Global Star Party 158

 

 

 

 

 

Transcript for Part A:

it's just us tonight just the two of us

just the two of

us that's

right just the two of

us well

here we

are it's tonight is the uh David Levy

and Scott Roberts show and um uh we are

David is live from uh veale Arizona I'm

here in

Arkansas and uh I think you

can if you're tuned in here you're

watching us this very early morning here

in uh Central Time Zone

uh uh we

are uh without Mr Christopher

go because he was unfortunately clouded

out fairly severely so but um I have a a

little uh video about the Kyper belt um

from NASA and uh

and then David will give a uh

introductory remarks and it will be this

will be a very brief show but we wanted

to uh um be there for you and I got a

couple of images to show you this first

one uh here is uh from my daughter Maria

Lago Soo and

Maria uh saw her first comet in her life

uh last night

or you know late evening and she took a

picture of it with her smartphone and so

I wanted to show that uh she had never

attempted something like this before and

um David was pointing out that you can

see the

anti-il uh which is uh pointing directly

down uh like down towards the tree um so

you can I don't know if you can see that

in this uh image but um

I I it anyway

yeah okay so here let's watch the video

and then we'll uh we'll go from there

so here we go

astronomers have just begun Imaging

planets around other stars the technique

isn't very advanced yet and it can't see

any planets as small as those in our own

solar system but let's suppose for a

moment that alien astronomers are

looking at our planetary system could

they find any evidence that planets

existed around the Sun even if they

couldn't see the planets themselves the

answer is probably yes that's because at

least one world in our solar system

would make its presence known by its

effects on a huge cloud of dust at the

fringes of the solar system

in a place called The Kyper

belt the Kyper belt is a kind of cold

storage zone out Beyond Neptune occupied

by millions of icy bodies including

Pluto the icy objects in the Kyper belt

released us that from afar could appear

as a hazy disc at infrared

wavelengths new computer models created

by NASA scientists shown here reveal

what dust in the Kyper belt might look

like to an alien astronomer Neptune

creates the intricate pattern the

massive planet's gravity tugs on the

Cloud's dust grain nudging them in their

orbits Neptune creates a ring structure

in the dust cloud which features a gap

where the planet itself resides and this

Gap should make it fairly easy to tell

where Neptune is from afar even at

distances where the planet is too dim to

detect directly supercomputer

simulations that Mark kusher and I

performed also allow us to see what the

dust in the solar system may have looked

like when the solar system was much

younger in effect we can go back in time

and see how the distant view of the

solar system may have

changed in its youth the Kyper belt

contained many more objects and

consequently lots more dust in fact the

dust was so thick that the particles

themselves often

collided when we included collisions

between dust particles we were really

Amazed by what we

saw successively younger models of the

Kyper belt dust cloud show progressively

simpler structure eventually leading to

a single narrow ring Beyond Neptune's

orbit D collisions change Neptune's

gravitational imprint the Gap in the

ring structure

disappears the amazing thing is we've

already seen ring structures like this

around other younger stars like

fop terms of dust we now know that these

other systems may look similar to our

young solar

[Music]

system dust around other stars can tell

us a lot about possible planets just as

in our own solar system it could reveal

Neptune

morning

everybody let me turn off this crazy

ech much

better well tonight it's uh it's just

David Levy and myself uh

regretfully uh Christopher go and his

team were uh enormously clouded out um

and uh you know I don't know if he will

be continuing to make trips back up to

the mountain uh above SEO City

Philippines but uh I know Chris he he is

someone that uh he doesn't give up but

uh today there will be no broadcast from

the Philippines um and um

so you know uh you know I know he's

disappointed but it was it was fun to be

with with him over the last couple of

nights and

um

um what are your what what's your

thoughts about being clouded out I know

that we've all experienced it many times

David yes we certainly have and it is um

you rained out not clouded out in

Arizona in Bale Arizona where I was able

to get a couple of very out of focus

images oh yeah okay let's see if I can

pull those up let's

see

um we've

got this shot right

here yeah this is a shot I took and uh

it seems that I forgot to focus my

camera and I will do a little better

tomorrow yeah but look how bright the

comet is and how long the tail goes all

the way out of the frame uh at the top

and then you can see this line coming

down this

glow coming down it comes down quite a

ways um and uh that appears to be the

anti-il is that right uh yes yes ites it

is correct although I would tell it more

of an uncle tale an uncle Tale

but it seems that the PCT the camera

caught it better than I was able to see

it

visually yeah it's very cool you'll have

to uh you have to try again uh uh with

that camera or another camera uh a lot

of smartphone um uh images are coming in

as well uh I'll try to collect some of

those for the next Global star party

that we do um then there's let's see is

this one right here ah there we go

here's another one um where you can see

the comet at the top there and then the

anti-il goes really far down like almost

to where it's it looks like it's

starting to touch the glow of the where

the sky still has some glow up there and

um uh so it's a really I think it's a

very easy to see comet

um you know uh when I was out with

Mary uh we could see the comet and the

tail naked eye and it was like no

problem at all uh but I not sure what

the uh brightness look like the I think

that the uh I mean to me it looked like

the brightness of the uh the head of the

Comet might have

been as bright as maybe like Polaris or

something

oh I believe that it might have been I

think if Comet was a little brighter

than that I could easily see it with

the

yes that's right that's right

so well um let's

see I'll just kind of hang out with your

nice image here of of uh of of the Comet

now what's up these are just Stars up

above right there a kind of a trio of

stars yeah

over here right and this glow down here

that we're seeing is that

Tucson uh yes that is the uh actually

that's just the the sunset the this

picture was taken when the I was still

pretty bright oh okay okay very good

very good well

excellent I'll turn this over to you uh

David and and you can do your uh

quotation let's see do a quotation

tonight it is from from actually from MC

Beth and I've done this before at the

global star

party but uh the interesting thing about

about MC Beth is that it shows that

Shakespeare lived in a world of

time and John Milton in a universe of

space and uh but it's a little better

than

that because in the quotation I'm going

to read to you right

now it shows that

um MC Beth has just given up he has just

started to uh

realize you know he's just been informed

that his wife is is

dead and um he really doesn't know what

to say and I imagine Shakespeare in his

study with his laptop is trying to

figure out what spe to give MC Beth at

this

point and it's kind of like he feels a

nudge on his shoulder and he turns

around and he sees God right behind him

and God says will take a

break yeah uh take a break it is

um I got this i got this and uh and the

uh quotation is what McBeth says she

should could have died Hereafter there

would have been a time for such a word

tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

Creeps in its Petty Pace from day to day

to the last syllable of recorded time

out out brief candle life's but a

walking Shadow a poor player that struts

and Frets his hour across the stage and

then is heard no more it is a tale told

by an idiot full of Sound and Fury

signifying nothing signifying

everything and I like to think that with

that speech Shakespeare is anticipating

general relativity by 300

years and and and it is interesting that

he does

that uh but whether whether he does

anticipate general relativity is s not

for us to

say but it is a beautiful magnificent

thought that Shakespeare is Penning

down uh on this final night of our 158th

Global star party and on that note I

will give it back to you Scotty okay

okay all right well let me let me come

on with you here we are um

uh so uh yeah we have uh only a couple

of people watching in the chat right now

but uh uh you know uh such such things

teach astronomers you know when you get

clouded out like this we had our last

Global star party was about cloudy

nights and uh um and this this can

happen to all of us and we talked about

things that we reflect on and um things

that we do uh uh during those times

we're not out able to get out under the

stars you know um and so you know for

for me uh when I'm clouded out you know

I kind of reflect back on you know kind

of contemplate uh still my place in the

universe and um and it just uh you know

I I find it to be a uh a reprieve that

sometimes is thrust upon me but uh you

know on any account I I'm I'm uh you

know I'm grateful for even the cloudy

nights you know

so uh but I think tonight after so many

sleepless nights uh uh trying to chase

this Comet um able to do it here uh

locally in Arkansas I had the two

previous nights uh or

you know would would have been the first

two nights that I was able to see the

comet I didn't see it very bright I did

I did see it through clouds and through

the haze and stuff uh but uh last night

was a real treat because it was so clear

and um it can't uh it can't match David

Levy skies in Vale Arizona but still

from a uh Urban uh you know site

actually from my Apartments I could I

could definitely see it with an naked

eye so I hope that you're out there uh

checking it out uh and if you're so

inclined you can send your images uh to

me and my email is really easy it's just

the letter

s for Scott but not not Scott just s

explorien ific tocom and I'll be very

happy to see your images

and uh we'll include some of the uh best

of them on uh the next Global Star

Party well uh that will be it for

tonight for me and um David thank you

again and get some rest yes and you too

and we'll see you at the next Global

Star Party

okay all right take

care and you guys have a good night

thanks very much for watching

[Music]

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like to invite all of you to uh to come

to the next Global star party they are

run by Scott Roberts of the score

scientific

and me we we co-host this program and uh

it's usually done on

Tuesdays and uh usually at 6 o' or so

Central Central Time and I hope to see

you all there my name is David

Ley I hope to see you all at the very

next Global Star Party

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

[Music]

oh

 

Transcript for Part B:

wait actually I I suspect Scotty they don't want to hear it right now they want to set up their

telescopes but we have a live audience it yeah that's Rose r o l

yes first one oh there you go okay just sent you a friend request

uh Scott Scott I'm gonna

have breaking up there Chris to uh get into our Zoom so because

we're GNA project and have a live stream okay

okay will you still be on Zoom yeah yeah yeah I'll be on Zoom but uh

they're going to broadcast it yeah good everybody so it'll be great

because um they can hear um David uh give a talk on

comets okay but don't I won't start until you guys are ready okay ready for

some reason the whole world 105.1 FM wait there's a radio station here

it's going to be broadcast through that radio station okay that's cool cool it's going to be uh it's going to be

broadcast to the whole of Sabu

awesome

okay hey where is

Venus um you can log in now so um he can start

the lecture probably uh you up

[Music]

yeah you can see the moon now yeah it's right behind

you actually it's right right there

there

okay look like we're live let me check something

here yep we are all set we are all set here great we set although Chris is not

and that's okay that's okay but uh while we're doing this

um

uh you know um welcome to

attempt number three here uh for the8th Global Star Party

Never hello The NeverEnding 158 that's right that's right so um uh

and I noticed that my my zoom we're setting up a screen here uh ready for David to give a

lecture yeah and it's gonna be broadcast throughout

SIU great okay so I'm having a a slow internet connection myself but go ahead

uh David Levy is has is joining us from Vale Arizona and um uh

and we'll talk a little bit about uh it comets kind of

Bri so okay are we ready we're ready okay

everybody and welcome to the never ending 158th Global star party this is the third night that we've been here on

on a mountain in the Philippines uh Scott and I have SE the

at twice now last night and tonight uh although I did not see the

anti tale tonight I know that it's there so I'll look for it harder tomorrow night

anyway I want to talk to you a little bit about comments

Cloud are you there yeah great okay I shall continue yeah anyway the story

begins in 1965 for me I was already very

very committed to to the night sky to astronomy I decided even I was going to

be an astronomer not realizing that in order to be an astronomer would had to be good

at math and I'm terrible at math so that took care of that I see I see it over

here what happened was something very different was October 196 5 I was

walking to my high school which was West M High School I think many of you now

have school because there is a very famous student who graduated from West

Mount High School her name is kamla Harris and in about one one month from

now the United States will be voting to see if she should be the next president

but anyway I was walking to this high school for my oral examination because

West High School is located in Quebec Quebec will not allow anyone to

graduate high school without some knowledge of French I knew that they were going to

ask me some questions about what I wanted to do for career and so I walking

down to I thought what did I want to do as a career now just a few weeks

earlier and SEI Japan jointly discuss which became the great

com the CL are moving this area is getting clear and clearer it was it was

really very very very beautiful and pretty comic and now that I was thinking about

that and the respect and the high regard that I had for AA and SEI who are both still living now

suddenly the idea came to me what I wanted to do is to discover a com and that would be a very nice goal

to have in life I I uh got very excited about that and

that in the time I got to the school that I would begin the search on

the 17th of December of that year got to school sitting in the uh

boardroom and the uh head of the frch department there

m as me some questions which I tried to answer and finally he asked INF fren

what did I want to be do as a career and I sat up as straight as I

could I was very proud of

myself Mr I would like to c a

comment the man glared at me he looked around the room took off his glasses put them back on and said in

