differently than we do in Virginia and they they may be interested in different things and so
you learn about all that you expand your horizons as they say it's so it's a it's a very very fun thing and as you said
one of the uh key components is that you have to have the time to do this and it
kind of works both ways it's a you have to have the time but it is what you make
it you know so if you don't put much into it well okay you don't put as much
time into it and all that well you're not going to get much out of it either but if you want to do it you can do it
and uh it opens up a a big
expanse and it it is a lot a lot of fun um okay unless you guys have anything
else to say about this I'll uh I'll conclude with with this final slide here i want to emphasize that really if you
are an officer right now in an astronomy club and want to continue or want to
expand your your reach uh want to share your knowledge especially your organizational skills you know think
about volunteering um I just said that it's really it takes as much time as you
want to put into it for most things but some things you know you got to have
them done on time but by and large the more you put in or more time you put you put on the more you're going out of it
so if you just have you know some time to contribute you know think about it think about starting out at the regional
level um about you know like I did be I was secretary and I tell you secretary
is it's easy uh you know you don't put in hours a week you put in an
hour every quarter maybe I don't know you know you you don't do all that much
but but there are jobs that have to be done and someone has to do it So uh go
ahead and and think about this uh one more slide and I think I'm done all that just my final slide here but I want to
uh uh thank you all for listening on this and give it give it some thought if you are in a position uh to to to
volunteer and you have an inclination to do to do it uh I'll put Terry Man on the
spot and I'll say contact her and she'll she'll point you in the in in the right direction uh and I don't think you'll
regret it either anyway that that's what I have thank you for your time and all that okay thank you John appreciate that
sure uh yeah I mean the league wouldn't be here if it was not for the volunteers and a lot of local clubs just definitely
wouldn't be there either and it is a great hobby and you will meet fantastic people so thank you very much John
you're welcome okay how about if we go to Don Nab don it's good to see you i
know you just walked in from a camping trip so uh you're just getting jumped right on line jumped right online too
yep that's right we were camping in uh deep in the woods of Pennsylvania where there was absolutely no cell signal for
since Tuesday so uh it was a nice break actually to tell you the truth so I bet
all right so I have a few slides on uh
what's going on in the night sky i didn't want to spend too much time on it because then we have a lot to do here but uh let's take a look i will share my
screen it's coming through okay yep [Music]
okay all right so a few highlights of the main June uh 25 night sky um as
always I'd like to point out in case we have some new viewers online tonight that every month John Goss is does a
great service to uh amateur astronomers across the world really especially here in the the US by putting out a night sky
guide now our club just finished teaching beginner astronomy classes to uh the local night school and I hand
this out to every student and I tell them "This is more than a map this is a story." uh where John leads you from you
know point one two three four five six leads you across the night sky so these
are great resources to have and we so much appreciate John doing this uh every month puts some time in for this in
addition to the sky map there's always a couple other graphics he puts out this one actually has passed this was from
the beginning of the month but it's you know he always puts out one if you can only see one event this month see this
one this was always always a fun one i always try to try to find and and see the things John tells us to see and
here's the moon one you put out a moon one for a very tricky object to see on the moon on the far far edge of the moon
but uh these are always fun always entertaining and uh great for beginners
especially this main sky map you can walk yourself around the sky if you don't know the sky uh how do you find
them it's pretty easy you go to the Astronomical League website you got to
scroll all the way down at the bottom go to navigating the night sky and you click and up comes this page so and here
you can see here are the May the Maya navigating night sky here's the one about the uh the Mario Oriente about uh
the moon and Mars so uh it's a great resource i really encourage everyone to
take take advantage of it whether you're a member of the league or not so uh
lunar highlights the new moon is on May 26 and June 25th uh here's a picture I
got a couple weeks ago this I call this the smiling moon i guess some people call this the old moon the new moon's
arms but uh I saw it as a nice smile in the sky so uh had to take a picture of
that but a new moon is a great time to observe any of the deep dark sky objects
that we might want to look for this time of the year galaxies are a great thing to see lobular clusters full moon the
full moon is fun a lot of amateur astronomers will poo poo the full moon is so bright but I enjoy the full moon
uh it it you don't have the contrast necessarily as when you have the Terminator view but I still enjoy the
full moon so uh the May full moon is on May 12th this is called the Frogs Croing full moon these names come from I picked
these up from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada uh u calendar that's
put out every year a great calendar and then the uh the June full moon is on uh June 11th the trees fully leaved full
moon i really like the June full moon this the moon is so low in the sky if
you can get a uh an open field there where the the moon light is shining on a on tall trees it lights them up so
beautifully so I love the June full moon so this is the fully leave full moon
that is on June 11th the planets you know for through the winter we had some
a wonderful series of of planets to see we still have some but uh it's not quite
what it was mercury is now in the pre-dawn sky but uh at the end of the at the end of the month it goes behind the
sun and then it reappears in the evening sky on June 6 venus is in in the
pre-dawn sky shining so bright minus 4.7 magnitude mars is getting is falling
further and further behind us and are erased around the sun but it's still visible it's still a red dot in the sky
it's in cancer the crab right now and uh late in the month it's going to move into Leo and I'll have another slide
coming up in a moment to show you uh the moon and Messier 95 96 and Mars are all
close at the end of June it's going to be a nice sight in the sky uh Jupiter
Jupiter is also falling behind uh we are actually we are speeding ahead of of
Jupiter and it's going to drop into the glow of the sun uh pretty early in June
