Transcript:
Well, hello everybody. Welcome to night number two. Friday
night. Indeed. So, I hope you all are having a great Friday night. It's the weekend y'all
and that's all that matters. I think at this point, welcome to the virtual Star Party, the Texas Virtual Texas Star Party
2021. I think most of y'all can figure out why we're having a virtual Star party instead of
an in person one yet again in 2021 but at last, we are here. We've got a night packed full
of awesome fun stuff guys. It's going to be great. We've got Trivia giveaways talks. all
kinds of really fascinating stuff tonight. It's it's it's just an awesome thing. My name
is Will. I'll be one of two hosts tonight Kind of doing things for you guys. You can
find me at my social media at Deep Sky Dude right there and to my left or right or whichever it is on my screen. I
don't even know anymore. Mister Joe Calif, the president of the Houston Astronomical Society.
You can find him at the Astro Joe right there, Joe. another night, man. How's it going buddy? Looking forward to this.
Last night was an absolute blast. We went late into the night. It went really late but it was fun every hour that we
were there. tonight, we've got another wonderful schedule of of and and Trivia giveaways and
things like that. So, I'm looking forward to kicking off the party here Will. Yeah, you know, we go late into the night as astronomers. That's how it
goes because astronomy in the daytime, you can only look at one Star. well but at at night
time you can look at all the other ones and but they're both fascinating. So, you know, I'm trying to play favorites or
anything but one thing. Oh, thank you, Salsa. You rock. We really appreciate you and all
of y'all watching out there. I see some familiar faces in the crowd. They're all avatars but their faces nonetheless, I
appreciate all y'all hanging out with us. All of our advertisers and friends and Telescope, Celestron explore
Scientific. The Houston Astronomical Society is helping us out so many people and we're
going to go through all that as we go tonight. Basically, I think what we should do now,
Joe is we'll probably go ahead and plug the dates for 2022 if
you want ultra dark skies, West Texas, and do the Texas Star Party next year. Those are the
dates. So, I don't know. Are you ready? I'm ready. I'm
excited. You know, I wish it was tonight but you know, this is the next best thing to
actually being there. you know, looking forward to April 24th of next year. Can't get here soon enough. You know, the good thing is It looks like we're
turning a corner. Things are starting to look better and barring any, you know, anything
kind of unforeseen or a massive meteor strike or anything like that. We should be out in
beautiful West Texas next April. I agree. Yeah. And so, there's the dates. Y'all get ready to get ready to register
which is you know, coming up in like the November time frame or so. Yeah, it'll be here before y'all know it. I promise you
so, but get ready for that coming up and just mark your calendar right now. Get the days to your boss. Be like Hey,
I'm I'm out of work these days. So go ahead and give me those days off. It's requested off
now, right? There's no harm in doing that. So, yeah, it's early. Get it in early. You'll be there hanging out with us on
the upper middle or lower field whichever you want. So, those are the dates and and Joe, you
know, explore scientific is is helping us with this event basically, you know, and so
they've got a little an intro video. I think we should let them handle this next segment. Yeah, absolutely looking
forward to their intro Hey, everybody. Scott Roberts and Kent here from Explore
Scientific and we're at the world famous Texas Star Party winner 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
stars, super dark skies out there in West Texas near Fort Davis. This is a star party
that a lot of us love to get to Deep Sky Observers Astro
photographers. It's beautiful and a really friendly staff. We think you'll love it. The thing
about the Texas Star Party is is that you know, the camaraderie you've been to the
Texas. I haven't been to the Texas Star 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.
I see the comment. Kenton Scott Tru Cowboys. That's right. Hey, they're dressed for the part, right? If nothing else, you
know, it's it's a wonderful welcome that we got from them. They've been wonderful supporters of this whole event
and we couldn't do it without the help of the Explore Scientific folks and you know, they alluded to something in
that video that is absolutely true. You know, I think what separates the Texas Star Party from all the other Star parties
out out is the the camaraderie. You know, it's it's wonderful being out there with 600 of your closest friends on really
skies in the magical West Texas Big Bend area and yeah, for
those of you who've never been out to Big Bend it is unlike any other place in the world when you when you're out there,
you're thinking, hey, I'm going to this Desolate Desert place. There's so much to do and what
we do at the Texas Party at Star really doesn't happen unless we're in the Big Bend
region. So, Willow, I figured we would share something with folks to let them know really what Big Ben was all about.
Let's do it.
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 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,
hiking 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 gotten 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
harassing 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 to
unlock the mysteries of the cosmos, Big Bend is more than just an international destination but rather it's our
gateway to the universe.
and it it truly is a beautiful area out there, man. You think you really captured that in that piece? Did a great job.
Yeah, I appreciate that Will and you know anybody who goes out there for the Texas Star Party the first time they're
there, they look up at the night sky. It's amazing just how many stars there are and how easy it is even for
somebody like me or you who knows the night sky to just absolutely get lost in the in
the dark skies there. So it's a wonderful beautiful place. Yeah, even a seasoned observer like Larry Mitchell couldn't find the first couple of days.
Hey, I know II didn't feel so bad. The first time I went, I couldn't find the big dipper. So, yeah. what is that? You
know? Yeah. Oh and that's why we go out to the Texas Star Party. That whole area, the Big Bend, West Texas area is a
beautiful place. If you haven't been out there, you're not doing yourself any favors. It's really really cool and Joe's
video is a great capturing of that but y'all tonight, we have a lot of crazy, awesome stuff
going on. We've got the one and only Stephen J O'meara on with us tonight and He's going to
going to talk to us about astronomy in Botswana. Yeah. And most of you are like, what? Like, just wait you, I promise
you, it's going to blow your mind and we also have Karl, Gebhardt Joe. He's going to be
live with us in the broadcast studio. So, looking forward to hearing from him. He's doing a lot of fantastic work with the
Hobby Eberly Telescope so that they can, you know, figure out why the universe is expanding
as quickly as it is. So, that should be a wonderful, wonderful talk. So, stick around for tonight. Yeah. And I
think you know probably what we should do now is I don't know. it's it's central time. We
should probably get on Texas Star Party time. What do you think, Joe? I think it's TSP time. Let's do it.
I feel it. I think think we're. do too. I think we're on Texas Star Party time and for those of y'all that are wondering,
those are clips taken by myself to others of the Texas Star Party while it was happening
and you can do that too. You just have to go, you know, and bring your iphone or something to film it with and you too can
have video of the Texas Star Party which is an amazing place, Joe. I, you know, again, we're doing this because we
love the Texas Star Party, right? We miss being out there and but we've got some fun
stuff, man. We've got all kinds of We've talked about that and I think we're going to do a
trivia thing. at some point tonight, right, Joe? Maybe we'll do it. Yeah, right now, I don't know. You know, one of
the things about TSP that I love the most besides from the dark skies, the awesome telescopes and everything else
are the prize giveaways and so we figured, hey, how do we bring that kind of experience to everybody online and we
figured we'd do a trivia contest giveaway. So, what we wanted to do tonight to get everybody in the mood is get
you ready with a practice quiz basically. So, we're going to
do this practice quiz. Anybody who's got a smartphone smart device or even your laptop can
participate in this. We want as many people jumping in as possible. Remember, this is just a practice quiz. We want
everybody to get used to what this is like. set down a few ground rules so we can make sure prizes goes to the to the
appropriate winners and then, you know, just have fun. So, this practice quiz has two questions and I want as many of
you folks in here to participate as possible so that you get to hang it. right. So
what I want you to do as we go in here is we'll go over the rules real quick. You're going
to be prompted to log in. It may give you a name like metal or something else like that.
Please put your real name in there so that we know who to get the prizes to. Don't just click join quiz or put
something cute in there. Use your real name Last night, we decided to go with 15 Seconds
for each question. Tonight, we've opened up to 20 seconds per question. So, you have 20 Seconds to answer each
question. If you get the question right, you get points if you don't get it right, you don't get any points. However, because they're A lot of people
participating The more quickly, you answer the points, the more or the question I should say, the more points you actually
get. So, faster answers get more points if you take a little bit longer to answer, you'll still get points but not
as much as those who answered more correctly and even though the very end we're going to show the winner, the top three
places get a prize tonight. So, hang in there. We're going to get through the contest and we'll announce the top three
winners at the very end of after afterwards and that should be a blast. So, is everybody ready? I'm ready,
Joe. I don't know about you. Alright. now, I am ready and I
just put the code in all the chat rooms. So, it's right there. It's also at the top of the screen, right? Joe
39060165? That's it. So, two ways to join. You can go to Mentee.com through a browser and use the code 39060165 like
you mentioned will or just open up your camera app if you've got a modern smartphone or something like that. Scan that
QR code that should give you an option to go to that link directly. So, we want as many of you jumping in here as
possible. I see we've got about a dozen folks in here right now. Let's get give a little more time for folks to jump in.
I see the heart coming up. Yeah, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Nice and yeah, we we want to give everybody a
chance to play. So, you know, it's just a browser. You log in and give us the real name it.
We're not going to be a problem. We want to be able to get the price of your gift when you win. So, we have lots of
cool emojis popping in Absolutely. So, one of the things that we're going to do, I guess we'll just jump into
it. Again, this is a practice quiz. So, we want as many of you folks that to get used to it, they're used to it already
cooler than than be ready to go when we do the real trivia quiz. So, we're going to jump
in right now. You ready? Will? I am ready. Alright. so, if you
participated last night, this might be familiar questions but what state is the Texas Star Party held at Why Texas Chile
or giraffe? The state of giraffe. Yeah. You have 5
seconds left to answer. Get those answers in. Time's up.
and everybody got it right this time. Last time we actually had somebody get it wrong. So, yes,
Texas is the home of the Texas Star Party. Glad everybody's good. I was wondering. Yeah.
And you'll see at the end of these questions, you'll get a leader board. So, who answered
this? The the fastest Looks like it was Kelly Miller. So, by by result of answering the
most, the quickest, Kelly gets the most points. So, 975 points. Alright, here comes
question number two.
Bachelor. The answer gets more points. Who is the Hubble Space Telescope named after is the Hubble Space Telescope. named
after, is it Neil Armstrong? Albert Einstein, Kim Kardashian, or Edwin Hubble?
Oh, wow. I thought it was Tom Hanks. No, that's a common mistake though. Yeah. Wow.
Alright, time's up. Edwin Huddle. Somebody did get. okay, there's a guy in the Oh yeah.
but but that's the way way it goes, right? We'll go ahead and finish slide here. We'll see
who the winner of the test quizzes and after it
tabulations, all the points here looks like Debbie Moran is
the winner. Congratulations, Debbie. Our good friend Debbie Moran is the winner. Unfortunately, we're not giving
away a prize here, right? But you know, everybody hopefully gets a chance to figure out how
this thing works and it's going to be ready to go when we do the real thing in just a little while, right? Yeah and so get
those fingers ready because the fingers, web, browsers, whatever you got because we're
going to be doing that a little bit later in the show. So, you're going to want to stick around and we also all kinds of other giveaways like door
prizes and stuff, Joe which is exciting and I don't know where
do we go next, buddy? Yeah. you know, Texas Star Party is our favorite star party by far but
we also wanted to kind of give a salute to the other Star parties that are out there, right. So, I figured we just a quick nod to those others that
are upcoming and hopefully, if you've got some time, you can give one of those Star parties
a visit as well. So, First off,
August 1st through the sixth is the Nebraska Star Party. Well, you and I kind of talked about this last night. We did. This
place is I've never been and I think you said you've never been either but this place is renowned for its dark skies and
is AA wonderful Star Party as well. So, for anybody interested in going in early August, Nebraska Star Party.org
is a place to get more information The Oregon Star Party is going to happen
shortly thereafter, August 3rd through the eighth 2021. Get more details over at Oregon Star Party.org and then the
world famous Cellophane Convention is August 5th through the ninth. So, it looks like everybody else is getting
started in early August there. Oh yeah. Registration is now open. So, if you want to register for that, go to St.
Lehane.org and get all the information and registration content that you need and will
one of your favorites. Yes and that's the Texas Star Party but one of your other favorites is the Oki Te Star Party. That's
right and that's going to be coming up in early October. Want to share a few things about Ot It's dark and it's
awesome. Go to Ot. That's what I'll say. Absolutely. So, that's coming up October 1st to
the ninth. 2021. Okie dash Text.com for more details. The Enchanted Sky Star Party. I
know. Yeah. yeah. Another dark place happening in early October. So, hopefully by then, it's getting a little cooler at
night Enchanted Skies.org for more details there. Well, another one of our favorites. This is the last Star Party
that both you and I attended. That's right. last year but the El Dorado Star Party is
happening in early November. Actually, my birthday is going to be in there. So that that's a good reason to go celebrate
my birthday. There you go. El Dorado Star Party.org is the place to get more information.
Winter Star Party. our friends down in Florida did a wonderful job of doing the Winter Star
Party online this year but I've never been myself. I've heard the seeing is fantastic. Thanks
to the the ocean right there but that's going to be going on early next year. January 31st
to February. 6th and then last but not the least, our favorite
Yeah. Texas Star Party. The one and only as well as mentioned earlier is going to be
happening April 24th through May, 1st 2022. So, Texas Star Party.org. Go ahead and get
that loaded up in your browsers because we're going to talk about a lot of things that you can see on the website tonight
but we're looking forward to that next year as well. So, that's just a quick no to some of our favorite star parties
there will, you know and they're and they're all great. It's it's always a challenge to figure out if it's going to
work with the schedule and the logistics of getting all your gear out into the middle of nowhere because that's where
the darkest skies are but II can promise you that it's something that you should do. even if you only ever get to go
to a couple of Star parties a year or one, it's going to enhance your visual observing.
It's going to enhance your astrophotography. It's going to enhance your connections that you make in the field. It's
like I said earlier, it's the camaraderie. So, get out to the star parties y'all. It really will make you a better
astronomer, better amateur astronomer, whatever you want to call yourself. So, just get out there with us and we'll
hang. We'll hang out. Yeah, a lot of people show They bring a teleskope and they never look through their Telescope.
They're looking through other people's Telescope which is one of the nice things about these Star parties. That's right.
Yeah. And so, one of the cool things about all these Star parties are most of the star parties, I guess is they they
all have door prizes, you know, a lot of people will stick to the end no matter the
conditions. So then off chance they win a star chart from someone or something a red flashlight or whatever and I've
been one of those people for the Okie Te Star Party 2018 I believe It was it rained the
entire Star Party which was fun but at the very end, there was a bunch of us that went to the
giveaway because and you could tell that there was a lot of people that just stayed just to to to try to win. I didn't win
anything that year though. So, it was kind of, you know, it's kind of sad but a bummer. Yeah.
so we've got some winners tonight for the start. Now, the way this the door prizes work
for this is if you were basically registered for 2020
and 2021. If you registered on the website for the Texas Star Party, you're automatically
entered to win this giveaway, okay? This is a way for us to give some of the fun stuff to
our TSP regulars. The people that would have been out there in the in the deserts of West Texas and a little nod to our
friends here that we go hang out with. So, this this isn't necessarily a crowd participation giveaway but we
do have some winners, Joe and I think we may have some info on that Yeah, absolutely. So, you
hit the nail on the head Will usually the Saturday night, the last Saturday night of the Star Party is when we have the big
giveaway. We're going to have more giveaways tomorrow. So, be be sure to stay tuned for that and join us tomorrow night but
we'll kind of touch on these things if you are registered and for to attend TSP in 2019 through 2021, you're
automatically registered to win. It's a double random drawing. A lot of stuff
happened in the background to make that happen. Registration list those years. 2019 through
2021 is randomized and sorted and the price list itself is randomized, assorted, and we put all of that together and
we've got some giveaways. So, first door prize of the night is a Hubble Optics Hubble five
star artificial Star donated to us graciously by Hubble Optics
and the winner of that is Christian Wade of Kansas City, Missouri. Alright,
congratulations Christian. Absolutely The next door prize
is a $50 Amazon gift card donated to us by the Texas Star Party themselves. So, the
winner of this $50 Amazon gift card is our good buddy Tom Weidman from
Tom Weidman. our good buddy. The white man's clean up at Star Everything. If you're have
all the luck, I guess, right? You're in our party with these guys Don't even play the giveaway. You're not going to win. They're going to win it
all. I promise you. Just take them to Las Vegas right afterwards, right? Yeah, that's yeah, it's very lucky guy.
That's awesome, Tom but bro, just play it with me. Okay, Tom. That's it. Next door prize
is a $50 Astros Zap E gift certificate. So, anybody who's got Telescope, astronomy
equipment, you need accessories and ask for Zap is a wonderful manufacturer and provider of those accessories and the
winner This prize is Richard Bell, our good friend, Richard Bell, who's the president of
the Kalamazoo Astronomical Society. Awesome. Congratulations, Richard. Very
cool. presidents all around Alright, and door prize number
fifteen at already shows it there a gift certificate for remote observer, a remote observing winner's choice of
either 3 hours of DSO time on a fifty millimeter 500 millimeter excuse me, a scope or 2 hours
of DS time on a one meter aperture scope. Wow. Wow. For 1. Hour of planetary Imaging on
a 1meter scope. The winner of that is James Bardsley of Franklin Tennessee James,
congratulations. I am jealous. I am. I am jealous and thanks
Go out to one of our advertisers Chili Scope for providing this wonderful gift
and James, I'm sure you're going to really enjoy that. That's incredible. Okay, we're
not done yet. Door prize number sixteen. another Fifty-dollar
Us Zap Egift gift certificate kind of want one of these myself, Right? Right. Because
that makes some awesome stuff and the winner is George Lu of North Richland Hills, Texas.
Congratulations. Yeah. Congrats, George. He's a long time. TSP person and good
friend of ours. Yeah. Yeah. There you go. Alright. door prize number seventeen donated
by one of our great partners through this whole event, Sky and Telescope Sky and it has been absolutely wonderful,
magnificent letting us use their platform to stream but they're also Don a sky and
telescope pocket, Sky Atlas and if you don't have one of those, it's indispensable. You've gotta have one but one lucky
person Tonight Tonight doesn't to go out and buy it. They're going to get one for free and that's Adam Gillard. hope, I hope I pronounced that
correctly in Bloomington, Minnesota. So, this is going all the way to the northern part of the continental for a
nice we have here at the Lower Forty-eight. Yeah, congratulations and last but not the least, door prize
number eighteen here. is a $50 Amazon gift card donated by. We
got some folks that we know down at the Houston Astronomical Society. Just a few, just a few and the winner of this prize is billing from
from Alameda, California. So, we're covering all parts of the United States tonight. Railing
There you go. Congratulations and we'll reach out to everybody who's won a prize
tonight to make sure that these prizes get in the right hand. So, really excited about that.
Yeah. Congrats to all of our door prize winners. One thing I do want to mention right here
at the end of that is that you can get these amazing shirts
that we are wearing right now that Joe and I have on our producer, Don Sully is in the in the background. He's wearing
a shirt even though he's not on camera, he's got it on. This is a nice, comfortable shirt. man. I'm telling you, it's good
quality. It it's it's it's an awesome design. Chris and
Christine Ober and Tara Krasinski, our T shirt designers did a great job. Basically, you go to Texas Star
party.ORG and then you can find the T shirt online order. You
fill it out and tell them what size and send in your money and you'll you too can have one of
these T shirts that we have. I know that like I said, Joe and I have ours on. It's great
stuff. We'll be wearing them for 3 days straight. washing them in between. I hope Joe. I hope But yeah, you guys can. I
was there. Don't sleep on this. This won't be available forever and it'll be it'll be a way for
us to in 2022. We all show up on T shirt day with our with our COVID shirts on it. It'll
be a cool way to be like, yeah, we were on the the thing with each other. Awesome. So, get those and we'll be mentioning
those again as time goes on so. That's right. That's right. and well, I think we also have a
few other things that were donated to us that we're giving away is auction prizes, right we do and the auction is
ongoing. So if you're not bidding, you're not doing yourself any favors here y'all the VS TV. TSP Auction is on
right now and I believe I have a banner with the website here. Yeah, there we go. There's the
website right there. Texas Star Party dot Better World.ORG slash auctions slash V TSP
Auctions. Maybe if Don can hit the the chat with that link so people could click on it.
