Global Star Party 131

Transcript:

foreign
we are streaming on Facebook YouTube twitch Twitter
um several pages on Facebook and uh you are watching the 131st Global star party
uh with the theme of the Voyager effect and um we'll just get started
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Voyager 1 has left the bubble
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hello everyone this is Scott Roberts from explore scientific and the explore Alliance and welcome to the 131st Global
Star Party the Voyager effect we have an incredible lineup of speakers
tonight including um my well not myself but David Levy uh
Dr Linda spilker from the chapter Paulson laboratory she is the project
Mission scientist for Voyager very proud to have her on we've got David eicher
coming on as well from astronomy magazine and a whole bunch of other
speakers that I think you're going to really enjoy we have
a few things that I'd like to to bring your attention about you know if you you
haven't kept up with the Voyager missions if you don't know this uh you know the Voyager spacecraft both Voyager
1 and 2 left in 1977. um when I talked to people about
voyagers and I say look you know do you realize that we have spacecraft that are
now in interstellar space we have and that they are still being controlled still being listened to
um from a team in California I think a lot of people the general public they
get really amazed and surprised about that um and it when I think about it I I
still kind of get stunned by it although I I keep up with it I look at the the
official websites and you know try to understand what I can from you know on a
pedestrian level of what's going on in the solar system out there on the far reaches
so I think you're going to learn a lot tonight and we are
we have a live chat as well that you can check in with us and ask questions if
you'd like but I'm going to turn this over to David Levy who will give some
commentary and perhaps a poem well thank you Scotty and welcome to the
global Star Party um my favorite Voyager story
was when I was talking with Brad Smith I was interviewing him for the biography
I wrote about Clyde Tomball decades ago and he was musing about how
he started out as a middle-aged person and he ended it pretty much with his
death he stayed with the mission for decades he was really really really
uh he really loved that mission my favorite story other than the one
about Brad Smith himself it was the Voyager record which has been
putting up which has been put on as directed by Carl Sagan
and they were trying to decide what music to put on the Voyager record of all the music done
over the world throughout the world what should we put on the Voyager golden record
and they really wanted to get some Beatles but at the time the Beatles lawyers couldn't get together on it and
so they couldn't but then somebody said Carl why don't we just put the complete works of Bach and
be done with it we could have looked and said that would be boasting
anyway I have two poems to reach you today the first one
is from Alfred Lloyd Tennyson and it's just one stanza from the memoriam
and I'm going to ask a question as you're listening to this what is he writing about
and was the day of my delight as pure and perfect as I say the very Source in
Fountain of today is daesh with wandering Isles of night
what is he talking about anybody
I think you're gonna have to tell us David the very source and Fountain of day is death with wandering Idols at
night for someone who has been looking at the sunspots every day since 1963.
that's what he's talking about the sun's thoughts but for my true poem today
I'm gonna quote from Robert Louis Stevenson who in 1913
wrote a poem for children and they called storybooks
and I think as we can imagine Voyager inching farther and farther from us as
we listen to this poem there in the night where none can spy all in my hunter's Camp I lie and plant
books that I have read till it is time to go to bed these are the hills these
are the woods these are my Starry solitudes and there the river bios Bank
the Royal wines Lions game to drink
I see I see the others far away
as if in flight the camp delayed and I like to an Indian
Scout around their party traveled about
there in the night were none can spy all in my Hunters Camp
I lie and play at the books that I have read until it is time to go to bed so
when my nurse comes in for me oh my well my return across the scene
and go to bed with backward looks at my dear land of storybooks oh thank you I'm
back like that I like that um
David uh um are you uh
what what would you say is your most favorite and special moment during the
launch or the flybys or you know what would you call your most uh you know
special moment about Voyager I think it's actually working with Brad Smith
uh you know Brad was uh he was the Imaging team leader I like the way he
got his team together he had a habit of having meetings in rooms where there
were no chairs and no tables so nobody could sit and so his meetings
were very short always very short and I really like that
and I like it the other thing was the uh the Saturn 500
as they go as you know as they go
um remember as they do an image a series of images through the Rings
and if any of you want to see that today look at the opening credits of any
episode of Voyager and as they're doing the theme music
and they they bring out past the Rings they show exactly the same image it
might be the image itself from Voyager of the Rings turning into the particles
of ice and dust um
but I think that was that's one of my favorite of the Rings that's very special and the other thing is I would
agree I would agree yes the Rings are the rings are incredible yes yeah and the coral and this causal series
describe the Saturn's rings as exquisite
I think that is so important to go out with any telescope at all and
look at Saturn's rings I think is transformed many many people
uh you know to become lifelong stargazers and uh even if you don't
become a stargazer I see sat to see Saturn's rings is life-changing and I
have seen people well up with tears after looking at it I think a lot of amateur astronomers can you know have
had similar experiences if they do astronomy Outreach work you know uh it
is almost unreal When You See It live for the first time and of course to see it
the way that Voyager did and and the way that Linda spilker has seen it
um I I just would like to have been a fly in the room just to see you know those reactions and those emotions and
so um but uh uh thank you David thank you so
much thank you our our special featured speaker tonight is uh Dr Linda spilker
uh she came on to uh the uh to the to J
the jet propulsion laboratory when she was fresh I don't even think she was finished with uh University work at the
time uh but she as I recall had an internship at JPL right off the top she
gets uh uh joined up with the Voyager team in 1977 so she's right there at the
big at the beginning you know she meets and works uh you know shoulder to
shoulder with uh you know uh you know amazing uh you know legendary figures uh
in planetary science she works there for a dozen years and
then you know so she's there for the flybys she's you know as we we talked uh
earlier uh uh in a interview I did with her at the mission control at JPL which
was a huge highlight for me you know she talked about we were talking about Cassini at the time and the fire hose of
information that's coming out of of that spacecraft but I imagine it was at least
that with the Voyager Mission uh because they were they were doing things that no
one had tried before certainly Guided by the Pioneer spacecraft but uh you know they you know
we had not been to the ice giants yet we had um uh you know some of the
um uh people that solved and continue to solve these problems that might creep up
in in a a space journey like this uh it's just amazing that that humans can
can do this so um then she goes on uh with and she's on
with the Cassini mission for 30 years she's the project Mission scientist
there and uh she had like 300 scientists reporting to her so
um and and now to come back as the project uh Mission scientist for Voyager
uh basically replacing Ed Stone who had been with uh Voyager for 50 years maybe
something like that or at least 50 years I'm not going to take away all
of what you might have to say Linda but I do want to say that we're very very
honored to have you with us tonight if you haven't really explored what you
can find about Voyager and there's tons of information to look at you need to
catch up and get on the NASA Voyager uh website and look at all that's that's
going on the the Voyager homepage is amazing with all the news and the
current uh status of the spacecraft we've you know Linda and her team are
still talking to the and listening to uh the Voyager spacecrafts and so I I just
find that's that's beyond science fiction for me okay so but um Linda
thank you so much for coming on to Global Star Party well thank you very much Scott for
having me here today and what I'm going to do is share with you
something that Scott actually turned the Voyager effect and that's how as we look at the Voyager missions how its studies
may have changed Humanity this does that look okay that screen look okay
um I think you're on your presenter screen again
this the swap displays button up at the top yeah
okay yes that that that looks much better that looks much better to me too so okay let me go ahead and get started
again thank you Scott I'm very happy to be here and to share with you uh some of my experiences with voyager and in
particular to point out how Voyager has changed Humanity over the course of its Mission and still continues flying it's
in its 47th year each spacecraft just celebrated their 46th anniversary since
launch and the two Voyager spacecraft Voyager 2 was launched first in August uh of 1977
August 20th and then Voyager 1 was launched second Voyager 2 is on a slightly slower trajectory so Voyager
One quickly overtook Voyager 2 and both launched from uh Cape Canaveral in
Florida
between 1977 and its launch in 12 years 1989 there were six extraordinary
planetary encounters and these planetary encounters completely altered our view of planetary science in just that single
decade and this opportunity came about because Gary flandro found a rare
opportunity that once every 176 years the four outer planets lined up in a way
that a single spacecraft could visit all four and so Voyager actually got started
in 1972 building the spacecraft and then launching in 1977. think about it isn't
that long since we had put a man on the moon since Neil Armstrong walked on the moon until we were busy building and
then launching the voyagers the Voyager 1 trajectory is shown in blue we flew by Jupiter in 79 and then Saturn in 1980
the red trajectory is for Voyager 2 we flew by Jupiter in 1979 and then 81 by
Saturn 86 was Uranus and 89 was Neptune and you can see that uh Voyager ones fly
by we flew close to Titan that bent Us North of the ecliptic plain and out of the solar system and Voyager 2 we flew
close to Neptune's moon Triton that bent Us South out of the equatorial plane
we did for the first time is revealed just how diverse and active these planetary atmospheres were for these
outer four planets uh they're incredible Rings all of them have ring systems uh the the moons and also the
magnetospheres of these worlds and the case of Voyager 2 Voyager 2 was the first spacecraft to encounter Uranus and
Neptune and Remains the only spacecraft that has flown close to these two worlds
this shows those four planets to scale relative to the earth the earth is at one astronomical unit that's the
distance between the Earth and the Sun and so in just a little over a decade Voyager expanded our solar neighborhood
out to 30 Au at Neptune Jupiter is the largest planet in our solar system and
the two Jupiter and Saturn are considered gas giants while Uranus and Neptune are considered ice giants they
have considerably more water than either Jupiter or Saturn
this is the Voyager spacecraft to give you an idea of the scale that High Gain antenna is about 12 feet across and you
