Transcript:
8:55 p.m..Mirko Maher - “Comparing Deep Sky Images”
foreign [Music]
[Music] Vortex around Earth presented by science
at NASA would you believe Earth sits in the middle of a space-time vortex
Einstein predicted this almost a hundred years ago and it turns out to be true
on May 4th 2011 researchers announced that NASA's gravity probe B spacecraft has detected The Vortex and its shape
precisely matches the predictions of Einstein's theory of gravity the space-time around Earth appears to
be distorted just as general relativity predicts says Stanford University physicist Francis Everett principal
investigator of the gravity probe B mission time and space according to Einstein's
theories of Relativity are woven together forming a four-dimensional fabric called space-time
the mass of Earth dimples this fabric much like a person sitting in the middle of a trampoline
if Earth were stationary that would be the end of the story but our planet spins and the spin should pull the
dimple around in a four-dimensional swirl this is what gravity probe B went into
space in 2004 to check the idea behind the experiment is simple
imagine trying to spin a toy top on the dimpled surface of that trampoline it's going to wobble right
something similar happens when you try to spin a gyroscope in curved space time its spin access will drift or process
gravity probe B carried some superspherical Gyros into Earth's orbit to see what they would do in practice
this simple idea is extremely difficult according to calculations the Twisted
space-time around Earth should cause the axis of the Gyros to drift by a tiny amount really tiny
it's like measuring the thickness of a sheet of paper held Edge on 100 miles away
even the slightest disturbance could ruin the experiment we had to invent whole new technologies
to make this possible says Everett the gravity probe B Team developed a drag free satellite that could brush against
Earth's atmosphere without disturbing the Gyros they figured out how to keep Earth's
magnetic field from penetrating the spacecraft and they created a device to
measure the spin of a gyro without touching the gyro pulling off the experiment was a big
challenge but after a year of data taking and nearly five years of analysis the gravity probe scientists appear to
have done it the Gyros processed The Vortex is real and we are in it Einstein
was right again for more information about the space-time Vortex and what it means to us on Earth please visit
science.nasa.gov
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thank you
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well hello everyone this is Scott Roberts with explore scientific and the explore Alliance and this is the 129th
Global Star Party peering in into time or you know to in
other words uh the uh you know the Look Back Time that
astronomers uh understand when we look at something that's far away
um and so we're going to have lots of different conversations about that uh it's obvious to uh many people when they
understand the concept of a light year how far a light travels in one year and
that distance is roughly 5.9 trillion miles which is a boggling number
um it's it's easy to understand that if we're looking at a star that's four or
five light years away that we're seeing it as it was four or five years ago when you see a Galaxy that's 50 million light
years away we're seeing that Galaxy as it was 50 million years ago but I also challenge people to
understand that if you have your friends standing right in front of you that just the briefest fraction of the go
okay that that the light had to travel to reflect off them and get to you well
you're also seeing them in in the past okay so we never get to see anything
quite in real time and so that is a uh uh I guess that's one of the
mind-bogglers of uh understanding and learning about astronomy and so
um tonight we have great speakers as we always do on global star party uh we
have uh David Levy David eicher Terry Mann um Robert Wilmore Robert hasn't been on
our show in a while uh he does public Outreach work and uh very passionate
about the astronomy work that he does we have
um Tim Hunter Tim is co-founder of the international dark sky Association and
has written some books recently which he's going to cover tonight in the Barnard objects Caesar Brello will be on
Adrian Bradley uh Marcelo Souza these are all regulars Ron breacher who is
becoming a regular an astrophotographer comes back on to this 129th Global star
party and then we have John Schwartz and he's introducing a friend who who does
astrophotography and teaches astrophotography his name is Mirko mayor
and so we're really happy to have all these people on tonight and we're going to start with David Levy
now David David's internet was down but uh undaunted David is joining us uh by
FaceTime on my my on my iPhone here and so we're going
to let David kick off the event by reading uh some poetry into my my
microphone here go ahead David well thanks Scotty I hope everybody can hear me
okay I am uh uh we're talking about time
and I've got a couple of quotations tonight to offer you that relate to the
theme of time and the first one is from Macbeth Shakespeare's Macbeth
and he um he is just the part in the play near the
end where Macbeth is told of him his wife Lady Macbeth has just died
and Macbeth at that point decides that he is going to give up he doesn't want
to live anymore he says I have lived long enough and he's just uh
he's just giving up Shakespeare meantime is trying to write a proper speech for him and I like to
think that is he sitting down with his with his quill pen laptop and trying to
write the speech because it's not working out for him and he's just uh throwing paper after
paper and finally there's a knock on his on his back and he turns
around and there is God the almighty standing right behind him and God says will
take a break get a beard get a couple of costumes
so this is the first of the two quotations he should have died here after there
were there would have been a time for such a word and at the end of it we realize how how this connects to the
theme of time tonight where we believe that Shakespeare is
anticipating by three centuries general relativity tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow could
eat plants Petty Pace from day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and
then is her dolmore out brief candle life's been a walking shadow a poor
player that stretched some Prince's hour across the stage and then there's her Gilmore it is a tale told by an idiot
full of Sound and Fury signifying nothing signifying everything
and this is where I think that that passage is so important and possibly
anticipating general relativity the other quotation was inspired last night when David
reister and I were observing at the curacola site and we uh we're looking at body's window
and the two globular clusters in there that are probably approximately
30 000 light years away the bottom of the most distant clusters we can see we're seeing them as they appeared about
30 000 years ago and so this is a rewrite of John Keith's
poem about the um you know um on the famous wine and felt I like some
Watcher of the Skies when a new planet funds into his kin so I did a little bit of rewriting much have I traveled in the
Realms of gold stars and clusters scene
around all the celestial islands that by being with eyepiece on telescope to the night sky hold off of one white expanse
and I've been told the Galileo rule this is to me yet did I never breathe as pure Serene
till I heard Walter Botta speak out loud and Bolt and tell them I like some
Watcher of the Skies when a new star cluster swims into his skin through his Majestic window looks upon
the Milky Way he stared at the center of our galaxy like a diamond shining in the sky
with the wild surmise silent Through The Mists of space and time I hope you all
heard that back to you Scotty thank you yeah yeah they did hear it thank you they said it was like picture in picture
here so thanks guys thank you and David thank you very much and you have a great
night tonight I'm sure you will take care thanks
okay all right so we have the technology that's awesome
um uh David uh uh always finds a way uh to uh make his uh lectures work
um I after seeing him at uh the astronomical League convention
um you know here he was uh obviously not in the best of health but he he made it
happen he made it work and uh I I think it was uh I mean he's got a standing
ovation it was inspirational really and um so he is a driven person and we are
lucky to to have him uh with us so anyhow
um let's uh let's uh move on to our next speaker here which I believe is uh David
icker and David has been finding the unusual uh deep space
objects to talk about um now David uh I'm not real familiar
with the sharpless catalog who was sharpless
Stuart sharpless was an astronomer at the U.S Naval Observatory in good old
Flagstaff for many years and he compiled a catalog of what were then considered
to be very faint nebulae um in the 1950s and he revised it and
expanded it to become a catalog uh in its its second form if you will of 313
objects and so that's why when we see sharpless two hyphen something or other
that means it's this first revision second sharpless catalog and this we're
going to be talking about is the 157th object that he listed in that
second revision of the 313. so he was a very determined and an important uh
Galactic astronomer researcher who compiled this catalog of great nebulae
most of them a mission nebulae that had been essentially uh unseen many of them
in earlier catalogs like the Messier and many of the NGC objects
I think he would probably love your series of exotic deep Sky objects David
so well thank you well he was another guy who like me was afflicted with a
strange disease of being really interested in these faint deep Sky objects
and we're joined by a bunch of us that are afflicted well well thank I'm glad to hear that Scott you know sharing the
the same uh illnesses is is a good thing that that brings it out our Humanity I I
would say in many ways and I do want to share tonight A a bit of a sad fact in
space time because you're seeing me now as I was a a short time ago and I don't
even look this good anymore so that's kind of the pathetic nature of
where we are with the universe here's what I'm saying yeah but that notwithstanding I would like to share uh
some information about one of these wonderful nebulises so I will see if I can share my screen and I will see if I
can share the right screen and I will see if I can start a slideshow and if
you see Centaurus a there we're in the right place in space and time
I will be good it looks good that's a good looking Galaxy there's maybe you know what milk
ombuda will look like you know seven billion years from now but we won't be around to see it but we can dream
[Music] um but moving on to what we're really here for tonight is Stuart sharpless and his
catalog as we mentioned uh this is sharpless 2 uh Dash 157
if you're keeping track at home it's a large and relatively bright emission nebula most of the sharpless objects are
emission uh or reflection nebulae this is in Cassiopeia and the nice surprise
here tonight we're moving slowly through a list of several Scott realizes how
terrible this is what I'm planning but we're moving through a list of
hundreds of deep Sky objects okay so you know if I live that long I may be you
know maybe stuck with me for another 10 years talking about but but um anyway we've moved about a degree
away from where we were last week that's the progress we're making here because
this uh object that's sometimes called The Lobster Claw you might have heard of it in that way remember in the last 20
years or so amateur astronomers have come up with a nickname for essentially everything in the sky you know with time
on their hands um but this is very close to the bubble nebula which we talked about last week
that's a much brighter uh emission nebula of course with a a very hot Wolverine star uh embedded in it so this
one is fader and it's larger and it's it is shaped sort of somewhat claw-like I
will I will accede to that tonight it also has a number of objects that are in
very close proximity as you'll see to this nebula and the most prominent are
two pretty bright open clusters mercarian 50 uh markarians and other one of these great deep Sky researchers he
was an Armenian um and and this is a an Open Class he studied largely open clusters and
galaxies this open cluster is about 11 000 light years away so in in accordance
with our theme tonight we're seeing this open cluster and the associated nebula at about a distance of 11 000 light
years that's as as they were about 11 000 years ago
um it's near the northern edge of the nebula and there's a brighter cluster that it's more likely that you're
familiar with and that is NGC 7510 it's compact but has a bunch of bright stars
in it in a kind of a distinctive shape and it's an eighth magnitude cluster overall it's about seven art
minutes across it's also 11 000 light years away and these are both
young clusters that were born out of this hydrogen gas so they're uh tick
under eight million and 10 million years old relatively young open clusters
the northern part of this nebula which is sometimes separately identified by
the way is sharpless to 157 a if you're scoring at home
um and if you are then we need to get you into some other Hobbies too like remember the the the the Packers are
playing this weekend let's hear some good mojo for Green Bay please thank you very much
um but uh the northern part it has its own uh identification number here and it
somewhat like the bubble nebulae except on a smaller scale in a fainter uh
nebula and star also has a wolf or I a star embedded in it that's ionizing the
the gas in a circular shape remember wolf Rye stars are uh are massive stars
that that are fairly young that were stripped of their outer atmospheres and so have a very intense uh ionizing
radiation pressure that they're pushing out into the surrounding interstate or medium so this is a weird and
interesting area of the Cassiopeia Milky Way here's the same chart that we looked
at last week just to prove that I'm telling the truth the bubble nebula is in the middle here and our large
sharpless 2-157 is below it here which has this weird kind of claw like
shape and you can see the Clusters near it including the Fairly bright NGC 7510
so this is a wide field uh image that I found on the internet by Trevor Jones
that shows The Lobster Claw at the bottom you can see the sort of claw-like appendage going up from the nebula the
bubble nebula is the brighter nebula smaller nebula that's above it just above Center the bright nebula which
maybe we'll also talk about one of these days NGC 7538 is off to the right of the
bubble there and the big open cluster m52 is up near the top of this image the
bright cluster that I'm talking about that's near The Lobster Claw is just to the right of The Lobster Claw there and
is a small compact fairly bright uh kind of linear shaped open cluster there and
we'll see it in more detail in a minute here here's a uh better shot in terms of
detail of The Lobster Claw sharpless
2-157 NGC 7510 here is just at the bottom right Edge there you can see that bright
open cluster and the circular area with a bright wolf right A Star is just to
the left of center there you can see so here is mgc 7510 that if you're
frustrated and you don't have a reasonably large scope and a dark sky to see The Lobster Claw itself it's a
relatively low surface brightness these are generally all challenging objects so one of your guys with your 18 and 25
inch Scopes will be able to see it but if you have a smaller telescope you'll certainly be able to see the open
cluster mgc 7510 this is a good and detailed shot of it by our old pal
Bernhard hubel so that's it that's the challenge object
we're almost done with that area now after two weeks and we're still drop by
and enjoy us and drop us a line and send us your images we're enjoying the anniversary year of astronomy magazine
I'll quickly mention again that the latest book that's out there is uh our child's introduction to space
exploration that I wrote with Michael bokich and please keep on your radar if you
would starmus 7 the seventh starmus Festival we're going to hold next spring
fortunately several weeks after the eclipse in Bratislava Slovakia that
really is just a hop skip and a jump from Vienna Austria that's an easy place for westerners even to get to so we will
have many fun things to announce in the near future with starmus
and that's what I have Scott tonight oh wonderful that's great
I'm looking forward to uh seeing more of um of astronomy Magazine's 50th
anniversary year and the highlights that you guys will have um and uh I really appreciate you schooling
me on sharpless so I'm going to have to dive into his uh his catalogs and learn more about the man so
he was a good guy and and that's one of the more interesting catalogs there are a lot of obscure catalogs of deep Sky
objects but this is a good one as far as amateurs are concerned interesting things and many of them are bright
enough to go after to both of you and certainly to image so it's worth checking out yeah awesome thanks very
much David okay thank you Scott all right uh we are going to transition to
uh uh Terry Mann Terry is someone that is
um been a steward over uh the astronomical league for many years uh
she is um you know her Boundless Energy and getting people organized and keeping
everyone on track and uh you know following through on big agendas at the
astronomical league has is uh is really impressive and
um she is uh also I think equally impressive she's an adventurer she goes
out to remote areas to go and photograph Aurora but she loves nature
um you know a lot of people say they like nature and all the rest of it but uh Terry is special in this way and um
so we're lucky to have her on tonight and uh Terry what have you got for us
well thank you Scott um you were talking about back in time and I thought you know I kind of would
like to take that to a different level a little bit okay and so I'm going to
share my screen I want to go to long long ago but I want to go to long long
ago from the other end of the telescope to what we have seen change and when we
look back what we we have seen as amateur astronomers and imagers and
visual people so this is kind of everything I think so many of us will remember because
I came into astrophotography because I had a camera I love photography and I
loved astronomy the two went together so I started off with putting a DSLR on the
back of a rv6 criteria Criterion the reflector telescope that I still have
that I bought used for two hundred dollars but nowadays we have all
graduated the technology has just really blossomed and moved forward so far but
you know one of the big things for me was when I first started being interested in astronomy putting a camera
on the telescope I started looking around at people that were Imaging and the guy that impressed me the most
was Jack Newton I I looked at his work and it it just I was just so enthralled
by everything he did he inspired me to do what I do he inspired me to image he
inspired me to reach reach more to try to be better and I while I have never
been as good as Jack Newton even as today it is it goes to show that we as
amateurs when we work and we talk to other people we never know who we're inspiring or what they might do so you
know for all of you out there doing that realize you might be touching somebody that they have no idea I mean you know I
was fortunate enough to meet Jack at one time and I think I told him wow I bought your first book I think it was his first
book and it just really inspired me to do this so realize a lot of you out
there are doing the same thing and you just might not know it yet hmm
and as I said this was my first I call this my real telescope I had the 60 millimeter uh telescope but this was my
real telescope and I still have the tube and I'm sure in the garage somewhere that old Mount is still there
but you know the thing was I was interested in astronomy about a telescope and it was all of a sudden oh
my gosh I know the constellations but I don't know anything else now how do I how do I use this how do I learn my
parents didn't know anything about it so I had to learn and they did help me I had to learn actually how to use it what
the Scott what was in the sky how do I look through these things and I've seen some of the Articles where uh
the ads especially for the cigarettes I saw when where the eyepiece was down at the other end and they were kind of
looking at their belly button and you know if you didn't know any better you might do the same thing or a
beginner might do the same thing but you know what really confused me when I talk to people and I'd say I want
to do photography the first one of the first things they said was you have to have a drive but they said you have to pull her a
line and I said what what is polar align and they said oh you gotta run taxes up
with the North Star well I know where the North Star was but oh my gosh look at this how how am I supposed to know
how exactly to align a mount like this this is how where I started and I was
confused I didn't know what to do but look at today today is amazing we have
so much technology to help us set a telescope up align a telescope guide a
telescope the new mounts have made an incredible difference for everything we
do and they're all just totally amazing
and like I said I I loved photography this was my first this was my camera and
I bet a lot of people out there used to Pentax a1000 at one time when I first
started doing the Aurora always I always used film in the very beginning and I
either used the iso 400 or the film 1600
um I also hybrid film why two or three times but I was worried I was gonna blow the house up so I uh kind of backed away
from that but you know it you took pictures and then you had to get them developed and you spent all this money
and you were lucky if you had one or two good pictures on that roll of film and then you had all that money that was
wasted but you did learn from it but the one thing I really I learned about
cameras this was all manual I learned to understand aperture ISO everything that
went along with this focusing so when I Advanced on up to a dedicated Astro
camera I knew a little bit more about it because I understood how the camera
works with these we have instant gratification whatever we should we see right away which is a big plus a huge
plus um hey as with any digital camera the image isn't any good hey no problem
throw it away you know delete it do whatever that's no problem but you learn
from what went wrong on that image on using software
um I you know I've gotten used just like everybody else I use a lot of software
but uh there is always a learning curve that is going to go with that
but I also in the beginning I set up my own art room so I learned the mechanics
behind what the image was I knew all this because I was back in a time when