Basically what this is, we have two auctions going on right now. I'll scroll down to them.
We have a premium Star cabin. Stay at the X Bar Ranch. It's a
$500 value guys. 3 days two nights at one of their cabins of your choice. That's an
amazing gift. I can tell y'all that I've been there many many times and it's definitely worth
bidding on. if you don't win, hey, whatever. If you do win, dude, you're going on vacation
and the other one is the one and only Prude Ranch where we normally have the Texas Star Party. It's a winter weekend
stay at the Prude Ranch again, two nights 3 days. at one of their facilities there at the
ranch in the mountains of West Texas y'all. Yes. Amazing place
bid on this because you could win and you could get an amazing deal on an awesome
weekend. I don't know Joe. I'm I'm thinking I might have to bid just to you know, just to do it. Well, I don't know
either. but actually I do know I'm bidding on both of them. So, you know, these are the
places where we have the Texas Star Party and the El Dorado Star Party again, some of the darkest skies in the lower forty and you know, why not
take advantage of that when one of these stays and take your
telescopes out and enjoy the night sky there. That's right. Yeah. And our friend, Don, our producer in the background,
he's helped us so much with this Don. Thank you again. Of course, he has dropped the link in all the platforms there. So,
that's the link go and bid on this stuff and if you outbid me, I'll be upset but I bet Joe
will be the one who outbid me and then. oh no but whoever wins, you know, Will and I are
willing to sleep on the front porch if that's okay, wherever you're at. So, yeah, good luck to everybody bidding on those
things. Even if you don't ask, we'll probably be out there anyway. So, definitely check on
those and so yeah and I mean, I guess what we should do, You know, Joe, we should probably
give away something to the people here that are live right now with us on all the different platforms whether it
be absolutely what explore scientific we've got Deep Sky Dude. my platform. we've got the Astro Joe, which is your
platform and Telescope Houston Astronomical Society Aesthetics Explore Scientific. We've got a
lot of platforms We're broadcasting out to and Joe found us an awesome way to give
away cool things like one of these t-shirts and I think that's what we're going to give away. Now, Joe, why don't you tell us how we how we do do it,
man? Yeah. so, what we're going to do is use the #explore Scientific. We want to give a
nod out to our good buddies over at Explore Scientific but on whatever platform. You're on all the ones that were listed
Put in a #explore scientific anywhere there and we'll start
collecting all of those entries and that's all you gotta do and we'll give everybody a couple of minutes to go ahead and get those Explore scientific,
explore scientific entries in and we'll just run a complete
random drawing and whoever wins gets one of these fantastic T shirts. Yeah and a real quick thing that while y'all are
putting explore, explore scientific in the chat wherever you're at and you're getting,
you're going to be entered to win the auction does end in 1 day, right? And I think so,
it's at noon or is it? I can't remember exactly what it is. So, 9 PM tomorrow night, 9 PM
Central tomorrow night. Make sure that you get those auction bids in and you know, like I
said, these things are are awesome. They're worth quite a bit. So, whoever wins is going to be a pretty lucky person and the thing is, you know, the
proceeds go to the virtual text or excuse me to the star party so that we can continue to put on a wonderful event year after
year. Yeah, that's right and that they were graciously donated by the two ranches that
we have. two Star parties at the Ranch Texas Star Party, the X Bar Ranch, El Dorado Star Party. So, thank you to the
prude. Thank you to the ER and so while you guys are getting
your #explore Scientific into the chat, I think we're going to turn it over to our friends
at Celestron and let them we're going to hear from for a second When we come back, I think we
might pick a winner. Right, Joe? Yeah. I think that should be enough time. Bear with me one second as I get this Lots
of I see. man. I see so many people dropping. Make sure you do it with no spaces guys. I see a couple, a couple of
spaces in it. Make sure it's exactly as you see it on the screen. Otherwise, the the algorithms won't know who
picked what. So, make sure and you only get one. You can put fifty in there but you only get one. You only get one. That's
it. So, we're going to hear from our good friends over at Celestron and when we get back from the break, we're going to go ahead and give that T shirt
away
Ready for new kind of Telescope experience. Unlock the power of your smartphone to help you
navigate the night sky. Introducing Star and Explorer by Celestron. It's fast, easy,
and accurate in minutes, you're ready to take a guided tour of the universe. First, do your
smartphone and launch the Stars Explorer app. Unlike other astronomy apps, Stars Explorer
aligns precisely with your your Telescope and sky recognition technology to pinpoint it.
exact position in the night sky. Follow the simple instructions and in seconds,
the app generates a list of all the best objects currently visible in the night sky.
Select an object from the list and follow the on-screen arrows to the desired object. as you
move the Telescope Stars Explorer recalibrate its position in real time. The
Bull's-eye turns green when your object is ready to view in the eye pieces. It's that simple. Stars Explorer works
anywhere in the world. No cell signal required. So, whether you're backyard or a remote
dark sky location. The universe is yours to explore.
from the time it took voyager to leave the earth and reached the edge of the solar system. I
went from being a baby to a high schooler, to a university graduate, to a worker, to a business owner, and now I'm a
husband, a father, a post grad student, a science communicator, a musician, a YouTuber, and backyard
astronomer. I've been lucky to reach this point to be able to buy some of the best equipment and amateur astronomer could
dream of. There's one thing I can't afford and that's time Astronomy has made me a more
patient person and the constant drive to get better and collect more data to capture the wonder
of the cosmos is something I have to balance with everything else in my life. So, when I see
a Telescope with a lower F number, I know that it's value to me is far greater than money alone. The telescopes value is
not just the sum of its parts. It comes from how much you can get it outside and how much you
can get out of it. That's why I jumped to buy the celestial Acumen Schmidt. It's six focal
length that have two allows me to capture the incredible Southern hemisphere in nibble. Sometimes within a single
night. but always with revealing depth and signal.
I've been shooting the universe with the Rs of eleven for years now and it's allowed me not only the satisfaction of
sharing these unique views from my end of the world but also to detect and track asteroids which is an area I'd love to
explore further. The Rs easily crosses that divide a consumer scope vs. a scientific
research grade observational Telescope for discovery and analysis. The real limit for
the Rosa is really how far I'm willing to take it and it's nice to have a Telescope that I
won't outgrow for a long time because time is the only thing
we don't get more of.
awesome ad segment by Celestron. Thank you guys. Over at Celestron. Such a great
company, man. It's a it's a household name. Just a company. You know, when you buy it, it's going to be good quality stuff
and I've never, it's never been a the case, you know, that I haven't had a good quality
piece when I bought it from Celestron. So, Love and like Tom Weidman says love our Celestial on next YZ. Man. that
thing was when I saw that come out. That's it II love astrophotography. I'm done.
This is my the last mount and it's the first one I bought. It's still the one I have it. it's amazing. I bought a lot of things before that for iphone
photography and none of them work nearly as well as the Xyz. I'm kind of curious you use
that Star Explorer yet. I've heard wonderful things about it. The Yeah, Well, yes,
Actually, I have one of those little scopes and yeah, it is unbelievably cool and I'm
saying that as a person who has a Twenty-two inch Dobson and when when you put your iphone
on there, it's plate solving. it's solving on your iphone and it is incredible. You nudge of
the scope and you see that reaction on your phone with the star chart? Absolutely amazing.
It's definitely something y'all should look into if you're a beginner or if you're just an expert and you want to wow the
crowd at a at a outreach event. It's amazing. Yeah. Alright. Well, I think it's time to give
away AT shirt. So, for those who haven't jumped in whatever platform you're on, enter
#explore Scientific and get your entry in for a chance to win one of these wonderful
Texas Star Party 2021 T shirts. Yeah. Well, I think I think we're ready. Huh? I think we
have to pick somebody. I think I'll do. I think it's the comments are in. I think somebody's going to win AT
shirt and we'll see what happens. Here we go. Here we go. Look at all the names. All
those names coming in and it's going to settle in on one person and that person is going
to win AT shirt. That person is I wish we had a drum roll
salsa. Our good friend Salsa. congratulations. Friend of ours and a member of the Houston
Astronomical Society. If I'm not mistaken. Very awesome. Yes, absolutely. So, salsa, if you wouldn't mind, Email us at
V Tsp. Let's go ahead and flash that banner down there at the bottom there. I've got it somewhere. Oh, there it is.
There it is. Salsa. If you can Email us at VT SP at Texas Star Party.org. Give us some
information about your T shirt size, your address, things like that. We'll make sure to get that T shirt in your hands. So, congratulations once again,
Salsa. Amazing. amazing. Amazing. Exactly. Oh, it's so fun to give away stuff. You
know, I got a free shirt. So, why can't I pay that forward? And I promise you, I'll say it won't be this shirt so you
don't have to worry about that. It'll be a whole different shirt. Never worn. promise.
Like I said yesterday, these are fresh off the runways in the lawn in Paris. So, it's
it's the summer's hottest fashions. high quality threads, you know, We talked about
celestial earlier. Another one of our sponsors. Wonderful partner out there and the
manufacturer of exquisite astronomical equipment. You and I talked about the eye pieces that we have from Explore
Scientific and how they're just top notch. You can compare, put them up against anybody and they hold their own. Well, I
figured we'd share some of that goodness about explore Scientific with other folks as well. So, pay attention to this
today. We're going to talk about the a chromatic series of telescopes from Explore Scientific. The A series to tell scopes have three pieces
of glass in the front that provide great visual and astrophotography opportunities
for the amateur astronomer. they range in size from the ED. all the way up to the FPL
Fifty-three 165 mm Telescope. They come in the classic white tube as well as
the spectacular beautiful carbon fiber tube. There's three levels of glass FCD one
which is the essential series, the FCD 100 series and the F L
53 series of glass. Each one has their own benefits. They are all great for visual and
astrophotography. For more details and to purchase these telescopes, go to Explore Scientific dot
again and again. Those are those are great skills, man. My ED 102 which is a chromatic.
Yeah. Yeah. right. Right. The aroma. A echo. Yeah. A is the way to go y'all. So, you know,
they're worth it. I promise you they're worth it. Yeah. Wonderful scopes, wonderful eye pieces. good folks that run
that company and we're just really thankful for their partnership in this whole thing and give them a shout out. They
do a lot of great stuff for the astronomical community as well so that's cool. Well, I'm I'm
really excited about our first speaker tonight. You and I had the opportunity recently to sit
down with none other than Stephen J O'meara and talk to him about what astronomy in
Botswana is like and Stephen is well known and probably regarded as he is regarded as
probably the best visual observer out there. He's done some pretty incredible things
with the Telescope and I thought it was a fantastic interview. How about you will? Yeah, it was amazing to be
sitting in the same online room with and just to hear his, hear us talk that you know, in that
context and I mean, it's just amazing. The guy is is a legend especially amongst us visual
observers. Yes. Discovering the spokes of Saturn's rings before we discovered the spokes of
Saturn's rings. I mean, come on y'all. That's like ridiculous abilities there and he's in
Botswana, Africa doing some southern sky observing in one of the darkest places on the
planet which I'm sure is just the worst right. It's nightmare being in the best place in the
world for that but no, it was a really awesome interview and it's just, it's just so cool to
be able to talk to him. If you've read Sky and Telescope at any point in your astronomy
career, you've probably read an article or two by mister Stephen J. O'Mara. So, I guess
Joe, do you have, do you want to just roll that or do we have
Alright, everybody. Thanks for joining us and we've got a special treat today. We're
joined by none other than mister Stephen J O'meara and most of you have probably heard of Stephen but if you haven't,
he is a renowned visual astronomer, probably the greatest of our day. He's
recognized for his legendary eyesight and observational prowess among his many
astronomical achievements. Stephen was the first to say Haley's Comet and it's 1985 return and the first person to
determine the rotation period of the distant planet Uranus, one of his most distinguished was the visual detecting
detection of the mysterious spokesman Saturn's B Ring before the voyager spacecraft image them and I remember you telling us that story when he
came to visit us at the He's an astronomical society. People thought you're crazy and you end up, you ended up being
vindicated there. Stephen has been honored with several awards including the prestigious Lone Star Gazer
Award for setting the standard of excellence in visual observing the Omega Santo Award for advancing astronomy through
observation writing and promotion and for sharing his love of the sky and the Caroline Herschel Award for his
planetary discoveries. the international Astronomical Union named Asteroid 3637 Amira
in his honor. So, we're pleased to have none other than mister Stephen O'Meara here with us Stephen. Thanks for joining.
Yeah, you're welcome. And yes, I wish I could be there in person II. So, miss the Texas
Star Party and I do guess I hope you get have a chance to chat about our memories too
later. Absolutely because there's only pleasant memories and I do have to say that
personally. I even though this has nothing to do with Barbara Wilson, I'd like to dedicate
this to her in her honor. I
yeah. I miss her. She was, she was a driving force. among the visual observers there. So,
but today, I'm going to be talking about Botswana in Africa where I live and I've
been living here now for the last 8 years and I was asked to give a presentation because
some people were curious about what the stars are like also, what am I doing here? Why am I
here? And so on and so forth. So, I thought I'd give you a little rundown as as to what's
going on in my life because I'm now a Southern Hemisphere observer. and first, I'd like
to talk about where is Botswana. So, we're in Southern Africa and I think one of the
most important things to understand and to distinguish is that we are in Southern
Africa and not South Africa. We're an independent country. We have nothing to do with
South Africa and the in the way of government or policies or culture. It So, we're no
different than having United States and Mexico. You know, what are the similarities?
Culturally, it's totally different. So, and we'll talk a little bit about that later but it's a beautiful country safe
Here are some images that you might recognize for some the
number one ladies, detective agency book is seven Botswana,
The cry of the Kalahari by Mark and the Owens. It's all about
their their life in Africa and the lions and of course the the old film, the Gods must be
crazy with the coke bottle falls out of the the plane and it's a comedy and that's also
takes place in Botswana. Now, the interesting thing about Botswana is that it's mostly
Kalahari Desert and I have to admit that before I came to
Botswana. I really II. admit. I did not know where it was and I
was living on the island of Hawaii and now, here's something that I find interesting. I had no idea.
Daniel Green at the Central Bureau Astronomical Telegrams emailed me and said, Steve, do
you know that you're at the anti pod of where you lived in Hawaii? So, I lived in Volcano,
Hawaii which is plus nineteen 19° and Mount Botswana is minus
19° and not only that, they're essentially 180° apart and this is like the towns that we lived
in. It's just amazing and look at the similarities between the the sizes of of Botswana and
the big island of Hawaii. So, it's pretty incredible that I essentially moved 180° away to
the southern mirror site of of where I lived. In fact, you'll enjoy this too but this one is
about as large as Texas. So, also kind of a similar shape,
isn't it? Yeah, if you think about it, I have to I have to add that for that one. Anyway,
so this little red dot shows us where we live in Northern Botswana. Now, the capital city
is way down in the lower right Gai and it's way, way way down
on the edge of the of the border and you can see that most of the the country is as
it says Kalahari desert but up where we are mound it's MAUN.
You see that green area and so it's rain water that comes down from Angola and filters through
into a river system and so mound is the gate to the Delta which is a 1000 Unesco World
Heritage site. So, we're up almost about as high as probably the Texas Star Party.
We're about 3500 feet in altitude flat as a pancake. So, it's sort of like the Texas
Star Party being being held in Florida but it's and in fact, the 0 of Mango Delta has
incredible similarities in the nature of the river as it does to the Everglades in Florida.
This is Mo. it's it's not a highly populated area. We have
one major international airstrip. Most of the people we live along the river, this
section called the Tamala River and it's still in the Kalahari
Sands with the sand in in our backyard. That's from the Kalahari and just not far we
have elephants. You can just go 20 minutes outside of mound and you're in the natural wildlife
area. and this is one mode of transportation to get to some
sites across the river and why am I here? Well, I met my future wife to be Deborah
Carter and some of you may know Deborah as she was a travel
quest eclipse tour coordinator. She's seen almost as many eclipse as I have almost at
least a dozen eclipses and she's also a travel agent in a in a yoga instructor, certified
yoga instructor So, met and then when I wanted to come and
see her, she set up all the arrangements and honestly, again, I didn't even know where Botswana was. I just got on a
jet and I arrived now but if anyone's thinking about travel
to put but what I mean, two Botswana, Deborah is really the one to talk about. I've just
wanted to say one thing about her life is that many years
before I met her, she's from England and she ran Overland.
in a truck over landed from England. all the way to Africa.
This is the route. I mean, they did this for many, many years going through the Congo, the
Algiers, the Sahara Desert stories upon stories that she could tell you and so she knows
Africa and she she ended up basically ultimately stopping
the overland and then became a travel agent in Botswana where
she is today and so We're together. We do yoga and stargazing Safaris for people
that are interested. In fact, we she organized with Sky and Telescope. We put together the
Botswana Stargazing Safari which in fact, we have one coming up in in this the end of
this month. If anyone's interested, and this have been
quite successful just to show you the type of animals that we have in Botswana. We have
elephants, leopards, rhinos, cape, buffalo, hippos, jackals,
leopards, cheetah, giraffes, kudos that animal down there with the Longhorns cables,
giraffe, zebra, you name it and it's all here. In fact, we're going tomorrow out to the bush
again. Some of these are just come in sites for birds. We
have saddle bills, storks, the water, crane, fish, eagles,
giant eagle, owl owls, the colorful bird at top is the
lilac breasted roller. Some Some of these are species such as the ground horn bills at
bottom. the skimmers and so on. So, it's quite, it's quite a
beautiful natural environment now, We have basically three
seasons in Botswana. We have let's see, we have cold and
dry, hot and dry and then hot and wet. So, mostly it's mostly
we have Dr. See the hotter? It's cold but even in the rainy season, it's been it's been
quite fantastic. The atmosphere phenomena that we get to experience especially in the
flat extensive planes. I mean, when the thunderstorms come, they're just like you find in a
horror movie. It's just unending lightning and that we're just rolls unceasingly
across the plains and you can see some of the atmospheric phenomena that we have in in
the lower image middle. You see these really bizarre odd
concentric rings around the sun and that photo, all the others were my photos but the one that
particular one was taken by a friend Shirley who is the lower right? She was out hanging her
clothes and She just pulled out her phone. She looked up in the sky and there were these
concentric rings. It's pretty pretty amazing and prettiest but that's the one thing about
the people of Botswana. They they have keen eyesight in the various Now, as far as darkness
is concerned, we're down there that little Red.you see in Africans in in Southern Africa. That's where we are as far as
dark skies are concerned. You can compare that to the United States and Central America and
all across Europe and Saudi Arabia and over into to the
east and you can see that we have, we're in a very special location and this is for an
example, a shot I took from our our backyard and this is just a
simple fifty millimeter lens probably a 62nd exposure Now,
what am I doing here? Aside from no, I have my wife,
Deborah is in order Before we were married, I had to get
permission to be here and to stay here on a special permit
filming permit and study which was I wanted to study the sudden stars and also to deal
with the bass. Now, they were that formally called the people and they were the original
Aboriginal natives of Botswana and they still have tribes
throughout Botswana and I spent 4 years dealing and learning
with them with interpreters to find out about the stars in
their interpretations of the sky. Now, these are some photos I took of them in their natural
habitat. Their original nomads, they are hunter gatherers. They
still live this lifestyle and they also shamans and they have
stances where they they mystical unite with the
universe or or with animals. It's really fantastic to see and to experience the scent.
