Virtual Texas Star Party Night 1

Transcript:

Well, hey, what is up everybody? We are here at the Texas Party even though it's
virtual Y'all all know why it's virtual, right? I think most of us can figure out why we're
doing this instead of meeting out in the dark skies of West Texas but at last, here we are.
My name is Will. You can find me down below here at Deep Sky Dude on all those social media
platforms that they have these days. and check us out there. You can also see my friend,
mister Joe Caleb. He's right here and you can find him at the Astro Joe Joe. man. We're going to have some fun tonight.
We got a lot of cool stuff coming up, man. Yeah, we sure do, man. You know, I was looking around earlier because like this looks nothing like
the Prude Ranch in West Texas, right? So, but we are going to do the next best thing to
actually being there and we've got three awesome nights planned with some great speakers, some fun Trivia, all
kinds of cool things to hopefully bring as much of the TSP experience to everybody we can. So, I'm looking forward to
it Will Yeah, this is going to be fun. We've got we've got Trivia. We've got T shirt
giveaways. If If y'all want one of these awesome T shirts, we're going to give one away in just a few minutes and like
everybody who's here that's commenting, you're going to be eligible to win. So, get your fingers ready, Okay, I'm going
to tell you how just yet but we're going to get to that in a second. One thing I do want to mention though for those of
y'all that might not know what the Texas Star Party is, it's a star Party out in West Texas where the skies are very very
dark and Us amateur astronomer are people's Bring our telescopes out there and view
objects that are way, way, way far away, right? It's it's it's dark sky fun and of course, the
last 2 years have been cancelled due to COVID which is an unfortunate thing but we can
announce this. I think Joe Wright, we have the party date for twenty 2222. The cat is out
of the bag. Everybody go ahead, will I? I'm really excited about this but we've got dates
for the TSP in 2022. We do April 24th through May 1st
which is a it's going to be a good one. You know, those nights can get a little chilly in the mountain, West Texas at
like what? 2 AM. You know, it gets a little chilly out there sometimes depending on on on
the conditions but one of the beautiful things about the TSP Star Party is we've got a snack
bar. So at 2 AM, when you're chilly, there's nothing better than walking down to the snack bar, getting you a Frito pie
and if you're not from Texas, you haven't had a Frito pie, those things are delicious and the right thing that you need
at 2 o'clock in the morning. No, it's absolutely true. That is absolutely true. We got so many people from all over the
world watching tonight with us. I mean, we've got comments coming in from Southeastern
Idaho. What's up, Steven? We've got mister Carl Batts himself. They're and from Bay City,
Texas. Nobody knows where that is though. Nobody knows where that is. We've got people from
all over here. Nova Scotia, Canada. and Boston. I mean and
so we're going to be highlighting your guys' comments as we're going through tonight and hanging out with
y'all and so, you know, I feel like we maybe should we should
introduce some of our sponsors and stuff. Of course, we're here on Sky and Telescope. We're going to explore scientific. We're we're on my
platform. We're on Joe's platform, Houston Astronomical Society, so many platforms we're broadcasting right now and so, We're just excited to
be here. We've got so much stuff guys. So, we we'll I guess we'll get to our first little spot here from Scott and
the team over at Explore Scientific. Yeah, that's Scott and Kent. They were gracious enough to put something to get
together for everybody to welcome you all to the Texas Star Party like we said, for those of you who've never been
there before, you're here now. So this is technically, I guess your first Texas Star Party and
the folks over at Explore Scientific who are great sponsors of this event. Wanted to say a little hi So, let's
get that going. Hey, everybody. Scott Roberts and Kent here from Explore Scientific and
we're at the world famous Texas Star Party. One of the dates again, the dates are June 10,
eleven, and twelve in the evenings and you know the Texas Star Party is one of the world's greatest Star fights.
super dark skies out there in West Texas near Fort Davis. This is a star party that a lot
of us love to to get to Deep Sky observers Astro photographers. It's beautiful
and a really friendly staff. We think you'll love it. The the thing about the Texas Star
Party is that you know, the camaraderie you've been to the
Texas. I haven't been to the Texas Star Party. Party. I've been, I've been to Mcdonald's Observatory in for that. Okay, But I've never been out there,
Right? But folks, it's dark out there. If you ever get a chance, you need to make the trip. That's right. Yeah. we'll see you there. We're here for the virtual event and we'll be
showing you lots of stuff. Stay tuned.
It's such a cool little video that Scott and the team made over there. Thanks Scott and Kent for that. That was so
cool. It's just gets us in the vibe of right? I'm jealous. Where do I get a hat like that?
We've gotta talk to those guys and see if we can get some explore. Scientific branded hats for us, right? Yeah. yeah.
Maybe there's maybe that's in the cards for us. Maybe one of your viewers can let us know or something. I don't know. Absolutely. but yeah, Scott and
team there have been absolutely fantastic. We appreciate everything they've done to help us put this together and speaking of will. What's on the
schedule for tonight? Well, we have a fun evening of lots of Astronomy goodness actually and
one of the main things about Texas Star Party, the thing that I always look forward
to is one of the main talks for me is Larry Mitchell's. Yes, we've got Larry Mitchell, the
man himself recorded a talk for us and we're going to be playing that. We've got the the awesome team at the F back
which is the Fort Bend Astronaut Astronomy, Club Fort Club. Yes. And they the George Observatory out in just south
of Houston. They're a wonderful team of highly knowledgeable. They high emphasis on outreach and things like that. So, we're going to have them join us as
well and again, we've got T shirts to give away. We've got Trivia door prize giveaways. guys, there's so much stuff to
give away and and to hang out so you don't want to miss a second of it and basically, I
guess we're going to, you know, lead into the next thing which is where is the Texas Star Party, right? We talk about West Texas. What's down there
in West Texas? You know, maybe around that that Bend area, Joe, what is that? yeah, II. don't know but I'm sure given
the size of Texas, it's huge and it's just a big Bend. Oh, wait. Yeah, actually, it is Big
Bend and you know, people always say, you know, what is it about West Texas and and Big
Ben specifically? that's so magical about you know, Observing and and all these other things and I say, you
know, if you're going there just for the night skies, that's half the party, right? There's so much more that you can do out there and it's
really magical place. An area that like we said, gives you some of the darkest skies,
night skies that you could find in the continental US but at the same time, there's just a ton of things to do during the
day. So, we really wanted to kind of let people know where we go and then focusing on, you
know, the prude ranch itself So, we figured we'd share with everybody a little bit of the goodness of Big Bend if you've
never been there before,
There's an old adage by William Blakely that says, Texas is neither southern nor Western
Texas is Texas. and for anyone who's been to the Lone Star
State, they know that the different parts of Texas are just as varied from one another as we are from our neighbors
across our borders. Whether you're deep in the thick of the piney woods and the lush
marshes of the Gulf Coast and the plains of the panhandle or on the limestone cliffs and
caverns that can be found in the Hill Country, Texas landscape is more varied than
those of many countries but no region seems to capture the true essence of what Texas is
more than Big Bend though people may think of West Texas as a desolate place, it's a
destination that folks come from around the world to visit Big Bend National Parks are almost half a million visitors
in twenty-nineteen alone with people coming in from all corners of the world to take part in world class hiking,
biking water activities, or to take in the natural beauty that is like no other place in the
world. Big Bend also boasts some of the best dining destinations and international
festivals anywhere around
but for astronomers, the Big Bend region is unique and unlike any other in the United
States. when the sun goes down, this landscape is transformed into something that cannot be
described until you've looked up into the Big Ben night sky and got lost in the heavens
above. very few places. both skies as dark as they are here and on a cloudless, mindless,
Night, the Milky way can shine bright and stretch from horizon to Horizon.
and as the song deep in the heart of Texas goes the stars at night are big and bright and
nowhere is that more true than here For those looking to peer through their telescopes in order to unlock the mysteries
of the cosmos, Big Bend is more than just an international destination but rather rather
it's our our gateway to the universe, the universe
That was awesome, Joe. You did a great job on that piece, man. Narrative. Appreciate that, buddy. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah.
So, yeah, I mean, you and I have been there. I know several people watching have been, you know, until you've actually
stepped foot in a big Bend region. It's really hard to describe just how magical the place is and if you're on your
first trip to the Texas Star Party and you're driving through those desert roads in the mountains to to get there,
you realize it's a special place and TSP time is a special time. It is and you know, Since
you said that, Joe, let's get on. TSP town. Let's do this. Yeah.
I guess now we really are on TSP time, right, Joe? I feel like the star party has
officially started, right? So, everybody's queued up, gone through registration and the
star party is on. So, it's a it's an awesome, awesome feeling when you're waiting for that registration gate to open
drive through the gates there and get set up on the field, you know that you're on TSP time So, yeah, awesome. Good
job with that video. Well, that was fantastic. Thank you, brother. You know II wanted to convey. That's the whole thing about This is Joe and I and
Don, our friend, Don Sully, who's in the background. You can't see him. He's back there. I promise y'all but you know,
we all got together. We just wanted to convey our love of this Star Party to you guys and
gals out there who are who may have not have been or maybe you have been and you haven't been in a while or you went the last
few years and and you were sad about the cancellations but we've got a lot of cool stuff coming up so we don't need to
talk about how much we love TSP just yet. We've got all night to do that but we're going to first I think what we should do
Now, Joe is probably show people the Trivia stuff that you've you've gotten together for us that you and Don have
curated in the background. We've got a test trivia question so that we can get everybody kind of in the same
place, right? That's right. We want to get and I'm trying to get my best Bob Barker voice going but I can't quite get it
right. Get your animals spayed and neutered but one of the things that we really wanted to
do with the Star Party is get everybody involved and one of the ways that we thought we would do that is to have Trivia
quizzes. You know, it gives you an opportunity to regardless of where you are in the world, all you need is a phone or some
other device in which you can participate and it's a lot of fun. So, we'll we're going to
have our first practice quiz. Okay, I'm ready. This doesn't count for anything. This is
purely just for practice. So, people get used to how we do these quizzes here and we want
everybody to follow along. However, there are a couple of rules that we want everybody to kind of follow along with,
right? So, here are the rules. when you go to the link up at the top Mentee.com and use that
code. It's going to prompt to log in, please, please log in with your real name because
it'll give you just a random name like metal or giraffe or something like that and I'm
sorry if giraffe ends up winning this thing. We don't know who giraffe is and for the real giraffe out there, I
apologize if you do win. So, yeah but yeah, please use your real name. Don't use a
nickname. that way we can find you and get you the prizes that you've earned for every question that pops up, you've
got 15 Seconds to answer the question. Okay. So, during that time, there are multiple choice
questions. Select the right question and and you're good, okay? You do get points for answering the right question. You get no points for getting
it incorrect. However, there's a time thing to this too, right? So, the faster that you
answer these questions, the more points you'll actually get. So, this makes it really close and I've seen people kind
of come from behind a lot of times at the end of these things to actually overtake the leaders. So, don't give up if you think you're behind there.
So fast, correct answers get you more points If you miss a question, you don't get any
points there. So, it's going to be a lot of fun. So, if you've got a smartphone or anything else like that, get your phone
ready. Go to Mente.com. Type in that code
39060165 or you can scan that QR code there down below and that'll take you there as well
and when you scan it, you'll see the QR code meaning that you're ready. So, we're going to give everybody a second or
two to go ahead and get that done. We see people are jumping in right now and we and the
world watching with us tonight, Joe. We got Guatemala. Yeah. Look at that Tours in the
house. You know, all the way from our tours. Yeah, absolutely. So, a terrace and
look at the terrace. That's it. So, just follow the the the handle of the the right there
and then spike spike it. You know what I mean? Alright, guys. So, we're letting a few
more folks come in here and this is why you want to have your phones ready to go once we get to the actual quiz later on
today. So, we're again, this is just for practice. So, get used to it and I see an alien in there and everything else. So,
we're going to start the quiz now. That's our question. Okay. remember, answer fast to get more points, Alright, easy
question. What state is the Texas Star Party held in This is a hard one for me. I can't figure it out. Yeah, Hawaii
Yeah. Yeah. Go ahead and answer there. You got 5 seconds left to answer this question. You
can tell what animal Joe goes to see at the zoo when you're. Yeah, there we go. There we go.
26. Oh, we have one Hawaii. Come on. I'm sure Hawaii Star
Party would be great but not as fantastic as Texas Star Party. So, yes, the correct answer is the is Texas Star Party is held
in Texas. again, this is just to give you guys a chance to play around with the system to get used to it. Alright, next
Here we go. Oh well, before we get to the next question, we're going to see who answered the quickest. So, coming in the
Ellie Miller and Chris and were the fastest we have. It was just a hair faster than a few other folks. So, they answered
it around the same time. Okay, Kelly Miller, long time TSP
person. Yeah. Good. Good to see you. Alright, question number two. Here we go. I can't answer
faster to get more points. Who is is the Space telescope named after the questions will get We
promise. Yes, we promise. Who is the Hubble Space telescope named after Neil Armstrong. Albert Einstein. Kim Kardashian
or Edwin Hubble? I think it's that one. Yeah. Yeah. The one, the other one you mentioned II.
Yeah, I think it might be excellent. We got everybody. Everybody got this one, right?
Okay. So that's absolutely correct. Edwin Hubble is who it's after and we're going to
take a look at our leader board. We tabulate the results after this, we have our friend Ernst Young. I'm just joking.
This is all done automatically. Debbie Moran, our good friend,
Debbie Moran, came in from the the end there and answered so much more faster, I guess with that second question, I was
able to overtake everybody. So, guys, I think this is going to be a fun time when we get to
the actual quiz and and the Trivia giveaway at the end. It's going to be a lot of fun. We're going to actually have
ten questions and let me get back here and stop this here.
Lots of opportunity to get more points get in there and you
change the leaderboard Like Joe said, things can change from question to question, you know, our friend, Don Sully got us
some pretty good questions. I was able to preview some of them and I'm not going to play. I wanted to to be, I'm going
to, I'm going to try not to. So, yeah. no, we we have to kind of hold ours, you know, hold back from actually doing
that ourselves. So, that's just again a glimpse of what the quiz is going to be like. So, hopefully everybody who
participated saw what it was like. it is ready for the actual thing when we get going so that should be and well, I
figured, you know, we got a good group of folks here. Do you want to flash a few comments on the screen to see
who else might be joining us? Well, we got all, we got people from all over. This is this is pretty crazy. Wisconsin I saw,
you know, Canada all over the place. Richmond, Texas, you know, lots of us in Texas here.
you know, really want to be at the Texas Star Party and this is the next big thing. Hopefully, you know, we know
the Virtual thing is kind of it's it's been going on for a long time now and hopefully You
know, as things wind down, we will, we will return once again and we will in 2022. I will see
all y'all there for sure. Absolutely. I can't wait for it. So, you know, as as you mentioned, will, you know, we
unfortunately can't be there right now but you know, we also like other Star parties. The
star parties are cool. you know, they're they're not quite Texas Star Party but you know we like a lot of them. So we
wanted to kind of just share this with everybody who who's watching and look if we quite
scratch that TSP that you have right now. There may be some other upcoming Star parties you may want to attend and these are some that we've been to
others that you know, the the folks who've helped plan this thing have been to as well. We just wanted to kind of share
these things. The Nebraska Star Party will. Have you ever been? I've not and I've really really want to go. I've heard this is
one of the best star parties in America and never been. I do want to go though. I have too.
I've heard that the skies there are incredibly dark and sounds like it's a good time so that's going to be happening first
through the sixth of this year. If you have any questions, go to Nebraska Star Party.org and
visit that website. Next one is the Oregon Star Party. I haven't been to this one myself either but I know people who
have. Yeah, Good. and Ed, the guy who built Elvira the most
insane scope ever built by the hands of man. He goes to Oregon Star Party a lot. Absolutely. Hey, Eddie. I saw Eddie pop in
there. Eddie the eighth at 2021 or Star Party.org. world famous
cellophane Star Party is August 5th through the ninth. Registration is now open at
Cellophane dot and well, this is one of your favorites. Oh yeah. Ok. There's something special about Ot y'all and it's
in a beautiful place where you can see it right there in the Panhandle of Oklahoma. Dark
skies, beautiful stuff. Try to do it. That's right. So, later this year, October, 1st through
the ninth 2021, you can go to Okie dash Text.com for more information about that Star Party and then the It's Sky
Star Party in Socorro, New Mexico. I've heard lots of great things about this Star Party. myself and II can
imagine just how beautiful those skies are out there in the New Mexico desert. So, yeah, that will be October. 1st
through the third 2021. little bit of overlap with Ok Te. It looks like, right? Yes. So one and then the other I guess or
not that big of a drive I guess but no, no that that that should be good and then again,
one of our favorites, the last Star Party that will and I both attended before you know, COVID
shut everything down and you know, El Dorado this year was a little bit smaller again because of COVID restrictions
but it was still a blast and that's out in West Texas as well and that'll be going November 1st through the sixth
2021. Anything you want to mention about El Dorado Will and our friends over at the Bar Ranch. It's an intimate Star
Party. It's not big. it's not intimidating. It's easy to do especially if you're in Texas.
great skies. give it a shot. Absolutely and then the Winter Star Party the, you know, kind of the people who kicked off
this whole virtual Star Party format. So, we appreciate them kind of a blazing a trail there
but if you've never been to the Winter Star Party, they say the sky, the the skies are steady because you're down there off
of the coast and it's really a treat and you because it's so low in latitude. there are
things that you can see there. you you can't see at Star parties in the continental Us. So that's going to be coming up
shortly after the New Year, January 31st through February, 2nd 2022 and At least I mean,
we gotta say it right? So, oh, we got the date wrong on there. Will. I don't know how I messed
that one up. That is not going to be happening January 31st through February. 6th. That's the winter Star Party. No, but
again, that'll be happening at April 24th through May 1st. So, yeah, really excited about that
and we hope that many of you if you can't join us at the Texas Star Party next year that you
can at least go to one of the other Star parties that we have listed there and enjoy everything that we enjoy these
things so. Oh yeah man and it's it's worth it. I promise you even if you don't have a big scope, you can do what's called
Night. Leaching. Yes. Walk around and get in other people's telescopes and eye pieces and usually everybody's
really cool with that. So, come out and join us. Bring a camera or whatever you got and come out and yeah, so I mean, we've
got a lot of stuff to do tonight. So, we're going to keep on blazing that trail. We're going to be talking about those other Star parties as we go. go on through the night but
first of all, as we're coming into this next part, we got a little giveaway to do now
giveaway a giveaway. Yeah, another We're going to be giving away a lot of stuff II. Think as the as the night goes
on. but we've got, let's see. is it on there? Where is it?
There it is. There it is. We basically have a giveaway every
year at the at at the Texas Star Party in person where you must be present to win but we
must be socially distant to win tonight. and so basically, if
you registered for TSP, you know, 2019, 2020, and 2021 and
you weren't able to go to 2020 and 2021, you're automatically
entered into this whole thing. So, This is a, this is a treat for specifically for people who
are TSP regulars and so we're going to, I guess announce the
first what? Three, three winners of the grand prizes and what they won which is some awesome prizes from our from
our advertisers and friends at you know, all the different places. So, Joe, what do we have there? Yeah, yeah. So you
kind of alluded to to something there. Well, you know, the the must be present to win is kind
of a common theme at the Texas Star You could spend the entire week there but if you're not
there in the hall, when they're giving away these these giveaways and whatnot, you don't get it but because of the
circumstances, you, if you've been at any of the, if you were there in twenty-nineteen, registered in 2020, 2021, as
you mentioned, you can win one of these prizes. So, things that we wanted to mention
before we start the giveaway I believe this was a double blind random drawing. so that you
know, All of that was done using a computer system on the back end and I've said enough.
So, let's go ahead and give away some prizes. Let's do it. Alright.
first door prize is a Celestron power tank. 0. 5000. So, will
you own one of these things I hear they're fantastic and phenomenal. Whoever walks away
with this thing is one lucky person. So, we're very thankful and and and grateful to
Celestron for the prizes that they donated here but enough of me talking who won, who won it?
Michael Guidry of Hockley, Texas. Congratulations, Michael. Bit of a golf clap
there. Exactly. So, Michael Guidry wins the Celestron Power Tank. 0. 5000. Congratulations,
Michael and again, we'll be reaching out to all of the winners so that we can get the
arrangements to get those in your hands. Second item is
donated from from Hubble Optics to us and it's the Hubble Optics Hubble five star artificial Star. So, this is a
fantastic device and the winner of this is Philip King of Minneola Texas Grant.
Congratulations Philip. That's awesome. And lastly, we have
oops, I'm sorry. I put the wrong thing Oh, I'm sorry. That's okay. Not a problem.
Door prize number three. Again, another celestial power tank. 0. 5000. So, this goes out to
our good friend, Joe Sutter the Houston Astronomical Society and the Fort Bend Astronomy,
Club Joe Joe Ellen. Congratulations. and we want to
give away more. Are we stopping right here? I think we had three, right? So, yeah. Okay.
Well, we'll revisit this a lot, I guess periodically as we go along, right? And sounds good.
we'll we'll be giving more of those away as we go because we've got some some more stuff to give away. We've got AT shirt to give away here in a
few seconds. I know I was telling y'all to get ready, get ready to do that. So, we'll go ahead and do it now while we're
we're getting ready to announce the the auction which is another part of this whole thing that we got going on. So much stuff y'all. right now.
Joe found this awesome feature in Streamyard for us. So, we're going to put it to use Tonight and try it out and see if it
works. So, right now, wherever you're watching us from, type in hashtag T TSP Rocks right
now. Do it right now. I think you only get one entry, right? Joe? You you can put as many in there as you want but you only
get one. You get one. yolo or yo yo, one, I don't know. Yeah,
put it in. There's Melissa. She's got hers in. I see Let's see a couple more maybe coming
in here and get those in now because while we're talking about the auction, you're going to have a few minutes here to
get the TSP rocks in and you'll be eligible for one of these awesome fine cotton Texas Star
Party t shirts. That's it. These things are fresh off the runways in Milan and Paris. You
know, all of the fashion shows that have been going on. We have our hands on them. Here are top notch fashion designers
Put these together Now, in all seriousness, we had a great group of who helped come up with the design this year. It
is a little bit of a theme, right? So, you have Texas and the mask on top of it and give
me some space below there. So, we'll show a picture of that as well a little later on but they're awesome and anybody who
goes to the Texas Star Party love collecting these things and we're going to be giving one away here soon. So, we are
and again, I see a lot of TSP rocks coming in. Yes. so this
is awesome. You can see this flooding in as we're doing this. Why does it keep switching to me like that? I
don't know. And while we're waiting for those to come in, Well, we've got some auction
items as well and people can actually bid on and and there
it is. Yeah, absolutely. Look at that. So, VT TSP auction.
And now, there's two packages here. You can, you can bid on the XR. We'll go ahead and
click on that one first and show you guys what that is. It's a premium cabin stay at the Bar Ranch y'all. and right
now, the bidding is started at $50 and we have that link somewhere. I don't know if you
can put it up while while I'm showing this but the link to these auctions will be coming
soon and you guys can throw your name in the hat for this. You could you could get a great
deal. you know, depending You look, you only got 2 days here. So, if you if staying at the
bar ranch in a premium cabin is something you're interested in for 3 day, two nights, right
here. Go in and bid and get that going and then of course, we have another one for the Prude Ranch which is where the
Texas Star Star Party is held and it's 3 days two nights there, Joe. Yeah, that's
absolutely awesome. You know, you and I were just at the Bar Ranch last month and I think we might have kicked off all of
the bad weather we've had here in Texas, right? It was such an awesome for us there. The Prude
Ranch is is fantastic. As always, that's it's kind of what makes the Texas Star Party
the Texas Star Party and it's certainly kind of interwoven in the DNA of the party there but both of these auction prizes
are fantastic starting bids. there are $50 go ahead and go to that URL down below Texas
Star Party dot Better World.org slash auctions slash VTSP dash Auction and get your bids in.
these things like I said were graciously donated to us by the prude and The X. The XR and we
want somebody to walk away with each one of these and spend some time in under beautiful dark skies there. So, check
that out and yeah, those are going to be fun items for whoever wins those. That's
right. So, I guess and we'll be talking about those more as we go along. I guess though, it's
time to throw one of these shirts into a virtual crowd. Yeah, it's you know, if we
should have designed this Virtual like AT shirt cannon or something like that to shoot this out. Yeah, yeah. yeah.
Yeah, let's switch back over here and pick a winner for this thing. So, we're going to go
ahead and do the drawing. We're going through all the folks who entered the #there and the
winner of the T shirt is
Julie Fowler. Whoo hoo. Congratulations, Julie. So,
Julie, you are a winner. The winner of the the the first T shirt giveaway that we have
here and let me go ahead and flash the banner up there so you know who to get in contact with but Julie, if you can
Email VT TSP at Texas Star Party.org. Let us know that you're the winner of the T shirt. Give us your T shirt
size information and we'll make sure to get AT shirt out to you. So, congratulations Julie. That's absolutely fantastic.
Awesome. You'll be you'll be sporting the white T shirt just like the rest of us. So, that's it. Congrats. So, I guess we
have we gotta get into a lot of stuff here. and we might as well get into our our Explorer
scientific spot, right, Joe? Yeah, let's go ahead and do that right now.
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Little technical difficulty there. That's okay but we also wanted to share with everybody. in this segment, we're going to
talk about the Explore Scientific Double It series of telescopes. the AR series, Each
telescope has two pieces of glass in the front lines. So, rather than three that is in the front of the high-end
telescopes. These telescopes have chromatic aberration which means when you look at bright
objects, there's going to be a purple or a blue fringe and a red fringe. However, visually,
it doesn't affect visual us at all. and amazingly if you try
and do astrophotography, these telescopes are great for it. We have some pictures that we'll
show you that show exactly how pretty these can be. These pictures are achieved by using
a narrow band filters H Alpha triple line is the oxygen and
double ionized sulfur by taking those three wavelengths of light. the photographer can
merge them together and create a full color image as you can see by the pictures on you now,
I have behind me the Explore Scientific 102 double telescope
and the really big brother, the 150 152 millimeter tablet
telescope in between. We also have an AR series, 127 telescope, the Focal Range,
focal length ranges from 663 millimeters with this telescope up to 900 988 millimeters for
the One, two. These are great inexpensive telescopes that can
be used for some to do some really high-end work. Check 'em out on our website.