English Levy how the hell do you expect to make any money doing something like

that everybody laughed so hard including him that he said okay I'm Gonna Give You

full marks for the answer you just gave me if only because in all the years I've

done this that is the most usual and strangest response I've ever received

but you better you better keep your word Ley you better find a comet within 20

years because if you don't I'm gonna come back and I'm gonna lower your grade

oh I started Comet hunting two months later on the 17th of December

1965 19 years after that I discovered my first com in

1984 after that I kind of got the hang of it and my second one in

1987 yeah a third and again in 1987 fourth

1988 that was a very interesting split on split

off

yeah I think I should stop people are of the getting excited

aren't in the edge is moving that way so

when the voice quiets down yeah yeah yeah yeah let's let's bring them on with

you well Chris how's it looking uh did the clouds need to move but it should we

we're at the edge of the cloud you're at the edge of the clouds okay so uh the

cloud should be gone in about 15 minutes but okay it's still it's still very

bright here it's Sunset is still 20 minutes away and we won't see the Comet

probably in another 20 20 minutes 20 minutes okay all right so I'm gonna have

David resum has talked but um uh maybe uh you could mute on your side and uh

that you know because the excitement is is getting uh maybe my phone is

way yeah you can you can see the kids here getting

yeah yes uh these are uh physics Majors uh

astronomy uh uh the astronomy club of the

University again I see did your did your I know that you

had a big crowd a couple of days ago as that thin out at this point or they uh

they're still coming um there's a big crowd downstairs uh we're just still holding them off so uh we're just uh

waiting for uh everybody to finish setting up then uh yeah we'll get the crowds in right so we've got

roie looks like a aile zutro joining us on on Facebook um

he says in Indonesia two hours from now we can start taking pictures of the Comet so

yeah we have one hour minutes from now David Samar watching on YouTube says

got it last night in St Cecil in New Brunswick it wasn't very bright but I

got ited gun is also

watching and I'm gonna start sharing this Chris is it okay is it okay if I

mute you on your side and I'll I'll let David finish his talk okay when you come

back on unmute yourself all right you're okay here we go

okay David okay thank you let let me continue now uh the comment that I found

in 1988 was very interesting because just two weeks after that Gan and

carollyn Shoemaker found another Comet it was on the same field of their

telescope as mine was because they were actually looking at my Comet the comet

that I had discovered and then Carolyn Carn said well what's this over here it

turned out there was a second Comet there that was was named for the shoemakers and Henry

H it turned out that about 12,000 years ago the two comets were one comets Levy

and Sho maker hold were one Comet oh it they were that Comet was as far from the

Sun as it would ever get at what they call aelion

and the comet being at aelon with where there was no stress of

sunlight of solar gravity on it and but but for some reason the comet

split up into two large pieces out there one of them came in March of 1988

to the vicinity of the sun I'd found it then and then in May of 1988 the

shoemakers found theirs and that was very interesting this was a split Comet from

12,000 years ago wow and that's kind of how I got to meet the

shoemakers about uh a year later we were at a conference on asteroids and

comets and of course at these professional conferences you learn the most when you are at the coffee breaks

rather than at the lectures yeah I was at a coffee break and then Jean came out and he pointed a large

finger at me and just just um beckoned for me to come to him and I thought well

Jee must be pointing at some famous astronomer behind me so I turned around to see what famous astronomer was behind

me nobody was and she said you you're the man I want to meet so I went up

there by the time I met him we were already friends a year later I started to and

remained that way from 1989 until

1996 when they when the program came to an end we found I think

about 12 comments together and uh there were a couple of

comments that come around just once and never again but over the course of our work together there were nine de iotic

comets that we discovered and they were really very interesting Saker ly

2 looked very much like an asteroid but that turned out that it was

a comet she make her L6 was bright enough that I could see it through one of my

favorite telescopes [Music] manura but by far the most famous comment we

discovered in the highlight of our careers was definitely our Discover of Shaker ly

n in 1994 that comment taught us a very

important lesson it taught us how life can

begin on a planet and the answer it gave us was

that life begins when a comet or an asteroid particularly a comet collides

with a planet and when the Earth was very young cometary debris was falling

with much greater frequency than it does now maybe every few centuries a bright

comet would be coming and crash into the Earth depositing onto the planet the

simple alphabet of Life the carbon the hydrogen the oxygen and the nitrogen c h

n the simple alphabet of life and it just deposited those four simple

elements onto the Earth and then maybe another Comet came and did the same

thing and then another after that and eventually the four elements kind of

merged together to form proteins and finally very far into the

future from that began to form uh RNA and finally

on one magical day DNA so we are as je room maker love to

put it the progyny of comets way way back into my past and your

past comets were really the origin of

life and as Carl Sean said in his famous Cosmos program we are made of star

stuff even more than that we are part of comets and so when we go out tonight

with chrisopher and we take a look at the comet which is pretty bright tonight

it is not not the brightest Comet I've ever seen I think a

comet uh neowise from a few years ago is a little bit brighter boy that was just

so nice with a nice tail going out but tonight it was easy to see without a

telescope without binocular and I understand that it has an anti

tale and that was predicted and it seems to be developing right now and so I hope

that we'll get to see that this evening and I want to end my

presentation tonight by giving you a couple of quotations from my favorite

book and I think that if I were on a ship like the Titanic and it was

sinking and the captain said we have a library on board this sinking ship and

in the library is every book that has ever been published in Humanity's

history and everybody should go down there before the ship sinks and choose

their favorite book the one that I would have chosen would have been lesle

pelters Starlight Nights The Adventures of a stargazer it is by far the finest

book that I've ever read and I'm going to end this lecture with two quotations

from it one one is absolutely delightful just one

sentence in the first chapter he writes I have seen a dozen comets hither

to unknown I've seen a dozen comments hither to

unknown slowly creep across the sky as each one signed its sweeping flourish in

the guest book of the sun isn't that a beautiful way of

describing oh yeah the best is a a uh

something that is meant so much to me that when I first read it I typed it out

and put it into a frame and I still have that frame I did that on October the 10th

1966 and this is what it is you know he's writing beautifully

poetically but then come these two paragraphs that deserve to be inscribed

in bronze on the wall of a building time has not lessened the

ageold Allure of the Comets in some ways their mystery has only deepened with the

years at each return a comet brings with it the questions which were asked when

it was here before and as it rounds the Sun and backs away

toward the long slow night of its aelion it leaves behind with us those questions

still unanswered to hunt a spec of moving Haze

may seem a strange Pursuit but even though we fail the search is still rewarding for in no

better way can we come face to face night after night with such a wealth of

riches as old crues of of Egypt never dreamed of thank you all very much wow

that was nice David that was great thank

you oh you know if David Attenborough ever does a documentary about comets uh

he's got to have you as its star so

well except that I'm not a star I may be a comet but I'm not a star star stuff anyways our stuff star

stuff yeah wonderful and you know David I love the way that also you describe um

you know the building blocks of life uh and what we've learned about comets this is this is um I think one of the most uh

compelling and interesting parts to learn about comets is that uh you know

without comets we wouldn't have life here on this planet that's for sure what do you think about the oceans um David

is there any thought of how comets might have contributed to you know liquid

water on this planet I there has been and if Jean Shumaker were here he would

be jumping up and down and he would just saying I think that commet fill the Bas

ocean basins with water and uh that they might have

contributed most of the water that is in the oceans a lot of it would have been by

asteroids that also have water in them Larry bosi in the late

1990s discovered there was evidence of water on asteroid number one

series asteroids that would have collided with the Earth in its past would have provided some water but

comets have a lot more water than ice than than asteroids do

well you know there must have been so many I mean aside from yourself there so

many scientists and astronomers that were so inspired by uh Jean shoem maker

and and Carolyn as well you know it was uh Carolyn

um uh you know kept kept the Flames alive I think

for her husband but uh you as well I mean you you're the discovery of

Shoemaker Levy 9 and all the Shoemaker Levy comets um helped uh Usher in new

generations of people that would otherwise probably not know about the shoemakers you know well well thank you

thank you for saying that Scott I I uh certainly accept your

compliment uh but uh it's the truth so but but compliments are all the better

when they're true yeah what I wanted to add was that I do miss Jen and Carolyn

now yes I am the only still living

discoverer of comet Shoemaker le9 and all the other Shoemaker leavey comets

yes and uh so I feel that there is a uh a task that I have to do that I might

have fulfilled to some extent this evening who inspire people to think about comets to go out

and look at comets like the comet that we're hoping to see tonight yes the comment that I did see

at my night here in Arizona and that you did in your night in Arkansas

yeah yeah people are watching it around the world we saw some uh great um images

from the southern hemisphere of of the Comet and of course it's huge

you know so you know uh comets

have ion tails and dust tails and this comet has uh is a got a growing anti-

tail what is an anti-il David an anti-il is um not really a tail but

their comet has dust especially a Dusty comet has dust that circles its

nucleus and at some certain point when the when the comet just passes parah

helium the sun kind of shines at the right angle on that wheel of

dust and uh of course the part of it that is behind where the real tail is we

don't really see much but the part that is in front the anti tail we do see and

we may see that tonight tonight this com has two very beautiful tails a very

small gas tail which is nice but the dust tail which is what stretches way

way up into the sky right now is really very very pretty and uh I saw that without a

telescope without binoculars just with my own eyes tonight

outside I was out there thinking well I'm not going to even so wait a minute there it is there it is that's right and

I used the telescope that you provided for me Ur to see the nucleus of the coma

tonight or the inner coma good and it was shining pretty brightly I would say

probably zero first magnitude maybe even minus one hard to

tell brightening West I was a little surprised to find it

naked eye uh you know a few hours ago and and uh you know

I could just barely see it you know I'm like in an urban sky so it's not dark

not like where your site is David I'm very pleased that uh that your wife Wendy actually saw it as well yeah yeah

yeah and she was really she's you know I said do you want to try to see this again she's like absolutely you know so

she has a funny story about Hal's Comet because her father like a lot of like a

lot of parents or you know uh maybe especially fathers uh want to show their

kids something about the universe and the sky and when a big event like u a a

great Comet uh comes you know that that becomes uh the Lynch pin uh to get the

kids out and um anyways this is down in Honduras Central

America and he wakes up Wendy uh who's pretty young at the time this would have

been uh 1986 885 886 and uh she comes

stumbling out of uh her sleep a little perturbed that her dad has W waken her

up but unfortunately her father doesn't know what to look for okay or where to

look and they're both of them are expecting to see this Comet streaking

across the sky okay not hanging in the sky and

um so and she kept warning me that this

Comet better not be like H's Comet was for her you

know did you know that there is a very famous song that describes Wendy's experience

almost of a letter no uhuh it's by Mary chapen Carpenter and it's called when

hie came to Jackson when hlee came to Jackson it is a beautiful song one of my

favorite songs and I used to play it dur in fact you might have heard it during a lecture I gave once oh maybe yeah maybe

it's a beautiful beautiful song and it describes Wendy's experience

almost the letter I was married to also to a girl

named Wy oh yeah magic name yes yes and

uh I remember one morning I came in from

observing and I had discovered a comet that morning it was my most recent visual Discovery and I was trying to

keep things quiet because I knew Wendy was sleeping

and I called a friend of mine p glenos on the phone and uh was talking about it

with him and then I thought okay I'm going to go back to sleep and I'm going to try not to wake Wendy up and I walked