so catch it now i'll catch it in May before it drops into the into the muck of the setting sun uh Saturn Neptune
they're in the pre-dawn sky they're very close uranus is uh out right now we won't be able to see it is uh going to
reappear in the pre-dawn sky in late June so uh so really there's a lot of happening in the pre-dawn sky and Mars
is the the one happening mostly in the in the evening sky so here is that uh
that that site that I mentioned in the previous slide here's the moon and Mars this is on June 29th and pretty close to
a whole couple of galaxies here in Leo the Lion uh and while we're in Leo one
of my favorite things I always have to mention is the Leo triplet uh this is a
great little grouping of three galaxies two of them are Messi objects one is not
uh if you want an idea what it might look like in a in a telescope I took this with my sea star um you know there
are much better pictures out there of the Leo triplet but this is more of a representation of what it might look like you know in a pretty good size
telescope at a dark sky site you can get all three these are the two Messier ones this is the Hamburger Galaxy up here and
uh it's a beautiful site in the eyepiece you need a fairly wide viewpiece to catch all three but uh it's a beautiful
site in the sky my favorite constellation is Leo uh what else oh this is globular
cluster time the globulars are coming back m3 M5 probably the uh the most brilliant
one in the northern sky m13 in Hercules and uh M92 looks like I caught a little
bit of a uh a meteor or probably a satellite going through there but uh I
really enjoy looking at globulars uh M13 you just get lost looking at looking at
M13 it's such an amazing amazing view in the in the eyepiece and uh this is one of my
favorite asterisms when we have night sky observing events uh I like to show uh especially young people some of these
interesting asterisms of the sky this is one of my favorites this is called the three leaps of the gazelle so here we
have three pairs of stars all all part of Ursa Major but uh the story is that
uh the gazelle uh leapt away from Leo was chasing it and as it leapt across
the sky it left three pairs of hoof prints in the mud so this is the three
leaps of the gazelle uh always fun to see always fun to show to people with
doing a laser tour of the sky and uh here's you know we I want to
show you a little asterism that a friend of mine actually past president of our club showed me we we all know this part
of the sky Corona Hercules Bodies but I found she pointed out to me another
asterism in the sky we can make up our own of course anytime so here's our tourists this is the same view of the
sky i just removed the constellation lines but here is the martini glass in
the sky this is always a lot of fun especially to show uh if you have young people around and their parents are
hanging around something to show their parents here's the martini glass in the sky
so additional sky guides other than what uh the AL puts out you can get them from
skymaps.com or what's out tonight you can just do a skymath.com is is the address and uh just do a search for
what's out tonight and this will come up these are great guides they they're out there every month for free and uh I hand
these out to all the students that are beginner astronomy classes and uh they always appreciate them so I think that's
all I have for tonight wanted to keep it fairly short so uh back to you Terry
thank you Don let's see devided has made it hello Devid how are you
oh I'm fine thank you it's good to be here let me get Well I'm glad you joined
us okay so I'm sorry I'm late and I'm very glad to be here
um it's been kind of a bit of a rough week i was at the Texas Star Party where
I gave a lecture that went very well but I had a couple of bad falls while I was
there i wasn't hurt or anything but um it was it shook me up a little bit and
the other thing is last Saturday night I had a pretty serious car accident
i wasn't or anything uh except that when the airbag went off it
it scratched both of my wrists and they're healing right now but I lost the
car and um and uh it's probably in a way a good
thing because I'm uh slowly recovering and uh trying to get my life back
together it's good to see all my friends at the Astronomical League and I do have a quotation today
for you and
um I think the appropriate one right now let me see here is going to
be is going to be from Tennyson and uh I've always loved Tennyson his
poetry has been really inspiring to me beginning when I was in college and I
wrote an essay about the elements of science in in memoriam and I really did enjoy that and
I I still love Tennyson but today I'm going to quote his final poem it's
called Crossing the Bar wrote it in 1889 the year he died and he requested that
anyone who publishes a um catalog of his poetry please end it with this
poem i'm not ending anything right now but I'd like to read this poem sunset
and evening star and one clear call for me and may there be no moaning of the
bar when I put out to see but such a tide as moving seems asleep to fool for
sound and foam when that which drew from out the boundless deep turns again home
twilight and evening bell and after that the dark and may there be no sadness of
farewell when I embark for though from out are born of time and
place the flood may bear me far i hope to see my pilot face to face when I have
crossed the bar thank you Terry for letting me do this so late i'm doing a
lot better now and back to you well we're glad you're doing a lot better it
sounds like you have had a rough week yeah well thank you so much for joining
us we appreciate you taking the time to do that and we will be on next month so
we'll make sure we let you know earlier all right well thank you very
much i am going to jump in here um Chuck Allen should have was going to be here
but he had something come up so I'm going to just do a very short report on
um some of the things we've got coming up and let's see here we
go let's go back to the beginning here and we do have Alcon coming up alcon is
really we have got probably maybe 30 registrations left and that's about it
we will be closing registration for Alcon either on uh May 31st or before if
we fill up and Alcon right now is uh June 26 through 28th and during that
time we are at Bryce Canyon bryce Canyon's astronomy festival will be going on at the same time so you can
also attend that and also there are about 16 speakers that will be speaking
during that time and our vendor room is filled up we have quite a few vendors um
that will be there uh and ZWO Spencer's Camera Stellar View um Pegasus Astro
Explore Scientific Dark Sky Utah Advanced Telescope Systems Sky and
Telescope magazine you name it we got a bunch of people that will be there as vendors so we feel very honored that we
have them too so please um if you can join us at
Astrocon next month um I'm going to jump down one more
there we go i am going to say we will be back on June 6th at 7 PM that should be
June 6th at seven i forgot the 700 p.m matt Rhino from the Milwaukee Michigan