Okay. And definitely check those refractor out. Those are amazing refractor. I've owned
the double it and the triplet in the 102 millimeter. I think my Go-to scope man. Every time
it's easy to grab. Beautiful stuff. Great, great scope and so thank you to our friends at
Explore Scientific for shooting those little promos. It's awesome stuff. We appreciate that. Yeah, absolutely and
look, you know, you would never use something like that to look directly into the sun without
any protection, right? You have to have the proper protection and speaking of the sun, something happened with the sun
today. Well, I don't know if you heard about it but no, as soon as I opened social media,
it was like being bombarded by by cosmic radiation, right? And
I thought there's something in the moon. Did something with the sun. I don't know but our friend over at Sky and
Telescope actually
Welcome everybody. We're here with Kelly Beatty who is a senior editor with Sky and Telescope and the man who puts
together all of the sky and telescope tours. Kelly, how are you? Hey, it's great to be with you. Wonderful. We're glad to
have have you with us. Hey, we've heard a lot about this guy in Telescope Tours Can you
tell us a little bit about what these tours are and what goes into creating a tour? Sure and
I'll use the one that's coming up in just on on Thursday as an example. It's an eclipse of the
sun but the path in Canada and heads off, you know, over the North Pole to Siberia. Not a
lot of people are going to see it in the northeast. It'll deep partial eclipse 2. years ago, I started planning to fly a plane
into the path of the angular so that a few dozen people with us on the plane could could see it
and it's it's taking a long time a lot of work but it's coming to fruition and we're
going to be leaving from Minneapolis before Dawn fly over Southern Canada see the
annual eclipse and Then sit back down in Minneapolis after a flight to about 3 hours. That
flight has been 2 years in the making and that's kind of the the cadence that we work on in
planning the tours at Sky and Telescope. Now, there are some tours that we are doing every year like we do an annual tour
to Iceland and in fact, the picture that you see behind me is my background. I took that
picture in 2019. We had an exceptional year of Aurora's that year and as you might
know, we're coming up on a maximum in just three or 4 years. So, it should get pretty
good. That's a tour. That's pretty easy to set up because it's kind of plug and play but this eclipse flight or or
taking people to, you know, to the Yucatan Peninsula for an eclipse or Easter Island. All
of those are coming up. Those take lot of care coordination. We have a couple of companies that we work with that we
really trust and and are happy with that provide the very best accommodations and it's it's
it's a lot of work but it's very fulfilling. Absolutely. Now, with the pandemic, you
know, obviously having hit the entire world and people staying
away for travel for quite some time now and you know, thankfully, it looks like we're starting to emerge from that a
little bit. What's the demand look like for Astronomy based or space based type of travel?
Well, like a lot of travel, I think there's plenty of Pent-up demand not only because people
are you tired of being locked up and they really do want to travel again but also because a lot of people had trips planned
that they ended up not going on. They didn't spend that money and a lot of people we find on our tours are sort of,
you know, baby boomers who have lots of free time. They're still adventurous. They have a
lot of disposable income and so they're they're willing to go on interesting trips and and
you mentioned the pandemic, we're not for that. I would just be coming back from a 10 day tour of Italy. Huh? Where
we go to, you know, Galileo Birthplace and go visit the Meteorite collection at the
Vatican Observatory and and that's been rolled over to next year. So, it's true. The
pandemic really hit us hard especially like the total solar eclipse last year in December.
I just, it's it's painful to even think about the right There'll be more eclipses, right? And there are more
opportunities and and so we're actually kind of front loading our tour inventory if you will
with lots of places to go not just for eclipses. We have tourist plan for for Botswana
and Hawaii and Australia and Italy. I mentioned all of which
are not connected to any particular event at all. They're just wonderful places to go. Wonderful and for
somebody who's looking to do one of these tours for the first time, what's the best bit of advice you can give to one
of those first timers as as they embark on one of these tours? what we try to do? You know, know, there's always an
astronomical component to the tourist be at an eclipse or like Vatican Observatory but we
we're not like it's not like From observatory to Observatory to see everything we possibly
can. People go to see eclipses often because they're in a place where they've always
wanted to go. Chile and South America or Hawaii or there's an eclipse coming up in Easter on
Easter Island and who hasn't wanted to go to Easter Island. right. And it provides a convenient opportunity to to
make that dream come true. So, we we make it a well rounded set of activities not only the
you know, the the the die hard stargazer in the family but maybe the spouse who may or may
not be as interested or whoever is coming along and that way, everyone has fun. The thing
about eclipses in particular, solar eclipses, you know, it's you're you're depending on the
weather and so we want to make sure that the tour itself is is very satisfying and a
experience so that the eclipse although the highlight of the tour, it's not a make or break situation if we happen to get
clouded that we Have a great tour. Excellent. Well, I know you had a question you wanted
to ask as well. Yeah. You know, you've been to a couple of Texas star parties, I think,
Right? and II was wondering, you know, because II seem to be together to ask this question of all of our guests but I'm
I'm interested in this sort of direction of a thing like, what is one thing you took away from the Texas Star Party? I know
you called it the the land of large Dobbs, the land of the giant Dobbs. I mean and and and
why not, right? You're going to take advantage of of the the the clarity and and the other
darkness of that location, you might as well bring as much as you possibly can to see all the
things that you've you've read in books. you know, like the Herschel 500 lists and things,
things that you've never been able to see from your home because of light pollution or lack of aperture, whatever it
might be and here, it's like the mecca of big telescopes and dark skies and so I have not
been to TSP in a number of years. I am itching to get back. We have here and we're
we're hoping to all go back to you know, with the whole last couple of years having to cancel. Of course, it's not
been that fun and so hopefully you can join us out there. maybe have the Sky and telescope tour, bring some
people to Texas Star Party and then we can all just have a good time out there. That'll be pretty cool and interesting. You should mention that because
of course we have a tour to Texas for the eclipse in 2024. We thought about making our way
out to McDonald's Observatory in Fort Davis and we're still working on that possibility. we'll be there and wrong
because you'll be in the path of the eclipse somewhere.
Excellent. Last question I've got for you, Kelly. You've obviously traveled the world to
observe a lot of of these wonderful astronomical phenomenon. Had an opportunity
to see a lot of the sites and and and whatnot. Is there something that's still on your bucket list that you would like
to do that that you haven't done yet? in terms of visiting places in the world and with an
Astronomy? Yes, yeah, it's coming up this December Sky and Telescope has a tour to see a
total solar eclipse. The only places you see it are Antarctica. Wow. I'm sorry. And
and out in the middle of the ocean and so I'm going to be on a cruise ship that as you know,
it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere December is and so there are a lot of cruise ships and and this particular cruise
as many will will get to set foot on the Antarctica. I get to play with the penguins and that is definitely on my bucket
list and my wife, she would not be denied. She is definitely coming along and we're really
looking forward to that one. Cool, Excellent. Alright and for anybody who wants to get more information about these
tours, where can they go just our sky telescope, website, Sky, and Telescope.org and
there's a nav button at the on the homepage. big one that says tours and just click. We've got
ten active tours right now. with two more that I'm about to load that II. Can't tell you
about but okay. It's it's a great selection and II.
encourage people to have a look and you know, if they have questions, fire off a message to me, KB D at Sky and
Telescope.org and I will happily get back to you. Excellent and they can follow you online. You've got a
podcast as well that people can subscribe to. I do. It's a once a month podcast basically for
beginners, you know, for people who are just getting an understanding of the sky. It's like 12 minutes long, no
equipment required. Just as I say, just bring your curiosity. If my podcast and I I'll show
you the night sky. Excellent. Well, Kelly, we really appreciate everything that you're doing. Can't wait to
participate in our first guy and teleskope tour. That's something that I was hoping to do. this past year in Chile but
obviously, I wasn't able to do that because of COVID but we look forward to all the wonderful things that you and your team are putting together.
So, thank you very much for joining us today. It's my great pleasure guys. Thanks so much for having me. Absolutely. Take
care. Bye.
Hey, that was Kelly Beatty. Really appreciate his time and
taking us the sky and telescope tours That was my first time
getting a chance to speak with Kelly. He's a fantastic guy. Will the interview was
phenomenal. I think we we probably spoke for about an hour just chatting back and forth about all the the cool
things that got planned and if you've never done a Sky and telescopes tour before, it is highly worth it. I don't think
you have to worry about a thing. You just basically show up. They've got everything taken care for you and it seems
like on time. So, looking forward to as we start to turn the corner on COVID being able
to go back to some of these things. So, Absolutely. Yeah and and today that what they
did was so cool. You know, they were in an airplane checking out the angular eclipse. Yeah.
So, can you imagine you really can't be cool stuff. So the sky and telescope stores is
something that tours or something I've always wanted to do scheduling and all that.
It's just never has worked but haven't talked with Kelly that day. It's definitely something
that I'm putting on the list to do for for something new for sure. Absolutely. Yeah. So, if you go to Sky and
Telescope.org, take a look at their tours there. See what they've got planned. I know they had a trip to Botswana
coming up as well and that's the home of Stephen J O'meara who is going to be our speaker
one of these nights and he's got some interesting things to share about the night sky there. That looks to be absolutely interesting. Lots of
cool things going on there. So, give that a look If you've got some time, go to the URL and take a look the tours they have
and the other thing I wanted to do is Kelly kind of plugged his podcast. I mean, you see how just just how engaging Kelly
is. So, give that podcast to follow. You'll learn a thing or two about Astronomy. He's been
he's been around Astronomy a little while. has a lot to share. So, I thought that was a fantastic interview Well, yeah,
it was great to talk to him. He's a musician so you know, you won't be able to, you know,
we sat there and talked about that for way too long. We couldn't air that because you know, it's just music not Texas
Star Party so, but yeah, Kelly is a great guy. Sky and telescope man. It's I've been reading that magazine since I
was a little child making my mom head off the magazine rack at the at the grocery store. So,
thank you all to Sky and Telescope for everything they do for us and speaking of, you know, like the Texas Star Party
has a lot of people, you know, behind the scenes. Joe, I know you're a volunteer there. I'm a volunteer on our friend is a
volunteer. There's there's a lot of people that make Texas Star Party. you know, make it what it is and one of those
people that make it what it was is Barbara Wilson. We lost Barbara Wilson before the Texas
Star Party 2020. of course 2020 was cancelled. 2021 is cancelled and we're here doing
it virtually. So yeah, I think it's appropriate Joe. What? What do you think? We take a second here to honor Barbara
and and her legacy at the Texas Star Party? Absolutely and you
said it well, well, you know, she was always just a present figure there at the Texas Star
Party. I was doing a lot of serious work but never thought it was serious enough that she
couldn't take time to, you know, spend time with newbies and and folks like in my first time out there, I spent quite a
bit of time Night leaching like you said, of her telescope and and we just never got to properly say goodbye to Barbara
and we figured we would do that today.
and Barbara, this one's for you. We appreciate everything you did for the Texas Star
Party. Like Joe said, all the help that gave us as observers and one of Barbara's friends,
Joe, one of her best friends was mister Larry Mitchell, none other than the legend himself,
right? Yeah, absolutely and it's, you know, he had such a, you know, soft spot in his heart for for Barbara, you
know, he always called her his best Observing buddy but Larry is You can't miss Larry when
you're at the Texas Star Party, right? You go up to the upper field, you'll see all these giant dos but none of them are
bigger. Larry's 36-inch telescope and it's it's a beast but again, Larry is always
happy to let you climb up that tall ladder to take a look at whatever it is he's looking at
and for those who don't know Larry, he's also the man who puts together the Advanced Observing list of Texas Star
Party. So every every year, you have a general Observing List that you can tackle and also an
advanced Observing List and a lot of planning goes into those Observing List that Larry puts together and we got a chance to
catch up with Larry and talk to him about how he goes about and and puts these things together. Kind of a review of all of the
the programs that he's done over the last 20 years and we figured we'd share the first part of that tonight then we
get into some of the star Party aspects with the Fort Bend Astronomy Club and we'll wrap the night with the rest rest of
Larry's talk. So let's go right into Larry's first part of the Texas Advanced Observing
Program.
Thank you, Joe. Yeah, I've got a lot to cover tonight. So, I'm
I'm essentially trying to cover the entire universe in hour, hour, and 15 minutes. So, bear
with me. I'll do the best that I can. The Advanced Observing List is part of is one of two
Observing lists that we have at the Texas Star Party. The other one is the regular program
which is headed up by John Wagner in Dallas and John's been doing it actually longer
than I have and he does a very, very good job with that. The Advanced List I started in the
year 2000 with mainly two goals in mind. Number one, to get
people to be better technicians with their telescope to go out and try to find objects that
they might not think they could otherwise see that have weird sounding names. Most people are
comfortable with NGC objects or messier objects but when you Eric and something or you'll be
a doggy and something. They they they they panic. They they
tend to think they cannot see those objects when if they try, they can't. So, we try to get
people to look at more exotic, unusual objects. number one and then number two is to educate.
I want people to understand what they're looking at, why it's there, what it's doing
because because if looking at a telescope field and you see some faint fuzzy object and that's all that is You see,
that's all you know about that but if you know that it's a galaxy 150 million light years
away and it has a super messy black hole in the center and it's blowing out realistic jets
100 thousand light years in length that gives it meaning that makes it an interesting
object to look at and it certainly makes it more interesting in some little fuzzy thing that you know nothing about in a telescope
field. So, those are the two main goals to look at some more
exotic objects in the universe and also to learn about what you're looking at about the
universe. It's I'm I'm going to
cover a lot of territory tonight. I've got my Email at the end on the last slide. This
is a review. So, I'm barely going to scrape the surface of each of the objects that I'm
going to be talking about. So, anyway, with that, we'll get started. This is the upper
field at the Texas Star Party. It's one of three Observing fields and the night sky in
West Texas which is held in Fort Davis every year and the night sky is phenomenal. It's
one of it's among the darkest skies in the entire United States and it's also one of the
driest skies we have. It's not unusual to have humidity of 15%
so you're not looking through an ocean of water when you're looking at something in the
night sky and we're at an elevation of about 5000 feet. So that's certainly that
certainly helps as well. a lot of Star parties have wonderful
skies, dark skies, and things of that nature but a lot of a lot of Star parties don't have what TSP has which is is
accommodations. We've got we've got rooms, We've got bunk houses, family cabins. we have
enough places for six or 700 people to stay This photograph
was taken from the front porch of my cabin so that is very nice and we also have food at
the Texas Star Party so you don't have to go into town. although there is food in town but You can you can eat right
there on the ranch. It's the Prude Ranch and it's in Fort Davis Texas and it just, it
makes life easy. You can stay up all night and sleep all day and and it's just it's just very very nice. Plus, we get to
we we get to make a lot of lifelong friendships. People from all over the world come to
the Texas Star Party. My first, my first time there was in 1987
and I up in the sky and I couldn't believe it III. thought I knew this guy but I
couldn't even find a constellation Virgo because there were so many stars in the sky. So, that's why all of us
come to West Texas for those pristine skies and it it really
is. It really is fantastic. So, this year's Observing rules for
the advanced Observing lists is by far the easiest List I've ever I've ever put out I'm
trying to get a reward for some of the retinal torture that
I've put them through in the past and I've made this list very easy. Someone with a 1820
inch telescope could probably see every object on this list. There's a there's a few
challenge objects but by and large, it's easy All you have to do is observe twenty out of
the 4040 observations. You need to do it in the next week from June 5th to June 13th and those
of you out there, I hope you have better weather that we're having here in Houston because it rained today and it it's we
have a good chance of rain for the next week. So, we we may we may be on hard times here but I
won't cover all of this because it's in the website. The Ps website with the internet
access and you just, you just dial at the Texas Star Party activities. The Observing programs and goes to the
Advanced Observing programs and you can download this list as well as a handout which covers
each of these each of these objects These are the pins that I've handed out in the past
starting with the year 2000, This one here is the pin that
that we'll be handing out this year. I've got I've got 90.5 of them that I'm going to hand out to the the the first ninety
people. and we also have, I also have plenty of pens the
past years that we're handing out as well. now II do most of
this myself but I don't do all of it. I have some very very
good health. These are these are all amateurs by by
definition but they're professionals in my book, Gemini and Anna Chandler live
in Fort Davis and they have supplied me with many many good ideas over the years and
observations Paul Downing has a beautiful observatory in Spain, Southern Spain and he takes
professional photographs and sends them to me. Jimmy Lowery has a forty-eight inch
telescope and named Barb. That's in Fort Davis and it's a wonderful instrument to look
through. Jose Sancho has observed with me for many, many years and he keeps me honest
with some of the observations that I think you can see in a Thirty-six-inch telescope but you may not be able to see in
his eighteen inch telescope and he has world famous Sancho Saco scale which he keeps throwing
up at me. but that's the kind of information that I need because I'm trying to tailor
make this to 1516 inch telescopes a million. Steve
Goldberg they're their input is just invaluable. They are my
Observing buddies at our site in Columbus. They are constantly giving me ideas of
things to do, things to look at. They cri my writing. in
which they always find something wrong with it. Usually by the second or third sentence, So, they're and I'm
over at their house right now. So, II. can't thank those guys enough really And then Keith
Keith, we know him as Ktwo is probably one of the finest observers in the entire world.
Keith is an amazing, amazing observer and he and I have spent many many hours sharing eye pieces together. So, a huge
thank you to these people because without their help, the Advanced Observing program
would not be what it is. probably wouldn't even exist. So, thank you guys. Alright, I
talk about Star hopping. I promote Star hopping A lot of
people have their computers and their go to systems and all that and that's fine. It's it's it's and that's acceptable for
the program if that's what you're going to do but If you learn how to find things
without a computer in the sky, you can find it with anybody's telescope on any night and if
you do it three or four times and you and and you want to go back to it, you can can memorize it, then you don't
need a computer. You can find it on your own. I can find most of these objects like the the two that I'm going to show you
here in about 5 Seconds when you can do that without a computer, it just gets to be
really fun. The thing the first thing you do is you find a naked **** Star and and hop off
from that some people will go will go to the general area and try to wander around until they
find an A or something they recognize but if you start off with a bright naked eye Star, you can't go wrong and the
first thing you do from that is you determine if you're going to go north southeast or west
from that Star. If you're going to go directly to the to the target or if you're going to an
asterisk and on storm charts, if you go to the left of your bright star, if you go to
You're going east. You go to the right. You're going west. If you go up, you're going north and down south. So,
determine which direction to move your telescope and go to your first target. Whether
that's an asters or whether it's it's the object you're looking for. So, to find the
Eskimo Nebula, first thing you want to do is find the star
while so in Gemini and this is real because there's a bright
star behind it and if you use that as a pointer, well, it points directly to this trio of
stars. Actually, it's a crescent but these three stars are very bright and very obvious in any finder scope.
So, you've gone east from there and from here, if you go to the
southeast and you'll see a faint fuzzy looking Star in
your finder scope. Well, if you If you have your finder scope centered with your mains scope,
which you should do have illuminated crosshairs on your finder scope. If you're looking
at Saint Fuzzy Star, There's your rewards. The Eskimo Planetary Nebula and that is
very, very easy to do and it's easy to memorize another object, M Fifty-one, the
Whirlpool Galaxy first, find the tail Star of the big Dipper
which is all if anybody can find that Star from there, you
want to go to West, You Go Do West, you will This asters the
four stars. It's kind of a rectangle of sorts. It's very
obvious in any finer scope, easily seen. If you use a brighter of the stars in the
the rectangle as your pointers. Well, that points to this triangle of stars here which
again is an obvious asters of stars. Now, from here, you have to kind of be because you've
got a bright star here and you got a bright star here. What I do is I dissect these stars
here. So, I go to the right star, the star When you go to
this Star in your finder scope just about any finder scope. If you look a little bit to the
southwest of that, you'll see the whirlpool and if you've done that properly and it's
easy to do, there's your reward. Mf one The Whirlpool
Galaxy. So, this is Star hopping and people get all
concerned about holding charts upside down and doing all this other kind of stuff. Just pay
attention to which direction you need to go north, southeast, or west. If you go
in the proper direction, you've got to go to the asters and then, if you go, if you if you
use that, you've got to go to your next one and it makes it easy and believe me, this is so
much more fun than using a computer with a computer. All you know is what you're looking
at is somewhere up there but you have no idea where if you start hop, you know exactly
what constellation where you are, how you found it, and if you and again, if you do it two
or three times, you can do it again. So, that's a that's
that's a little bit of my Star hopping 101, I suppose but
believe me, it's much much more fun when you do it this way and you know, if it's a faint
object and you've Star hopped over to that object and it is very faint. It's just above the It's just above the background
but you know exactly where in the field to look and sometimes you need that in order to see
some of these objects. So, with that, I'm going to start off on
each year starting with 2000 2000. Every year, I give a talk
on that. that covers that year's Observing program. So, what I've done in the left hand
corner of each year is the cover slide for that particular lecture that I gave. So, in two
The subject was rings. rings over the Texas star party. That
is kind of a rough way to start to get people started because when you take the center out of
a galaxy or you take the center out of any of these objects, you're taking the brightest part of that object away,
you're leaving the faintest outer regions for people to find and and and so I started
off with AA rather difficult program but but this was of interest to me and it was of
interest to a lot of other people as well but these
our Nebula Planetary Nebula Galaxy galaxies. Anything that doesn't have a center that
year, we had Doctor Allen Dressler as a keynote speaker, Doctor Wrestler is a famous
among galaxy people. He was one of the big proponents to study
what's called a great contractor. He had a group of people working with him and he called himself a seven samurai
dresser discovered that our part of the universe is moving
towards the the Virgo cluster Virgo Galaxy cluster, and the
Virgo Galaxy cluster is moving towards the lanai. a super cluster and that is moving to
the great tractor and that is moving to what's called the chap Super Galaxy cluster. So,
our whole part of the universe is moving in that direction. and What Doctor Gresser was
working on and that's what he talked to us at the TSP about since then, he's immersed
himself in and more works with with galaxies. How evolution of galaxies, how they evolve, and
what they're doing and he gave a wonderful thought one of the
objects, the first objects that I have on the list is and you C, 6337, which we call a
cheerio because it looks like a cheerio, a cereal piece. It's a
it's a it's basically a doughnut, a circle The reason for this is that there are many
reasons actually but this is a planetary nebula. This is a star that is an act of dying a
few things I want to try to explain Some of some of you folks, this may be a little
elementary but the speed of light, light travels at 186300
miles, a second or 300 thousand kilometers a second in a vacuum space is not a vacuum. It's a
much better vacuum that we can create on earth but still it's not a vacuum but we treat it as
if it were a light. Here is how far how far light travels in 1
year and it works out to just under 6 trillion miles. Most people around it off to six
miles. That is both a distance and a time measurement When we
say something is 50 million light years away, it's taking Night 50, million years to get
here. So, that's a time measurement. The distance is you can take that 50 million,
Multiply it by 6 Trillion. You'd come up with some unbelievable number but that's
a distance number. So a light here is both time and time and
distance and that has something to do with space time which I'll talk about temperatures
that I have listed here are all on the Kelvin scale which is a scientific scale based on
absolute zero Most people, if you're familiar with the Celsius Scale Kelvin and
Celsius are very similar Celsius is is 270 273.1 273.15°
below the Calvin's scale. So, essentially what we're talking about they are the but the
reason why. big reason for the Kelvin scale is this three digits which is always more
accurate than two digits. So, that's that that's a that's a
big reason for using Kelvin and everything. You see all your temperatures that you see in here are going to be 105
thousand Kelvin Alright, back to the cheerio. This This is planetary nebula which is a
star that is dying at some point. son will go through a summer stage in about 5 billion
years. Essentially, what happens when you have a
structure like this? This tells us a lot of things. It tells us that the Central Star is a
binary star. It has a companion and as the star is dying, it
puffs it. It it it swells up and the it goes to a red giant
face and if it is large enough, it infuses helium at 100000000° and and goes through a second
swelling up call a giant branch of the AGB and but at some
point, the star gets so big that the outer portions of the star are no longer
gravitational bound to the center and they start drifting away in what we call a slow wind as a drift away. the
center part of the star the center part of of the nebula and the companion to the nebula
in that Star up and it starts throwing mass out along the equatorial reach and it forms a belt and that belt is what
we're seeing here and we call that a Taurus. That belt acts as a constricting belt so that
later eruptions go through the polar regions and those are the lobes and they're much for than
normally much faints than the Taurus around the center. So,
if you see it from the side, we see an hourglass figure like this or like this but if you
imagine if you turn it and we're looking down, if we're looking through the polar regions of the star, what we
call pole on view and we're going to see the Taurus is a doughnut and that's exactly
what we're seeing here. We're seeing these lobes pointed towards and away from us and
all we're seeing is the Taurus. This belt, and most of the planetary nebula that we look
at. This is what we see because this is typically the brightest part, not not always. in some cases, we do see it. We do see
the the the lobes but in most cases, this is what we're seeing in this particular case.
The distance is 5200 Light years and all planetary Nebula distances are very very vague
because we have to base it on the star This is not a regular Star. This is a star that's
either gaining in temperature because it's a white dwarf or it's decreasing in temperature.