we did not have this techno all these new technologies which it's great either way and I you know I envy the people
that don't go through this and I really did learn a lot about developing uh the
one thing I hated oh my gosh the chemical smell that would almost make me sick and you had to work every
everything was time sensitive you know here so long there so long uh hang the picture up look and see what we've got
but yet I have to admit I enjoyed it in college I did all the dark room classes
that I could and all the photography I really learned a lot about that
but nowadays I gotta admit I love the digital dark room it is so nice to sit
down and really think about what my eyes all what I saw that night and how to
make that image look like it almost as much like it as I can make the image
look through the digital dark room because when they developed my pictures at um the store they would tell me that
they don't have they didn't have a lot of control as I knew sometimes you just really could not control that with a
digital dark room I can control so much more of the print and I think that's where you know is it art or is it really
you know the image you saw and there's always going to be that counterbalance there some people prefer what they
actually saw others like the art end of it and that's cool too you know as long as you're not trying to pass it off as
something else the oh the AI software anymore the software is amazing uh there is so much
incredible software out there the learning curve comes with it too I started pics insight and I've got a
learning curve with that I use a lot of topaz lab I use that but it is amazing
what it can do to help you put the picture the image back to look like what
it was you took so you know going from the smell and setting up the dark room the lights to
being able to roll into a room have a beer and a piece of pizza while you're processing your prints total different
atmosphere totally it's still the same Basics behind it in some ways you know
but we don't have to put up with the chemicals we can do so much more and be so much more comfortable
and polar alignment I have to admit I use the ASI air
um that I have really gotten used to and when I go to super I know where the
North Star is but when I'm standing on my head trying to look through the polar line scope on a mount it's very easy for
me to get confused when there's a whole lot more stars there so I use the ASI air and there are many more other things
that you can use too you've got Nina you've got phd2 you've got a lot of things that you can learn that you can
use for guiding Fuller alignment um you know everything and we are so lucky to have that because
polar alignment for me as you saw what I started with it really was an issue of
how to do it and the darker skies I go to you know the harder time it was to pull that little north star out of all
these stars in the field and the new the new technology helps me do that and I'm
sure it helps a lot of other people too and we all have our favorite things that we do and favorite gear that we use but
we have really came a long long way oh yeah solar filters now we've got
eclipses coming up a lot of solar stuff coming up we know how important solar filters are for the safety of our eyes
you know we have got to have safe Builders up there think back my little
60 millimeter Sears refractor I remember being in grade school and I was so
excited because I could bring my refractor to school and show all my classmates the sun well I had this
little screw in solar filter for my eyepiece on that 60 millimeter refractor pointed at the sun probably for at least
a half hour can you imagine what would have happened if this thing would have cracked I mean it's amazing again we
spartaned up we have learned a lot technology has taken a lot but helmet I bet there's quite a few people that have
that solar filter come with the telescope and I've heard four rumors that some people have still seen this
come with a tele scope which is just unbelievable to me um that's something that should have
been outlawed from the very beginning but I can still remember being so proud of that 60 millimeter refractor and that
little solar filter and now it's just a piece of history that we want to forget
guiding oh my gosh I hate to tell you how many hours with an illuminated
reticle on a guidestone that I spent in the observatory taking pictures especially of Orion I remember Orion one
night oh it my eye was practically Frozen to the guy to the reticle or to the
eyepiece but nowadays look at this man we can take a 30 millimeter guide scope
and throw on this is a 120 zwo mini guide and it'll got it will just guide away we
don't have to strain our eyes you know we look back at how what Our Roots were I mean this is definitely what Our Roots
were and what we're using today has made everything so much easier it's just
incredible and so to today
um star trackers there's a whole bunch we could say about star trackers I use a GTI go-to
um because I when I started off with a sky guider Pro I loved it and I spent so
much time trying to find the objects the GTI uh with the go-to has been
incredible and I've also got the ecu6r pro that I really enjoy working with and
you know they tell me now you have to pull her a line I press the button I look and just go and that's something
that long ago we didn't we weren't able to do so we have came so so far in
history and or in our roots of how we did things and how things worked
um and so we got this we spend more incredible time under the stars where I
started my gear a lot of times and I just kick back and watch the sky I can watch it on the iPad guiding or the
phone and I can watch the sky I can watch a meteor shower you know that's stuff that we really could not do in the
past but okay what about you guys I mean a camera and a tripod is amazing it really
is um there are so many new cameras that do break can allow you to do great
nightscape photography and you know I found the more I've worked with stuff like this people can
relate to things that they see whoops I'm sorry see in the sky um because I can have a picture of a
galaxy on an art display and they're not real really impressed with the Galaxy but you show them the moon and they can
they relate to those craters they relate to everything else that you see on there
um Aurora people can relate to that a lot of wide field with the Earth in that
field or in that image really makes people stop and think and it's easy to
do it is very easy to do you always experiment some and you don't have to go out and buy the most expensive camera
you can work with what you got experiment with what you have and do what you can and you will learn from
that and it will be fun and it will be easy because you don't have to Lug a lot of equipment around you take the camera
you take the tripod out and you look around and you you stop and really think
about what kind of image you want so start there that's what most of us did
we worked with a camera we worked with the tripod we understand did the basics and that is very important to do and
Scott I think that is all I have for you tonight it was very thorough I think
it's nice to go down memory lane a little bit and um uh certainly I
remember some of the challenges of uh of being working with film and stuff like that but that that craft of working in
the dark room is something a lot of us Miss uh but I'll tell you what I don't
miss about the darkroom and I worked in a dark room many many years is the
stained clothes all your clothes would be stained yeah oh yes three and stuff
as you're moving with the prints and the trays and stuff sloshing around and stuff like that oh definitely yeah yeah
yeah so yeah but uh yeah when you came up with a beautiful result uh you know
it was really it was very nice but I would say that in the digital era that
we have more control than we did then and the other part is is that
um when we're working with an image we're always working with an original and you're transferring something that's
largely an original digital file so you know this allows you to do high quality
science work you know it's already archival you know and um it
can be transferred anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye pretty much so yeah and you can play with that you know
I go back sometimes and I look at some of my older work and then I can update it you know with the newer technology
with the newer software I can make it look like I want it to look or like I
think I remember it looked better you know it just allows you to do so much more and so we've learned so much as
we've moved along and I think it's great and I can't wait to see what else we learn in the future yeah in the future
in the future you know the as you say the software just gets better and better and our skill set gets better and better
so yes it does it definitely does yeah we were talking with chatting with the
audience a little bit um and uh we were as you were talking
about going down memory lane in the dark room uh Mike Wiesner brought up
um you know how here leverage some of the old telescope companies like Criterion and unitron and uh Starliner
and Optical Craftsman and stuff and I felt very privileged to actually kind of
have known that prior generation of telescope makers you know so oh yeah
they did incredible jobs I mean for the time it was they did incredible work yeah yeah I mean the Optics of my little
RV sips are amazing to me so I that's right yeah I just couldn't bring my
parents like parents could afford to get me a unitron or any of those really nice telescopes I saw on sky and Telescope so
at Christmas in 1961 my mom got me an Edmond scientific three inch Newtonian
telescope for thirty dollars oh wow pretty good deal yeah real good deal
oh Mike says should have been could not have afforded so in my case too so
anyways yeah but here we are now uh working with a really great equipment
all the time and I would tell you that the telescope makers today are all doing
a great job you know so it's it's really interesting to be in this industry Terry
thank you so much and thank you Scott thank the astronomical league for all the stuff that they do
um and uh let's talk maybe before I let you go let's talk about the next Alcon
that's yeah yeah we're going to be going to Kansas City yes we don't have the dates are not set
yet The Host Club is working on that now so we will be in Kansas City probably
I'm going to guess sometime in July is what I think they're going to come up with some date in July so yeah that that
will be a lot of fun great okay well as it gets closer to that we'll we'll talk more about the details so that's great
and that sounds good too um one thing I do want to bring up um if
Al live is going to happen on September 22nd Robert Reeves is going to be on and
he will be thinking about observing and understanding the moon so we're looking
forward to that that'll be at 7 pm EDT September 22nd
22nd all right that's great thank you thank you I'll be there so yeah you
better be thanks since I'm broadcasting it yes okay all right well thank you very much
Terry yeah thanks guys have a good night YouTube yep okay all right so
um uh gentlemen I had mentioned earlier uh that had been on global star party
before uh but it's been a little while is Robert Wilmore Robert is an Outreach
Enthusiast um and uh very creative kind of guy which is uh exciting because
um you know to have someone approach uh learning about astronomy and explaining
uh uh you know the concepts of astronomy in a fresh way is I think really
exciting so Robert uh thank you for coming on to Global star party and um
I'm going to give you the stage
hello yeah well first can you hear me let's
double check that perfect five by five
okay cool all right I hear I hear it I'm sorry I have a little bit of a delay going on here but all right so on my
screen here oh I think I can start to see it now I see the sun starting to come back now
this is what basically I consider Outreach astronomy what is Outreach astronomy and something you might be
curious about is uh what I'm trying to do here is share telescopes with everybody conveniently and there are
many different ways to do it but why would you want to do this you know you might be asking yourself is that um well
really I just think that Outreach is a great way to meet people uh you are literally using the Stars to break the
ice there is no need for drinks music or dancing or to have fun uh although those
things can add to the the fun that Outreach provides indeed Outreach
doesn't uh just it allows you to get to those really far out conversations that
you would typically have with people after the third drink or the third round of records that you're listening to or
uh the third round of dancing um so yeah it's it's a lot of fun doing those
things but I'm not sure if we could actually enjoy any of those things without someone going out there and
sharing astronomy and teaching about it so it's just a really good way to connect with other people on an
astronomical level with your community and uh build long-lasting friendships that would with people that you would
never otherwise consider having anything in common with so that's what uh Outreach is for me
it's just a great way to connect with people and I have a ton of tips that I'm about to go over here with you and I'll
try to see if you have any questions but I'm just going to start rambling just just to let you know all right so um so
here is the Sun that we were trying to show you here okay you can see kind of an edge here and maybe a solar
prominence might show up here at the top oh cool I see some clouds clearing up right now sure enough the clouds do show
up right when you try and start sharing your telescope that will happen all right so
um if you want to go out there my first tip for public astronomy is if you want to go out there and share your telescopes
with people it's really important to just know your gear I think it's uh
useful to know what telescope you're using how to use it all the nuances about it you don't want to be out there
trying to figure out your telescope while sharing it with people that might add to the frustration and if you start
to show that you're frustrated you don't really know how to use your telescope this might deter people from wanting to
buy one so uh yeah do your best to know your telescope but as well as know a few
things to aim at as well maybe the stars are not your strong point you might not
know every constellation in the sky and that's okay because doing public Outreach you're going to learn a lot
about astronomy and uh people will just tell you things however if you know
where the Moon is or the planets those are great things to start off with that's what I would start off with the sun is also useful if you know how to
share it safely but yeah that's that for tip number one and I just want to make sure that yeah
you go over all your gear and be sure to get ready for lots of questions about your gear as well and if you are going
out there and sharing the moon or a specific planning try to know some information about the object that you're
about to share here me I didn't prepare at all so I've already failed my first tip I if we saw the solar flare I
wouldn't really be able to tell you all that much about it uh I know that the sun spots that we might be able to see
over here in this camera oh I could see I see a cloud coming through or some some light so this is by the way the
white light filter on the right hand side and this is an H Alpha telescope here on the left and there were some
slower prominences here but um yeah so I don't know all these solar features I'm not very versed in it but
I I know a little bit and and I can keep a conversation going so that was my first tip that's a big one I'm sorry
that was a big tip but we got plenty more to go over here tip number two okay is to start off small try and share your
telescopes it's a smaller group if possible uh friends and family that's the best way to start off I start off
with barbecues and uh it just blew up from there okay uh let's let's move on
actually here I'm going to go ahead and minimize this and I'm going to show you my first
telescope
okay here we go here's my first telescope it was a 114
millimeter Newtonian and Scott we all get on questions
and so telescope I'd started taking out and sharing with people at the Docks and uh
yeah it's been a lot of fun and you can see how it I have a comment covered in signature sorry turn up my volume yeah
there's one of the first signatures oh oh yeah
yeah I have a comment uh you know you were talking about maybe not knowing everything that's up in the sky or or
knowing every answer uh but um you know it is as you said it's a
learning process and if you're getting out there and you're sharing the eyepiece or sharing the view and you're
sharing the excitement um then that takes people a long way
I agree yeah sorry I got a delayed on the comment there uh I totally agree though it it really does push the
experience when you're just sharing it
so this is our setup here that you can see and this is the solar telescope that we have set up right outside
this is the H Alpha telescope and here's the white light telescope all right now I want to share with you a
quick time lapse to come up here to my time lapse
all right let's move on to the next couple tips while this is going on so uh what when you're doing public astronomy
uh try to practice speaking clearly and reiterating the same information in new
ways oftentimes you will be asked the same question repetitively from new visitors it's important to never show
impatience or that you're getting tired of being asked the same question over and over try to be excited about telling
them the same information for the 100th time that night after all the information is exciting and it's worth
repeating hundreds of times uh become the embodiment of science that is be a
self-correcting process double check all the information that you provide is accurate to the best of your ability if
someone corrects you take it with a stride and vow to tell them the corrected information from now on to
tell others the correct information from now on and be sure to also triple check that information yourself
of course and uh next lobotomize yourself try to become two separate
people one is going to help the other is gonna freak out after the show this is a show and the show must go on if if
accidents happen do your best to maintain composure continue to educate and freak out later I have stories about
kids trying to ride the telescope hands twisting adjustment knobs eye makeup all
over beautiful eyepieces signatures over signatures and yes one dude even tossed a pen at our mirror but the show must go
on and also this goes without saying but uh use robust robust test use a strong
telescope something that was built well like our explore scientific and inch first linked upsonian because it's going
to get a beating over over the the years if you use it for that long and thousands of visitors all right now
um make sure to give your visitors a chance to handle the telescope every now and then if you can eventually if you
become comfortable enough around visitors it's very helpful to let them put the hands put their hands on the
telescope this is a serious Step Up in letting others enjoy your equipment when you let someone aim and focus your
telescope for the first time you're basically creating an astronomer on the spot and it can be an even more awesome
experience for that visitor than just looking through it bring a donation jar get a venmo QR code
if you can people want will want to give you money so try and streamline the process so you can keep yourself from
being occupied by money transactions use a sign any dry erase board will do
and uh it the more official the sign looks the more professional you will appear people will be less hesitant when
you have a sign this is great uh for people who are just shy and also for you
if you are shy about it engaging with strangers so also wear a reflective vest
if you can I don't have one with me but usually as you can see in the time lapses I'm out there people will run
into your telescopes if you do not make their presence known it just happens so light up your telescope keep it in a
well-wit area if possible all right next uh ask people if they've seen Saturn yet
don't ask if they would like to instead ask if they've had a chance yet this will seem more like a public service
than just someone soliciting for money the people walking by might be confused at first thinking they unintentionally
walked into an invite-only session but nine out of 10 people will not argue and just be jealous that they haven't
received their free view yet the other one tenth of the people will say wait you can see Saturn and then they'll want
to have to come they'll want to have a look after that so um also uh if people are in a hurry
just uh they will let you know um don't be afraid to wave someone down who looks like they're on a mission
oftentimes they'll politely let you know and uh keep moving if they're too busy and if you're too shy to interact with
them they might just move on regardless this brings us to the next one and get used to rejection because it does happen
not everyone wants to look through your telescope and that's fine try to remember who they are so you make sure not to bother them again if you can
let's see I have another video here
we'll get another video going real quick while we go over some more tips if you don't mind
and uh yeah just get used to the rejection um wish uh them a good evening if they
don't want to look through your telescope and the person who just rejected you will likely be more thankful the sooner you move on to your
you move on your attention from them so be quick be polite don't drag on the process and smile uh that's my next tip
after all you are having fun so why not let your emotions show if you see a spectacular view of the Moon put out the
energy you hope to expect others to put out when they look through your telescope if you love hearing people say oh wow that's so cool then you should do
it too uh this will just make the whole experience more fun and it'll help you
show others how fun really telescopes are so being stressed is okay so so long
as you keep it exciting um and all right let's move on actually some other things uh but
one more tip I've got lots more action explain everything you do if you can every time you change the eyepiece add a
filter or adjust anything let the visitors know and uh what oh that was a cool that was a cool
signature yourself so um yeah it just fills the dead air as you explain things and so there's no
awkward silences and it also helps keep your visitors feel like they're more involved in the process I'm gonna turn up my volume
and let me know if you have any questions I'm going to start getting up the next bit of media
and so now I'm gonna see if the sun has come back
actually let's take a quick look okay now it looks like it's still cloudy out there boo
that and now okay I'm gonna
bring up the next tip let's see number 14.