uh astronomy club will be joining us i don't have a title yet but mark your calendars we will be back here on June
6th so what I am going to do is go back
and get Kevin in here um Kevin thank you for hanging out with us as soon as I can
hit the right slide kevin's gonna be speaking oh sorry kevin will be speaking about
Mother Road to the Stars uh the space heritage of Route 66 and Route 66 has so
much heritage i mean I I I love Route 66
every think that would be
amazing and I see my internet went i do have a problem with my internet so I
probably just locked up again uh but let me introduce Kevin for those of you that
don't know him and I don't imagine there's a lot of people that don't know who you are Kevin if you're involved in
astronomy and you've been at LOL Observatory Kevin Schindler is the historian and public information officer
at LOL Observatory where he's worked for 30 years he has authored eight books and
contributed to a bilquy astronomy column called View for Mars Hill for the
Arizona Daily Sun newspaper in May of 2023 he he served as the astronomer and
residence at the Grand Canyon and a fun fact and Kevin you will have to explain one of these he has both a fossil crab
and an asteroid named after him how in the world did you get a fossil crab
named after you well in a previous lifetime my
background was actually in geology and paleontology back in the Lake Cretaceous when I was in that field and so I did a
lot of fossil collecting out of Florida and we did field work in Jamaica and other places and and um there was a new
crab species fossil crab species that um they must have run out of names because they decided to use mine on it so yeah
this fossil crab it's um it's impressive or not I'm not sure but I think it's
impressive and then asteroids um little observatory has named has found a lot of
asteroids and um and so periodically they'll name them after different people
so um gosh I'm I'm looking at the group here i think several of of you guys have
asteris named after you on this kind of cool thing yep it does um okay well Kevin and how
about if we turn it all over to you and thank you for joining us i know you just
got home too not too long ago you have been traveling seems like it's the time of year yes I was down in Mexico with my
wife a a a nice downtime and um the weather was great and we were
we on the largest freshwater lake in Mexico Lake Chapala and it was just
lovely and um we just got back last night my gosh well thank you for taking
the time i I I know you're busy and you're probably tired oh no this is
great this is always fun to talk about this stuff and as you were saying Terry thanks for the introduction um Route 66
is one of those magical things in the United States um there are a lot of a
lot of historic roadways but Route 66 um nicknamed the mother road by by
um by of course I drew a blank i've got his book right over here um Grace of
Wrath John Steinbeck um he he and there's also other nicknames for it the
Will Rogers Highway America's Highway and such but it's a very storied um
roadway and next year is the centennial of his commissioning and um and as
discussions came up about celebrating Route 66 I'm at Low Observatory you know
we're just as the crow flies half a mile from from Old Route 66 um plus we have a
car that's at the observatory um it's a 1911 Stevens Durier motor vehicle and it
was owned by our founder Perl and he would take it out um across Northern
Arizona and the car is actually older than Route 66 um so it it's been around
um for a long time and it still runs and we take it out for parades and stuff like that um for years we we had it in
the July 4th parade in Flagstaff and a couple times I rode in it in the back dressed as P of LOL um so I I still have
to send apologies to anybody who had to witness that but it's a it's a neat car and so we were thinking okay we want we
want to be connected the observatory wants to be connected with this celebration um and and then I started
thinking you know looking at the path of Route 66 and it's it's almost stunning when you look at the path and um and
astronomy things beyond um just low observatory and so that's what I want to
kind of share tonight um and I you know some of it happen stance but I think one
of the great roadways of America um with all this astronomy heritage I think it's
a great topic and so um let me just get the program up
here um and you see it title slide
uh yes mother Road to the Star okay so so when I started looking I realized
holy cow there's a lot of connections with astronomy um first of all a couple things about Route 66 um next year's the
centennial so 1926 is when it was commissioned um and then it was
decommissioned 1985 there's still a lot of segments um along the 2400 miles um
that are still active but it's not Route 666 per se um and Route 66 went across
eight states started up in Chicago um came down Illinois Missouri just a
corner of Kansas and over to California um and what I found stunning when I
started looking at it is this this is a map roughly of the pathway of Route 66
and each one of these X's is some space themed thing um that is along the way
and so there's really a lot as you can imagine there's a lot in Chicago there's a lot in the LA area but there's stuff
in between here um and so um you know some of it's scientific research centers
some of it's um public outreach some of it is the cheese of Route 66 you know
you have like the biggest hot dog and the biggest this and that that um there's a couple things like that um
even UFO sightings a famous UFO sighting so what I thought I'd do is just do kind
of a a whirlwind road trip starting in Illinois and just kind of going through
and highlight some of the space themed things and I'll point out that um we're we're doing an exhibit at the
observatory about this and we're also um looking at a potential book idea because
there's as you mentioned Terry there's so many different angles of Route 66 and
so many different ways of celebrating it um the cars the people the the um signs
um so much but the astronomy in space I think is pretty cool and I and I think that's worth um sharing with more
people so let's start this little road trip in Illinois and so what I've done
is I've got some postcards for each state um just to kind of show the pathway through it and as I mentioned
Illinois as you can imagine especially with Chicago has a lot of um connections
um so we start in Chicago here's the official beginning of Route 66 the sign
and then we think about University of Chicago holy cow what a heritage of
astronomy going back to the 1890s and this is George Ellery Hail who founded
so many amazing observatories American observatories um Yorks Mount Wilson um
Palomar um set up the 200 in there just an amazing person he was involved with
um so we think of him here's a here's a picture of Yorks Observatory because
Yorks was connected with the University of Chicago that was kind of the research facility um so here's a an early picture
um you can see one person in here is not on staff that's this guy right here this
is an Albert Einstein visit with the staff um but York's and University of