So, it's not a real Star as such and it's also shining
through these lobes and and and it's like fluctuates. So it's
not a it's not acting like a real star and it's very difficult to get a distance on
something of that nature. So, some of these planetary nebula distances are off by 100% or
more. but in this particular case, the Nebula temperature is
45000°. It's ages between twelve and 24 thousand years. The Central Star has a
magnitude of 14.9 but you cannot go by that. The Central Star and the Nebula M
Fifty-seven is about sixteenth magnitude but sometimes I can't even hardly see it in the Thirty-six-inch telescope. So
the central Stars are very because of all the things that are going on about about and
around them That's a little bit about planetary nebula and how
they form and hopefully everybody is with me on that. This is the NGC 6888, the
Crescent Nebula and those of you that are going through the Observing program by all means should look at this. This is
one of the show pieces of the heavens. we refer to it as eye candy and with a nebula filter.
This is a beautiful, beautiful object. I might point out the distance to the nearest star
proximate is 4.24 Light Years.
4 years only to the nearest star, The temperature of our sun is about 6000° Kelvin. Just
a little below 6000° this
particular object here. is what we call a wolf. A nebula.
They're also known as ringing nebula. We're seeing this object from the side. If we can tilt it from the pole on view,
it would be a ring. It would look very similar to this but
we're seeing this from the side and we RA stars are very, very
messy, very large stars, twenty-five to fifty times our
solar mask. They're huge and they being very large. They
have a very short lifetime. Our son has a life expectancy, a lifetime of about 10 billion
years at Rye Star may only last two or 3 million years because it is so messy. It burns
through all of its resources in a very short amount of time.
The the the the the crescent Nebula has had three major mass loss episodes. The main
sequence, the red giant branch, and the wolf seafood when it goes through the sequence, that
is very rapid. It loses a tremendous amount of mass in a very short amount of time.
Usually on an average of something like one solar mass over 100 thousand years So
that's a tremendous amount of material that this Star is throwing This is only the
wolf's event. Star is only 1.9000000 years old. It
originally held Twenty-five to forty solar masses. It's thrown off enough material. now. it's only down to about fifteen
solar masses 150 thousand to 400. Thousand years ago, it was
a it was a red giant. So, it's it is actively throwing out material and you can see this
with a nebula filter in almost any amateur telescope. It's beautiful. It is absolutely
gorgeous and it's easy to find it. It's located 2.7° Southwest
of Gamma Sigma, Cigna, and Gamma Cigna is the cross Star
of seams or some people call it the Northern Cross. It's the one right in the middle. It's easily found and in a ton scope
Xander, if you move your telescope to the southwest, just a little bit, you want to
look for a flattened diamond shaped asters which looks like
that The Southern star of that
asters is the wolf. A Star. That is the star that is throwing this cloud It's
illuminating this cloud and as the slower winds slap into the
faster or the faster winds slap into the slower moving winds. that is also ionized. it. So,
this is easily found Just just find the the the flat diamond
and go to the southern star. You can't miss it. Alright. 2001. Advanced Observing. We
had explosions over TSP as a topic and we had some more
very, very excellent speakers. Timothy Ferriss. it was a noted author. He's written several
books on Astronomy If you ever get in the car with chemistry, be prepared for a ride because
he likes to go about 100 Miles an hour. You know, but he gave a very, very good talk. It
2000. 2001. TSP. Paul Hixon. This was his second visit to
TSP. Paul is noted for his Hixon 100 compact galaxy
clusters. He's also noted for inventing a spinning mercury telescope which he had up in
British Columbia BC where which is where he still lives and we
very much enjoyed Paul being there and we'd like to get him back again. on the right hand side is Steve Amaro. Steve
there for a while was a fixture at TSP. Steve is a good friend of mine. The picture down below
is a talk that he gave of of a trip that he and me and his
wife went with the National Geographic Crew to a volcano in the middle of the Mediterranean
ocean called Stromboli and we were there for 2 weeks and they made a TV movie about this and
Steve gave a talk on our escapades at the volcano and this is the outfit that we had
to wear when we're on top of the mountain because it was throwing lava bombs at us right and left and it was a very,
very interesting 2 weeks and of course, this is how Steve looks with without without the gear
but Steve has been to numerous TSP and those of you that know Steve, he's got incredible,
incredible eyesight He he calls himself a visual athlete. He
works at it. I've spent many many hours Observing with Steve and he's as good as you he is.
But he's also giving a talk next week on Botswana Observing
in Botswana land which is where he's living now. Alright, I'm going to spend some time on
this
but First off, I want to talk a little bit about the concept of
space time. The space time is something a lot of people don't A lot of amateurs aren't really
familiar with but space is three dimensional as we know but it's the time is also enter
into it. the time also. enters into it
because of what I mentioned a minute ago. It takes light travels at a finite speed 186
thousand miles a second. So, it takes like time to get here.
when we're describing the universe, we have to consider the time factor as much as we
as much as the depths and and and the the three dimensional space factor that people
typically talk about. One thing that I'm going to emphasize here is moving distances or
moving radial distance. This is the distance that is actually
an object actually is at most people throw distances around
like 50 million light years away. 100 million light years away. All that really is is
like travel time. We refer to that as look back time. If I say a galaxy of 100 million
light years away, it's taking Night 10100 10100000000 years to get here traveling at 100
miles a second but that's not where the galaxy is when those photons reach your eyeballs
because during that 100, million years, the the universe has expanded. So, it's much
further away than 100 million than 100 million years. So, we
call that co moving distances. You have light coming at you but it's moving away from us at
the same time. The universe was formed. 13.8000000000 years ago
and originally, that was an inflation, a period where the universe expanded faster than
the speed of light but then it settled down and in our part of the universe, it's expanding
it. Something called Hubbs Constant and there's constant is numbers all over the place
but it seems to be settling out around kilometers per second
per mega powers and being 3.26. 3.26000000 Light years. So,
that's how space in our part of the world is expanding. However, and next Friday,
Doctor Gebhardt is going to talk about dark energy which is a talk. I'm really looking
forward to because somewhere around four point 4.5 to five 5
Billion light years out the universe suddenly starts up. in
its expansion. There's some negative gravitational effect called dark energy that we
don't understand what is causing that but nevertheless, the universe is speeding up as
as we go further out from the universe in general for objects
from us, a billion light years out, a billion and a half years out the the the the The
cosmology red shift which is what we call the expansion of the universe. The cosmology, red shift and look back time
are pretty much the same and this only applies to cuss and very distant objects but once we get beyond a couple of
billion light years, it does make a difference. So, these two objects here, well, for
instance IIIII made a sample. If we have a red shift of six
AZ factor of six, it took 12.8 12.8000000000 years for that light to get here So, that's
how It took that light. to to to reach our telescopes but
during this 12.8000000000 years, this object moved away. So, it's real distance is
twenty-seven point 27.5000000000 light years away, not 12 billion light years. the
universe as we know it is about 90.5 billion light years in
diameter which means we can see out about Forty-three 43 billion light years in any one
direction. At some point, the the universe expansion exceeds
the speed of light and beyond that we won't be able to see anything because those objects
will never be able to get here because it's expanding faster than the object is moving this way. So, hopefully that not
confusing too much for everybody but it's it's it's
it's a lot to throw at people. a 6 billion Lightyear object
for instance is 7.6 7.6000000000 Light years in real distance If we had an
object, if we could see an object, 13.8000000 light years away, it it's distance would really be 46 billion light
years. There is a database on the on the internet. It's a net. right Ned? Right database
for those of you that would like to look at this and it's
it's it's very interesting. It's got a calculator there where you can calculate all this out yourself but the I'm
going to start with three C 273 and it's Jet first This was the
first optical quasar along with three C forty-eight that was discovered a quasar were
actually discovered back in the 50s. They found a bunch of them but they were radio loud objects and they could not find
a visual counterpart which is why they called them Quasi stellar objects. QS Os It
wasn't until 1963 that Alan Sandy finally found an optical
counterpart to one of these. one of these radio objects. One of these stellar objects and
this was it. Three C 273. This is the brightest quasar. It has
a magnitude of 14.8 which is really bright but it has an actual distance of 2.6
2.6000000000 light years That's all object to be that far away.
It's located in elliptical Galaxy and that galaxy has one 1 billion solar mass black hole
in the center black hole in the center of our Milky Way is
about 4.1000000. 4.1000000000000 Light years. So, a billion billion light
years mass black hole is a monster and that's what you see in elliptical galaxies and that
is what is powering this jet and it's it's shooting material
out which for us seems to be super luminous. It seems like it's moving faster than the speed of light but that's only
because it's moving at an angle to us and we see it moving at a shorter distance. It's it's
it's an illusion. The other object on here is the double
quasar and this is probably the most difficult object I've got on this this year's list. It's a first gravitational lens
discovered it was discovered in 1979 and it proved that Galaxy
Bends light. You've got a quasar it's way in the background. The quasar is
actually twelve point 12.8000000000 light years away but it's almost exactly had a
very massive Elliptical galaxy. This 4.26 4.26000000000 light
years away and that foreground elliptical galaxy is acting as a magnifying glass and it's
magnifying that quasar in the background but it's also splitting the images up into
two separate images which are separated by about six arc sections and you can see them
here. You can also with the Space telescope, see the galaxy. This is the
illuminating galaxy. This the foreground. that's that's causing this is causing this
mirage. and this backed up Einstein's theory that yes,
gravity does Bend Night. His his theory of general
relativity part of it was proved by this There's also a
time to delay between the two objects and we use this to determine how fast our part of
the of the universe is expanding and in to one has 64
and one has Seventy-two and and I said a minute ago, I've I've rounded all of my distances off
to seventy kilometers per second per mega par So, all of these distances that you that you see that I've I've I'm
talking about here are based on seventy and and not some other
factor Alright. Active galactic nuclei. and 4151. This is the
standard of the sea. one time galaxies, sea one galaxy to the
most active galaxies. They act like quasar. They have, they're
shooting a out at relativity speeds which is almost the speed of light I mentioned a
minute ago, our Milky Way Galaxy a black hole Sagittarius
Well, a 4.1000000 solar masses. That black hole is roughly the
diameter of our solar system about the distance from sun, sun out to Uranus. The black
hole in the middle of this one is Forty-six 46 million solar masses and it's throwing gents
of material out at a high speed There's a second black hole of
10 million solar masses which they think orbits in about 15.8
years. Anytime you look at one of these sea galaxies, you see
a bright stutter like nucleus and this is this one is very
bright through a telescope. You see a faint outer halo. you see some of the spiral alarms which
are very very faint but the center is very bright. is a true monster. This is one of
the most explosive forces in the universe that we know of. It's this is 250 million light
years. This is the most luminous ultra luminous infrared galaxy that we know of
it. It has a luminosity of a trillion times. The sun it is
less than a billion years old and it's and it is composed of
stars that are forming at a rapid pace. Three, 340 solar
masses per year which is unheard of and it's calculated
which seems to be an unbelievable number and I double checked this but but it seems to be true. It contains
more energy in this galaxy than 100 million milky ways would contain that. That's an
unbelievable number but that seems to be that seems to be the thinking It has two two
nuclei two rotating black holes. the counter rotate. They're currently about one a second apart and something
finding out about merging black holes. If there is a counter rotating type of thing, they
tend to rebound This one hasn't done anything like that yet but they do have some examples for
some galaxies with close proximity black holes that are
actually rebounding. So they don't they don't just merge nicely like, you know what a lot of people think two. 2002
interactions. When galaxies collide, whole bunch of things happen. They form rings. Here's
a galaxy going through another galaxy They're they usually form stars. There's compression
effects, Stars are being formed, Stars are blowing up. There's all kinds of dynamics
which happens when when galaxies merge These are three objects that I have on the list
for Observing list for this year. The box or hicks and
sixty-one name for Paul Hixon that you met earlier is a
beautiful visual logic. There's there's four objects here. They're the average 180 million
light years distance but it's actually a triplet four inches. You see 4173 is only about 50
million light years away whereas these other three objects are about fifty or 180
million light years away. They're much much more distant and each of these are
interacting with each other. This one is truncated. This is a polar ring galaxy. This has
Htwo regions, an Htwo region for those of you who don't know is a star forming region where
a very massive stars or ion the cloud, the gas cloud around it and causing that cloud to glow
and that that that glow or that ion is hydrogen being stripped
of this electron and that's causing that that cloud to glow summer to a neon light bulb
here on earth and that glow is what we see and we call those at HQ region. This is this is
dark Matter dominated group as pretty much all of these are. It's like ratio is 14.5. So,
there's a lot of dark matter involved in this. There's more much more mass than light and
we don't know what dark matter is but it affects it. It has something to do with gratitude.
It it seems to work with but we really don't know what what
dark matter is. Dark matter comprises about 27% of the
universe, dark energy that I mentioned earlier which is speeding the universe up and comprises 68% of the universe
which means Astronomy is an embarrassing situation that 95% of the universe we can't really
account for which is interesting. but anyway, that's
the way it is. Seaford Sex tent. I'll jump over to this one. This is also one of Hixon
Finest is Hixon Seventy-nine. and here again, not everything
is accorded. Only these four galaxies here are at the same distance and are interacting.
This is debris. This is material that's thrown out of this galaxy. So, that's not
6027. E is not really a galaxy of interest is NGC 6027 6027 D
because it's a This is 922 Million light years. The rest
of these galaxies are 202 million light years. So, this this is several orders of magnitude, more distance but if
you look at it carefully, you see really more detailed and it's more distant object than you do any of these other
objects. So, that's interesting. and I'll I've got some more examples of some
things and you see 4298 and 4043 oh two are in Tacoma
Barons at a distance of fifty million years. So, they're part of the Virgo Galaxy cluster.
They're separated by only 5000 Light years and when you look at them visually, there's no apparent distortion. You would
think, well, there's no, there's there's nothing going on between them but when we
look at them in different light other than visual, Night, the hydrogen one emission, they're
they're they're they're sharing materials between them. the northern part of Forty-three oh two has a tidal tale of the
shooting at the top. So there's going on here but it's not,
it's not seen in visual life and all three of these objects
or something that those of you that are going to get out under the sky and look, you should look at all three of these
because they're just beautiful. absolutely gorgeous. This is kind of small. You need to put high magnification on this
because it is so small that it would fit inside our Milky Way galaxy. The total diameter of
Sacred Sext is only 100 thousand or 10100 thousand light years. So, it's it's it's
essentially a size where a milky way that you can fit all of those galaxies in. So, when we say Paul Hixon is his
catalog is compact Galaxy groups, There's a compact galaxy group for you. Alright,
the Siamese twins these are in the act. both of these galaxy
pairs are in the act of just beginning. They're merging operation A 220 that I showed
you a minute ago as well into the merging. These are just beginning and most of the star
forming activity is along the line here. They're only separated by 20 thousand light
years. We're separated by two and a half million light years from the from the Andromeda Mth
One galaxy. So, these are very close to each other but there's
very little distortion. The same thing with these two galaxies except these two
galaxies and 54 and are thought to have formed together at the same time but we do see some
semblance of interaction. If you can see these title streamers between the two
galaxies, that's one. The other thing is the spiral arm here is
flattened out and straight and and there's this gigantic Htwo
region on the end appears to be pulled out of the land. So, the fact that this this doesn't
curve around like the rest of the objects and the fact of the streamer between the two of us
tells that there is some interaction that is going on
but there's some thinking that these two galaxies may never form. They may never actually merge into an elliptical
galaxy. but nevertheless, they're very these these are
fairly faint but yet noticeable and telescope. These are noticeable in just about any telescope very, very easily
seen the Siamese twins. Alright, Planetary Nebula I'm
going to start speeding things up because I'm already running behind. but planting nebula
stars that are stars up to eight solar masses that are going through a dying process where they're throwing off
their outer portions of the star and I kind of touched on that a minute ago. The stars
spend most of their time on the main sequence where the internal fusion fires. they are
pushing outward or matched by the tendency to gravitate and collapse. So the stars in a state of equilibrium and it's
90% 90% of its time in this equilibrium state but in the center. It gets hotter and it
expands the star out so that it becomes a red giant. The outer
halo floats away and it becomes a planetary nebula which goes through the planetary stage,
ends up a white dwarf. It actually will end up as a black
dwarf but it's theorized that the universe is not old enough for a black dwarf to yet exist.
It takes about 30 billion years for a black dwarf to exist and we're only twelve or 13.8.
13.8000000000 years into it. this year. 2003, we had William Harris who is a recognized
expert on clusters. Almost every paper that was written,
he had something to do with. So, we were lucky to have him Son, Quack is the reigning
authority on planetary Nebula. He was there that year. He has
written seven books pertaining to planetary Nebula. I used his
books as my source for my lecture that I gave on Planetary Nebula and son was
sitting right in front of me in the second row and he was actually taking notes and and
he said he enjoyed the talk but even more so he came down and enjoy it and observed with us
that night. and he thoroughly enjoyed himself because he never gets to look at these
things. He he looks at him through instruments through C CDs and cameras but he never
actually gets to see them. So he enjoyed Observing with myself and Barbara Wilson who
who was showing Scott and then of course, David Levy. who's
another Star work. David has been to TSP many many of times. He is the reigning authority on
Comets. David has discovered Twenty-two comets and I think he's written 33 or 34 books,
something like this. So, he, David has done a lot a lot of
work in the realm of amateur Astronomy. This is a blow up of an alien that somebody hung
from the the ceiling and it had Larry Mitchell across the front of it. Somebody undoubtedly
enjoying my planetary nebula List but these were the speakers that we had that year
and they were very very excellent. Each one of them planetary and ambulance come in
all shapes and and sizes. This is orientation which I talked
about a minute ago. So, I won't go into it but if you see it from the side, you see the we
see this configuration if we see it at an angle, we see a truncated type object if we see
it on, we see these things. These are just a bunch of
different planets that come in all shapes, sizes, orientations, and ages and they're very, very nice to look
at. and II, love them myself.
Spherical planetary are usually from single stars, not a binary
star but a single star. Usually, they're rotating slowly that have a low metallic
and they're extremely some of them can be You need a nebula
filter because a lot of times they're real faint. This is meows. It's butterfly and in
this case, you can see the lopes. You can see the ejection. The Taurus is in
here. You can actually see the central Star shining through the Taurus and you can see the
lobes as well. So, this is just a couple of images of of of
different types of planets that we look at this year. We had three of them. I had the Box
Nebula PC And I see 4593 and each of these cases, we're
looking at the Taurus. We're looking at the central region here the the nebula. we're at,
here's a diagram of it. We're that is the Taurus. You can
faintly see the lobes at the end. I've I have never seen
them myself visually but you can capture them in photographs
This is multiple what we call quadruple lobes. In other words, not one lobe but you but
you got two lobes on each end and that's because the stars wobbling as it rotates as far as wobbling and it throws loads
out in different directions. Pct Twenty-two is called a starfish planetary because if
you look at it, it's a mess. It's a very young planetary nebula and that Star is really
spinning and it's throwing material out through the polar in all shapes, forms, and
fashions. What we see is the Taurus. We don't see this but visually, we can see. We can
see this part here and and it's it's one of those planetary
nebula. not many people are familiar with Pembroke Costa Twenty-two but yet it's easily
seen. It's it's very bright and that's the idea of what I'm trying to get people to do is look at unusual objects that
they can see in moderate size telescopes and this is example right here. The there's a few
other starfish planet and has two dash Forty-seven meows 137
and they all look very similar to this. They're Ama I see 4593. you've got shells within
Shells within shells, numerous shells in here that are blowing out material. You've got the
initial slow wind from the from the red giant phase which is expanding at thirty miles per
second and you got the fast wind which in later at 875
miles per second. that fast wind slams into the slow wind creates a snow plow effect and
causes it to glow and that is why we're able to see this object because you've got
different different wind levels slamming into other we levels and ionized stripping the
hydrogen and oxygen atoms from from the from the the nucleus
from the core. So, These are these are three very bright, easily seen planet that we have
on our on our program. 2004 Lola clusters. We had Will
Tyrion that year of Star Chart Fame Will's wife was was
they're from Holland every time she'd go up and look through my telescope, she'd come down and go. yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
yeah. You know, she she she had never seen a lot of these things and she was enjoying herself. I want to say a things
about my friend Barbara Wilson who unfortunately passed away a couple of years ago
Unexpectedly Barbara was a queen of Abu clusters. She had seen just about all of the
clusters in the Northern Hemisphere with the possible exception of UKS one I suppose. I'm not sure we ever saw that
one but if you dial up a cluster on the internet,
chances are you will see an observation by B Wilson. That's Barbara. She loves these and
she was very, very good at observing them. for many years.
She was my favorite Observing partner. Barbara had a love with the sky which is infectious. She got everybody
around her caught up in it. She coauthored a discovery paper of
I-57 which was a cluster. So, she had something to do with discovering that she and I came
up with something called Ain't No List which stands for the association of Individual
Individual Nebula and things nobody observes with. We did this a nice as a lark and the
thing called on some of the objects on there was to observe Ellen. She's golf ball on the
moon. Observe a Nutri observe a son, Clint off of Voyager one
but we also had some things that we got snickered on. We we put some things we thought were
doable but yet impossible such as AA Galaxy within 1° of the
horse had an ambulance and we a. we have an award for that. A
naked eye. A naked eye visible signing of an elliptical galaxy. We gave him a word for
that and Barbara got snickered on another one. One of our one
of our objects was the arrow that points to the Celestial North Pole and Amelia Goldberg
nailed it on that one. We put an arrow on Amelia's telescope
and pointed it at at at the north Sure enough, we awarded
her AA certificate. Now, these certificates were black poster paper with black writing on it
and people killed themselves to get these things but anyway,
Barbara is no longer with us. I don't think TSP will ever be quite the same without Barbara
and Barb. If you, if you're looking in, we miss you. We really do. She was, she was she
was she was fun. fun to observe with Panama was on the list.
Panama eight is one of the brightest Panama clusters. It's
a distance. It's it's only 18 thousand mile light years from the galaxy. and it's resolving
in most telescopes. It's part of the galactic stream of of
the clusters which we're thinking are captured objects from many other other other
galaxies. and I actually tease on is how you pronounce that Te
on three is another. that's in the near the core of the Milky Way Galaxy. I want to stop here
and explain something which is metallic. It's typically referred to as iron over
hydrogen ratio and it's any element heavier than helium.
Some people, some people put lithium in there but essentially, when the big bang
occurred, 13.8000000000 years ago, it create hydrogen and helium and a smothering of
lithium and nothing else. So, anything heavier than an atomic number of three had to be
formed in the heart of a star and we can use the mentality content to determine the age of
that particular object because it takes so many millions or billions of years for certain
metals to form So, that is a very very good age candle and that's what astronomers use.
So, Te on three is a very metal rich, popular cluster. Most
modular clusters are metal poor because they're all clusters are they breed of the galaxy as
planets were debris of our son, our son formed out of a gas cloud. What didn't form into the sun formed planets Milky
Way Galaxy, our spiral Milky way galaxy when it formed the debris that did not form into
the Milky Way Galaxy formed. We'll have clusters. So T's on
three is a little bit different because those gloves that form with a Milky Way are all on the
order of 1112 13 billion years old. They're very old because Milky Way is very old. So, when
we see a glove like he's on three, that is metal rich.
which is minus .73. It's very close to the sun. We automatically think it came
from somewhere else. It's not not part of our Milky Way galaxy and in this particular case, it's part of the galactic
stream of lo clusters and they have found so far five of these
events, five of these streams so they think in the past five Galax have merged with our
Milky Way and possibly three smaller galaxies have merged with our Milky Way and they can
determine that by these galactic streams of of of which
metallic clusters, black teas on three, the the the clusters
Te on nine and it's on seven and it's only 9 billion years
old. So, that is very much much younger and it's obviously came from somewhere else not from our Milky way. Oh, hey. Or a
Ti. dismissed all these. he's on is being totally impossible
to see Visually me, Barbara and probably quite a few other people have seen all of them.
So, don't let the experts tell you, you can't see something until you try and that's that's
the whole premise behind this behind this Advanced Observing List
Alright. So, stay tuned for part two because there's lots more of that info coming. Larry's talks are always just
an amazing knowledge dump. You know, you just, it's it's one of those things you have to
watch over and over and over again to get all of what a Larry's saying because it's just so good and again, I know
we talked about this show last time but it's like being at Texas Star Party when you hear hear Larry's talks, it it makes
you feel like you're there. Yeah it's it's incredible because Larry can take something you've never even
thought of. Right. And he talks about how he will actually get his ideas for these lists from
professionals Astronomy, journals, magazines, and things like that. You know, things that we're not reading normally
because we're normally reading, you know, Sky and telescope but you know, he spends a lot of
time sifting through a lot of professional data to come up with these lists and he just retains it all and every time I
listen to Larry, I learn a lot and I'm looking forward to the second part of that that presentation there. Absolutely.
We got lots of other stuff coming too guys. More T shirt giveaways, more all kinds other
giveaways but I guess now we should do the the great Texas.
You must not be present to win giveaway part two, right? I think that's a fantastic idea,
Will and we gave away three prizes earlier and we're going to jump into the next three
door prizes. So, any objections to that I second the motion
Joe. Alright, I don't hear any. So, door prize number four is a
Caldwell card from Sky and Telescope. graciously donated as a as a door prize from Sky
and Telescope. One of our distribution partners or I shouldn't say distribution. Our
broadcast partners here tonight. They've been very gracious with all of the door prizes and allowing us to
stream through their platform but the winner of tonight's Caldwell card from Sky and
Telescope is Victoria Catlett from Allen, Texas. Victoria.