We're also noted for their keen eyesight. In fact, there are studies done where they they
actually saw and had names for the individual moons of Jupiter. This is what the and
I, this is pretty telescopic and they had names to the moons of Jupiter and they watched
them dance around around the the fire of Jupiter. So, pretty
incredible eyesight and and it's the the bass of people who have that kind of skill are the ones that take you out when you
go on these game drives because they're the ones who who can find and spot the animals even
far away. Incredible eyesight and some of the legends that I learned were were fascinating for the the stars were the the
spirits of their relatives and the brightest stars show their
significance of their deceased the importance that they had to the bass people, The brighter
ones were the more important ones, the fainted ones less important and also the they're
the ones that had that had died a long time ago and they're
fading away in the sky and they also have just like the Aboriginal of Australia and
other Aboriginal cultures. They really focus their attention on Dark nebula and here we have
the giraffe. You can see the two composites that show the cul. The Sac is the head of the
giraffe and going down toward the heart of the Milky Way and then there was one recent
legend. I heard about how the Scorpion, the Doc Nebula, which is the the river and the pipe nebula which trips the giraffe
when it's setting that falls into the into the earth and
their idea of the Milky Way itself. It's fascinating and
they have several, several myths involving the Milky Way including that there was a
daughter who was left to to watch their camp while the
hunter gatherers went out at night and so to give them a guiding light, she took the
ashes from the fire and tossed them into the sky in order to create the Milky way and we're one It's really fascinating. I
was able to get the shot when we were visiting with them at one of their camps in the in
the bush and here was the campfire and the smoke was trailing right up into the
Milky Way. So, you can really you just saw the legend in front of your eyes. You can see
how they interpreted the sky in that way in their way ahead of their time because seeing the
top illustration, the moon in the belly, they had the crescent moon. when it started
off as male and then it got fatter and fatter until half moon When it became female and
then essentially, it gave birth to itself on the full moon and
then after that, it returned to being male and then the moon
recreates itself and then the the idea of the lunar phases is
it's this is one of my favorite legends and that There was a
hunter who went out and he he got an animal in order to feed
his family and then they use the skin to cover themselves at night in order to sleep. So,
the man put the skin over him as he was sleeping but then his wife gradually and slowly takes
the coat away from me from the man until he is fully exposed and then he takes the the this
the skin back and covers himself until it's time to go out. His family's hungry and he
has to do it all over again. So, it's quick, fast, quite fascinating what they have and
so, one of the things I did at the end of the four and a half years is I put everything into
a book and it's a it's a visual guide. It's mainly to help a lot of the guides that come
here to learn more about the night sky and also this
includes the Bass Sky Lore which is lacking a lot of the sky lord that we have today.
So, it's now just recently helped a penguin random house by strike nature Is there
imprint imprint and so there's a lot more tales of it in there
but this was in a way my gift to the the Botswana people for having me having me stay and so
I'm I'm I'm just really happy and it's that I had this
opportunity and continue to have the opportunity but I have to tell you Last story about
the bass people with the when we were I was out there with them and then suddenly, a
satellite went across the sky. This is the ISS going into the earth's shadow and I thought this was perfect to find out.
So, I told my translator, I said, you know, ask them what that is. What is that thing moving in the sky? Because in
ancient times, they didn't have satellites and so as they do naturally, they get together
and their discussions. Now, the interesting thing is they have to click language so they talk to one another and it's like
you don't. it's they have like five different clicks that they
use and they have discussions and they they filter and they and they move things in the
sand and so then the interpreter told me, well, they said that it was created by the
black people and then they go in and they're talking. I'm all the clicks and then they said,
I said, well, where where where were these people that created this? And they said and they did, they're clicking and they
down south. They were down south and I said, okay and then they did some more clicking and
I said, well, do you do they know what it it is? And then my interpreter said, it's a
satellite So, they
They had a good one on me on that one.
So wonderful people but I think my favorite thing was one night, we were at the campfire
and this wasn't too long ago and we had an opportunity. It's a wonderfully clear night and
we're looking up at the sky and I just said to one, what do you see? What is it that you see
when you first look up at the sky? I mean, what does it mean to you? It's the interpreter. talk to them and then the
answer was really beautiful and and and and it really
encapsulates the feeling of the people really. It's very
peaceful. Now, talk about anti pods and II. don't know. It's
amazing. When I was in Hawaii, I had the the opportunity to see a boat light and it's
magnitude minus twenty. It just slid up the night sky. I was going to go out come hunting and it must have been early in
like four in the morning and this thing just came over the sky and it exploded directly
overhead and the fragments came down. No one was able to collect the pieces because it
fell over the lava field. So, you're looking for a black stone amongst black lava in the
Volcano National Park and so the rest of the fragments probably fell in the ocean but
it was pretty incredible but now we fast forward to 2018. Now, Deborah and I were out at
a camp and unfortunately, I became really, really ill and
so I didn't go out on the game drive and I was in our our
Safari tent just very sick and I didn't know at the time, Darren Green, the micro trying
to tell me that this Catalina survey had discovered this new
asteroid 7 hours before it hit and you can see the path and
it's heading directly toward Botswana and
It was only the second time in history that a astro was detected before it's fall and
this one was 7 hours before then. So, I was in the tent.
Deborah was trying to nurse me and then suddenly, the tent just lit up and she just sent
someone. They were coming back from a night drive and they had the spotlights on the on the
tent and the camp manager that came running in and was trying to tell me something just fantastic happened and Steve,
you have to get out there. you have to look and I was like, go away. I'm not I was really
sick. unfortunately but look at this. Watch what happens. This one was taken from South Africa near the border of Botswana.
and this is the this is the asteroid coming in and then hits Oh, I know. So, right
after so, right after we got back like the next day, I went out and I helped the American
media Society collect information. I went out in Botswana. Although these are
from South Africa, I went up through and I interviewed people who had seen the fall
and to help them triangle where the the meteorite might have fallen and this brought me us
to one camp Dina and it was in the Kalahari Desert and I met
with a guy who actually saw the terminal blast. He saw the
thing came in. He saw the fragments fall. The media just vanished from the sky and This
is the location of the artist impression of the of the
incoming asteroid and the cat manager. In fact, was in the
shower and he thought there was a gas explosion. The Sonic booms was so intense. that was
rattling that the the structures and they came out to see what was going on but
anyway, in the end this now, this is an amazing feat. Peter Jenkins from the City Institute
and together with local. and a
local scientists and others went out and they actually recovered pieces in the
Kalahari desert. They set out a whole line of people and just walked amongst the lions and
and and the first one was cited by a local woman again, the son with their incredible eyesight
and it was just this little teeny fragment underneath the bush how they found it? I have no idea but it turns out now
that this fragment called the mop meteorite They found several pieces but it turns out
that it's probably a piece of vest. So, and that just
happened here in 2018. Pretty amazing. and it's fortunate now
to go from the from the A bang to a whimper. The skies are so dark here that we have
something that we also called a ghost meteor and here's an arrow. You can see that faint
faint street coming from the upper left out to lower right and there's sort of a comet
that's coming in the sky but it's very dim. It's about fourth magnitude and there's no central streak. It just comes
in and filters through as if it's Alta fizzing away. They're
they're pretty amazing. and now to show you to go to a true, we
have dark skies here. I can see the light from our backyard but to get to even darker skies, we
go to a place called me Pans National Park that you see that near the center of the of the
map in the green. that big long word hands and it's 12 thousand
square kilometers pan and you get 360 360° flat in this
desert like region and we go out there and just just and I show you that it's a very
lonely place and isolated and you're under the sky. We build
campfires. We have the vehicles that take you out there. Now, look at this. We sleep out
under the stars on bed rolls. This is Deborah sleeping. Now, this is not a composite. This
is an actual just a simple fifty millimeter lens shot. Probably 60 seconds. I don't
know. I'm trying to mount and just show you what the Ada
Corina region. That's the cul. the sac up above. stars right down to the horizon and you
have this for 360 360° and the the pens is so flat. We
had an an eclipse recently. It wasn't a total eclipse. This was we got a partial but
Madagascar had they had an angular eclipse but we went, we took people out to the pans and
we're able to see the the whole event. It starts off with the green flash coming up above the
the flat horizon and then the serrated moon and sun and it's
just phenomenal. We had a partial lunar eclipses and the pans are always fun. So, there
was yoga instructors. So, I made this composite image of the eclipse with the them doing
yoga and we've had beautiful full lunar eclipse is a
composite because we live in such a special place that we have trees that summer,
thousands of years old Beautiful. Full fully eclipses
that you know, we see. I know you guys get them too II. Remember, in the Northern hemisphere but there's
something that we see now, Look at this one. This was supposed to be the invisible eclipse. I know you had it too in June of
2020, it was a eclipse that was only less than 40% but look at
the two places where I have compare and see the top image and compare it. Look on the
right hand side in the Lunar Highlands. You see how it's slightly darker lately. Yeah.
it was just an amazing. You could just, you could just detect this with the with the
naked eye. It's really incredible eclipse and we've had two transits of Mercury
since I've been here. Twenty 2019. We have the beautiful
Venus and pleads conjunction which you know, we all, we all
had our is upside down for you guys and one thing and I don't know if you had, we had the
lunar eclipse with the with the blood Red Mars Mars opposition and and July 2018 but this is
really special. The on the right, you see the constellations with the bright
star and the horizon is a halt
but you know, we had the moon and Mars up so high in the sky. It's just a fantastic sight and
speaking of Mars, the last apparition during his 2020
opposition. these these images I took were just made with
Morris was essentially really high. Got up to about 70° and here you see the Milky way
again from the pans and you have the Milky way upside down. See the hub of the Milky Way is
is below that bright star near the bottom is Antares and the rest looking up is going south
but these images of Mars I took with entry factor. and it's
just no CD or anything. I'm just taking a fifty millimeter lens and a Thirty-five
millimeter camera holding it up to the IP and snapping and then they're probably composites of
like two images. each of these but you know, it just reminds me of the the olden days, the
photography, it kind of really resembles what we see through a telescope more than what we see
through AC CD which we'll never see through a telescope but this is You know, it's only
because Mars is was so high in the sky and so steady that was
able to get these results and if you can even see, I'm I'm pushing it to like up to 400 or
300 up to 400 Power and still with no, you know, but that's
probably the limit but you can exceed what you would naturally think you can accomplish with
with the small Telescope and Recently, I also published a book on Mars for those that are
interested in from reaction books in the UK It it it talks
about from early from the beginnings to up to the the the
recent The recent explorations of Mars. So, if you're
interested but anyway, that's part of what I'm doing. I'm still writing We have we have
the great conjunction. In fact, we had the on the night before. this one, we had the actual
conjunction which was a closest approach but we had more clouds and is is shown here and I was
only able to see I could see Jupiter and Saturn through binoculars but I couldn't see them with the naked eye through
the clouds. It's just Jupiter but it was beautiful. That's to the three inch. Again. What it
appeared like from here. and then we've had a whole series
of comets. I know we all shared neo wise but I want to show you
probably what I look like also before it became famous and we had several comments that
started off very low in the south here you see Carmen Burton and which made a close
approach to Earth in 2018. 2019 but in in December, 2018, it
came within 12 thousand kilometers of the earth It started off low in Forex and
Adonis. Oops, sorry. but here it is in Adonis over the and
it's very beautiful. very large. Comet with the diffuse
head and here it was passing the pleas and this was under the full moon. So, but anyway,
I think I said thousand but anyway, 12, million kilometers. It's a thousand and even in
this short exposure, you can see that the Comet Trail a little bit during it's it's
it's passage and then immediately not long after that we had Comet Swan which is a
beautiful, beautiful comet that that put on quite a show for us in the Southern Hemisphere.
This is from the sky. Deborah took this photo but the like an
eighteen millimeter lens and it shows comet around six
magnitude. the light and then it's tail just grew it. It moved very rapidly. It's tail
grew and it was almost 10° long but the reason I say it was curious is that it really was
more of a photographic spectacle than it was a visual spectacle but still, you know,
through binoculars, you could probably see a few degrees of tail but I know people
especially in Namibia that we're getting up to 20° of that was really a spectacular in
bizarre comet that but the the head was visible but just
barely, you know, you know, got up to about magnitude 5.5 but from our dark skies, it was
still quite a spectacular view and then these shots in the twilight as it started to
approach the sun and the dust a started to grow and we're hoping that it was going to
turn around the sun. We was even a magnitude estimates of it while using Soho data. but
then it fizzled like many of these comets do. and then right
after that, we had Comet Lemon and it made several passes by some messier objects and NGC
clusters. It was another beautiful binocular comet that reached six magnitude again
with a thin ion tail and here
Comet. Lemon as it was fading on the left. This is what I look look like from the
Southern Hemisphere. See that Little.so? That's just what the that's what the 200 millimeter
lens even taking probably a minute exposure. So, it it
initially Neo didn't even live up to expectation surpassing
Comet Lemon and was hanging more or or less around seventh magnitude at times eight
magnitude and then who You know we had the helium. flare. So,
there it was on the left and here it was. This is you guys have the best view of it
without question it it was and the the far northern sky and
for us, we can still see pretty high north but this was in the
in the twilight. We were at least able to see it but then it grew. it came out from the
twilight and had a beautiful green head with a red tail. So of about you would in the ancient times where you would
have a like AA cemetery, bloody cemetery of a tale and then it
just give us some beautiful opportunities. They never got really high in the sky. It was
always very low but it did enter the dark sky but this is past the time when you already
had the most fantastic views but still by historical standards, we still, it wasn't
a great comment It was a great photographic comment but it just didn't have The real
visual punch of like a hail bop or ya. or comet West or others
that I've seen throughout the last 50 years. but it's still a
beautiful comment and here here it was Comet, Neo wise joined
another one that we had two stars and Comet Lemon. So, you
can get all three in a in a 200 millimeter frame and a passing
going away and one of my II like this shot anyway just because it shows the comet
entering the Ali And of course, the glide itself is left over
of debris from the solar system including material. So, So,
it's just sort of illustrating a comet depositing material into the what will enhance the
zodiac in time and of course, we have the super fall and rise of Beetlejuice and from the the
Northern Hemisphere, it look like that upside down. We also
had no no including 6.5. No. In
2018 which is in a way unfortunate because one of the things I've been doing here is
memorizing the Milky way down to about ninth magnitude using binoculars. So, I make many
constellations in the hope of discovering a Nova. this this particular Nova, I wouldn't
have discovered for two reasons because first of all, I was in the northern hemisphere but it
occurred and second of all, it was in the morning sky and II. think I'm I'm not getting up in
the morning to look for the no, I'm being lazy. I just enjoy this. This is a great opportunity for people. If you
if you ever want to relax and just it's it's visual meditation in a way because you
just go out. It's just you and the stars. you make up all these little mini constellations. you create your own names for them if and over
appears suddenly it's okay but otherwise it's just it's like looking I had a bunch of friends each night. It's just a
fun way to spend the time under the stars. Then, we had no reticular which was really blew
me away because it was well out of the Milky Way in reticular
near the large cloud in dos and and it reached the fifth magnitude which is and if
you've ever heard of reticular and say, what does that sound familiar? and that's probably because of the Zeta reticular
incident So, this one kind of had a it was kind of a Hoo. to
see but it was beautiful. Just in the sense of it was you could see it naked eye. The
fifth magnitude and when it began to fade, it really became sort of a crimson red. It it
was fascinating to see and recently, you had the the Nova and Cassia. Now get this. This
is just amazing. Okay. Now, if we can get like I said up to the northern sky, we can see the big difference. It's at the
horizon. We can see Cassie Pierce the horizon. So, this one I just went out and took a
guess at where to point the camera but I knew what Pierre would be but I just took the
shot. It it's it's it's like a fifteen second exposure. 7
minutes into nautical twilight and the noble was 4° above the
horizon. No I didn't even see this visually. I just took the shot then then I saw these
stars and I matched them to an ABSO star chart and then you can see that little star at the
very bottom in between the leaves of the tree is a Nova Casa which we had here I went
out a couple nights later and I was able to see it visually with binoculars. I like 2°
higher but still, I thought that was kind of a cute catch.
So now, we talk about I think what? TSP people are all about
and it's the dark skies and deep sky objects and what you can see and you know, we have
really do have what's considered portal class one
skies where you can see there's a there's a band and GM Thirty-three naked eye shadows
which we've done Tsp and But I do laugh at the last one.
Jupiter and Venus degrades dark adaptation. I think that's kind of a hoop but I'll show you something that that can bring
that to light. However, So, we do have the light. Here's the image. In fact, this is from
where it shows these a light band and how it grows in intensity as the sun even has a
horizon So, here's the Cdc band with the Milky way overhead
with all the planet the moon. Venus Mercury, Jupiter, Mars,
and Saturn. It was a couple of years back that we had that and
then here's a shot taken from the pants and as you can see, the shine is that overflow
above the word gang shine. with the upside down Milky way setting into the horizon with
the pleads off to the to the the right now, what's really fascinating again and this has
been said before but I always When I lived in Hawaii, I always find it interesting that
when people saw the Hawaiian skies, they always said, I've seen darker. Now, this is like
from the top of Mauna Kea and it's like, you may have seen darker but you haven't seen
truly dark skies because truly dark skies are so infiltrated with cosmic dust in the light
and everything else that they're actually bright skies. So, it's really is an oxymoron but you know, truly dark skies
are in a way truly guys And this shows you a short exposure
showing the Milky Way hub setting up upside down with the large line of clouds, a small
cloud and it's showing the ground illuminated by the Milky
Way. The light of the Milky way. Now here was Mars when it was an opposition in 2018
during the sky and telescope start butts when the stargazing Safari on this one, we took
them out to the pans and we set up. We had all these tents set up so everyone can enjoy the the sky and one of We did. We
had Mars rising. At its brightest in the East Venus was
setting in the west and the Milky Way was about nearly as high still getting high
overhead in the south and so we took this photo, Peter Tyson. we we set up a little
experiment. So here you can see on this film canister, you can see the I piece canister, the
shadow of Venus, the shadow of Mars and just coming toward us the shadow of the Milky Way
When Yeah. And you can see M Thirty-three Naked eye. It's really not an issue but one of
the things we do have in the Southern home is here. That's really glorious are the gloves,
Star clusters. They really are the brightest and the best are the Southern hemisphere Omega
Centurion Forty-seven to and the ones in a palo Just
fantastic. This one. a 362 in Tua. twenty-eight oh eight in
Corina. It's just something just a multitude. They're beautiful clusters in Moscow
and just so much but one of the things and this goes back to the same people, the bass
really? what's fascinating is the Doc Nebula that you can appreciate and II get lost in
it. So, this was a shot in the Milky Way overhead and Sagittarius. That's the dark
horse which you know, we I remember Barbara Wilson showing me that for the first time from
Texas at the Texas Star Party. So I'll always remember that
But here, you know, it was directly overhead. and this is
again, this is just a simple 150 millimeter shot and not
stacked or anything. It's just again, probably thirty to six. probably 62nd exposure again
Showing the military over here but the dark in it. It's it's incredible. This is two two
images, 250 millimeter lens images stitched together from
the pants showing the Ada Karina Nebula to the right. the cul, the sac in the middle,
alpha and beta and to the left, this is one of the most remarkable areas of the Milky
Way that unprecedented and it's splendor and this is shows you the Southern Cross and in Ada
Karina, this is just I'm I'm using you know, the diffusing
filter here but again, these are just a minute exposures.
Just look at all the objects from bright and early to planetary Nebula to open cluster toolbox, Little jukebox
a greener itself, The southern pleads just this whole swat and most of the most of everything
that you see in here. You can just see either with your naked eye or binoculars They're really incredible. Now, this is
a photograph I took up the aid of Karina and this one is probably like two or three
images stacked together. Probably with the 200 millimeter lens but it shows
you what you can do. I was even looking yesterday at the
keyhole and I'd be like through a three-inch tractor. It's it's
it's it's it's beautiful and the hocus We have we have an
8inch reflector. Now, I'm going to try to see that II was out looking at the other night. The scene was poor and I
thought I could split it. I've seen it before it in in New Zealand with a 9inch refractor clearly and of
course, I've seen it down the Winter Star Party through thirty-six inch you know, so on
and so forth but this is just things that we can see and of course, the mandala and the
clouds are just about to put it bluntly. Heavenly. They really
are naked eye objects. You can see the tarantula nebula naked eye, and Forty-seven is
brilliant. In fact, it's that bright star you see to the right of the small me cloud.