can see to the left out on the boom there's that black object it's the radioactive thermoelectric nuclear
generator the decay of plutonium generates heat that heat is turned into electricity
which Powers the entire spacecraft on the right you can see a long boom and
part way out of the boom are some of the fields and particles instruments and on the boom itself you can see sort of the
the copper colored instrument that's the infrared spectrometer the instrument I worked with for my 12 years on Voyager
that scan platform also contained a narrow and wide angle camera an UltraViolet spectrometer and a
photopolarimeter and if you look carefully a voyage you'll notice a small golden object that's the golden record
and as David talked about earlier that record was the the brainchild of Carl Sagan he proposed to the project that
each Voyager carry a golden record with the sights and sounds of Earth and
directions on how to find it how to find the Earth and so there are greetings in 54 languages 118 images 90
minutes of music including Chuck Berry's Johnny B Goode and after the Neptune
flyby he actually came to JPL at Carl's invitation and played that song for the
Voyager team and all of the people that were there for that final big party on the cover of the golden record you can
see a diagram that shows you how to get the information off of the record starting at the outside and if you get
all of the information correctly decoded your first image should be a circle also if you look at that Starburst those are
the locations they're little hashes on it of the pulsars relative to the Earth and it's a basically a map of how to
come back and find the Earth should you find the Voyager spacecraft and want to find find us
you talk a little bit more detail about five of the instruments from the Voyager Interstellar mission that are still
operating on the Voyager spacecraft we had to turn off the instruments on the scan platform we didn't have a lot of
targets to image anymore and they were taking up a lot of power and as the plutonium decays power is a very
precious resource on Voyager have a long magnetometer boom to measure the strength and direction of the magnetic
field a plasma wave subsystem it's too long about 10 foot long antennas the
measure the plasma and radio waves both at low rates and then a waveform receiver that receipt receives them at a
high rate and once a week we record a single frame of high rate data and we record it on our eight-track digital
tape recorder and our eight-track tape recorder on Voyager 1 is still working still records the data and about every
six months we play it back also have a cosmic ray subsystem that measures the high energy electrons
protons and ions that make up the galactic cosmic rays a plasma science instrument that measures the the plasma
the ions and electrons that are floating near the Voyager spacecraft making in-situ measurements and a low energy
charged particle instrument that measures the ions electrons and protons but just at a slightly lower energy
range than the cosmic ray subsystem and actually has a detector that rotates to eight different quadrants and provides
360 degrees of a view there's the iris instrument again I
worked with that team for 12 years and they actually wrote a proposal to the Cassini mission for a new composite
infrared spectrometer basically a new and improved Iris and they invited me to join the team as their ring scientist
and so it was really my experience on Voyager that led to becoming part of a
Cassini instrument team and the Voyager photopolarimeter took observations watching as a star would go
behind the Rings as the star winked on and off behind the rings that would provide Exquisite detail down to tenths
of meters of resolution of the Ring systems in particular Saturn Uranus and Neptune so those are two of my favorite
instruments besides the five that are currently operating on Voyager just want to very quickly highlight some
of the discoveries and some of the very beautiful images from Voyager to spacecraft flew by Jupiter in 1979
finding a very active Dynamic atmosphere filled with storms and belts and zones
and turbulence and really a very interesting laboratory for atmospheric science you look at all four of these
worlds all you see are the at the tops of their atmospheres they're made mostly of hydrogen and helium but you see also
very colorful beautiful clouds and on your right you can see a snapshot of the Great Red Spot
one of the really incredible discoveries from Voyager were active volcanoes on Jupiter's moon IO and you can see Linda
moribito holding the discovery image was actually an optical navigation frame a frame taken to precisely locate the moon
relative to the neighboring Stars so it's Overexposed relative to the Moon surface itself and she saw sitting off
the edge that bump which was one of the volcanoes from Iron we discovered that there were a number of volcanoes going
off simultaneously and if you look at that feature on iO on your right kind of looks like a hoof print or something
that's an active volcano going off a very Dynamic active surface more volcanoes going off at one time than we
have here on the Earth then of course Jupiter's moon Europa looked completely different from our
moon we had our moon is the standard for what we might expect and yet here we saw a bright white icy surface lightly
cratered heavily fractured and it was our first hint of a subsurface ocean on
a moon in the solar system and there's a mission Europa Clipper planning to launch next year it's gonna be many many
close flybys of Europa to characterize that subsurface ocean and look for possible Jets and plumes
discovery of Jupiter's faint ring that was just incredible this long exposure picture you can see the yellow arrow is
indicating the the ring we actually took followed up with Voyager 2 and took the picture that you see on the left and you
can see those those Wiggly White Lines those are star Trails we held the shutter open long enough to get an
exposure to pick up the faint ring and during that time the Stars slowly moved back and forth as a spacecraft moves
slightly from side to side onto Saturn Saturn's most iconic feature
of course is its rings there were features in Saturn's atmosphere but it certainly wasn't as dramatic as
Jupiter's atmosphere and then the Rings and looking at the Rings I just remember watching day after day it was Rings
within Rings within rings and the structure just got more and more complicated and beautiful as time went
on subtle color differences indicating slightly different compositions the Rings are mostly made of water ice of
particles from about the size of tiny marbles up to how sized or larger the
outermost narrow ring the F ring is shepherded by a pair of moons you can see that in the lower right hand corner
and then the dark finger-like spokes discovered by Voyager which ran Saturn's
b-ring dust elevated above the ring said just an amazing incredible find in
looking at Saturn and its rings this is one of my favorite pictures because it shows how in those days we
got back the data and it really was with paper plots and in this case it was a
long printout of the Stellar occultation data it's a calconf pin plotter there's
literally a pen moving back and forth as this white paper slowly Scrolls out and
you can see the fine structure and waves and details in the Rings and this is part of the data set that I used for my
PhD thesis at UCLA Enceladus another bright icy World
reminiscent of Europa in many ways lightly cratered lots of fractures
all of this pointing to a very young surface and saw this was in the center of the
e-ring and as Cassini discovered it actually was generated by geysers active
geysers shooting out of the South Pole of Enceladus from four long fractures indicating a global subsurface ocean
Cassini flew through these Jets sampled their composition and lo and behold the
ph and the conditions look right to potentially support life in the subsurface ocean of one of these tiny
moons that we now call Ocean worlds so a voyager certainly expanded Humanity's
view of where you might find life within our own solar system and it could be in
the oceans of some of these icy moons tighten about the size of the planet
Mercury had it Formed elsewhere it could have been a planet in its own right largest moon of Saturn and I had a very
substantial early Earth-like atmosphere mostly nitrogen but with some methane and more complex hydrocarbons and it had
a high level of hazes and so the filters and the instruments we had on Voyager couldn't see through to the surface and
that was one of the science goals for Voyager so immediately after the Voyager One close flyby a group of scientists
got together and proposed a mission that became Cassini with an Orbiter at Saturn
carrying a probe named Huygens that successfully landed on the surface of Titan and we really did then peel back
that Haze Uranus the first ice giant visited by Voyager Uranus looked very Bland we're
looking at its South Pole it was like a giant Bullseye facing us as Voyager flew by if you stretch the image and you look
at the one on the right there was evidence of some Haze right at the south pole but very hard to tease out methane
gas is giving it its bluish color and so far only Voyager has visited Uranus so we hope to go back with a Uranus Orbiter
with probe Mission the probe to go into Uranus's atmosphere and to launch that mission sometime in the next decade
the Iranian Rings nine narrow Rings potentially young very dark very
different from Saturn's rings the blue ring profiles on the left are from the
Voyager photopolarimeter and I really love this view it shows the how much detail you can see when you watch that
star move behind the Rings and it was just more information I could use for my thesis than to compare the ring systems
at these worlds and also to kind of think about you know how to ring systems form around these worlds they're inside
in a region where you can't scoop the material up and form moons so you get rings but how long do they last and how
do they interact and are they good analogies for protoplanetary discs from
which you can form planets in in a solar system Uranus has five moderately sized moons
but since it was in a bullseye configuration we could only fly close to one turned out we picked Miranda the
innermost Moon and what an interesting place it looked like it had been broken apart and put back together and if you
look carefully in the image on the right you can see there's a cliff that's over 12 miles high and all of the fracturing
and stretching and and activity that's happened on the surface of this Moon Uranus and Neptune both have very
unusual magnetic fields the white dashed line is the spin axis you can see the arrow indicating the direction of
rotation of the planet about its North and South poles and then the red arrow
is indicating the direction of the magnetic field and it's quite offset by a large amount from its spin axis and
most the other planets in our solar system that offset is much smaller also
you can see a bar magnet representing the location of the center or the strongest part of the magnetic field and
it's offset from the center of the planet considerably offset in the case of Neptune so highly irregular offset
Fields with voyager we just got a single snapshot as we flew through Neptune back to a dynamic active
atmosphere with large storms on its surface on the surface of the atmosphere we're just looking at a gas
Neptune's rings you can see the the tenuous Rings shown here are revealed by
Voyager as Neptune is in the middle and so I've just cropped it out because it was Overexposed to see these very faint
rings and finally the major moon in the Neptune system Triton Triton is about
the size of the planet Mercury Titan sized and it and it's a captured Kuiper Belt object it has a retrograde inclined
orbit it probably scooped up or broke apart the other moons in the Neptune
system as it went from a probably a very eccentric orbit down to its circular orbit has a polar cap of solid nitrogen
ice and those little black streaks are the places you can see a lot of them where there were active geysers we could