Congratulations on winning that card. I have something similar. I actually have the Sky and telescope Messier card like
that and it's fantastic. I use it out in the field all the time. It's a wonderful, wonderful piece of equipment to
have in your in your arsenal there. Absolutely. Alright, our good friends over at Vixen
Optics, the Star guy in Berlin have donated a poo Prism binoculars seven by fifty
binoculars here. really good. Pair of binoculars here and the winner of those binoculars is
Tom from Dallas, Texas. Alright, congratulations Tom. Nice. going to get. Yeah. you
know, the thing is you can take those binoculars out to TSP and you know, we talked about the
large tops, things like that. You don't even need those. You could spend the entire time out there with these binoculars and
never get bored. Absolutely. Yeah And the sixth door prize
here tonight is a looks like a Pluto globe from Sky and
telescope themselves. So, I don't have the Pluto one but I have a moon globe from Sky and Tell and these things are
fantastic. Lots of detail, lots of you know, markings. You could spend hours literally
looking at this thing. It's it's just fantastic and a great way to kind of reimagine the the planets in three dimensions
there and the winner of this is Jay Barney from Houston, Texas. Congratulations, Jay. So, for
each one of these winners, we'll contact you offline. just confirm your contact
information where to ship these things and have them sent over to you. So, thank you all. Appreciate everybody who signed
up in the past and is eligible for these prizes. So, yeah,
congrats and again, for those of y'all watching live tonight, keep watching. We're going to give away stuff to y'all and there's a trivia contest
coming. So, if you think you've got the brain power, we want to see your skills and. Absolutely
And for for those of y'all wondering, you may be wondering where can I get one of these cool TSP T shirts that and we
are wearing. you can find them here at Texas Star Party dot
and if there's a there's a banner at the top. If you go to the second banner at the top,
you'll see the shirt, you'll see this exact shirt You'll want to click on that and then
you can fill out the little form here and you get you put your name, address, all that
fun stuff. What kind of size shirt you want and get your payment stuff in there and it's
a beautiful T shirt. It's actually really nice. It's a good quality. It's not those like those thin T shirts. you
get sometimes, you know, it seems like it's a good good quality t-shirt. I'm just scared. I'm going to stain it
because I know how I drink coffee. all over me. It's going to be ruined in no time. So, I'm probably going to have to
end up picking up another one but yeah, I always have the second one there. Like I said, these are fresh from the
runways of Milan and Paris. So get them while they're hot. They're part of the summer 2021
collection and it's a great T shirt. So yeah, you can order those there at the Texas Star Party.org website. Absolutely.
Get on there and get those done and get your get your piece of history because this is the
first ever virtual Texas Star Party and so you can own a little piece of that and I guess Joe, it's time to move on
to our next segment which is the the wonderful folks at the Fort Bend Astronomy Club.
They're going to show us how they do what they do and the
man of the hour. There he is, Tony is there is the president of the Fort Bend Astronomy Club. Tony, how you doing, man?
It's good to see you. I'm doing great. Can you hear me okay? Can we certainly can we got it. Super I just wanted to let
folks know the original plan was to have our club members out at the East Dome which
which is ours at the George Observatory along with the three to five deck of scopes but
as of last Friday morning, we had to make a judgement call whether that was going to be
possible and when you're looking at 7 days of thunderstorms in a row and potential Brazos Bend river
flooding, we had to make a judgment call and called of doing it live. So, what we've done is taking data that we've
acquired from doing what we call AAA at the George and
we're working with that this evening The Fort Bend Astronomy. I'm president of the
Fort Bend Astronomy Club. We've been around since 1984 and our volunteers have provided
majority of the observatory volunteers since 1989 when it opened It is located out in the
middle of Brazos Bend State Park which is about thirty miles to the southwest of Downtown Houston. and the
George has three observatory domes. The dome, the research dome, and the West Dome and our
club owns the Dome. I should mention that the observatory is owned by the Houston Museum of
Natural Science and Pre-pandemic. that is before March 2020 The door was open
every Saturday evening for public viewing through telescope eye pieces and the and the guests actually got to
go inside of the three domes and each of the Each of the domes has at least two
telescopes and you end up using whichever object you're looking at with the best telescope for
that object. What I'd like to do is share my screen here
Alrighty And I'm going to shut this off real quick. I'm going to share my screen share screen
your screen. and I'm going to go to this one.
Can you see my aerial aerial photograph? We can. We certainly can. Oh, I'm I'm
sorry. I'm I'm going to back up once. Stop sharing.
This is one of those technical glitches. Oh, it's always fun, right? Trying to figure out
online and the cool thing about this is we may not have to worry about this too much longer. We may be able to just meet in person eventually,
Right? I mean, yeah, Yeah. Open one of these days. One of these
days. And for those who live in the Southeast Texas area, the
Georgia Observatory is also the home of the Astronomy day event that you know, weather
permitting, we put on annually there and it's it's a fantastic place for that type of event.
I'm just, I'll go ahead. Go ahead, Joe. It's it's it's you Tony. This actually was a the
segway to the Astronomy day. This was an aerial photograph that one of our club members took of the Georgia Observatory
getting set up Astronomy day and right here we have the east
and right here we have the research dome and then right here, we have the West Dome and you can see we have this huge
deck area that goes around it and so it it affords the
visitors out out there. pre-pandemic, a lot of opportunity what we've done
from the since COVID and when we reopened in March of 19th of
2021, we put the guests were not a I've allowed inside the observatory. We've got monitors
outside of each observatory. one here, one there, one here, and then we've got three decks
scopes that also have monitors over here on the deck. That way, we can adhere to proper social distancing and so forth.
I'm going to stop sharing real quick here because I'm going to try to play this video and see
if we can get that to go.
share. share. screen.
Can you see my video over here, Joe? Not quite yet, Tony. Okay.
I'm going to stop sharing. screen on the screen to cancel.
It's one of the joys of technology, right? Yeah. Yeah.
I'll just let that. I'll let that go. EA at the George. We,
when we were talking with the George about reopening, we needed to come up with
something to adhere to the social distancing and the attendance limits and so, what
we developed FEC developed and implemented is EAA at the George electronically assisted
Astronomy for remote remote viewing. outside the domes and
we use ZO cameras attached to whichever telescope we're using. We use the sharp cap
software to do the stacking of the images. Most of the images we're we're doing to where
they're about 10 seconds per image and then we're using maybe fifty images and then we
stack em and display them on a thirty-two inch high-definition monitor outside the dome
because of the social distance and the attendance limits, we had to come up with stations so
that we could spread people across the deck and it's worked really, really well. The the
interesting thing is we can now we can if it's cloudy, we still have stuff to show the guests
when they come out and like I said, unfortunately, we've been experiencing thunderstorms and
cloudy weather the last 6 weeks so that actually kept us from capturing current sky views,
etcetera and doing our live demonstration as it was originally planned. We Let's
talk tonight about EAA at the George. Then, we're also going to talk about the differences
and field of view of telescopes and cameras in different setups. It's it's amazing how
different the telescope views can give you and then the the interesting wrinkle is all of a
sudden when you when you put a camera on there, the camera's also create different views.
So, we're going to talk about that and then we're also quite a number of our club members
very deeply into astrophotography and we're going to show some images but we're also going to show some
comparisons between Ea images and astrophotography images and
by the way, I should clarify that EAA images are typically
you're really not manipulating the image at all. There's really other than stacking you're really not doing much of
any processing and with that, our first presentation is going to be by Jeff Lipp who is co
chairman of the East Dome and a very exceptional astrophotography and Jeff is
going to talk about the dome and more in depth about EAA at the George So, I'll I'll turn
it over to Jeff. Appreciate that, Tony. Thank you. Thank you. Hey, Jeff. How are you?
Oh, doing great. Thank you very much. Thanks, Tony. I am Jeff Le, co chairman of the East as
Tony said and we are responsible for the operation and the maintenance of the east
at the George Observatory. It is basically an eighteen inch F
4.5 Newton and telescope on an equatorial fork mount which is
because we don't have to worry about Meridian flips with the German. Ew out and you have to flip it to the other side. Once
you reach the meridian which is an imaginary imaginary line between the north and south The
scope has been in use since 1994 and has been credited for over 300 asteroid discoveries
by our A team So that was back in the heyday. Nowadays, they have these these massive surveys that find asteroids and
they change the rules on ranting right? So, we don't do much of that anymore but we do
use the dome for public viewings. As Tony mentioned most Saturday nights when the
weather is nice and when it's not, we we, you know, have our playback that we're going to do
and then for special events like meteor showers and spring break, we're also open. So, the
Fort Bend Astronomy Club has not only just responsible for staffing the dome which is ours
but as well as the other dome and Decos as well. COVID. on a
typical night, it was not uncommon for us to have 20200 or 250 folks coming through the
East Domes. We'd have to march them in and up the ladder and look to the IP and so that that
that was quite a quite a busy night but with the advent of COVID, we we've had to retool
and retrain as Tony mentioned due to having to keep social
distancing. So, what we did basically is we acquired some camera equipment. the ZO 294
camera that we use as the imaging camera which is a a four size chips. So, it's not
extremely large and it gives us a field of view of approximately half a degree by a third of a degree. So, we got a pretty small field of view
and then we also have AA Guide scope which is just a four inch
or refractor double it that we use at QH Y three 178 guide
camera on it because about is is is old and it requires a little bit of help keeping on target even though we're doing
short exposures and then we have a button off mask that was actually laser cut by a gentleman by the name of Roland
Fields from the community college That is really great because it helps us focus
really quickly. Otherwise, we'd have to fumble around getting the focus and and and the mask
just makes it so much easier. So, you can see the button off mask here to the lower left and as Tony mentioned, we put a Thirty-two inch monitor outside
the dome so that people can safely social distance. You can see that the you know, the dome is kind of tight. So, back in
the day of IP viewing, we marched people in and march people out and we'd have a line around the back of the dome. So, actually this. this is
actually a little bit more enjoyable than than getting all those people to the Dells but what we do look forward to going back to IP viewing again
because that's you know, there's something about looking at an object with your own eyes that that that the camera just
can't convey So, basically, we mentioned that we're we're using EAA which is electronic
assistance Astronomy and what it is is it's not astrophotography with
astrophotography. You take a bunch of photos gently long duration and then you go home
later and you you spend hours and hours and hours processing that data and come up with a pretty picture you hope we'll
get maybe, you know, printed in a magazine or image of the day or hopefully, you know, the
holy grail which is a NASA pod but with the you're you're essentially Observing through
the camera and so you're taking short exposures in the case of the dome 10 seconds at 120 game
for this camera which is a magical setting where the noise drops down and we use a process called live stacking using
Sharp Cap which is written by Doctor Robin Glover Glover. You know, he's in the UK and lots
of people use the software. It's great. It's easy to use but what it does is is it takes
the the individual images that you take and its them averages them. Most people think
stacking is additive. It's it's not additive. It's it's an average of the image images and what that does is it reduces
the noise and improves the signal. So, we're always looking at improving the signal
to noise ratio and the other thing that sharp cap does which is really cool is allows us to laid back exposures that we
previously taken so that we can simulate live Observing which is what we'll be doing here and I'll be doing that next and we
use that as Tony mentioned for a cloudy night so that the people that show up George still get the benefit of seeing
something that we would have seen on a clear night that you're you're just not seeing it live. So, I always always
tell everybody it's not live. it's me so I guess that kind of dates me memes. Many people
probably don't know what that is. So, Anyways, so the the
object I'm going to demonstrate is going to be the famous great Orion Nebula M Forty-two which
is in the constellation of Ryan. You can see the little box around here. It's a sword of orion and this is a solarium
capture of the actual date it was taken. So, this was taken on April 10th by a gentleman in
the name Paul Noll who is operating the scope at the time and so this is the actual
elevation it was. So if you look at the information here, we can see the altitude was at 22°. so it's pretty low in the
sky at the time we took it and What I'm going to do now is I'm going to switch over to short
cap and so basically to do a playback instead of instead of
connecting to the camera, we're going to open what's called a folder monitor camera and what
that does is it allows us to play back the frames as if it was being sent from the camera.
So, the first thing you have to do is actually select the folder. So, I'm going to select this fits files and that tells that the type of files that
we're going to do and then uploads one of the frames. Okay, so the first thing notice is the image is very dark. We
can see some stars and we can barely see the core and that's typical of a linear image that
has not been stretched. So, this is kind of what called the native format of the data and
in order to actually see it, you know, clearly with the human eye, I'm going to click on this little histogram out of
stretch here and so. Oh wow. Awesome. Wow. It it stretches it. Okay. so, this is one
single 12th frame and what we we can see here is is it's pretty noisy. Okay. And part of
the livestock and processes, it's it's going to reduce that noise but one of the things also do is is, you know, we
don't actually cool the camera because it's it's just another complicated step for operators. We're trying to keep things as
simple as possible. So, what we've done is we've taken some dark libraries at various temperatures and so the
operator can select a dark at an ambient temperature that's close. You know, it's close to yours. This one was taken 70°,
you know, plus or minus 5° and for what we're doing is close enough if you're doing a photography, you want that temperature to be exact but for
EAA, you know it is good enough. So, I'm going to apply the dark and then, what I'm going to do is I'm going to
advance to the next frame as if the camera recorded the next frame and you'll be darkened. Well, that's because it applied
the dark. so, I have to reread it. So, after I reread it, you can see the noise is a little bit better but really the the
main benefit of the dark is that over time as we cross it, these little these little blips will show up blue green red
blips and and those are hot pixels. So, we want to apply the darts to to eliminate that.
Okay. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go Rewind this back to the first frame and then I'm going to reset the
histogram, okay? As you can see, I've got 55 frames here to me about 55 frames and then I'm
going to start the live stacking. So, I'm going to hit live stacking here and you'll see this little area here pop
up and then, this is our what we call the big histogram. okay? I'm just going to go ahead and reset, reset that and
I'm going to hit the play button, okay? Once I do that, it's going to start playing the frames at a rate. it at the
maximum Now, I'm going to set it to one every 4 seconds. Normally, it would be 10
seconds but we're going to speed it up a little bit so you get a little bit of the effect of of of what we're going to do. So, now, it's a stack three
frames and well, you can't see it that well because I haven't stretched it so we can do an auto stretch here but what I'm going to do is I'm going to do
it manually so you can see what that looks like. So, I'm going to slide the mid tones. You can see as I slide the mid tones, it brightens up but the
background becomes really bright too. So, what I want to do is I want to slide this black level all the way pass
all this noise right here. This is noise and you can see that it starts to become darker. Okay, So that's looking better
but yeah, it looks really red. Well, the reason why it's red, the camera's actually green sensitive but we had some red lights on in the dome. So,
those red lights are kind of reflecting around. So, the image is kind of overly red. So, what's really cool is we
have these little adjustments here. So, I'm going to reduce the red and when I clicked down here below the slider, it's
it's going to reduce the hump. You can see there's a little histogram hump here and the reds starting to go away and as
as we bring it closer to the other two hubs, you can see that the Now, it is almost gone
or she's still a little red dominant here. So, click on it a few more times and voila. Okay, Now, it looks like well
and it looks like we're being dominant but you know, what we'll do is the blue looks a little low. So, we'll click here and move the blue up a
little bit and let's see if we can make it look a little better. There we go. So, that's
that's looking a little better here and so you can see here that the background looks a little more neutral Probably
still a little bit greenish. so we might click down there a little bit. There we go. That's so that looks good and so as
the frames click where our signals going to improve and let me go ahead and minimize
this and then you can see. So, yeah, this is a pretty pretty good image scale here because
it's it's you know, 2000 focal length telescope. We're definitely over sampled because we've got fairly small pixels
over samples if if that's actually something that was derived by Nyt Harry Nyt and it
was born for audio but it's also used for imaging. You can be over sampled or example in my photography, I'm actually
under sampled which means that basically, we got more resolution going on with the telescope can really provide
us. So, anyways, so we can see some of the dark lanes. We can see some of the red nebula here
coming out which is really cool and then we can you can see the trapezius was pretty well resolved a lot of times as your
photos, you can see the trapezius was really blown out completely and that's because we're taking short exposures
but we can still blow out the trapezius if we want to by sliding the slider over here and Now, you can see that it's
getting brighter so we can see. So, this is one of the, you know, things we can get more detail but when we blow out the
core, so, let me go ahead and raise the black point a little bit to reduce the background,
The core is still the core is a little bit better now but but again, it's kind of a trade
off. It's how much do you want to blow out the cord and how much you want detail you want to provide. So, during the public viewing, this is what we
show the public and we have somebody outside explain the public. Okay, this is the great night. Nebula. It's a star
nursery. It's it's it's the brightest nebula in the northern hemisphere and it's
1400 light years away from us and and we explained, you know
the differences in in the colors here. the the Reds or the hydrogen alpha areas which
the Nebula which is it's it's absorbing the energy from the hot bright stars and it's remit
it and the blues that you see here. that's the reflection Nebula which is similar to what you know the the sky does it's
a light and it becomes blue. So, it's got a little bit of all the different types of dark nebula as well and you know,
it's various things. we, you know, we can do with this. We click over here in enhancement. We can do some additional
sharpening here so we can sharpen a little bit. That's it just tweak it just a tad and you can see here, it's now
finished stacking. It's gone through all 55 images and and
then usually after we spend enough time on an object, we then switch to the to the next object. Now, the last thing I
wanted to mentioned and and Joel's going to do a better job of explaining this is this
object is bright enough to where I only had to manipulate this histogram with some of the faint objects. This histogram
here, these two kind of compliment each other. This is kind of a fine tooting histogram and it has its own
mid tones black level that you can tweak and adjust. You can see the red here is still a
little bit more dominant so I can, you know, tweak the red down a little bit more. You can see it just did it here now where the the reds more level.
So this gives you kind of the big picture of the histogram and this gives you know, fine, fine tuning picture and and Joe will get a little more details.
He does that much better than I do but anyway, so that's basically what we do for live
stacking. It's you know, it takes a little bit getting used to. We've had to train our operators because they were all visual operators and since I
had a background in Astro Photography, it was a kind of, you know, fell on my shoulders
to kind of train everybody and and and do all that. So, I'm going to switch over now and
back to a presentation and the next stop I'm not going to livestock but what I'm going to
do is is I'm going to show you a free live stack of image of a
one. It's boats galaxy and this one here is very difficult for
us because you can see see it's facing to the north and that's Houston from from the George and there's a lot of sky light
pollution, whatever you want to call it and so that prevents us sometimes from seeing some of
the faint details and you would think MA one would be a great option because oh look at the
magnitude. it's it's 6.94 but the surface bright of the outer arms is actually quite faint
and that's that's the hard part. The core is easy. Core easy to get. It's it's the outer arm. So, this is a this
is also done by Paula Noel on on the same night, April 10th and he actually got 464 12th
image. So that's quite a lot but the you can put in the core. The core is well defined
but the outer arms is extremely faint and so it was very difficult and we had to manipulate the secondary
histogram in order to get that that to show up Okay. And so, a darker location, it would have
showed up much better. The Georgia's about a moral 595 .5. So, it's not the darkest but to
the north, it's even worse because again, that's where the Houston sky is. So, what I wanted to show you is when you
take the data that and again, as you capture this data, you save it to to fit files and you
can actually take it and process it in as as an astrophotography
tool that I've spent many years learning how to use and so, what would it look like if I took the same day just with the
darts? We we don't take flats because it's difficult to take class with with these domes. We get a little bit of vignette
but as an astrophotography,
we can see all the stars spikes start to show up here. The outer arms show up much better.
You can see some some detail here in the outer arms. The core even looks better. You can see the dark line showing up
better. So that let me flip back again and show you the difference. So, this is this is what you get with EA A which
which is great and impresses the public, okay? You can still see it. It's like, oh, this is a galaxy. you know, so many
million light years away and then and then this is this is the astrophotography version of
it. So that basically concludes my part of this presentation and I believe Joe Brewer's up
next and he will tell you about EAA that he does in own personal observatory. Thank you
very much. Fantastic, Jeff. thank you for for that. that little presentation. I mean,
it's it's different to know that there's a difference between the EAA and astrophotography but it's really cool how you guys are
implementing that Y'all you adapted, you overcame and that's that's why we love the George. That's why we love Fb.
So, thank you. Absolutely. Yeah. You're welcome. Yeah, it was a huge effort to do that and a lot of people put in a
lot of time in it and and and and it was actually quite a short notice and and we actually got it up in our first
night at the doors that we opened up. It was a beautiful clear night sky and it was a resounding success. Awesome.
That's what we'd love to hear. Thank you. And so next, it
looks like we have mister Joel. How you doing, Joel? I'm doing fine. Hopefully, my internet
stays up and you'll be glad to know that when I looked outside, I could see Venus and
it's almost perfectly clear. Yes. The first time in. I don't
know how many weeks I've lost track. and I'm sure the
mosquitoes are that thing. I'm sure they are. Yeah, you're hungry. Yes, I believe I've
shared my screen. So, it's just I'm going to continue on what Jeff talked about If I can get
my screen up here. like that. Okay. What what I've got is
another playback of a previously recorded image. What I'm is Boyd which is M
Eighty-one and Eighty-two. Now, my field of view is going to be much larger than what Jeff had
and that I'm using as less eight inch Liza telescope which
is an F two scope. It's coupled with CW Asi
camera which is a sea moss color camera. and this is
actually recorded back on December 7th of 2020 and I'm
here. Let's just go through a few of the details of how we
actually process within Sharp Cap as the image is being
acquired similar to what Jeff did maybe hit on a few other points One of the things we use
this for. Of course, it's outreach. have my own observatory and I have grandkids and one of the things
that started getting us about a year or 2 years ago is that my
eyes aren't quite as good as it used to be. My wife's eyes aren't as good as they used to be and our grandkids still have
lots of good eyes, Granddaughter. it probably needs glasses. grandson, probably not. We were spending
a lot of time focusing the to out. There's more telescopes
and just a eight-inch. There's actually a seventeen-inch at the Eight-inch is actually
mounted on top of and I talk later on on field of view. I'll show you the actual apparatus
but let's go into the live stacking now.
and let me get it started by pressing the go button under
capture profiles. There's the first one I can just case you
can see the images starting to flash and you don't really see much other than a few stars.
You can see the spectrum down here at the bottom and if I pause this, I can do a kind of
a stretch I can stretch it here right. and make sure I've got
my galaxies and I've got
M Eighty-one and Eighty-two and it looks like MGC. Yeah. 3077
is also we had a really visible here. So, M. 81 is supposed to
be about 6.77 magnitude visual while M. 82 is eight point 8.02
Magnitude took off about 12 Million light years away and they previously had some
interaction with each other but let's start back up the
summation now or I guess it's actually averaging So, it
should be There it goes. There's eight. and we can look
at the alignment. as it goes. It tells us how many pixels
it's happening to shift damages so that they're lying. You can
see this down here at the bottom. You can see that that one, it didn't shift much that
one. It did Other thing that it does. I have a sigma clipping
turned on And it is flipping a
little bit. which is good for getting rid of a few hot pixels
or maybe a satellite that came across later on. It wasn't in the first four or five flames
You can also look at your guiding it. You can connect the
HD two, get guiding through here. It can do automatic
gathering back through PHD two so you can do filtering by
amplitude of what it analyzes your images are doing. or You can look at your drift data.
and at the time, this is being taken. My scope was not perfectly aligned as far as
polar alignment goes. So, I'm getting nice straight lines but I'm drifting. So, I'm probably
not guiding in here The other thing I'm not doing is I'm not
applying any darks or any flats to this point. I'm just people
and I'm going around really quickly. I don't bother with
flats or darts. It's you know,
it makes it makes a difference but it's not a major difference. The main thing that
I do and I actually want my grandkids do this. just unstress. I reset everything.
My grandkids like to adjust the colors. I'm red, green, So,
they will come over and help me with this and this will keep
them occupied for hours as we go through different objects.
you can type button one on. The sliders are next to and I like
to align I blocked it right up to match the blue. I'm going to take the green down by doing
button one and clicking below the slider until it line with
the blue. I'm going to stretch it again. You'll see that this bar is the black level
mid-level white hubble. It brought the black level up to the middle to back up nice and
dark and it looks like it's through stacking. Now, it's done forty-nine images. so we
can actually finalize our color corrections And the chef
pointed out, there's a small histogram underneath the control profiles or capture
profiles. These are this is actually related to this one.
It actually changed when I stretched this this little one
changed but you can see that it's not lined up the same So, this is more of a detail. I'm
going to bring the red to match the blue again. I'm
then going to find a block level up here which is way over here against the edge button
one on it and try that dash line over close to the middle
button. One Then, I'm going to come into the middle The mid level dash
line and the small histogram and drag it over
and watch the detail come out. You'll also notice that a lot of noise is coming out. So,
I've probably overdid it. So, I come back down I bring back
over to the dark whack of a little right down a little
Bring this up here more. I can come up to a zoom area
that's up in the control bar at the top. and let's zoom it up.
You can start to see some dust lines in here. and let's see if
we can get any more color. It looks like the blue could come up here.
It's never clear of what you're seeing on a different monitors.
The blue that didn't like too much but one of the other
sliders is base screen intensity. You can actually make it be gray scale or you
can make it be more colorful Somewhere in there is probably
good and we can take this down here. and we're still at 50%
which means 50% of the pixels aren't being utilized by Te It to 100%. That's where we're at.
You can see that it's a little slouchy but then this is fifty
second. So, it's 500 seconds of exposures. All this is
Okay. My grandkids are like to stay here and play with these colors. Change them around.
make them what they want and then we'll we generally come down and under save You can
save various things like sixteen that stack of it or you
can save exactly as you see it which except for the Zoom is
all the color corrections you've made. all the adjustments to the back level
movements of the spectrums and generally do I have it set up. I say a PNG as exactly as I've
seen and I save a sixteen bit thats file so I can play with it later in Pixel inside or
something like that if I wish Now other things you can actually do with the program
you can't set it up to interact with your telescope. mount as
long as it's as it will go for most, I use it with a sweat and an astrophysics mounts You can
also make it work with different types of focuses make
it. It does a good job of utilizing I can't remember who
makes this one. What the links is by Optic. and it, you know,
it's the same type of a setup using a USB three or USB two or
wireless connections back to the computers
beyond that. that's about what I've got for this point in time. The It does. It's like I
think was touched on. You can control the temperature of the
camera and it will show you all that at the bottom. It'll show you the temperature of your
camera. It'll show you what frame you're on. You'll see how many flames you've dropped. all
types of information comes through and if you wish, you
can save all of the flames that it captures So you can process
the like so. that I believe I
will turn it back over to you. We're talking more about all
this in a field of you talk later on. Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you. And Paul is actually saying great job, Joel. So, I think I have to agree with him.