Chicago had some remarkable scientists through the years i haven't included any modern-day astronomers
um just because I learned long ago that I don't want to annoy anybody by saying something wrong about them so you know
people that aren't here anymore you know I'm safe but these are just some names
of people who worked at directed or otherwise were affiliated with
University of Chicago astronomy department and this is a who this doesn't even include a couple Noble
laurettes um but but it's a pretty impressive field so so we think about
the development of of astronomy and especially astrophysics um in the late 19th early 20th century
and this was one of the leading centers of it um of course we can't talk about Yorks without Edwin Hubble who um got
his PhD from University of Chicago 1917 here he is at one of the um Yorks at the
Yorkis Observatory and I think it's kind of interesting when we look at a couple themes of of Route 66 that Hubble was
born along the future path of Route 66 he went to school in Chicago and then he
worked most of his career in Los Angeles area so his whole life was centered
around that historic road and of course um places like Adler
Planetarium um which is a important center of astronomical education and outreach and you know something that
we're all here for is is to share the awe and wonder of space and the inspiration we get um and that certainly
happens at Adlark so Chicago has this really amazing heritage of research as
well as as outreach and education and I'm kind of an astronaut nerd so we
can't talk about Chicago with talking about some of the astronauts who grew up there or were born there um Jean Cernin
Jim Levelvel um Whoops um and I keep hitting it there um
anyways they all they all these are just some of the moon walkers that grew up in the Chicago area
okay david who's this
i say David because is it what's that that's not Bart Bark is it this is Ray
Bradberry i I you see I put David on the spot because he's written so many eloquent books and and Raven Bradberry
um he's he's from an area about 20 25 miles from Chicago and he was a prolific
writer as is devided um he wrote the screenplay for He came from outer space
a classic American movie with really incredible acting um and then um glad
you put me on the spot for that Uh because I was thinking about Bart Bach when you showed the picture of all
those lovely scientists standing in front of the 40 in one of them was Frost
and Bart always talked about those three scientists as the three meteorologists
hail snow and frost yeah that's perfect
so Brad Barry also wrote um classic Mars novels um and and interestingly you know
he was one of the writers that wrote with a very Lwellian um perspective with these canals that
were supposedly on the planet and bringing water to the dying planet and such so he was born Bradberry was born
just um a little bit off of of Chicago so you can see there's science there's science fiction there's outreach and
education we've seen so far if we if we dip down a little bit you might see the X here um Wilmington in that area um
this is the classic Route 66 um stop it was it's called the Launching Pad a
restaurant that was there but right next to the Launching Pad was the Gemini Man
and the Gemini man um was was one of several statues along Route 66 about 20
feet tall made of fiberglass and there were the so-called muffler man and they were used for different advertising um
so this one was the Gemini giant it was opened right around the time Gemini was
sending the Gemini um missions were going up with two two astronauts on
board and so this is this is part of the kiche of Route 66 that I like um and
connecting it to Flagstaff a little bit if you've ever been to Flagstaff at the Northern Arizona University
um this is Louis the lumberjack if you look closely they kind of have the same pose and everything the hands are in the
same position louie was supposedly the first muffler man and sat on Route 66 at
a a cafe in Flagstaff called the Lumberjack Cafe and now there's one
Louis outside of the football stadium and one inside um but it same the same
um origins of the muffler of the Gemini man Gemini Giant so there's a little bit
of the Route 66 cheese that makes um the pathway so cool if we duck down again
here boy I keep putting you on the spot David but notice where the X is here and
it looks like there's not a dang thing there um but there is something there um
and this was the birthplace of a young fella if you look front row second from
the left um his name is Clyde clyde Tombbo
and Clyde Tombbo was born in Streeter Illinois not far off a beaten path of
Route 66 and again just like just like um Hubble Clyde Tomba would spend
um at least the early part of his career and make his make his name along Route
66 when he ended up in Flagstaff here but this is Clyde when he was I don't know eight or nine years old maybe um
when he was still living in Streer and if you go to Streeter today
there's this big mural there um there's a Pluto sculpture that was just added a
few years ago um and so they they certainly love Clay Tumba though there
and celebrate them so let's go down a little bit further to Missouri and Missouri um St louis as you
can imagine um has some things like um that's where some of the Apollo
spacecraft part um elements were built um but there's a couple other places here too there's one called
Marshfield and in Marshfield is where this guy was born Edwin Hubble in
1889 and then just a little bit away gosh it's maybe 20 miles away Harlo
Shappley was born and it's remarkable that within this short amount of distance two of the great American
astronomers of the 20th century if not all time were born they they certainly didn't know each other growing up but
they both came from the same place essentially they both ended up at Mount Wilson and over overlapped there i
wouldn't say that um they were friends but they um both worked for Mount Wilson
for a while shappley ended up um leaving later on and Shaploo was one of the astronomers involved in the great debate
of 1920 um talking about the the solar system the universe and this the scale
of the universe and whether these fuzzy spiral nebula were island galaxies or
island universes or were all part of the same galaxy so they came from just a
just really close together um right along where Route 66 would eventually go
if we go go down to Kansas Kansas there's just a little bit of Route 66
and in fact if you look at the map there's really not much along here but I have to point out that there's this
community right in the middle here called LOL and it's it's not connected
with astronomy at all but the f the name does derive from the same um name as LOL
Observatory and the LOLs of Massachusetts so that might be a little bit of a stretch um with the connection
with astronomy in Route 66 but what I do like is if we look at the state flag of
Kansas um um well not state flag but if you
look at the flag it has it on here but here's a sign from Kansas adastra peraspera um to the stars with
difficulty and so so the state itself has that connection with with astronomy