actually see them in some of the Voyager images uh some kind of cracks or vents
or something going on Frozen ponds of nitrogen another very interesting place
to go back and explore in more detail so just to summarize the Legacy there's
a lot you know 11 000 years of work devoted to the Voyager project through the Neptune encounters
it inspired a generation of scientists including me post Apollo and primars
Rovers and these tiny moons once pinpoints of light in a telescope especially for Uranus and Neptune were
revealed to be unique worlds and in some cases ocean worlds and so in a single
decade as I'd indicated we've revolutionized our views of atmospheres Rings moons and magnetospheres as well
as significantly expanded our planetary neighborhood
some of the last pictures taken by Voyager we're turning the cameras back around and taking a portrait of our
solar system taken by Voyager 1 on Valentine's Day in 1996 planets one of
which was the earth as Carl Sagan called it the pale blue dot it's shown there in
a Sunbeam it's a Sunbeam of refractive light inside the camera and that pale
blue dot as Carl Sagan would put it has everyone you've ever known everyone that's ever lived on this one small tiny
world so what next perhaps the grandest tour of all for Voyager the Voyager
Interstellar Mission and what this diagram is showing here is the solar ecliptic latitude you know Voyager 2
went South Voyager 1 went North as a function of heliocentric distance in AU
Voyager 2 is at 160 astronomical units more than five times further than when
it flew by Neptune and to give you an idea of this distance at the speed of light it takes a signal a little over 22
hours to reach Voyager Voyager 1 that's almost a light day and so if you send a
signal up say hi to Voyager you have to wait two days before you get something back that says hi how you doing and so
both of the voids are extremely far away and outside this this boundary between Interstellar space and the space
governed by our Suns called the heliopause so we're in a very unique region the only spacecraft to be
exploring in this region of space this is another view if you look at the
sun is the yellow dot you can see the orbits of the planets you can see sort of a bubble that marks the termination
shock that's one boundary inside the heliosphere that's where the solar wind goes from supersonic to subsonic then
there's the Helia sheath finally Crossing the heliopause the boundary into Interstellar space and just want to
show you a little bit about here's the heliosphere in the kitchen sink if you run the kitchen sink and you have where
the water hits that's the sun you can see the water is Flowing out very rapidly because that's a supersonic
solar wind hits a boundary the termination shock slows down until finally across the heliopause you can
put some of those boundaries in there that shows where the that sort of ring where at first the shock or the wind or
in this case the water abruptly slows down the wind turns and then flows towards the drain and then you're in
interstellar space and here's here's a view of it if you want to try it at home just a nice bright light and you can
look at what the solar wind looks like flowing out from the Sun and here are those boundaries now drawn on that
kitchen sink View so Voyager 1 was the first spacecraft to
enter Interstellar space and that was in August of 2012.
and this is just a summary of some of those surprises basically the takeaway message here as As Time grows short is
that a lot of things are models predicted about the interstellar medium didn't turn out to be the case solar
effects last far past the heliopause the particle line was expected to reach a
steady state but it's gone up if anything so many unexpected finds that we found with voyager and continue to
find year by year well in the future long after the power
from Voyager is gone what we're going to find is that about 40 000 years Voyager
1 in particular get within a light year or so of one of the neighboring stars and somewhat later Voyager 2. and over
the next half million years or so each Voyager will fly relatively close within
a few light years of a neighboring star and perhaps someone might find the golden record and decipher it and figure
out just where we where we are here on this planet and once the power is gone and voyagers are going silently through
space they're going to become our silent ambassadors to the Milky Way our iconic Testaments to human curiosity
and while the future of our species may not be known these voyagers will continue to Glide forever amongst the
stars and you know who knows what else they might find here's some of the legacies from Voyager it's scientific
and Technical achievements with the planetary flybys and now Interstellar space certainly holds the records for
longevity speed and distance has had a cultural impact with the golden record and there Stephen Colbert on one of his
shows he's dressed in an astronaut suit is presenting Ed stone with a NASA medal
and voyager's a mission as inspiring as Voyager touches many generations and and
so you know who knows what remains with voyager we're hoping to make it to the 50th anniversary in 2027 so who knows
what is in store for Voyager or should I say bijer
I'd be happy to take any questions okay there's um
there was a quite a few remarks here let's see
um people saying hello of course people that have met you um you know wanted to uh say hello
um but uh there were questions about the communications between
Voyager in US you you mentioned it take it takes almost a light day to get that
signal I've heard it um uh you know I've read
that the uh Power coming back from Voyager is less than what's called an
auto watt okay I'd never heard of the term before but that's a billionth of a
billionth of a watt and so I I don't know how to what's a
good analogy maybe you know of one of uh how to compare that to
that's weak of a signal but it's amazing that we can listen to
um to Voyager it is truly amazing we're to the point with voyager now where we need the 70
meters the three largest stations one one is in Canberra in Australia one is
in Madrid and Spain and one is a Goldstone here you know in the United States and we need those giant dishes to
listen to The Whisper from space and that's to pick up 160 bits per second so
the the data rate that includes all the fields and particles information and the engineering data and when we we want to
go up to like 1.4 kilobits per second we have to array now five stations the seventy and then four
additional 34s because that's the slowest rate we have with which to play back the tape recorder so it's it's it's
certainly a whisper from space and uh we're just really happy to have we wish they'd build a few more antennas and
we're looking into can we use the vla for instance as Voyager gets further away that's one of the limitations uh
less power the spacecraft is growing colder and the distance just grows longer making it more challenging to
continue to receive the data a question from John Ray watching on
Facebook he says that was wonderful thank you uh when will the distance be too far to utilize or will the their
power be gone by then is it a distance thing or is it a power thing yeah it'll be very interesting or is it
just an aging spacecraft components we're now starting to see evidence of the thrusters slowly clogging yeah we
had some backup thrusters we're using but we're on our final set you know will it be that will it be some other problem
with just having been out in space for so long or or power with less power we're starting to slowly turn off
subsystems eventually instruments and then things get colder so it's kind of a race between less power too cold and uh
we're hoping perhaps to make it yeah certainly to the 50th Anniversary uh that that would be great that's our goal
can we get one or both Reuters to the 50th and perhaps into the 2030s and that
would be really great to get to 200 Au just has a nice ring to it a nice
Milestone that's great wow okay so um uh what's happening right now with
with the voyagers I I read uh just briefly a headline that one of them was
um you know turned off is it is it completely turned off or not turned off that that you
weren't communicating with it right right we had a little bit of trouble a bad command ended up going to Voyager 2
and it pointed off about two degrees from its pointing directly at Earth and you think oh two degrees I mean that's
so tiny but the distance of Voyager 2 that's the equivalent of the earth Jupiter distance so it was it was not
pointing at the Earth but fortunately what we did is we used the the most power we could get and sent the
equivalent of a shout from the station in Australia and that got in and it sent
it back to its normal position and everything has worked well with with both spacecraft ever since but there
were some scary moments very moments there with that but uh fortunately we were able to command it back and it
would have gone back on its own you know like in another six weeks or so it has a lot of fall protection and automatic
algorithms that kick in you know if it doesn't hear from us after a certain amount of time so that would happen but
it's good to get it back sooner yeah for sure yeah and stories like that that just totally amaze me that that uh you
know that humans are able to build something like that build this these kinds of Fail-Safe sin the redundancy
into it uh and you know and for people to go you know we can do this or we can
do that and extend the life of this and so that's you know uh getting that extra
life squeezing out every last drop of performance out of those spacecraft and
continuing to do real science that's just amazing it really is it makes my
head it's a real tribute to the flight team who has been you know so creative in keeping the spacecraft going for this
long and just their perseverance and uh like you say creativity and also as we
need it some of the experts of course with time have retired but if we encounter a problem that might require
their expertise they're really happy to come back and help us and sit down with us and and find some solutions to our
problems so that's great too wonderful and and the team that's there
um are there a lot of Legacy members still part of the team or is it has it
been replaced by younger scientists what's it like yeah it it's a mix of
each we have some people that have been there since the instruments were built in 1972 a couple of the heads of the
instruments and some of their team members some of the flight team has been also on Voyager for decades as well but
we're in the process and have been for some time of training up the Next Generation bringing on the post-docs and
graduate students and and early career scientists and Engineers to transfer
that knowledge and give them a chance to work on Voyager you know somebody says Hey a chance to work on Voyager I'll
take it yeah absolutely um there was a question about the
Voyager 2 being repositioned was it done with thrusters or reaction Wheels
yeah we we don't have reaction Wheels like Cassini had we are really a Thruster
use thrusters to point Voyager it's a three-axis spin stabilized spacecraft we're always pointing at the Earth we're
always sending back data and we get about eight hours per day for each spacecraft of data that we get coverage
so if we just downlink all the time then they can give us these these pieces of time in between other missions and we
can collect those data Melinda thank you so much uh it was a
real privilege and uh I know our audience learned new stuff I learned new stuff and
um uh it's great and um uh you know we really I think I can speak on behalf of
all of us we are very very excited about what Voyager will bring to us in the
future and uh um you know at the point of when maybe it does uh shut down I I hope I'm around
to watch it happen uh and um so I I
wonder what the Epitaph might be about Voyager towards its end but it's still a
very active uh you know a live wire out there and so it's it's really cool
absolutely well it's been a it's been a pleasure Scott it's been a great pleasure thank you for inviting me thank