into the bedroom and she was sleeping soundly and yeah ever so quietly I

crawled into bed trying not to lift up the blankets as any more than I had to

didn't want to wake her up who right it was she was sleeping so sadly and then I

turned and looked and there she was looking at me with her eyes open and she said you got one today

didn't you I said you expect me to stay asleep with that

news so that evening I asked her if she wanted to get up early the next morning to see it yeah and you know I Wendy

doesn't like didn't like to get up that early in the morning sure yeah because that's early right now

and and uh she did like to but she looked at me and she said to see your

new Comet I wouldn't miss that for the world oh yeah I showed it to her that's

awesome and it reminded me of Lesley's line to hunt a speck of moving

Haze because it really is just a pain

blob of moving Haze this one that we're looking at tonight is a rather bright

blob of moving Haze yes with a large amount of haze going behind it which is

the tail and uh it's really very very

interesting yes the movie that I'd recommend your audience to see it is called

IQ it is about Albert Einstein and a fictitious niece he has that he and his

intellectual friends are trying to pair up with a auto automobile mechanic h MH

and um and uh won't tell you the story but it's a wonderful movie and there is a

big comment involved essential part of that story and the movie's called IQ go see

it or rent it or buy it or walk or do

something but go see that movie it's wonderful let me see I just posted uh uh

the song by uh Mary Carpenter of when Hy came to Jackson so

do you want to play it for us I can't play it because they'll probably shut

down the the live stream but uh the audience can listen to it you know so if

they click on it they can hear you can uh you can sing it for us they won't set you down if for

us uh if I had words and I can find it here let's see I

don't even know how the tune goes do you know how it [Music]

goes something like that to Jackson lyrics you know the

internet's just amazing so it says late one night the

wind was still daddy night when the wind was still Daddy brought the baby to the

window sill to see a bit of Heaven shoot across the sky The One and Only Time daddy saw

it fly it came from the East just as bright as a torch the neighbors had a party on

their porch daddy rocked the baby mother said amen when hie came to visit in

1910 now back uh then Jackson was a real small town

and it's not every night a comet comes around it's almost 80 years since the

last one though so I bet your mother would have said amen

too as its tail stretched out like a stardust streak the papers wrote about

it every day for a week you wondered where it's going and where it's been

when hlee came to Jackson in 1910 now daddy told the baby sleeping in

his arms to Dream a Little Dream of a comet's charms and he made a little wish

as he slept so sound as she slept so sound in 1986 that

wish came around and it came from the East just as bright as a torch she saw

it in the sky from her daddy's porch as Heavenly scent as it was back then when

hie came to Jackson in 1910 Scot

and late one night when the wind was still with a capital b and a capital

[Music] T that's a cool song it is Ed Gunther says a song song

yes and please say Dad gunur I miss him and I hope to see him

in the winter time yeah he's he's on he's on watching the

program you know he watches Global Star Party a lot you know so

yeah probably to hear yourh poetry when you start off every Global star party

yeah I've done that and except for one I have made it to every one of your Global

made to every one yep and I still contend that the other one wasn't an official Global star party this one this

one was uh arranged by night sky Network and uh kind of out of my control in fact

I'd say out of my control entirely I did broadcast it but uh there were others

that had selected speakers and ran the program and I just tried to keep up so

well the lady who was in charge of that wrote to me afterwards oh that they

didn't get me on yeah I think it was uh a uh big faux PA so not her fault I mean

uh was nobody's fault not her fault either because she really wasn't running the schedule you know she had uh she had

gathered the people together but uh they had picked other people to run this program and had their own

ideas and that's okay you know I've done uh live programming for other astronomy

clubs and stuff especially during covid that's the reason why we started Global star party is because everyone was in

lockdown you know I know that was one big projects you started yeah it's it's

been it's been very rewarding audience Scott Roberts has probably more energy

than anybody any 14 people that I know and um it's because of people like you

that give me the energy I so sorry about that Scotty

and next mon in case Scott doesn't have enough to do he and I are going up to L

Observatory to see ination of their new uh Science Center yeah the astronomy

Discovery Center ADC I think is what they call it uh Observatory is a very

famous place it was famous mostly As is the

site of the discovery of Pluto yes 1930 by Clyde Tomo you mean the planet Pluto

David I call it the planet Pluto just to like what we are hoping to see tonight

is a comet that is a comet and and uh etc

etc somebody giving a lecture about Shoemaker leing

n said this and that and he's then concluded his lecture by saying

Shoemaker leave n was an asteroid not a comet what and I looked at Jean and

Carolyn they looked at me and we we just said no way if it smells like a

comet tastes Comet tastes like a comet it's a com feels like a comet it's a

comet probably probably so Chris you want to unmute

your uh your uh Zoom link here

there yeah um actually the West is clear except that small area where the comet

is which is kind of a joke um that's a cruel joke this is

crazy I mean there's a one Cloud probably about 15 degrees wide that's

covering the comet all the rest is clear yeah yeah yeah yeah you know I had the

same thing happen to us in Arkansas you know every night you know as the Sun is setting the clouds gather right around

where the sun is so it's crazy we can see Venus it's clear yeah

and uh to the left to the right of the Comet it's

clear well you might be able to see the tail climbing out of that cloud maybe

but no no this cloud is moving so it'sing we're gonna get it we're gonna

get it it's it's just about probably I'm

willing it away right now it's you know the the the the edge

of the cloud is probably about five degrees from the

comet we're we're at the edge so Ed Gunther says thanks for doing

the Scott Ed this is what this is the juice you know you work hard every day

but what revive drives you and and makes makes you want to keep doing uh all of

this is is doing stuff like this so thank you thanks for tuning

in and I'm yeah what time is it uh Ed lives

out I am

it's cool I like to have the uh live chat going on you know because we quite a

number of people here right now oh look at that yeah yeah they're going to see

it they're observing Saturn and the Moon while waiting for the comment you know

um Chris I've got that video about the Red Spot on Jupiter can you talk a

little bit about that and then I'll just run it it's like three minutes long something like that sure you know the

background of this okay um uh red red spot junior is actually oval ba so what

happened was that during you the second world war early 40s mid 40s three ovals started to

appear and um these three ovals uh I forgot the name I think it

was AB b c d EF okay so uh what happened was that um during the early 90s they

started to merge and became one spot which is olba and uh I think the merge merge took

about a few years and uh I think it ended around 1999 now these these ovals are giant

storms yeah yeah yeah these were at the South uh uh temporate belt stb

so what happened was that these three ovals started uh after they merged uh they started uh it uh I think

in 2005 late 2005 it started to change color and uh when I observed it in March

2006 it was completely red and quite interestingly in 2019 it became White

again we so uh but right now it's starting to turn red again so it's kind

of weird white and red white and red white and red okay

okay all right so I will show this video and uh uh we'll learn more about

juper wait a wait wait a second are you guys getting it it's sing

right uh it's getting closer it's getting closer to

Edge it's getting closer to the edge okay all right okay this is about a

three minute video let me run this and uh we'll come right back to you okay

[Music]

astronomers have been observing Jupiter's Great Red Spot a massive storm big enough to swallow Earth for over 150

years however new discoveries continue to emerge especially with NASA's Hubble

Space Telescope taking closeup views Hubble's latest observations gathered

over 90 days from December 2023 to March 2024 show that the Great Red Spot is

less stable than it seems the data reveal that the Great Red Spot is wobbling like a bowl of gelatin Hubble's

images allowed astronomers to create a time-lapse movie of the storm's squiggly motion while scientists knew the storm's

position changed slightly over time they didn't expect to see its size fluctuate

thanks to Hubble's high resolution they found that the Great Red Spot is squeezing in and out while speeding up

and slowing down Hubble observes Jupiter and the other outer planets yearly through the outer planet atmospheres

Legacy program or opal but these particular images were part of a special

Great Red Spot study the team has been tracking the shrinking Great Red Spot since the opal program began 10 years

ago and predicts it will continue to shrink and eventually take on a more stable less elongated shape researchers

hope that future high resolution images from Hubble might reveal other clues about what's causing the storm's

fluctuations studying the biggest storms in our solar system helped scientists understand

hurricane patterns on Earth and could even apply to weather on planets around other stars

[Music]

it's getting dark it's getting dark David look at

that yeah it is getting dark actually it's very dark where I am

although the Moon is kind of starting to set but long and set from my part of the

world still up in the Philippines so still up in the Philipp

what time is it right now it's almost five

o'clock oh yeah like Chris has got his green laser going on there

all right Chris you can unmute wait a sec we're waiting for the

cloud to move it's just very close it's very close good that's called the uh

what is that called the slow reveal we use it in sales a lot you know

it's when you have like a cloth over the new product that nobody's seen yet and you're slowly pulling it back

the the the comet will just stay in one place and move uh comets do not move

around they orbit the Sun so it's just like the planets what

man

huh Chris I also noticed that TMC radio 105.1 is is logged in and um yeah it's a

radio station yeah and Neil Romero uh yes yes that that's the audio here

that's the audio okay okay that's quite a so you're also broadcasting live in

the Philippines on on the news broadcasted live throughout

seu very cool very

cool let me explain to the kid yeah that's that's the

moon the other one is Venus that's uh wait a sec bottom

right yeah that's Saturn that's Saturn you want to see Saturn I think

one of the telescope

sat you can see the Rings there's a a small kid here yeah yeah yeah Chris I I

know that uh from um uh Edwin and amilda who did a lot of Outreach work in the

Philippines and still do uh they you know they are uh they've often told me

how I mean really interested uh people are in the Philippines about astronomy

do you find that to be the case yes it is you know I think it's it's not just here in the Philippines but all over the

world and uh it just needs um us people like us to show it to them uh for most

people uh you know getting this knowledge is uh not accessible uh you

know very few people have telescopes so uh when you have something like this and uh they find out that uh you know it's

something that's possible to observe then they get interested you must have have shared uh

your astronomy experiences with with uh hundreds of thousands if not millions of people us so yeah but there's really one

country that uh that has a government agency that promotes astronomy in that's

Thailand I think you should go there one true that's true they've been on global star party before themselves so yeah

yeah n yeah it's incredible it's it's a government agency that teaches astronomy

to all kids in Thailand yeah that's only going to have

it's going to pay big de dividends in generations to come that's for sure and

basically you they have this Reon the only way for their country to improve in

is to get their kids into science and engineering and that's the basic reason why they're doing this

yeah wait a second I need to check the comp how is it yeah please do how is it

Ste huh if you're just now tuning in this is

the 158th Global Star Party um where we are live from the Philippines and also

live from Vale Arizona we've got Christopher go in the Philippines above

SIU City he's on a Mountaintop uh he's broadcasting with a

uh a starlink system uh and also the I mean we want to see the

comment is broadcasting as well throughout the Philippines so that's

cool David's uh coming to us from his home in Bale Arizona so the problem

is and I'm here in Arkansas to explore scienti going down with the plan the planet so we just need a cloud to

move yeah we're going crazy because the cloud decided to stand still come on

he'll move and appears to stand still because

it just takes so long Chris we lost your

camera yeah sorry what's

happened did you just dis uh disconnect the camera itself

or I don't know what happened to my camera wait a second

try um unplugging it and plugging it back in um I can't do that because uh

this is a builtin oh okay oh wait a sec let me check go to

zoom settings under video and see if it's selecting the

camera a

there's something wrong with my camera it just died it just died huh uh I think

I need to reboot okay we'll wait right here okay

yeah let me reboot

okay I lost your your sound for a second yeah let me mute your phone

here there you go now get rid of the

echo can you still hear me David I can hear you

perfectly

okay so we'll see what happens here so I can share my

screen let's see

David your other uh Zoom link dropped you're on your phone I'm going to ask

you unmute unmute unmute I am just unmuted

unmuted no more uh no more Echo no more mooding yes let's

see yeah I got the video working but not the audio so that's cool

so yeah let me share this we can talk

about L Observatory a little bit now you've been to low many times I think

many many many times many times I've been a few times was actually in

1967 oh goodness person who gave us the tour that day was not our than Robert

Bob Burnham wow yeah you mean the the uh the

Burnham uh Celestial handbook and the interesting thing about Bob Burnham was

I didn't know that he had discovered half a dozen comments but one of the other people did and he has you mean