Great job. I think it was a fantastic job. Yeah, good stuff there, Joe. Thank you.
Yeah. And to continue the conversation, we've got another member of the FB Group here. So
Manly. So, can you hear us? Okay again. Can you hear me? We certainly can. How are you? I'm
doing great. How are y'all doing? Well, thank you. Been enjoying the presentation so
far. Yeah, it really is fantastic and look, you know, the Fort Bend Astronomy Club was a recipient of the the
Omega Award for all the outreach efforts that you guys have done and you guys certainly had a good system in
place prior to the COVID pandemic and it looks like you guys have you know, modified
what you're doing and are continuing to chug along. So, we certainly see why you guys are renowned for your outreach
efforts Absolutely. So, Sonny's going to share his screen. It
looks like it is. Oh yeah. There it is.
Alright. Well, my name is Sonny Manley. I'm a member of the Fort Bend Astronomy Club as
well as the Houston National Society. I'm also a volunteer at the Houston Museum of
Natural Science at Observatory Let's get caught up here. which
is Tony said it's located in Brazos Bend State Park about thirty miles outside of Houston. So tonight, I'd like
to continue the EAA discussion and show a few more examples of
what's possible with the A It's Jeff and Joel have already shown you examples of the
livestock. I'm I'm just going to show you the final images and talk a little bit about the
power of image stacking
I have my cursor over here. Here we go. This is I said I'm
a volunteer here at the George. I usually divide one of the decks, scopes and this is a set
up from the first night when we opened up in back in March
complying with the COVID-19 guidelines. We sit back here
The table here has my laptop. It's connected to the telescope
which in this case is my a millimeter refractor. I have the ASI 294 color camera
attached to the camera to the telescope and running sharp cap on my lap and then displaying
the image on the inch monitor. and the S can sit out here and
safely watch what what we're showing. My first image is
going to be one that we've seen denied earlier that Jeff showed and Forty-two but as Joe was
mentioning, you get to, you get a different views with different color scopes and so
Jeff showed the eighteen inch telescope which had a 2000
millimeter focal length and my telescope has a 560 millimeters on. So, showing quite a wider
field of view than was available to the eighteen inch
This is just a single 10. minutes of and it looks like, hey, we're starting to see some
data. I'm not using any dark or flats or uncool
So, after a minute. so, we've taken 610 minutes Sus adjusting
the Instagram as Joe and Jack will show, We're really starting to see the the Orion
Nebula and the nearby so called Running Man Nebula We got a
satellite trail that came through. sometime during those first six exposures. As you
mentioned, the stacking help with that. So, we let it stack
for four more minutes. So, we're we're a total of 5 minutes and we're pretty much
erased that satellite trail but we got another one came right
through there. The nebula this time. So, we continue to let it stack and so after oops, I'm
sorry I went the wrong way after 15 minutes. we end up with the final image here and
it Satellite trails are essentially gone. Again, the only process in here is
changing the histogram levels.
We're, you know, we're able to see the the nebula and all that. as Joe Jeff mentioned,
it's about 1400 light years away. Stellar Nursery, the Red
Glow is from I Emissions as the active stars in the four
ionized the the hydrogen that's present in the cloud So, it's a
great example of what's called an emission Nebula one that actually emits light In
contrast, we have the running man Nebula over here which is a reflection man. and there's the
gas and dust are just reflecting the light and the stars and the scattering
produces the blue color. The third type of nebula that we have are called dark Man. You
see them here and in between the running man and the lion
and this is is just where the dust the gas and the nebula so that they're actually obscuring
the light that's coming from the emission manual our next
image. is the iconic a nebula.
It's kind of a difficult image
or difficult visual image with PEIA. We're actually able to
say 1515 and a half minutes of 10 Seconds subs actually able to get a pretty good, pretty
good view here. Of course, this is the Dark Nebula the horse head Chevy super imposed on the
Mission Nebula behind which is why we can see the
Nebula And we have another emission nebula here called the flame which is also crossed
with some darkness Interesting thing is the emission nebula in
the background that actually provides the elimination for the horse was discovered by her
wooden Herschel in it in 1786, it was like 102 years later in
1888 before the horse and Nebula was actually discovered that it was discovered by
or a photograph. Excuse me, of a photographic for
the final image. is the you may be two or cigar Galaxy. This is
the one Joel would just show This one was actually, I took
this at in my backyard in Missouri City, Texas which is a
suburb of Houston and Jeff mentioned that and maybe one
and maybe two area in the north. The observatory was hard
to get. Well, it's even worse here and I'm I'm closer to Houston looking over Houston
but this is with my CA
Celestial Schmidt Casa, the ASI. 294. I did cool it and I
used the master door and a flat but this is just 1760 seconds
of again, it's AAAA, not a photography. Just manipulating
the histogram. We're able to see some detail in this
Starburst galaxy which is about 12 million light years away. and
It's it's a star formation of started about 100 million years
ago after interacting with gravitational interaction with the nearby much larger in
eighty-one galaxy and the star formation here has run in an
accelerated pace perhaps ten times in the the smaller core
of of the to compared to the entire Milky Way Galaxy. and
that really concludes my talk tonight. I appreciate your attention and Chris awesome
job, So, you guys, I mean, you guys are proven to us again and again that y'all are some of
the masters of outreach and we really appreciate that for sure. Absolutely.
Okay. So, now we do have a little break we're going to take right now and I think what
we're going to do, I think what we have is shirt is that we're going to do Joe. Yeah, Yeah. I think it's time for a t-shirt
giveaway. Will I think now is a good time to start getting in the keywords there. We're going
to have a different one this time around than we did the first time. right? For the first T shirt giveaway we are. So, what you're going to do
again to be entered to win this high quality t-shirt for one's Texas Star Party is you're
going to want to enter this into the chat wherever you,
wherever you're watching from. Now, we're going to be getting back to the the Fort Bend guys in a second. You know, we're
going to take a little commercial break here but the idea is to give y'all enough time to get that. Well, it just
went away. Get that III went off the screen here. Sorry.
There we go. Get that Hashtag in you want to do that and
basically, we're going to draw one winner to win another T shirt. There they go. They're
the comments comes to see them come in. Yeah. Everybody get that #sky and telescope in there to be eligible to win
that t-shirt. Like I said, we were in Milan just last week for Fashion Week, right? These
haven't even hit New York Fashion Week yet. Everybody's scrambling to get these shirts. So use that #sky and telescope
on whatever platform you're on and we'll be able to come in for the drawing but I see them
all come in. Yeah. Until then, let's go ahead and hear a little bit from some of our
advertisers here.
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Alright. thank you Celestron. Awesome spot and we're going to just keep going and jump into
our next spot. right, Joe? Yeah, absolutely. One thing I wanted to say, I've seen a lot of people coming in with the
sky and telescope hashtag on whatever platform they're on in
order to get in on the t shirts. I've seen a few people put Sky A and D. you want to
make sure to type it in exactly as you see it down there at the bottom Sky and the ampersand
telescope, Sky Ampersand, telescope, Sky, and telescope there so that you get entered into drawing. So, if you
haven't had a chance yet, go ahead and put that in and get entered for that drawing because we're going to give that away when we will right
after this ad, right? Just a few more seconds. That's right. There we go. So, be sure to be
doing that.
That's awesome stuff there and well, not sure if you're on mute but I'm mute them. Yeah.
those buttons you have to push, isn't it? It is. right But I thought that was a fantastic set of ads. There's several
wonderful advertisers there. Celestron, all the great equipment that they have out there. Some of which was talked
about by you know, the the previous folks from the Fort Bend Club and then what they use for their outreach and then
of course, the Prude Ranch Bar Ranch. Wonderful, wonderful places to observe and look if you want to some southern skies
without having to hop on an airplane to do that and always use chili scope, right? Be able to remotely operate some of
these telescopes so that you can get any of the photos that you want. So, with that, well,
you've got the #down there below last chance for last call to get in last call in whatever
platform. Remember to use the Ampersand like just said, spell it just like you see here. No spaces, no nothing like that
and you're going to be entered to win because yeah, Joe's counting down. It's so I'm counting down. Alright, we're
ready to draw. Let's do this. Alright. going through
everybody here. Who's going to win the T shirt? Like I said, hottest fashion item of the summer. And the winner is
Kelly. Kelly Miller. one of our one of our gatekeepers at Texas
Star Party. Someone I've worked the gate with many times. Kelly, great, Great. You win AT shirt. You don't have to buy
one this year. She gets AT shirt and Will, where should she send an Email to so that we
can get? Yeah, make sure we get her size and everything so that we can get the T shirt over to
her down there. VT TSP at Texas Star Party.ORG Kelly. That's
where you're going to want to send your Email so that we know who you are, where you are, why you are, and we'll send you the
T shirt. Awesome stuff. Congratulations, Kelly and hey, well, I'm I'm still kind of
feeling like I'm in a giving mood Yeah. Yeah. You think it's time to give away some more door prizes? I think so. Let's
do it. Let's do it. Alright, let's do this. You guys ready for more door prizes? Let's do it. Alright. So, for another
pair of binoculars, some seven by 50s here from our friends over at Vixen Optics, the Star
Guy and the winner of this particular door prize is a good
Dana Lindstrom. Dana, congratulations. Dana is in Galveston. I know Dana was in
Galveston. but either way, Dana is, what's that? That's just
where he likes to be most. Yeah, there you go. But Dana is the winner of this binoculars
graciously donated by Vixen Optics. our guy in Berlin Okay,
next, we've got a Fifty-dollar Astros Zap E gift certificate. So, anybody who's got a
telescope needs accessories and ask is that make some of the best accessories out there? This Fifty-dollar Zap E gift
certificate is going to Javier Castro out of San Antonio, Texas. Javier Castro.
congratulations. You won the Fifty-dollar Astro Zap gift certificate and we also have
this Hubble Optics five star artificial Star. Wonderful for
I'm guessing alignment, right? Column and whatnot or I've never used one of these. Well,
the Hubbs. Yeah. for column of various things. Yeah. Yeah. It's like a star. You put put it way off and look at it and
then it doesn't move. Wonderful. So, you can, you always need one of these in your toolkit always. And the
winner is Keith. I hope I'm pronouncing this right from
Kimberly United Kingdom. We've got a shipment going overseas. So, congratulations Keith.
That's absolutely fantastic. Keith was in the chat not long ago. I know it's 1 AM when we started so it's probably that's
right now so Absolutely. So, I think we're going to keep going. We have a few more door prizes to give away here. the
last two door prizes of the night. Another set of four Prism binoculars from Vixen Optic Star Guy in be the winner
of these binoculars is Megan from New York, New York again,
I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly. I know a few we as well. Megan is the winner here
and the last door prize of the night. Again, another set of binoculars. Vixen Optics was
very generous and no need a number of items And the winner is Dean Sullivan from Tucson,
Arizona. So, congratulations to everybody who won a door prize tonight. We've got more to come
tomorrow night. Plenty more door prizes. So, be sure to tune in for your chance to win those door prizes. Absolutely
Got a lot of cool stuff coming guys. A lot of cool prizes donated to us by our our
advertisers and friends. So, congrats to all the winners. Absolutely. Let me go ahead and
get us off of this and well I know that I think somebody had mentioned there was some difficulty in getting to the
auction site earlier. Yeah you know, I just pulled up the wrong window. I think the the auction has been fixed. Let me
remove this screen and share the right tab but the auction has been fixed. You know, we're
not exactly auctioneers. We didn't want to sit up here and like 599 or you know, so we
don't want to do that. So, what we did is we set up this auction which is basically, if
I can share it here. Yeah. To overview auctions and view Now,
they are public. So again, X Bar Ranch, a 3 day two-night
stay at a premium cabin. I think I'm going to bid on this myself actually. Yeah, I was thinking the same thing. Well, it's not quite showing that
other screen. It shows the, is it still showing the wrong one? Yeah, you've been able to reshare that Well, I don't know
why I did that. That's that's odd. Okay. Well, at any rate, yeah, that thing is is open now
and we do have AA link that we can flash on screen maybe that will us. I guess it just didn't
change at all, all, did it? Wow. That's very strange. I'm going to stop it then. Yeah, there's a link below. So, Texas
Star Party dot Better World.org slash auctions slash VT TSP Auction ETSP dash Auction.
That'll take you right to those because of the glitch. Nobody has bid yet. We'd like to see a
lot of people starting to bid in starting bid for both of these packages is $50. these these two night, two nights
days are worth a lot more than that and it's a great to get in. help the Texas Star Party
but also get some some some dark sky opportunities as well, right? Yeah. And that's the
thing is is you know, XR and Prude Ranch both known for their dark skies. So, if you're
an astronomy or you just want to get away to a to a dude ranch horses and whatever else
is out there in the wild, you want to do that as well. So, Okay. so I guess Joe we move
here and we go into our contests which is something I'm
excited to see. Yes, you Don and Joe have done a great job
with this trivia contest. So, I'm excited to see. I can't play. I wish I could but I can't play. So, I'm just going
to watch and learn and maybe eat some cotton candy and
that's how I feel every time we do this Trivia contests here. So, it's like a nice sugar rush for me. So, for those of you
who are with us at the beginning, we kind of went over how to do this but we'll do it once more for everybody else just so that you participate
and see who's going to win these these wonderful prizes that we have here. So, not to
repeat myself but I'm going to repeat myself. Here are the rules. when you log in to the platform, if you've done this
already, it should keep your name in the in the system but if not, you're going to be
prompted to log in. Make sure you log in with your real name so we know who's who don't use the nicknames that it might
give you. Don't change the nicknames to, you know, to a different nickname that you may have. Otherwise, you might win and we just don't know get a
hold of you. Okay, You're going to have 15 seconds to answer each question. No more, no
less. If you get the question right, you get points. If you don't get it right, you don't get points. However, the faster
you answer the question correctly, you get more points. So, the longer you wait to see the the answer and then the
answer afterwards and get it correct, you get fewer points in answering it quickly, okay? alright, everybody understood
that Now, to get to the to the quiz to participate, you can open up a browser, go to, you
know, use your smartphone that works pretty well too. Go to WWW.mentee.com, use the code
876. Again, It's
6958760 or if you've got a smartphone and you can scan that QR code, it'll take you
directly to our quiz here and we're going to give everybody a minute or two to go ahead and get signed in, Get logged in
here as well and we'll take it from there. So, while we wait for that will, do you have any
any new comments that are popping up on screen? Well, we do. We have the Courtney Project saying she's going to
bid on it and so I would love for that. That's that's the wife go ahead and bid with and
the weekend at the bar. Yeah. There you go. Dean said
congratulations to all the winners not winters. Matthew
says excellent presentation. Thanks for putting this on. Well, thank you for joining us, Matthew. We really appreciate that. and and Sheena said we're
doing a great job, Joe. So, I guess we are. I mean we all we have is is you guys to tell us whether we're doing a good job
or not. Oh yeah and we appreciate you guys and so again, just find the QR code,
turn on your camera on your it'll it'll bring up a little web page thing. You just click
on it and enter that code 6958760 right at the top of the
screen there and that's going to put you in for the trivia contest and what ten questions,
Joe? Yeah and again, more points for fast. Less points
for slow and there you go. Let's get at then. Hopefully everybody's had a chance to get
in. Who wants to get in? If not, there's still a little bit of time to jump in here. So We'll go ahead and start with the quiz.
Alright, question one of ten. I see all the participants in there again, last minute to get in. Mentee.com. Use the code
6958760 and now, we're going to start. Lots of fun emojis popping in. That's right. I'm
seeing more and more people join. Alright, on December 1st 2020, the the Iconic, a Sibo
telescope collapsed. It was featured in several movies. Which movie was a Sibo not seen in alien in 1979 Golden nine
1995 contact nineteen 3 seconds left folks. Get your
answers in. Time's up. and the
correct answer was aliens. So, most people selected that one and congratulations for
answering correctly there. If you didn't answer correctly, like I said, don't quit because
it's amazing how quickly you can go from the bottom back to the top here. Yeah. Alright.
So, after the first question, who is in the lead? sting? Ali?
I don't feel like it's a real name. So, Sting, Alicia. Yeah, Unfortunately, Ali. Yeah, We're
not sure if we're here. so, I don't know. I'll see. I don't think you're going to be able
to win but. Okay. Yeah. Alright, let's go to the next question. Question two of ten
here. and so fast to get more points.
How about that? Having a little bit of a glitch
here. Alright, here we go. There we go. after landing
after a landing. NASA engineers dubbed 7 minutes of terror that Lamar's perseverance lander touched down safely. Where did
it land? Gale Crater Diana Platinum crater, or goose
crater? Hmm. I know the answer. Can I do that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Go ahead. Raise your
hand. Will I got it up. You just can't Most people said Gale Crater. No, it's actually
Jesse Crater. So, the most recent landing was in Jesse Crater. So again, like I said, you can go from the the the
last place to first time here. So, congratulations to everybody who answered that correctly and we'll move on to
question three here once we see the leader board. Oh, David
took a commanding lead there. It looks like. Yeah. David Tillman. Alright. So, Mars
Rover landed at Mars Rovers I should say landed at all of these sites. So, don't feel too bad. If you missed this question.
Alright, question number three. what will it be? What was the original cost for a 1 year
subscription to Sky and Telescope Magazine mailed to an address in the US in 1941? Was it $2 325 $5 or 750 I wasn't
alive then I don't remember. that I can remember. Alright,
time is up. Most people selected $2 and that is correct. It is $2 indeed. That
was a day's wage back in those days. Yeah. So, who's who's leading now?
Oh, let's see. EF is in first place now.
Alright, over there. Excellent. I see a good run. That's right.
That Two-dollar subscription is equal to about 350 today in today's 5495 subscription rate equals to about 325. 1941
dollars. Oh, wow. Interesting. Yeah. Question number four, here we go. that fast to get
more points. this constellation known by the name of the hero of Greek mythology is known for
its great keystone and two true gems of the night skies, M and M Ninety-two did or Hercules
Seis or excuse me, Cephus or Perseus I know the answer. Yes.
Time is up. The vast majority got the correct answer there and that's Hercules, Hercules,
Hercules, Question five,
I discovered the period luminosity relationship of variables. Now, stars now used to measure distances to far off
galaxies. Who am I? Carolyn Herschel. Henrietta Levitt, Ruben or Annie Jeff Cannon.
This is a tough one. That is a tough one.
I have a thought but I don't know. Let's see. There we go. It's AB and they're absolutely
correct. It is Henry at eleven. made tremendous contributions to Astronomy that are still
pertinent today. Absolutely. Alright, question number six.
Charles Messier led off his famous List with a very interesting object. a common name of them. One is the Crab Nebula. What type of celestial
object is this? The Supernova Remnant, A reflection nebula or planetary nebula? Hmm. 3
seconds to get your answers in. Yeah. most people got this.
It's a Supernova remnant. That that was actually visible. about a thousand years ago or
so and it was documented by the Chinese. So, congratulations to everybody. We've got that
question correctly. Question seven,
in August. 1977, a volunteer at Ohio State University's Radio telescope, found a possible
signal from ET Still a mystery today. Name of the, what's the name of the signal? Is it the X signal? The Wow signal, the
cosmic Ringtone or contact one I like the sound of a ringtone.
Yeah. I think I have that on my iphone now. Yeah. Most people set the wild signal and that is
correct. It is the wild signal. Wow. Absolutely. Exactly.
Alright, let's take a look at our leader board here. Oh, lots
of points, Julie. Yeah. Oh. Oh, Dave Raven has taken the lead
here. Joe Abs the second. Joe Filas third and everybody else there has an opportunity to
catch up. Alright, question eight, here we go.
which moved in our solar system has the smoothest surface of any known solid object in our solar system. Is it Europa?
Titan, Pluto, or Eo?
Which one is it? And it's the answer is not my head by the way. You have to say that exact thing.
Most people chimed in with the Europa and they are correct. It is indeed. Europa Alright,
question nine. two more.
Galaxy. M. 64 is a single galaxy located in the constellation. Coco beans. What is its nickname? The Egg
galaxy, The Box galaxy, the silver Needle Needle, or the Black Eyed Galaxy. I know this one. Yeah. Beautiful object to
look at the telescope. Yeah, definitely.
Most people said the Black eyed galaxy and those people are correct. indeed. Alright,
lastly, congratulations Courtney. Yeah, one out of ten
ain't bad. It's the last question. This is your chance to come back. What is the term used when two astronomical
objects simultaneously have about the same right ascension or about the same eclectic long longitude? Is it solstice
conjunction or scissors? Scissors, right? There you go. Thank you 5 Seconds. folks,
this is a tough one. This sounds like an FAA Question time is up. Most people came up
with conjunction and yes, it is indeed conjunction conjunction.
That is number ten and you know what? We're going to keep people hanging on. Oh, we're
not going to reveal who the winner is quite yet. You've gotta stick with us and give us
a bit more astronomical education and everything else and afterwards, we'll go and
share with the top three winners there and what the prizes that they want are. That's right and that was fun.
That was a lot of fun. I wish I could've played along because I think I've done pretty well. I don't know. Maybe. Yeah. And
again, Jason, part two of Larry's talk is coming up soon. You can watch the beginning of
that later if you want. After this is all over, it's still always going to be archived
online and it's on the Houston Astronomical YouTube page as well. Houston Astronomical
Society's YouTube page. You can watch it there if you want as well. Absolutely. Alright. So,
we will share the results of the quiz after after done here but let's get back to our
friends over at the Fort Bend Astronomy Club and Joe Brewer, Joe or excuse me, Yeah, we're
going to bring Joe back, right? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. So, let's see where Joel is. I know
he's out there somewhere. There he is. There he is. Joe, you're on mute. just in case you'll
have to come out and mute there. Oh, there we go. There we go. Won't pack to mute. No,
it's good. Now, we're good now. Yeah. Okay, we're going to do a
little talk about field of view. Vince. We've seen this
the scopes from the George Observatory and I've shown a
few others have shown a few images and pairs that you get a
different image out of everything. So, let's talk about how that all works. So, let me bring up a slideshow
here. This is a sideshow. Okay. Are
you able to see it? We are. surely. you can. Yeah. A miracle. Modern technology.
Internet hasn't crashed yet. That's right. Okay. So, let's
start this off. Move to we've discussed what EAA is So, let's
just look at a few other things here about it. We've talked about using subframe and right
there, from two and a half seconds up to 30 seconds. You
are limited guiding integration time which is actually
averaging. It's usually from 5 minutes to 30 minutes for what going to show. That's that's
basically what we're going to going to be doing The biggest thing we use EAA for the moment
is trying to keep people's attention and we can't really have them touch the eye piece.
So, this is the Best thing we can come up with and it really does give good views of objects
but sometimes objects are small objects are big. How do you
determine what that all means? So, I'm going to show you some
comparisons between different telescopes and different cameras and talk about how you
compute the actual field of view for combinations What I have is a Seventeen-inch. AG
IDK telescope which is operates at F 6.7. It is an as you can
use it for optics optical with an eye piece if you wish and I used it for a long time. That
way. mounted on top of it is a restaurant where as a eight
inch which is an F two. these two scopes. The field of view
are considerably different seventeen inch with just a
standard camera. which in my case, I've used a CWA SI 294
and I now have ACWO AS I-26, hundred mounted on a eight inch
on the IDK Seventeen-inch. I have a full flame camera which
basically means it's the size of an old thirty-five millimeter film I've used AC
0094 and the CW. 6200. In this
list, you can see the pixel sizes how many pixels there
are, and a diagonal of these cameras. Two of them are for
the the 294 and a 2600. lot of
the same there. There's a few few millimeters difference in the diagonal. Quite a bit of
difference in the number of pixels and when you move to the
094162 hundred, there's a lot of difference in the number of pixels There's some difference
in the size of the pixel but the diagonal is the same.
Like I said, these are both mounted together and that the eight inches on top of the
seventeen inch and all the scopes are mounted on astrophysics. 1600 to see As
far as the software we're going to be using Circa In this particular case, I have to use
the Sixty-four bit version because the cameras put out
quite a bit of information. The larger ones, the CWL 094 and
especially the CW 6200 is a
very lot. It's it's just a lot of megapixels on it. to 6200
actually a 62 megapixel camera.