These are just some looking at them. of course as you're looking into another island universe one being torn apart
by the molecule and we have these weird and wonderful objects in another galaxy that
you can see clearly. and then the large me, a cloud this is
taking from our backyard That bright spot is the tarantula in nebula in it, You can see all
the structure and binoculars. It's it's fascinating and this is probably a 200 millimeter
shot showing the how splintered the galaxy is and Some of the
beautiful and clusters that are involved in it that you can
enjoy through your through your Telescope. It it really is a
different universe down here. So, I'm I'm encouraging you to come and visit You can win up
in the northeast corner is Victoria Falls. It's a common John, if you come to Botswana,
just go over the border to Zimbabwe and enjoy the enjoy the falls and if you want to
learn more about Botswana, I don't know if you've ever seen the movie. It's really well
done. BBC, I believe but it's called A United Kingdom and it
really gets to the heart of what the Botswana people are like. It's about the first
president of Botswana. democratically elected who is a black man who married a white
woman from England and that kind of it embraces the the
attitude of the culture. Again, there is no apartheid here in Botswana. It never was And is
it safe to travel to Botswana? Absolutely. Global peace index,
the safest place in Africa to visit in 2021 is Botswana It's
the safest country in the world and it's global peace Index score makes it safer than the
UK or Spain and I'm here to tell you that where we are in
especially it's safe and much safer than even the United States. II cannot tell you how
beautiful the people are, how friendly they are, and how peaceful they are. So, it's
just it just adds to your visit without having to worry about anything. So, we hope to see
you soon. until we meet again. Thank you for your time. That
was wonderful for you and thank you so much. You know, like I said, I've I've heard you speak before and every time that I
get the opportunity to do so, I'm ready to just jump in and do whatever it is that you've
been doing. You know, your enthusiasm It's because
absolutely he's going to say your enthusiasm for astronomy is certainly infectious and it's you know, obviously inspired a lot of us as well.
So, I really thank you for presentation and I was hoping you might have a time for a few
questions. You know, I've always wanted to ask you a few things directly and I was
really curious about your answers. You kind of hit this as well earlier but I think it
was Larry Mitchell who told me that you said there's nothing really special about your eyesight that you're AI. Think
the term was visual athlete is is that what it was? Yes. So, you know, you've lived a life
in astronomy that many of us dream of and and you have this reputation as such a great visual observer which you are
but for the average person who's you know, maybe just getting started in astronomy or maybe been at it for a while and says, you know, I can't do
the things that Stephen does. What are some tips that you would give them to to really kind of become better visual
athletes like you said? Yeah Well with with any athlete, it's really training. It's
difficult today. It's it's hard. You know, I also always call myself a nineteen century
astronomer. We're now living in the twenty-first century. I think that's more aptly put
visual athlete is great. Now, that was given that name was given to me by a member of the
amateur Telescope mixes of Boston ages ago. His name is
Lucia and after I gave a presentation, he he just and said Steve. you, I got it. I
got it. You're a professional athlete, you know, in other words, it takes the pain just
think about any sport that you do. You just don't. suddenly, well, maybe some people do, You know, you know, have a golf
swing that that that miraculously gives you a hole in one every time. I don't know but generally, it takes
practice I think today it's like that. I'm a nineteenth
century astronomer because well, I am. II. Guess I've
never been one to rush. to Russian observation. It's
always spending a lot of time behind the IP with a given
object and I know in today's world that's a difficult, very difficult concept So, but but
that's what it takes. That that really is what it takes and I can honestly tell you that
going through the log books at at Harvard Observatory when I started using a 9 inch
Telescope II, remember, I think the faintest stars that I could initially see was something on
the order of maybe like 11.6 and I was all excited about that but then as I went through the log book, you just the mac
and cheese faint faint faint. I mean, I remember seeing a sixteenth magnitude Star with the 90s III left there. you
know, for Hawaii and finding variable stars around
thirteenth and fourteenth. magnitude visually, you know, but this is this is just because I spent so much time
behind the best telescope eye piece and I know I see that there is no right or
wrong and III really I can only tell you what I do what and
what I've always done now in the in the old days, not everyone had the had the
opportunity that I did and that was initially I was the best 15 inch telescope refractor and that
was built by the original director and his son, William
Crib and George Phil Bond. So, this fifteen inch, that's 26
Feet long wooden mahogany tube and they created this plush
velvet observing chair that goes around on a railroad track and you're just sitting in the
chair. there's room enough for two people but you just sit in this chair with this huge
Telescope and there's like a little on this iron wheel that you turn to raise and lower
yourself and that's it. You sit in this position and then let's say I'm observing Saturn, you
know, and that's all you did for the night because you sat in that position and just
monitored Saturn every time you go out don't expect to see what
I see. you you go out and you see what you see. Think about
the next night. You're your mind will automatically remember what you saw the night
before. Mm-hmm. You'll see it much sooner. the next time you go out and then you'll add a
little more detail because now you're spending more time then you go out the next night what
you saw on the first sight goes bang II can see the bands on Jupiter. I So, a little fest.
what else can I see? So, your mind, you're constantly searching. It's really an
investigation. Okay? So, it's even like the other night II
was out looking at the moon and it's one thing I do is I as II
don't want to know what's been seen. I don't I want to discover myself. what's on the
moon and there's just so much, there's just so much to see
that. you I just wait for something to snap out at me and
then you look at it and then you study it in detail II. Honestly, it's all none of my
discoveries. were intentional
Like I didn't say tonight III, I'm going to go out and find a
comet. I'm going to sweeten the of the sky and I'm looking for a comet. You know, it's it's
like when I found the spokes, it was not, I'm going to go out and I'm going to to discover something inside of me It's
just like it's it's just looking relaxing, breathing,
There's no way. I mean, especially for the for the young It's an interesting thing
that you said there, Stephen. Yeah. Because you know, talking to Larry Mitchell, he mentioned the same thing. He said, you
know, looking at Stephen, you know, you guys spend a lot of time out in under dark skies
together and he said, often times, Stephen would just focus on one object the entire night
and you would have, I guess it was a black cloth or something that you have to. Yeah. to
cover and and you would just and it could be something even you know, fairly brightened and
and you know, obviously not something that is so obscure that you know, most people
wouldn't even bother to go to it. He said, you know, often times, you would be doing that with messier objects and you would spend an entire evening
just studying it and waiting for the sky conditions to change to see what else you discovered. so II always
thought that was fascinating and by the way, he gave very similar to advice to what you gave as well. You know, don't
rush it. Take take your time and you know, spend the time to to see what it is that you can
see and and what presents itself after some time as well. So, I really appreciate that and that's I think that's true
and what Larry said too is very important Atmospheric conditions change what you see
in one night doesn't mean that you're going to if you're you're, that's it. That's all you can see. It really is what
you can see over many many nights and again,
just repeat observations, Nothing different than a fan or
you know, seeing Haley's comet you know, but I've I've given
this to so many times but III know but I it's an important point It's like when I when I
first again, I didn't go out intending to see he's comet the whole project was to see how
faint I could see So that when the first person says But they
are Haley's Comet. Let's say through an eight-inch Telescope at sea level at this particular
magnitude, the idea was for me to be at 14 thousand feet using a twenty-four inch
Casa Grain reflected that would have mirrors by Te. That was just polished. I'm at 14
thousand feet with, you know, with bottled oxygen looking at the Zenith, you know, that this
feel, how can you be in this field and so the the the whole irony of the story is
Hi. Well, I got this. Okay. I have to be all the people. I
don't have to but anyway, You know, I've had I've had someone gave me what it's called the photo stat that it wasn't even
a photocopy. It's called a photo stat of the polymer sky survey. that I was using and to
see but and I was recording stars that I thought were fainted in the sky but I did
not see. Okay, I did not see the comet and when I brought them because now next to me
that the 88inch telescope, they had ACCD camera and it will fall in the So, I
came back after spending an hour. Eyes are bloodshot saying, alright, I I've spent
so much time looking in the field and this is how faint I could see. I couldn't see the comet. I told him but I said,
geez, you know, the comet must must be really faint because I think I'm seeing fainted than
the stars in the sky and then he said they had a Paloma sky chart there. They looked at
them and compared them and said, oh, I'm sorry, Steve but this photo only goes down to
like sixteenth magnitude, not the 21st. but I can tell you the stars that you charted are
on the Paloma Sky survey near the limit And they said but I
have to. I have to because here's the thing, Okay? So, I understand the first thing I said was I did not see the
comet. That's the important thing, right? They're the ones who said, Steve, you just sat
down to the limit of the Paloma Sky surveyed. The problem is you're looking in the wrong field. Oh, thought I had
tested. I had tested. Look at the time I was living in Boston and I had taken the UT time for
Boston and applied in Hawaii. That's what altitude does to
you. So, I didn't No, I didn't. Compensate for the six-hour
different in the movement. So, I was looking in the wrong field but the point is that even in the wrong field, I was
blindly charting stars down to the limit of the Palomar Then of course, the second time I
went out, I did, I did see it but the important thing here was it's the photon hits you
know, like when you're seeing faint you you you, you collect
photons. It's like bang The first time when you see something, it's did I see it?
Alright and then bang. you get another pin. You go. I think that was right. And then more
photos on hips, the more times you keep getting a repeat hit, then you build your confidence
level enough to say that's it that this this is real. This is what I'm seeing like someone
someone Hey, what's the thread? It's
someone said Steve O'Mara. Why is it Steve O'Mara Never says
percent confident. he saw something. Why is he always 100%? Sure. it's a valid point
but just for me, Why? What's the purpose of saying? I think
I saw something and to me, I eat the seed or I or I don't know if I get a 65% tile if I'm
like, I'm 65% confident, I saw it. I sit down and say I didn't see it. I have to try another
night and I'll keep trying to either say, I can't see it. or
I see it There's there's only in my book, there's only one way or the other. If you're 90%
confident of seeing something, you you're not still You need to back out and observe again
until you're 100% up until that point, it's a no go. You know, it's it doesn't mean anything.
So, that's kind of why I if I, if I can shamelessly plug one of your books, Stephen. Yeah.
Honestly, the the first observing book I ever read when
I first started an astronomy was your book on the SCA objects and and I'm and I'm I'm
I'm honestly here to tell you, I think that reading that book and especially the the first
part of the book, you you explain an awful lot of what you're just not what not with
the same enthusiasm that you just did but how to observe, okay? It's it's hard to capture
your enthusiasm in in in words that we just saw and I would
strongly recommend and I'm and I hope there's a lot of younger folks watching this this
program recommend that they get that book and if if nothing
else, thank you. If nothing else for the for the first part
of that book which is a phenomenal guide to how to observe and I really thank you
for that IIIII. Think it. I think it helped me pull myself into astronomy and a lifelong
passion. So, thank you. Oh, good to see you. Welcome. Yeah, I still take that book out with me to the Texas Star Party and
other Star parties as well even though it's one of the first books I had and and most recently, 104. Hundred. Yeah.
Yeah. That was fun. There's someone else who wrote to me
and said, I'm really disappointed, Steve. that the Herschel, I said, I love the
Herschel 400 but but III have to say, I'm disappointed that it's not in the same format as
the book. First of all,
You can, you can use it at Gold's Gym to do that.
bench presses with it. I will add something in one right even
I have a question for you, man. You've written millions of articles and all kinds of cool
stuff and you know, a lot of the sky and telescope stuff we've all read but you know, I
know you've been to multiple CSP and you know, TSP, like you said is is is something that
brings you a lot of joy and I wonder, you know, maybe what's what's one, you know, really
standout moment for you that you have from TSP that's still to this day just sticks with
you so many hire you. Oh no.
There's there's so many. Oh my god. Where do I begin? Oh, I know where to begin. Begin at
the beginning. Alright, first time. This is just a funny story. Okay? But it's it sticks
with me. Alright. So, I was calming down. I was working at Sky and telescope at the time.
and I came down to talk to Tsp. It must have been after I found
Haley's Comet. So, mid 80s and
so here I am representing SMT and I had I had a suit coat. I shirt and tie. Got all dressed
up. and I get up there and they're
introducing me and i'm III start to talk and then suddenly, two women start
walking up the aisle and then I'm talking and I'm watching. where are they going? And the next thing know, the undressing
me, they're taking off my my coach jacket once I'm doing my time, they start undoing my
butts My name is Larry and Barbara. get up and said,
welcome to Tsp. No tags allowed.
That's awesome. So, like when you said, you know, we have a t-shirt waiting for you. Kind of like, okay, I get the
picture. I get the picture. putting clothes on you now as opposed to the other. Yes.
right? Yeah. I mean, that's but that kind of, you know what though? It's just I mean, of
course, we do so many beautiful and wonderful observations at Tsp. I mean, II mean. Okay.
Alright. A memory that sticks out was when Clyde to came and
Larry and Barbara and the Goldbergs and I think Brent was
there as a guest speaker and David Levy and and we, I came
down with which we all all at the We had observing challenges
and there was a harbor astronomer who said, Steve, we went out to lunch once with Lee
Robinson who is the editor of Sky's Telescope then and he said, Steve, I think, do you
think it's possible? that you guys can see a gravitational lens. you know, and I was like,
well, I don't, I don't know. He told me all about this thing and he goes, well, I said, look at it. I'm going to the Texas
Star Party and they have lots of instruments that TSP and I think we should, we should try it there and that was the time.
Clyde Tomball was there and it's so we did. we we we we got the we we were able to see the
the twin quasar in Ursa major, you know, through Larry's instrument, the barber's instrument through Summerfield
Ken's instrument. Eighteen inch and it's on and on and then I
saw it. It it's just he was he was ecstatic just to be able to
imagine that for someone who, oh boy, you know, a farm boy
going from just like Nick and I started drawing planets and getting access to, you know,
the low observatory and and then oh it just and then for him to gravitational lens. You
know, just putting them into another dimension that was just fascinating aside from the fact
of his puns, it's really horrible puns and jokes. He was just, he used to tell like he
used to tell him he had dozens of crow jokes and we've been
walking along under the dark Texas skies, you know, with the red flashlights of course and
then he'd say, where does a crow go to drink? a crowbar.
and then he sit there and just he just sit there. He's stand there and just wait for you to laugh and then like Jupiter was
up once and he was walking along and he said, there's Jupiter by Job and then nobody
said anything and he didn't get give up. He just kept going. by Job by Job. what we get, we get
it. you know, from from anything
from you know, two in the morning, corn dogs. The first time I ever had a corn dog and
the Frito pies. Absolutely. You know, it's interesting you mentioned that and then, you know, and then they had Larry
and Barbara and and Matt and they had the ain't no catalog. Yes. Right. You know, in the
arguments we have on the field, fun arguments, you know, just everyone and Matt Devore is
going around and we used to call him the Celestial police
to make sure that that person accurately, you know, it was
such fun. It was such a great camaraderie between everyone on the field and and and you know,
like going up Larry's Thirty-six inch, whatever and
I'm standing up there and holding on trying to hold on to the Telescope Yeah. But they
really at Texas Star Party because that was the planetary observer and like I said in my book, it really a Texas the You
know, the Goldbergs and Amelia Goldberg's and and Barbara
highly acclaimed visual women, astronomers, visual astronomers, and and and it's
just so many people. I mean, but They really brought my
interest into the deep sky. the deep deep sky and and to tell
you the truth. Larry, even showed me a deep sky object one
time. It's a look. How much can you see? I think it was like in the Siamese twins, galaxies and
they're looking at for the title tales and I don't remember the first view but I remember the second time I came
to Tsp. Larry showed me them again. He says, what do you see? And I said, oh, I see this. I see this. I see the
title tales. He goes, huh, you didn't see that the first time you over here. So, it goes back
to what we were saying before, you know, so experience that the first time I look at something, I didn't see the
title tales, you know, and then the second time I look, I did without even knowing I had
increased my my deep sky prowess. If you want to call it that and yeah, I mean I-0 and
we just a crazy things we did Martha, we used to go from TSP down to Martha. I don't know
this story but Oh, what? Oh, because I was interested in bats and so we have bats,
detectors and we used to love and go out and look for bats which used to live right above the Texas Star Party sign at
the Gateway. Mm hmm. But anyway, they were also are flying around in Martha and we would drive down to Marfa and I
remember one time, we, it was David Levy and Larry and Jet
and we were under a street lamp in in Martha and throwing up
pebbles and looking at the bats coming down to catch the pebbles and then This car
pulled up like a Cadillac and there were two ladies of the night inside and then rolled down the window and they went.
hi, and I just started playing with bats and then
It was just classic and we had fun. So, we went out to look at the Marvel lights and this is
the days of the green laser when they first came out, huh? And then a school bus pulled up
and this this is a terrible story but a school bus pulled up and we all hit in the bushes
and then now the kids come out of the school bus and they're all like looking for the Marvel
lights and. Wow. And then whoever had the I forgot who it was that the green laser. So
I'm just trying to get up into the bushes. All the kids are ringing and they ran back on the bus.
If you're one of those kids watching this now, you know, don't worry. There's a kid that
will never go on an adult. Now, you will. I swear we saw a green lights out there. Oh my
god. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Well, Stephen, if I could ask you one more question, you've been very generous with
your time today. Yeah. You know, you've you've amassed a tremendous, you know, just
mental catalog of all these things that you've observed and you know, a lot of what you've
spoken about, they're still on my bucket list to observe as well but do you have a favorite object that no matter what it
is or what time of year it is or you know where you're at, you just love observing that
object Yeah. Oh boy. Well, I'm I guess I have to. It's it's
old but I have to say the Orion Nebula. Oh, wow. I mean, you know, given that at that time
and again but it hurts that to the time I had at Harvard because they they devoted an
entire animal to the Orion I'll be like, you know, so they studied that thing to pieces
and and I just used to love the drawings that they made of it and and when I was reading through the journals,
everything so that that has an intimate tie to me Saturn of
course is is is beautiful. but then it deep sky objects, you
know, beyond beyond Orion. Good
So many It's like Larry said he's trying to pick your favorite kid, right? Yeah, it
is. It really is. I know in the
okay. Like I have like a little favorites of things like the Southern Hemisphere. Mm hmm.
There's the little jewel box Like everyone talks about the jewel box but there's another object in Corina. It's just
it's a tiny little thing. Little pip squeak thing to the naked eye binoculars. You could
just start to start to just just start to resolve it Then you put the Telescope on even a
small Telescope and it's just like it just punches you. It's
magnificent. It's it's it's all together. The the the little
the jewel box itself is beautiful in itself but it's a little more spread out of this
one. This is magnificent. I think it's superior to to the the jewel box and every time
I'm out, I have to II do have to look at that because it excites me to see it that
tense, the liberation of of stars I don't know. Like I
said, I Cheers. every objects I know that's why every object
that's so good and I hate asking that question but I know but that's okay but you know,
there's it is true but I'm always fascinated by the answers. Yes. Yeah. You know,
but II, guess it comes down to the classic things of what you first observe when you were
young for me anyway. right II. Okay. For example and again, I
know they're tripped but the beehive cluster See now because I remember the first time I saw
that through binoculars and I was a boy scout and someone had the Zoom binoculars and I don't
know. I saw this fuzzy thing when I was a kid up in the sky and this kid handed me the
scout leader handed me the orion binocular viewer for telescope with two eyepieces and pointed it out and I was blown away but it
just shattered into starlight that really that really just
sticks with me but I mean, I have my favorite stars for, you know, for personal reasons
like, okay, Bach, It's his favorite because he
spent so much time studying. It was a Karina in the in the star, Ada Corina. He already already said when I die, that's
where I'm going to go with the aid of Karina. I mean, I love a of every time I go out and it's
in the sky. I have to look at a Karina just because you don't know what it's going to do. It's just, it's just a
beautiful object in the nebula surrounding it but even just the star a Karina. but yeah.
anyway, that's wonderful. Yeah. Oh, again, it's a good, it's a
good question but so many objects are so beautiful and I and II had a suspicion. you
might say that as well because no, that's okay but it's it's true. Yeah. It's 1 day. you
know, 1 day, someone's going to go Absolutely. I think it's a
testament to the beauty of the universe above and yeah, all that it has to offer for us and
what you and what you say there is I'm going to totally be
honest because I've spent now the majority of my life under. okay? Admittedly, really dark
skies in Hawaii now to Botswana. I spend
the vast majority of my time. I think looking at the sky. Okay,
II want to capture with the naked eye can see under a dark
sky and what we all know is a vanishing universe. So, I'm trying to record like when I
show you the photograph of the gaming shine, you know, when you can see the gay and no one knows how the enemy can see the
gay and shine anymore. It's become a myth, you know, but it it's real and so I'm trying to
It's just In fact, I have to say the first couple of years,
swear to god. 2 years. the first 2 years that I've lived in Botswana, I did not learn
the southern sky because I wanted to gain that childhood
wonder of looking at the sky and not knowing what I'm seeing. I mean, I go to the
northern sky and I say, I look up and up square pegs. Oh, there's one. Oh, you're right.