know you the Bob Burnham has discovered six comments wow yeah I didn't know that no

because I haven't found any a while you know it's sad about um um uh

Burnham because uh uh in talking to a friend of mine

that worked with him his name will come to mine here in a minute but uh

uh in writing the Burnham Celestial handbook it's a three volume set it's all hand

typed and he said every time that there was an ER or something that he needed to

update or whatever as he was trying to complete this three volume set he would start all over

again he would start all over again and um

uh and he would uh retype it okay

so according to him that that and that guy's name was Paul raches Paul worked

at uh L Observatory for a long time as well and

um he I guess it literally drove him mad uh uh because towards the end of his

life uh Burnham kind of fell off the face of the Earth but he was kind of

rediscovered as a homeless person living in baloa park uh which is in San Diego

and um he would make little paintings for people and and he was selling them paintings of

paintings of cats that's right most of them were cats I think yeah yeah yeah

and then um you know and then he passed on but

uh I mean if you've ever read the burn of celestial handbook I mean it's just an

incredible uh description of every celestial object that that's in there uh

with the that at the time you know uh the most accurate scientific information

and a lot of it still holds true today um so if you haven't read Burnham

Celestial handbook I recommend that you that you get a set even a used set which is okay I'm not sure if it's still

published but uh uh it is uh was for many many years kind of an amateur

astronomer's Bible you know so com with um books that David Levy had

written uh um you know really you had a complete

library of uh what you needed to know uh about amateur astronomy and uh and I was

about to uh to brag when Scott started bragging on my behalf but may I brag a

little bit brag please okay um tonight's quotation from Starlight Nights and my

lecture that I gave tonight wasn't the best lecture but it'll do at 3 o' in the

morning my time sure um this was lecture number

3,132 the Le one was given in the spring of 1960 I was in sixth grade at Rosland

school and westm and Scott have you ever heard of Leonard

Cohen yes of course he went to rosin oh I

see about 10 years before I did did hear of uh Toma

Harris visible all the time yes yeah I've heard of her about 10 years after I

did and then another really famous uh Comet discover

guy David Ley

so I saw Chris Chris's video work just

briefly

o' and Chris is getting I think he's trying to log in with a different our

somebody's with him that's got a laptop uh no no we're talking here yes it's an

echo so you've got you got someone else that's logged into to the zoom link or

comp so it's picking up on that microphone and it's repeating repeating

[Laughter] repeating Chris you could also log in

just with your phone uh if that if that works for you that's what I'm doing

yeah I think you can take my picture out of the main view screen and put yours

instead or Chris's let's put let's add Chris there we go there you are there's

Chris and that's working and I'll add myself here we go okay so it's dark now

are you guys uh how about that cloud

you're still muted

Chris okay I can tell he's pantomiming the cloud okay you're muted Chris there

we go yeah yeah uh we can see um Venus and

I think uh Urus on the right and uh yeah it's just

I don't understand this is

crazy and we lost the video

again okay okay it's it's okay

Chris I think I you can hear us but we cannot see your video any longer yeah I think my uh my camera just went

cops I I have to check it when I get home okay

you could if you have a zoom on your phone you could log in that way let me

check it looks like this is the studio for TMC radio 105.1

well it's not the first time to have a technical difficulty and trying to do something with

astronomy I thought this was the first time no it's not the first time there was this thing called the Hubble Space

Telescope uh they had some ISU the uh observing that has been done yeah this

is the first mistake that has ever happened ever ever

happened I like I like the mistake that happened during Shoemaker ly n when you

guys were trying to um load up film and it gotten exposed I guess Here Comes

Chris Here Comes Chris he he logged in with something else here let's see what happens that's a funny story that

happened yeah what didn't like somebody opened the door or

I guess someone had um exposed the film that the

shatos the film we think they did it on purpose why it didn't tell us why would

they do that well they never told us they had done it and we discovered it

ourselves when after the first um

whoops and completely blank

oh be nailed for that one people you know who saves the day

David Saves the Day David that's right decided to use some film anyways right

at these horrible films and very angry and I said Jean why don't we try the films at the

very bottom of the stack they might not completely light struck and that's right Jean actually

took two of took one of them out of the stack developed it and he said you're right it's clear except for a little bit

on the side so we were able to use those bad films and two of those bad films

that we used in the two Discovery films of comet Le

v9 wow remember trying to guide that exposure and saying I sure hope the heck

nobody see because I can barely see the guidar with Jupiter so close yeah in the

sky and we're putting it on bad film on bad film were there clouds as well yeah

we had clouds but the clouds kind of parted for a bit that allowed us like a hole in the clouds right through holes

in the clouds we were able to take the second picture and that is amazing two days

later Carolyn stood up and said I don't know what I've got but it looks like a

squashed Comet and uh Jeanie got up to look at it

what was running through through your minds did did you think that maybe at first it was just uh some sort of

optical defect or I thought Carolyn was just kidding around and I thought she

was kidding around okay and I said Carolyn you are joking aren't you and

she looked at me very seriously and she said no David not this time yeah the only time

yeah she had a good sense of humor she had a wonderful sense of humor yeah I

imagine that Jean did too I I wish that I I had met Jean you know I wish that I

had met him you did meet car didn't you what's up you did meet Carolyn oh

absolutely yeah Carolyn and I met several times um and uh I would counter

among my friends you know I didn't know her like I know you of course but if Jee

were talking now he would say that Carolyn was the one you wanted to meet oh I'm

sure but jean was a lot of fun fun himself yeah yeah yeah but during the

Shaker leing n time our friendship just got closer and closer oh yeah almost as

though we were physically joined yeah that's right you were

s joined by joined by Celestial event and and by you know something you know

in history joined by the orbit of a comet y it was if that Comet took its

tails and swept the three of us up and brought us around going around its orbit

with it for a year and a half oh yeah yeah I would say it's still doing that

actually it's not it it completely disintegrated on colliding with

Jupiter well there's gota be some of that Comet dust still around probably still going around

Jupiter I said that it's probably s still some of that Comet dust around probably still going around Jupiter

there probably might be

yeah well I don't know what Christopher's

uh situation is you plan to try this again tomorrow night if we don't see it tonight I would imagine so but let's

hope we see it tonight yeah yeah he's tried so hard you know but Chris is the kind of guy he

does not give up you know and that's what it takes you know if you want to if you want to have some amazing

experiences in astronomy you got to be there you got to show up you know and uh

and just enjoy it you know uh no no matter what comes you know whether you're clouded out you get a flat tire

on the way to some place or whatever it's all you know it's all part of the

uh journey of exploration

so Chris can you hear

us there yeah the cloud refused to move come on it refuses to

move can your camera come on your phone actually the camera is

pointing at the comet right now um we took some pictures it's just Cloud it's just on the area of the

[Music] Comet now are you the cloud is like a

volcano a strat volcano it's it's it's not that wide

are you logged in by your phone or H how did you log in again excuse

me are you loging on your laptop or by phone

laptop okay I see it my phone um the video is too dark because it's dark here

yeah what does it look like when you share your screen Chris let's try that

let me share my

screen okay okay that works this the view of

the camera yeah

hey wait a sec the cloud is moving North

yay let's see let's

see nothing

the cloud is actually moving

now

North yeah the cloud is moving North now

great, but um yeah com supposed to be r

to is that Urus off to the upper

right is that what it

is yeah the rings of Saturn look really I mean not completely Edge on

but but more uh tilted to towards you can just uh kind of see the edge you

know I love looking at the Rings when they are a joh they're just that line is

just so striking yeah yeah it looks like a dash going across the

planet I'd heard David that they think the Rings are actually quite young they're not uh and won't last for very

long you know as they are younger than the planet yeah

um but uh uh the younger that's a relative term

though yeah of course certainly surely they are in the

billions of years in age but maybe not quite as old as the planet certainly not

as old as the planet [Music] itself Jupiter has a ring

too yes and

uh it's probably quite common I mean with all the planets that they're now

exoplanets yeah probably probably not unusual for a planet to have rings you know the Earth had one

after that all that object collided with the um with the Earth that Mars siiz

planet ismal Collide Earth and it broke it broke the pletal apart into a ring

around the Earth but it didn't last very long it coal last to form the

moon

yeah I think that was one of the most important discoveries from the Apollo

missions you know it's nice to know that uh we found that something that's so uh

foundational uh when you think of all the things that uh the moon gives us you

know with u our ties and all the rest of it I I wonder if we didn't have a moon

if life would have taken hold here and I I would say that that

uh you know I would guess I mean certainly the the scientist that um studied this the

astrobiologist and such uh be interesting to to hear them weigh in on

this but if we had no moon uh no Tides no you know would would

we still have life here my guess is no we would not yeah I'm guessing Prov so

much even the tides uh if it weren't for the moon the

tides would still be there because the sun provides some gravitational pole that's true that's

true but um but not like the moon and the sun together moon and the sun

together but uh my guess and it's just a guess is that we would not be here and

losing sleep for all these nights if we had no moon

right Chris is the cloud still moving

North yeah just still clouds oh

gosh this is crazy because if you look at the sky it's clear

here everywhere except in the direction we comeet there's a big anvil

cloud it's crazy

everywhere is

clear this is how you learn how uh how to deepen your uh experience of

patience

yeah h nothing nothing

nothing St laser again the

position yeah it's getting

low yeah want to start here or

you of them are yeah the thing is the comet is in

the wrong part of the sky that's what's

wrong I don't know what's wrong with comets why clouds are so attracted to it

yes this is the second time this week I mean last Saturday it was also like this

it was cleared whole Sky yeah except where the comment exactly

is yesterday we were a little lucky but not a lot so we got this yeah you did

actually get to see the comet yeah yeah there it is is a tail and this is a

better view mhm

it was quite bright it is bright yeah oh yeah look at

that yeah even through clouds you can see it but right now the cloud is just so

thick sorry getting you guys up so early for this we we're here with you man we're

not like uh we're not part of you know just absolutely we're not part we are

audience members but we we we totally understand that you know the situation

thought it would clear up now um the the whole sky was clear this afternoon and

the cloud was moving towards clearing and uh it just so happens that the you

know during the prime time the combat the cloud just stopped yes

it's clear over here and I think there's a clearing over

there it's just the cloud

stop I'm going see if I can look at a satellite

image yeah it's h

don't touch

youa yeah oh I see where the cloud is oh look at the

L yeah it's supposed to be around there what's

okay there it is we can see

like and the comment is still quite high right now but uh it's just that the clouds is there mhm

so uh yesterday the comment was this like this so you're you're kind of like in

the middle of the island is that right Chris was

yesterday what time was it around this time around this time yeah just so

happen right now CL yeah that cloud decided to

stop yeah yeah the way it looks on the satellite it looks like it's just it

looks like it's mushrooming

okay yeah it's it's like a mushroom cloud over there

yeah you can see the lightning what is the island that

um uh is next to the the island where you're on what is the name of that

Island let's

see what did we

get it's where the comet supposed to

be

uhhuh that

yeah Dy can you hear me yes I can I will be back in about five minutes yeah

that's cool okay hopefully um try lck tomorrow is my

last day here so I'll try one more shot okay but tomorrow it'll be a lot higher

it'll be about 25 degrees so hopefully well if it were 25 degrees

now it would be above the cloud top I see

uh it's funny because um yesterday's

Cloud this you know at today's altitude the comet would have been above the cloud seems like the cloud is chasing