you thank you Linda take care you too
okay um well now that your head might be in the outer solar system and and uh
sorry for centers are making like mind-blown uh memes you know uh live
memes uh back there on our Zoom room um so I hope you really enjoyed that
um our next speaker is none other than David eicher the uh editor-in-chief of
the world famous astronomy magazine David thanks for coming on to the program
um how many I mean I don't know if you know this answer but how many articles do you think that astronomy has written
about Voyager through the years oh many and it the initial coverage was before I
got to the magazine but it was one of the major things the coverage of Voyager
especially in 1979 through 81 of you know the Jupiter and Saturn encounters
that really catapulted astronomy magazine to be the largest magazine on the subject in in the world
and it was really Richard Berry and Robert Burnham who were writing about it at that time I got there in 82 just
after that explosive wave of you know when I was I was publishing my little teenage magazine you know at the time
um that the Voyager got going but it was huge for me as well because the first thing I ever saw through a telescope it
was a Criterion rv6 was Saturn and I was electrically hooked you know I had the
Saturn connection and I got to know Carl Sagan and his involvement with voyager
and others and and it was you know it seemed like the doors opened and the
exploration of anything out there was possible it was a supercharged time that
Voyager represented in terms of exploring and understanding the universe so so it was really big but I wasn't uh
at the magazine until the Uranus and Neptune encounters it a little bit later on on voyager's timeline but but it was
a huge influence that really may help to make the Early Astronomy magazine what
it became honestly right yeah and it's not over right so and it's not a story The Story Goes On
it's not and this was a fantastic thing to have Linda on tonight and a great talk yeah wonderful
all right so uh tonight uh you have another exotic deep Sky object to talk
about the bad news Scott for you is that we haven't run out of these yet okay
even scratched the tip of the iceberg I think we're you know 20 into the list of
450 you know so we have a ways to go we're still up in Northern
we're in Northern Cassiopeia working our way South you know yeah
um I I wanted to mention something I'll take your heart a little bit uh I I came
across the article about the uh your minerals article in astronomy magazine and I I posted that uh on my Facebook
feed for other people to find and I'll post it here in chat as well uh but I
thought it was a nice um you know uh story to read about especially after we went through your
extensive collection of minerals you know so I was I was really happy to see
the article well thank you that that's how How the Universe likes to make planets right to rest rocky planets at
least yeah awesome okay well I'll let you get at it thank you good stuff well I'm gonna
share my screen and I will see if I can share the right screen and we'll see if
we can start a slideshow and we will talk about yet
another uh not Centaurus a which is a really cool Galaxy um which I regret not being able to see
in Milwaukee but it's a favorite Galaxy to see sometimes when you're far enough South uh and maybe what the you know
milk armor that will end up looking something like we we will be maybe deep down in this scene you know about six to
seven billion years from now perhaps when we do this dance with the Andromeda galaxy but for now uh we will go and
we'll talk about a really great very very rich and quite large open star
cluster that's composed of relatively faint stars and a huge cloud of them NGC
7789 that's in Northern Cassiopeia this is an object that was discovered by
Carolyn Herschel in 1783 and so it's sometimes because it's so rich and is
such a clump of faint Stars it's sometimes been called Carolyn's Haystack
of all things or also Carolyn's Rose or the white rose cluster and it's a really
beautiful object especially you can have a fairly wide field fairly low power
telescope because it's a bright object in a very rich area the Milky Way and
see this cluster really nicely so it's it's pretty satisfying even for small
telescope users it's a relatively old open cluster it's 1.7 billion years old and it's
about 7 600 light years away in that arm of the Milky Way passing through
Cassiopeia and Perseus there it's V magnitude it's bright it's it's brighter
than seventh magnitude and it spreads over a large area as I mentioned 16 arc
minutes it's half the diameter of the full moon it's total extent so it's a big object compared to the majority of
open clusters in our sky that are a fair amount smaller than that so this is a
good one for for telescopes of any size as long as you're in a reasonably okay
Sky you know as far as Darkness this object has about 6600 solar masses
and the membership is about a thousand stars it's very rich cluster and most of
the stars are reasonably faint so here we can go to our favorite Ron
stoyan star Atlas here the Indus interest alarm which gives us a good amount of detail and a pretty compact
package and you can see the area around NGC 7789 there is another little open
cluster stock 19 nearby and the planetary nebula a bell 82 and a few
other things some bright variable and double stars but it's a very rich area the Milky Way and you can see this even
in fairly simple images of the cluster here's here's a really good shot of the
cluster and you can see the kind of colorful star feel that it's in and I think even though this is a relative
close-up you can see how rich this cluster is it's just a very satisfying
group of stars to look at because there are so many members in the cluster
then very briefly our old pal uh Alan Dyer shot this as well it's a little bit
wider field and this just I came across Allen's shot here uh that's a little
older and it just shows the look at the incredible density of stars in this area
the Cassiopeia Milky Way it's just really incredibly rich in terms of faint
Stars so it's a good area even when you're going away from objects like this
just to scan with your telescope if you have a you know a degree field or maybe
even a rich field telescope it's a really fun area to be in because the whole constellation looks very nice and
colorful and stunning so that's the next object it's a pretty straightforward open cluster not a lot a
whole lot to say about it and I'll say we're still we're in the last vestiges now after many many issues after the
initial Voyager coverage of our 50th anniversary year here I'm happy to have
our newest columnist has joined us again Molly Wakeling on the show tonight she's
taken over the beginners column and and had a tremendous start with it as well
taking it over from Glenn Chapel um we're very happy to have Molly on board and we have lots of surprises
still coming up for the end of the year with the magazine and I'll mention very
quickly Michael and I have written this book to inspire kids about the era of
space exploration we're in and boy again now we have the starmus festival this is
going to be the seventh starmus Festival coming around the corner for next spring
it's thankfully it's about it's about five weeks or so after the solar eclipse
next spring here in the United States but in Bratislava which is a hop skip and a jump away from Vienna we'll have
the starmus festival again next spring with lots and lots of Nobel Prize winners and astronauts and scientists in
Allied fields in chemistry and biology and other fields and some special surprises and a whole bunch of rock and
roll as well with Brian May and other Rick Wakeman and many other dark stars
there as well so we hope you'll join us at starmus and that's Scott all I have
for tonight so I will that's a lot Sharon so
fantastic um uh yeah and I would say that um you
know uh and thanks for pointing out about the 50th anniversary of astronomy magazine uh if you don't already have a
subscription to the magazine you need to go and get one it is uh the world's largest publication of its kind and uh
always full of great information you can get a digital version or
um you know if you like to have something instantly on when you turn on the room lights get the printed version
you know so it doesn't need batteries uh is always there you know so you know
I'll tell you Scott the people who get the print who are you know the people who've been reading it like us for a
long time they don't they want the print they don't want the print absolutely absolutely so yeah yeah they get angry
if you don't they do right yes yeah well anyways I'm glad you still make it
uh in print and um uh it is a beautiful magazine so thank you so much David
thank you Scott thanks yep okay uh you know the uh Global star party and
explore scientific we're big supporters of the astronomical League uh and now
the The Experience uh of being near the organizers of the astronomical League
now for many years for me uh has left a big impact you know uh I think that I
was really became one of the converted when I went to an ash an Alcon event in
the 1980s now late 1980s and I saw how
their awards that they were giving out were affecting the recipients and affecting
the audience and uh um so you know I don't think there's any
other organization that recognizes amateur astronomers in the way that they
do um they also support uh amateur astronomers who are learning and trying
to become better observers through their observing programs they have like over 80 observing programs that you can
partake in and I don't know how many award programs that they have I should
probably count them up sometime we support a few of them and I feel it's
our responsibility to give as much support as we can if you don't belong to
the astronomical League through one of uh its member clubs then you can join as
a member at large and you just have to go to astroleague.org but they're on every
Global star party and it's great to have them on and this time returning is uh
don knabb don you have the stage okay let me uh go
ahead and share my screen thank you for coming on
oh happy to be here all right I'm gonna start the slideshow
is that coming through okay yes okay
well first thing I will mention is that uh Scott always helps us out you know our
broadcast of uh astronomical League live and uh we have different programs the
next one is coming up in a couple days here this Friday and uh and that's going to be with
Robert Reeves going to talk about observing and understanding the Moon and uh you know on on the show will be
Harold Ulrich who is the current president Terry Mann the secretary Scott who we've heard about before and
David Levy who we've heard about before so uh it's coming up this Friday and uh
seven eastern daylight time and uh let's hook on to that from the AL League
Facebook page okay thank you so tonight I'm going to spend just a little time talking about
where are the stars in our sky that are like our sun
you know we spend a lot of time with our son every day living on
sunscreen hiding from it and observing the Stars tonight but we're other stars that are like our sun
so I think it's our galaxy here's a picture of our galaxy an impression and we would be somewhere out on the outer
arm here and uh so let's look at the types of stars
ninety percent number stars in the galaxy are healthy and stable and that's sort of like cars Sun our Sun's
considered a uh white yellow star and is considered in the main sequence scientists call it it's still fusing uh
hydrogen at the core that's 90 of the stars in the galaxy one percent are giants okay these are
the stars that are in retirement okay and those are no longer fusing primarily
hydrogen they're still fusing some hydrogen but they're fusing heavier heavier uh elements and they are Fuller
and they are swollen and they are the Giants of the of the universe much larger in size than the uh into the
stable main sequence Stars then we have the white dwarfs these are
stars that are Beyond retirement and are actually at the end of their their their
lives they are very small and very dim