tip number 14. Okay so yeah you explain everything you do and
oh no we moved on to that tip actually but here let me just show you a couple more things like as we're explaining
everything to you we showed you the Sun and here are the telescopes that we're using so that's sort of an example of
that next I would like to show you
this so my next tip for you outreachers is to
try and uh if you can bring some red towels small curtain uh block out any nearby lights if you can uh you know
just help with stray lights oh all right now if you can also be sure to let people know when you're going out
and this could be really helpful let me bring up this next one
I have a another tip for you all I have a couple more tips but I wanted to show you this this cool news article here
that we've got let me bring it over here check this out we made it into the news y'all
boom wow okay so uh yeah when you go out it's nice to let people
know that you're going out it's also nice to notify the local authorities of what you're doing and when you're doing
it if possible if there's Security in the area it's better to seek permission than forgiveness uh practice using a
cell phone here you can see that uh this person's holding a cell phone photo that we just took so
people will want to take photos through your telescope and it's uh going to take up some very precious time at the
eyepiece if you can ask to take the cell phone from them and take the photo for
them through your telescope and with your practice this will speed things along not only will they think you're a
wizard but they will be more grateful next I would like to actually show you
the the posts that we do so here's an example of a Reddit post you can if you
want to you can copy this from the screen and uh plagiarize it all you want
um this will just allow people in your community to know where you are and here we've posted on the Bellingham subreddit
of Reddit and it was great this is tripled the amount of visitors that we get
next I would like to show you we're almost down here just so you know at number 19 is bring a buddy if you can so
right back there that's my wife Cheyenne and uh it could be your grandparents uh
a friend a co-worker anyone they don't even know need to know how to use a telescope but it's better if they do
obviously uh if they want to bring their own telescope that's even better you know you have double the telescopes to look at the sky with but it's just safer
to do these kinds of events with more numbers if you have another person with you this will help you when you get
swarmed with guests and so bring a buddy and uh this will make the whole situation a whole lot safer for you and
we have two more tips and then we're done here I'm going to go ahead and close these and next I'm going to move
this over here so we got that out of the way and explain everything that we do
right as we go and then I'm going to go up into my next venue here and start showing you some cool stickers now these
are stickers try to uh come up with something to give out to your members your visitors as they come along and
sorry if I'm missing any questions right now I'll get to those in a second but uh yeah give out badges whenever you can
um or business cards you can make it uh anything you want photographs just some
sort of souvenir to remind people of what it was that they saw you know like I saw a Galaxy a globular cluster a
nebula Planet the moon where I saw the sun safely and these are really fun
people will have a lot of big blasts with these and the last tip that I've got here is to
if you want to go ahead and let people sign your
telescope this isn't every something that everybody wants to do it's going to
boost the enjoyment of your visitors and the show in general by like 10 times uh
just make sure that they look through the telescope before you let them sign it that's the rule eventually your
well-signed telescope will become a beacon of Outreach and it alone will attract visitors it becomes a community
art project in this way and lets visitors feel like they're part of something bigger and here is the
progression here we have the brand new explore scientific 10-inch dobsonian
I love this telescope for many reasons and I could just do a whole thing on talking about this why this is one of
the best telescopes I think for public Outreach but then it gets a little bit more covered in signatures as it goes along
then eventually it's completely covered and we're going to donate this telescope as soon as we
reach our donation goal of uh 1450 and we only have 450 left to go we've been
doing this since February that's it that's my presentation y'all thanks for uh taking in all my tips
about space Here's the view of the Sun thank you very much Robert
um there's a story here uh Steve Adkins was telling a story about
um uh a public Outreach thing that he was doing during Comet hayekitaki says a
long time ago I was doing a public event for Comet hayakitaki and the local news was there to do an interview I ran to
the car to get some notes and slammed my thumb in the car door I carried on
[Laughter] that's a brave man right there
yeah so uh yeah The Show Must Go On as you say uh that's great I love the idea
that you have people sign your telescope Robert I agree totally look very
um festive and uh you know uh I had I had done something uh similar not not
quite as cool as having somebody sign my telescope but um I would have them sign my star chart
and so I have a star chart with all these signatures from other amateur astronomers people that I
just met newbies astronauts uh you know Space Explorers
um so it's got the full Gambit in there and uh but that's beautiful I I really love it I like all the colors on it and
it looks cool I'll go grab it real quick
while he's getting that I did want to mention that uh you know in October uh there will be
um sign ups for the upcoming winter star party uh and the next big star party
that I know about right now is the elkitex which is happening this September so if you're looking to go to
Dark Skies uh see some cool stuff um and be with some great people these
are two wonderful star parties to attend I see Robert here setting up his his uh
his sign telescope here
okay there it is let me uh get this a little bit bigger
there we go very cool now how long have you been doing this
um your Outreach work I I put this knob on here to allow people to
oh 2017. 2017 is when you started okay that's a
good idea look at that very nice
I like to see people customize their telescopes the boot
this thing what does that do it's a fan
this is a fan and it also has a nice protective uh grating on here to keep
people from trying to mess with the collimation jobs ah very good excellent built-in battery
excellent all homemade huh
uh I had a lot of help from Michael's
but yeah that's that's the telescope very cool and it is just getting covered
now okay well Robert thank you very much
thank you uh next time I hope to uh uh have you on
when you're out thank you doing uh some Outreach on uh at one of your events that would be super cool
so okay um there's another comment here oh
absolutely yeah yeah Steve Adkins says I was the president of the okay uh the OKC
astronomy club at the time me and a few members are the ones that that found the
dark sky site oh he's talking about the Okie Tech star party uh Camp Billy Joe
at the black Mesa the rest is history yeah and it's a great history if you
haven't been to the Okie Tech Star Party you really have missed one of the big um and great uh uh star parties in some
of the darkest skies in North America so excellent place to go
all righty I I at first when you started I I did not realize that we were looking
at two different views of the Sun but now I can see that and I can see some sun spots on the right and uh definitely
see the Sun and HF on the left and I do see a little bit of a prominence sticking up there that's very
cool excellent and that's a live view right
okay yeah there's a lot of you great okay all righty thank you very much
um we are going to transition to watch a couple of videos
that I thought you might find interesting from NASA and I think ones from the European Space Agency so
um I will take this uh Spotlight back and um
here we go thank you again everybody thanks very
much Robert here we are
[Music]
time and space as we know it started with a bang what did the early Universe
look like immediately after the big bang and how did that lead to us I'm leilan from Isa education and we're at the
European space agency's Technical Center in the Netherlands to learn more about our Cosmic history from The Big Bang to
the early stars and galaxies we need to speak to astronomer to find out more
hi hi hello my name is I am a research fellow here at Esa and
before I started working at Issa I did the PHD in astronomy from the University
of Nottingham back in the UK and even before that I'm an engineer
originally so you're an astronomer engineer it sounds like the perfect person to ask about the early universe
so can you tell us what the early Universe looked like sure so
um our universe formed in an event or in an explosion known as The Big Bang some
13.8 billion years ago now just within a second after that the Universe was filled with small particles
such as electrons protons and neutrons but because the universe was an
unimaginably hot place right after the big bang it was not possible for these
particles to actually come together to form atoms but then the universe continued to expand and cool down such
that after about 400 000 years when the temperature had dropped down to about
3000 degrees it became possible for these particles to come together to form
neutral atoms atoms of hydrogen and helium and these hydrogen and helium
they were the first elements to form in the universe so when did the first stars and galaxies
come to be so right after these very first elements that is hydrogen and helium were formed there was a period in
the history of our universe something that we astronomers refer to as Dark Ages and as the name suggests I mean the
reason we call these period as Dark Ages is because there was essentially no source of light the for stars and force
galaxies uh they were not born yet and so the universe was predominantly
composed of these dark clouds of hydrogen and helium and so these dark
ages lasted for about a hundred million years or so and only after that the the
small dense clouds of hydrogen and helium they started collapsing under the influence of their own gravity uh
becoming hot enough to kind of trigger the nuclear fusion reactions within them and this led to the formation of the
very first stars and first galaxies so nuclear fusion essentially is that
when two lightweight atoms are forced together to to form a heavier atom and a
lot of energy is produced as a result and that energy is the light that we see exactly that is that is the light in the
heat that we see from our own Sun that is exactly how it is formed we've often heard this expression that we are all
made of Stardust how's that possible the light and the heat that we see from our sun it is made
through a process called less nuclear fusion and all the elements that we uh
that that make up our human body such as oxygen carbon nitrogen phosphorus and
sulfur they were created in Stars through the very same process of nuclear fusion at the end of their lives Stars
swell up they expand and they explode in massive Cosmic explosions uh known as
Supernova and when Supernova explored they expel all the material they have produced including the very elements
that make up our own planet and even us so essentially because we all of us are
carrying the remnants of these distant massive Supernova explosions within our
own bodies we we say that we are made of Stardust the James Webb Space Telescope is often
referred to as a time machine how's that possible how can it transport us so far
back in time because the light takes time to travel from one place to another we see objects not as they are now but
as they were when they emitted the light that has traveled across the universe to us so for example the light from the sun
takes about eight minutes to reach us so when we're looking at Sun we are looking at it not as it is now but as it was
eight minutes ago similarly the nearest neighboring Galaxy and Ramada it is 2.5 million light years away so when we are
looking at Andromeda we are looking at it as it was 2.5 million years ago so
essentially all the telescopes are time machines but the James Webb Space Telescope or the jwst it's going to take
us the furthest back here so if I have to put things in perspective the Hubble Space Telescope that we have
now it is the most powerful telescope and with it we have been able to discover galaxies as far back as 13.4
billion years ago this was when the universe was just 400 million years old but the James Webb Space Telescope it
has been designed to peer the universe even further than that to find the first stars and first
galaxies when the universe was just 200 million years old so we're talking about baby photos of
the early Universe baby photos of the early Universe precisely yeah cool when it comes to stars and galaxies which one
came first do we know you don't know that yet all we know that is the very first sources of light they they came
after the Dark Ages as I explained earlier so about 100 150 million years
after the big bang so yeah I'm very much excited and looking forward to work on
the data from jwst very soon yeah we hope you could see it soon as well fingers crossed yeah thank you so much
for speaking to us today no problem this was so much fun thank you so much
[Music] okay all right right so our next speaker is Dr Tim Hunter Tim has been a great
friend and I've known him for decades um he's also a gentleman who's done a
lot for the astronomical community and is one of the co-founders of the
international dark sky Association Tim is always an interesting guy to talk to
and loves doing astrophotography he loves science he loves
his current love is writing books about astronomy and so Tim I'm going to give
you the stage thanks for coming on to our Global star party and thanks for being my friend for so many years
oh it's wonderful Scott was just trying to think about it's 30 plus 35 years or so yeah it went by quick
went by real quick I hope you can see my screen yes I'm going to talk about very
briefly and you can feel free to be a good uh moderator company offer that go
too far I want to talk about the Monarch objects and the book that I recently got out called the Barnard objects then as
Monarch saw them and now as we interpret them okay all right there we go so here's a
copy of the book available all good book sellers available from Springer nature
but I want to talk about a little bit about nebulae which are just interstellar clouds of dust hydrogen helium and often
ionized gases there are enormous in sizes but but really less dense than any
vacuum created on Earth even though we the pictures of them look like there's all kinds of stuff that we're looking through enormous distances
you can classify as bright nebula and these are visible either from fluorescence caused by hot stars and
fluorescent processes in the nebular material or reflectance of light off of
particles in the nebulae so-called reflection of your mind the fluorescent nebula are going to be rare or greenish
the reflecting ones are going to show bluish color and what I'm going to talk about very briefly today is dark ambuli
those are dark areas of dust and clouds that are so wooded against bright star
forming regions or Star clusters so dark nebulae are very common throughout the Milky Way
they originally were described actually probably by uh William Herschel certainly it goes back that far and
there for a long time felt to be holes in the sky is where they know Stars I'm gonna talk about ee Bernard a fabulous
astronomer and Max wolf is Buddy and these two gentlemen 100 years ago
literally did the first comprehensive study of these dark objects and pretty much after studying them for many many
years realized that they're actually obscuring material between us and background Stars
so dark nebuli are Extinction alike by dust and there are still our clouds they're often associated with what's
called giant molecular clouds these are clouds that have molecular hydrogen molecular hydrogen is very difficult to
detect uh because it doesn't give much of a signal but whether it's molecular
hydrogen and there's enough of it but that's areas of star forming uh small rounded dark nebulizer
sometimes called globules because these are often star-forming areas the dust particles are generally
submicron size and they're coated with frozen gases bicarbon monoxide nitrogen
and sometimes water these dark Nails usually have hydrogen in them they have helium they have CS gas ammonia
formaldehyde and they have Ultra have organic and even aromatic organic compounds
e Barnard is probably one of the greatest astronomers of all time probably the greatest if not the
greatest visual astronomer of all times this eyesight and his visual observant
was fantastic ironically because of those photography skills pretty much put visual astronomy out of business so
here's some seminal pictures of Barnard the picture on the
left there is of him and the 36 inch refractor like Observatory the middle
picture of him with the Bruce telescope but he took photograph things at Yorkies and the picture on the right is picture
of him in the molar age and this is an absolutely fabulous book by William Sheehan called The Immortal
fire of men this the biography of E.E Barnard absolutely must read this is
really fascinating even though you know you know what's going to happen it's wonderful to read in a recommended
highly Max wolf is also very prominent astronomer in Heidelberg Germany here's
a picture of him and the telescope there is a Bruce telescope it's a twin inch a
twin 16 inch refractor wow so Catherine wolf Bruce is very
important in the story of astronomy 100 years ago she was a patrons astronomy and gave
quite a bit of money in those days to astronomers her father was George Bruce and he was a tight founder made a
fortune in the early 1800s and Catherine gave donations to Harvard College of territory for the Bruce
telescope she gave him the University of Chicago which is the Bruce telescope that Marner
have used and the one on Heidelberg Germany which we just saw a picture of
the two Bruce telescopes the one from Harvard College Observatory and the one from the University of Chicago Europeans
have long since the bit the dust and are no longer in existence in fact the lens for the Bruce telescope uh Yorkies is
hidden nobody knows where it is it's missing in action last scene somewhere in Greece it wasn't the Harvard College
Observatory is actually now in the Harvard College collection it's a 28 inch diameter refractor
the Barnard used these telescopes to produce a fabulous book called the Alice the selected regions the Milky Way and
Catherine will Bruce along the way found on the Bruce medal the astronomical side of the Pacific and this actually is one
of the most important Wars an astronomic when this is an award that's given for a lifetime of service goes strong