the comet

yes anyway we'll just try

tomorrow yeah you could but then

it okay uh Scott I think I'll I'll go now you'll go okay all right I'm gonna

show our audience kind of what you're looking at um I'll call back uh in case

uh the cloud clears probably the cloud will clear if I get if you get off

offline all right I'm gonna wait here I'll wait here another half hour okay

okay bye okay Chris take care all right so uh yeah so this

Another Kind of Night of frustration with uh Christopher go um going to show

you kind of what we're looking at here um with

uh I'll share my screen and show you the live cloud

coverage over uh the Philippines let's

see here we [Music] are there we are

okay and so let's just uh uh SIU city is is right here I don't know if you can

see my mouse but um and if

I run the uh time lapse here you can see uh clouds kind of mushrooming around

Sabu City and that is what um what is

frustrating um Chris at the moment moment here

so but he's right if uh if the comet's up

higher then we probably got a good shot at

it

e

e

for

for e

Transcript for Part C:

hi Scott can you see me yes I can see you too Chris

hi can you see

me yeah I can see you perfectly so yeah hey Chris

so you can see that's Les where the comet will be M

so over there see you can see the the

sunset okay see what happens

yeah so somewhere over there the comet should come so you see those clouds uh

as long as they move move

more this is really crazy because right now most of the sky is clear right

now except where theet is

this Chris we'll um we'll do some introductory type of things and then we'll come back to you

okay okay sure sure sure yeah because I'm I'm also going to give a Le about

comets so okay so we'll start off with David Levy giving a poem okay he's he's

standing by ready to do it right now take like just a few minutes so we will

take off okay that happen okay so here we

[Music] go

[Music]

okay we are on right now um and uh this

is is uh a special Global star party this is the 158th Global star party uh

we've got Christopher go standing by in the Philippines and uh David stayed up

uh late to uh give a uh an appropriate poem to kick this off so David I'll turn

it over to you well thank you Scott and hello Chris

it's I'm glad good to see you I haven't seen you since uh NE a few months ago

anyway um the sky was pretty clear tonight

here uh David Roser my friend from his home was able to see it just

barely um and uh and and and I I could not see it

tonight so I'm gonna try again tomorrow what I did see tonight and what is out there right now

appears to be a very faint pinkish auroral glow oh wow the sun yeah the sun

has a lot of sunspots on it right now including one great big naked eye

Sunspot and here and uh and I think that

is that was setting off the corono mass injection which caused the Aurora but I

saw it last night and possibly tonight

anyway my poem tonight is going to be Gerard Manley

Hopton some of you might have studied him in high school and remember him as one of the

most difficult poets to read he has a weird rhyme scheme very

difficult to read except when he was at Balo

College in Cambridge part of Cambridge

University he was he saw a comet it was not quite as bright as Su

shinan Atlas it seems to be we hope but it but it was it was Temple

rigi's Comet of 1864 two weeks later he wrote this

poem I am like a slip of comet scarce worth discovering in some Corners SE

Bridging the Slender difference of two

stars come out of space or Suddenly engendered by heavy elements for no man

knows but when she cites the sun she grows and sizes and Spins her skirts out

while her Central Star shakes his cocooning Mists and so she comes to fields of

light millions of traveling Rays Pierce her she hangs upon the flame cased sun

and sexs the light as full as Gideon's fleece but then her tether calls it she

falls off and as she dwindles sheds her smoke of gold am miss the sister in glet until

she comes to single son last and solitary so I go out my little Suite is

done I have drawn heat from this contageous son to not entle death now

forth I R thank you Scotty for letting me do this thank you thank you very much

okay all right so um uh we are uh I've

got Christopher go on the other channel right here I'm just going to bring him on he's got the camera aimed at the part

of the sky I think where the comet is supposed to be and they are still they're

experiencing some clouds right now so we'll see what kind of luck we get here

but uh I will uh uh I've got a little uh

video that I'll run uh about a very special Comet and um and when we hear

Chris come back on I may interrupt that video um but uh I got a couple of videos

to show you um but you know this is uh this is Christopher go he is on top of a

mountain in uh the Philippines and so kind of cool that we can make this kind

of connection anyways um I'm thinking maybe they got some sort of uh you know

starlink system or something like that but um yeah and I want to say hello to

the people that did T tune in here we got Pine Chari uh uh and Ed gther and uh

one or two others out there I can see that are kind of chiming in and um

so let's

uh MO

over and we have temporarily lost um Christopher go so we'll have to get

him back on but in the meantime Let's uh let's switch to NASA

[Music]

we are looking at a picture of the planet Jupiter taken with the Hubble Space Telescope in 1994 at a time when

the fragments of a shattered Comet shum your leevy N9 were pummeling into the planet leaving huge black impact sites

on the planet prior to Shoemaker leaving 9 we

had never had the opportunity to prepare to watch an interplanetary impact in our

solar system isn't that incredible it's right in the that's amazing what we

all Shoemaker Ley n was a comet that was discovered by Jean and Carolyn Shoemaker

and David Levy Comet Watcher and co-discoverer of the Comet and he's an astronomer at LEL Observatory she's it's

called Shoemaker ly n it was the ninth Comet that team had found and to his

left his wife Dr Carolyn Shoemaker to her left David Levy co-discoverer of the

Comet and what was unusual about Shoemaker Levy 9 was that it was in

orbit around Jupiter we believe was captured probably about 70 years earlier

the late 1920s it wasn't just flying through the

solar system it had at some point in the past been captured by the gravitational field of Jupiter and more importantly

than that when the orbit of the Comet was computed it was discovered that

within about 6 months this Comet was going to hit Jupiter we think the reason

that Shoemaker leby 9 was shattered into so many fragments was that on its last

close pass while it was orbiting Jupiter the gravitation was so strong the gravity field that it actually caused it

to fragment and break up joining me here on the podium or up front is Heidi

Hamill uh from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology I was asked to take all of the proposals that had been

accepted to look at Jupiter as the comet was hitting it and put them together into one large observing program with

Hubble so that it could capture all the full range of what may happen on Jupiter

everybody who predicted that we would see something dramatic was

right and the Hubble observations were fantastic we saw massive explosions we

saw ripples in the atmosphere of Jupiter we saw dark material that was processed

by the intense heat of these explosions this image of Jupiter taken

by the Space Telescope was one of the most dramatic images from the Shoemaker ly9 week it was a weekl long event took

that long for all the fragments of this shattered Comet to hit Jupiter this

particular image is of a particularly large fragment it created a massive

plume of material that shot out but thousands of miles above Jupiter's Cloud

tops took about 20 minutes to rise and then collapsed and so the arc that we

see in the bottom of this image is the collapsed material from this gigantic

[Music] plume it was just an amazing example of the power of

collisions in our solar system

okay so we're back right now and I'm going to bring on with me uh Christopher

Go's camera you can see what we're looking

at and we've got the sunset there there's some clouds according to Christopher go in

the Philippines the only place in the sky where there's clouds is where the comet area is supposed to be so we'll

see what happens I've seen uh stranger things happen though um you know I've

observed through a uh during Hal's Comet I I observed through a thunder not a

thunderstorm but a rainstorm uh not yet

there's Christopher

go about to start a lecture downstairs the public you can see the sun over there

yeah we can see the sunet that the direction there's a clouds there

unfortunately but you look up it's it's clear it's just in the

Horizon we'll see wait we'll wait oh

Chris so good to see you again since our group are

flying USB I I need

[Music] more USB guys anybody have USB flash

drive flash drive I need to transfer uh my

talk can't you Google drive it no I

have pptx uh looks like you can see the sun reflecting off

the exported to images so clouds down

there uh wait a sec uh or do I need K TV

um I'll have to use my phone connect it's connected your phone

right it's connect to your phone gun says we're calling that cloud

tail remain remains here very

foggy we can connect it to

the so right now it's uh about 4:20 a

where I am d where David is is uh it's about he's two hours behind me so about

2:20 in the morning David's offen up though out looking at the sky so what's your normal

routine David for for nightly observing um yes my normal routine is that I'm on

clear nights and then go in and maybe watch a

movie on Friday nights or nights when I failed to see the comment I came in and I watch a movie

and then I'm on the mobal store party with

you the movie that I saw blond which is really a very funny

film and um anyway I did see the comet a few months ago when it was quite

faint but Chris there seems to be a coming out

right of one of the clouds there uh kind of a brightening is that the tail of the

com right yeah that's the [Laughter]

sun that's that's where the sun is so there's a slight clearing right

now okay what time is it there Chris what's your local time it's uh 5:20 PM

um we should uh it should Sunset is in about 10 minutes okay

mhm Scott I'm gonna have to be part now okay but thank you so much for having me

on tonight thank you David thanks for kicking this off and we'll see what happens in the Philippines yeah okay

okay take care by bye you too see you anything

let's check something how's the comment sir it's

clouds oh clouds a crap will do the lecture later okay we

don't have time anymore it's about it's

almost very I'll show

um I'm connected to the camera right now yeah we got it's just like Freeze Frame

right now I just see we can see your face but SC no

movement there we go there we

go so Chris how are you connecting to the internet is it like through a starlink uh starlink it's starlink okay

St yeah yeah starink all the astronomers complained about starlink satellites but

you know what a lot of us use Starling we're out at the remote sites so I think

I'll I think I'll take the uh the satellites wait a sec share there's no

stopping it now anyways so okay you see that red box that's where

the comet is okay all right we'll hang in

there where's that the

cloud above that cloud it's clear it's clear above that

cloud can we see anything it's above the cloud

a bit of light clouds but other than that cloud if we see anything or not I

can see it the comment no no uh can me see the

comment uh I'm G to take this full screen here so I

can seems like I kind of see a bright spot in there

it's still daylight though it's not yet Sunset yeah yeah we'll wait we'll

wait we got time pretty

high yeah I think we're looking through thin clouds right now

I wish it were there you know it's so infuriating that

the entire eastern half of the sun is clear of the sky is clear know from from

from about yeah and that's all right the western side is cloudy I don't know why

what's going on it's because you want to see a comment that's why

hey we just do our best you know yeah the Christopher go uh uh David

levie always says you know that comets are like cats this is one over 200 exposure it's

still are we looking what are we looking through a telescope

or yeah yeah okay uh a

refractor you can see the my setup there you can

see

yeah yeah I see your setup I don't know the audience can

let me see if I can change that

somehow

okay some clouds are coming in this is going there then few like CLS

going afterno will be

com what's our process uh because there were

some by B how many uh 30 30 30 30 yeah

okay for those of you people that may are rolling

in let roll we'll let roll in roll right back out

645 then we will be observing the the moon and

Saturn maybe as soon as the sunset finishes then we'll uh the clouds will

dissipate so what time they can come up

now lecture will start at 6:45 645 yeah those who want to see the comment can

come up we have a big space 30

40 hopefully tomorrow the sky will be better we'll back here to but as you can

see um uh yeah it's the West is really flat Horizon we're about a th000 feet

above sea sea level right a th000 meters so about 3,000 feet okay 3,000

feet will you be discussing at the ground frog for the general public or

uh we can have uh General

um we're getting a nice connection with your Starling right now this is

[Music]

good time do it start we can't even see

Venus we can try I'll try to point to

ven see what happens

okay is supposed to be there that there oh

yeah see that's Venus

is this Venus let's check that's Venus

yeah here you go get your focus yeah it's Venus yeah looks good so let

me realign my my telescope uh yeah I think it's

full very

well so how many people there are there Chris in your group yes wait wait a

second yeah can you can you look

it's you're going way more right other way other there more more more

more it's here now more more then it

should lower I think you have to lower

it here here here it's going up now more

bit more more then move it to the the one

earlier other way other way other way more more

more more more more it's here now that

dot that's enough that's enough then Cent yeah I think it's going to be tough

seeing this comment but we'll try yeah we'll try let's go it's all we can ask

for I was looking at saichi yoshida's comment page

uh Comet Atlas and there were reports of uh like getting around minus

three but this is uh might have been reported through observations I don't I don't think it's minus