and of course we could talk more about if we get further away from Route 66 there's the Cosmosphere um one of the
great science museums in the country um and David I think is going to add
something here were you raising David or were you showing me away
no I'm just going to say that Kansas is one of the couple of states in the
country that's actually passed a law stating that Pluto is a major planet
when it is visible over Kansas sky and I thought I wanted to throw that in it's
legal and in fact in fact we'll we'll touch on that a little bit later when we get to Arizona because Arizona's um
claim along the same lines so let's head to Oklahoma
and Oklahoma um if you go to Tulsa um there's this really great um space
museum Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium and they I in recent years
they've done a lot of astronaut events um in addition to this great um just exhibits of of um aircraft spacecraft um
kind of similar to if you go further down to Weatherford weatherford is the hometown of Tom Stafford who orbited the
moon on Apollo 10 and they likewise have this um air and space museum this is
devoted specifically to him and he just passed away a couple years ago um but but this is another another museum
celebrating um aircraft and spacecraft and there's one more place um
in Texas if we go another place that celebrates an astronaut Alan Bean who
walked on the moon on Apollo 12 is from this little community right here and
there's the Wheeler Historical Museum and if you go there they have the statue
of of Allen being there um and a little bit information it's not a museum
dedicated specifically to him but it's a great place to learn about the Apollo program so you can see through Texas
we've we've there are so many different aspects of space um you know a lot of
astronomy but also astronomics um that's there and we keep going west um through
New Mexico and New Mexico has a couple fun places if you go if you go to Santa
Fe um and if you go to the plaza Santa Fe there's a building called 109 East
Palace and 109 East Palace doesn't look like anything um you went you go there and
you say "What does that have to do with space or science or anything?" And if
you go inside there's a little plaque on the wall and it talks about how um this
was the entry point for anybody that was going to be working um up at Los Alamos
um where they developing um the atomic bomb um and that's maybe a stretch from
astronomy and space but I don't think so i think it's all connected so every every everybody from around the world
who worked on on the Manhattan project and went to Los Alamos they first checked in here and there stories about
the locals you know always wondering what was going on there's a lot of foreigners
coming into town they would always go to the plaza and then they were gone and nobody saw them again because they this
is where they checked in and then they went up to Los Alamos and that was all top secret um so these people all
disappeared um from Santa Fe another New Mexico and here's that
plaque that's there another um New Mexico connection is in
Albuquerque and and with these I'm not giving every single one but just kind of an example but in Albuquerque it used to
be called I think the Atomic Atomic Missile Museum or something like that it's now the National Museum of Nuclear
Science and History and this is a great place um they have models of of Fat Man
and Little Boy um and um really really
do a good job of promoting the heritage of space science in New
Mexico now if we go to Flagstaff we've got two states to go Arizona and
California and Flagstaff um of course is the center of a lot of astronomy but before we get to Flagstaff
there's this little place in Winslow and Winslow um has a place that had a pro
profound impact on space sciences on on human exploration of space and that's of
course Meteor Crater and um Gene Shoemaker the father of astrogeeology
um is the one who proved beyond doubt this was created by an impact from space and it was and it's still used by
scientists who um still go here to study the astronauts who went to the moon um
trained here it's the great analog to the moon and I should point out that Aremis astronauts are coming to Arizona
and training just like the Apollo ones did going to some of the same places including Meteor Crater um so that that
Meteor Crater as a training ground is not just a historic footnote but is something that's still happening today
and if you if you drive to Meteor Crater at some point um you might hear
something about movies that were made in the area another kind of fun space connection is the I think the arts we
talked a little bit um before about some of the statues that were up there i think this is neat um Starman um this
again like I don't know Jeff Bridges I think won the Academy Award or he was at least nominated for his part in this
movie um but the final scenes of the movie take place at Meteor Crater um and
so here we have some some Hollywood along Route 66 before you get to to
California um if you go to Meteor Crater today you won't see this building you'll see more like this um but this was um
the American Meteorite Museum that Harvey Nineer ran here for years before he moved it to Sedona and other places
but right outside Meteor Crater you had this vast collection of meteorites and this was this was one of the places you
stopped if you're going to Meteor Crater you're going to stop here to at least see um an amazing collection of
meteorites if not actually buy your own personal um versions of
them so let's get to Flagstaff and Flagstaff I'm not going to
go much into the heritage of Flagstaff because there's so much and I mean I know I've talked about this a lot before
but Flagstaff um one thing that I think is interesting is when Pival set the observatory up in
1894 it was 18 years before Arizona was a state he chose Flagstaff and at the
time Flagstaff nickname was the skylight city because of the brilliance of the stars well jump ahead to the
1950s and well going back to 1894 when the observatory was established there's
no electricity there's no outdoor lighting problems um electricity hadn't reached it yet but by the 1950s
um it was becoming a problem at least for the astronomers and um the observatory low
observatory acquired a um telescope from Perkins Observatory a 72-in diameter
telescope and they found a place outside of town to put it you know where it was a little bit darker but there were
search lights that periodically would shine up in the sky and so the some of the leadership of the observatory
including Earl Slifer who had once been mayor of Flagstaff he talked to his buddies in downtown and said you know we
don't want to get rid of this light but can we do something to kind of moderate how it's used i mean does a search light
need to be on at 2:00 in the morning and so the the city leaders wrote an
ordinance and this was the first outdoor lighting ordinance in the entire world
um right in Flagstaff and through the years Flagstaff continued um to write
new ordinances update the current one the county that it's in Cookanino County
um develop ordinances and in 2001 when the then international um dark sky