So, it's putting a lot of information out for controlling
everything. We're we're the scope action points. I used the Sky Safari six pro criteria,
software criteria software, Everything we're going to be talking about is computer
control through a single computer back to a office, So,
in Observatory, like I said, we have the two telescopes here on right. You can see the big
scope which is the black AG IDK seventeen inch F 6.7 mounted on
it is the Crestron La eight inch Ftwo on the Otto scope the
cameras at the front. It is only good for astrophotography. That's what it's designed for
and that's what it does very well. The AG or the seventeen
inch scope the cameras conventional and it's at the back where you'd have a piece
You can see the AP mount and all the wires So, if you look
at the other part of the building, this is what controls everything. Obviously, if
you're in here at night, your night vision is pretty well gone. This is designed for
basically outreach showing people all the images the screens. so you can have
multiple people. Everything is controlled from the two four K
monitors at the bottom. One of the monitors is then duplicated up to a TV so people can see
Then, there's an Android pad down down here on the that has
duplicated up to a fourk TV. So everyone can see the star
charts. You can also bring up more professional images and so
they can compare back to the images being taken at the time.
right now, what I was going to use for the real time at the George, if we had good skies
was the from our laboratory. I pulled it off and I put it on top of Mount and you know, put
guide cameras on it. So, this came into my garage and was all set up and yeah, it started
raining raining for 3 weeks. I should have known better Hey,
let's talk about how you actually do the field. A few calculation. If you're using
camera, So, here's a link to some software or it's just a
little spreadsheet. You enter in information on and it'll
tell you what your field of view is given a picker telescope and a camera
configuration. So, basically, you need to chip size which is here to width or the height and the focal length of the
telescope. and if you want to know the width because most of
these chips are rectangles. If you want to know the width, you use the millimeter size for the
width. If you want it, you know the height you use the millimeter for the height. if you want it in the degrees, you
simply use this conversion multiplied by fifty-seven point 57.3 a minutes multiplied by
another sixty a second. I think it's another sixty in there but
formulas and then the Emmy scale is relatively simple. Also, you simply take the field
of view and whatever units you've got it in. If it's a second, you put that in here
and you, if I bought a total number of pixels that you have,
and units will be filled with you per pixel. Now, what if the
catches to this is that I'm using color cameras which are
Rgb. So, they have red, green, and blue pixels. But when you
actually get a picture of it, you still have the same number of pixels. So, somewhere back
into electronics of the camera. there's been or maybe it's in
the software you're using there's a calculation done that
has to do a little bit of interpretation to get the pixels back. So, these aren't
true. any scales and they're not
field or field of view is probably true but the any skill I'll probably is not quite
right. So, if you're also looking at the resolution the the isn't exactly what you
compute out if you're trying to compute it which is a more difficult problem. So, I
started some of the combinations and the left hand chart. We can see the cameras
the width, and height and pixels the pixel size and the
basic that kangaroo flame size of different cameras and then
the diagonal. you can see it. The first two which are basically the thirty-five
millimeter frame. type cameras are both the same. You can see
that the 2600 a 294 are similar with the 2600 being a little
bigger and it also turns out the 6200 6200, the 2600 are
sixteen be cameras were the Ninety-four and the two 9414
that if I remember And here's some telescope combinations.
These are just the scopes that I have laying around. You can
see that. There's quite a variation here from 26.7. 3.6.
3.64. 3.650. So, here's the
bottom is a chart of combination of scopes, cameras,
image scale, and then the field of view Now, you can see that
the Idk, the seventeen inch scope with the 094 and the 6200
field of view didn't change when I change cameras. Image
scaled it though because I packed more pixels into the same area. If I look at the
with the 294 and the 2600, you can see that the image scale did change and the field of you
could change. I actually gained field of view So, it's moving
forward Again, some of the things you have to consider though is that image Also,
we've has impact on what you can resolve the larger the
field of view, the lower the scale using the same camera.
Increasing chip size. maybe too large for the scopes. Best
imaging area. So, when I changed the for eight inch from
a 294 to the 2600. I took the risk that my new diagonal size
of the chip maybe outside the range of what the scope was good for and it may have
problems on the edges In my case, I don't see that. I think I'm still good. In the case of
the Idk, it didn't matter because the chips are basically the same size. So, then you
have to also consider pixel size because that reflects on your image scale and your
resolving what you can actually resolve. How many bit the is it ten 1416? Are you going to
cover a mono? And then there's other things, some of the newer cameras are now backlit instead
of outlet. which means where the actual wiring is at and it
has to do with whether you get electronic noise So, it's
moving on. Here's a comparison between the with the 294 and
the with the 2600
There's significant difference in the exposure which on the left is is sixty-one subs 10
seconds. So, only 610 seconds on the right, we have 189 Subs,
10 seconds each 1890. So, it's easy to see in 84, or M
Eighty-six, and lots of other galaxies on a picture like this. I actually have my grandkids come in and count how
many galaxies they can see in this field of view. because this is fairly large field of
view. Now, there is a difference. if you look at the difference, the distance
between the galaxies, it's not quite as much on the right as
it is on the left but it's not a lot If I go to comparing the
with the 2600. to the seventeen inch Idk with to 6200 Then I
get a lot of difference. The white box on the left. is
basically the field of view of the seventeen inch telescope.
So, one of the things you have to think about is what do I really want to see? Am I going to be looking at little things
or do I want to look at the big picture? And again, there's
other thing that comes in play Is that the big telescope?
required that I use a 22nd exposure instead of a 12th
exposure. The law as it could do it with 10 seconds the seven
inch inch scope, the sharp cap software would not align the
images. So, I went to a 22nd exposure Moving on to the next
one. Here we have more galaxies. and again, the white
box. outlines. the basic field of view that's going to be in
the seventeen inch scope. So, on the left, we have Eliza over a 294 camera On the right, we
have the Idk with the 6200. These aren't a little bit of
difference in exposure but not a lot here but again, on the
seventeen inch, I had to use a 22nd exposure for the subs on the Vasa. I was able to do a
12th and again, it comes down. Do I
want to see this? What I want to be able to get all the galaxies and if you actually
had this on the screen II, do an observatory. You can zoom this up and you can see that
these are galaxies and start to get more detail but you get a lot more detail on the right
The accommodations will be also different because every camera
basically behaves differently. Now, I am applying darks and flats here because I'm doing
this in a more controlled environment because it the scope and everything remains
set up. So, Here's M five. and
in this particular case, they're the same. exposures.
There's fifteen subs of 10 seconds each. The software, it
doesn't have any problem with this because it's a fairly object but the detail on the
right image is significantly more than on the left image from the Raza but it's what you
want to see. This is an object where you probably want to use
a larger scope of higher F number so that you get a
narrower field of view. You can actually tell that this Star is a double star for on the left.
Even if I blow this up. all I can barely tell is that the star isn't quite around. I
cannot really split it.
Okay, here's an example of a galaxy. This is M. 81 which I think we've seen previously and
other images or other talks. you can see here again. white
box goes to this in the seventeen inch You can see that
the dust lines are very visible here We're here If I zoom this
up, it you could tell it's there but you're still not getting the detail but then
again, I'm not going to get to see the M. Eighty-two or this
NGC object down here and ten to one. There's more galaxies. So, here's another one up here.
and it's really hard when you're doing outreach to know which is going to be more
impressive. showing someone a single galaxy or showing them. There's all these galaxies
disclosed together. There you go. It's 105 and a
lot of its neighbors and there's a lot of neighbors. in
the wide field. There's all kinds of neighbors here. here.
Not so much but he gets to start seeing detail on this one.
and actually this one, the has more exposure. It's a 12th
exposure and it's up to 22 thousand 22050 seconds. Day
seventeen each is 22nd exposures but only up to a thousand 800 seconds and I've
still got more detail More galaxies here. You have to
consider what it actually even fit and in this particular case, these just barely fit
Once again, I had to use for the seventeen inch. I had to use a 22nd exposure to get it
to average to images together.
and that's basically what I've got. You just have to consider what what do you really want to
show and what do you want to see? Are you the big picture and a small picture and work
out the math to get the camera to match the scope? and match
the resolution? The radical resolution at the scope and
what's what do you do you want to do I think my timer is going
off. So, I'm done. I'll turn it back over to you. Alright, very
cool. I feel the view is plays a crucial role when you're doing whether it's visual Observing or astrophotography.
Ea, what you're doing field of view is definitely important. So, thank you, Joel. It's great stuff. Absolutely and I think
we're going to bring our buddy Jeff left back on. Yeah, there he is. Jeff, you're on mute. Oh
yeah. That that that I love that. Yeah, I'm glad to be back. So, just wanted to
comment the the picture behind me was actually something that I got from Joel. He printed out the horse head on a on a kind
of like a blanket. So, I thought that was kind of cool. Anyways, I want to talk about
my astrophotography. So, I'm going to switch to my slides here if you can you see my
screen, We can. Yeah. Excellent. Excellent. Okay. I've been doing a photography
now for about 7 years and this is not the setup. Obviously, I started with, I started with a
rather simple beginner setup but for the sake of time, I'm just going to go with what I've
got today. So, this is basically my telescope is Takashi FS Q, 106 EDX which is
a very well corrected, refractive telescope that I bought from Lassen Sky. It's
one of the benefits of having Takashi America in your backyard. You can just drive there and pick it up in my my
mouth is in astrophysics. Mock one which is a very accurate tracking mount that I've had
for several years and it's just been great worth every penny I use the Starlight Express
filter wheel with an off access guider so you can see the filter wheel here and the off Axis guider. Come on out here.
There's a pickup prism which redirects the lights a little QY guide cameras, what I've got
and then I recently upgraded my focus here. I wasn't quite with the stocker and so I bought a
Moonlight night crawler which is about half the cost of the talk. So, it wasn't cheap but
it's a very accurate focus and it also has an auto rotator which is kind of cool. So, it
it will actually rotate to whatever angle I want and I've got multiple cameras. These are
just two that I have my my CCD camera or CD's are kind of like
going out of style these days because everybody's going with the sea moss cameras but this this is my TSP STF 8300
Monochrome and it's monochrome camera but I can take colored pictures because I've got a filter wheel with these astronaut six millimeters,
color filters, and I also have narrow band filters as well and then I have one of these 294
cameras for EAA and color imaging which is it's kind of fun. The image with a one shot
color but monochrome is really kind of where I started with and and recently, I bought AZO
600 monogram camera as well. I just hadn't had time really to to use it. So, going on to a
software sequence generator pro, there's lots of software out there that happens to be I've been using for for most of
of my time and it does automated image captures So, I can basically set it up. you
know, playing my target ahead of time frame it. it does plate solving. It does auto focus. It does automated burning flips. I
can basically set it up, go to sleep, wake up in the morning and I got all my pictures taken and if everything goes well, if
something goes bump in the night, it can even text me that something's going wrong and I can run out and and and see
what's going on clouds or something or whatever. I used PHD two which is pretty much gold standard. It's open open
source, software free even though I'm out tracks very well. Guiding is still beneficial and and keeps the
the stars pinpoint picks inside. I've mentioned earlier in my previous presentation, I used that for image processing
to do the Capri Complete calibration alignment stacking, and the post processing. Then I
also use Start which is a useful tool which is actually written by HAS number Nikita
Missa I had to actually honor of beating him out of the dark side a couple times and this is
very useful for creating Star Wars images which are kind of cool but even more important for creating masks that I can
use for Advanced processing techniques and I've got an example of that my images and then the new shiny toy is this
Topaz AI noise which is artificial intelligence software which sharpens and des
your image and you have to be extremely careful that you don't overdo it with this because it'll actually create artifacts but I also have an
example of that in my images as well. So, moving right along. So, the first image I want to
talk about is M Fifty-one, the Whirlpool Galaxy was taken on January 2028 at the Houston
Dark Site with the 294 color camera and this image was actually published in the June
2020 Astronomical League Reflector Magazine. It's only 3 hours of integration time which
is actually kind of short for for imaging and one thing I wanted to point about this image is the fact that this target is not an optimal target
for my to I have a short focal length telescope. 530 millimeters. What I did was I
used an image processing technique or a method called drizzle which basically helps
increase your resolution of your image and you have to do certain things like which is
moved between each frames and so forth to take advantage of that but it will also, it will increase the resolution. So,
that's this is actually the image that we're looking at here is is is approximately twice of what the regular
resolution of my telescope is and you know, Joel mentioned the the thing about
interpretation, what color of cameras? well, with drizzle the bearing. It actually gives you
more accurate interpretation or more accurate color representation of those those pixels because each will only
be be measuring one color and it interprets the other colors and so with drizzle, it
actually gives you even better interpretation or calculations of those colors and I'm not, I don't think you can do drizzle
with the live stacking. So, this is something you can really only do with with post processing 122nd exposures.
This objects 228 million years away and can't as the
constellation, I pronounced that right The next image takes a second to load This is, this
is one that I'm pretty proud of. This is the Iris Nebula that I also took at the dark
side again with the 294 camera. It was also published in the December Astronomical Reflector
Magazine. This is a little more time 5.1 hours. Now, it may seem like a lot of time but for this image, it's actually quite
short and the does. the show shows up really nice. I processed this one really hard
to bring out the detail of the dust which shows up really nicely but when you look at it
really close, it was pretty noisy. So, I used my new shiny toy Topaz AI, Dey to actually
reduce the noise in this image. So, even though a lot of people they put, you know, 1015 20
hours into this into this image and it actually made it look like I had a lot more integration time in it than
than I actually did. but you can see the nice blue reflection and then all this
wispy dust which I think is really cool. These type of objects I really get into. So,
the next image I want to show you is my what I call my blue pelican. This is a false color
image using a narrow band filters and I took the oxygen
oh three data at the HAS Dark Side because oh three is actually still susceptible to
light pollution and for my backyard it wouldn't turn out as well. So, I took the oh three data at the HS Dark side
but I took the hydrogen and the sulfur from my backyard because they're pretty resistant to
light pollution and so took us with my CCD camera. So, very
long exposures and to get the blue to come out more because this is a Hubble palette. So, I mapped the oxygen to the blue
channel, the a green and the sulfur to the red channel which is the Hubble palette. It's
called Hubble Palette and to get the blue to really come out. I took really long with
CCD cameras. You take really long disclosures with sea moss cameras, not so long but with
the with the A, I'm sorry, oh three filter. I was taking 40 Minute exposures where I was
taking, I believe like 30 Minute exposures with the HA filter. So, this is a lot of integration time twenty over 20
hours of integration time in my blue Pelican. The stars are actually RGB stars. I think that with my color filters so I
actually merged color stars in with my image normally with the band images, the stars are kind
of magenta color They may be white but I've I've recently started putting color stars in
the images. So, so moving along to the next image. This one
here is is one of my favorite images. Actually, this is the cave nebula that I took on a
trip to a dark darker side. So, the HA S Dark Side is when aborted for this was taken near
Los Naples State Park in Texas and Vanderpool Texas at the Los
Maple River Lodge and I was out there on the I thought I'd take my telescope out and I only had
one clear eye but it was a glorious clear night. It was a clear night. The rest of the nights were all horrible. So, I
took this also with my CCD camera, 7.8 hours. This is an example where I set it up with
my software. I let it run all night. I went to sleep. I woke up in the morning and I had all my data there and so it was
pretty good. I like this picture because it's got the three types of nebula. It's got
the emission nebula and it's got the blue reflection nebula
and it also has the dark nebula. It's the dark nebulizer
to this particular image. I also use some Advanced processing techniques with this
that I learned from Adam Block. I subscribed to a block studio and he's he's got some advanced
techniques that help keep control of the stars. One of the hardest things about a photography is the stars. Okay.
you think it's Stars are simple. They're just points of light but what happens is when
you process and you heavily stretch the data, the stars bloat and that's one thing as
photographers look at to see what is a good picture. How do the stars look like? So, I use some advanced techniques and I
used the key to start it to do that and so you have to mask out the stars and and when you
stretch it and then put the stars back in and that's where Star that really shines and what you really use your for
startup for and you know, some people use it to create stars images which sometimes can look neat as well but so I, you
know, learn a lot from Adam, block my processing skills, have improved and subscribing
to to his site and lastly, this was actually taken not with my
equipment at all. It's been so cloudy lately and so kind of bummed out and I always wanted
to image some Southern hemisphere objects. Now, this is barely visible to us in our here but it's very low in guys.
So, what I did was I joined an amateur hosting facility which
happens to be in Chile Observatory, Elsa. I don't know how to pronounce that right. right. is is the actual
observatory telescope live is is is the vendor and so II purchased some time on their
telescope system and it wasn't really a telescope really at all. It was a camera lens, an icon 200 millimeter camera lens because this object is
extremely large. This is the Vela Supernova Remnant which is a twelve year old Supernova.
That's 800 light years from us and and this this is a bicolor image. It was only taken in
hydrogen and oxygen three and I did take RGB stars and the
essentially the red channel is where the hydrogen is and the green and the blue is where the
oxygen was mixed into and all the wispy detail here. This is the this is the Supernova
remnant itself and it's it's reminiscing of the spaghetti Nebula. Some people would take it spaghetti. nebula. but this
is actually much bigger than the spaghetti and these are some some gum nebula here as
well. So, this was taken with a extremely expensive Finger Lakes instrument CCD camera.
They're like ridiculously expensive and this actually won
the site that I post my pictures on is Aspen and this actually one image of the day
in March on March 7th of 2021. So, I recently started doing a lot more of this just because a lot of my time is limited. I
like to go out to the dark side, use my own equipment but lately the weather's been and
subscribing to the service has been actually quite cool. I've I've done a lot of Southern
hemisphere objects that that I really enjoy. So, this is a 3.8 hours of integration time in
this particular image and I was happy to win my second image of the day. My first one was taken
4 years ago. so, that's how long it was between my image of the days on on Aspen and to wrap things up, this is my
site. It's on Astro and it's it's slash users Jeff 2011.
2011 is kind of when I got into Astronomy, I bought my Orion Xt eight from from Lance's in 2011. So that's what I and you
can see my pictures here. Many of them will have one top picks and top pick nominations. The most recent ones are from Chile
or Australia. This is a large cloud that was taken in in Australia but some of these others were taken with my
personal telescopes and go to the site. If you see the bronze that's my avatar and you can
click on one of these images and you can see a bigger version of it and detailed information about the number of
exposures the equipment used and so forth. and that talk.
Thank you. Awesome stuff, Jeff. Wow. I, you know II wouldn't
even be able to get close to that So I don't want to download your. I did it. Exactly. We live vicariously
through you, Jeff. Appreciate it. Thanks. Great stuff and
we'll keep it rolling here and you know, there would be rounding applause. I'm sure between each of these, it's
great stuff. So, so I think is who we have on the agenda next
year. Alright, Glad to be back.
All the buttons. All the buttons to push. and I got some buttons to push. Berry says,
awesome indeed. I agree. Courtney says, good job, Jeff. I also agree. Absolutely. So
did my screen up here. We're not seeing it. Oh, actually, it's 003 of us are trying to
share it now. I think I'll go ahead and let me come back in.
There it is. One of us will grab it there. Let's go for it. Will. I didn't do it. That was
done. We do see your screen now. So. alright. Yeah, we're good. We're great. We'll get
going here. few pictures here of some of
the equipment that I use. My first telescope was the real
telescope was is this Celestial Cm Casi ring that I bought in
1977 and still using I use this for a solar lunar planetary and
some deep sky. My 80mm refractor that we saw earlier. I use that for
each guy fellow A member of
Join has let me borrow a dedicated solar telescope that I've been using this year to
take do some solar astro photography but for my lunar planetary, I use the CA and
here's the back of the C and I have a creer on it. CW
atmospheric dispersion corrector, explore scientific
two X focal extender in my eight CWA SI 224 Planetary team
want to point out the importance of of proper
filtration for solo viewing our energy. Astronomy is pretty say
except during the day. you just have to be careful that you're using proper filtration. living
in Texas here outside of Houston. We got bored seven or 878 Skies kind of limits the
astrophotography that I'm able to do at home. Luckily, I enjoy lunar solar Planetary as as
well as so bright objects like the moon, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars
lend themselves to astrophotography and light pollution and the main problem with solar system master
photography really is the atmosphere and here in Texas, We're essentially at sea level. So, we're looking to a lot it
turns out that a powerful technique to lessen the effects of atmosphere is the atmosphere
which is what astronomers call the scene is something called what? The energy and lucky
imaging is just a technique where you capture a large number of exposures over a short period of time and hoping
to catch those brief moments in the atmosphere is a crystal clear and then once the images
are captured, they're analyzed for sharpness and only the ones and then these lucky images are
stacked to further reduce the noise and produce a single inject the or the process to
produce a fine line that is much sharper than any single image. Lucky imaging of the
sun. moon, and planets can produce hundreds of thousands of images. So, we have to use
softwares to sort and stack and the programs I use are auto stacked three to be sorting and
stacking logistics six for the sharpening and Photoshop. The
final adjustment Now, this is an example I took 100 frames out of one of the Jupiter
videos and you can kind of see as it wobble back and forth. That's the atmosphere It's it's
stored in the image actually, the scene here isn't all that bad. We're able to see the
bands on Jupiter, the Great red spot, one of the moons but
what I did was II made a three-minute video with the C eight and the atmospheric
dispersion corrector of the two X and the ASI 224 and picked up
like 12 thousand frames I ran this through a stacker and then
register stacks and here's the result. So, now, we can see all
the details that were handed out in the previous picture. Interesting cloud bands. the
dark bands are called belts. The light colored bands, They're called zones for
whatever reason. Temperature differences on Jupiter account
for the color differences. Here we see the great red spot and also the Moon Europa which I
discovered or found out a few minutes ago was the smoothest surface and the solution
So, what I did was I took additional 3 minute videos and
1 minute intervals over a period of about an hour run all
through individually through Auto Stacker stacks sharpened
them. We took them into Photoshop and then put them in a program to create this
animation. So, here we're actually able to see the location of Jupiter over a 1 hour period. Now, Jupiter is
rotating. planted in the solar system and rotates in about 10 hours. So, and we can also see
the motion of the moon. Europa as it moves behind Jupiter in
particular sequence, Mars is another great favorite
planetary target whenever it comes to opposition which is about every 2 years, We had a
great opposition last year. So, this is these are images from last
I like the previous
down here in 2018. We didn't have a vest on this time of
year. Circus elements of note here is Olympus on the Elysium
Moms. It's one of the largest volcanoes on Mars. It's actually the third highest poop
on Mars
Curiosity Rover and Insight lander. actually landed
in this art of of Mars Ellis. Flames.
I couldn't resist The Jupiter Saturn conjunction in December
21st last year. as Joe was talking about earlier with the field of view, I had to change
my setup a little bit and use my CA but I didn't want as much
focal length because I needed a wider field of view. I actually had to use a focal reducer and
the ASI Pninety Fort camera to get the right field of view
capture both Jupiter and Saturn in the same image Again, this is Lucky Energy. I had to
brighten Jupiter. I mean, I had to exposed for Jupiter. I had to brighten Saturn and post
processing to bring it up because it's quite a bit of dimmer to get the moons. I
actually had to take a little bit longer exposure and then combine that in Photoshop with
this to produce this composite image
lately what I've been trying to do is capture the International Space station ISS as it
transits across either the sun or the moon. There's a great website called Transit dash
Finder.com which will if you put in your location and the time you want to look. So,
we'll give you.
times and locations of these transits from from your area.
We've had several favorable ones this year but they've all been clouded out but luckily on
April the twenty-sixth, we had a very good ISS transit that
was actually visible from my backyard. So, I didn't have to pack up all my foot run out,
set it up somewhere and then try to catch the the transit
Joel and join me on this venture and we set up in my
backyard in between the clouds and at the the transit. We
actually had just a very, very thin cloud layer. So, we're actually able to capture the
the ISS transit last April, 26,
we use the blank 100 THA solar telescope. So, we're looking at
the chromosome of the sun as opposed to the photo shoot and you are a SI 174 Mooch camera
one. camera transmits and hydrogen alpha. You might as
well use a monochrome amethyst. You don't get one color
and I took a 12th ten. 12th
capture. I started 2 seconds before the predicted time of
the transit had to run for 10 seconds and captured a thousand
frames and then we had about sixty of them that actually had the ISS on. So, what I did was
II extracted those sixty planes and then composite them on this
image to to show the passage of the of ISS across the the face
of the sun. Interestingly in that, we're going into a solar
we've we've come out of solar minimum. We're getting into up building of the solar activity
over the next three or 4 years and we are actually able to also see three sunspots at the
same time. shown here, labeled as active regions You know. I
like to make animations. I think I mentioned that. So,
what I did was I took this and created an animation that I'll
play here. I'll play it several times This is pretty close to
real time. here. I'm going to press it now. and if you see
the ISS cross, do do it again. There it goes. It's coming across right right through
here. That's about it. It's just less than a half a second
for the transit. So, that's why we only got sixty frames and
then II created a
Another version. It's a little slower so you can actually see the ISS transit across the sun.
It's about fourteen times slowed down about fourteen times versus the actual
transit that we saw in the previous ABI. again, you can
see the I move the cursor. You can see the active areas here
on this. Do it one more time.
that pretty much. ends my presentation. I once again,
we'd like to thank everybody for their attention Clear skies. Thank you so much. Yes,
absolutely. I really appreciate that. Okay and next up from the
Fort Bend Club, we've got mister David Haviland, our good friend. Hey, David. How are
you? Alright, yourself. doing well. Thank you. I want to compliment you guys on a on a
really good program. Oh, thank you. Appreciate that. Well, you guys are a huge portion of that. So, thank you very much.
Yeah, thank you David. You're y'all are doing a great job and and you you do some
astrophotography kind of stuff too, don't you? Yes, a little bit. I've been doing the EA in
the West Dome as well but I've also been doing some other things during the pandemic. So
cool. Let's get into that.
should be up. There we go.
Alright, this is me. I'm actually in all three clubs and I actually started started with
JSA as a long time ago. I do run either dome right now. I'm kind of in the West Dome
helping others train train people My interests are mainly
outreach galaxies, nebula, and the moon. That's where I'm going to be focusing today. I have helped run Houston
Astronomy this a few times. Day job is not, it's not Astronomy.