serves a picture on the right of her father in the picture on the left is
supposed to be a capital proofs and this is taking off of Wikipedia and I've read that this actually is not probably a
picture of her well here's the Bruce telescope that she donated at E.E Barnard talked to her and
this is completed in 1905 and set up in Europe he's Observatory so hopefully you
can see my cursor the big lens here is a 10 inch refractor which photographed on
12 by 12 inch plates the smaller right here is a five inch guide scope
the one over here on the side is a six inch refractor a voigtlander lens that
was purchased and that gave eight by eight plates and occasionally Barnard would put a small uh what he would call
a magic lantern one and a half inch lens on here to give a wide field view so
there's a telescope as set up here it is in the hallway when they first got it here's a picture on the left is set up
at Yorkie's Observatory where he took wide field plates typically about 10 degrees by 10 degree plates of the Milky
Way and here it is set up in 1905 it was transported to Mount Wilson and he spent
most of the year of 1905 in Mount Wilson taking photographs of the southern part of the Milky Way and Scorpius opiocas
Sagittarius so he published a list of 182 dark
nebula in 1919. after his death Prime examples of these
photographs are published as a photographic Atlas the selected regions the Milky Way this is edited by Edwin
Frost who was the director of Yorkies Observatory and Mary Calvert who was actually Barnard's niece and worked at
the observatory so they collected his unfinished work and put it together so this was published uh postmortem
they included a second list that Barnard had started before his death but hadn't
gotten around the collating and they started the numbering and they had a 2017. so in this original publication
there are no Barnard objects from 176 to 200. so they number one to 182 and then
one uh excuse me one to 176 and then 201
the two 370. here's a picture Edwin Frost the European here's Mary Calvert she's
looking through a 12 inch refractor in Kenwood Observatory which was in the South Side Chicago in those days
well his photographic Atlas the selected region Milky Way uh was a grant that you received in 1907
but he never got around to doing it because he spent years finally getting together publishing his observations
from Lick Observatory from 1889 1995 took till 1913 to get that published
and then he selected 35 000 photography prints for his Atlas he
looked at the each one inspected seat didn't like the photographic process so that Atlas has published 700 copies that
each contained 50 large photographic prints so only 700 of these books were printed so if you have an original copy
of source thousands of dollars and the first draft was completed in
1922 uh and then he was too ill to complete it and no longer could work on
it and he died in the early 1923 and the 700 copies were finally printed and done
in 1927. it's an extremely valuable book so it was in two parts
the first part was the photographs in the description these are 52 original prints from his negatives and the second
was the charts and tables that he had drawing showing the objects you can look at this
a total Digital Imaging of this the Georgia Tech website
and then a republish of this by Jerry doebec this is really a wonderful so Jerry republished it the same size same
everything same font everything uh not the original Prince he digitized the
best that Prince could find then pre-published in Cambridge and I really recommend this highly if you can find a
copy of this so here's our book which is sort of a take on where we actually discuss these
objects discuss what they were known in those days discuss what they're doing now and we have a forward by William Sheehan
I'm so proud of that the introduction right here talks about uh very detailed
description of Photography in the history of photography and history of Ash photography
then we talk about an overview nebula one of the things that I feel proud of is a large collection in this chapter
that's normal catalogs oh I get very frustrated of seeing these initials what
catalog is this where did it originate what is it for and we don't have every one of them we summarize a large number
and then talk in this chapter about his photography what kind of place did he use how do you develop them and I showed
Terry had a picture of dark room earlier in this session and Barnard's a master
he did all his own photography all his own development also in printing then we discussed some of these objects
can be visually observed others of them are only photographic talk a little bit of modern Imaging give some selective
use and then what we have done Jerry and I took 25 Barnard objects that he had
marked on his charts but not had numbered and we gave him the numberings from 176 to 200. no verification he
would have never run that way but we suggest he says quote the missing objects and then close up with
discussing what are these now what is the astrophysics of these why are they important today glossary I tried it every term that was
in the book I tried to Define and we have a table all these so here we are out at the grasslands Observatory
Southern Arizona this is the earth Shadow Rising
and here's the original Observatory 24-inch telescope was mainly designed
for original thing and when I retired a number of years ago I spent some of my life savings to put
three buildings here with remote telescopes he was remotely operated from Tucson they work most the time but of
course they don't work all the time no one has to always be prepared in the middle of the night to get in the car and drive down and fix something
and so this is a 20 inch telescope in the far Building 24 inch telescope and central building the one that used their
Barn objects is a Takahashi 180 millimeter telescope with a Canon EOS
are a full frame camera so because most these are large enough you want to do
wide field Imaging it's about 500 focal lengths field of view happens to be on that 2.6 by 1.7 degrees but we also have
on a loan a Canon 200 millimeter F2 lens this is a 2.5 000 lens no longer being
made it's absolutely perfect and it gives a 10 by 8 6.8 degree field of view
so much similar to Barn Orange plates so here's a typical picture of Barnard 33
the Horsehead nebula this is taken with The Takahashi Canon EOS combination now
Barnard listed his chart took a picture of this described it 1905 did not call
it the horse head was not particularly interested in it years later he actually looked at this with a 40 inch telescope
of Yorkies had a very hard time observing it and hasn't realized that bark and Barnard was one of the greatest
visual observers of all time discovered multiple galaxies multiple nebulae multiple star clusters discovered the
fifth moon of Jupiter which got him world famous discovered at least five or six comets in his lifetime and he had a
hard time visualizing this here's a typical picture of the North American nebula and we can see I've
labeled a variety of Barnard objects these are dark nebulous areas in these things
well here's a typical chart in this book so this will be uh plate uh 41 and then Mary Calvert would
draw a chart showing the objects that you're supposed to be able to see so look at right over here we see the
famous e right here it's a bar on 143 and 142. here's a Takahashi picture of
it and there's a 20 inch picture so this is discussed and shown in the book
here's another one you notice this thing Barnard 63 right over there
then here we have Barnard 63 a wide angle View and what looks like in color
now here's one that is called the fission platters Barnard 44 and 145s
above it and here's a so here's Barnard's original plate and here's for the exact
same scale that Canon 200 millimeter F2 lens so you can see how much more
nebulizer you see but the color will tell you an awful lot more about this and Barnum was not able to see because
this plates were only sensitive ultraviolet and to the blue portion of the spectrum
one of the things I wanted to do in the book and I got frustrated when I started reading about stuff people describe the
funnel cloud or the stigma star cloud or the northern coal Sac or the scutumsgard
cloud with a Sagittarius small star cloud of Arsenal so what the heck are these it's amazing try to look these
things up so I looked them up documented them discussed them in detail on the book so that when you hear these terms
you go look them up the small Sagittarius spark cloud is actually M24
and that was what was described by Messier and here's a little bigger
picture of it the small Sagittarius star Cloud here's a large Sagittarius star cloud and that was the asterisks
advancing horse which is in our configuration a lot of people describe
well here's a couple of very good objects Barnard 92 and Barnard 93 and
here's NGC 6603 this actually is a wide-angle picture of this small Sagittarius star Cloud this is actually
M24 M24 is not NGC 6603 Messi actually
described the entire star clock why I don't know because it was pretty obvious that it was not common but that's what
he described inside of it are all these other objects and here's M uh Barnard 92 and 93 these
are very nice telescopic objects here's another thing Barnard was very
fascinated by this can you see Barnard 86 he discovered that or observed it uh when he's
searching for comets in the in the middle 1870s and noted it down had actually been observed earlier by Hersch
on other people and Barnard saw this was so dark and so wonderful he thought that was a hole in the sky
what's neat about it and this is a 20-inch picture of it you can see the object there it's right next to this
star cluster what I've done is blown up Barnard's plate uh with approximately
the same image scale so you can see that the modern Digital Imaging and the longer focal lengths can give you a much
sharper images so the Barnard objects many of them are very large and they're worthwhile for
visual observing they can be visually observed on a dark sky site with free of the Moon
a lot of them are stunning photographic Delights uh a lot of them are pretty challenging
targets to see and some are very small and very hard to distinguish in the background and when you get a long
exposure color Imaging sometimes they fade into the background and you're wondering why he actually identified these things
so here's an example of his chart 13 which is the region of real opiocas and
you see these things in red b200 b177 b176 well these are areas that monitor
Mark you can see the dash lines but he didn't give them a number so in our book we just arbitrarily numbered these to
complete his list because he obviously noted these areas but never got around the number right now and here's what that would look like if
you take a long-term color picture of these things oh yeah you can see M4 Antares or borrowed 176 177 400 45 44
and 43 and 42 he had described so if you want to see almost all of our
known objects in color you can go to the grassland Observatory website and just go to the Monarch page and just
grasp it just type grasslands Observatory you could find it um it's three towers.com or grassland
deservatory.com and then you go to the Barnard page to see it so to summarize
here before I'm asked to quit I want to say their partner objective very
important from historical point of view I think and I mentioned this very often
in the book many of these seem very arbitrary and there are multiple dark areas not specific catalog by Barnard
he was very inconsistent on why he would label these things it was inconsistent in his numbering he was so busy doing
all kinds of astronomy I think he did this off and on he would come back to an area and he'd already use number 44 so
an area next to uh number uh 44 he was up to number 213 so
he'd have number 44 to next number 213 and said why aren't these number an RA I want the number of consecutive order
well they're not but their areas in intense study today because there are regions of star formation the potential star formation
there are also regions where organic compounds are being discovered so they're very interesting
well this is the end of act one so I am finished honorable but at this point
okay well great well thank you very much uh Tim that was
uh wonderful um uh the uh the grasslands Observatory
has been uh something you've been working with for a long time now I remember 30 some odd years ago when I
first came out to visit you I think you had just recently completed it and
um uh it's in pretty dark skies out there so I'll have to get out there once again
and absolutely yeah well that's great okay so folks we
are going to take a 10 minute break and we're coming back with um actually
we're not taking a 10 minute break we're going straight onward to Cesar brolo uh who's waiting backstage here Cesar you
want to come on
hello how are you good
how are you today great um now it's clear uh but I need to
to put my my go-to much better okay because my relation earlier was okay for
the sky in the in the evening but now I have you know that sometimes I
don't have all stars for alignment um I use my go-to alignment my my image
of this guy tonight is excellent as the last week comparing for for you know for
uh for that is the this guy they see this guy it was great only maybe I need
more uh you know go to a nation alienation but I can show you for the
audience something like talking about about the
the sky and you know
[Music] and we can see some live some views for
a few minutes and then we will go to that break and then we'll come back to you okay yes yes I have okay if if we
are lucky I I can see maybe I can see you you can see uh clouds in the in the
Horizon but I don't know if they are moving from here if not well you know uh
fortunately I I can show nothing tonight but you know
now I have something in the field starts but uh
I'm making I can show I can show you a short view of
of the the sky now yes
mm-hmm this is the duration of of a Scorpio
near to to in the area of
of a Scorpio the area of Antares
when I moved the telescope you can see some sometimes the different uh star
trials with different Scholars with colors that's right yes
sometimes when you watch the the the uh it starts like a point
is not easy but you know yeah an old trick is to throw the image
out of focus and yes see the colors easier yes yes all is in duration of of Scorpio
I can show you more in zarya
mm-hmm and we can say that all these stars are
more than maybe 15 years 15 000 years
like year uh of distance and are stars
that are impossible to watch to the naked eye
in the sky sure
well I I try to make a go-toolination in 15 minutes 10 minutes or 50 minutes if
we are lucky but I think that the the clouds are moving here but you know we
can try I I send you a message if it's impossible to to show something
okay all right well then uh Caesar we will yes we can
the audience can see that the the clouds are coming from from the
West it's all right it's all right yes it is a lie this is life
that's right that's right like you yes yes okay we are going to
um we got a live view of the sun over here with Robert Wilmore so let's uh
let's go over there for a couple minutes and then we can take a break
um we have ways to keep the ball rolling it's no problem so
all right um yeah as you can see right now we have uh to uh the left of the screen you've
got an H Alpha view um and to the right is a white light
View and I can make out if you look at it
carefully you can see a prominence Rising right at the top of the uh the
sun on the left and we got some nice Sunspot Sunspot
group here on on the Sun as well probably that largest Sunspot is bigger
than planet Earth so now the sun is uh was it roughly nine
minutes light minutes away so we're seeing as it was nine minutes ago
and uh you know it's uh it's interesting to look at the sun it's our closest star
and um you know I I wake up in the morning uh you know
really genuinely trying to generate um uh some gratitude for the sun
um you know it is it is the parent of the solar system it's holding our all of
our planets in place and um it's amazing all you know you think
of all the things that's going on in the solar system and the Sun is driving it
um including our weather you know so but that's uh that's wonderful
here I'll I'll pull myself off here so we get a bigger screen of the uh
the views here and we should take advantage of this for a little bit before you get too much in
the trees there
yeah you can see the prominence yeah
and we are pretty much into uh some Leaf cover instead of cloud cover
at this point Ah that's a great View look how big that prominence is it's
huge all that plasma going out into space
all right Mr Wilmore thank you for hanging in there with us and making this possible
it's great okay uh we will take a um we're going to
take a little 10 minute break um so it's a good time to um go and get a sandwich or take a
bathroom break if you have to and we'll be back in about 10.
well we're back um hope you enjoyed that little break there
um and um Caesar were you able to uh yes
okay yes all right uh with clouds but we
we can talk about um some options that we can appoint in
the sky my go-to is perfect but I have clouds you never can have something or
much better safe you can never get all together functioning good
last week uh we have a beautiful show
with you and John yes Batman um we enjoyed a lot of objects well I I
am in the region of Scorpio that I say let me share my
telescope okay
well we are in Antares um first of all we can say
that Antares is that tonight is a night of
how how many times the the light is coming
from the star or from the option to us how many in the history
um well we can we can know that 164
years like years ago the time
the lack of this of this star are coming maybe from the time of
Civil War no more uh let me
in the history 164 is gone how many years for the
audience is I I know I say that the brightest star
yeah 164 164.
is relative a close at close as a star that we put in the center
I'm using live image of only it would have been 1859 is 164 years ago
18. 1859. so what was going on on this day
in 1859
lots of historical events Johannes Brahms gave his first piano
Concerto in 1859. wow yeah the fourth Century Bible was
discovered um and the so-called Sinai Bible
and the light now of this star that came from
164 years ago was started that it is a live image it's
not a recorder no no this is something so real that if I put my hand
well turn red because the reflection of my hand you know but this is the idea for the audience
100 this is a a closest option in
comparing comparing the scale of the light that we receive in the time
and well we can we can go to M4 that is very
near to this option I go to the cattle
using this and I choose M4
I think that M4 the stars of M4 are near to
or excuse the option C4
maybe we can see so the Thousand light years away
seven thousand seven thousand seven seventy five light years away
oh it's really far away from dantaris yes yeah yes it is
700 it's like this the middle age yeah
it was discovered Charles Messier cataloged it in 1764.