association now called dark sky international when they started their program of recognizing communities who
um protecting the dark skies they named Flagstaff as the world's first international dark sky city and
Flagstaff continues um to be a model for how to protect dark skies so that's a
big part of Flagstaff's heritage but of course there's a lot more um this guy we
talked about earlier he migrated west to Kansas and end up in FL ended up in
Flagstaff and discovered Pluto in 1930 that's Clay Tomba um Pluto on the left
here has such a strong heritage of Flagstaff it's been called Flagstaff has been called the home of Pluto because
virtually every major discovery related to it has connections with Flagstaff
early searches its discovery by Clay Tomba um the first um detection of its
atmosphere um the its largest moon Shaun were discovered off of um photographic
plates taken in Flagstaff the New Horizons mission has scientists that work in Flagstaff so it has this really
strong connection and in fact it's so strong that every year we hold an iHeart Pluto festival as it's called and this
year one of our featured presenters was one um David Levy um and hopefully David
you had as much fun as we had you we did having you here oh boy did I ever that
was that was clearly the highlight of the winter for me i just loved it
i And it's a lot of fun it's I I just wish Clyde had discovered Pluto maybe in June instead of February up in Flagstaff
because it's the weather can be a little challenging and there's also in Flagstaff like a lot
of these other communities there's a strong amateur community here amateur astronomy community so Flagstaff
continues to be a great place um to do research as well as to do outreach and
and I pick on David again um because David was part of a contingency that came for the grand opening of our Marley
Foundation Astronomy Discovery Center um for years the uh the attendance at the
observatory was getting to the point where we were we didn't have room we didn't have room for for visitors to
park we didn't have room um to for more things to do so you would have one long
line at at the telescopes and such and so um last November we opened this new
facility it's 40,000 square feet it's got three stories this is um the inside
from the second story looking down up on the top story is what's called an open
deck planetarium um you're up there and you know we thought about building a
traditional planetarium but we've got the world's first international dark sky city we've got dark skies so we built a
planetarium but didn't bother putting the roof on we use the real dark skies of flag stuff and these seats are heated
and so um it's a delightful experience you sit back and look at the stars and there's this screen that pops up so you
know you can do stargazing point out things and then oh yeah if you look really closely you see that little
smudge here's a closeup of the Andromeda galaxy and so it's really a fabulous experience um this grand opening was
such a stellar event that it brought in some some of the great names in astronomy um these two characters right
here for instance um you'll recognize from tonight's program um Scott and
David and David um Iker who does a lot with you guys also um so it was a it was
really great time to celebrate astronomy and to kind of kick off this new era of
astroourism and astroourism is becoming a major element of the tourism community
to the point that in June um I'm going with the local Flagstaff
um chamber or visitors convention and visitors bureau um to promote um Astro
tourism because um it's not just astronomers who recognize it it's the
tourism industry that realizes a lot of people are wanting to see dark skies and reconnect with the cosmos and so how do
they do that they go to places like you know low observatory or Kit Peak or um a
lot of other places and so um I think it's it's really gratifying in current
times where we're losing a lot of programs i think there there's this desire by people to to simplify a little
bit and just reconnect with the universe around us um and so it's really great to be able to participate in
that i wanted to just throw this picture up here this is a picture of Mars that
was taken with the Clark telescope by one of our educators Dylan Short and
David Dave Iiker just shared this on his um Facebook page a few days ago but if
you ever look through the Clark I've never seen this view through the Clark of Mars um but it's pretty spectacular
um and you can see one of the ice caps there and everything and if you look closely I don't know maybe you can see some of the canals um depending on how
much you drank earlier tonight one more thing I wanted to mention about Flagstaff is you know Flagstaff is the
home of Pluto and we have this Pluto festival and there it's it goes beyond
the science it's a community pride and so one of these one of these community members
that takes pride is called Mother Road Brewing Company and Mother Road Brewing Company is named after Route 66 and for
the last several years every year for our IHAR Pluto festival they make a different beer and make a can for it so
our first year was Pluto Porter and it it featured nitrogenated beer because
Pluto has nitrogen and so each year there's these different themes we have here's Clyde with his 9-in telescope
this is the year that the observatory acquired that 9-in telescope in an auction and it's now in display right
here behind Scott and David right there and so again representing I think
not just that science has done here but science has celebrated
here and then there's the Galaxy diner um astronomy themed so let's go let's go
west of here um if we go to Kingman and for those of you who might have be
familiar with Kingman maybe you you're on your way to Vegas this that if you're
in Flagstaff you drive here and then go north from Kingman to go to Las Vegas you might wonder what the space
connection here is well 1953 um there's supposed UFO crash there are
three different UFOs that were cited um just a couple years ago a TV station in
Phoenix revisited this and um there's a fellow who even wrote a book about it
called Seven Days in May The Kingman UFO Story by Harry Drew and um perhaps not
surprising but I tried to get online to find a copy of this and I think it was
probably self-published i haven't found a copy anywhere um I I'm gonna be
visiting Kingman in a couple weeks and so I hope to find a copy there but I I think it's again as part of the space
lore of Route 66 um whatever you think about UFOs or or UAPs as they're often
called now unidentified aerial phenomena um again if you're going to find it
anywhere it seems like it's going to be along Route 66 well let's end the tour oh I I forgot
I added this because because we're talking about Arizona and you know where else in
Arizona these you know Arizonas are kind of funky this way um there's a state representative named Justin Wilmouth and
he got the idea of of officially recognizing Pluto as the state planet so
you have state flowers and state fossils and state birds he said "Let's have a state planet." So he introduced this