but our sun is a healthy stable star fortunate for us and uh
so we're going to move the white dwarfs and the Giants to the side for a moment here I'm going to take a look at the healthy stable Stars
all right so seven percent of uh of the healthy stable cigars are
like our sun a yellow white star anime sequence
we'll put that down inside here the next are the hot blue stars okay
these these these stars are much brighter than the stars that are
like our sun they are they're very bright and very large so we'll put them down there what's left
so we put it left what's left are the full red stars
so almost 80 percent of the healthy stable stars in the sky are in the cool red but still the main sequence but they
are they've been they're very Dem and they are essentially invisible to us you know
looking up in the sky so what do we see
um with just our eyes now you need to remove my little thing here a bit
I need to hide my floating control there we go so what do we see
mostly with just our eyes we see the Giants that's what we see and
we see the hot bluish Stars so if you add that up four percent one percent we're only seeing about five percent of
the stars in the galaxy is all that we can see from the Earth
so let's take a look at maybe what what are the one of those Stars we're looking at in the sky uh this this presentation
actually uh more fun when we have some chance to interact you know Laser Class people say what is that constellation
can anyone name it and uh if you have any experience with genres they'll say oh yeah it's Orion
so here's Orion the winter constellation coming up I I did see it this year Ryan on Saturday and Sunday
morning I was at a star party called the York County start party
uh it's south of Harrisburg and it's a small scale Regional star party but I
happen to wake up early worked out of the camper about 5 a.m and I did see Orion
but normally the considerative winter constellation not a summer or fall consolation
so start is one shoulder is a giant
the other shoulder Giant and the belts start to Giant and uh the lower right star of the giant
we'll name these in a moment probably a few of you out there know what these stars are called the Middle Belt star and then we have a
giant down the lower left and a hot bluish blood to Giant double star
okay so you don't see any type G like our star don't see any any white yellow white stars so Beetlejuice
up in the left garage will download right Beetlejuice being a giant I don't remember the details but I think
Beetlejuice if it was where our sun is would would sort of like engulf the Earth and maybe as far as Jupiter if I
remember probably some of you out there know that better than I do but uh so there are no Earth-like sun-like stars
in Orion so you might recognize this triangle in the sky if you go out tonight and look straight
up and it will be right overhead summer triangle so a giant here in venom
on cygnus the swan the northern cross the Giant on the One Wing
giant the other wing giant at the very center of cygnus another Giant and then one of the most
beautiful double Stars probably the most beautiful devil stars in the sky is alberio
and it's a Yellow Giant and a uh a bluish a hot bluish star and his
greatest star parties you know I do a lot of Outreach we take a look at a burial with a nice refractor got a
nice sharp image and general public come up and they can see the blue and the
yellow yellow colors it's always a lot of fun to start party uh up here Vega one of the brightest
stars in the sky it's hot bluish another hot bluish in Lira the
constellation lyric that Vega is in these are both Giants and this is hot bluish now the astronomers out there in
which someone could tell me if they know what this is a very famous star this is the double double
that is if there is double star but when you look at it under higher magnification each of the doubles is a
double star and they're interesting because they are oriented at 90 degrees to each other so this is a good test of
a refractor if you can split the double double you've got a really good sky and a really good telescope
so um down here I'll tear and uh Villa is also hot bluish again this is
to Vega I think I named these very denim and Altair anyone see any uh
yellow white stars items again no stars like our sun
so here's what's easy to recognize Our Big Dipper asterism not a
constellation asterism and of course the pointer Stars point to the North Star so the Big Dipper and Polaris
hot bluish at the end of the handle mines are an out card outcore this is a
good vision test if you can split these with your Naked Eyes your eyes are still pretty good
another how bluish more hot bluish another hot bluish another one and the giant Polaris is also a giant star
so again we're looking a lot of stars so far and some very famous constellations that we see all the time and there are
no stars like our sun Pia this is the first constellation I
remember seeing when I was a boy scout okay looking straight up having to be a winter Scout meeting because it was
straight up so here are the Giant another Giant a giant a giant
a bluish and I'm going to break the sequence here finally a sun-like star
finally so this star is Ada Cassiopeia
and I did see this naked eye uh on uh Friday night Saturday night that
the star party it was at uh it's a yellow white main sequence star main sequence type G
and this 19 light years away and that's that's that's still considered very close in our galaxy very left that's a
next door neighbor it's been more than four times as far as Alpha Centauri which is the closest star to Earth after
the Sun so it's still a neither very close there's only really one more star in in
our sky that we can see that is a main sequence G star and that's so Teddy Owl City all right so the stars that we can
see that are like uh like our sun they're not very bright they have to be
close and that's what Tau City and at a Cassie PR so uh popular did a large large
search uh from 2009 to 13. it searched the sky within this area of the uh
similar triangle that we saw and look for 150 000 Stars it checked
for exoplanets and in at Starlight at sun-like stars
uh so if you look at actually another representation this is the way
uh simpler with searching out into the Orion spur of the Galaxy
here's maybe a little more accurate scientific depiction of the actual field of view of Kepler and it discovered 2700
exoplanets that were confirmed discovered more potential ones but 2700 were actually confirmed so uh
so our type of uh a star is very hard to see in the night sky naked eye really only two and the
two I mentioned are about fourth magnitude so we can see them most places uh and there's a lot more out there you
know many more but we just can't see them because they're not close enough
that's all I had and let me in my share here
if I can get back to zoom that can help you yeah yeah somehow I've
lost my control panel that's easy to do yeah okay yeah there's a couple of
comments here um uh don um uh this is uh off-road uh watching on
YouTube from the UK um made a comment that the summer triangle
he says that Patrick Moore used to insist continuously that he invented this the uh concept of the summer
triangle so and um and then he also mentioned that
El Barrio has a yellow component doesn't it or a question yellow and blue yellow
and blue yeah and uh 95 Hercules
yeah yeah I think I think at Star parts we call it gold except if you look for the gold star yeah the sapphire and gold
yeah yeah the jewels in stock right
well Don thank you so much um welcome to you uh Before I Let You Go did you
have a favorite memory of uh of the Voyager missions you know I was thinking
uh on I clearly remember when uh the encounter was happening with I guess it
was it Jupiter first I remember my wife and I went over to the local University here
the astronomy Department had arranged somehow to get a feed and to show it live on the monitors in the lecture hall
I remember doing that that's cool quite a long time ago if I remember going over there and sitting with a lot of people
to watch the image come in yeah yeah right and when we just knowing
that it was going to go from one planet to the next it was just uh uh you know I was I was still quite young but um
uh yeah uh everybody was waiting with baited breath for sure yeah I had
already graduated but we went back to college too I got invited to see that it was it was amazing
wonderful Don thank you so much and thanks to the astronomical League thank you okay
all right so up next is we're going to go down to uh Argentina to Maxi filari's
uh and Maxie um always blows our minds with uh his
amazing astrophotography and uh I really like Maxi's stories of of uh how he
approaches uh Imaging um you know overcomes obstacles uh in in
trying to capture fine images through his uh equipment uh you know and uh he
always stuns Us by by what he's able to pull off so and uh also a very friendly
uh gentleman who's always willing to extend a hand to anyone that's trying to
get started in astronomy or astrophotography Maxie thanks for coming on to the 131st Global Star Party
oh thank you it's called for that presentation I honestly and I'm glad for
for what you think about of me and well you know uh I I didn't
of course I didn't exist when the Voyager comes out from to space but anyway uh when I
was a little boy I remember watching VHS documentaries uh
um it's the narrative through the voice of Isaac Asimov you
know and he talks about the the Journey of the Voyager and the pictures that
well leader took here show us here in
the presentation and that's me that's a brings back at that time in the
early 90s for me so I I'm you know I remember last Sunday
afternoon watching those vhes with my brother and with my father and well
today my birthday of my brother so happy birthday clicked in yeah
so well anyway uh you know I I I I when
she was talking about all this all was she was through
um doing and all the team that they dust
that amazing journey of this spaceship you know it's unbelievable that today
it's outside of our solar system so but anyway we we can still communicate with
this uh spaceship so for me it's mind-blowing you know at that time
everyone maybe they will say it's impossible but you know they that's the premise of the humanity
is a BRI break that wall and say we can do it so
you know anyway uh well thank you for inviting me it's honor to be with you tonight
what I'm going to talk you about is what I'll be doing this last week there's a
lot of things that I've been doing and let me share my screen
well first of all uh you can see there's a lot of video files and and another a
files here because I was taking pictures of a Saturn we still having a very high here
in the South atmosphere so last weekend it is sorry last
Wednesday I we had a very good well not not very
good a good seeing alerts so I tell Nico
another guys to you know guys we have we need to take pictures to Saturn this
night because this is the night so I was taking a lot of videos and
taking a 10 minutes a video so in this case
and the results of this night uh well I'm still processing and practicing the
rotating and everything but for example this is the the final result that I get
that night and in this case this is not the Voyager
this is my home my backyard telescope
and I could capture um encelados and test it smooth
and of course we have the the shadow now and this side of the of the railings
because the a month ago it was from this side and anyway we can see the the the the
storms from the the lines of the planet
I also did the opposite way you'll turn it 180 degrees
and for depends of the perspective that you see it's it changed a lot you know
um I I can't understand now um I couldn't imagine now in that in two
years there is going to be very aligned to us so there is going to be a very
very thin and so anyway I I'm still I'm glad to do this kind of
outro photos because I always want to capture like the Voyager did at that
time the planets you know uh I also tried with Jupiter that night
it was a honestly you can see it well I had a
take a wavelets in this picture but it doesn't worth it because it's very low
from the horizons and and it's tough yeah exactly but I did my first time