and it was the first globular star cluster in which individual stars were resolved so people discovered that this
was uh uh indeed I'm saving 100 at 700
years seven thousand seven thousand sorry
seven thousand thousand one hundred and seventy five light years wow
each light year is 5.9 trillion miles um you know so if you take that and
multiply that by 7 175 that's how far away it is
pretty fun but that's one of the closest things to us and you know with uh deep sky
especially globular star clusters many of them are much further away
wow yes here I I watch on this from from the information from from the
application it's amazing that's
why what's amazing is that we learned how to discover a distance you know yes
and this size is the size is 75 light years across from from yes yeah this
area huge yeah wow it's huge huge yes and have sense because
yes but this incredible that seven seven thousand two hundred like years away yes
the same distance that that as NGC
6397 making this the two Clauses but are
the closest are the two closest Global clusters
our solar system yes yes we are thinking
you know when you think about our culture in history talking that we don't
have um how do you say maybe maybe the the first they are they they call it a
Egyptians the Egyptian uh archeology the
oldest they all this um you know the oldest
um guns that they they found are maybe around
this time is around uh the old Egyptian
time is around four thousand uh uh years
uh before Christ and the light that came from this
cluster is maybe 1 000 year
I go it's incredible sorry but by the clothes
technical problems
the real things where the people can say the the clouds
moving and the the scale of this this is very small in the sky my my
smaller maybe the the size of the moon is in the entire the entire field
you know yes and this is so far far away that is
incredible in this area may we let me opening
Sky Map while we are enjoying the the cluster
I'm stop share and but I'm opening
and stellarium and enjoy the i i ensure
the the map
if we can go to another
to another object but near in the area and with enough
bribe you know to be visible tonight that we have really
and for it's impossible for nebulas but maybe
maybe another one M80 okay it's possible
Caesar why don't we do this why don't we uh pick up the next speaker uh which
would be absolutely absolutely in between Adrian and the next speaker you
should be on your objects I think I think that is the best yes okay maybe we
can have the we are can't get lucky and have a much better Sky maybe the clouds
are are going out okay sounds good let me okay let me
switch me foreign
thanks for coming on uh you've been on the road and uh where are you right now
I am in Denver Colorado okay and uh by saying okay that means my audio works I
see my videos yep I'm using uh a different laptop and
different system that I normally use I thought I was going to be on my phone which is sitting right here sure but on
that I'm in a room three of us are going to be going down to Okie text so what I
thought I'd do while Cesar while you find M18 um I'm going to share
um I've shared pictures that I've taken from Okie text over the last couple of years that I've been but I thought it'd
be a good time Scott Marcello you're here um how are you doing I thought it would be
good to share what I'm going to use the primary instruments for what I plan what
I plan to use to capture and this is the contraction that is going to be
doing most of the capture which you have is a Canon 6D you have a lens that is a
16 to 35 F28 um it's an lens for those that know
about uh Cannon gel lenses one important thing to note manual focus
I use manual focus because you're you're out at night and there is a I've done
the testing to where there's a couple ways you can get focused but I've also
I've noted where it is on the camera and you probably can't see the uh
right around there is where I get good Focus okay so when I'm out there and you
know Noki text is a little darker uh in Kenton Oklahoma so you you're always
best off making sure you can turn your camera to the spot where you know it'll
be mostly sharp and then you can fine tune it from there what's on here is an intervalometer that
I bought from a camera store what this allows you to do I don't know if you'll
be able to see it if I turn it on it may or may not show up
so what you can do with this is set times for exposures so if you want to
take multiple exposures you can I have it set up to take a couple of two minute
exposures where one two minute exposure followed by a delay so I can turn off
my little oh shoot move tracker which yes she did
put the whole thing together this ball ball head mount goes on the tracker this goes on a wedge
and I've actually used the wedge from uh sky was it uh the star Adventure from
skywatcher that wedge actually works you just need something that allows this to
be polar aligned and then this will track and the camera goes on top of this so
say I'm shooting at something towards the South that's how the whole thing
will look on top of the tripod don't have the tripod here but this is
tracking um two minutes I'll experiment with it and see if I can get more than two minutes and see how much
data I can pick up this is an 85 millimeter lens now those
of you that do photography know the 85 is a portrait lens I know the 85 as
a great lens to stitch together um photos this is the part where I share
screen and before I do of course get the sky meter see if we're getting 21.9 21.8
it'll be interesting to see just how dark the Oaky Tech Skies read so let's see
we're gonna share I'm just going to I'll share Safari app and see
if I can do that so martello you'll recognize this is a
version of the image that wound up and uh this is a different
processed image it wound up as the uh head of um sky's up magazine and uh
still very grateful for that this one because I've taken a few versions I had
taken a few versions of that photo and this is more or less how it looks to you
naked eye um you may just be able to make out the ha regions that are here
um depending on how good your eyesight is but what I'll do is focus in so wide
angle shots tend to look like this and I believe this this was before taking a
modified camera the camera I showed you is modified this is what you can do with an 85
millimeter lens and it's essentially you can take a mosaic
of the area and you can get some incredible detail with
it so the plan is to especially with these these two
nebulae that are in scorpion the cat's paw and The Lobster Claw are right here
you can kind of see this resembles a little bit of a lobster if you do Milky Way Photography take a look at your
image and then look down at these four stars and see what you have if you've
got enough detail you may see something that looks like a little bitty Lobster um it's got a different name as well the
The Lobster Claw is one of its names and this for obvious reasons is the cat spa
um there are other if you can you can see there's enough detail to see the lights of a plane going through there's
a cluster here there's a little cluster here there are all sorts of objects
going along the plane of the Milky Way and I'm sure this dark nebula may have a name but
a lot of times we focus on the overall picture but if you can you
can get good focus in good detail look at that you have the butterfly m6
and M7 ptolemy's clustered a butterfly and then going on up here
more clusters more ha regions this is where body's window is these are things that are much easier to
pull out of the um of the Milky Way of the Milky Way region
and how do you know you may be looking at a globular cluster you see extra little
stars floating it around I think this is as far as I can zoom in but for instance
let's go back out there's so many uh yeah there's so many dark nebula there
yes and I thought this was in 22 Scott
it may be and then other dark regions so there's a lot to discover
um now of course when I redo this the goal
is to not quite blow out the cores of these nebulas so that we can actually see some detail yeah so
so getting shorter exposures and then blending yeah shorter exposures are less a little less gain when I took these
pictures I'm sure I had the I had aperture all the way up and I think I had my ISO all the way up the darker the
sky the more you get and one way that
classic astrophotography handles this is to take different exposures but don't
move your camera move your you move your exposures you move your uh settings and
you combine them and what you end up with when you stack though you stack everything together and you combine it
your composite photo contains a lot of good detail in it and unfortunately we
didn't we didn't quite get to
um in but we did get m17 and this is as far as we got here so
there's another NGC object I know of him look at the this is and real quick Sky
look at the detail in M23 here no it's beautiful this is yeah this is a uh it's
a nice bright open cluster you're seeing this in a you know if you
had the ability to view ha regions and you're looking at it in binoculars this
is what you might see and so when it's darker out you know you've got a nice dark sky getting
things like this is you can do it with less exposure time than um when you have
to you can of course you can pull this off but it takes longer exposure time and one of the problems you have
is you can only get so much that you know as you know the sky moves the Earth
rotates and you can only get so much of it if you want to put it on the ground
you have to balance between when you want to take the exposures how
much of the exposure you want to take and you know how much uh of the ground
because this is going to move and you're going to have to find a way to
um to marry the two if you want some sort of landscape if you're just looking at the object you're not worried about
it you can take as long you take as long an exposure as you need until the end
the object goes behind and of course star trails are very popular
I did this one um yeah you see it rotating around the
North Star which does not appear unless this little sliver of it right here is it
but um even the North Star moves a little bit you know not as much as this
is here in Kenton Oklahoma not here in Denver but in Kenton these Stripes May
well belong to um Ursa Major or the plow Big Dipper
rolls behind this Mesa a little lower in the sky than those of us that are that
live in in the 42 degree 41 42 degree latitudes yes so so this one that's
dramatic look at this yeah and this was a redo of this image these are the
clouds I remember doing a presentation and talking about if you see dark clouds
you know that you're in a dark area and there's a different shine to the Milky Way that uh you just don't seek I redid
it and got the foreground to come out green I you know for the longest time
this was just in Shadow and uh now you know you've got you know with the
masking that some of the Adobe tools allow you to do now you can take your old image single images and treat them
as if they were two separate images you can mask for the sky you can mask through the ground and it does a pretty
good job yeah so now you've got a nice contrast this is when you're shooting
away from the actual campground that's what you get and this is another part of
the campground those of you familiar with um being at Oki text with no there's
building down here there's a little spot right here where this crosses this
uh Campground is uh I used to know the name of this Campground but I've uh it escapes me
it's uh Billy Joe Camp Billy Joe can't Billy Joe yep it is actually a Christian
Campground they go there in July and we wonder how do they avoid the heat because it gets really hot I think it's
really hot yeah so Scott I don't blame you for coming last image I'll show because I've
showed it on global star party before but this image was even more Majestic to
view than it was to try an image yes you've got the sky glow but it was the first time that I looked
and I noticed you know the the sickness region was as bright as the uh
you know it's as bright as the galactic center just more is visible and it gave
this look to this guy that I tried to capture that look just like the Orion
region I tried to capture that and um there's a couple of different
attempts of me of capturing it the way that I saw it a little bit of Astro
classic Astro where you zoom in and I think I'm out of
that first those are first images look at the DraStic difference when you try
an image in a yeah you saw the Orion picture look at me trying image at a site in Michigan
that just isn't as dark in a very similar settings you get all this data but it just the sky color is a little
different it just doesn't it's still a beautiful shot but it just doesn't there's that same sickness region
sickness setting it's just I still do it I still think it's a you
know it's a nice image there's it's a little harder to get the type of look that you get when you're you know even
with even when you stack your images this was an attempt to stack and this is when when you stack your images and
you're in a lesser portal Zone yeah you begin to get some of the detail that you can get with just a with a straight
image and let's see I thought
you know the Upper Peninsula of Michigan produces a very you know it's a dark enough sky but then
you know this is a dark sky Park and it's nice but then the second time you
go if you go out Doki text and then this happens and you go okay
any dark sky any truly dark sky location we'll end it with this one Scott any
truly dark sky location you know there's a reason so many people come out to turn
on their telescopes to look at these things in the night sky because it is absolutely beautiful it's something you
don't see um if you come from a location like I do
um you don't see the Milky Way this clear now this is a processed image
um I may have included and I probably no I didn't what other parts of the Milky Way are just as impressive but of course
the core is that you know the core is very bright but when this Andromeda
Cassiopeia leading into Perseus when this is just as uh you know this is just
as impressive this is uh a lot I do believe this is a Malad object this
giant cluster here in Perseus um when it's that impressive all this
red comes from the red lights in Camp and it's it's something you'll even if you don't have the pictures to
share you have the memories so right go to a dark sky Park in Cherry Springs
begins to give you what that's like and if you come out west west of the Mississippi the uh you've got higher
altitude less humidity yes and your greatest your images if you if you tune
your images to look the way that the sky color was when you see it you're going to get this dark grayish Sky color a
whole lot of stars a bunch of Starlight a bunch of Starlight and you will if you
love the night sky you will enjoy it so I'm going to start my share here Scott
and uh yep we're about to go have dinner till John Schwartz look forward to uh
watching this presentation if he comes back on uh thank you all for having me
we pulled it off we got this set up so that I could uh use my Mac to share some
images and now turn to Scott uh the star party over
to Cesar because I'm sure he probably has something else to show us yeah thank
you all all right thank you very much okay uh just a quick check in with uh
Cesar I think he's um I think he's indoors right now the telescopes alone
uh so we will switch to our next speaker which is Marcelo Souza Marcelo thank you
for coming on to Global Star Party hi
how are you thank you for the invitations guys it's great to see you my pleasure and today I have a news
ah something happened because I was in the right place in the right moment
I I made a discovery today I will show here not to me because I asked for
animation participate in a group that analyze comets and the realizing special comments and I
was Observer responsible for one image this night and then this is made
something different happened in the comments
the results is that important to hear that I will show now first I I let me share my
screen I'm very happy with this results because
first time that I saw something that nobody someone before can you can you hear me
that's gonna hear me yeah it's quite can you hear me I hear you fine yes okay but something happened
in my computer oh oh on that moment uh it's not this I I will stop share and
share again no problem so something happened different here
let me see Ferry one ah now is again can you see
yes I can see you why is not working I don't know there we go and just take it
into presentation mode yes I don't know what's happening it's
using presentation mode I open again
sorry but my computer
sometimes he wants to do by his own
I don't know why it's not a working presentation mode
it's okay we can still see the pictures okay okay I will show here
um but I can't see the picture but I I will say what what happened
yeah what happened ah here are the maze I'll try to put in presentation modes
or what let me see I'm working it's working it's
awesome not from here no not yet
can you see the presentation huh no it's just all it's a black screen
wow and now I'm not sure what's happening
hello can you see not yet oh wow
let me try come on one time more if it didn't work I will show the internet
because it has a you know can you see there we go perfect okay this is this is
the events that you organized last week
was here with me and we organized many activities in five
different seats these are I will show very quick the image where I talked
about the protected dark sky you see he is the director of the dark sky
in Uruguay chapter Uruguay I am the director of Judah
and they revised review have organized events in four different seats have a
lot of students involved
another seat and we have a lot of presents that
participated in this this activity here and also had the opportunity to look to
the sun here another seat we are talking with the head of the Department of
Education of the city in the we have a fair and with a lot of students there we have
the opportunity to look into the Sun that great
he's here for another meeting here another school the event another school
talking about the house to protect the dark sky any fine students that are
motivated to join us yes how many students how many students were there
in total in one city the big one we have 250 students wow
51 in this last one that I showed 40 and another another one that have almost 300
students in the fair then the total RE dog have the opportunity to talk with
more than 600 students three days in three days and this is a place that he
wants to be the next dark sky place here in Brazil
that participates online refers here in Brazil rights
[Music] uh dark sky in Uruguay and now is the result that I received
today that was a big surprise for me these are the first picture because I'm participating the folks telescope
project we have access to telescopes with two meters two telescope with two
meters we have to meet the diameter of two meters uh
centimeters and this is why they may first image that I could use in the telescope with two meters that is the
image of the commented 12b
and this was the image that I took from this saved the same ER
[Music] comets but now it's very far from us is
in the center of the major here the comments oh yeah this is if I'm not
wrong in August 25 this means now I took a image these nights look at
the requirements in the center of the maze watches
I never noticed this but his admires from the picture Astronomical Society
that participate in the comic change project that he noted that he happiness
are merely outburst in the comments then
a first time I I asked the record the amazing in the correct time the time
that happened at the mini outbursts in the comments then this is the only
page is there until now that I know RPG is outbursts and as a result of this today the group
that it's not only me man the a is coordinates by Helen us
Catholic University and he should admires that you are doing these studies
with the Maze of the Comets they publish it today announcing the astronomers
telegram man but everybody knows that see is his sister
and the this was from the my image the
image that I took using this telescope is here
I'm very happy the first time that uh uh is one time in life you know that you
can see something different to happen yeah it is the only one that made the
history of this and he's here
has identified another small watch burst of amplitude that's that far
yeah it's nobody knew about this and the first time I'm very happy that I make a
contribution right it's the amazing that I had the opportunity to to take these nights and
here is the page of the common chases and why he's not he wrote he said you
might know that this happened here is the electrical you see of the comments
and you see here the image from today you're happy
here the magnitude here is is he he Jesus was the last one the
Chinese and today one and you saw that he is more
intense the light of the comments and he made the he had the opportunity to
analyze the photometry of the the comets and he confirmed that so Isa is more
Outburst today man is the first contribution
I'm very happy with this first time that I saw something different and I think
that's only the image that I got to that he showed this now they I try another
image today and tomorrow and see what is happening with the comments but this is
telegrams
so long about the distance because I had the opportunity to take another image
using this telescope the folks in this project now educational
opportunities and I'll talk about the distance here and
here is the the how we imagine that is now the shape of
the Milky Way elliptical galaxy and this is the
position of the sun in your eyes and inside the Dimitri I I'm the stars
that you see during the night the other a few stars appears like like a Galax
Forest that are not inside the gym Ukraine and the Milky Way this idea
Stars hello here we are in the center here the sun
and it is closer is one of the Stars of the triple system
of your Alpha sent out that is the light you need a more than four years to reach
us not as far and that's three years more or less Church all right one of the
stars of the people system and here the radius here is 5e lighting years right
in this image and another one that you only these type that have name that I