bill i went down to this is on the floor of of the of the house i went there to
testify on behalf of Pluto along with our director Amanda Bosch um and Pluto
was um through some good good nature bantering on both sides it was approved
as Arizona's official state planet my thought is because of this we should
state change the state flag and the state flag features the copper colored star and 13 rays of of the sun we should
change it to this um so that Pluto is at the center so there's no confusion about
where the state um who has the state planet is Pluto
that's right so let's send now we'll go to California and to Los Angeles and Los
Angeles like like Chicago that general area has a lot of astronomy um stuff
along the way um again over here is where Santa Monica is where Route 66
ends but if you go in that area here's our friend George Hail again who who was
the maker of big telescopes the Yorky's 40-inch refractor the 60inch at Mount
Wilson which was the largest telescope for years the 100 inch at Mount Wilson which was the largest telescope for
years and then Hail was uh involved with the development of Palomar's um 200inch
telescope named after him so Hail did a lot um for astronomy out here and then
remember Hubble who started out in Chicago just like Hail ended up here and
u made some of the fundamental discoveries of astronomy in the 20th century um for instance he had this
plate he took a 1923 and he thought he found um several
nova um realized this one wasn't a nova it was a um a variable star a sephiid
variable and that allowed him to connect um distances of galaxies
um um with their velocities and then he also developed his famous tuning fork
kind of kind of the same model that we use for galaxies today it it's changed some but it hasn't changed that much so
this this is an example of some of the stuff that Hubble did out out there of course Griffith Planetarium is a center
for astronomy research and inspiration um Jet Propulsion Laboratory
um found in the 1930s um is a is a center for um space studies um so
there's so much out there i could spend all this time on California um but but again there's so much that's out there
um and then we'd get to the end of the trail Santa Monica um Santa Monica Pier
so so to me I I just find it fascinating in thinking about you know the
centennial of this this great American road the mother road that there's so much space along along it and it's not
like it was planned um but but but scientific research astronaut training
um astronomy education um some of the classic Route 66 heritage of big signs
and big statues and stuff like that um UFO sightings there's just a little bit of everything and to end I thought I
would just show this final slide showing the flags of each of the states along Route 66 and you know this is this is a
little bit weak in some ways because most states have a star in them um
representing you know a member of a star represents that state or you have stars representing the original 13 states but
if you look at all of the flags they all have astronomy connections some of them are just the single star like Texas um
the zeia is is the cardinal directions with the sun oklahoma though you're
looking for the astronomy and you maybe maybe these crosses could represent stars but in the official description of
Oklahoma's flag um that's sky blue representing the sky um Kansas has a
rising sun and so on so every state has some astronomy themed um element um to
his flag so to me you know as a historian I love
Route 66 I love astronomy And I think it's kind of neat to see what the connection is so that's kind of a a
basic introduction i I kind of give this program partly as just kind of an
experiment because I think it's kind of fascinating there is a connection i'm not sure if others do um but but in
folks I've talked to nobody's ever thought about this angle of of Route 66 so I think something we should pay
attention to especially in the next year as as all these centennial events are happening
so Terry I'm done blabbing i could talk about this all night because I think it's really cool but David will start
calling me out on things and Scott will start telling me story start telling stories about how he defaced um this
book he has with all these important signatures of all these astronauts and
the who's who of people in space and I sumearily defaced it and he still doesn't talk to me because of it oh come
on i I'm still apologizing i'm proud I'm
proud that you defend Well thank you Kevin you know that is a really interesting take on 66 i never looked at
it like that i mean it was always just so historical and something I thought
would be really cool to do but you've added a whole new section to Route 66
yeah I think it's something you know it's especially next year with the centennial you know in two years nobody
will care but next year there there's a lot of interest and so I think it's a
good angle that we can use yeah you'll have to keep us updated on what you do either at LOL or around there i would
love that sounds like something that would be a lot of fun to attend yeah um in fact we were talking to Mary Demuth
earlier who's online here her daughter is the head of the archives at the observatory and her team is is creating
this exhibit um and so in our exhibit hall Pip Lol's car nicknamed Big Red is
right in the middle and on one side is going to be an exhibit about Big Red and his connection with Route 66 on the
other side is is kind of what we've talked about tonight this um countrywide connection with um the Mother Road and
space that sounds like a lot of fun i'd like to know more about that as it gets closer and and David had his hand up and
I thought I could talk long enough to where he would maybe forget he was gonna say something but go ahead well thank
you Kevin i I think if I had missed your lecture today I would have had no choice
but to go out and have another car accident your lecture was outstanding it's one of the best
astronomy lectures I've ever heard it is outstanding with a capital O and a
capital G i really really enjoyed it i was thrilled by it uh it kind of made my
whole day and thank you Kevin oh thanks David and I I think um that auto
accident probably um created some damage um but I'll I'll take you for what you're
saying and I and I have to say again I appreciate you and Scott being up here
during the grand opening of the Astronomy Discovery Center thank you thank you it was uh it was absolutely
fantastic and for anybody that wants to see one of the most amazing outreach
centers in the world uh dedicated to astronomy and space exploration you know
go no further than LOL Observatory you're going to really love it and uh
you know we got special tours uh Kevin you know took us into the uh library and
uh um it was just really a lot of fun and I want a copy of the shot that you
took of all of us uh standing around Clyde Thomas telescope so I'll send that
to you very cool very cool thank you that is really cool yeah i didn't know
you had Big Red i didn't realize that that was there well when you when you come and visit I'll show it to you it
it's it's sitting in the middle of our um Putinham Collection Center and the