that I captured Neptune so uh of course that's really far away but
anyway I I'm glad to take a chance to to give this a planet
for the first time so well this is what I've been doing with a
planetary and the when the weekend came
we we try to organize a to be inadverty
so I asked to Marcos if I could be there and when I
see the the Google Maps started images uh this was almost
three weeks ago and you can see here there's a really huge circle
because they are constructing a and and
while constricting The Observatory right now so I'm really glad to to what what is
happening here and you know I Scott I thought I sent
you a picture that that day but I think you couldn't see it and but anyway
uh I I'm really glad that this project continuous
the size of all the things in Argentina for now anyway
and we went with Herman Vaccaro so we
can do some Astro gazing and taking pictures uh let me share you
these pictures I took that afternoon there's a lot of telescope here and
equipments and you can see the the the new building in
in this sunset uh here's my principal equipment then my
little one with the hey Askari CDL 200. then I bring for the first time the
dobsonian telescope and Herman
bring this um is I don't know it is not let's make
a second I think but anyway this is a really huge telescope and very powerful
and he went with do you recognize this mounts Scott
oh yeah so 100. exactly working down the
southern hemisphere that's cool yeah exactly so he he buyed a couple a month ago so he went
with his new Gear to to give a chance and this is from another angle for
example a his Herman preparing everything actually
I access 100 and you know we have a really windy
afternoon the winds stopped so nice I I was great
yeah but anyway altitude
it was really really windy but we prepare the equipment so we we we're
done going to be at home very early so we start to prepare everything is
when I tell you the pictures and well
I did this little time lapse a couple minutes ago so let me show you
a if you can see it the the full frame yeah okay I'm going
to start the this is almost one and a half hour I think you can see is
Scorpius here going to the West the Milky Way okay here's again the the
line does it goes there there was an airplane and you can see here the the Milky Way
is a parallel with the Horizon look at that
so when you have it why you got to go the southern hemisphere to see this you know
exactly and see how the equipment moves because I
we was started guessing uh taking pictures and watching through the
dobsonian and see what we could could get because more later the the steam it wasn't
perfect but anyway uh I say okay I I I I have to take
pictures because maybe 2 am the the weather says they're going to be clouds
so now we have to do this and well uh you know I really love to do this time
lapse and when I was doing it I saw from through this Trieste here on the right
it was the first time that I saw a meteor a bluish meteor you know a I saw a green
I saw red I saw yellow some white but blue you know was incredible I remember
the the little clusters from the lightsaber on Star Wars you know something like that right
but you know it was amazing so when I was capturing I I was working
with an icon and the cwo and the objects that I take place
first at the night was the conjunction of the Moon and Mars
that's nice so this is within icon and the Oscar I I
had to take a chance but also
foreign
uh really low and you know I give a try yesterday but I think maybe tomorrow is
not cloudy I will give it a chance again but it's almost impossible from the the
brightness of the of them afternoon you know but anyway uh
this it was when I started the night so with the principal equipment I pointed I
start to point it uh this place that is in the corona Australis you know this is
a really good place a lot of Cloudy and nebulia you know
this is not Club from the 90s velocity gas dust and everything
and you can see how the the Stars uh
shape give the shape of this a
when their Brides Stars it gives color to this clouds and
you know I didn't could get much more detail like I say there was a really good it
wasn't really good night for get details but anyway
I really love to capture this again and give a try
so I was doing almost two hours taking pictures and all the stars even the the
guy didn't say they are wrong the the single picture was still around so that
means that the night wasn't really good anyway but then I started to see what I what
the next object that I could get before the the class came and I want to try it with a
Galaxy and give a chance for the first time to
the for next A and D hmm and this is a really good
it's not to come on to capture this one because
once you try to sometimes you can take pictures of the core of the galaxies not
the dust so it's a really huge object that you can
capture but not too many astrophotography from here capture it so you can see in the in the color for next
a there's a lot of new velocity a rounded so when I saw this when I get
distracted so I say okay honestly worth it to try to give a try
so maybe next time when if the weather say is going to be much more better I
will try again so
there's a lot a lot of Galaxy clusters that doesn't fit on this field of view I
had to make a cold position to promote them it must say exactly so anyway
I I did this with the principal equipment
but then I when the the little one and then icon I I capture four objects that
I didn't process yet but I want to show you for example what I get
this is known by the raw fucus and what
a constellation and there's a lot of objects here because we have and that is a
a M4 uh well I don't remember another names
of this place there's a lot of velocity but I still working with this Violet
places calling a Anglo because the Nikon's really old but
is give me a battle to to try to remove this and the stacking images I try with
darks BS and everything and flats but I don't know what's going on here
because when I go there to M8 and I
started there there's no Anglo here because the dark a calibration says
take take them off so anyway I I did this I think a half hour so
anyway there's a lot of info here to to work it and
more later I because at that time this was going to the West so more later I
give a try to the large my channel Cloud uh
and it doesn't fit all of it on the this field of view with an icon but
here's data Angelina he's the core of the of the Galaxy
and there's a lot of new velocities and globular clusters they are they are
floating through this galaxy so anyway this is a really good object to
to capture and of course more later I give a try
to the um the the small magogenic level with 47
to can I so you can compare here
with this field of view the case the principal Global cluster
but more than here there's another one
here's another one I think and there's a lot of global cluster here and of course
and inside these galaxies but anyways Rich region very much
so what see that's that's that's amazing I think we are running out of time
um yes yes a fantastic uh there was a lot of
objects that I got yeah so yes and uh we'll have you on next next week to talk
more about uh your work there it's very uh very impressive so thank you thank
you it's a pleasure to be here yeah it's great to have you here well uh we are uh going to go straight
to Molly Wakeling Molly is um has been on global star parties uh several times
uh in fact more than several times and she is a regular uh contributor also to
many other online programs and social media and stuff I think Molly is very
committed to um you know sharing the knowledge that she has and uh
um you know I know that we're fortunate to have her on our program
um so Molly thanks for coming on to go Star Party um uh what was your favorite Voyager
memory do you have one uh well I also wasn't around when boys were launched but
um I still going it's still going up there yeah I did grow up seeing uh those
pictures mainly in in the textbooks before the newer ones got added and seeing those on I I was one of those
weird kids that one of my favorite shows was Nova on PBS oh sure all right so it
was part of the Nova film crew I'll tell you the story sometimes oh my God
um yeah I just I just love like that a piece of us something that we made on
our little planet is out now in interstellar space and we'll just continue to exist for the rest of time
right uh you know it's it's uh without being in an atmosphere things don't get
broken down in Space the way they do on the planet so it's just gonna keep going for tens thousands hundreds of thousands
of years and I don't know maybe get picked up with part of its name scratched out
what is this and that record maybe not too destroyed by micro meteorites and still still able
to be read um but yeah just a piece of us being out there in in interstellar space uh for
the rest of time I just oh it gets me too so I absolutely love that fact
um and and yeah how it's just been so recently that we've gotten these these
close-up views of of the planets in our own solar system and uh just wonder how
there's still so much that we don't know about about the planets and how we've only been to some of them once which is
mind-blowing so hopefully much more to come from future spacecraft for sure
um well I'm going to go a little bit further out than the solar system tonight but not outside the Galaxy with
the Cocoon nebula so I like to come on and uh talk about
something that I've imaged before and talk about why it's uh what's
interesting scientifically about it or uh also it's interesting to look at about it and how to look at it how to
image it uh because there's so much cool stuff to look at out in space and especially when you have access to
photography equipment you can see even more than you can see with your eye but it's also really enjoyable to go look at
these things visually as well and um yeah so like coming on here and
talking about these things and I haven't been able to do as much Outreach stuff lately because I'm in a critical end
phase of my PhD but uh hopefully when that's all done and I get get moved on
then I can continue to get back into more of the Outreach events I was doing a couple years ago so uh yeah all right
so uh the Cocoon nebula is uh sort of like the triffid nebula where it's
actually three nebula wrapped up in one you have an emission nebula a reflection nebula and a dark nebula so the emission
nebula component is the is the pink that you see here the the red mixed in with the white Starlight uh that is the
hydrogen Alpha emission so hydrogen gas that's being energized by the stars in
the nebula and actually primarily by that one star on the middle is where most of most of that uh light is coming
from it's energizing the hydrogen gas which is causing it to glow and one of
the colors uh one of the optical colors it glows in is is this uh deep red that
is the primary as is the brightest emission for basically anywhere in space but particularly for hydrogen uh the
nebula also includes the open cluster ic5146 very commonly I think probably
always a mission nebula are associated with Star clusters because new stars are typically being born in these emission
nebula in these In This Cloud of of old Stardust
so where can you find the Cocoon nebula it's uh so I like to also mention things
that uh to talk about targets that are currently up that you can go see now instead of having to wait six months and
uh as we're getting toward the end of summer we still have cygnus relatively high in the sky and it's not too far
from cygnus and from our familiar easy to spot stars of deneb and seder Saturn
never know how that's exactly pronounced it's also in the vicinity of another open cluster Messier 39 and
um yeah so something you can still go out and see tonight if you wanted to if it's clear where you are it's not clear
where I'm at where I am tonight unfortunately hmm um so some fast facts uh it's listed
apparent magnitude kind of varies depending on where you look it also varies depending on whether you're talking about the open cluster of stars
or the admission nebula or the reflection nebula component but uh I've put down 7.2 one of the numbers I came