have here is the bahana star that is almost six light years from us
and another one the series that is almost 80 and half
light years almost and another one that is these two points
is partial oh penism you know what that is more than
11 90 years from us these are the closest uh Stars part of the process
and they arrival that you looking to describe every our first note that we
are looking for the past and now
here is the South and cross here that's it flowers is very important to him
that's it will have here you have a star that is
a better from in the Southern Cross that is more than
350 light years from us and the they have one that is a little far from
this one that is almost 306 more than 306 like news
and then 10 000 years we are not going to see more of the the Southern Cross
because of the movements that have in the universe but to have time yes 10 000
years
[Music]
is closing Galaxy these are satellites Galaxy I
have here the distance that great 5 000 light years promise only from here in
the southern hemisphere you can see the two other galaxies that and here also
have two other one but these are very easy to see this guy that they had like
large Magellan clouds that is how much 100 and 6 000 light years promise
restaurants
in the Triangle Galaxy that's it it belongs to our
local group right here and the andama Galaxy is almost
two two and a half Millions light years from worse and the
dragon Galaxy near pretty medium light years from West this is our local group
of Galax where the galaxies the fossophobic
grounds and make is not the Galaxy are moving
into one interaction drama Galaxy is moving direction of the
Mercury here the garage fancy is it's not enough
to make this galaxy to come near
and I had the opportunity to take pictures using a two meter telescopes
and I could look very far right
this is one of these with NGC 13.5 or it
is almost near seven five in medium the
mighty response is a spiritual Galaxy I discovered it by Hashem in 1979 he using
the constellation of edoms 75 million light years
and I had the opportunity to take a picture of these galaxies there is this this project is fantastic but let's give
us the opportunity and the we can involve students to do this the other one is this NCC 16 4290s 200 Millions
light years from West Nashville Galaxy constellation of Taurus
to look what 200 million light years and it is I had the
opportunity to do this in real time I was moving to telescope in Hill Time
and accessories telescoping in Hawaii
this is another one that is NECC and 10 or three
36 million light years from us foreign
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
to take pictures of this Galaxy and study these galaxies now we are we I had
the opportunity to take indifference and filters with different filter now we are
producing a color image if it is different uh image from different
air filters and this this is the sky's art magazine
to answer my presentation thank you very much it's a great place to be here thank you
Marcelo it's wonderful yeah uh sky's up is a free publication it's um the
contributors are astronomers from around the world so it's a global astronomy magazine I'm going to put a link here so
you can go get your own copy of it and uh
I scratched it before I forget I shared here the link for the oh I don't know
what type of my computer but I have tried channel the link is
I'll share it on I shot it now I said no wait for the
information about to do is bursting Department geography
that's great okay so there we are
through the power of the Internet it's shared all over the world thank you so much thank you Marcelo it
was great all right um let's check back in with Caesar and see what uh what we've got here
well okay um us um uh so we with thinking uh
uh Sherry again okay but I choose I choose to show to show and that is again
[Music]
the people can see uh in the sky in direct and if by in my uh from my
telescope uh you know that it's impossible to show more than L4 that we
will watch earlier on and I try with M80 but it's
something that uh when uh when we are
having next week or you know and maybe
we are we are uh we will be more like he's the
best presentation in the next week with the next flower Safari because it's very
interesting to to traveling uh by this area
and tonight I can show you something uh I share how the movement actually of
the clouds are at least
um in the satellite this is so real that you know uh
I well you don't control the clown you are watching the the the the sharing ah
sorry sorry no no yes I first of all I'm sharing the amazing sorry that we have
clouds I I have clouds yeah we got clouds yes yes
John we were beautiful the last week that yes yes clouds and sometimes we
have some some uh you know some clear Parts but maybe we have a higher clouds
I don't know but actually you can you can see by my telescope that you know
and this is yes and this is oh
this movie man it's moving and Mission let me share it how about some spiders
tonight the tarantula is that potentially up or uh
yes impossible to to show something like
like last week right here you can see actually
you have um spheric River tonight yeah yeah sure
yes behind it though Caesar in about 10-15 minutes we're going to get that
clearing again yeah yeah but maybe this sorry about about you if
you let me I don't know if I can I can
ah here the problem is that you know [Music]
something okay you're near the ocean there too right yes uh yes this area is estuario and
this is but I think that is so different this one here do you
have snow actually in this park yesterday they have snow here they have
rains you know it's it's really big and different the areas
um in this area here do you have Brazil you know where
Marcelo is and this is more reinforest
and then we'll come back and check again okay
yes no problem I I think that okay tonight is is uh
okay for me it's okay I have been called I return next next week with more
lighting much um are you presenting the Catamarca star party in October all right sounds good thank you thank
you see you in a bit Caesar okay all right our next speaker is uh Ron breacher Ron
is a gifted astrophotographer uh he often shares his uh images to me in
email and and uh almost every day I see something new from him and uh I love the
work that he does Ron thanks for coming on to our Global Star Party what's happening this week I could not
turn you know Scott just contacted me yesterday and said hey this is the theme
yeah we're looking back in time and I think I responded within a couple of
minutes right yeah what is this one uh because you know I've often said
telescopes or time machines but yes my wife
has corrected me and changed my way of thinking about this the telescope
is just between the stars and The Time Machine
so the time machine relates to the detector of the light so that's what I want to talk about a
little bit and I'm going to try to convince you that that we're all time machines so let me share my screen with
you and uh switch over to my presentation so
uh little little tip I often put my conclusion on my title slide
so there's the conclusion that I'm going to try to leave you with tonight we're all time machines and uh I'm gonna I'm
gonna do that by um hopefully showing you some cool examples
and talking about some neat ideas I uh I love to write and teach I'm a
contributing editor at spine telescope and I write for amateur astronomy magazine as well and I'd love to teach
online and uh in person one-on-one or in groups
so uh we do masters of pixinsight.com tutorials and uh subscription tutorials
and I also provide teaching one-on-one so if anybody wants to reach me my email
is at the bottom there are Reacher rogers.com this is me standing with uh Celestron
14-inch telescope that I recently mounted in the observatory Scott this
all came together when we were at neef all right um when we were at niac and uh so I've
just got this going so that Floria pictures you're seeing is from this new telescope which is connected to a camera
on the back which is another kind of time machine but tonight I'm gonna like
I said try to convince you that we're all time machines and before we can do that we got to get our heads around the
speed of light because light travels really incredibly fast and
um then I'm going to show you how we're all time machines and give you some really neat examples all in about 10
minutes so I've given this example before uh in
in a global star party because it helps people get their head around the speed of light so if we think about kind of a
regular human speed of 100 kilometers an hour which is about 60 miles an hour
um if you were driving at that speed it would take you 16 and a half days to
drive around the earth it would take you six months to drive to the moon and 170
years to get to the Sun so that's at a regular kind of speed that we can get
our heads around easily but if you were traveling in a light car
you were driving at the speed of light all of those times get really really
short so less than a second to get around the earth you could get to the moon in a
little more than a second into the sun in under 10 minutes at that speed
and so light travels really fast but it's important that it doesn't travel
infinitely fast in other words if the sun suddenly disappeared
from the universe we wouldn't know about it instantaneously
it would take eight minutes and 20 seconds before we would know about that so any time we look at
anything there's time that has passed so for the
nearest star more than four years for Galaxies the light might have been
traveling for millions or billions of years so we always see things as they were not
as they are and the further away things are the further back in time we're seeing them but it's it's really
important to note that even if you're looking at somebody across the room
the light reflected off their face took time to travel to your eye so even
in that close setting we're looking back in time it just becomes really
noticeable when we look at things that are really really far away so that's why I say we're all time
machines even the non-astronomers even the people that are just looking across
the room are looking back in time we're always looking back in time
so I want to give you some cool examples and every one of the examples that I picked is something that I've seen with
my eye as the detector so there yes these are photographs they
were taken with a camera but I picked them because I've seen each of them with my own eye I've seen into
the past with my own eye and in the case of this The Crab Nebula I've seen six
thousand to sixty five hundred years into the past four thousand years BC
and another really cool thing about about Supernova Remnant like the Crab
Nebula is that it's not the same every time you look at it so I went and dug
around and I found um a journal article from 1942 taken by uh
bod and published in the astrophysics Journal and I've oriented it pretty much
the same way and I want you to just notice these two Bright Stars at the top
here notice that the edge of the nebula doesn't cover those stars in this older
image in the new image it goes way past those Stars
oh yeah now there's a v of stars down here unfortunately I've got the the words
covering it but there's a little V here and right in the middle of the V there are two faint Stars right here
and they're right at the edge of the nebula in 1942. 80 years later
they're engulfed within the nebula here they are right here yeah so even in
80 years a relatively like a human lifetime we can see this changing how cool is
that that's very cool this is another one of my favorite ideas
when we think about when we think about um
fearing back in time we've all been talking about things as
though there are a specific distance away and even on this slide on the very bottom you see I've got that it's about
2.3 million light years away that's really just the average distance
this this galaxy occupies space it's about a hundred thousand light
years across so in fact you're not looking at one point in time
you're looking at every point in time in that hundred thousand year time span
and so the time that it took for the front edge of the Galaxy was just closer
to the bottom is a hundred thousand less years than it
takes for that light from the back end to reach us so I just think that that's really cool
remember even though we see things as two-dimensional they're three-dimensional out there and if we
want to extend that thought just a little bit further we're not only looking at 2.3 million
light years plus or minus 50 000. we're looking at every time in between
then and now because all of the stars all of the single stars that you see in this image
all of those are inside our galaxy yeah
so just uh this kind of thing really makes me stop and think
here's uh another example of uh a couple of different objects here that I that I
want to point out it looks like just one thing but the main thing here is an open cluster called Carolyn's Rose cluster
NGC 7789 and it's about 6 700 light years
away but you'll notice this bright red star here that bright red star is much closer at
1094 light years away although it looks like part of the cluster when you just
look at it in 2D just hold that thought that uh that there are different distances away not
only are they at different distances away but that one star is a variable star so it's
not static so this is what this star looked like
in uh I think it was in 2011 yes it was 2011.
when I took this picture and that red star that you saw was
really nice and bright well a couple of years later a friend of mine asked me to image this
cluster form and I went out and I imaged it and this is what I saw
oh wow 2011. 2013. so I was pretty new at this huge
this is a teachable moment always do your homework before you write to the Harvard Central Bureau for
astronomical telegrams and tell them that a star disappeared that's what I did
I'm now the subject of Talks by another friend of mine who's a variable star specialist who teaches people how to do
their homework so here's here's what happened
in the two years between those two pictures
I happened to catch this star at its maximum and its minimum
and remember that the star is in the foreground the cluster is in the background
so binoculars and telescopes and it can help while I was uh watching you guys on the
big screen on the little screen I was getting my telescope shooting so yes
sometimes my time machine is uh uh CMOS sensor a camera sensor but
really we're the real-time machines there's nothing more special than
getting your eye up to the eyepiece and letting those weary long traveling
photons flood into your eye and have that experience and remember every photo that
I picked here was of something you can see in a backyard telescope so with that thank you very much for
inviting me to talk tonight oh thank you thank you I I love uh your analogies and
um you know I think that it's something that I'll be able to use also when I'm
explaining trying to help other people wrap their head around distances and the Scale of
the Universe and time you know yeah and you know it's a tough one you know so
why don't we check in just before I give up my share why don't we check in on my time machine
that's out in my Observatory just on the other side of the driveway okay so here
we go I'm Imaging uh NGC 7129 tonight
and what you're seeing is a five minute exposure through the red filter
and it looks like my guiding is at about 0.4 Arc seconds wow
and this is what the 14 inch telescope that's crazy so
looking really nice so that's that's what I was doing while I was watching uh
watching the global star party I was getting this running that's awesome
all right I look forward to seeing the finished image that's great man
I'll disconnect from that hopefully I just didn't shut everything down yeah Ryan thank you so much wouldn't be
the first time oh yeah yeah anyway thank you I'm gonna I'm
gonna take off I really appreciate you inviting me to speak tonight yes yes well uh I thank
you too uh run great images and um uh you know
you're a gifted teacher so thank you very much thank you see you guys all right take care bye all
right so um our next speaker is uh John Schwartz uh John is uh hails from California uh
John and I have known each other for gosh I don't know 20 25 years maybe and
um uh he is uh he's always someone that's full of energy and loves
astronomy um and he is an incredible artist and
um uh he loves those big telescopes too so John
that's what I want to do is get I see I see an award there yes I um just got it as you guys were
talking it came to the door wow I thought it was my pizza
thought it was a pizza this is better in the pizza let me turn the lights on I'm in a really nice place tonight
in the clouds again yes like Caesar but let's see if you're entirely yeah I was
they beat me up tonight if you can believe that let me see if you can I don't know if you can see it it's
reflective hard yeah because it's black on black with your green screen but uh
first place let me do the like real life maybe we
can get it come on baby give it to me all right well we're solids reflect it's
so beautiful I can't believe it man it's got a big Saturn on it this is this is
from the astronomical League correct yes yep in the first place for
um first I wonder if I dim it down let me see your space art
okay well never mind anyway it's a nice reward and uh it's great congratulations the
astronomical League um great place to be to join they have a
lot of uh great stuff from Awards which I just got one and they have uh so much
knowledge and information and such great people yes one of the best organizations
I've ever had a pleasure of working with um is prompt really great thing and uh
teaching me so much I've been doing this my whole life and I'm learning a lot more yeah with league so I'm really excited
and oh that's great this is a league event yeah we're doing good yeah so my
background you know so not too far maybe a couple hours away in the
clouds and then this is my my uh Alien shirt yeah looks like a glow-in-the-dark
shirt I do want to know if they're real and I would ask them to take me to M51
that's as far as I'm going to go 23 million light years
so it's a long way to go you know the problem is when I came back nobody would be here that I knew
maybe my uh children's children
I could they could yell at me that's right well they'll check your DNA and
then they'll go oh wow okay you've got you know 500 rels has been born since
then so maybe more yeah yeah so you know this is a great
topic and you know the greatest caveat is when you're at a star party and you can tell
people that how far back in time would you like to go on the they don't understand at first
and they say no really because most of these objects are light years away
so we'll start with some of the closer stuff a few of the planetary nebulas and work our way out to the Globs and then
way out to the galaxies and quasars okay you know my my last uh big star party I
was shocked to find out that one of the objects I was looking at was the 270 million light years away
I mean when I when I read that I kind of just like that's the Triassic period
here on Earth it's this is when the earth is recovering from massive
Extinction and uh dinosaurs are just coming on the scene and that's if you could take that
light and just blink it here you know the distance covered if you combine that into the equation
you just can't imagine you can't even fathom how far you're traveling it's
just I mean you know how you drive and you see mountains when you're driving on the road you go okay we've got to get to
that range and then I'll be coming into the valley and getting closer to my destination yeah literally you can drive
at the speed of light forever and you'll never even get there you're just driving like you're stopped
yeah it's been just amazing so who knows if you can bend it and uh you
know like bring the corners together and fold them and touch and join in one place
I'm not sure I understand all that uh you know it was nice of him to
mention that Carolina Rose cluster as well on cloudy nights Frank uh posted a
beautiful sketch of that and it's probably one of the best open clusters in Cassiopeia to
a view now if Caesar can get it going I'd like him to show us the southern Jewel box
because that is a gorgeous cluster uh compared to our Jewel box
I mean ours is very nice but check out this little cluster back there
pretty neat right yeah so I I love looking at the open clusters
you know uh there's some great ones that we can look at you know year round which
is good especially the winter has some amazing ones but I I like to go further
out and do a lot of globular clusters and you know we just finished this Spring Galaxy season so now we're
getting closer to the winter season and the planets are coming around so that's exciting
so let me get this thing started here I'm gonna try it maybe I can do a thing
at the end hopefully and um it's music it's one of my things I put
together I may just have to screen share in order to pull it off but I'm going to give it a try
to close I was trying to get my granddaughter seeing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star we've been rehearsing
but she wasn't ready so this is a drawing
this is a great Galaxy to look at it's a very long
elongated Galaxy you know when you look at it it's a epitome of an edge on
basically you can imagine that if we were in our own Milky Way galaxy
and we just shot out light years way out on the same plane as our galaxy so it's
like looking at a plate sideways you're seeing that dustling and those are actually the spiral arms of that
Galaxy and they're um compressed and you can't see the plane like the the grand spiral
of it but if you could fly back on top of it you would be surprised how much it would
look like our Milky Way but it also would probably be a grand spiral galaxy which is a wonderful face-on spiral
like M101 M51 m 100 there's there's quite a few of them
but um they're they're interesting to look at because it's a different view that you're used to seeing and it's
iconic to see those certain kind of add-ons if you look below you'll notice the satellite Galaxy just like our Milky
Way has the magellanic clouds so when these little teeny galaxies are just
cruising around minding their own business they got a little too close to that big