You just can't erase that. You know, you you have a pattern and a bang. this evolutionary
control for your reptilian brain takes over. here. It's in the southern sky. It was just
magnificent to be able to capture that unknown. What are these things? What And then,
you know, so then I started to learn more and more about the sudden constellations. I was always a big head about the sub
constellation saying that, you know, a bunch of mechanical things that are you compass and
then let's learn them when you get to learn them and you get to see them and you get to appreciate them and you get to
appreciate when they were created during the age of enlightenment. and what it just
becomes a whole new world. It really is. of a whole new way of exploring but yeah, the
Naked eye sky and those faint ghost meteors and whatever the sky can throw at me as far as
what I can see with the eye not you know, not so much. How can you see you Just the things
that are beautiful that you can that just make you want to look up and AII, just wanted to
capture that and somehow, keep a record of it so that those
were the days my friend. Absolutely. Well, Stephen as I said before, thank you so much
for joining us today. This is an absolute treat and like I said, every time I've heard you speak, I'm always inspired to
to get out there and I think I can speak for Will and Don ourselves. we want to get out to Botswana soon and and
certainly take advantage of those beautiful skies that you have and again, thank you for all that you've done for
astronomy. all that you've done for the Texas Star Party. All the wonderful books that you've put out for us and then, like I
said, all of us have these in our bookshelves and I look forward to the new books that
are coming out and hopefully, we can join in on one of these tours coming up soon. Yes, please do. Looking forward to
that would be so much fun. Thank you. What an honor that would be but thank you so much. My daughter would be ours. Thank you. Really because what
TSP has done for me in my own education and growth. I'm It's a it's a fantastic Star Party.
I wish you well. I wish I could be there. Miss you guys and
take care. We'll see you soon. Thank you, Steven. Thank you.
man. Just an epic epic talk. That was, I don't know, Joe.
What do you think? Oh, you're muted, Joe. Ha ha. You did it
tonight. I muted tonight. Yes. You know, some people will see
athletes like LeBron James, or whatnot on the street and and totally geek out over them. We did the same thing with Stephen
O'Mara. So, it was just a fascinating conversation with him and he's so down to earth and and gracious with his time
and willing to share all of that. So, I was really happy that we had that opportunity and and that we got the chance
to share that with everybody else here and that was only one half of our guest speaker list
tonight because we also have Doctor Carl Gebhardt who's going to be joining us in just a little bit of time to share
with us some of the initial results that they're getting from the Hobby Eberly Telescope Energy. Experiment. That's
called heads. You'll hear that term a lot tonight and what they're doing is using that
tool to to measure the expansion rate 10 billion years ago with the goal of discovering the underlying
nature of the universe. So, stay tuned for that. That's going to be an awesome presentation with Doctor Carl
Gebhardt. He's actually backstage. You can't see him now. we see him but he'll be joining us here shortly. So,
looking forward to that and I always have this ready for showing of the data that we get
from the board of of visitors there at McDonald's Observatory. This is just a subset of some of that data and he'll talk a lot about that.
I'm sure. Yeah, fascinating stuff they're doing on on the mountains out there in West
Texas just like a few miles down the road from the Prude Ranch where we have Texas Star Party and so it's you know,
it's one of those things you can kind of just go out there and and knock on doors until you find people like Karl to
talk to but now it's it's a great thing. It's a great place, a great facility, so much to do and see in that area
man. it's just it's It's a lot of good times and you know,
it's Friday night, Joe and we have guest speakers on Friday nights and that's always cool
but one thing we do out at the Prude Ranch on Friday is we all
get next to the mess hall or the cafeteria, whatever you want to call it and Robert
Reeves gets on the roof with a camera. We all assemble and we take a group photo and Don Joe
and I thought it would be really cool, really nostalgic to take a look at some of the
old Texas Star Party group photos that go back into the 80s. There's a few years that
are missing for whatever reason but you know, it might be cool for us to take a little stroll
down memory lane and I'm in some of these pictures. I know Joe, you are in some of them too. Yeah And cool thing to do,
right? It really is and I'm trying to find the video here by the way. So, this is
something I've gotta get queued up but no, it really is. You know, for anybody who's been to the Texas Star Party the photos
on Fridays, he said, Will. is that usually when we do them? Yeah, it's usually on Friday and I mean it's you know, I
think it's about maybe one or something. that's right. After I think the lunch on Friday and
it's cool because you know, the first couple of years I went to Tsp, I kind of missed it II
didn't really understand what was going on. I was like Larry Mitchell, I was there for the skies. I'm I'm working on all
night sleeping all day. I don't need to do any of these other activities and then over time,
I was like, man, you know, I really should be these pictures because this is pretty cool. So, you know, it's it's one of
those things that you have to you have to really get out there and and and get it, get
in the mix. for it. So, we have that as I wonder if Don can
maybe help us out with that. I don't know how we ended up missing that one. You're not
sure where that is right now? but anyway, we'll look for that one and come back to it. I
think we can probably give away some door prizes real quick. Oh, here we go. Oh, there we go. Okay, there's no music
done. I don't think the
We can narrate over it. Yeah. Okay. So, this go back, you know, so far that you've got the black and white photos
there, right? It's 1983 much larger crowd for the photo in
83. yet right there at the Prude Ranch on that one Kind of recognize that area. and what
we'll do is we'll also upload this video to various Youtube channels. probably astronomical
society. You'll get on their YouTube. I'll get it online and you can check this out anytime you want. Try to spot yourself.
It's kind of like a Where's Waldo of finding yourself in the in the the ESP photos and
there's a lot of people man over the years. It really is. They're being creative coming
up with everybody posed in the state of Texas. Yeah, Yeah. State of Texas there. Yeah.
90s. The the color photos really started coming about, you know, that was when I think
we were, you know, using Theros or something like that. And here we are in the new
millennium. Yeah. 2001.
and the interesting thing, well, like I said, I know the audio's out on this one but you know, when you look at these
photos and I know you put this video together, you know, it's amazing to see how many different people there are but
at the same time, how many folks are there throughout the kind of that entire span? Yeah
and you know, you can go the whole Star party without meeting certain people. They're either on other fields or this
or that. Maybe you meet them in the dining hall, you never see them at night. You know, everybody here's a little their
little sections Prude Ranch to do the do the observing. all there to do. observing like
Steven said, you know, we're we're there to hunt the faint stuff. So, let's get it done, right? But there is that
camaraderie thing that you get when you go to a Texas Star party that is invaluable. really. It's like networking.
It's it's being there with the people you already know and then every year you meet someone new, you make friends
and then it's like a family reunion after that. It really is. You're going out to the ranch to meet with the with the
whole family, you know, and it's really cool to over the years. how wardrobe has changed
as well. Well, we're not known for our fashion senses. amateur astronomer other than these
Texas Star Party T shirts. Like I said, fresh off the runways in the lawn in Paris, Yeah. And
it's yeah. Yeah. You can tell we're definitely, we definitely know what we're doing as far as
that goes but no, it's it's just a good time. all the way through the years. there's
been, you know, just great, great times at Texas Star Party, right? And these photos
kind of highlight that and hey, if you're there and you're in the picture, you're part of history at that point. I'm sure
somebody has all the years hung up in their office or something. Probably Robert Reeves himself actually, the guy takes the photos nowadays.
Absolutely and so, it's really cool and you can order these
while you're at the Texas Star Party. I don't know. I think it's like $10 or something or somewhere at fifteen to get a
printed out copy which is pretty cool. Absolutely and display 'em. Yes. this is when
we had a Primera join us. You can see the costs of the flag there up at the front and she was a fantastic speaker. I
mean, just really motivational and inspirational. Yeah. And you can see the the back row.
We are very excited to be there. Usually. yes. They're the ones who are super stoked
to be at Texas Star Party and 2019 was a fun year. That was
the last year we all got to see which is the last year. Yes, absolutely. I'm in there somewhere. I think Joe, you
might be in there or Yeah, as a couple. anyway. yes, lots of friends we see in here. We see
Larry Mitchell in the middle there Just a ton of cool people to hang out with at the Texas
Star Party. I mean it's just it's so much fun and you know,
Friday night again we're on Friday night. It's the weekend y'all. Here we are. We
giveaways at the Texas Star Party. So, I think maybe we should do the what I guess the
second part of tonight's giveaway or are we doing? We're actually going to hold off on that right now. We are. Yes,
Because we have Doctor Carl Gebhardt with us. Oh, we want to learn about everything that's going on there. So, hey,
Carl. How are you? I'm doing well. How are you all doing? We're doing fantastic. Thank you. Really appreciate you
joining us tonight and you know, giving us an overview of all the work that you guys are doing there in West Texas. It's
not too far from where we have the Texas Star Party. So, I really appreciate it and for
those of you who aren't familiar with Doctor Carl Gebhardt, he is the Herman and
professor of astrophysics at the University of Texas. He grew up in Rochester, New York. so that's a little bit of a
ways away from from West Texas but his career is taking him through Michigan State University, Rutgers University,
University of Michigan University of California, Santa Cruz, and eventually to the University of Texas in 2000. He
works on a of galaxy studies ranging from black holes to dark matter to Dark Energy. He
leads the Hobby Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment head decks which uses the head to make the most
accurate measure of the expansion rate of the early universe and I've had the
opportunity to listen to you talk before your your your presentations are absolutely engaging. I think this is going to be a special treat for
everybody watching Doctor Carl Gebhardt, thank you for joining us. Well, thank you. It's a
it's a pleasure to be here II Am excited to talk about the
work we're doing out the observatory and specifically to the Texas Star Party. It is
when I So, just before I came to Texas, everyone, all the astronomers out in California
would say, have you been to the Texas Star Party? Have you heard about it? And they were all super excited and it was
fantastic. So, it's it's it's great to be here. So. great. So, So, I'm going to tell you about the Hobby Eberly
Telescope, A dark energy Experiment I'm going to start on my board on my whiteboard.
So, right here and just to do some very simple diagrams and then I'll jump to like a talk
where I want to show you some of the results. So, what we're doing out at the observatory is
we're trying to understand the expansion of the universe, One of the goals here is to is to
it's it's to to understand where the big Bang came from. what gravity is It is
remarkable that we don't understand what gravity is. We know what it does. We know if I
take this marker and if I let go, it will fall down and we can talk about the curvature of
space-time. You know, we can talk about in terms of a force which it isn't really but we
don't understand the nature of why space time is curved. and
we are in a big mystery right now and that The universe is
expanding in a way that we just don't understand and some of
the solutions to why it is expanding that way is the big
bang may be wrong. Gravity may not be understood yet or
there's a new type of energy out there. So, anyway, so this is what I want to talk about
and let me start out with what we're doing at the Telescope. So, I want to show you a couple
maps later on that I am super excited about and every time I make these maps and I just made
one just yesterday, I made a new map of the of the very early universe because we got
some new data analysis and I'm going to show you that map and I'm going to show you the map
before the hundred collaborators in my in my A collaboration have seen it yet.
So, what we are doing is we're looking out in the universe. So, let's let's imagine a
person here. Let me make sure you can see this. Okay, so we're down here and we're looking out in the universe and
we have a smile on our face because we're looking out in the universe, okay? And when you go out at night and you look out in the universe now,
we're not looking at particular objects. We're taking the light from the individual objects and
we're making a match. So, we look over a huge angle of the universe and I'll show you
exactly where we're actually are looking all around the big dipper. So, we look out in the
universe on the wedge. Alright, So just imagine You look this way in the universe and you
look this way in the universe, We live in a weird universe that we all understand and I'm
sure many of you understand all these things but I'm going to walk you through because there's a few concepts that I just want to make sure we get.
So, it's really important and we all understand that as and so and so as we look out, maybe
we see a galaxy, there's a galaxy here. It's it's a galaxy out here. There's a galaxy out
here. As we look out, we see these galaxies. Now, we all know about about. Look back
time and the universe has done us a favor and the favor is the speed of light is fine and why
that's a favor to us. It is we we wouldn't be so hard to do anything if the universe hasn't
provided this gift that the speed of light is finite because as we know, when we
look out, we see that object, that object and that object, the objects that are farther
away because the light had to travel are young. So out here You have young and this is
early in the universe. These objects over here are old and
this is late. So, I'm often going to use the words early for the early time in the
universe and late for the late time in the universe, there is an ultimate limit too and this
is this is why III want to make this plot. I want you to follow me along because I'm going to
show a map that we've made already. There is a boundary that we get This is what we
call the observable universe. and we cannot see beyond the
observable universe as far as as we can tell the observable universe is that link for which
you take the age of the universe multiply by the speed of light and you are abounded
by what you can see. Our universe is only so big. the observable universe is only so
big and we can't do anything about it because the speed of light is finite That doesn't
mean there's nothing beyond that. We know there's we we we are pretty assured that there
is stuff beyond the observable universe. What it, how far it is? We don't know. You know,
it's it's it's the size of the universe of the whole universe. It's somewhere between the
observer of the universe and really really big and really really big is the best scientific term that we can apply but anyway, so we look
out and we go out and what we're doing here and this is where it gets weird as you look
in time. Let me as you look to ones further and further away,
you're looking at an office that are younger and younger. Now, what happens though is we know these are best theory
which is pretty well understood is that the universe at some point in the past was small and
hot every model, every and we do have multiple models beyond
the Big Bang but every model the fundamental assumptions
that at some point, you have to explain that the universe was small and hot. Well, this is
weird. Look what I'm doing here. So, you have an object. See, there's an object on this part of the universe. We look
there and then way over here, this is an object over here in the past though, the universe
was smaller. We started out in the Big Bang with everything in a very, very small spot. The
the Where the size of the observable universe where our
math breaks down in the early universe was a size of a grapefruit, Okay? And so and so
that's that's kind of where our math breaks down. We can't really say what what what goes
beyond that point. We can't draw that down to a point of zero. In other words. so you
have these objects that are at the edge of the that for us are very far away. Okay. But for
them, they right next to author. So, we have this weird
construct that as you look out the objects are actually, they appeared to us far away because
that's the way our universe is right now because we think we think light travels in a straight line, right? In fact,
the universe is significantly small at that point. When you look at the objects at the edge
of the universe, you're really seeing very, very small features. very These objects
are very close together. So, we have two things that so there's multiple things that we can do
by by by looking at objects and making a whole model, a whole
map of where the objects are. Two things can happen. Imagine two objects that are close
together in the universe. The universe is So, now, I'm going to walk this backwards. Two
objects are expanding out and then, what happens is because there's a gravitational
attraction between these two. if they were close together in the beginning, they would slowly come together and so how
fast they come together though is dependent on the size of gravity on the effect of
gravity and so what goes on is that if we can make this map and I'll show you the map in a
moment because I'm super excited about it. If we can make this map a few things we
can get here. One is we can get how the gravity works. That is
we can measure the effect of gravity. We believe we have an understanding and a large
scandals. It goes as one over the distance squared. This is what we're all taught. It works remarkably well. Okay, so
that's one. So, that's one thing we're going to test this is this the best model for
gravity on very large scale but the other thing that's important is that we're as we
make this map of galaxies, we can get The universe expands and this is the whole point of
headbands is to make this map of this evolution again because
we have this gift The speed of light is finite. We can make this map of how things develop.
So, so so so that's the that's the essence of he is that is we are after how the galaxies are
clustered together early on in the universe. we can compare that at different times. You
look at how they're clustered at this time this time this time and this time and then you
can detangle the effects of gravity if you have to mod how gravity works with how much the
universe expands. That's what he says. So, now, let me show you a few things. Let me just
share my screen. sure it shows a couple of
buttons here. Make sure Oops. Oops. Hold on a second. I got
the wonders of technology. The wonders. I got the picture. I want to share. We can get to
the origins of the universe but let's let's do the entire screen. So, can you see it?
Now, we're adding it to the stream. Oh, yeah. There it is. Okay. So, let me pop this up
here and I want to talk about a part of it. So, this is Hex Hex is the Hobby Telescope. Dark,
Energy, Experiment. We came up with this idea So, just to tell you how projects work. I came
up with this idea in 2000 2002. It's 2021. I don't even know
anymore. That's almost, that's going to be 20 years next year. It is crazy. how long AA Big
Project takes to develop. We we really didn't start building until like ten to 12 years ago
but now we're a full steam and ended up being a 42 million dollars project. We came up with here in Texas. It's
mostly, it's all our Telescope. It's mainly financed by a Texas, A Texas A and M Oxford
there and then a bunch of Germany. it institutes. We've got some support from the National Science Foundation,
the Texas Advanced Computing Center. So, in a nutshell, what we're doing is we're taking one of the largest telescopes in
the world and that's this Telescope here. This is the hot. So this is a cut out of the hobby. I believe the Hobby
Eberly Telescope. a ten meter Telescope. so it's in the top five optical telescopes in the
whole world. So, we take the biggest Telescope. We built the largest specs instrument which
means we take the light and we divide it into its constituent wavelengths and this is how we get how far away an object is.
That's how we get the red chip. how fast it's moving. So, this Spectra is about, it's how you
count somewhere about 100 times more powerful than any other spectrum. Las tell us one of
the largest telescopes in the world. Largest country back by far. We're doing one of aren't the surveys ever done on a big
Telescope in terms of time in terms of observations and then, we're using the Texas Advanced Computing Center which is in
the top five most powerful computers. Number one for one that a university has access
to. So, we took these four things and we put it together and we have a crazy Experiment
and it's often called that crazy Texas Experiment. That's what a lot of my colleagues around the world have been
calling it which I decide that's fine by me. Okay. So just Here are some numbers.
Heads up by the numbers or 40% Complete right now which is super exciting. So, I've been
doing this project for almost 20 years now. We've been taking data for four. We have another
two 3 years ago and people tell me that so long and it is just a blink of the eye to me. I've
been doing this for 20 years. I got two or three more years and we're going to have a complete sort of it's fantastic. We're
going to have two to 3 million of galaxies. I've wrote all the data reduction a code in four
I'm old. All the modern code is written in Python for is so
much faster. For those of you who are are jockeys out there, they would appreciate that. It
is so and and and so, I enjoy that aspect of it. So, I code all day long. It's people want
to know what I do at code. So, what we're going to, we we are on track to make the best
measure ever of how galaxy are distributed 10 billion years ago, we have 10 Thousand fields
to observe That's plan. We've observed a 40% of those one 1
billion Spectra 1 trillion resolution elements. So, what the code is going to do, it's
going to, it's going to search sift through and I'll show you a couple of these resolution elements. It's going to sift
through 1 trillion resolution elements and find galaxies.
Okay, so this is the big thing we did on the Telescope. We took the biggest, one of the biggest telescopes in the world
and we took it down. We took it down for about 10 years and we put on whole new top end and we
put the Spectra graphs on the side. The only thing we left intact was the primary. We basically rebuilt the whole
thing. It had too small of a field. This is where most of the money went in the project. It's always the case where you
have this, you know, you're getting money for your project. You have money that you that you plan to do for the science
analysis but there's always, there's always overruns on the instrument side and it's because it's hard and you can't
have the science without the So, all the money is always diverted. We're doing well with
the National Science Foundation but still, it was it was a lot of months what it's built. It's done. It's beautiful. It's to
specification and that is fantastic. This is the project that I actually envisioned that
I came up with in 2002. It ended up being almost exactly the same which I was very excited about. So, this is the
pie chart which you've probably seen and what the universe is made of. Okay. And this is what we Now, this is what we think
is in the universe. I'll explain why in the hell he is going to try to solve this. So, there is 74% and and these
numbers pop around by a few percent a seventy to 74% is in
a dark energy and I'll I'll talk about that. 21% is in dark matter and the rest of a 5% is
a normal matter and what we are made of what we live on Earth is a very small fraction that
mass is normally in hydrogen and helium and nuts and we as heavy elements are amazingly
.03 Percent. So, we are completely utterly irrelevant to the universe and that's why
I love astronomy. So, this is this is dark matter and Dark Energy ninety. I've always said
95% of the universe is in stuff we don't know about that is
remarkable. The dark matter. The problem with Dark Matter has been around for a very long time. I've been giving talks
like this for a long time and I've been saying for a while within one or 2 years, we're
going to measure Dark matter particle. that has not happened
and right now, I would say that it might not be a particle and we might not and we might have to modify the theory of what
dark matter is which is really exciting. Dark Energy is even more mysterious. I'll talk
about that but the way we measure this is this model that I showed on the beginning of how the universe expands. We we
look at how the galaxies are distributed. We turn that back in to an expansion and we can
explain that expansion by 21% of Dark Matter and 74% a dark
energy. So, let me go. It's just I'm I'm going to show you
a few sets of slides that are the same in terms of concept This is probably one of the
more important cartoons that have been shown multiple times down in the bottom left is so
we have a problem when we talk about the evolution of the universe. We have three
dimensions of space and one dimension of time but I have a two dimensional board in order to explain this So, you have to
allow me some leverage in that and and and and try to try to understand how this goes. So,
time axis is the one that's along with the diagonal of this comb and the space axis. So, what we think about when we
think about the universe as a whole, you don't think about the expansion of the universe
itself. Okay. The universe is as far as we can tell is infinite. So, you know, you
can't do infinite I mean infinitely times too. So, three times. Philly. So, you can't.