across which is probably more the open cluster magnitude than the nebula magnitude because the Neville itself is relatively dim
um it is four thousand light years away so within the Galaxy but
um we're still within uh not not too far from from the earth honestly in terms of
the galactic scale it's about 15 light years across which you know we talk about galaxies when
we're looking at things out in space and they're a hundred thousand light years across and so 15 can sound really puny
until you remember that a light year is bigger than the whole solar system and imagine how enormous that nebula is uh
and what it would be like to be inside of that so 59 years is still quite large and would envelop the couple closest
stars to us um the main part of the nebula is listed
as being 12 arc minutes across which sounds small but it actually looks a lot bigger in wide field photographs and
especially if you include the dark nebula tail coming up off of it which I'm going to talk about in a second
and uh on the topic of it being a solar Nursery it has been imaged a lot in
infrared and in x-ray because there's a lot of young Stellar objects in it so
these are newly forming star systems that are sometimes not quite fully
formed Stars yet I think but they're getting hot hot enough to emit x-rays which is pretty hot so that Fusion
process is starting uh yeah so one of the really interesting
features about about the Cocoon nebula that makes it different from the many other emission nebula that we can see is
this long tail of dark nebula I don't have a great picture of it that I've taken but I I don't know how well this
is coming across but it's sort of first of all a cloud around the edges of the
nebula and then also this really long tail that heads up Westward uh from the
nebula and uh when you're out at a very dark sky site you can sometimes see the
dark nebula because you see the extinction of the stars behind it and because it is in cygnus or near cygnus
which is a very star dense constellation you can sometimes see the dark nebula in
that area because it blocks out the stars that are behind it so um an opportunity to go see a really cool black nebula I so a dark namila is
a cloud of light absorbing molecular dust so as opposed to the ionized
emissions of the emission nebula with hydrogen and ionized oxygen and sulfur
nitrogen and things like that this these are non-ionized molecular elements or or molecules that are
absorbing light instead that's that's what makes it a dark nebula so they're they consist of both submicron dust
particles coated in Frozen carbon monoxide and Frozen nitrogen but they
also contain a lot of organic compounds which I think is fascinating uh like ammonia formaldehyde
cyclob I've practiced this yesterday
these I I think they did this on you know these these chemists do this on
purpose so
it's a um not in tongue physicists out of their world that's right that's right
uh and uh well and so like uh it's fascinating to think about the fact that
there's that there's uh organic compounds out in space because you typically think about organic compounds being on planets or in comets inside of
solar systems but the these there is chemistry happening out in space and there's chemistry happening out in space
that doesn't happen naturally on the surface of of planets including the
earth and the reason why some of this unique chemistry happens out in space is because a it's cold but mainly
um the spaces between different molecules is very far apart so
ordinarily compounds that could be briefly made here are going to either
fall apart or go into some other kind of chemical reaction very quickly but out in space it could be a while before a
particular molecule runs into another molecule and so you'll you get a lot more of these molecules that are too
reactive to exist naturally on or if and other planets but do exist out in space
and the way that we know that these chemicals are out there is through radio astronomy where we can because the
molecules are going to Emit and absorb light on much longer wavelengths than Optical light so you need the um the
radio to look at some of that Spectra so yeah dark nebula are very cool and
um I don't know how they end up being connected to the formation of organic molecules on planets and comets but I'd
be it'd be fun to go learn about that sometime see if there's any connection I like to also show pictures of what
these objects look like in different wavelengths and one of the pieces of software I use for this is called Aladdin which has a huge repository of
images from every Space Telescope and every ground telescope survey almost
everyone that exists I think and you can look at any part in the sky and look and see what data are there and
go look at a variety of different types of data so um oftentimes radio
is pretty low resolution and so there wasn't much in any of the radio images I looked at
um even for the dark nebula part so uh just sort of splotchy all over the
sky so not much of an image here for the sun I picked uh one of the frequencies at random at 70 gigahertz from Planck
but there's a really pretty picture in infrared from the Herschel Space Telescope which uh was mainly looking at
some of those young Stellar objects that are in the main part of the nebula and also these youngster objects are also in
the dark nebula tail which I think is fascinating and so this is a a starless so they remove the Stars like you could
like you can do in pics and site they actually probably used pics inside for this um
uh if you in infrared of of the nebula and um I think this is the main part of the Cocoon with that um molecular dust
tail going up in here which uh uh what may absorbs less infrared it looks like
than than it does for optical maybe a mixing infrared um yeah really cool picture from personal space telescope and infrared
uh there was also some you can kind of see that there's something that resembles the Cocoon nevilla here in
ultraviolet which I thought was interesting I don't know why they chose red for the color but this is from the Galax survey
and then uh x-ray this is roughly the same field of view I think I'm a little more zoomed out in this picture but
there's a bunch of little dots here and those are those young Stellar objects that I mentioned earlier uh that like
sometimes glow in x-ray radiation which means that they're very hot to be able to put out that high frequency of light
and uh there was something here for gamma rays though nothing nothing in the Cocoon nebula is hot enough to emit gamma rays or at least not a significant
amount of them so there wasn't really any imagery there uh oops after that from the previous one
observing the Cocoon nebula not the bubble nebula um so uh because it's in cygnus you can
see it for a good portion of the year if you're in the northern hemisphere since it is up high almost at Zenith in our
sky so I put from June to December on here depends on how early you like to get up in the morning in the springtime
to be able to go look at things that are along the Milky Way But if you like to
observe in the evening and then go to bed you can still catch cygnus before it sets all the way until December uh so
even though it's in cygnus you think summertime you can actually see this in the wintertime as well it is difficult to observe visually because it is mostly
the red Mission nebula and our eyes are very insensitive to Red um but uh if you're out somewhere very
dark and from what I've read a six inch or larger aperture is recommended from a very dark sky site
refusing maybe if you use a nebula booster you may be able to make out more of the hydrogen that's there I don't
know how much hydrogen beta is there which is the Bluer wavelength that hydrogen emits that um is more picked up
with the nebula filter but maybe you'll see something with that um or from a dark sky site you can try
to make out some of the dark nebula by looking for the stars that are extincted behind it photographically it is a much easier
object to catch you don't need a whole lot of time on it actually it's very strong in hydrogen Alpha
which you might think might make it a good narrowband Target but actually it's much better done in wideband because of
the reflection nebula and because of the dark nebula neither of which you're going to catch if you're Imaging it in narrow bands so maybe do it in wide band
and if you want to add some hydrogen Alpha to it then you can kind of boost that hydrogen Alpha signal in color
uh the one of the cool things about it is that it's really great with a narrow field of view or a wide field of view so
if you're using a Rokinon or samyang 135 millimeter camera lens or if you're
using a 11 inch Casta grain you can image this and you'll get something nice
out of it so it's good basically at any focal length the deeper you go the more you'll get and by deeper I mean more exposure time
uh getting more of the dark nebula and more of the reflection nebula and more detail in the emission nebula but you
don't need really a locks um the picture on this slide is just two and a half hours at the ocutec star party which is
pretty dark which has to pick up that dark nebula very quickly um but on the next side I'm going to show an image from a portal 5 site that
I only got four and a half hours on and still got a nice shot of it so it really does not need a lot of exposure time
even though it is quite dim visually so uh I'll leave you with um my best
picture of it so far which um uh I forgot to put the day down I think I took this last year
yeah probably something like that relatively recently um out at a portal 5 site at a local
state park this is with my Takahashi fsq106 the optolong L Pro so wide band
and it's just four hours 20 minutes of data on my one shot color camera my zwo
2600 that is beautiful thank you that's beautiful I'm quite pleased with this one I would like to get more data at
some point to get more of the dark nebula up here and around it but
um using The Takahashi my stars came out very nice and it really but like like the images shown earlier there's so many
stars and sickness yeah and it's just you could just fall into them that's
it's just incredible and yeah that's what I got fantastic
well you got a lot Molly that's that's awesome that's awesome I uh put a link into uh
the astronomaly log which is the official log uh or blog of uh Molly
Wakeling and so a little behind on updating it and uh
pretty much else on there but it does have a link to my Aster bin where I was where I do keep relatively up to date
with posting images and also to my Facebook where uh you can see both images and uh sometimes I post like
here's a picture of my telescopes tonight or I'm out camping this weekend or whatever so um yeah it has links to those sites as
well as well thank you so much thanks for the uh a fantastic presentation thank you
all right okay um up next is uh Kelly Ricks Kelly came
on for the first time at the last Global star party uh she is a very
um uh she's a creative force in in the field of uh of art music and uh also
in astronomy I think that she's uh we would consider her to be a protector of
dark skies and um she has uh um you know she comes with a lot of
passion for um you know observing the night sky and
she puts it down in beautiful artworks uh I I wish that uh I could hear her
perform music as well but I I don't know how much she does of that anymore but
she is a uh it's kind of like a Renaissance person and um so I'm very
glad to have Kelly Ricks on again tonight thanks for gracing the 131st
goal Star Party well thanks for having me back again
it's a real pleasure to be here you've been asking people about their Voyager
connections and I um I like Molly was not born
you know I don't remember everybody's starting to make me feel old okay
but that's okay I will say um the day that I was born I was born in
July of 1979 so that was when Voyager was traveling through the Jupiter system
sure I you know found that out later and so I have a special connection to that
portion of the mission especially because the first object that I looked at through a telescope was Jupiter so