three may not be minus three now but but uh this is probably at the time when

they were looking at SoHo uh data

is that it here is that it is this it is this it you got

it you see this on it click on the oh yeah I see

it is that I see a bright knot

there it's okay there a clearing

well your box is kind of covered it up a little bit is it right oh

yeah Chris I think that might be it see let's

see yeah let's see let's see it's somewhere

here

yeah I wish there were no clouds I don't know that might be a

cloud effect there's some opening over

here where's mom downstairs overhead it's

so overhead is so clear it's crazy look at the sky overhead it's

blue that's okay no I don't think it

was but I've seen some pictures it's it has a very bright core yeah

oh gosh tomorrow it'll be higher though yeah it's clear over

there yeah near the clouds specifically yeah the the sun just

set near to the large actually the sky is clear

it may it may those clouds may disappear now Sun's

gone it's up uper

okay we just dropped him so we'll he'll come

back in the meantime let's go back to uh uh project called the sungrazer

project that is a citizen science program that you can get involved with to discover comets of your

own when I began with the sun Riser project we had less than a thousand comets was over 20 years ago so the fact

that we've finally reached this Milestone 5,000 comets is just unbelievable to me sraer project is a

project that allows anyone anywhere in the world to sit down with a laptop and

discover comets the clue to what a sun grazing comet is kind of in the name there it's literally a comet that grazes

by the sun the sun graer project relies exclusively on images of the Sun from

spacecraft and the images that we discover nearly all of our comets in

come from the solar and heliospheric Observatory or Soho that is a satellite

that was launched in 1995 so it's been operating for a long time now 3 2 1

ignition and liftoff of Soho and the atlas vehicle on an international

mission of solar physics our participants go to the Soho website

where we have all of our latest images from the spacecraft and they download those images and it's really as simple

as looking through them flicking through the image and looking for something tiny and faint and moving in a different

direction to the Stars discovering a comet is a very unique

feeling you have this realization that suddenly you found a piece of the solar

system a piece of the universe that no one has ever seen before

prior I think you're muted Chris

yeah I you might be

muted it looks like the clouds are starting to dissipate here which is good

good for us

for for

okay I think Chris is trying to say something here but he doesn't know that he's

muted they're getting excited so I think they're seeing the comment

Chris you are

muted hi Scott can you see me oh yeah yes you were just

muted yeah yeah yeah okay go back to yeah it's clearing off

for you it's clearing up everywhere except

where the comet is it's so

frustrating wait the the cloud is fragmenting now

yeah yeah yeah just wait I think we'll get some clear skies I think we're going to see

it we just have to be patient I'm lowering the exposure time

now this is one over 25 seconds

okay it's still very bright but yeah very good

over there you know the sky Scott the sky

right now is probably about 80% clear

yeah that's a good sign let's just we we will just wait you know so

you can look overhead you can even see it's clear

clear clear I see it I see it

Chris we can push those clouds yeah and to the right of Chris and the U what the

viewer sees here is your screen being shared and then like a little box off of

the upper right hand corner where we can see your face and your telescope

so oh this is so frustrating but we still have about 20

minutes let's see what happens stranger things have happened

right now

there's a clearing coming up yeah I just hope it there I can see a

clearing coming up yeah Chris thank you for putting all of

this together and trying to share this experience I think this is so

cool yeah I know I know you wanted to be perfect but you know

yeah the universe is not perfect

well maybe it is maybe this this part's perfect too we'll see we'll see hopefully we'll

see you can see sunet

now can see it's a you see that reddish uh okay it's reddish on my right side

see that yeah

I think there's a hole coming up for us come on cloud we call them sucker holes here in

the United States I don't know why they

call so we got Jor nonan

ping poingo yeah everybody's pointing their

telescope on the cameras yeah on the comment now yeah yeah

good you can see

the there's everybody

here hello will the comet stay above the Horizon probably about uh for tonight

about uh half an hour half an hour we'll hang in there yeah half an

hour after we'll probably get a clear shot right at the very end is what I

think tomorrow is better because it'll be 45 minutes yeah well I'm gonna be out

there looking that's for sure

hopefully tomorrow it'll be better so exactly what which mountain

are you what location are you at excuse me what what location are you

at which mountain I'm on a mountain uh it's

called top the top of SIU so it's a west of the city uh okay cibu is a mountain

so we're on top of a mountain right now very

cool is top the a little cooler there I know the Philippines is is a warm

place here right now the temperatures

in going to about 19 that's Celsius yeah of the

altitude yeah this place is famous is we're overlooking the city

of City you can

see okay we have temporarily lost we've tempor L lost um

uh Christopher go um but he'll be back

on so a lot of times you know when you're doing astronomy of course there's

no guarantees that you're going to get clear sky but um but just being there

even during clouds uh will mean that if there is a break you're going to get

that opport Unity to see something that you might not otherwise see so um it's

kind of like uh you're going fishing and if the fish aren't biting then well

you've gota you gota wait uh it's

really if I connect it sometimes disconnects TMC have you tried phone TMC

yeah but it disconnects every the WiFi here go it constantly

disconnects it's clear now we V this yeah Venus is now

visible all right yeah

we can s through the you're not going to disconnect and it's just going to get slower you're not be

disconnect it's not to their own starlink Wi-Fi it

disconnects every like a minute I don't

know I did but it keeps connecting MC yeah more more or less I

think yeah but I only have one bar but it just while L strong though your LT is

good you see it's a you can see the clouds yeah and it's clear on top check

if the camera actually yeah

H we go to Venus for a while okay let's see

there's Venus Zoom yeah once you zoom in

there there we go I can see it now

[Music]

we'll just wait here for U Chris to come back on but in the meantime just real

quickly I'm going to share uh a comment page that that uh

from saichi Yoshida and a lot of people may not be aware of this web page but it

has some of the most accurate information about uh comets and let's see here it

is so this is uh Comet c2023 A3

um and the URL is ar.net

and I will copy that link because this is the link

and I'll put it into chat here for

you so you can see placement of where the comet is at different dates

and you can see the magnitude that Comet was actually reported uh to be brighter than minus

two but this is probably during the time when it was being observed with Soho the

spacecraft Soho you can see some observations right here

top of course then we're this is the predicted line of

where we will go [Music] but you'll see that the observations at time Scott we might

have okay hold on go back to you I try using this

okay guys guys if you want to see the comment it's around where

so I was pointing out um the predicted

path and actual observations so every dot is an

observation and this is typical of what you'll see on uh saichi yosh's Comet

page

so look at that prediction right there it kind of Peaks out right right up there but the actual brightness uh

observations exceeded that quite a bit as it got right next to the Sun

so so it's always exciting to

see let's

see can you bring your camera back on Chris

little frustrating for Chris go at this point

um that it is what it is

so and we're going to hang out until The Bitter End might as

well so um

let's go learn a little bit more about Christopher

go I should do this more often where I share the you share the

screen are you back with this Chris I was it sir

louds oh my God yeah

clouds like visible for today no it's it has been visible for

like a long time now it's just that it's now visible in this side of the sky for a while for a few months for a

few months it has been visible in the Eastern side sky where the last few days

it crossed the sun it went through the sun this is the first time that it's actually going to cross starting last

week uh Tuesday Wednesday then Emer it's emerging this is the first time it emerges from the other side

so um for the past few weeks or like

months gooded says you guys Tau me that you

miss every object that you don't go out and look for that's right

it's now it's kind of frustrating because you can

see you see that clear on top and just the cloud where the comment

suppos come on cloud get out come on cloud you can see it maybe our audience

floud away we'll see we'll see what the power of our audience is like

is that a green laser there's the comet it's green

see yeah it's a green laser

right in the

Philippines do they allow lasers in the Philippines

it looks like the clouds are going to thin a little bit here see what

happens there's a clearing on the right of about yeah we see that

let's go back to this page he'll come back

so this is um for those of you that might be

watching that are astronomers and are thinking about coming on to Global star party uh this is typically what I do

okay uh is I create a

page and we stream the stream the live video on that same page as well as

stream the text that's there uh there's a channel switcher where you can go to

different uh social media uh platforms we're broadcasting to and anyone that is

on um we uh create a link and where

about what time that person would be on this is Christopher go Ambassador

page and talks about him

yeah being astronomer since 1986 that was probably right on the

heels of Al's Comet he's done quite a bit he is very

famous for his planetary images and uh he's been in science journals he

works with the Hubble Space Telescope team um especially when it comes to

Imaging and he has some images of Jupiter that are only bested by the

Hubble Space Telescope so uh so when you get a chance you're GNA want

to Google Christopher go images you could do like Christ go

Jupiter for example and see some stunning super detailed images

[Music]

looks like Christopher is on multiple connections here I can still see

him in the background we probably still hear

him I'm

live dark

I met Christopher go in the early 2000s and uh um he had made a discovery of a u

this Jupiter's oval which was a storm

uh and um so that was quite a quite a bit of excitement um a lot of times

amateur astronomers do make discoveries of uh planetary uh storms

uh LTE so let's see I cross the how far is it are you're

going to be see it's nothing

nothing

yeah well the situation here is the sky is clear probably up to 10° above the

Horizon the it's only 10 degrees above the Horizon no no the comet right now is

around 4 to 5 but the clearing starts at 10: I

see well let's just wait till the bit end where it would be imp you know let's

see let's see what happens Let's see we got time I'm not going

anywhere is there anything uh my live view doesn't see

anything now yeah it's all clouds

mhm you can see Venus it's very bright it's out of the clouds

yes it's just this comet is under the

clouds so Chris will you be at the same site

tomorrow yeah I'll be here tomorrow and uh yeah the the comment will be higher

so if you'd like we could try [Music]

again let

yeah we could try again if you're if you got the whole setup still

available and um I'll wake up I'll do it

again not sure why it keeps dropping but uh maybe it has something to do with the

comet I don't know but this is kind of a practice run um obviously so

um and tomorrow uh uh Chris might have a

better shot at the comet since he'll be up

higher and you can get

uh once we know that he's getting the comet he'll talk about how to photograph the comet and um you know but finding

it's not going to be if you got a clear sky it's not going to be hard to to locate the comet itself because it's

right after Sunset so so I'm definitely going to be

watching for it and um we'll see if uh Chris comes back on

and we'll finish we'll finish watch I started watching um or broadcasting this

uh project called the sungrazer project again this is a citizen science project

that you could be involved with where you look at data that's collected by the

Soho um spacecraft and it's constantly looking at the sun but there's lots of

comments that have come around the Sun that amateur astronomers have found or not

even amateur astronomers just people that have tuned in and wanted to do some citizen science and they collected over

5,000 comets there you

are so this is uh the sky right now okay nothing much really

it looks beautiful though look at anywhere

else no this is this is kind of

Hope yeah the comments probably around on 2 three degrees above the Horizon now

I see so Chris do you want to try this again tomorrow yeah we'll try again

tomorrow okay all right so I'll be back you by by um WhatsApp and uh and we'll

do it again and we'll just call this one a trial run okay so yeah see okay sry about that take

care scottt all right thank you so much thank you okay bye bye all right all right so that's uh that's