Putinham Collection Center is part library part archives part offices um
but the car still runs and so when they take it out they put it on on these little rollers and push it out the doors
and then start it and drive it um and Oh my gosh if you're lucky to be here at the right time you can get a ride in it
there we go that would be that car would never be the same
oh that sounds like a lot of fun well Kevin thank you so much i really enjoyed that and I'm sure our audience did too
that just takes a whole new spin on 66 but please do keep us updated on any
activities that are going on you're more than welcome to come back anytime if you just want to talk for 15 minutes or so
and update us on what's going on we appreciate that thank you no problem love to have you come back so all right
does anybody else have anything that you'd like to say or is there any questions anywhere I guess I should ask
no I I just I wanted to add um uh you know I I put in a little segment of a a
PowerPoint about Annie Jump Cannon today is the anniversary of her acceptance by
the International Astronomical Union uh for um the Harvard what became known as
the or is known now as the Harvard uh spectral classification system and um I
think it's called the [Music] OBFGKM system okay i think it should be
called the anti- jump cannon system but yeah but one of the uh amazing and
venerable uh uh women astronomers uh and she opened the door for many others um I
was in reading about her um you know I did not know that she was deaf um you
know and so that was uh that was something I learned today but um uh you know what an amazing uh and dedicated
astronomer you know classifying over 350,000 stars you know the oldfashioned
way looking at uh individual spectra identifying it and uh and mark it down
in a log so no computers she was a computer so yeah definitely
yeah she did amazing work there was a actually a the a theater that put on a play about her history here and a lot of
people that were in the astronomy club I was in it was held at a college we all went and it was amazing to learn about
her and the things that she did she did and went through so um really did enjoy
that but that that's how I kind of knew some of her history in more detail um
but yeah she was an amazing lady really and one of her peers was uh uh am I
pronouncing correct her last name was Leave It henrietta Leit is that right and she was also deaf
yeah and so they had her in the play too yeah so but uh maybe you know I mean
gosh I would not wish anyone to have uh you know a challenge like that but uh in
another way uh when I think of people I mean let's just take Stephen Hawking for example you know they you know you have
uh some sort of challenge and it allows them to focus on certain aspects of
their lives and to improve upon them and uh you know uh These people all did
really truly amazing things that we're still paying honor to today yes scott if
I could just mention um that that story you talk about the the computers at
Harvard um it's a fascinating story and um David Soil did her book a glass
universe um that's all about that and I if you haven't read it um David Soil
David Soil she's such a great writer but I think really covered that really nicely
she's a great author too a very nice person yep and I'm sure that's an amazing story
really when you get into more details about it because you know I it's just
hard to believe i mean those women were just incredible women that were doing things that you know like you said old
style you know no computers they were really doing the brass tax of what it
actually was women but incredible yes they were definitely
and you know hidden hidden figures the book and movie really brought great attention to the computers of a later
era but the ones of the 1800s and 1900s I don't know if they can be more
impressive but they they had a lot against them they were remarkable that's true yeah they were definitely when we
went to the Vatican Observatory there's also a group of women that did incredible work on classifying uh star
positions and this kind of thing so you know it's uh you know there's been so much work
done by so many unsung heroes um and I I think that we'll be be uncovering them
for a long time that's true so all right well um I would like to
thank everybody for being here and joining us tonight and please mark your
calendar for June 6th and Matt Rhino of the Milwaukee Astronomical Society will
be with us and as soon as we get a title and an announcement made we'll get that published so thank you all very much and
thank you so much Kevin and Devid and Don and John Goss and Scott thank you
again for broadcasting and I will turn it back over to you okay thank you very much okay well uh uh before you go Terry
uh what can you say about how many spots are left for the Bryce Canyon event
i'm sorry i just locked up how many spots what i thought I just like shocked her the living daylights out of her no
no i was wanting to know how many spots are left or how many rooms are left for the Bryce Canyon event uh for Astrocon i
do know Monday night is completely gone because they had a limited amount of rooms because we have all of our council
coming in that's about 25 up for a big meeting on Tuesday it'll be an all day meeting and Don has that smile on his
face don will be there too yep it'll be a long day but after that I do believe
they have at least 15 or 20 rooms available each
night now I have not checked it lately uh that was probably about a week and a half ago and more people have signed up
online sure we are going to be really close to either cutting it off before May 31st or on May 31st and we're going
to have very very minimal rooms left if we get that far
so they're trying to get in everybody they can if you wanted to go to this I mean you're g it's going to be an
amazing event uh in incredibly I mean if you have not been to Bryce Canyon uh
this is just that alone is is worth a trip but add the layer of the
astronomical league you know pulling out all the stops and incredibly dark skies
it's just breathtaking so um you know I'll be there and looking forward to
seeing you there too so yeah and we do have some NAI speakers coming some of our youth speakers will be there oh wow
so we have at least two of the youth speakers that won awards this year that will be speaking uh during the week
during the few days there so and Scott thank you for the awards that you underwrite we all really appreciate what
Explore Scientific does it's it's our honor and responsibility so happy to be
play uh playing a part so thank you thank you okay uh I guess we're going to wrap this
up thank you Terry and um uh you know we want to u again recognize the
Astronomical League it is the world's largest federation of uh astronomy clubs
uh with over 300 clubs and over is it over over 25,000 25,000 members okay
still I mean a ton of people and uh you know more likely than not if uh if your
friends into amateur astronomy uh they're somehow touched by the astronomical league so all right you
guys have a great weekend and uh keep looking up good night
good night [Music]