It's what we talk about when we talk about expansion. We talk about the average distance
between galaxies in the universe is increasing and then in that regard, it helps you to
understand expansion because then you don't care about infinity. What's happening is the galaxies are effectively
spreading out in the universe as it goes. So, down here, you can imagine here's the big bang at the point here and time is
going out and the galaxies are spreading out and what happens So, this is a cartoon. So, if
you follow the follow this a cursor In the very beginning, there was a sudden expansion
which we call inflation, okay? And we don't understand that. So, that's a new concept. That's a new song. That's a new
Experiment. Trying to understand what inflation is. We're ways away from from
making that work but very early on our universe expanded very quickly and since then, it's
expanding slowly but still expanding. Now, the problem is that as you expand because
there is mass in the universe and because we think think
understand how gravity works that a galaxy on one side of the universe say over here and
a galaxy on the other side of the universe over here will have an effect. We'll have a
gravitational effect. The galaxy over here is my cursor. We'll pull on the galaxy over
here and that expansion should slow down over time. Okay, that's the theory. However,
when we went out to measure that expansion, it turned out that in fact, was not
happening. What's happening is that they the universe was accelerating. That is the
expansion was getting bigger. This is the term we call Dark Energy. We live When we when we
when we live in the universe. 13.8 billionaires after the universe began, we live at this
transition point between When a gravity slow things down and
when it began to expand out. So, So, we're at we're living at this inflection point when
the when a dark energy is beginning to take over, that
makes no sense. I'll come back to that later. Okay? So, just hold on to that though. So,
history of dark energy 1919 Einstein proposes an
acceleration based on he had bad info from astronomer, a brilliant guy but if you give a brilliant guy, bad info, you're
going to get the wrong answer. So, he came up with the idea of a dark energy 10. Years later
in 1929, Hubble discovered that the universe was both larger and expanding. Einstein was
actually embarrassed and retracted. This idea of dark energy back then, he called it a Cosmo con.
Fast forward. 7 years. two teams. Reese Smith and Mutter
discovered got the noble prize for discovering that there is a need for for an extra
acceleration hiking back 8 years ago to Einstein's idea today. Now, 2030, years later,
I don't even know 27 Years later, Ferris have drawn a blank. Farris have failed us.
They can't solve what that is. We don't know what's going on. I think it's the observers to the rescue at this point that
actually trying to make fine detail on that of the universe. That's where we are. Our this
term, I've said multiple times, they have assured in the the visitor's center that they they
took from me what we call Dark Energy may not be dark and it
may not be Energy. What it is that phrase, Dark Energy is a
phrase we use. That's our lack of understanding of how the universe is expanding. I call
it our ignorance term. I mean, it's it's not you can't do much beyond that. It's it's we don't
know what it is. So, don't get hung up on the frame. It was a really clever phrase. That sounds great. It sounds
important. Dark Energy sounds cool. Dark matter but it is just a phrase and it's just a
phrase that that demonstrates our ignorance. This is the equation here. This is also on the, I think it's not that same
shirt. You can get it at the visitor center there and and I only put it on here because it
is a relatively simple equation. This is why I put it on yours On the left is the
observation. So, this is the observation for the expansion rate. Keep keep in mind this is
relatively easy. You have to measure the expansion rate. You measure how far an object is away, how fast it's moving. You
do that for a bunch of objects and then you make this model. That's the expenditure. How much is the universe at a given
distance expanding away from us? That's the observation. That's again, what we're doing in Hex on the right is the
theory. So, left observation, right is theory 1998. We only had that There was radiation
that there was matter and then the shape of the universe and when they did this measurement
they had the observation That was a measurement that they did. They had the theory with
the three terms and the left side didn't match the right side. In fact, the left side
was three times larger than the calculation they had on the right side and there was a
collective. Oh and so what they do, whatever scientist would do
is they end in a term and they gave it a name Dark energy and that's what we did. That is
dark energy. Okay, so now we're going to try to understand this thing and this is how it works
and he and I want to show you a map in a moment. This is the big This is the big dipper right here. This region here is
what we're going to observe. We are going to do this crazy survey, the crazy Texas survey
where we are going to tile the sky and every little spot in
this box right here, we are are going to take a spectrum. We're going to put a fiber on there,
an optical fiber and we're going to observe it. If I did a Zoom in to here, this is our
footprint on the Hobby Eberly Telescope over on the bottom left. if I did a zoom in, one
of these and one of these boxes here. It looks like this. This is the focal point of the Telescope. I'll show you that
in a moment. If you did a Zoom in on one of these boxes here, it looks like this little
instrument here. We call this an integral field unit and if you, this is an array of 448
optical fibers. if I had to zoom in the corner over here, it would look like this image over here in the bottom right.
Each Little.each little dot there is an optical fiber and optical fibers are used
everywhere. They're used communications and what we do then is we wait, we observe one
chunk of the sky, take our data, and we hope that there's a galaxy somewhere in the
optical fibers and we know we know our density so we know we're going to get some and this is a galaxy like this is a
spectrum. So, we take that optical fiber. We put it through a spectra and you get an image like this and this is
the peak here. What we're looking at is gas that was generated in the galaxy from
active Star formation 10 billion years I'll explain that in a moment too and then what
we do is we so so here's the focal point. Again, I want to blow it up. This is our actual
images of the of the fiber. This is the photons last view
It's existence basically. So, what happens? Let me walk you through the story of the
photon. What happens is in the galaxy, far, far away, there
are two clouds in the galaxy early on in the universe because these are young and early galaxies and the clouds
come together. There's hydrogen in the clouds because it's mainly hydrogen gas and they
they Ali the gas excites is excited and so if you go down
to the individual atom, there's a hydrogen atom and there's a there's an electron that jumps
up and then orbit. So it jumps in orbit a little bit higher
because there was some type of of collision or some of energy injection, very quickly that
Fulton falls back down to the ground state and this one atom and then when it falls back
down, it emits a photon. Okay And then that's the full time that full time then starts with
travel starts is traveling 10000000011 billion years ago. It's traveling through the
universe and things are happening the universe as it travels through. There's a cluster of galaxies that Fulton
can be bent around that in its path, the universe is expanding. So, the full time is getting its wavelength
stretched and that full time is traveling, traveling, traveling towards our galaxy towards our
star straight towards earth that sees a Texas on the map.
It's traveling towards Texas. It sees West Texas sees the Hobby Telescope sees his big
primary mere bounces in the primary hits the mirror and then boom it sees this. it goes into of these optical fibers
here since it's sent to a spectra graph. that one Fulton then hits a charge couple
device. Our our CCD and it's turned into an electron We capture its charge and now we
own it. That's that's that and so we get a count of one that has been traveling for 10
million years. It goes into our detector, turns to an electron and then we can we can just run
it through electronics and then we can turn that into an actual
count on a computer and that's how we get the full time. It turns out that we need about
280 is a magic number. If we can get 280 photons in 20
minutes from a Galaxy 11 billion years ago, we get enough signal to be able to
detect and record it into how far away it is. That's our magic number and so these are
the futons. These are these this is what this is the stuff I look at all day long. This is
This is my favorite images. These are the actual detectors over here. This is the the
photon comes in and then it gets spread out according to it's it's wavelength on the left side is blue light. on the
right side is a red light and I'm looking for these little peaks right here on the detector. So, if you're looking
to cut out of the detector, there's a peak here. There's a peak here. There's a peak here. This galaxy is about this is
Night about 9 billion years ago, 10000000011 billion. I can just look at this and tell
because we have blue and red light and so the farther away it is, the more red it is and
so what my code that we that I'm that I've been working on for a long time now is I just try to find these dots. That's
what I'm doing. I'm looking for dots and then once we get that, I record it and I toss it and I go to the next object. Okay, so
here's some more dots. I'll show you a few dots. These are beautiful horses. These are the dots I can sum it up to one
particular so I can take all these dots and I can compress it and do a cut through This is
the cut through over here and this is the the wavelength that we This is the full spectrum. This is about ten and a half a
billion years ago. That's what we get. That's what we want. We get a lot of these a meteors come through, man. People have
been trying to get spectrum meteors for a long time. It's really hard to get a spectrum meteor because you can't point
your Telescope. They they fly through through. We see meteors all the time but getting the spectra is really hard but our
instrument is so freaking huge that we get meteors all the time and it took me a good 6
months to figure out what it was. We would see these spectra and they would come and go It
was a plane. I thought it was car lights blah blah blah and they kept coming all the time and then, finally, I've talked
to Anita Cochran and she was confused too and then she and I, we went back and forth for a
while and we said it's a meteor. You're looking at the gas at the iron that's burning
up in the atmosphere. So, we have lots of meteor spectral. I don't want those. I don't know what to do with them but we
have some people who are really excited. No one knows what to do about them because they haven't been able to observe these. So, a weekend if you
want me, I have a lot for you. Here's an extreme object which I am crazy excited about
because we had this huge observation now and so we're going to find the weirdos when
most people take Spectra of data, what they're doing is they have an an image
beforehand and they say, I want to look at that object or that or this or that object but we
don't have to worry about that because we're just doing a survey. We get what we get and
so we get the objects that have almost no one would choose to and here is one of those
objects. This is a big broad up, a big broad line. Clearly a
black hole and there's no image in here. I call these things a naked black holes. I have been
thinking about this since my whole career. I did most of my work on black holes. So, I'm trying to find, we know that
they have to be out there. We know that every galaxy has a black hole and when two
galaxies merged, the black holes will come together. They can orbit around each other and then they can get ejected
through just a gravitational slingshot. So, every model predicts this. There has to be
this free floating free floating. Say that three times fast. naked black holes. so
black holes with no galaxy about them. No, this is this is the regime of pets and so
there's one here that I'm very excited about. We're going to we're going to and so I have a bunch of students trying to to
look for these. So so that's that's that's not what we really need for this but but
there is some ancillary science that's going to come off So, we have a lot of lines, A lot of Spectra. I go through more
spectrum, more spectrum. So, more spectrum and so now, let me talk. Let me show you a
couple maps. So, back up to what we're going to do in the beginning. This is an observation of the aerial
universe is the cosmic right background. This is a full scan at the universe. This is the theory. So, what we are trying
to do is we're trying to map the observations for how masses distributed. This is one of the
variable universe. He has one a bit later on. to what the universe is doing in a
theoretical model. So, this is how the whole process works is we have observers and theorist. The observers will make the map
and the theories and will put in like modifications of gravity or modifying the Big
bang or adding extra energy and and they tweak the theory. they
and they make a new model of the universe compare the observation to go back and forth. That's the give and take
and so this is one of the first maps that I made and I'm super excited about this. I'll show you a few more. So, this is the
map I showed at the beginning. You as a human are down in the smiley face. down in the bottom corner here and you're looking
out. This is a distance. So, these objects are these are these are the nearby optics.
I'll show you all the different ones in a moment. So, the and and what you're looking at is
how the universe, the galaxies are clustered and you see these
structures here, these knots and filaments. This is how galaxies are clustered and
that's exactly what we're trying to do. We use the clustering of the galaxy to
tell us these points That is how gravity works. How strong
it is, and how much the universe has expanded. So, what we're doing with Es is we are
making the movie we're making. This is as you look back on this, where am I, where my
cursor is going? This is time axis and so there is clustering here and as the universe
evolves as it gets older and older, the effect of gravity gets stronger and stronger. So,
universe will cluster more. So, what we're doing in heads is
we're going to measure the strength of clustering out at the most distant and compared
to the nearby and that's a movie basically of how the universe is clustered. That
tells us how gravity works. That tells us how the universe expands this. I made, I made
this a few months ago. This map here and I tell you so I just took the I've been working on
that day. I just write computer code. I took I said, huh? I'm going to make this. It's called
a large scale structure map. It's called the red slice and I'm going to plot everything
out I made this up and I just stopped and stared and I said,
it worked. and I and I mean this morning, it was a 42 million dollars Experiment. and
and you know, of course, you're going to expect it to work but until you see it until you see
the data laid out, you're like, oh my my god, it worked and so now, what we're doing now that we have the map now we're going
to go through and do, you know, some fancy cluster analysis and measure how much is clustered
here and larger the I to how much is clustered down here and now, let me show you and so
this is the same image there. That's the data and this is a simulation and so what we do, we compare this to this and
then we can measure the cluster and the simulation measuring the cluster and the data. We know what numbers we put into
the simulation in terms of how strong of gravity is, how much the universe expands and we go
that back and forth now very large scale. So, this is what's new. So many a surveys have
have measured how the universe is clustered nearby. So this little edge down here. where my
cursor is is the same as this here. So, now, I'm going out to larger scales. So, people have
measured this before. This is new. This out here, this is what we're after. These are
these are what I call a nuisance galaxies. We're going to measure them anyway. These are nearby ones and these are
the distant ones. Hexagons, Ali surveys. So, we get everything in between There will be
galaxies in between here and the universe but they're not generating emission line at a
specific wavelengths that we can see drives me nuts that we can't see this but this is the
ones we care about and what you see here, don't worry about these radial streaks and these
these angular streaks try to look at the cluster and try to have your eyes smooth out and what you see, there's almost no
clustering here whereas if I blew up and in in the middle here, you see lots of clustering here. you don't see
much and when I first made this, I said, so what I did is I made this plot and I said,
oh, it worked and then I made this plot and I said, oh **** it didn't work and what is
that? You know, it took me like 20 seconds and then I said,
gravity really hasn't kicked in yet and this is this is 10 billion years ago, right after the universe came together and
gravity hasn't really kicked in yet whereas it's really kicked in strong down here and so this
is the movie that I'm talking about. This is the region of the sky we're looking at. That's the big dipper. This we
have field in the fall. It's looking right in between a ride and arenas and this is the one
that III just made this again. So, this is new data I just make this and I just stare at
it because no one's made this map before. Let me show you a bigger picture and this is what
freaked me out and this is now get a little philosophical here. So, here's the same map. This is the hex standing here
and here and we're only at so this is what I made this we only had about 25% of the data
process. So, we're going to increase this by a fracture of four the observable universe.
This is that red line I showed in the beginning. This is the observable universe. Our
Experiment is here. There's another experiment called called Desi. That's going to be
in between. We work with Desi now. They're fantastic experiments. Department of Energy they're about a half a 1
billion dollars Experiment. So, we're a little, we're about a 4040 1 million dollars Experiment. So they're going to fill in this region here. Look
where we are and so I make the spot This there are no
experiments from the edge of heads to the observable universe out there He is it. This is as far as we go and there's nothing out there. So
we We're going to stand strong for a very, very long time. but
this is the thing that freaked me out in this world gets philosophical. So, I love this because it's so bad. So big.
Look, we are about we are, if you think of us as explorers, we're making this map of the
universe. We're about halfway out to the observable universe and as I said in the beginning, you can't see beyond that. So,
when I made this, I actually I'm in in all seriousness, I got a little paranoid The
universe just got smaller because what we're doing is we're mapping out the universe and we think of the universe as
infinite and it is but to us, the observable universe, that's a certain size and so we are at
the point. we're about halfway out there in terms of mapping the universe which just kind of
blows me away and so I look at this sometimes late at night, come home, say I'm going to
look at the I'm I'm I'm going to look at this map and it's just it's just it's pretty It's
just awesome to me. This is what I love about about research. So, let me let me
jump to how we do this and this is because I don't want to III want to make a very important point here. One of the big
issues here is trying to vent the sample. We have millions
Galaxy. Billions of Spectra trillions of resolution elements. So, if something
weird is going to happen in the calibration, some weird meteor, some weird optics going to be out there, we're going to see
it and it is really hard for us to calibrate everything and so
the human eye is just remarkably efficient at this. Okay. And so, we are trying in
order to generate our catalog of what is distant and what is nearby are going to use machine
learning. We have a big machine learning program going but we need a lot of people to
calibrate this and so we get a lot of individuals. We train them. We need to order hundred
to a million galaxies catalog by a human and then we can go
to a machine learning and do a refinement on that. So, I started this with a small group
of five undergrads 2050. We're going up to hundreds. We run. I used to run pizza parties.
We're going to start them up in the fall where we get like fifty of the undergrads. We had millions of these galaxies. We
have a thousands of these things and so we're trying to find a way to merge these things together and we're
getting too small in the university. So, I want to what I call astro Tinder and what it
is, It's my phone. So, so what I want you to do, please, you can become a dark energy
explorer. So, we teamed up with Azul Universe and I talked about this earlier and I should have popped it off my phone where this image pop up on your
phone and you swipe left or swipe right if it's distant or nearby and so I call it Astro
Tinder. My my dean, I was given this talk about a year or two ago and my dean got really bad
and so I came up after me. He goes, Karl, you can't call it a Tinder. He's gone now, he left. So, I'm going to call it Este
again. So, right now, so this is the Dark Energy Explorers. You can find it easy on the
site. We've had, we put this side up 2 months 3 months ago
and I think it surprised the universe. folks, we've had 1.6000000 classifications, 4600
volunteers, and we've gone through .12 .12000000 of ours of of these subjects. Each one
is classified between fifteen and twenty times and and so we're going to try to get this
number up to a million and it has been it it has surprised me how useful it's been. Of
course, it's great for public outreach. I love to get the people involved in this analysis but what doing is we
have an algorithm that tells us what is distant and nearby and now, we have a group of humans
who said, what is this to a nearby And it like 90% of the
cases they match. Well, fantastic but then in those 10%, they don't match and now
we're going in and we're finding where our fault is most. It's it's about it used to be in the beginning that the
humans are always right and the code was wrong and then we modify the code and now we're
approaching that 5050 time but it's been extremely useful to have the group of people
classify this and and and we do that we're going to. So, this is one. So, this is our first
workflow of distant nearby and now, we're going to dig into the harder objects and do a
real or fake category and this has worked so well. We're going to exploit this as much as we can but we need we need more
people to help out. So, there's the the big role for for Hex.
it's an an observational program to get the expansion rate 11 billion years ago, the two major are the nature of
dark energy and HOA measures and I just, you know, this is an exploratory program, Hex is
designed to measure the expansion rate of the universe. If we did this huge survey,
this huge instrument and and and it's and I thought of this
whole thing as II treated it as an experiment Let me stop the
Welch's. I'll I'll just I'll talk a bit and I treated this whole thing as an experiment
and and the idea was to make this measurement and I've always said this to the deans
and the provost and such, we're going to make the experiment that I'm going to just toss an instrument off. tells them the
idea is is I want want. this is 42 million dollars for one number. Let's say two numbers.