Christopher go from the Philippines uh just above uh uh sio City and he's up

about 3,000 meters but he's going to be uh staying up there and uh we're going

to try again tomorrow as I mentioned and uh um so I'll run this uh I was about to

run this video on the sungrazer project we'll we'll do that again right now and then I'll set up everything again for

tomorrow uh it'll be tomorrow early morning my time it's right now about 5 o'clock in the

morning uh and I want to get some rest um so that I can try to see the comet

from here in Arkansas we've got clear weather which is great and um so

wherever you are I hope it's clear as well and look up on you there's plenty

of uh places to look on the internet for the comet on you know with finder charts

and stuff but um I'll put the link back

into the chat so you can follow where the comet

is in the sky and see reports of its brightness but there are many other resources for for doing that

so so thanks for tuning in and uh think about doing some citizen science with uh

sun graer when I began with the sun graser project we had less than a thousand

Comet that was over 20 years ago so the fact that we finally reached this Milestone 5,000 comets is just

unbelievable to me sraer project is a project that allows anyone anywhere in

the world to sit down with a laptop and discover comets the clue to what a sun

grazing comet is kind of in the name there it's literally a comet that grazes by the Sun the sun graer project

relies exclusively on images of the Sun from spacecraft and the images that we

discover nearly all of our comets in come from the solar and heliospheric

Observatory of Soho that is a satellite that was launched in 1995 so it's been

operating for a long time now 3 2 one ignition and lift off of Soho and the

atlas vehicle on on an international mission of solar physics our participants go to the Soho website

where we have all of our latest images from the spacecraft and they download those images and it's really as simple

as looking through them flicking through the image and looking for something tiny and faint and moving in a different

direction to the Stars discovering a comet is a very

unique feeling you have this realization that suddenly you found a piece of the solar system a piece of

the universe that no one has ever seen before prior to the launch of the Soho

Mission and the sraer project there were only a couple of dozen sungrazing comets

on record that's all we knew existed the 5,000 comic Milestone is a huge

achievement it's one that none of us dreamed we would even get to so simply the statistics of 5,000 comets and

looking at their orbits and trajectories through face is a

super unique data set it's a really valuable science and it is just a testament to the countless hours the

project participants have put into this we absolutely would not under any

circumstance be here if it wasn't for what our project volunteers have done that's really what 5,000 comets

represents it's 20 or more years of invaluable

discoveries from the project volunteers

today we are going to uh do an out of thebox assembly and how to use the first

light series 8 in job sonian

[Music]

[Music]

here so okay so if I'm going to align the Red Dot to the telescope I have to point the telescope at something and I'm

going to pick the farthest away I can see from where I am a tree a couple hundred yards away miles are better than

yards yards are better than feet so half a mile quarter of a mile three or 4

yards but if it's a top of a unique tree meters and kilometers yeah meters and kilometers exactly you just find that by

moving the telescope until it's in the center of your eyepiece right focus it up it's out of focus we're going to

focus it and you're going to look through the eyepiece set her up on that unique tree top of the radio tower and

then you're going to turn your Red Dot on and this is easiest to do in either the morning or the evening before it's

dark before it's too light and so you're going to look at that red dot and you're going to move the Red Dot left and right

and up and down till that red dot is on top of the we say we're using a radio tower is on the top of the radio tower

now when you go out at night to do observing you're ready to go now uh if you could grab me that planisphere over

there yes sir this is a blown up uh display model of our of our uh

planisphere okay so but what's cool about this one is it's double-sided that's right so we have the north side

which is what this is right but we flip it over and now we get the southern Sky

that's right so you can see the northern sky and then the back side gives you what you're going to see in the southern part of the sky that's right it's a

small compact thing but because we're not trying to get the whole sky in one Circle it's actually bigger and it it

performs bigger than its size because it's got that north south on the side of it

[Music]

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good day everyone this is David Levy that's me and I am holding the original

Discovery films of our most important Comet Comet Shaker le9 these films were

taken on the 23rd of March 1993 Carolyn discovered the uh comet on

these films two days later and uh and about 16 months after that all of

the fragments of this Comet collided with Jupiter giving Humanity its first view of what happens when a comet hits a

planet and uh and one of the exciting things about this is that when comets

hit planets they don't just drop uh dust

they also drop um organic materials uh carbon hydrogen oxygen and

nitrogen which eventually turn into proteins amino acids RNA and finally on

one magic day DNA comets Comet impacts are really the first step in the origin

of

life like to invite all of you to uh to come to the next Global star party they

are run by Scott Roberts of the store scientific and me we we co-host this

program and uh it's usually done on strees days and uh usually at 6 o' or so

Central Central Time and so I hope to see you all there my name is David

Ley I hope to see you all at the very next Global Star Party

[Music]

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Transcript for Part D:

okay we're going

[Music]

live and just check some things here

oh that's a beautiful head shot

there I'm fore

spee spee

spee hey

Scotty is it okay if I give my little

speech

absolutely yeah and so okay good evening

everybody

this early evening where you are in the

Philippines and uh looks like we're

getting a good view of the Comet

tonight very good and so pleased and

honored to be a part of it last night I

quoted for you my favorite poem by

Gerard Manley

Hopkins about a slip of comet tonight I

have another comic quotation this one

will come from Shakespeare and juliia

Caesar a very famous one I'm certain

everybody in the world knows this one

but here it goes Caesar's wife

caleria does not want her husband to go

to the Senate that day for fear of being

assassinated it was a fear that she was

100% justified in

taking anyway um Cesar looks at her and

says when beggars die there are no

comets seen the heavens themselves Blaze

forth the death of

princes thank you very much and welcome

Scotty

Roberts let's bring myself back on

here anyways um we have um uh

Christopher go here uh

He's on by Audio and regretfully they've

been clouded out once again okay which

means that um that we will uh do this

once again tomorrow uh I don't know how

long Chris intends to stay but he's not

someone that gives up uh once he's on to

a project and so um Chris you want to uh

say a few words

yeah um well uh tough luck today I know

you're disappointed but th this happens

to astronomers of course and uh yeah and

so um and I know that you you got

clouded out yesterday U but you showed

people the sky and showed them various

things that they could

see describe what it was

like uh well yesterday um the sky was

clear except that area around the

comet and uh unfortunately right now

it's the same story but much thicker

clouds uhhuh uh there are clearings the

East North and the South but uh yeah

where the comet is it's kind of hopeless

right now I don't know why comets are

Cloud magnets yes they

are right

yeah well um we did uh we did get some

uh reports of being able to see the

comet I I was able to see it um uh just

uh just after Sunset um but I also got

clouds like like it happened in the

Philippines ex except there was a break

in the clouds and then I got to see the

comet uh with a little bit of tail you

know I was using Venus as kind of a a

way to kind of um uh get a level uh of

of where the comet would be and so I

kind of looked to the right of the of

Venus a ways and lo and behold the comet

was there uh not as bright as Venus but

still a certainly a a brighter tale I

can only see a little bit of that uh

because we still here in Arkansas we had

uh uh you know particles in the air and

stuff and it just wasn't exactly clear

but I I feel good that I got to see it

um uh but of course everybody wants to

see the uh uh the the the tail

stretching out really far and I think

that was the experience that maybe David

Levy had David do you want to talk about

your uh Comet viewing

yesterday well yesterday the reason I

didn't see yesterday was that like you

there was a big cloud right where the

comet would have been tonight

tonight there was not but there is a

tree thinkle I need to set up my okay

okay all right I'll let you do that okay

bye I'll call you back later okay we're

gonna see if Chris gets a a break with

the clouds here so anyhow but you were

saying David what I was trying to say

was that tonight there weren't any

clouds but there was a tree that was

block where I thought the comt might be

so I simply walked to a portion of our

yard where the tree wouldn't be a

problem yeah and I went from Venus as

you did and then within a few seconds

there was the comet with

binoculars yes I went to the observatory

and I used

Eureka which is running extremely well

right now the only problem is is that

the mirror has a tendency to fall out uh

didn't tonight and I got a magnificent

oh yeah going all the way down like that

so yeah right

mhm so we have um watching right now we

have be sence watching from Belgium

there's probably some other people

rubbing their

eyes kind of tuning in but um uh my view

of the Comet uh was exciting you know I

thought that um

uh you know thinking back on it uh it

seemed that the portion of the Comet

just you know I could see the head of

course but uh right after the head and

as the tail begins that looked much

brighter to me than than the head itself

so um I tried to get an image of it with

my iPhone I was unable to do that but uh

a friend a mutual friend of ours David

uh Michael weasner uh did in fact get

that image I'm going to I'm going to

share that now so hold on for a second

I'll bring it up full screen and this is

done with an

iPhone um I think that the exposure

might have been somewhere in the

neighborhood of you know 3 to 10 seconds

something like that um and this is from

Oracle Arizona which is a kind of North

a little Northwest west of David but not

far I mean it's you know certainly a

short drive um to get out to where he is

and here it

is oh my isn't that good yeah so you can

see the uh you can see the dust tail and

the and the ion

tail and I think that is the city of

Oracle there in the

foreground and just beyond that would be

Tucson you know so but that's a

beautiful

shot I Echo that it is a beautiful

shot

so the uh video you were showing was

that the live feed from the

Philippines no uh that video was a time

lapse that was done about um you're

talking about this video

here that is a time

lapse uh taken uh from Chile and that

was U maybe a week and a half ago

something like

that but just look at that mean it's

spectacular dead

tail goes almost all the way up to the

top of the frame so it was really

good it was really good so this is this

is you know if you got a clear sky this

is what you can expect to see uh you

know and you're not having to wake up uh

early in the morning to see this this is

going to be uh after the sun has set and

um um you know a good uh a good way to

site it is to look at Venus and then

look several degrees uh to the right of

Venus and uh use some binoculars uh

that's that's how I found it U last

night well we're going to come out and

do it again tonight and see what we can

see this is now Sunday over here and um

so I think that that is um that's kind

of where we are

um Chris is uh trying to get set up uh

uh with

um you know his rig and um

and should call me back if there is well

he will call me back if he get some

clear

sky uh but in the meantime um I want to

call your attention

to uh we will be announcing the next

Global Star Party pretty soon uh

depending on how

this I think what we'll be doing is

we'll probably be broadcasting the 158th

one again tomorrow night um uh you know

uh if in fact uh Chris uh still runs

into problems today which I think is

probably likely so we would um we would

uh do this

again um on um on Monday night and uh or

Monday morning and uh you think you

might be up for that

David absolutely

you betcha you betcha that's right so

um uh yeah and so we we will we will

continue to uh try to do this until we

get something uh to show you live of the

Comet and then once we kind of recover

from that a little bit we'll announce

the 159th Global star party but right

now this is until we get the comet this

is this will be the still the 158th and

until we get that done I also want to

talk a little bit about the um uh the

opening of the astronomy Discovery

Center at L

Observatory uh I'm planning to be there

I want to bring my friend David uh Levy

and perhaps one or two others um uh but

uh I got a message from Ken Kevin

Schindler

um regarding this and um this grand

opening will happen on November

16th and they are going to open the

Marley Foundation astronomy Discovery

Center or the

ADC um and uh so they've got uh they've

got a lot of fanfare for this at 10

o'clock in the morning they'll have a

brass band a brass quartet there'll be a

ribbon cutting cerem

um and then they'll have throughout the

day they'll have dosent guided

tours special guest

speakers um so you can hang out the

whole day there'll be food trucks there

you know and uh um and then they'll have

their regular programming which includes

live shows uh evening constellation tour

uh stargazing sessions and campus tours

uh so you can learn more about the rich

history and um science at

um so uh definitely recommend this to

you uh it would be fun to see you in

person uh and uh if if you're fans of uh

if you're a fan of David Levy and who

isn't um you know he'll be there uh with

me and they'll they'll make it a lot of

fun

so

um and so David I'm going to I got this

uh video I showed you just a brief clip

of it um but there is a

program that

um uh has

[Music]

um the Roman Space Telescope in it

um and it's uh called the legacy of

light and I think that uh I think this

video this is just a a clip of it um few

minutes and this this portion of the

video concluded it it was the conclusion

of the uh Legacy of light event that was

held on

September uh 25th and

so um but it

foregrounds or yeah foregrounds the

importance of

Hubble J West and the Roman

observatories enable in in enabling the

habitable world's

Observatory uh which can answer one of

the most fundamental questions are we

alone and so uh I'm going to run this

now and then we'll come back and see

what Chris is

doing we have always looked to the sky

in

Wonder questioning the universe's story

and our place in

it in the vastness of space are we

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alone each generation of telescope and