It's actually biology. So, my personal motto is cells by day and stars by night and I've got
an Email here for any questions. I also have an Astro been account but it's loaded
with nothing but lunar images so far and if you haven't done so already, folks are more than
welcome to take any snapshots of this presentation. I do want to bring up that if it's going
to change on me, don't
Sometime a computer.
good old technology in and help you. I'm going to keep keep
going a little bit and I hope it catches up. I do want to emphasize the moon is actually
not our enemy. It's actually our friend especially during
outreach. events because we need to understand and realize that most of the people that
come up to our scopes have not seen the moon and the scope. I've always of the mood. It can
be observed in an urban skies and is a major outreach target. As I've mentioned, like many in
the club, I was one of those kids glued to the TV on July 20th at Sixty-nine and I watched it on a fifteen inch
black and white TV and I was the remote. Fast forward to about 1998, we got a Celestial
Star Hopper is a six and I pointed that at the moon before even even shooting my first
DSL. lunar photography isn't quite the same as Astro photography
that I considered as an extension It requires much shorter exposures in the
millisecond range, not in minutes and my materials and methods are here. I'm mainly
using a Celestron Cg eleven. It's eleven inch SCT. I've put
a Crawford focus on the back much like Sonny has done a threed printed a feather, a
feather touch back here and I mainly using a QH Y five 178, and monochrome with a modest
chip down here. Thirty by 3072 by 2042 with 2.4 Micron Pixels,
You don't you you want to have your scope aligned and have as little drift as possible but
unlike traditional astrophotography is not a mortal sin. If your scope drifts ever so slightly because
as so may have mentioned as well, a stacker helps you stack and can make up for make up for
some of those errors. My summary of the workflow is very quick. You actually use fire
captured to grab the AVI is that I use Auto stacker to convert the AV is the tips I
have auto stacker grab and and compile the best 20% of 3000 to
4000 frames into a single sharpened Ti. I'll actually have Auto star stacker do a
little bit of sharpening and as such, I have stopped using stats in my workflow and I take
it straight to Photoshop. Creative Creative Cloud. Now, I will spare the slide there
because that's a full slide of in depth nitty gritty of what we do in Photoshop. First shop
is actually an EAA sample. This credit, the credit of this picture goes to Joel Brewer who
took it at the George I did that with the twelve that the 294 but I've outlined the
mayor's that you can generally see here and this is one frame. So, yes, it does look a little on the on the wonky side but
everything from this point on is taken in the backyard at various times late at night or very early in the morning I'm
an Apollo. not. I'm always on the hunt for photographic for photographing the Apollo Landing sites. So, during this
pandemic, I've set up and I'll shoot them time and time again, trying to get better resolution with each shot Here we are at
the south end of the mere tranquility and if you can locate to easily recognized
Craters, Ritter and Sabine as well as Muy than half the battle to finding the Apollo
eleven landing site is pretty much there if you have the
clarity with you in order to see Aldrin Collins and Armstrong just to the south southeast of Collins is the
Apollo eleven landing site. Now, if you want an easy one to grab, make your way over to Im
on the west side. If you can catch a crater, a mes this big
open slide in here and you come down to this mountain range and this valley which is actually
called Hadley Real. It's a volcanic vent. I do apologize this late in the morning and
it's slightly over. burned out just a little bit but now, Hadley is sitting here at 18 thousand feet and Irwin and
Dave Scott came over over on their backsides and plucked down right here for a pinpoint landing but the geography of
this much like seventeen and sixteen make this one of the easiest Apollo landing sites to
sites to find in contrast. this is the moral Marco area where
Apollo twelve and fourteen landed the Apollo Landing sites are not easy to find in a
telescope. We'll let you know exactly where you are and that's a little tough because there's no major geography
around them. The snowman Craters where Apollo twelve landed and the triplet and cone
craters were Apollo fourteen landed are nowhere near able to
be resolved from earth based telescopes because some of those craters are barely 300 feet across and many of us that
shoot the moon are lucky to get under just a mile resolution I include the land Forsberg and
Reinhold Craters. They're in line with caps which is off the screen and Perry twelve is kind
of tough because it's out there in the middle of nowhere. Fourteen is much easier to find if you can work your way around the geography of these small
hills Sixteen is a little easier. If
you know what the segment and multifaceted peak of of
theophilus detail on this one is actually reasonably pretty good. You know, work your way
down and you will find the Craters, Lindsay and do and you'll know a fairly similar in
size and actually share between them a common wall. These two are unique can be hard. You'll be hard pressed to find another
pair of equally matched. Dare I say undamaged craters that are actually conjoined as these are
once you see them, you wander your way over to these two white specks. The smoky
mountains to the north and the actual stone mountain to the south and just to the inside is
where sixteen landed Now, if I hop over on, I'm not one of the
better pictures. Here's the bean in Ritter Muy. There's
eleven. if you use the bean and Ritter as a leak point and come down to the ombre Taylor A you
come right into Lindsay and do here two white specks and you
have a picture where you have two landing sites in one frame. I'm going to shift away from
the landing sites and come over to this one. I really like the way this one turned out. I personally call it the big
three pets, Alfonso and it's a it's a common common target for
visual observers and photographic observers. You're also looking at history. The oldest crater is very likely
autonomous note, there is no Spur Peak or terrace walls. It was likely made when the moon
is mostly love and semi soft. Alfonso to the to the south is a bit is a bit younger as
there's the remnant of a centerpiece and there's some terrace of the walls down on
the bottom is a younger crater and in very good shape with defined terrace walls and a
defined centers for peak folks are often lose perspectives as to how big some of these
craters can be. No pets Ninety-five miles across for 10
thousand 10053 kilometers. That diameter of that crater would reach from Galveston all the
way to just short of College Station. Now, one of the things I've also noticed coming up in
my images and those of others are these kind of rock like rolling rock features here and
here. This one is actually called the Katina Davie Katina. how these are formed still
remains injection to the to the to the the day but they are very when you find them. now,
hopping just to the south of that is another favorite target
called the straight wall. is up here at the top. and as I
said, the straight wall is down here. It's actually an elevation or Apt in the lunar
surface. It's well known popular target for amateur astronomers and Selena files
such as such as myself. The shadow at cask gives the appearance of a steep cliff.
It's 110 kilometers long roughly two to three kilometers wide and has a height of about
240 to 300 meters while it appears to be a vertical cliff is believed to be a relatively
shallow crate of about 45° This
was an interesting study in the moon's vibration. I had never seen a titanium as clearly as
I've got it here. This was taken on November 19th in the on the twenty twenty. I do
apologize for being just a hair out of focus. I was on the hunt for lunar objects and literally
just stumbled upon this and found Lady Luna was showing basically showing me her left shoulder at the bottom. I have
a Nasa website. It was provided by so that will show vibration
in real time. I either have run right right over it in prior
observations but most of the time, I'm both of them is just this kind of smudge that's over here on the far far eastern
limb. I've never seen it like this. My Atlas did not have a lot of information so I had to
go dig up a number of sources in order to identify some landmarks
Another big three that I like. I was playing with a photographic region of interest in fire capture and I wanted to
try to get Taiko Megs and Klaus all in the same shot Taiko is
roughly Eighty-five miles across This is 120 and Klaus is
almost 10040 miles across down here now. Well, it was the moon
was showing me her kind of her left shoulder. She's kind of hiding the South Pole because Klaus is a circular crater but
here it looks far more oval. I I'm really drawn to the five
arcing crater here in increasing size and how those came to be. I do have one
little touch of Taiko here. Decent one with citrus terrace
walls and for movie trivia buff. This is where the monolith was found in the movie
2001 Hop over to the center of the moon. We've got me and
pretty much the central region. the A mountain range of Abraham is to the left and I have to be
honest, I had a hard time finding information about this and I mean about this area on my Lunar map Atlas unusual net
sources. I ended up stumbling across through Google. something called the Chameleon Observatory that gave me a
quite a bit of information about the area. The scene was exceptionally good and I was
really attracted to this detail sloping from east to west. I'm
sorry. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. From west to east on these mountains as they come down and I had
never seen on to this point
I'm a hygienist is actually a really interesting area as
well. It's almost a seagull like structure. This is all volcanic. This is what the
volcanic grill is underneath here and this collapse. all of this. This is simply just fell in. This is a large volcanic
collapse in the center that sort of forms the pivot, the volcanic pits.the length of the
reel leaving very little doubt that the hygienist is a volcanic organ of origin and at one It was considered a
potential landing site for the Apollo program. Good old cappers like one of the most
photographed craters on the moon. The ejected blanket laying all out here, the terrorist walls and the very
fragmented, very fragmented sets for a peak makes this a popular visual and photographic
target. A favorite to the southwest is Schiller. Researchers found people
investigating craters and when actually Behringer was investigating his crater there
in Winslow, Arizona, This is very much a glancing blow as
researchers have found that you can still be as shallow as thirty to 35° and one will still get a reasonably circular
crater from an impact but this one very clearly is not circular. It is elongated. It's
not an optical illusion. I am presumed though. I do not know for sure that it probably hit
on the right and skimmed up to the left. It's only Forty-three miles across 109 miles long and
roughly 2.3 Miles deep Coming up on my last two. me terrace.
here in the Southeast limb covering covering half of the neck terrace. I get lost in all of the theology and detail
here. Again as a cool shot of Theophilus with a fractured fractured centers for peak.
It's a constant eye catcher for me and I also really like the
rust that I'll show here in this picture. This is taking the morning on November of 2020
and I get apology of the all time in here. This is actually
the crater wall of marine terrace. All this stuff came in
after the fact. you know, the white streak that comes in from
lower left to upper right? That is a Ray extending from Taiko for the detail and contrast, I
can actually consider this particular shot and the one before my Sunday's best but at the risk of blowing up, blowing
it up, I bring your highlight to the note just above rust. I've got LOL Parallel. Katina
is here. The more it's like the more I look, the more I see them. So, it's it's really II
can get lost in this shot. I get lost. I just wander around the moon taking pictures.
Rarely is something a single man effort. I have a number of people to thank for my efforts including Robert Reeves Jeff
Le, and Sonny Manley. and a few others and with that, I thank
you very much for your time. Yes. Coma corrector is a good
term for coffee, that's for sure. Stellar stuff, David, you know, like you said, the moon
is not always our enemy. Sometimes, it can be a good friend especially in outreach. Great. Absolutely not Stellar
but lunar, I'm just kidding. It is stellar lunar stuff. Thanks, David and I think next up on
our list, we've got Joe Brewer again. Joe, you're still with us. I'm still Excellent. It's
getting late but he's still making it. Absolutely. Well, let's go ahead and get your screen added. to the screen
here. and there you go.
Let's start this slideshow from the current slide. Okay, we're
going. We've got a few just images now from still using EA
techniques. The exposures are going to be longer I mean, the
total exposure will be longer. The subs will be about the same exposure
These will be more for getting a better image than what you
would do for a very rapid visualization. So, and of
course, we start out with the horseshit nebula This is taken
through a seventeen-inch F 6.7 with CW 6200 camera
subs. 20 seconds each. It's still only 1100 seconds. So,
This is some of the equipment that's going to be used to highlighted. It's going to be
in the yellow main. What we're going to be looking at a restaurant Loza eight inch
telescope with a CW 6200 or CWL
2600 power camera, and then a seventeen-inch IDK telescope
WITW 062 hundred color camera field, views are here again.
The has a strong has a much larger field of view. So, for
things like Nebula, Nebula, who are Stark nebula areas, this is
very suitable for small galaxies. The seventeen inch is going to be better moving on. I
think we've we've talked about this in earlier shows Got the
seventeen inch and the black telescope. We've got
with the camera at the front. and then of course, the large telescope has the camera coming
out the back. It's on an AP mount. It's also sitting on a
pier that actually goes up twenty-four inches so we can get above the of the
observatory which also made it nice for the grandkids when we're doing visual. you could
bring it down, bring it up everybody could see. I had to
control them. again. everything's controlled by a
little computer setting right here. All the focus are
electronic. absolute positioning.
The first one. This is a image using the 2600 CDCWO camera,
dark spots, subs are are 324
subs of twenty-second each for 6004 6400 6404, 180 Seconds.
So, this is IC 433 Now, what
we're going to show next is this area taken through
seventeen inch basically at the same time. The scopes are set
up So, they basically focus on the same area of the sky. So,
basically, I play simultaneously with both of these images. as they are being
acquired. I just put between them on my computer screens and adjust the colors and let them
run Moving to the next one. This is the trip. and we're
again, this is the but in this case, we are using an older camera, The ZW 0294 which is a
fourteen bit. We're at Twenty-six CW, Twenty-six hundreds, the sixteen bit.
There are few other differences but field of view is only slightly different. Okay. So,
this is ninety subs. 10 seconds for 900 seconds total You can
see that dark lines. You can see probably dark nebula coming
out through here. This is interesting. Down here in the corner. It gives you a lot of
covers. and now processing done to these other than what was
done at the time is being required. This is through the
seventeen inch telescope at the same time using the CW 6200. It
is sixty-seven subs 10 seconds each for 670 seconds.
We have coloration in the stars. We can
Good dark lines through the nebula.
This is for my granddaughter's favorite. It's the heart Nebula. You can see lots of
stars on the right. Not so many on the left. Nice heart-shaped
This is through the laws again because this is a big object. 735 subs a 5 seconds each for
3006. 3675 seconds.
Switching gears to show a galaxy. This is through the seventeen inch scope Idk. It's
got the ZW 062 hundred dark spots 360 subs of 10 seconds
each for 3600 seconds. You can
see dust lines.
Probably Star formation here. Nice coloration. I was able to
get the background from my black
This is the Eagle Nebula again to the seventeen inch 6200
camera. Seventy-five subs. 20 seconds each for 1500 seconds.
Not a lot of time but it gives you a really good view of I
believe that's the powers of creation in the middle.
comes out fairly well if you play with it long enough. just
playing with the colors using the slide bars and adjusting as it's acquired and then having someone who's not red, green
colorblind helps salsa and one of the final ones. It's just
the dumbbell nebula. Again, this is a small object or smaller object. So, it's in the
seventeen inch. This is ninety subs, 20 seconds. at eight 1800
seconds I believe there's one. Nope, there's not one. this.
I've actually blown up. You can get lots of detail out of it.
So, lots of coloration in the stars came through. and
basically, that's just examples of a little better imaging
using EA techniques than just used for normal outreach but it
takes a little longer in the exposure ranges but still, it's
very quick to get relatively good images and you don't have to be an expert processor to
make it work. So, basically, that's what I've got for now and I'll turn it back to you.
Awesome. Thank you, Joel. Great images, man. You guys absolutely out there. Yeah and
thank you to the rest of the FB Group. We really appreciated everything that you guys shared with us tonight. Like I said in
this time of COVID, you guys were able to adapt quickly and and still continue to bring
Astronomy to the masses and we really appreciate everything that you guys have done. So, look forward to you guys out at
the George Observatory and hopefully, you know, if we can't be at the eye pieces,
then we'll continue to do EAA as well. So, whatever. Thank you exactly. Thank you, Dalton.
Thank you, Tony. Thank you, David. Jeff and so you guys did
a great job. Really brought it down and let us know what you guys have been up to. It's great stuff. Thank you. Yeah,
thank you a lot. Alright, folks. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're going to hear from Explore
Scientific. one more time and then when we get back from that break, we'll announce the top
three winners of the trivia contest. So, hang on for just a moment. Can't Mars to explore
scientific. Today, we're going to talk about eye pieces. When you're out visually Observing. the telescope is half the
equation. The other half of the equation are eye pieces. The explore scientific family of eye pieces are waterproof which
means they're easy to clean and do other atmospheric disturbances do not affect them. The eye pieces come in.
These decorative wilt planter boxes. The blue one or the white one, the newest member of
the family of Explore Scientific eye pieces is a 52° eye piece. We developed it in response to customer requests.
The other members of the family are the 62° I piece the 68° IP,
the 82° I piece, the 92° eye piece, the 100° I pieces, and
the Astonishing 100 120° nine millimeter eye piece which Imm
you in the night sky to take a look at our family of five pieces or to buy them. go to
explore Scientific.com and click on the IP tab
and well, I think it might be on mute there. You know, I
always So, when I sneeze or something, I don't I don't kill
everyone but I have more than one explorer scientific eye piece. So, I was just going to ask basically make a statement.
I know you have several of those. I've got several of them as well and they're fantastic eye pieces. I put them up there
against just about anything else that's out there. They're fantastic eye pieces. So,
without further ado, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Yeah And our winners of
the Trivia Challenge Tonight are abs. first place.
Congratulations, Joe and II. Hope that's your last name.
Yes, because you know myself, I'm Joe. No abs but but Joe, if
that wasn't your last name, go ahead and send us a screenshot with the winner logo on on the
screen itself. That way we can verify it and get you your prize. Second place is Joe
Fila. So a Smorgasbord of Joe's. It's winners tonight, right? Wow, Jeffrey Gola wins
second and Tom Laskowski is our third place winners. So, congratulations to everybody there and you know, let's take
a look and see what they actually won here. Bear with me a second. Let me bring this up here. I think the Courtney
Project says she got 35th place. Well, hey, me run. I thought that is so much So,
look at this Joe Abs won a Celestron power tank lithium.
That is an awesome gift right there. So, congratulations Joe.
Second place winner, Joey Gola won a Fifty-dollar Lansing Sky
Egift certificate. So, congratulations on that Lance and Sky, our local telescope
distributor here in Houston. They're a fantastic place If you're nearby, give them a visit and check out what they
have but you've got $50 to spend there and you can spend that online as well if you're not in the Houston area. and
Laskowski. Our third place winner wins AT shirt and hat combo from our good friends over at Infinity and we always
love the designs that the Infinity folks put out. So, you'll be getting something really good there. Absolutely.
I look forward to buying something from Dirk from Infinity Every car Party Ok TSP
all the star parties at. He's at he's just always see a I need. So, that's that's the way that goes. They're absolutely
wonderful. Let me pull up the next file and so you guys remember earlier we listened to
the first half of of Larry Mitchell's talk to discuss all of that goes into the Advanced
Observing program at TSP. Now, we're going to finish off the program with the second half of that show that that discussion
I should say and so this is a continuation of Larry Mitchell's talk about the advanced Observing program
Alright. 2000. 2005. We had Halton A at TSP. This was his
second visit. His first visit was in 1995. This is one of my
favorite photographs. Chip is probably not probably, he's
definitely the the most famous person that we've had at the Texas Star Party. He came over
from Germany whereas which is where he is living and he was very, very easy to get along
with. very, very super nice guy. Everybody just just just love talking. and and he was
full of history. His first boss was was was humbled. So, he he knew a lot of people that we
can only read about. He knew them personally. He took the finest photographs of interacting galaxies that ever
been taken his atlas of peculiar galaxies which totaled 338 objects. He published that
in 1966 and and it's a classic and he published those by taking photographs through the
Panama 200 inch hail telescope of which he was astronomer for 29 years From there, he went to
Germany at Max Institutes and and that's where he lived out the rest of his life. He's notorious for his shift
controversy. the red shift by standard astronomers, you know,
use the red shift as a measure of distance to further out an object is the more it it's it's
the the wavelengths of light are shifted towards the red end of the spectrum. How can I said
that's not true that it has to do with how old the object is.
He said these galaxies are throwing out These galaxies are throwing out and this is one of
the objects that he used and you see 4319 marker 205 and there's a light bridge If Mark
205 is 978, 978 million light years out in this galaxy is 70
million light years? How can there be a light bridge? He said that it had to be thrown out of this galaxy and not only
that but it's new material that's formed and and conventional science All
material in the universe was created at once in a big thing and no new material is being formed. A says, nope, that's
new material. Well, most people don't believe him and he he
told me at one point that he didn't expect to be vindicated in his lifetime but he expected
some of his some of his theories to be proven Timothy Ferriss took me off to one side
and said he thought that some of us were feeling bad because she's ideas were were being
ridiculed by conventional science and he says we shouldn't feel that way because it's better. His critics love him and as she got to know you,
you can see what I mean. Very, very nice, man. He and I stayed in touch with each other until about a year before he passed
away in 2013 II would send him an inquiry about something. In a couple of days later, I get an answer back from him. So, he
was very very influential and and a lot of people and he was
very controversial and he relished his controversy. This is our
a Ninety-four and these are two closely interacting galaxies of
interest is NGC 3226. This is a term some amateurs not familiar with. This is a Green Valley
Galaxy Green Valley Galaxy are spectral between the red end of
the spectrum and the ultraviolet end of the spectrum Meaning that Star formation is either quenched or it's about
to happen but there's really nothing much going on in that galaxy and so it's between the
red and the blue and they call these Green Valley galaxies is also a liner galaxy which is
semi active in the center. You can see it. It is brighter in the middle A liner is sometimes
called AC Fort type three galaxies. It stands for low ion
nuclear emission line regions. That's what ladder stands for but it's the weakest of the
secret type interactive Galaxy 2000 2006 Nebula. This one
picture here has most of the type of nebula in existence. The The flame an emission.
Nebula. This is a reflection Nebula. This is a dark nebula and the only thing missing is a
planetary nebula. The stars don't form in isolation. They form in nebulous clouds and and
and and dense particles called gloves. This is a motel. This
is one that I'm a the dragon. It's NM. eight. the lagoon
Nebula. It's a very dense region of gas and dust. that is
withstanding the radiation bombardment from NCC 6350 and a
star is forming in the center of that and it is so dense that it can withstand this
radiation. So, this Star might make it sometimes it gets blown away at the star. The star just
dies before it ever gets formed. This is called a bot. They come by different names.
Some of them are called pre-made secret stars and the center is a pre-made sequence
stars, Some people call them young stud or objects. Some people call them evaporating
guests or if if it's in M the Orion Nebula they call pros but
they're all the same thing. Star forming dense regions. They're very cold inside. It
has to be cold because if it was heat evaporating, then the star could not condense Usually
you're looking for something that is a little difficult to people but if you know how to
find these things, they're not they're they're not, they're not bad. This is an eleventh magnitude Star here. You want
to use high power. You want to use a nebula filter and when you look in your IP feel,
you're going to see a black background but that black background has a blocker object
in front of it. So, you're looking for a black on black basically,
and when you see that, this is what that's it. You will have seen the dragon. This is
another example. We know that in Cassia, So, a lot of people
at the 2006 Star Party were able to see this at the fountains but I would encourage
you folks, Don't just look at him at the Lagoon, Nebula, look for some of this other stuff.
The Hourglass Nebula Bernard Eighty-nine NGC 6350, right?
Open Cluster Bernard Eighty-eight. All of these are features that you can see in the lagoon, man. Just look at
the governor to go to the next thing. Look at some of the features that are there. This is another one of those objects
that you should not pass up and you see 4449 because it has
Htwo regions all over the place. It's only 12.5 12.5000000 light years away. it
it it's it it's forming stars in a prodigious rate which cannot cannot last These this
this image here is very close to what you see in a telescope. You'll see the nucleus, you'll see the superstar cluster.
You'll see this massive Htwo region You this is a little
more difficult but if you look all around the periphery now, this is a star but if you look all around the periphery,
you'll see a little stellar. It's a little stars Star like things popping in and out of you. Those are two regions. So
when you You see 4449? You're actually looking at detail with
another galaxy. That's exciting. That's exciting to me and I think that's exciting to
most people. There is two titled tales coming out of it. This is a good, this is a good
image of one. My friend, Jimmy Lowery, Steve Conley, and Howard Banish have seen this in
in Jimmy's Forty-eight-inch telescope. So, this this is this is visible 2007 ABC's of
galaxies. We had Andrew Murrell from Australia. It's excellent visual
He's still doing Astronomy now. He's also a professional photographer and what I try to
do was come up with every letter in the alphabet with a name or type of of galaxy or
galaxy object and I didn't get a letter. I got most of it. This is the letter N. NTC 3190.
This is an easy cluster to see in a low power. I feel you can
see 3190. You can see the dark lane which kind of dissect cuts off or sharply These two are
interacting. This one is in the in the background. They don't know about this one because it's not warrant but these are
easily seen. They're in the neck of Leo, the lion Hogs was
the letter H. Huntington is Nebula was a letter C. We call this a nebula because it was
discovered in 1898 in 1898. they didn't. The concept of Galaxy was unheard of. So,
everything that was nebulous, that was extended, that was faint and fuzzy. They called a nebula the galaxy. I call them
white but nevertheless, this is called Clayton's Nebula because when it was discovered, The
local group was in 2008 and the local group, they don't know
how many objects are in a local group but at least eighty main
galaxies. they think in two different groups centered around the Milky Way and Andromeda in 2007. they found
some really faint galaxies that were too faint to be dwarf galaxies but too bright too
condensed to be clusters and they called them Hobbit galaxies which are Dark matter
dominated. Basically, the object that we have for the Observing List is Sexton A. It
is a dwarf irregular galaxy is probably the best example of a dwarf, a regular galaxy and
unlike most por regulars, this one has a lot of Star formation. Unfortunately, it
also has a seventh magnitude Star right in the middle of it. but it has a low metallic which
which most dwarf galaxies have but has a dense Star form
region here. There's one here and there's one here. This one
here, these stars are only 20, million years old. These stars started forming about 200 million years ago and they
started about 400 million years ago even though that Star is in
the middle of it, it's it's fairly obvious and fairly easily seen.
and for open for galaxy clusters.
2009. We had Tacoma cluster and the Hercules cluster. Both of
which are on this year's list. The comma cluster is over a thousand galaxies and
unfortunately, you have an eighth magnitude Star here. If you get that eighth magnitude Star out of the field, everything you see in the field
will be a galaxy which is quite exciting. This is odor. well
formed galaxy cluster. So, most of the galaxies or elliptical galaxies, they used to be
spirals but they merged. they formed ellipticals and when we see something like this, we can tell this is a, well, well
formed galaxy cluster of interest. Hubble Space Telescope found over 22
thousand loose clusters that are not part of any galaxy. They're just free floating
modular clusters that are inside the Galaxy cluster. So,
Please Please take a look at this. You won't be sorry. My My favorite galaxy cluster is AL
2151. However, the Hercules cluster this is about 500
million light years away. but these galaxies are predominantly over half of them
are spiral galaxies which is very unusual. even more unusual. Those spiral galaxies have a high surface brightness
so they're easily seen and This is a chain of them. They they
go up this way and you can see them with the body sizes.
probably ten or twelve inch telescope. We'll show you. We'll show you some of these. Some of these spiral galaxies
have a half a billion light years away and again, the fact that they're spiral galaxies
tells us that it's not as undeveloped. It hasn't congealed into a condensed
structure yet. We in Houston If you want to check the night
sky, we look at this. This what we call the hook and the heart.