So, the value of the the expanse, the value of the expansion rate and the
uncertainty on the expansion rate and from those numbers that we will try to understand
what Dark Energy is but I know and I know from all of the astronomers are in the
collaboration Again, there is there is so much data. It's such a rich data set that we're
just starting to exploit that now, that map, no one, my collaboration hasn't seen that
map of the of the of the universe yet and it there is so much in there in terms of not
just understanding how gravity works on our skills but understanding how He works in
relatively small scale inside of a galaxy and and and that combined with weird types of
galaxies, naked black holes. That image I just ended with and I just had to show that the the black hole in and it's one
of my favorite objects. I measured the mass of the black hole in that outfit. So, I was very excited but so where we
are now 40% of the data is in two or three more years will be done with all the data. We will
probably have a result within a year from now. So because the
way the results go the way the analysis goes is you only gain by the square roots. So, we,
once we get the half the data, once we get to the full a data set, we only improve by about a
40% in terms of the analysis. So, we should have a result. if there's something interesting in about a year from now,
whether or not we go out to the press, we don't know. We'll just see how it goes but our
full result will be done in about three or 4 years. So, let me in there. I always love. I'm
talking about the stuff. Stay tuned There's going to be a lot more going on. We we we don't know what's I said this on
students today where we're going through images. I just cycled through this data and
interesting things pop up and I say, huh, can you go take a look at this and do some study on it Like one off objects that
are out of a millionaire. It's just very exciting. It's it's it's what research is about. Okay. thank you for listening.
I'm happy to take Awesome. Awesome.
Yeah. Sorry. We got a got a little bit of an I'm not sure where it's coming from. It
might be, it might be the echo right there. Yeah, I think we might have got it there. So, we
do have a bunch of questions. Doctor Greg Hart with if you'd like to take some, there was
some really cool stuff. I'm trying to scroll back through here to to Jeremy's question. I
found out very interesting. is Dark Matter Axios. Good, good
question. So, We have So, the idea for dark
matter for the longest time had been what we call whips weekly
interacting, massive particles, and and and and we have
searched for those with physics experiments on the ground and we try to put constraints on their from astronomical
astronomical studies as well and we're almost at the point where we should have detected
it on the ground explain this one particular astronomical observation and we haven't
found it. So, the idea of dark matter being a wimp is running out of the right now. One
that's still standing. You're exactly right. is Axios. That's
much harder to study on the ground. There are some ways we can do it. We actually have a
researcher, a professor, a professor winget, and the astronomy department at UT who
studied white dwarfs and you can get a little bit of constraint. It's but it's really really hard. You can get some constraint on the amount
of accidents at some question and the answer is it Limbs are
almost not quite but almost ruled out. Axios are still remaining but they're going to
be hard to roll out but it's a good question. Very cool stuff
and there was a few more in here that I saw was the one that stuck out to you, Joe or
do you have a question? No, Martin's question was interesting. It's kind of more
of a philosophical one that I don't think we can answer but I figured we'd throw that up there and anyway, it's it is or
was there a bell on the other end prior to the Big Bang which is the great crunch and then expansion So the idea I didn't
I didn't get into this One of of my favorite ideas
philosophically is the multiverse. okay? And it's it's
I, this is more of philosophy, not so much a science because I
try to make a hard line between what you can prove and what you
can prove if you can prove it in with some type of
observations, I'll call it science. If you can't prove it, you know, when I get into arguments with my colleagues,
then I don't. It's still interesting. I love it and I'll read it and I'll study it but I'll call it more philosophy.
Let me call or religion sometimes with that would really piss off my colleagues but but the the multiverse I'm
really attracted to philosophically, there are and and so to answer Martin's
question is that is one idea out there that we have This
this this infinite sea of bubbling space time and you get these pockets of energy
fluctuations where a universe comes into existence and most of them are small enough. They pop into existence and then
they collapse back down. Every now and then, you'll get a universe that can expand a little more. Maybe it has a
little extra dark energy in there or maybe it has a little less man and and a lot of
energy so it can expand out. Maybe it has a too much matter and collapses back home. but every now and then because the
multiverse is infinity. you will get some Goldilocks
universe like ours that has a perfect amount of dark energy. The perfect amount of dark
matter. the perfect amount of inflation and we stick and so if you make a universe and so
prior to the Big Bang, then would be this bubbling space time continuum all over and we
just happen to be one that I mean, we can all can only live in a universe that allows us
that exists, right? We can't, we can't live in the universe but no matter, right? And so
and so and so, of course, we would live in the Goldilocks universe by definition, we don't have an we don't we don't
we can't have the alternative and so yeah, that that's that's one a potential what I would
call philosophical alternative to what goes on before the Big Bang Excellent And do you have
another time for maybe another question or two? Of course our good Deborah Moran asked is
Dark Energy, possibly geometry, something like water approaching waterfall. Yes. So,
the water approaching waterfall. It's interesting. Yeah, that's that. I'm I'm I'm
trying to make that analogy work but let me say so yes, there there was a term in that
equation that maybe you've memorized that they're one of those terms was the curvature
of the universe. If the universe is curved and if the curvature possibly changes
which is a hard one but who knows, you know, then yes, you
could have this expansion not so the analogy is actually a
pretty good. I would use like a fire hose or something like that. We're expanding out like that and it's not because
gravity different or anything like that. It's because Facetime is curved differently and so yeah, that's a very a
good analogy. There's there's one that's related which I like is called what we call the
Hubble Bubble which I like and that is imagine our observable universe. Okay. It's it's
related very much to Deborah's question. You have this observable universe. We can't see Okay. So, because because
the speed of light, it's fine but we can see a galaxy just at the edge. I have my partner here. So, if you have this
observable universe, say you had a giant structure right here. Big big cluster of
galaxies, lots of masks and there's a galaxy right here that we so we can observe this galaxy. You can't see this but
observe the universe but this galaxy is this is so massive. Feel the pull of that galaxy.
So, It gets a little extra pull and if we don't know that this
galaxy exists, then we say, oh, this galaxy is expanding faster than what we think it should be
not because of anything special like Derek Energy or modification of gravity but because there's a thing that we
can't see out now. So, imagine there's a scare now and we live in like a whole, we live it like a divot which is fine. You
know, there's going to be a fluctuations and so we're kind of the middle of a divot and so all the galaxies of the are
expanding away and we call it this weird expansion we turn a dark energy and it's nothing
more than a weird distribution of space time of and so that in that case, that's exactly a job
opportunity. So, that's a perfect question. Oh, excellent. And then the last one, if you're okay with it, we
had a lot of questions but I want to be mindful of your time. Walt Cooney had asked, how does the dark energy survey
overlap and differ from heads Okay, So there's a couple Dark
energies. So, there is there's so when I started Hex long time
ago, there was probably twelve to fifteen experiments out there. There's only like two or
three left standing. their energy survey is one of them. That one is done taking data.
That one is relatively nearby. So, the of the expansion of the universe again So, so that's
the dark energy is her is only looking out to about this window. A Desi out to about
this window. This is the DES. This is a Desi We are way out
here. We are out in no and no way and no person's land and
what is special about that is that so they're going to nail. So, the dark energy curve and Desi are going to nail how the
galaxies are clustered in the late universe. The older galaxies, we are going to nail
how the galaxies are clustered in the early bird. That's why I we did this because we knew
that energy and Desi were happening. We knew that was going to happen. So, I didn't I
wanted to push through. So, the whole philosophy was to go to a regime which no one has looked before and that's early in the
universe and that it's that connection between the expansion rate early on and the
expansion rate nearby. That's where the models for Dark Energy works and so that's it's
it's a variant so it's a very important I'm overlap Well,
Doctor Gebhardt, thank you so much for joining us tonight. Like I said, I've heard you speak before. I thought it was
a fascinating discussion and you make things simple for folks like us who don't have a
a PHD and astronomy or physics to be able to understand and of course it has. You know, it
begs more questions afterwards but absolutely fascinating talk and we're going to share with
everybody where they can participate in the citizen science portion of this in just a second but I really
appreciate you joining us tonight and wish you continued success and look forward to seeing all the wonderful data
that you guys are producing. Well, thank you. It's always it's It's always a pleasure to talk about it. So, so great.
Thanks for having me. Absolutely. Have a great weekend. Alright, take care.
Awesome. Fantastic stuff there y'all. I mean, it's just fascinating to hear someone of
Carl's Caliber come in here and just lay it down for us. exactly it is and you know,
we're going to be Carl's going to be famous. already is famous. I think that's it. I think they're going to find the
answer and I'm just excited to a small part of it as a Texas
resident, I didn't want to say anything, right? But I, you know, I just want to say, look, will you come back and talk to
us when you guys win the Nobel for for your research there. So, absolutely love to have
him, you know, and such a fascinating talking. We missed a lot of great questions guys.
We apologize for that. We want to be mindful of the speaker's time. I had. I have several questions but I definitely I
have his Emails so I'm probably going to throw a few of the right. So, Yeah. Well, look,
you know, to accommodate Dr, Gebhardt schedule, we pushed back some of the giveaways. Well, I don't know. You want to
take you away. That's good stuff away. Okay. Alright, let's let me get this up here.
ready to go for everybody. It is the continuation of the great Texas giveaway and like a
normal TSP where you must be present to win here. You must be socially distanced to win. So, let's go on and and give
away some prizes. So, the next prize that we're going to give away is a Fifty-dollar Amazon
gift card from again, the Houston Astronomical Society. It's a great folks there and the winner is Fred Tenney of
the Colony Texas. So, congratulations on winning that Fifty-dollar Amazon gift card.
Fred Tinney is that Gatorades is is that the same Fred? Is it? I think it might be.
Congratulations. That's awesome. If it is. That's awesome. Excellent. So, the next door prize is the book A
Night Watchman Journey. I'm I have it right here. This is the very one that's going to go out to the person that wins. It is
Autographed by David Levy had the opportunity to meet him last Valentine's Day. I spend
Valentine's Day with David Levy and that'll be going out to the
winner and that person is Terry Van of Fairfield, Texas. Congratulations, Terry by the
way, our speaker, one of our speakers for tomorrow is David Levy himself. So, it's I think
it's an appropriate gift given who we have speaking to us and very generous of you, Joe. Thank you for doing that. Oh,
absolutely My pleasure. Hey, Terry and I know you'll enjoy it. So. Excellent. Alright, we've got another set of Prism
Binoculars, some seven by 50s from our friends over at Vixen Optics Star Guy and Deb and the
winner of this door prize is Jeff Go from Aptos California. We've got another winner in
California. Congratulations, Jeff. Awesome. and from our
friends at Sylvan, we've got an 8 mm aromatic refractor package. Nice, very
nice and that is going to John Lamont of El Paso, Texas. So, probably the person closest to
the Texas dinner Party out in the Wild West out of El Paso. Yeah. Congratulations John for
winning the eighty millimeter, a chromatic refractor package.
We also have a another Fifty-dollar Astros E gift certificate. and the winner of
that door prize is Eric Foust from Ann Arbor, Michigan. I thought I saw Eric in the chat
there. I may be speaking and maybe some maybe. Okay. I'm
sure they'll chime in if they are. If Eric's out there. Yes, absolutely. Okay. Stefani has
given us also a nine millimeter one and a 1.25 telescope eyepieces to give away never have
too many baader eyepieces for telescope in the winner of this is David Mccoy from Plano, Texas.
Congratulations, David. and we've got these things are
awesome. You saw the ad earlier. Celestron Power tank, Lithium Pro and the winner of
this door prize is Donald Bradford of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Congratulations, Donna. That's
a beautiful piece. I have that one as well. Those things are amazing. I'll run my scope for like four or five, six nights
straight without having to recharge it on that thing. It's amazing. Absolutely and we're going to give away more prizes
here in just a moment but we figured we would let you all hear from of our sponsors and
advertisers I should say and bare with me one second. Well,
you know you're talking about the Celestial power tank. How
long have you had that? Oh, man. I've had, well, I have like almost all of them like all the different versions that
they they release. I have the big, the middle, the small and I've had since I released it. I
was like, that's that's a must do and I don't regret it because again, I use that thing
all the time. I use it more than like short power for my Telescope which is it's so convenient to strap it on the
leg of the equatorial mount, let it roll, you know? Absolutely. and I apologize.
I'm having a hard time bringing this up here but it's alright. We got plenty of other stuff coming guys. We have a trivia
contest in a minute. So, you're not going to want to miss that because you still have a chance to win some awesome stuff.
We're going to give away another shirt here in a few minutes as well. So, there's plenty of time to to win some
more stuff and again, this drawing, these door prizes are for the past TSP attendees but
there's plenty of chances for you guys in the chat to Lots of Trivia. I know Debbie. Debbie
Moran is ready for that next trivia contest. because yeah, she she's she's mopping the
floor up with with those answers. I think Alright. well,
we're ready to go and I wanted to let everybody get a little bit of an experience of where
we do this. Star parties and let you hear about the ranges
Well, there's a shot of the T shirt. If you guys are that
And we're back from where it breaks. Awesome commercial breaks, man. I mean, you know,
that one was made by the chili scopes people We put together a few of them and just fun, man. It's just, it feels like it
feels like we're a professional set up here. Maybe that's it. but again, you know, the Bar
Ranch, the Prude Ranch, the folks over at Chili's Scope been wonderful advertisers and
and have given us some wonderful things to give away to everybody and we're going to give away some more stuff. So,
let me know when you can See that? There it is. Alright, next door prize donated by the
Texas Star Party is a Fifty-dollar Amazon gift card and the winner is Joe Hudson
from Longmont, Colorado. Congratulations, Joe. Alright,
I won a Fifty-dollar Am I know why? neither you nor I have won't even know it's the yeah
there is keeping my fingers crossed next door prize is a Hubble Optics Hubble five star
artificial Star. The winner is Dan Clark from Rio Rancho, New Mexico. Congratulations, Dan.
Congrats and then Celestial Power 10. 5000. winner is Mark
Spearman from Whack Texas. Yikes. Spark. Yeah, that's very nice. Absolutely. Another pair
of seven by Fifty-four Prism binoculars from Vixen Optic Star Guy in Burbank. Oh, look
at that. Renee from the Woodlands, Texas is the winner. Congratulations, Renee. Alright, she's going to use
that for outreach. I bet you so and we also have another seven
by Fifty-four Prism binocular set from Vixen Star Guy in Burbank. Winner is Daniel
Chavez from Concord, California. We had a lot of representation from California this time around. So, congrats
everybody to to those who won and we look forward to giving away more prizes tomorrow
night. Absolutely. We've got a few more prizes to give away. So, stick around for tomorrow
night. Again, there's another Trivia thing. Tomorrow night, We got giveaways tomorrow night and we'll have David Levy with
us which is going to be epic. The one and only David Levy and we'll have with this as well
and also another thing that ends tomorrow night, Joe in a virtual Texas Star Party Ok
That's it. There it is right there guys and we do have a banner with the website I'll
throw up right now. There it is. That's the website you want to go to if you want to be a
part of the auction. Now, we do have a two-night 3 day stay at the Bar Ranch. You can see it
there. Oh, I see that number is increasing. That means a lot of people bidding and we have the
same sort of stay but at a different ranch, the Prude ranch, a 3293 day stay for a
winter weekend. stay at the ranch and both of those are on there. Now, you can use the
link to go bid and again, you're going to get a crazy awesome deal if you this
auction and like Joe said earlier, the money goes to the Texas Star Party to help us make a better event and to
maybe do more stuff like what we're doing here from the ranch in the future. Who knows? But that is an option for you guys
that want to to get in on that and again, Joe, I think that's
something I want to bid on. Yeah, no, give me one second here. It's go ahead and bid on
that Let me step on in here and get that. Yeah. But like you
said, well, you know, for for those who haven't had a chance to bid on any of those items yet, get in. It's going to be a
mad house. You know, take advantage of these wonderful gifts by both the Bar Ranch and the Prude Ranch and you know,
see if you can win those prizes and get out there with your telescopes. Yeah And it's worth it y'all. I promise you it's
worth the price you're going to pay to stay at either of those wrenches even if you just go, you know, during new moon on your own. I promise you, you
won't be disappointed in both those places. Very astronomer friendly. Both of them. and I
guarantee you'll have a good time. Yeah. Yeah. So, no, I guess we're going to the next
thing. Correct. Well, I was going to say, look, if you don't win one of these auction prizes and you're looking for an astronomy themed trip,
there's no better place to do that than through Sky and telescope trips themselves. So,
Sky and telescope puts on a number of astronomy related trips throughout the year. A
lot of them are focused around things like eclipses, right?
There are several eclipse trips. There was just an eclipse yesterday that they they were up on an airplane to watch the angular eclipse and
it seemed like a pretty fantastic event. Kelly Beatty is the person from Sky and Telescope. He's a senior senior
editor there I should say and does a lot of these trips does puts a lot of time and effort into planning these things and
it just puts out a fantastic event time after time and will you and I had a chance to catch
up with him The other and and we we shared that yesterday but we figured it'd be a great
opportunity to share it again with our viewers tonight to see what goes into the sky and telescope tours and what all
they offer. So, this is Kelly Beatty
Welcome everybody. We're here with Kelly Beatty who is a senior editor with Sky and Telescope and the man who puts
together all the sky and telescope tours. Kelly, how are you? Hey, it's great to be with you. Wonderful. We're glad to
have you with us. Hey, we've heard a lot about this guy and 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 an eclipse of
the sun but the path starts in Canada and heads off, you know, over the North Pole to Siberia. Not a lot of people see it in
the northeast. It'll be a 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 an eclipse and 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 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 solar 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 Peninsula for an eclipse or
Easter island. All of those are coming up. Those take a lot of care coordination. We have a
couple of companies that we work with that we really trust and are happy with that provide
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 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 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 it's true. The
pandemic really hit us hard like the total solar eclipse last year in December. I just
it's it's painful to even think about it right? There'll be more eclipses, right? And there 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 tours plan
for for Botswana and Hawaii and Australia in 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, there's always an
astronomical component to to the tours be at an eclipse or or like like Vatican Observatory but we we're not
like it's not like a march 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 in South America or
Hawaii or 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 for 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 the tour itself is is very satisfying and a great
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 still 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 away from the Texas Star party. I know you called it the the land
of large Dobbs, The land of the giants. 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 glass 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 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 here soon 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 a 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. Interesting. You should mention that because of course,
we have a tour to Texas for the Eclipse in 2024 and 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 You won't because you'll
be in the path of the eclipse somewhere. Yes. Excellent. Last
question I've got for you, Kelly. You've obviously traveled the world to observe a
lot of these wonderful astronomical phenomenon. Had an opportunity to see a lot of the
sites 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 has a
tour to to a total solar eclipse. The only place you can see it are Antarctica. Wow,
it's too cold. I'm sorry. and and now in the middle of the ocean and so I'm going to be on
a cruise ship that as you you know, it's in the Southern Hemisphere December is and so
there are a lot of cruise ships and in this particular cruises as many will we'll 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. That's 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 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 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'll and 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 Telescope tour. That's something that I was hoping to do this in Chile but obviously,
it 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.
I mean, you know, Kelly's such a cool guy to talk to. You know, he's a he is a great guy.
really laid back, super approachable. So, we're we're excited to have him as a part of our program and excited to
have Sky and Telescope with their tours, man, this is, you know, something I've always wanted to do like you and I talked about and it's it's on
the agenda, man. I think I might have to make one of these work. I mean, you look at where they go, Botswana Antarctica,
right? Iceland, Iceland, you know, don't do Iceland has been on my bucket list forever right? There's no I have now
not to go to Iceland and kind of wrap it around an astronomy trip too, right? So, I just
need to make sure to get that done but well, I think you know what time it is right now,
right? I think I know what time it is. It might be, what time is it for some trivia trivia
time. Alright, well, hey, folks. We did this again last night. We're doing it again
today. Top three winners win these awesome prizes. You can see over here the first prize
winner is gets a Celestron Power Tank Lithium. These things are awesome as well.