technology has brought us closer to the

answer

human determination has taken us further

than we could have imagined

this Legacy leads to our next chapter

and the answers that lie in the

Stars waiting for us to find them

well that was really cool I hope to uh

try to find that entire program online

uh so that we can broadcast that at some

point

um so uh on any account I'm waiting to

hear from Christopher go I am going to

to uh make a call over there and see if

he's getting some clear sky if he's

getting lucky which we that's what what

uh uh amateur astronomers often rely on

is uh first off is their

skill also just showing up is is often

uh uh you know very important because

you often do get lucky um so you know I

think all of us that have done a lot of

amateur astronomy uh know that we

wouldn't have seen the things that we

saw had we have looked at the sky and go

ah we don't think the sky's going to be

quite right you know uh so uh you know I

know that David uh tries to make an

observation every time and any time that

he can uh he's uh he also emphasizes the

important of recording uh what you look

at you know so then is Diaries and his

observing logs uh he has done that and

uh if you want to see those observing

logs you can uh by going to the Linda

Hall library and seeing those as well as

I think David your your first telescope

is there is that right yes it is they

have my first telescope my personal

journals and my entire collection of

observing yeah very cool very cool so we

have uh um we have

alar watching from deerlick astronomy

Village in Sharon

Georgia uh I believe that that Village

is uh right next to where the uh Peach

State Star Party happens if I recall

correctly um because I know that there

is like this little village that's uh

beside the observing field and they have

all these cool observatories and stuff

it's it's a little bit like the idea of

the Arizona sky village as well there

must be a few of these kinds of enclaves

uh throughout the country maybe around

the

world um and so beis Hines is watching

she said that they had clouds

unfortunately um you know and so this is

this is uh maybe one of the reasons that

you might uh consider visiting or even

moving to Arizona is um they often have

clear

skies and uh you know it is a playground

for astronomers I think so uh which is

great this uh this view of uh uh of the

Comet A3 uh is a timelapse now this is

done about a week and a half ago from

Chile but you can see how long the tail

is say and

um what do you know about the

comet David is this uh this is the first

time for this Comet to come in is that

correct it is apparently the first time

this an or Cloud Comet coming in from

the or cloud from the very edge of the

solar

system the boundary between the solar

system and Interstellar

space it is also a very Dusty com which

means that the

tail should become very very

bright and it should stay that way for

at least a few more

days would this would this Comet also

create a uh maybe a new meteor shower

for

us

uh yeah I think you'd want to ask U

you'd want to ask uh Peter Brown about

that and one onario because that's his

field two of the Comets that I've

discovered have meteor

showers periodical comment that I

discovered in

1991 as a meteor shower down in the

sther

hemisphere

and the most recent comment that I

discovered in

2006 as a meteor shower that I've seen

of very slow moving meteors every year

and um just before Christmas and early

December oh that's cool that is cool

that's GNA be very gratifying to see a

meteor shower from a comet that you

discovered so it is because it's the

gift that the gift that keeps on giving

you know uh in a good way so that's

great that's

great well folks I am not getting a

response back back from Chris um but if

I do uh then what I'll do is I'll

return uh back to uh my office and

um and see if uh if we can get a live

view of the comment uh until that time

David I think what I'm going to do is

let you get some rest uh I really

appreciate you coming on each night with

us as we try to uh you know get a live

view from the

Philippines

and I guess we'll close for right now so

uh you have any closing remarks you

wanna you want to make at all no but I

think you need some get some rest Scot

and we'll see you tomorrow

evening all right okay thank you take

care take

care all right and thanks for all of you

that have tuned in uh from around the

world uh watching this and those of you

that might watch this in um you know

after it's recorded and uh so uh but uh

you know surf the net a little bit and

uh um see what you can find as far as

recent images of the Comet it is

spectacular and uh and we'll be

back take

care good night all

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for

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a

 

Transcript for Part E:

okay are we still doing

this uh we are still yeah we're still

doing it at least for a few more minutes

we some reason we lost to the live

connection so I'm not sure

why but

uh but stranger things have happened

so no first time

anything first this is the first time

yeah so I'm hanging in there for uh

about another 20 minutes here and we'll

see if uh Chris comes back on I know

he's frustrated um so he's already just

been up there for three nights um and I

wanted to show uh I'll share my screen

here I'll show what um the

um what he's dealing with

let's see here we

go here we

are now let me I didn't share correctly

let's share correctly here we

go yeah you can see that David this is

um this is SIU City and I think that I

think that where the letter c is is

probably some mountains where Chris is

right

now and and um if that's North then you

know we'll be

uh well you can see he's got clouds on

either side of him here

so yeah well kind of mushrooming just

kind of going straight up you know is

interesting

yeah islands often get cloud cover you

know they have localized

weather and so that's

you can see it when you go to like

Kawaii but

um it has mountains so tall in Hawaii

that it gets above you know most of that

cloud cover monay of course gets above

that David I'm curious during all your

Comet uh hunting and Comet uh adventures

and stuff you probably have been to many

many observatories did you go to Mona

have you been there yes

okay up there with

manura Excuse me S yeah I went up there

with manura my 6inch diameter telescope

okay and I did an hour or so of comet

hunting from the summit of Mona from the

summit oh that's right next to the

Subaru telescope oh Subaru okay

telescope found it very difficult to

breathe yes yeah I when I was uh there

for the 91 Eclipse we were right in

front of the Canada France Hawaii

telescope the cfht yeah and

um uh yeah I was there uh nonstop

for four days and three nights you know

and you got view the eclipse from there

b to do the eclipse we were um filming

it it was actually filmed on 35

millimeter Motion Picture film for uh

Nova's uh presentation called the uh

eclipse of the century and um and boy

was it uh you know so that was my first

eclipse and I was running two cameras

simultaneously you know so I had these

mounts with these big 35 millimeter

motion picture cameras and

um uh it was uh after being awake

because I couldn't sleep I couldn't

sleep at the that altitude because of

lack of oxygen so I would about every

four or five hours I would take a break

I would go up into the um uh where the

uh you know the maybe conference room or

relaxation room or whatever for the

astronomers inside the Dome and they had

oxygen there that you could take you

know so I was breathing

oxygen uh and then coming back down but

I just I could not sleep and

so after after a few days of that uh you

know it's

uh you know the the evenings and the

sunrises and stuff like that wow I mean

it's just surreal you know surreal but

we got we did get the eclipse um on four

different cameras and they mixed all

that together and uh uh made for a

really nice documentary so it was fun to

be a part of it you know oh I'm glad it

was

yeah it

was because I was such you know because

it was uh done for Nova um uh there were

so many documentary filmmakers up there

at the time uh including Roger rusme was

there uh shooting for not a video but um

uh taking St still images for National

Geographic and as I was I was and still

am such a fanboy for the National

Geographic Society so it was cool to

work with him a little bit graic

Society seem we have more in common than

I

thought yes

well we're just going to wait a few more

minutes

here it's interesting about the um the

red spot and listening to

U uh Christopher Go's description of the

ovals that uh actually as an amateur

astronomer he's famous for discovering

one of the ovals on Jupiter

yeah he also keeps tabs on all of the uh

Jian impacts that have taken place in so

yeah how do you have you kept track of

how many times has this been an impact

on Jupiter

yeah I don't know but it's uh this may

be uh probably less than 10 but

certainly more than one certainly more

than one yeah oh

yeah it's interesting to me because once

amateur astronomers learn how to see

something how to make an observation

they they are able to find it again and

again you know

so and uh if you tell amateur

astronomers they can't do something that

this is only the realm of professional

astronomers

they always prove the professionals

wrong so for instance like exoplanets

that used to be only in the realm of

multimedia aperture telescopes you know

and uh now they do it with 4 inch

refractors you

know so it's all in the way you

look

yeah and and also too just looking at

back at old data when I was at at uh y's

Observatory and we were looking at some

of the old glass plates and stuff and

they said from time to time in amateur

astronomer and certainly professional

astronomers would pull one of those

glass plates taken you know right after

the turn of the century and I'm not

talking about the turn of you know from

the 1900s to the 2000s we're talking

about 1800s to

1900s uh they had these fabulous glass

plates and they would find data you know

uh of some Celestial phenomena so they

could go way back so that's why it's

important to keep that data you know a

lot of the the old

observatories um you

know were throwing out glass plates and

stuff like that you know

because you know how do they keep them

it is expensive to keep this data so

there is and I'll have to find the guy

that is doing some of this work there is

a a a group that is taken taking

historical glass plates and they are

digitizing them in high resolution um uh

for use uh you know down the road

so uh this was this was uh announced

during the alliance of historic

Observatory meeting that I was at at the

Vatican Observatory about a week ago and

when you did you meet um

brother guy Co Gago I did I sure did

yeah he is a good friend of mine he is a

wonderful guy you know

so and I told him that I said you're a

wonderful guy and he says yes I

[Laughter]

am brother guy is the U Pop's astronomer

and uh yeah he's uh he's got a wonderful

uh very Charming personality a great

sense of humor you know

so

um so I'm I'm I'm honored that I was

able to spend some time uh you know at

at the Vatican Observatory and learn

about them and um learn about the

history of astronomy with the Catholic

Church uh I was impressed by that you

know that they uh have such a deep

program you know and um their of course

their prize instrument right now is not

at the Vatican in Italy uh but it's in

Arizona M Mount Hamilton vat yeah the M

who I'm sorry isn't it Mount Hamilton no

that mount Hamilton is uh where the leak

Observatory is uh it's on

Graham so I got something wrong here on

Mount Graham m Graham sorry yeah yeah

now

Graham yeah so Paul gabber who is um who

is

uh I guess the astronomer in charge

there Vatican

Observatory back to the

vat for

it says the Vatican advanced technology

telescope in Arizona is a multi-million

doll astronomical research complex paid

for by private

donations consists of two parts the

alisp lenon telescope and the Thomas J

Bannon astrophysics

facility I've seen that telescope it's

it's quite a wonderful instrument

yeah here is a

picture of the

uh

Observatory the telescope's 1.8 meter

72inch mirror

F1 wow okay it was uh fabric the Richard

F Caris mirror laboratory University of

Arizona the first mirror ever made using

revolutionary spin spin casting I did

not know that and polishing techniques

that are now used to make giant

telescopes such as the L LBT the lsst

and the giant mellan

telescope Vatican advanced technology

telescope truly lives up to its name its

heart is a 1.8 m uh honeycomb mirror

construction with boros silicate uh

glass and

um so they did uh spin casting and

stressed lap polishing

techniques which are being used for

mirrors now up to four meters in

diameter very

cool we'll have to go up there yep and

there's Mount

Graham I don't know why I had Mount

Hamilton stuck in my head I would love

it very much Scot

yeah so are we gonna just give it up for

tonight and try again tomorrow I think

that's the

plan we'll hear from um I'll probably

get a call from

uh uh Chris later on

and uh we got one more shot at this

before he has to go down the mountain so

um so I'll be in touch with you Dave and

let you know what's happening okay okay

and I thank everybody for tuning in uh

tonight I'm sorry for the interruption

on the the live stream but um these

things happen and um we will be back uh

with uh probably the last install of the

uh uh 158th global Star Party um and

hopefully fingers being crossed that we

get to see the comet from the

Philippines thanks David thank you for

inviting me along tonight and see you

tomorrow thanks for being there so many

nights thanks all right take care bye

bye good night good night good

night okay so again thanks everyone for

tuning in and um we'll uh try to do this

again about the same time which will be

about 4 o' in the morning Central Time

and

um uh until then uh keep looking up

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good day everyone this is David Levy

that's me and I am holding the original

Discovery film

of our most important Comet Comet Shaker

leing n these films were taken on the

23rd of March

1993 Carolyn discovered the uh comet on

these films two days

later and

uh and on about 16 months after that all

of the fragments of this comic collided

with Jupiter giving Humanity its first

view of what happens when a comet hits a

planet and uh and one of the exciting

things about this is that when comets

hit planets they don't just drop uh dust

they also

drop um organic

materials uh carbon hydrogen oxygen and

nitrogen which eventually turn into

proteins amino acids RNA and finally on

one magic day DNA comets Comet impacts

are really the first step in the origin

of life

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oh