Galaxy and guess what happened it got sucked in and it's tidally locked
and it'll never Escape it'll just orbit that for eternity
for eons and eons which is kind of cool
I mean I wonder if they could ever spiral in and crash into the Earth you know
or not the Earth the Galaxy I'm thinking of the Moon so yeah this is uh 30 to 50 million
light years away in Como vernisis so it's pretty far
a little further than M51 but not as close as Andromeda
this is another one 5907 in the constellation Draco this is a format
that when you go on cloudy nights and you present your sketches this is uh
kind of like a template so you have a circle and then you have columns for you
know your information such as the object uh you could tell the telescope you use
the magnification the location seeing conditions
uh which would be Darkness transparency and seeing are the three factors that
will give you good seeing so when you're doing this hobby it's good to check windy or um the clear sky
clock to find your location and see what the weather is going to do
because it's sure not good when you go out and it rains and that just happened up at Mount Pinos
it rained like you would not believe just before the hurricane hit oh boy
this one I'm really proud of this is such a dim object this is in
my favorite constellation one of them Leo because I was born in July
and I love my zodiac sign so constellation Leo has
some amazing galaxies in it all different types some of the most impressive ones M65 m66
yes so when you're cruising around with even a six inch scope you can hit Leo
and you can nail about probably 10 good galaxies that'll give you a good view you'll see
some structure uh this is ngc338 I just completed this
just before it took me all day to get it right I almost didn't make it and I was falling asleep doing it
just staring at the screen for that long and not getting it quite right I hope it looks okay for you
uh this is 76 million light years away uh 14th magnitude
and uh we're just getting a glimpse of that little spikes the diffraction
spikes from the spider on my 28 inch which is an astro systems spider
very good so this is a nice tilted spiral and um
something caused a little bit of a Distortion of it somewhere but maybe it
absorbed the smaller one it's hard to say uh the next one is from our last viewing
session this is taken probably a few weeks almost a month to get it right
it's a Messier object m74
in Pisces Grand spiral so now if you were to fly
your machine save 100 light years maybe or a hundred
thousand light years you could fly from the side looking at the edge and come
over the top and then you would be looking down like you're looking at a plate flat you
know as you're looking at a plate of food on the table so this is uh was a great site I mean
it's very faint and you have to concentrate for quite some time to get
the detail to pop into view I did adjust the levels a little and uh
to get a little more separation between the arms it was a little bit more
paced I guess you would call it so but this is what it would look like in
uh this is Wonder 57 million light years
57 million light years away uh pretty far
yeah it's a beautiful galaxy though I mean
when Charles Messier was hunting these he probably had a few favorites I'm sure this was one
you know what I love is the way these galaxies they get a bar
in them and then it creates like a ying and a Yang almost the way it
separates the the core there's a divide and you have your left and your right
side and they spiral and um it creates that eye shape
and you'll notice that in a few galaxies uh they have that similar structure in
them and typically It's associated with the bar barred spirals
this was uh from our trip Scott right Mount Wilson
now this will give you an idea that telescope will show you this kind of
detail on the best nights yeah and you don't see this even in a in the merkos
32-inch you get hints of it I mean it's it's really good view we do get the same
detail but it's not as pronounced like this so we had the pleasure of
looking through Edwin Hubble's tool to look at these planetary nebulas yeah
and uh it is just something to behold the structures you know each one is a little bit
different depending on the way it exploded and uh where the energy was released
you know some of them are released at the equatorial most are the polls
because the poll is the weakest point of the magnetic field so typically when it lets loose it's going
to go through the weak spots and once that happens it's I think once
a star converts to Cobalt you better run it's like a predator
when it you know he laughs [Music]
what the heck are you and that boom man that that would be scary to feel this
like Beetlejuice is getting ready to go I keep seeing on YouTube now so just
announced that Beetlejuice exploded but I I don't think it did yet but I
mean can you imagine when that does what a great site we're gonna have
we won't need street lights for a few months be like a full moon all the time
so here's a comparison I did a comparison of murkrows in my view
that we have at malpinos on good nights and this is what I get
this is a sketch it's a little more subdued less detail
more just faint you know because of the aperture and you know the bigger the
aperture the more photons you can pull in for me uh the true absorption of photons
because photons is what's out there that's really what's in space is the
photons they're just floating around but when when they come from a source
you know they're directed you can look right into them and um connect you know
it is some kind of a energy but very faint so I recommend you do astronomy every
night if you can to get these photons will help you a lot
to add street lights is killing my my viewing now this is uh again Mount Wilson
this one we've seen I'm using this for comparison purposes you know the
structure of every planetary nebula is different uh the forces are far beyond anything
you could imagine uh in Mother Nature it's just on such a
scale that you just couldn't imagine it'd be like a bull hitting somebody blindsiding them you
just you wouldn't even but times a trillion so that's the Wilson look and we had a
good view it was this is a little bit more done of course I've had a couple years how long was it
since we went two years a year uh what I did with this now is I took
the Wilson data that my sketch had and I combined it with our typical best visual view
looking through merkos 32 inch and my 28 inch
and the color and the hue when you look into it it's like an eye it's called The Cat's Eye Nebula it's in
the constellation Draco and um they call it a Cap's eye because
it looks like a cat's eye sort of so this is one of my favorite objects to
look at this is probably the best view of get on one of the best nights there's so much stuff around that blew
out and when you look at a photograph that's been taken of this object for say
200 hours or something the whole outside has a shell and
structure it's just so faint that our eyes can't pick that up from that distance
do you like this one Scott I do this one is the merger I think this is one of the
most realistic views this would probably be real close to what you would see at
Mount Wilson in the eyepiece it looks very realistic thank you proud
of this one I just finished it it took all week I had to start on it
Tuesday night just to get things rolling these things take time you know
just think when they were created how how much time it took just the wave of a
hand this is
this is a funny name there's many names for a lot of these objects yeah one of the names for this is the clown face but
I'm not joking here this is actually the Eskimo nebula yeah
and um this is a real good one to look at as well now we were just getting the
hints of structure and you can see the diffuse Cloud that
blew out and it made a nice spherical planetary yeah you just see that brighter Inner Circle
the bigger scuffles I guess show the uh that diffuse Cloud the 60 inch
definitely shows that cloud yeah uh this was I think I Incorporated some
of the 60 inch into this one as well I mean that's what you look at when you
go to Wilson right planets lunar yes the moon when you look at the Moon through
the 60 inch it's like nothing you could imagine uh
the resolution is just like so amazing to see that you would think
what could you see on the moon I had to throw this in because my plaque
has the exact replica of Saturn on it and we missed opposition it was cloudy here
tonight I was going to try to set up the two UCam and do a live thing but it pretty much clouded out yeah this was my
best one of my better views murkrow was with me we've had views equivalent to this
and now we had shootouts you know there's a guy with an extremely good ogs
16-inch carbon fiber trailer mounted telescope it's absolutely amazing for a
Casa Grande and he was getting views that would blow your mind
but what I was getting were these white clouds on the bottom with the 28 that
I've never really seen before they actually looked like clouds like cumulative nimbus clouds
look at the detail on that yeah amazing so this this was uh I have
a sketch this freehand sketch but it's not nearly as precise
so I had to bring this into procreate and um so what's nice about digital is you can
do your sketches the easiest way if you're going to sketch uh I would recommend using a small rigel red light
or Scott has little red lights you need to have red light when you go to a star party it's proper etiquette or or people
will yell at you because they don't know how to be nice um
but if you're you know turning on your headlights with your high beams it is quite annoying
yeah and um you know you have to have the tools of the trade
but you can sketch on white paper just standard eight by 11 copy paper or
printer paper and regular pencil and you could use a blending stub you
know paper stub and a couple different uh pencils like a 2B 4B HP just to get the
basic and then you know check in with your light make sure everything's looking good and then later you can you know refine
it bring it into procreate and go to work and really clean it up make perfect
you know pretty much in nature most of the edges are perfectly you know smooth
so it's not like when you do a drawing and it's Jagged line you have to really keep it precise to to make it look real
that's the idea behind it sure improves your um what you see
your ability to see things you see so much more when you're sketching you train yourself to key on certain
features using averted vision and you know you have to take time take time
to look at this stuff don't just go to the eyepiece and say that's it I I just saw it you have to spend
decent amounts of time on on faint objects that are hundreds of light years
away until uh millions of light years away
and there we have my best little buddy I have to always say hello
who's always with me it's here now Bosco
and imagine traveling to the time of Star Trek where I could actually be a
Vulcan this is what I would look like Brock my name is
Johnny sprocket Johnny sprocket huh
and I'm with uh the global star party and the astronomical league and the a
stands for 18. and this is this is the the place I want
to be oh you know and then they got the space force that that's what I really
really now you know I would have joined the space force sure
that is such a great logo and and you know what they used they use this emblem
they use the Star Trek emblem I see for the United States space force
I don't look too bad as a Vulcan yeah it works thank you
well that is my presentation thank you so much man thank you that was
great and informative thank you very much yep that's what we want to do is uh
teach them teach people let them know you know what what it is actually going on and it's mind-blowing to think that
we are all of us if you've ever looked through a telescope you're a time traveler
you've uh you've you should get the award everybody should have a medal I've traveled back in time you know that's
right what's what's the farthest you've been back uh quasars
quasars you have 3c273 with uh my um
with the 16-inch telescope wow so it's I guess about three billion
light years something like that geez yeah how do you even see the faint blue
star is what it looks like so it's amazing it's amazing so John uh you uh have
introduced me to merco Mayor okay and he's a good friend of yours my Observer
I'll let you introduce him okay okay yeah and so let's bring
yeah well I'll tell you the greatest story worry about this so we're at one
of the biggest star parties with uh some of the most serious guys on the mountain I call them the fabulous four which is
uh Don panzak Leon tenzak yeah I I
pieces Etc and uh by the way he carries your eyepieces because we've he sells
them at the mountain and I see but and then we're always using those 98 Degrees from Jerry hot murko yep incredible
views so we're up there one night and I'm going why is this guy here we all got
Dobbs some of the best Jerry has a 22. I have a 28 and Don penzak has one of the
finest 12 and a half tier telescopes it's probably the best 12 and a half I've
lived through but um it's Don penzak you would expect no less so we're doing intricate uh list it's
going for obscure stuff and uh I asked Jerry who's this guy with
this little refractor over here I mean I I think the he doesn't really fit and
um so we're doing our reserving and murkrow comes over he goes hey John do you do
you want to see a picture I took I go with that yeah I guess and when he showed me Andromeda galaxy
it absolutely was mind-blowing with that telescope it's just like Caesar's uh
similar which one was that uh 90 or 60. it was a uh it was the 70 millimeter
William optic so
he kind of blew me away so I I might have become the odd man out after that
[Laughter] but we've uh through the Scopes you know I got them looking through my 28 he was
always so nice he used to go up there with his daughter and she still did they
had a little red Coulter Dove and they would always come and look and I I kind
of I didn't know him that long but I've kind of seen him grow up into Manny's quite a person uh amazing
astrophotographer uh incredible father really great friend of dynamic observing
partner and we killed it and we went out to Rodeo New Mexico and drove and picked
up his 32 inch I'll talk about that one let me let you go to
merco mayor thank you thank you I really appreciate you uh giving me the
opportunity to share on This Global Star Party number 129 so thanks Scott it's a
it's an honor to be part of this and uh what you have going since you started the pandemic I know I've tuned in on uh
the after you know after live um yeah so um I did prepare a uh
a set of slides that I'll go ahead and share um let me see if I can go ahead and do
that miracle
yeah that was a good new moon we had wasn't it last month
it was we looked at a lot of galaxies
okay can everybody see my screen can you see my screen Scott
uh yes uh it's not in presentation mode yet okay I'll go ahead
a click here yep great so just uh yeah just what I thought I would share is um just taking
some photos of some image sharing some images of uh some galaxies that I've
taken with longer focal length of large aperture versus a smaller aperture and
so I'll be quick hopefully we'll bore you uh for 10 minutes too much but I'll just get start with a little bit of a
background of myself my name is Marco mayor and I am an engineer by trade so I
I basically design facilities that transport and treat
water so every time you drink out of the tap or flush your toilet you can thank People Like Us
they're very critical to our society yeah so so my my interest in astronomy
began in 1986 at the age of 12 and that was when Halley's Comet visited so it
was around 1986 87. um I don't know if I thought of I've heard somebody talk about their first
telescopes my first telescope was this three-inch Tasco reflector and I'll
never ever forget the moment I got up at 3 30 a.m set up my telescope to look at
a red object low in the Horizon and lo and behold there was Saturn in its rings I just could not believe it it was it
was like you can reach out and touch it but you know in that telescope it is so small
um as a 12 year old kid I was setting up in the neighborhood and showing my neighbors and they wouldn't believe me
they said oh come on kid you have some sort of Kaleidoscope thing going on so after that I got my first real
telescope my grandparents and my parents pitched in on a 10 inch reflector it was a Coulter Odyssey and that's the
telescope that John was uh talking about um as a kid
um I was I was uh camping with my father and we had chased Dark Skies
um my father's no longer with us but you know I have him to thank for nurturing this hobby of mine that has been so
rewarding and inspiring and humbling and that's my daughter there at the age of
probably around 12 or 11 standing next to that telescope that I had since I was
a 12 year old kid wow so I took a 10-year Hiatus and I had that thing put
away and I was using it intermittently until I started taking that that scope out with my daughter on Camp trips to
enjoy the night sky is being in a you know it just fit in
the car that was the first compact I guess that was a go-to a compact uh
telescope to fit in the trunk of the car for its size it was pretty amazing you
had to rely on maps and star hopping we had amazing views but you know because it wasn't go-to you had to kink your
back and your neck and you're looking at that you know that by the end of the night your neck and your back hurts but it was my beloved scope for almost 30
years and then when I started getting back up to Mount Pinos at these star parties
around 9 2013 you know I start seeing people bringing up their larger telescopes and I won't mention any names
but you know people would bring in their 28 inch telescopes I am the king
and I noticed you know telescopes and Equipment got substantially better in
the amount of time that I was a little bit dormant from my hobby my childhood hobby so my quest for more aperture had
had begun so why astrophotography me well I wanted
to capture images of what I viewed and I really appreciated what Ron had mentioned earlier that he he takes
images of things that he views to share and I started my astrophotography hobby in 2014. I got a 10 inch Newtonian on a
German equal tutorial amount and I was using DSLR cameras before switching to
cooled Astro cameras and I still Chase those remote remote dark skies and that's this is a picture here in the
Mojave with me and my setup my first my first astrophotography rig
my ability became okay at Imaging while maintaining a level of sanity with the
you know the Steep learning curve that this hobby has with all the associated gear the mounts the cameras the
processing um I have a host of images uh on Astro
bin that I share that you could see a progression of some you know my images did get better but I'm not uh by no
means a a Perfection or or award-winning astrophotographer I just do it mainly
for myself and um just to share images with my friends and whatnot and with
other people who are interested um as my ability got better I compared
various tubes and cameras with imaging friends that were also on the Astro Imaging hobby path
um my friend Alex Roberts who is an amazing astrophotographer
um we compared we both had a 10 inch reflector Newtonian setup and we compared our cameras so let's you take a
picture with yours using your Pentax and I'll take a picture with mine let's see what it looks like and so we would just
hear a image of Rosetta nebula which is the heart of the Rosetta nebula um it's a beautiful star cluster with
surrounding gas that had formed those Stars I had also compared various lenses
using a Pentax camera with the 300 millimeter lens and the Redcat 51 so that was
really like hey if you have an awesome lens in your your camera set your camera bag do you really need a you know a 70
millimeter refractor to be attached can you get by with whatever you have and chances are you may be able to get by
and take a really cool photo of the night sky as long as you have your tracking ability
but I enjoyed doing both observational astronomy and astrophotography and I
would often have both setups in the field so um I eventually did upgrade that red
Coulter Odyssey telescope to an explore scientific 16-inch dob that's pictured
here set up with my um my Astro my usual Astro Imaging rig can we talk about that Bob for a minute
we can but hold on the quality of that mirror we have to tell them yeah yeah we
it's it's it's been an amazing telescope we're not you know it's an amazing telescope I have mine equipped with the
DSE um a a digital setting circles and it's just been a great uh telescope I've had
it for 10 years and there's my daughter again standing next to my scope 10 years later and now she's College Bound so
eventually fast forward to 2020 um I wanted I was getting curious and I
wanted to you know see what it would be like to hook up my camera equipment to one of these larger Dobbs and during an
observing session with John I asked him if it would be okay to hook up some gear to his 28 inch dobsonian and I asked if
I took 180 second exposure in my nine and a quarter Celestron what would that
exposure be in a large 28-inch tracking dot what how many seconds would I have
to take um of this exposure with the same camera settings if it was hooked up to a large
job so I did a little research and found that in order to figure that out you need to
figure out a couple exposure factors to get an equivalent exposure and I hope I don't bore too many people with some
numbers here but um you need to figure out two things your focal ratio exposure factor and an
aperture exposure Factor so the first factor is focal ratio so if I if I take
pictures with my C9 and a quarter my focal ratio is F10
using John's telescope as an example his focal ratio is 4.33 so the ratio of the
two ratios is about 2.3 so 2.3 times faster he collects light 2.3 times
faster in his 28 inch scope just based on his focal ratio
the other factor that we need to calculate is the aperture so that's just basically what's the ratio of the areas
of the two apertures so I'm shooting through a nine and a quarter Celestron tube as an example if we were
to use John's scope as 28 inch we end up with a square