Said they're they're fantastic. I'm jealous of whoever wins. So, that's going to be the first prize that we give out or
for the first prize winner, second place gets a Fifty-dollar Amazon gift card
courtesy of the Texas Star Party. and third place gets AT
shirt and hat combo from our friends over at Infinity and Man, I kind of want one of
those T shirt and hat combos too. I never, you know, I haven't gotten anything from Infiniti in the last year because we haven't been able to
go to TSP. they make awesome T shirts, awesome hats and that is the third place Prize for
tonight's winner. So, well, let me get my screen shared over here and we'll get we'll get
rolling. You know, is going. there's a you guys go to a website, you enter a number,
you put your name in there and you're in the trivia contest and then all you have to do
really after that is put your thinking caps on because I know our buddy Don who's our executive producer sitting in
the backroom. I can see him laughing right right there. I can see him laughing. I know he's probably got some wild for
you guys and those three prizes are incredible. This is going to be, I really can't wait to
see if our current leader board stands. if we get some new new stuff in the mix. So, we got
ten questions, right, Joe? And we ten questions and I'm going to go through the rules over here. You know, if you were on
with us early in the beginning of the show, the program, we talked about what those rules
were, how to play the game, participate in the Trivia, and you know, hopefully everybody
still remembers that but for those of you who are us later on and haven't had a chance to
kind of go through that. We'll step through the rules one more time. So, here are the rules.
when we give you the code and you can see if they're up there at the top, you'll log in with your real name. Please don't use nicknames. Don't use the
name. It gives you it from by default. Put your real name in so we can verify you as the winner. Hopefully, you walk
away with that power tank or one of those T shirt and hat combos and you know, we need to know who you are in order to to
be able to give that to you Yesterday, we gave you 15 seconds to answer each question. Today, we're giving you an extra 5 seconds. 20
seconds to answer each question, you do get points for answering correctly. You get
more points. The quicker you answer those questions and if you don't answer the question
correctly answered incorrectly, you don't get any points So, faster correct answers, get more points and the top three
finishers win a prize as we showed earlier. So, we'll give everybody a chance to jump in here. Here's the QR code if you
want to go ahead and scan this and join us in the game. or if you want to pull up, you know,
browser on your iphone or Android device or your laptop, go to WWW.mentee.com and use
the code 35970262 Again, that code is
35970262 and we'll give everybody about a minute or so to jump in here. Will I don't
know about you. I wish I could participate in this quiz here. I don't know if I would do well but yeah, well, I guess that's
set up by Dawn. I guess we'll find out how well we do against Don's Brain but I just had one question. Joe. is that pitbull
in that in that? That was Pitbull. Yes. So, you know, I wanted to try to, you know, hopefully get everybody hyped up, hyped up here and ready to
go for the quiz but you know, I am. What's that? I said,
there's going to be some good questions, man and I promise there are no questions about Pitbull. This is all TSP,
astronomy themed, no pitbull questions. So Don, when you're putting the quiz together tomorrow, maybe we can throw a
pitbull question in there. No, I'm just Okay. I'm a bit of a good pit bull reference but
none are coming to mind. Yeah. Yeah. Same here. So, we're going to give everybody another 20 seconds or so to jump in.
Again, Mentee.com. Use the code 35970262 or just scan that QR
code and jump in the game with us. Yeah. And again, put your
thinking caps on because I know, I know Don. You know, he's scaling this up as we go along and some of them might be
common knowledge but some of them might make you might make you think a little bit but again, just bring up your
cellphone with the camera, hold it up to that QR code Joe for us there and that will take you directly to the right here.
Yeah, absolutely. We're getting more and more people jumping in your last 10 seconds or so to to get in but again, Mentee.com
and use code 35970262 and remember to use your real name so that we can verify who the
winners are. Okay. And I think it's a good thing on the
pitbull is We'll talk to him after the show. Mary Jane and let him know. Alright, Trivia
is starting now. Here we go. answers fast to get more points. That's the name of the rules here. About to be a
strong indicator of life was recently found in the atmosphere of which planet is
that? Jupiter and Mars or Venus about to be a strong indicator
of life. Phosphor and gas was recently found in the atmosphere of which planet
We got 3 seconds left. Here we go. Time's up. And most people
said Venus, yes. The correct answer is indeed Venus. So, very good question by Don there
and you know, a little bit of information. Venus though, the detection meaning of phosphate
and gas is being challenged. That is true. So, you know, a lot of early excitement about
that and people are starting to come back and say, let's think about this real quick but yes, indeed, the correct answer is
Venus there. Okay. Alright, let's take a look at our leader board. here. All up, Tom
Weidman. Oh, that's the answer to that 970. 975 points followed by Tom Laskowski and
Israel Montessori. Alright, everybody else who's in here, there's still a chance to catch
up. This game changes all the time. Alright, here here we go for question number two. Here
we go. the 2020 is a long period. Comet Orbit was altered
during its trip around the sun. How long will it take to return? Oh, man, this is a tough one there. I would have
to be that last 34 years. It's 187 years. 6700 6766 years or
4570 4576 years. This could have been, you know, if you if
if you get this right and you knew it, congratulations. 6000. 6700. 6766 years and J
surprisingly that had eight people answer it. So, that's and too. So interesting. Yeah.
let's see who got this. Wow. To
wake up here. He's he's he's so good. Yeah. And this is right on his tail and Walt Cooney
coming in in third place. Congratulations for jumping in the top three. Like I said
folks, these things change all the time. So don't ever give up. on April 19th 2021, a new
milestone for power autonomously controlled flight was achieved. What was the name of the flight vehicle? Is it Falcon Heavy rocket ingenuity,
helicopter Mars Hopper, or solar impulse drone. I know
this thing. Yeah. this is just a couple of months ago, right? Yeah. New milestone for power
Honestly, controlled flight. Yes, sir. Curious to see what everybody says. Oh, the bulk of
the folks got it. right? helicopter. Absolutely correct. So, the helicopter had its
first flight on another planet and will I know you and I are watching that intently and really, really stoked about
that. Yeah, we Those ants persevered through that, didn't they? You know, they sure did
and I like the fun there. Oh. hey, Tom. To slip a little bit.
You see what I did, right? But Tom, there's still a chance to kind of catch up but Israel takes the lead there. Walt
Cooney in second place and Joe Frigo is in third for was the fastest to answer there. So
Excellent. Alright, we're going to go to question number four here and you can answer. many
noteworthy people have subscribed to Sky and Telescope. who in the following list did not have a personal subscription to the magazine.
Was it Johnny Carson Arthur J Clark, Albert Einstein, or Richard Lol Vincent I can't
believe you did the middle name for Richard
I couldn't tell you what. Arthur J Clark's middle name is our time is up and fifty people
guessed it correctly. Albert Einstein was the one person who did not have AA subscription to
Sky and telescope. but he did own a a Telescope to him by sky and telescope subscribers,
Gaza. So, there you go. I guess he was too busy writing those articles that would end up in Sky and telescope anyway.
Right. Right. Eventually. Yeah. Alright, let's take a look at
the leader board. I won't slip there at the top.
Israel extends the lead a little bit. and Perdue is in
third place. Salsa was the fastest there. So she moves up in the fifth place. Awesome. Seen a lot of position changes
here and here's question number five. in 1974. Carl Sagan is
Frank Drake of Fame broadcast message to a deep space object. Where did they be in this message to? Is it M Thirty-one,
the the Andromeda Galaxy Cluster Mth Star. approximate
Satori or M Fifty-one, the Whirlpool Galaxy. The you know, you can see kind of the binary
representation of that picture that they beamed out there. It's a 3 seconds two one Time's
up. Most people said, proximate to know it is a cluster. Mths.
Yes, Ironman. So, that may have jogged the memory at one point. Had a read that but Seguin and
Drake used to a radio telescope. I to be in the message to Star Cluster M
thirteen. So, there you go. Awesome. That really is. Let's
take a look at the leader board. See where things have changed. Israel holding strong
as a joke. building that lead up is Montero is at 4480 points
and Joe right behind him. Excellent. So, like I said, folks, anything can happen.
People can get the wrong questions and yeah, you can come back. So, here's question
number six. Odyssey. Two Chinese astronauts
land on the moon to refuel and they're stranded by a new life form. What what did they land? Is it Eo Europa, Titan, or
Danny? This is the famous Archery Clark book of the
sequel to 2001 A Space Odyssey Wow. That they land.
people answered correctly with Europa. Ropa. That's actually
where the first movie was set in the book as well was set. So, for didn't get that one.
man. Look at the leader board there. Wow. Oh yeah. It's holding strong. Joe's closing
the gap a little bit. Tom and Walter are starting to catch up as well.
Question seven, we've got just a few more questions left over here.
This constellation is named for a mythological hero who used a gory bag of chips to slay a sea
monster and save a princess. Was it Hercules? Hercules,
Perseus, or this is a tough one actually. Yeah, it is. It is
Constellation law is complicated, folks. Hercules
Perseus, Orpheus, time is up.
Hershey is what most people live with and yes, that is indeed the correct answer. Perseus, if you've read
mythology. Medusa. Use the head of Medusa to kill the sea monster and rescue Andromeda.
Let's take a look at the leader board and see how things pan out here. Oh, toss coming in
strong there. Closing the gap. Joe's even the closing the gap as well. So that man, there's
less than 100 points separating first and second place. Yeah.
We're down to our last three questions. Here we go.
What is the nickname for the deep sky objects? One is it the
blue snowball? The Whirlpool galaxy, The silver coin galaxy, or the pinwheel Galaxy? This is
one of our favorite things to look at. Will you and I were at the bar recently looking this through the telescopes. We
definitely would. Yes, I go there. I can tell you it's still there but it's still
there. Alright, time's up. Oh, nice. Most people got this rig, the Whirlpool Galaxy so messy
fifty and 51 is also known the Whirlpool Galaxy. So, congratulations everybody who
got that, You know, we're hiding now the leaderboard screen so that we don't see where all the jockey is. We're
going to go straight into the last two questions here. Oh yeah. This is where it gets
tense. Good boy In In 1967 grad student, Jocelyn Bell Bell found the first known Pulsar.
what code name was given due to its precisely time radio signal time X one LGM one or twelve
Seiko I don't know the answer. I remember seeing this a couple
of years ago. Leave it to Don to come up with these awesome questions that Time is up. and
you know, the majority of the people got it. LGM one. Awesome. Wow. So, LGM one
stands for Little Green Men One and his timing was so precise. It sounded like a signal from
Et. Oh, very cool. Alright, last question everybody and
this is for all the marbles. Well, but we're going to get to
a set of winners here and here we go.
What was Hubby's 1925 Discovery that changed the way we see the universe Galaxies are receding
from Us. Universe is expanding, measured the rotation of the whirlpool and M Fifty-one, a
measured first distance to a nearby galaxy. This might be a trick question. Well, I don't know. this is a puppy because
it does seem like to go a different way here. Absolutely.
Time is up. Twenty-two people got it wrong. The first
distance to a nearby galaxy. That's absolutely correct and that's why I said it might be a little tricky, right? The
constant is, you know, kind of attributed to him but he did measure the first to a nearby
galaxy Don slide doggy with that trick question. Yeah,
how's to drop in a galaxy proved it had to be outside of the Milky Way. So, congratulations to everybody
who participated but the winner of tonight trivia contest is
and the number of all pans out. Israel Montero.
Congratulations. You know, he he held on strong for a good portion of it. Lost it a little bit and came back to win and
barely eked out by fifteen points. Wow. The win over Joe Pergola. Joe, congratulations.
You did an awesome job as well. You won second place and Tom Laskowski coming in strong.
Third, our good friend Walt just missed the cut there in fourth place but is Joe and Tom
congratulations to you all. all our winner in tonight's trivia contest and will. do you think
you might be able to flash where those folks might be able to Email everybody? So, pick up
your prizes. They do that. Let's see. I think it's right there. There you go. So, for Israel, Joe Pergola to
Laskowski, please Email us at DT SP at Texas Star Party.org so we can get those prizes over
to you and verify you are who you are and thank you all for
you know, kind of following the rules and making You put your names in there. It makes it a
lot easier for us to do that. So, let me go ahead and stop that and again, congratulations to everybody who played and all
the winners. Yeah and great questions, Don. Those are always fun. I mean, you know,
Trivia definitely kind of breaks you out of the the thing and you know, makes you think a little bit which is, you know,
we like to think as astronomers, I think we do maybe maybe a little we
overthink the thinking part. I don't know. At any rate, get down there to the TSP at Texas
Star Party.org. If you're one of our three winners, we're going to match the Email name with your name and we're going
to send you those awesome prizes which again, I'm very jealous of but Joe, I think
right now, maybe I can switch it over switch gears a little bit to where we can give away maybe AT shirt. If you guys
might know or you guys might know why I'm putting that hashtag there.
somewhere but look, you guys might know what to do with that and if you don't type
#celestron into the the and you're going to be automatically entered to win an
awesome T shirt designed by our friends, the Os and Tara Krasinski. It a cool t-shirt.
It's it's it's a one of a kind thing. It'll only happen once this way. So, if you want
shirt, you know, there's a way you can order those. We've been over that too and you do it. Go
to Texas Star Party.org and you can order the t-shirt there or you can just type Celestial on
Celestron into the chat. I see him coming in Joe. There they are. Yeah, I see him as well. So, keep those coming in. What
we're going to do now is you know, listen to a few of our sponsors and I should
advertisers. Carl's going to get mad at me for saying that but we'll listen to a few of our advertisers here and give
everybody else a chance to enter that #that you see see there below regardless of what platform you're on, we can see
where you're putting it in and we're going to draw one person's name who gets that incorrectly. Gotta spell it
correctly. If you're off by, you know, even one character, we don't get to see it and you can put it in as many times as
you want. You still only get one entry per person. So, we'll be back after the ads a winner.
Did you know that Takashi America is part of Lansing and Sky located in Houston, Texas,
Takashi Designs and creates optical tube assemblies, mounts, eye pieces, and
accessories for both visual astronomical observing, and astrophotography, Lansing and
Sky is the distributor for all Takashi equipment made in Japan and destined for North and South America. You can learn
more about Takashi by visiting us online at Takashi America.com.
And we're back. I had something happened but we're back. and I
don't know Joe. what we should do now is probably hear from, I guess, explore scientific and
then we're going to give y'all a few more minutes to get that. What was it? #celestron.
Celestron. So, get that in. if you haven't done that yet, We've collected several entries already. We want to give
everybody else a chance to win. So, #celestron enter that in. We're going to hear from
Explore Scientific and when we get back, we'll give away AT shirt. Alright, I'm Kent Marks with Explore Scientific today.
I want to talk to you are alpine and lines of really great binoculars as well as our
new giant binoculars. More about those in just a minute. The Alpine Teton ten by
Forty-two binoculars are spectacular. They're multi face coated. They're ADHD, extra
lotus person glass. They have an AA prism with special coatings that are proprietary
to us that provide clear, sharp, crisp images Comparing these to binoculars are just a
couple of years old. I was blown away by how spectacular these binoculars are ten by
Forty-two is also come with the AC system that allows you to lock your dio so that you can
set it for what you want and then lock it. It comes with twist up eye cups and offers
long eye relief for people who wear glasses like I do. They're just a spectacular piece of
engineering and optical performance. I'd also like to talk about and introduce you to
the Explore Scientific Giant binoculars. These binoculars are fantastic. This pair is 120
millimeter pair of binoculars. They start at 78 millimeters and go up from there. Really,
these are two 120 millimeter telescopes mounted side by side. They come with the
explore Scientific waterproof 62° twenty millimeter eye
pieces right here. independent focus as well as the ability to
change the inner pupil distance so that you can set them to your face These are pair of
binoculars. The accessory you mount is available for additional price. and let you
look at down the barrel of these. It's just a beautiful pair of binoculars. I've used
them on the sun. I've used them on Arise Nebula. It is just fantastic to look through
these. Now, when I say you just use them on the sun, we have made safe solar filters for
these that come in a big oval. So, you can use this safely on the sun because you're using
two eyes. It gives you a great three dimensional view of the sun make sun spots just
absolutely fantastic. For more information or to purchase these binoculars or the giant
binoculars, go to explore Scientific.com.
I want those binoculars. I was thinking the exact same thing.
Teresa said it like. yeah, Look at those. Yeah. I can't wait to look through those. I was about
to say the exact same thing. Those things. they look fantastic. You know, I wish we're at the Texas Star Party
where a lot of the vendors come out and bring those new gadgets and gizmos that they've worked
on and we can take a take a look through those but we're here and we're ready to give away AT shirt. Well, yeah, I
got AT shirt that we can give away. Well, Don has it. It's not mine. It's not Don's either. It's an actual fresh
unknown T shirt. No odor to. Yeah. No. or anything else like
that. Coffee stains. I've I've been frightened. Be careful with this shirt and the coffee stains on it which is hard for
me. That's it. I know. I know but we're going to give away AT shirt. So, for those of you who
have not done so yet, go ahead and enter #celestron and we
will give that T shirt away here in just a second. Last few seconds, I see you there. Yeah.
good. That's a good. you know, you you're you're like to win. You're like, alright, here we
go. Here we go. Lots of familiar names and faces in there. Absolutely.
guys. hay. Congratulations, Chaz. You're happy? Yeah. Chaz Hay Hay. Yeah. one of the Chaz.
Congratulations. You are the winner of the 2021 TSP T shirt. So, if you get a chance, Chaz,
you're watching go ahead and Email us at VT SP at Texas Star
party.org so we can get your details, your T shirt, size, things like that and we'll make
sure to get that T shirt over to you. There it is. Congratulations. There you go. Yeah. And there's the Email
address that you can send it to us. What an amazing evening, man. I mean, it's just been
last night was amazing. We had FB and Larry Mitchell here with us. and so much fun stuff
tonight. We had Stephen J O'Mara, the man, the legend, all wrapped into one and Doctor
Carl Gebhardt. that was a fascinating talk. I love Carl's enthusiasm and the way he
delivers information, man, it just made me want to drop everything get a degree in dark
energy. You know, I was thinking the same thing. It's like, man, I kind of want to go back to college and you know, have this guy as a professor. I
don't, I don't know if he's teaching. I don't, you know, he's obviously doing research but now, I've heard him speak
before and you know, the entire conversation he was at his desk turning around and just drawing things on the whiteboard like
that and it was fascinating. So, I'm glad everybody else had a chance to listen to him speak tonight. It was just absolutely
fascinating. He's able to take a really really complex topic distill it and condense it down
into chunks that we can understand. Lay people like you and I will and it was it's fantastic. So, we look forward
to that and tomorrow, we have even more great speakers to to to join us, right? To cap it
off as a final night of the Three-night Virtual Texas Star Party event. Mister David Levy,
that guy right on the cover of the book there. He literally wrote the book on being a Night watchman kind of guy and Now,
you've read that book and it's pretty interesting stuff, right? It is David's lived a really interesting life. I
remember as a kid, I wanted to be a comet hunter and of course, I idolized David Levy.
So, you know, having the opportunity to meet him in person was again, like a kid
who loves basketball meeting Lebron James, I was just starstruck but David's a very
interesting gentleman wonderful person and I think everybody's going to be in special treat
tomorrow and we also have our good friend Stephen Hummel who's going to be joining us as
well. The man, another man, myth and legend. I guess on that people, we might as well throw it on Stephen Hummel.
He's a mover and shaker at McDonald's Observatory and he's a dark sky advocate of epic
proportions and we're going to learn tomorrow why dark skies are so important. I think most of us know but Steven's really
going to break down the minutia behind why and what's and what
they're doing at the McDonald's Observatory to help change that trend. back the other way. Get rid of some of the lights and
give us back the like. Steven said the annoyance of a dark sky and how bright dark sky is.
Yes. I can't wait for that man. It's going to be so much fun. Lots of well, we have Trivia tomorrow again. Yes, we have T
shirts that we're going to throw virtually out into the crowd giveaways with our virtual T shirt, cannons, all of that good stuff but that was
a fun time. Well, I look forward to meeting again tomorrow. We're going to get together at 630 Central Time.
You and I will talk and you know, special thanks goes out to You don't see him on the
broadcast here but he's behind the scenes making all the things come together that need to come together and doing a
lot of work. So, thanks Don for putting that together and will any last words before we leave
here today? Well, all I can say is that it's been a pleasure to be a part of this Joe. It's
been an absolute pleasure to host this with you to just in the in the same room with, you
know, Virtual room but same room with these these amazing people of astronomy and set a
reminder folks, don't miss tomorrow night because it's going to be the the cherry on top for this little event and I
can't wait, man. It's going to be so much fun. We're going to have some good times, some laughs, and some smiles. We may
even cry a little bit when David tells us some sad stories. Who knows that? you know what? I was, you know,
it's like, where is he going with us? You're absolutely right. There'll be a movie Maybe. Yeah. Yes. But at the
end of the day, it'll be a fun time. Well, I look forward to doing it with you again tomorrow and for everybody else
that's watching with us, look forward to seeing you with us as well. So, we'll see you then. Yes. Bye guys.