This is NGC six oh Forty-five and 6045 A These two galaxies
appear to be related but there's a difference of 29 million light years between them. The heart galaxies. This
this is NGC 6050 and I see something I forget but they're
they're separated by 65 million light years. So if you can see this well, you've got a good
You've got a very very good night. in 2009. I had to look
at Abel 2218. This is a very distant galaxy cluster. It
doesn't look distant because this was taken with the Space telescope but I showed you
earlier the doubles are well, here we have galaxies that are a in the background. the orange
arcs or galaxies that are 8.2000000000 light years out. The blue arcs are nineteen
billion light years out. of interest is this galaxy right here which is almost 29 billion
years out and and of course, these are moving radial distances that I'm using actual distance is not look back to
distances but these aren't you won't see and the galaxy
cluster is just a very faint object. This is the humble extreme be field. This is the
deepest image of the universe ever taken. They pointed to ho space telescope at this point
in for a and they left it there for 23 days. It's a 23 Day exposure. They got within 4.5
4.5000000 years after the Big Bang and we know the Big Bang is a valid scientific theory
because these very small galaxies you can't really tell it's the scale because even
though I did center on the center of the of this deep field but all the small
galaxies are all messed up. They haven't had time You won't see any nice spiral galaxy
structures in here because this is shortly after the universe came into existence and they
haven't had time to form yet. So, in this particular case, I look back time is 13.4
13.4000000000 light years out of a 13.8000000000 year universe. The distance of these
objects, the small, the most distant objects is 32.8000000 likes So, that's that's getting
out there. Alright. In 2010, we looked at flat and super thin
galaxies. This is something that I've never heard of before. Most amateurs, many
professionals have never heard of super thin galaxies. This was brought to our attention by a lot of Chandler in West Texas
and these things are a blast to look at. You can have it right in the center of your field and
you don't see it, you don't see it and all of a sudden, boom there it is. It was there all along. It looks like I laid a
hair across the center of your eye. Pc and when you see him, it's it's it's pretty
spectacular and it's something that a lot of people have not have not ever seen before. If
you took one on and looked at it, these of course are all edge on galaxies. If you took
one and you looked at it face on, it would look very much like you see Fifty-two oh four
completely no structure, not nothing is formed or anything.
one thing that I did find that was somewhat earth shattering. There was a theory before they
started studying these things and there's a bunch of 'em out there. There's actually a flat galaxy catalog which has almost
4500 galaxies which have an AB ratio, a link to width ratio greater than seven and they
studied this and they found that in the center of many of these is a super messy black hole until they started
studying this. The theory was that two tenths of a percent of bulge in the center of a of a
spiral galaxy that two tents to represent is the is the mask. the black hole in the center.
They've discarded that theory because many of these super thin galaxies that have no bulge have massive black holes
that are throwing out material. Most of these most of these edge on galaxies are like our
friend here that most of us have seen just 4565 with the central balls and they have
what we call a box of peanut shaped center and I'll blow this up. You can see it's it's
it's depressed in the middle kind of hourglass. It looks like a peanut and about half of
the bulge bulges and galaxies have that peanut shaped center.
The classic standard super thin
galaxy is this one
I can't read it. It's let me let me back up. It is UEC 7321.
It's a it's it's it's a classic example. It's an underdeveloped galaxy. It has a scale height
of only 450 light years The thickness our Milky Way Galaxy is twelve to 1300 light years.
So, it's very thin. There's no central bulge. It's very isolated and all of these super
thin galaxies have little or no stellar development for
whatever reason. They're not really sure why that is but they have very little development. They're all
galaxies but nothing much has happened to them and all of them are dark matter dominated and in this particular case,
the Isolate ratio is twelve. The question came up. Do we
live in a super thin galaxy? Well, it looks like we do. I mean, it looks very thin but
here in the center of our Milky Way is our galaxy bulge. So, the answer to that is no, we do
not live in a galaxy 2011.
proximity friends of friends. I tried to pick objects that are close to galaxies that we
typically look at but we look at the galaxy, ignore what's around it, like M, Eighty-one
Very few people look at Holmberg nine which is parked right next to it and it's easily found If you take these
two stars as a finder and you take a right angle using this as a distance factor, you go
back the same way towards the galaxy. Boom. There's a whole
Park right next to him. eighty-one and hardly anybody ever looks at it. I see 4278
right next to M Fifty-one. Hardly anybody ever looks at it. They don't know it's there.
M thirteen 4617 This is a
secret type two barred galaxy that is easily found. It's only
12 minutes north of a thirteen. If you don't see the galaxy, at
least you get to look at the at the finest of the finest clusters the night sky. but
this galaxy is a secret type two barred galaxy and it's 55
million light years away. Contrast that with M thirteen
which is 22 thousand light years away to find it. Look for
this, this this this Bend rectangular Bend parallelogram type of stars. These are
thirteen magnitude stars so they're easily found once you Once you find these, then
there's your there's your target. 2020 dollars. Anything
about on the list, We had Abel Thirty-seven which is a rare
planetary nebula that's in the constellation of Virgo. There's only four planetary in Virgo.
This one is very bright and Nebula filter is required with this one. You don't see
anything until you put a filter on it and bam, there it is. Very obvious in 2012. We did
something that I was very pleased with and and those of us that saw it was very pleased. I've been talking
gravitational arcs. and things that they get magnified by foreground galaxies. Well, a
2152 has closest gravitational arc which is right here of any
of the arcs and we were able to see it to my knowledge. No one had ever seen a gravitational
art before and we we were able to to see the art which is
almost 2 billion light years away. It's being magnified by this foreground galaxy which is
612 million light years away and we can we can we can see
it. We can see can see it in a telescope without too much difficulty and this is what it
looks like up close and you can see it is it is an art Some
other people saw it on the field and and that's one of those rare things that you get to see that most people have
never seen before. Alright, Illusions 2013 anything that
doesn' t appear quite right when we look at the night sky, everything is an illusion. The brighter stars are not
necessarily the closer stars. They've just maybe more messy stars. Our closest star
approximate and only four light years away is actually invisible to the naked eye. The
magnitude Star. So, everything up there is an illusion and this is a classic illusion here
because you've got two galaxies and you see 6314 A which is a
face on spiral super imposed over 33 be in the background
and they're separated by a distance of 5% like yours and
the advantage of super imposition like this is you can see dust. you can see material
all the way down to the core of the galaxy. So, that's the value of these things. that
year. I want to put something in on our Saturday night speakers. We had Levy who is
who gets to play with the Hubble Space telescope images of talking to us that year. He has a wonderful Most of us are
given a right arm for but it's Saturday night giveaways. The Friday and Saturday night giveaways were by these two Bob
Summerfield and Mike Blanchard. and they were hilarious. They
can make big money if they went to Las Vegas because they kept people in stitches. I mean, there was really a lot of fun.
It was just a comedy show and we don't do that anymore but while it was going, it was a
lot of fun and here's Amelia between the two of them. one like what's going on? Are these
interacting or are these not interacting? You can't just look at them and tell you can't tell the illusion. these galaxy
is here. NGC 5679 B. This to be in the foreground the red
theory says it's 397. 397 million light years even though it's spiral arm appears to be
in front of this four round galaxy illusion or is the red
shift wrong? We don't know. Here's a couple of galaxies
here. UGC fifty 904, 301 Light years. It's a background galaxy
according to the red shift Theory. It's a foreground galaxy according to the red
shift theory but this guy is this MCG galaxy which obviously appears super imposed on it. is
30 million Light years away. so that doesn't doesn't make sense
and the same thing here, these two galaxies, this one, a spiral arms are in front of
this foreground galaxy. So, all of these are illusions or the red shoe theory is wrong in
this particular case but this is what we did this particular here. 2014. I tried to use
anything. that visual or photographed. Read shirtless
galaxy. It's this is this is our male way and all of these are HQ regions all along all
along the same as Milky Way. Te Lara is a very bright carbon
Star in the constellation of of Lara's. It goes by the name of the jewel in the heart. This is
2000 Light years and of these stars when they when they puff up, they go to the red giant
face or the a giant face They get so cool on the outside of
the car and it goes back to mole or form and the light
shining through that is red and it causes the stars to appear
like like Lara here and there's a bunch of them and when the star gets swells up real big,
it gets orange or yellow and when it shrinks back down because all of these stars are
pulsating when it shrinks back down it becomes some of become blood red. I mean, literally look like a drop of blood out
of the sky. and you see 6781 is a classic, beautiful planetary
nebula here. Again, this is a pole owned view. We're looking at the Taurus. We're looking
down the Polar region through the through the planetary and it's slightly tilted
Twenty-three 23° from pole home. So the northern side here appears washed out. The reason
it's washed out is we're seeing the Taurus. We're seeing the Abe on the other side. due to
the downward tilt, we're seeing a little bit of the lobe on the other side and it's causing the
side to be washed out. You can see that in the in the telescope view. This is a
beautiful, beautiful planetary. It's an Aquila and everyone doing a list should should
should take a look at this one. Alright, I'm really running out of time but my favorite part of
the presentation is this part here in
I decided to look at me. galaxies and I had no idea what I was getting myself into.
because Benjamin would work out of the the observatory in
Armenia. This is this is this is an issue that most amateurs know little or nothing about
Armenia is a landlocked country east of Turkey, and they do a
tremendous amount of science over there. It's just freaking unbelievable. The work that's coming that observatory but
this is the cover page for that year's to this is the Mecca chain. A lot of amateurs know
it's called me chain but they don't necessarily know why. Mark in 1961 decided to take a
look at this and he wondered, well, maybe these galaxies are affiliated with each other. Maybe they're gravitational
attached. these these two Bryant galaxies here in Eighty-four M Eighty-six but the rest of them they didn't
about it. Well, he not only found out they were gravitational attached. They
were bound together but he discovered the center of the Virgo Galaxy cluster in doing
so. and made himself famous but he's not known for that in
astronomical terms. His boss a man by the name of Victor and
Mark Simon who people in Armenia and people in Russia
look at It's almost with god like reverence. Unfortunately,
he did his work during the Cold War. Had we not had a cold war
with the with with Russia. Amber Sue and I believe will be right up with Albert Einstein.
The man was brilliant. absolutely brilliant. He had a theory back in the 30s that
things in the universe were expanding when he was in his 20s. he discovered the
planetary Nebula were expanding but everybody else said no things for gravitational collapsing Amber. Simon. got me
to start hunting up objects with what they call ultraviolet excess that are active in the
center in the core and me went out and discovered 3500 of
them. 3500 3563 of them and that is what Marion is known
for. He did this in two different surveys and since then over 2500 professional
papers have been written on me and galaxies there acting. They're throwing out material.
and it's it's just incredible. The work level that Marion did
with Thieves. He started out all of these galaxies are active. They have active cores,
active nuclei, and way back in 1908, Vs coaster knew there was
something different about some galaxies back in 1943 Carl Seifert who worked at
McDonald's Observatory in West Texas catalog a bunch of galaxies that had some kind of
activity in the center but they didn't really know what that activity was but when you put a
spectrum on them, the certain lines were shifted which
indicated a high level of exaltation and and here here is
a couple of and when you see that type of activity in the
core, we know something is on Seaford. didn't know exactly what or why. but bars survey
defined. what happened in the course of these galaxies and
they raided the sea galaxies, a sea galaxy one is the most active 1.5 is less active. 1.9
is even less A two is even less see for type three are the liners the low a nuclear
emission line region galaxies that I was talking about
Mark's survey. somewhat defined. What is going on with
these with these spectral lines but and this is some of the
some of the galaxies that I've got on this year's list which I won't go into for time but you
guys should look at this one. 3690 and I see 694. You should
see this this region in between them At first glance, you might
see this is one object but it's really two if you take the time and patience to study it and you can See this Htwo region in
the center here. These Mart objects out of the Thirty-five
11863 are galaxies. 1700 are stars. Many of these are quasar
and 761 or a Gns. When we see a GM's, it's a loose definition
but typically these are they have AA, very active core AA.
very, very, very dense core
The the other galaxies are are due to Star formation. active
HQ region, and stuff like that. When you see a GN, you typically it's it's in in in
coincidence with black holes basically supervising black holes bar 421 is one of the
more active ones at at this blazer from this object is pointed directly at Earth. So,
we're seeing a tremendous amount of energy It's magnitude
is average is about 12.8. Yet. it is extremely distant. It's
520 million light years away. Here it is. Here is Victor and
Bars. Simeon and I could go on and on about this guy. He was
the founder of Theoretical Astrophysics in the Soviet Union. He founded the
observatory. He was lecturing at the observatory when he was
sixteen He discovered planetary. We're expanding in his 20s. The the the man was
incredible. He instructed me to find the Marian galaxies he
instructed Romeo to find galaxy
clusters and in 1958, he made an announcement that's done the astronomical world I'd like to
thank Doctor Eric Mckean. I initially contacted It's Doctor
Petro who put me in touch with Doctor Matt. and Aaron Mclean has been very helpful. He is, I
think Amber Simons protege. he seems to run things over there.
He has his hands and everything. He's he's published 300 articles. I get Emails from
him from Rome, from Los Angeles, from New York, from all over the world. He's in high demand and he's been very helpful with me. He's also in
charge. At the Hamburg and a gold medal prize which is awarded every 2 years. It's a
half 1 million dollars for someone contributing to Astronomy Amber sue based his
his theory of active nuclei on this. Amber Sue is not. he
found that this was being expelled from this galaxy which is being tore up the elliptical
galaxy and it's throwing this material out. this plume is 325
thousand Light years and if you remember our nearest star is for Night years. So, this is
tremendous energy and Amber Sue and noted that this was ejected. This was a new galaxy
that formed out of this material He was initially not
believed the powers that be at the time was was a Mickey or and none of them believed. They
thought that galaxies are so much power that can escape. You
have millions and billions of stars of gravity fields that are holding everything in. So, how can something be ejected?
Actually in 1963 when they found three C 273 and I found
out something was ejected from it. They all went back and congratulated him on this
discovery and some of them apologized to him for not believing it and basically, what he found was that around
the black hole is in which is moving very rapidly. This is a
source of the broad emission lines further out from the jet as low velocity clouds. This is
the narrow emission lines. So, your sea for one galaxies. If you can see this, if you can
see into the center, you gotta see for one, if you're at the side where you can't see that
you get AC. two if you're at the very side, you see AC
three, if that jet is pointing straight at you, you get a blazer ABL. assert object. all
of this came Victor
Amber. and that changed the way we look at galaxies.
forevermore. It's it's a shame to just gloss over this page because there's a tremendous
amount of science here Be a went out and found out that is
there an affiliation between high service brightness galaxies, and active galactic nuclei and he found out the
answer was yes. He discovered 621 of these objects bishop
found 60706 more that they added to the database that was
unknown. Went out and discovered 377 Compact galaxy
groups which is much further than the Hixson groups. These are on the order of billions of light years away. and then Elma
Persian was she did a catalog of commentary nebula and she's
still at it and as a matter of fact, last night, I read an article that she had been interviewed with and and she
said thanks to Victor and bars and and that's why got into Astronomy and while she was still into it. So, this is a
tremendous amount of work that I'm showing in one one unfortunate These are some of
the some of the many many things that have have come out of this one small observatory, the biggest telescopes, 102
inch telescope by the way. but it's a final thought and this is me saying this the the
observatory may be the most prolific observatory for discoveries related to Astronomy and and theoretical
of any observatory anywhere in the world. I believe that is true. I ran that across Doctor
McAllen and his response was Larry. I'm I'm I'm I can't
really agree to that. I'm I'm I'm too modest to say that is true. So, let me just agree not
to disagree with you. This place is amazing. The amount of
science coming out of here is incredible. They do a science camp for kids every summer and
they have hundreds and hundreds of kids come over to learn
about the night sky and this is a place most people know nothing about. So, I'm trying
to I'm trying to promote by UK Observatory in Armenia because I really, really believe these
people are on the right track. Alright,
open clusters and asters. We We had Don Pettit as an asteroid astronaut describing a living
on a space station. We had Pana Hai or that we know her as
she's a little girl of most of us guys. She's she's very very sweet young lady. Very
impressive young lady. She's from Costa and Sarajevo and she
decided as a teenager, she was going to throw a star party for
about. She got together some telescopes. None larger than eight inch and the day of the
the the day of the storm Party 10 thousand people showed up It was amazing Since then, she's
been traveling the world. She just got back from Australia. She's promoting Astronomy and
she's getting to do a lot of really neat things and she's getting ready to go to the
University of Arizona, I believe but I'm incredibly young lady and it'll be it'll
be very interesting to see where she ends up what she ends up doing This is a sixteen. The
pillars of creation which you can see I had this on the 2017 list this tower here. These are
all you can call them Stores are forming in here but this tower is four light years tall.
The distance between us and our nearest star. If you look at this, well, these these clouds
are blocking what's behind It's blocking the stars. If look at this, an infrared light like
this, you can see all of the stars that you cannot see that
were blocked They were blocked in in visually but the other
thing about this, this is like the dragon that I showed you a minute ago. You can see this
You are looking if you know you get this in the field and what you're looking for. is a black
background. that a black background in front of it and
you'll see that l Shaped black feature in front of a black background. use a filter and
you should be able to see that with too much without too much difficulty but like a lot of these dark nebula patience and
time, you need to spend the necessary time to be able to see this at the Hubble Space
Telescope. People call it the pillars of creation. Robert Bynum called him a star queen.
It's the same thing that is in M sixteen. what we call the
Eagle Nebula the open clusters that I've got
on this year's list. NGC 6645 which has a very definite ring
feature in the center which is probably blown out by Supernova Explosion be Eighty-two. I see
4996. These are all easy open clusters. Nobody should have any difficulty Observing any of
these objects, Asteroids are stars, a groupings of stars
that appear to be gravitational bound but they're not. They're at different distances. They
have nothing to do with one another and most common asters that we see in the night skies,
the big dipper because most of those stars have nothing to do with each other. So, it's an
asterisk and the object that I've got on this year's list is an object called the to the
toads stool which was discovered by this lady here, S
French who for years has been been a sky telescope contributing editor. She goes to stoop every year and she and
I usually have a telescope set up right next to each each other and she's a lot of fun to observe with A for asters is is
a asters that was discovered by Houston's brand. Wiseman at the
Texas Star Party some years ago and he was looking for something else and he just stumbled across this and says,
wow, that looks like the letter A and now it's my understanding that is an official us that
Graham found. This is something you can find as well. That's that that's asters all over the
sky All all all the only thing that's limiting people is their imagination because this stuff
has ever worked. The last group I'm going to talk about is
Edward Emerson. Bernard. He's another hero of mine. We did this back in 2018. This is him
with the 36 inch telescope at Lick Observatory in California.
He was a, he started out working when he was 8 years old as a photographer, as assistant. So, he knew a lot
about photography and he took some of the best photographs anyone had ever taken. He also had the best eyesight. If
anybody had ever taken that year, we had Richard Berry as a guest speaker and Richard's
been there several times. I think this is his third or fourth time to TSP but Byron
was interested in mainly two things. What are these dark nebula and what are comets
because both of them were complete mystery to people
around 1880s to 1910, 1920s
Barnard went a long way towards explaining what both of these were. as far as comets go.
Comets would get a mysterious thing. Sometimes her tail would just completely fall off and
they didn't understand why. Well, Barnard eventually figured out this tale disconnect had to do with the
sun with the son sending out
radiation and he noticed that disconnect features have more when there's a lot of sun spots when the sun was attractive and
as it turned out, he was exactly correct. That is what caused these failed disconnect figures. Barnard also took the
first photograph of the Milky Way astronomers before that had
known that the Milky Way was formed of millions of stars but had no idea how many he took
this photograph in 1889 and it caused a sensation. Stars
everywhere no one had ever seen this before. So, that was that
was quite phenomenal. Barnard also discovered the the
the the the fifth moon of Jupiter which made him famous. He's covered Barnard Star which
is the most rapidly moving Star. The second closest star to us. He had incredible,
incredible eyesight and he observed every single night that that he could when the
moon was not up. This year's Observing objects that Bernard Nanny which requires high
magnification to see it. It's in background in Sagittarius. So, it's somewhat stands out. I
have these clowns here because Barnard before he figured out
what they were, they thought these were holes in the universe That's what Herschel said. They were barter revered
Herschel and so it was thought that these were holes in the universe but it just didn't
quite seem right and when Barnum saw a guy like this where he saw the C that were
backed by the moon. He realized these were clouds that were in the foreground of these stars
that were not illuminated, not it radiated by anything else and we're blocking out the light in in the background and
in that, he was very, he was absolutely correct and the last item I've got is NGC 6818 which
is a very bright planetary nebula. You can see color in it. green, blue, blue, green
depending on your particular eyesight. It's located Only 40 minutes northwest of Bernard's
Galaxy. NGC 6822 with Bernard also discovered and it's a very
bright, easily seen planetary neighborhood. Next year, we're
going to take a look at John Lewis Amo dryer index catalog.
Most people are familiar with the NGC, the general catalog. Most people are not so familiar
with the index catalog which is an index catalog objects. So,
that'll be the subject then. So, as a final thought, I just
want to say that somebody's always doing what somebody else said couldn't be done. Don't
let anybody tell you, you cannot see something through a telescope in the night sky until you've actually tried so
many people think they can't see something that there's some exotic name or it's supposedly
an infrared object so I can't see it with my visual eyesight. I've seen plenty of the
infrared objects. So, If if it's up there and you are
individual Astronomy, take a look. Don't don't don't let anybody or anything dissuade
you from trying to see anything in the universe through a telescope. So, here's my Email
address. I'm sorry this took so long but it's it's it's hard to cover the entire universe. in
in an hour. but those of you doing the advanced Observing limbs, I want to wish you good
luck And for the rest of you that are still here, I thank you for your attention. Thank
you very much.
epic stuff, man. Epic stuff. Larry is a legend at Texas Star
Party. Even if you're not a part of that whole family, you may or may not know who Larry Mitchell is and if you don't,
you do. Now, Larry like Joe said earlier is the the guy who does the Advanced Observing
List at Texas Star Party. That's what that whole talk was about and if you want this
year's list, you can get it right here where Joe is pointing to at the Texas Star Party website Texas Star
Party.ORG couldn't be simpler than that. I mean, that's what we're doing here at Texas Star Party and you can go down to
activities and I believe it's under the Observing Observing
programs. Yeah. yeah. Yeah. There you go And it's right on air and and then Advanced
Observing program there. So, click on that. You've got all the details about the TSP 2021 program. I believe that's
running through the thirteenth. If I'm not mistaken yet, don't. So, starting June 5th runs to
June 13th and you still have some time and so it's a
wonderful program and I think Larry capped it off perfectly, right? You know, nothing is impossible. Get out there and
and observe and even though it's the Advanced Observing List and I remember my first time out to the Texas Star
Party, I just thought, you know what? I don't know if I can even try it. Big mistake on my
part. You know, one of these things that you know, because Larry put so much time and
effort, research into this program that And there's a
theme, right? You learn so much and and these things like I said that are that to you
before may have seemed obscure all of a sudden, take a significant presence in terms of where you things from an
astronomical perspective. So, I absolutely love it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah and and and his stuff. I mean it's it's a book when you
get it. It's a printout and it's usually eight by eleven that thick of of the write ups
of all the objects and stuff. So it is definitely something you have to put some time and effort into but it's rewarding
and like I said, every year when when it's Larry's talk, there's a lot of info. He packs into this incredible. I can't,
I don't even know how he does it. It's I don't either clown car of talk stuff keeps coming
out of it, man. I'm telling y'all, if you go watch these talks over and over again, you will pick up more and more and more and more. So, thank you so
much. Larry Mitchell, awesome stuff as always and I can't wait to be back on the upper
field with Larry hanging out, sharing photons and and loud, loud laughs at night. yelling
at each other across the field. Come look at this. So, yeah, it's going to be awesome, man. Absolutely and thanks to our
good friends over at the Fort Bend Astronomy Club too. They did a fantastic job of showing us how they go about doing
outreach now with EAA and astrophotography and look, you
know, we're we're really sorry the skies didn't cooperate with us and couldn't do a live Star
party tonight but we did the next best thing which is show how that's done and show some of the images actually go
through a live replay of how those images are hard. And how you get these wonderful
astronomical objects on the screen there. So, it was absolutely fantastic. I'm using absolutely a lot because it
really is, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that brings us to the end
of today's program. Will, who do we have on schedule for tomorrow? Well, we've got a
bunch of stuff for tomorrow. We have Stephen J O'meara, I
believe. Is that correct? That is correct. Yeah. So. that's right. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. One of the if not the
best visual observer of our day Steven's eyesight is legendary.
The guy is incredible and he's going to talk to us about doing down in Botswana, Botswana. in
Africa. Yeah. Yeah. Which is incredible and Sky and Telescope actually has a tour going to Botswana for one of
their astro tours that are coming up. So, should be a great talk and we also have our
good friend, Doctor Carl Deb Hart from the University of Texas McDonald Observatory who
is going to be talking to us about some of the dark experiments that they're doing there with the hobby Ely
telescope. So, another fun-filled informational night
coming up tomorrow and we're going to have Astro Trivia. It's going to be and prize giveaways. So, giveaway
t-shirts, all that, right? All that good stuff and if you if you don't win one of these, you
can always order them online. So, we'll start tomorrow at 6:30 PM Central Time. We'll be
on all the channels that we're on tonight. So, if you watched us at either Explore Scientific Sky and Telescope, Houston
Astronomical Deep sky, dude. Tune in again there tomorrow. we'll we'll be on with all of
that great information and those great guests. So, will any parting words, You know,
hopefully the weather clears up for us a little better as as the summer goes on and we get to see some some cool sights.
My challenge to everyone is get out there and observe when you can take advantage of the clear skies when you can and I can't
wait to see all of y'all here tomorrow night. 630 Central and we're going to do two awesome
speakers coming up y'all. It's going to be great. Absolutely looking forward to it, Will. So, to everybody who's still with us, really appreciate you,
all of the viewers and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye, guys.