inch area you know we're not factoring or Accounting in the center obstruction but his the area of his mirror is 615
square inches we're in a C9 and a quarter it's 67 square inches
so that aperture factor is nine times more light Gathering ability in John
scope so his scope would have his he's collecting Photon photons sorry that
I've that have started you know 30 million light years away or whatever he's collecting photons nine times faster or
or more abundant at the same rate so he will have more photons in per second
than I would have photons in my my sensor so we decided given the opportunity we'd
put it to the test and we hooked up my camera and we lo and behold we got
um well actually we've we calculated what this is so to calculate the equivalent exposure
in 180 second photo say if I was taking 182nd exposure in my C9 and a quarter
um I would need 180 seconds divided not by 9 which is the aperture factor and then divided by
2.3 which is the focal ratio factor I would need a an exposure of about nine
seconds and if I was taking an exposure of five five minutes in my C9 quarter that equivalent exposure and John scope
would be about 15 seconds or 14 and a half seconds so we basically said we
should do this let's hook up my camera to your scope and try to get 15 second subs and so we put that to the test
and this is what one of our results was right here that I'm sharing this is the
Eagle Nebula which is also what hosts the famous Hubble Pillars of
Creation I'm sure John is could I show my insert in between real quick after
you've tell your story about it sure this was an image that we used
10 second exposures and I hooked up two cameras a h Alpha camera and a color camera
and we combined a total integration for this image of about 15 minutes and I did
the processing on this it wasn't um you know it wasn't by means any means
perfect there are people that can Pixel People all day and come up with some things nothing's ever perfect in ask for
photos that's for sure um but this was a good good uh test for
us to uh to work on you know and what It ultimately happened a year and a half
later it inspired me to get a larger telescope so I I went out and got a 32 inch double
screen telescope he smoshed me into Oblivion
I've been destroyed I see uh Robert sharing an image of of
his it's it's a beautiful the beautiful image of uh The Pillars of Creation the
Eagle Nebula there it's awesome um so what I'm going to share now is just some um side by side of various
rigs that I've taken pictures with of galaxies and just it's kind of mind-blowing how amazing or how quickly
you can get photos um to be equivalent so here's a picture
of M1 oh I'm sorry M101 that I took with the 32 inch dob and on the left hand
side is a 32-inch knob with 15 minutes of integration I believe I was taking 20 second subs and on the right side
um I it was three hours to get that photo using I think it was 180 seconds
through my C9 and a quarter obviously this isn't a
a comparison these are images that I took maybe years apart so but they look different but I'm
getting a lot of light Gathering ability in in the large in the large telescope yeah
this next uh object here is M51 which is 28 million light years away
on the left I took 10 second Subs through the 32 inch and on the right
I took 180 second Subs so much more resolution
yeah it's it's quite quite remarkable here's a really cool I know we've been
talking about time and space and distance I'm not sure if anybody's shared this but one of my favorite
analogies to understanding distance is is the Earth and Sun at a one inch scale
apart so if the Earth and Sun are if you scale the Earth and Sun down so that
they're one inch apart one light year is going to be one mile
away at that scale wow so when we're talking about Imaging a Galaxy 28
million light years away using a scale of the Earth and Sun one
inch apart that Galaxy is 28 million miles away
the reason why that one inches yeah the reason why that one inch scale
works is because by an amazing coincidence
there are 65 000 astronomical units in a light year
which is the distance from Earth to Sun and there is guess what
65 000 inches in a mile
so when you put the Earth and Sun one inch apart you can get a Rel you know a
kind of mind model of what what a light year is so these galaxies that were taking
pictures of are 28 Million Miles Away in a one-inch Earth Sun scale
which is 28 million how many astronomical units is that
a lot yeah it's It's a 65 000 times 20 to 28
million yeah so this next image here is oh actually this
is just for some perspective so here this is present day this is the first image of M51 which was
taken in the year of 1889 by Isaac Roberts and it was through a 20-inch
scope and that involved four and a half hours of manual guiding you needed to do
that in four and a half hours and I wish I had to share but I have a friend his name is puya and he took an
amazing photo of M51 just using his camera and his telephoto lens and super
and stacking a bunch of short exposures and I wish I could share that with you right now but it's really quite remarkable because it just speaks to how
much technology has improved and just what you can do with today's technology it's quite
remarkable so I did the same thing with the m106 on
the left is eight minutes of integration and on the right is one and a half hours
one one of my favorite objects to view through and John knows this one well
um
32 million light years away I took this photo with two different um setups and uh two hours on one side
11 minutes on the other side and we all love the Deer Lick
um another 12 minute 30 second Subs on left side one hours three five minute Subs on the
right side 32 million light years away or 32 million years ago wow
and then last I don't have a comparison but this is one of my favorite galaxies to view through a telescope you can see
this on any in in many modest telescopes eight inches uh you don't need really
large aperture to view this with your eyes but you could see this and it reminds me this galaxy reminds me of
reminds me of our own Galaxy we're seeing another galaxy 39 million light
years away Edge on and it reminds me of viewing our
own Milky Way those dust Lanes I mean it just makes it look 3D
beautiful so what what are my uh what did I what were my conclusions of Imaging through a
large scope oh you know there's it's not easy transporting a large aperture telescope
for Imaging um it takes away from the time you can enjoy and share the views with your very
own eyes looking through the telescope um so it's it
one thing about large aperture is you really want to use it to look through it is my finding and you don't need
um aperture really to take a great photo you I'm just so impressed with what
people are doing all these images I could never process the way that I'm seeing these amazingly skilled
astrophotographers and what they do nowadays it's just incredible
um the pros is I've taken some of my personal best high focal length images with it so if galaxies I've I I've taken
some really I'm really happy with them they're the best photos I've taken personally my personal best and you can
image many galaxies in a short amount of time if we were to just devote a knight to capturing galaxies on on a sensor
um we could we could cover a lot of ground and so with that that's the end of my uh
talk um I really appreciate Scott for having me thank you
yeah well you are welcome back anytime um beautiful images and uh can I uh I like
your I like your analogy of the one inch scale you know it's uh it's great I will
steal that oh please do because I was I was it really I really when I read it I
read it in the uh what's the uh the three volume book I can't even believe I'm having a brain
burnhams I read it in Burnham's and that's how Burnham's explained it yeah it was really it hit me I never never
gonna forget what a fabulous what a fabulous set you know I mean all the inspiration that came from Burnham's you
know I mean there's so much more information today but it would be very hard to beat the inspiration of what
Burnham's put forth in that work so I keep those books with me at every Star
Party they're in my trailer ready to go yeah and um you know that's some of these things
you want to see obscure stuff you go back to the charts and really start to go through them there's there's a
lifetime of objects you know what merko accomplished and when he discovered you
know just running the numbers we had been up all night and um we're a jazz to give it a shot and our first
shot was so amazing and it was just a test murkrow's the most amazing
astrophotographer he doesn't give himself credit you know that picture won the second a pot of the day that was all
you Merkel I was just my scope man but I owe you the credit for mine I'd like to
show this uh if I could I want to show you Hubble's picture what merko did if I
could uh get in there real quick Merkel oh stop sharing okay well well no I
think uh Scott does that right Scott I I can do it or you can do it
this is uh what merko accomplished and and uh the picture through his 32 was even deeper
so we're gonna try to put ourselves both together and uh see if we can make this
a real effort give it our best shot
so I'm ready to go yeah let me uh let me bring you on
go ahead I'm gonna just add the two of them
because uh one of my process to match our our image
so yeah we we were uh pretty impressed with the result of uh what merko had
achieved I I was I mean for for using the big scope it's absolutely amazing that we
could um achieve that wouldn't you say Mirko
oh he he's up he turned out yeah he's muted
oh yeah it's we have it's when you're using aperture you should certainly what
I've learned you know it really uh you really can short your exposure shorten your exposures
I was uh I want to maybe close with the music oh uh this is it I wanted to show
mercoscope okay so this is an idea this is Hubble right
the pillars as you can see it's very sharp
of course this is my that's my dream you know if you want to visualize
yourself in in the universe you know the power of manifestation you have to visualize yourself in in the big scope
so potentially I see myself with it I could get it
that's humbled again okay um let me go back I gotta I gotta get our
picture it's tough to differentiate when when you're um
when you're um looking from a distance my eyes aren't as good as they used to be there it is
look at that from here on Earth with a 28 inch telescope
it's unbelievable isn't it yes
beautiful I was extremely okay so now foreign
I wanted to share my screen I'm going to see if I can finally play
the closing song here we go come on baby give it to me
this one has stumped me for eons and I don't know if it's gonna work
this is not copyrighted music right uh yeah you don't want to no no no no no
you don't want to play it nope it's not they'll cut the stream nope this is
actually um free okay from uh it's it's on my Samsung
they put the music they're they're just a synthetic music uh and you do it to
the song and that's what I've been doing can you guys see my screen
yes okay so let me see if so you can see everything now
I see the pillars there yeah okay good wait I'm gonna find I'm gonna see if I
can get my song Finally please give it to me
it's so frustrating I have got to figure this out because I've been skunked every time
you know when I when I do the um simulated version oh there it is
okay let's see
[Music]
thank you [Music] cloud pictures
[Music]
foreign [Music]
all right there it was gentlemen thank you thank
you thank you presentations um I don't know who else is uh back
there I see that Robert Wilmore is still checked in and Marco and John thank you the three of
you for those pres presenters that are out there watching on YouTube with the
audience thank you for your great work today I want to thank the audience for
uh participating uh from around the world um we've got uh guys all the way from
the UAE to uh um down in South America and around North
America as well um and uh it's great to uh it's great to have
everyone here um let me bring this in gallery view you can see everyone that's still with us
um and we'll be back next Tuesday uh with the 130th Global star party so
um the uh theme is uh to be determined for
the 131st Global star party which I'll tell you about already uh it's called
the Voyager effect and uh uh Linda Dr Linda spilker who took Ed Stone's
position for as heading up the Voyager missions okay is going to be on with us
uh she is from the jet propulsion Laboratories she is uh they are still flying controlling the Voyager
spacecraft which both took off in 1977. so um it's gonna be fantastic to have her
on uh Linda arrived at JPL uh fresh out
out of the University she interned at JPL and uh her one of
her first uh projects was the Voyager Mission itself so she worked alongside
Carl Sagan and the original people that were involved with voyager so uh I think
it's fantastic that we have this opportunity and of course if you're so
so inclined and you have an idea of how the Voyager missions have
affected you we'd love to have you on global star parties so
um okay well I'm going to uh do we what do we have here Robert he's he's showing
us something right now let's bring him on Robert to the eagle oh is that live
amazing uh hello yeah I'm just sharing some space photos space photos
no it's not live not live well Robert thank you very much for for
bringing us some live views our Eagle you said hang on let me find it yeah
oh yeah thank you oh the other name for it is the star
Queen the star there you go wow
what what size instrument did you use
it's a reflector this is with a 10 inch dobsonian oh very nice really wow
very good incredible nice pinpoint Stars
I was gonna see if I could find the photo oh there it is so there's the 10 inch on
the uh G11 is that a parallax tube
the uh tube looks like a metal Parallax instruments tube
uh no this is uh just an equatorial over here is a two telescopes and and this is
on an lx65 dual saddle yep
fantastic I'm sure you get long lines waiting to look through those telescopes
that's all I got well thank you very much thank you
um thank you Scott thank you very much guys
a little video thank you for you guys to watch about I love your photos yeah
before I we shut it down and um uh there's also a uh the guys from the
winter Star Party sent us a little commercial which I'll play as well so
um but uh thanks again thanks to everybody and uh
as my friend Jack coreheimer used to say keep looking up
thank you yeah thank you thank you Scott thanks
osiris-rex is NASA's first asteroid sample return Mission it launched in
September 2016 on a journey to explore an ureth asteroid called bennu after
arriving in 2018 osiris-rex spent nearly two years orbiting bennu mapping and studying its
rugged terrain before carrying out its primary science objective on October 20th 2020 the spacecraft
ventured to a small crater in the asteroid's northern hemisphere it dodged Jagged rocks and towering Boulders and
plunged its arm into the loose surface Excavating six tons of debris while collecting about 250 grams of material
osiris-rex stowed its Bounty and closed its sample return capsule it Bid Farewell to bennu in May 2021 embarking
on a 1.2 billion mile Cruise back to Earth now two years and four months after
leaving bennu osiris-raxis closing in on the place where its Journey began
[Music] on September 24th the spacecraft will
approach to nearly 63 000 miles from Earth it will power up and release its
sample return capsule at 4 42 am mountain time the capsule must be jettisoned within a narrow time frame
and at just the right angle to hit its Target an area of roughly 250 square
miles in Utah's West Desert once the capsule is away osiris-rex will fire its
thrusters to avoid colliding with Earth at 8 42 a.m the capsule will streak into
the atmosphere at a blistering 27 000 miles per hour it will Race Across the
Western U.S and begin to Glow with heat allowing infrared trackers on the ground to chart its progress as it pushes
deeper into the atmosphere the capsule will rapidly decelerate subjecting the bennu samples to a punishing 32 GS about
two minutes after entry it will slow to Mach 1.4 and deploy its strobe parachute
stabilizing its descent the capsule will enter special use airspace at 8 46 a.m
almost 10 miles above the Department of Defense Utah test and training range radar stations will lock on and track it
to within 30 feet of its Landing site at 8 50 am the capsule will extract and
deploy its main parachute one mile above the ground it will make its final descent at a leisurely 11 miles per hour
like a marathon runner savoring a Victory lap before touching down in the desert soil at 8 55.
after ground teams retrieve the capsule the bennu samples will be taken to NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston
Texas the sample canister will be opened in the Astro materials acquisition and
curation facility and the samples will be curated distributed and studied for decades to come
having delivered its cargo the osiris-rex spacecraft will depart Earth but its Journey will not quite be
finished in a daring Encore the renamed Osiris Apex will enter an elliptical
orbit of the sun repeatedly passing within the orbit of Venus and pushing the limits of its thermal design
beginning in 2029 it will chase down and investigate Apophis a 1200 foot Stony
asteroid destined to make an exceptionally close flyby of Earth
after 13 years in deep space at the start of a new decade alone on a new
world the journey will continue [Music]
come on come all to the Southern Cross astronomical society's 2024 winter start
party celebrating 40 Years of stargazing happening from February 5 through the
11th 2024 on Scout key in the beautiful Florida Keys get away from the cold and
adjust your latitude underneath the pristine Skies of Southern Florida with breathtaking views of Anna Karina the
jewel box the Southern Cross Centaurus a and of course the
Magnificent Omega Centauri tickets will go on sale under about October 1 2023 at
scaz.org see you there
so it's a beautiful sunny day and uh we have uh you know a refractor out and
I've got my close glasses on and I've got my safe solar filter of course the eclipse is not here yet but
um I wanted to take a few minutes just to show you some things about solar filter safety the filters that we use
are the highest ISO standards and actually independently tested by us as
well so just to make sure that those standards are met so if you're going to
use a telescope to look at the partial phases and part the let me underline partial phases too you use eclipse
glasses to observe the sun in partial phases when it's uh in total if you're going to
be on the path of totality you can take the glasses off and only during that time can you directly look up at where
the sun is because it's completely blocked out you'll see the corona you'll see you know lots of really cool effects
that will they'll leave you speechless but during all the partial phases you have to have safe solar filtration so
how do you do it properly let me show you first off let's show you what you shouldn't do what you shouldn't do is
put on eclipse glasses and look through the telescope that's unfiltered and I'll
show you exactly why here we're going to point the telescope directly at the Sun
and right now we have sunlight coming right through the eyepiece
you can turn that up a little bit if you use solar glasses and look right at the filter material you see it's already
burning it's burning a hole right through the solar filter material that is how powerful a telescope is you can
now see it there is a hole through there and that could be your eye so this is what can happen if you think that you
can use eclipse glasses to look through unfiltered telescopes or binoculars if
you do that the sun's energy is going to burn right through the filter and burn right into your eye
so if you're going to use a telescope or a pair of binoculars to watch the partial phases of a total eclipse or
just to observe the sun to look for sun spots or something like that make sure that you are using an over the lens
solar filter that has the proper ISO safety rating and all of that and so
what I'm going to do is I'm going to put this filter on it's uh you can see how snuggly it's fitting here this is not about to come
off but you know if you have a loose fitting filter use tape do anything that you can
to make sure that the filter is not going to come off and then the the other thing is too is
that finder Scopes Optical finder Scopes are like little telescopes and they need to be filtered
as well in this case I just have a red dot finder there is no magnifying power to it so I'm not going
to use it to sight the sun in the way I'm going to sight in the sun is literally as I'm going to look down at
the shadow and align the scope up so I'm getting the smallest Shadow possible of the
telescope as it's hitting the ground and now I can safely look at the Sun
comfort and look at sunspots and if we have partial phases going on in the eclipse
I'll see them all
are your eclipse glasses safe for looking at the sun let's check to see if your eclipse glasses can handle the heat
or if they need to stay inside first off never check your eclipse
glasses with the sun that's a good way to injure your eyes take your eclipse glasses and find a bright light like a
lamp or a flashlight hold your eclipse glasses up to the light and look through them the light will appear extremely dim or
not appear at all when looking through the glasses for example you should only be able to see the filament of a light
bulb but not the glow surrounding the bulb also if your eclipse glasses have any marks or scratches on them don't use
them if you have older eclipse glasses from a previous Eclipse give them a check to make sure they haven't been
damaged or scratched all safe eclipse glasses will meet the iso 12312-2 standard
it's best to store eclipse glasses in a safe place where they won't become scratched or punctured remember never
look at the sun without eclipse glasses or a solar filter be safe and happy sound viewing everyone
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thank you foreign
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thank you [Music]
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thank you
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thank you