excellent and uh so this past weekend we just finished up our dark sky festival
at capulin Volcano National Monument we had a Friday that was completely rained
out and fogged out but the Saturday was beautiful and another connection to Voyager here
not only did we get to pass out some deep space Network stickers not many
people know what the deep space network is but I get to explain it to him and I love that I want one
I actually don't know where the part got them um but also being at a volcano I got to
talk about volcanoes in space and a lot of the very interesting things
that we discovered about volcanoes in places like Jupiter and Triton and even
Miranda and um um I don't think I think Enceladus was Cassini but anyway we got a lot of that
initial information and some stunning images from Voyager as well so I referenced that quite a bit
um if I can share my screen here um let's see is this in
is this in the correct yes mode okay so this is oops
this is an image from uh just as we were getting started for the capulin volcano
Festival we have some people just starting to assemble we have our telescopes getting set up and I'm over
here in the corner talking about volcanoes in space so anyway
um so my main presentation tonight is about overlooked constellations I've done a series of
artworks about constellations that tend to be overshadowed by others especially you know for for
those of us who have been observing for a while we know some of these constellations but you talk to most
people and they know they know the Big Dipper or some major and they know Orion
um but not many others and there's some really beautiful ones out there with some interesting stories
and characters so I thought that I would uh try looking into some of those
um this first one here is an illustration that I did of lepus which
is constellation that hangs out right below Orion and
I mean obviously this is highly interpreted I didn't leave I didn't include stars that are around lepus and
some of the brightnesses are enhanced a bit like if you were to go in to stellarium and turn up the relative
scale of the stars um the the slightly changed
shape of the constellation I like to maybe reference the some of some of the ideas of the Stars a new way to see them
by H.A Ray where he takes the official stars of the constellations and sort of makes them look more like what they are
so in uh in lepus here the hair one of the favorite things that I have to look
at is this beautiful dark red star
um and I have some of the um screens over here covering up my view of
this particular portion of my slide but this red star is called a Heinz Crimson
star and it's a variable star it has a period somewhere in the range of 450
days and when it's toward its dimmest part of the cycle is when it really really looks very red
but that was one of the first things astronomer showed me through his telescope was this really just ruby red
star found it was really stunning oh another object we have here is m79
hanging out in the little paw of the rabbit next we have a hanging out behind Orion
a truly truly difficult constellation to see monosaurus the unicorn and yes I have turned up the
relative scale of the stars in the unit unicorn quite a lot because it is very
dim very elusive just like the mythical character itself but some of the interesting objects in
the Unicorn first of all the rosette nebula and when I was getting started in astronomy I had
my little eight inch dobsonian on My Back Porch Looking Through the star map trying to figure out what to see and I
saw this really big nebula in the middle of this you know right next to Orion and I thought well that will be easy to find
so I put my telescope where I thought the right area was and there was nothing there I was very confused and only
learned later that yes it's a big object but it's very faint and very diffuse so
every failure is a learning experience but close to the rosette we also have
the Christmas tree cluster over here just below the horn which yes I did
bleed up a little bit into here to Gemini to make a horn it's a little artistic license
next another mythical creature Draco this is a beautiful constellation
weaves in between the Big Dipper and the Little Dipper which I also included or
some minor in this view of the constellation and the the Deep Sky object that I like
to feature here was the Cat's Eye Nebula um which is a very nice one
I'm a musician yes um so of course I've got to choose Lyra
which I suppose for most of us as observers this is not so much of an overlooked constellation there are lots
of amazing things to see in this one but typically when I've been at Star parties
where people have tried to explain the look of Lyra they instead of a musical
instrument they have instead referenced Fred Flintstone's tie
um which there's the triangle and then here it is by hanging down there so so I wanted to
take it and actually um you know play it the musical instruments side of it
um of course the beautiful objects we have in Lyra or the Ring Nebula one of
the great objects for a beginner to start with just right smack in the middle of those between those two stars
about three quarters of the way there and you've got a great you know the cosmic Cheerio as I like to call it very
rewarding for a young Observer or a new Observer I should say
um also we have m56 which is here hanging out behind her hair and something that
was referenced earlier in the night Epsilon lyrae which I have zoomed in a
fake telescopic view here on the double double in reality it is much further
separated um than this view this is an image I got off of Wikimedia Commons
just to give you a sense of what that looks like in addition to being a good test for a refractor and a good Sky I
would say that that would also include a dobsonian reflector it's it's possible to get this in a good with a good sky
and a good dobsonian so is it um is there supposed to be an image in
the black box there yes did it not come through it doesn't look like it's coming through okay well
any case I guess you can you can look at my uh drawing up there for some drawings good
if highly interpreted view little they're a little bit uh further apart in
reality than they are in this View all right next we have corvus and
speaking of using stars to get to interesting deep Sky objects I think
corvus is my favorite constellation um at a lot of our dark sky events we do
a thing called a telescope sandbox where we have a couple of little dobsonians
you know six eight inches that people can use they can play with and that's
what I did over the weekend I coached people through first finding a star then finding Saturn and finding by the end of
the night there was a girl she was maybe 10 years old she was fine she found m81 and M82 for my giving the directions on
where to look she was able to put her telescope on that on those objects um corvus of course it's a spring
constellation but it has this wonderful pattern of stars here that leads
straight to m104 the Sombrero Galaxy
um I don't know if the terminology is the same everywhere but this is my little
star hopping map we've got these two Bright Stars here and then another star
up here that's in a kind of a triangle and then it goes to what most people
I've heard called the Stargate which is a triangle of stars surrounding
another triangle of stars reference is a very old TV show which is nowhere longer
Salient for for kids um but I did ask a kid a few months ago
what he thought this object looks like and he said it's a fidget spinner so now I call this little pattern of
stars the fidget spinner and of course you jump from there to what I've often heard called Jaws
I'll think of it just as an arrow pour it straight to the Galaxy and oops and
uh whoops let's see there we go back through
um Point straight at the Galaxy for someone who's never looked at a Galaxy before what a helpful thing to have an arrow
point straight to it all right the next constellation yes is
typically more of a southern hemisphere object I can see this constellation from
my latitude here in New Mexico which is awesome um and you will notice a couple of weird
things about Pixis the compass um first probably you're all jumping on
top of me saying ah you're East and West are backwards well in most cases that's true however
um if we line up the uh an equatorial grid on top of the stars and again I've
I've got screens that are covering my my portion the active portion of my of my
view so I can't directly put point at these Stars but in the drawing
typically the compass I think the needle is used by these stars but I have used
these other stars over here to make the needle and by following that needle it
pretty much follows you know straight up to straight up to the North Pole but in
order to do that you know standing in the northern hemisphere looking South north is up and East is
over here and West is over there so it's just a little bit of a different perspective I've got a couple of deep
Sky objects that I will probably never see they are very very faint I just I
think I put them in there because I thought they were beautiful all right probably my favorite
constellation in the whole sky for many many reasons uh Comma baronises just
this picturesque little right angle of stars with a gorgeous um
a uh star cluster milot 111 dangling down this is the hair of Baron icy Queen
baranice of Egypt in the second century BC she sacrificed her hair to help
ensure that her husband Ptolemy would come home safely he did and so they're
seen in a loving Embrace here in this picture um coma Baron Isis is has got some great
objects in it there's of course the needle Galaxy um and the black eye Galaxy
but my favorite aspect of this particular constellation is the fact
that it contains within it the galactic North Pole
which is something I had never heard of until I I read this wonderful book by Tyler nordgren stars above Earth Below
um and he was talking about okay the Earth spins and we have a we have a a
poll where the access is pointing well guess what the Galaxy spins as well and
there's a there's a poll a an axis of that rotation and it just happens to be
in coma Baron Isis when this constellation is high in the
sky when it's straight overhead and it helps to be in a further south latitude
um the Milky Way is all around us on the
horizon we are looking straight up and out of the Galaxy you won't see the
Milky Way anywhere um which you know this is a very this is a very helpful constellation to be able
to reference for people who come to a star party and say the one thing I want to see is the Milky Way I say well
you're not going to see the Milky Way tonight but here's why because we're looking straight up and out of the
Galaxy all the way around us on the horizon is the Galaxy standing upright
and we're looking out into clusters hundreds thousands of galaxies in this
image not only do I have the needle and the black eye but also a reference to
markarian's chain of course that's in Virgo but right next door just you know
clusters of galaxies it's you know so many galaxies you can't find your way around these galaxies
so well that uh wraps up what I have to show um my website deepskykelly.com where I
have a lot of my other artwork um and let's see stop screen share there we go
all right so thank you very much
I mean it's got
um I think you're muted blah blah blah here we go there you go
that always happens to me anyways uh I I muted it for a moment because we were
getting some Thunder back here and I did put a message out that if in case we I
go I lose my power the the magic of Zoom will keep the program open so if that
happens I'll blank out and I'll come right back in but what I was saying is Kelly
um uh I want I can tell that you really know the sky extremely well uh and
um you know to be able to explain uh how to find a couple of galaxies in the sky
that I know a lot of adults struggle with in trying to find uh on their first
go-arounds um that's testimony to how how well you are interpreting the sky so that is
that's great that's great use little tricks you know learn learning the constellations and you start to see the
patterns in the sky um Stars lead to other stars and it's um so
yeah I guess I guess it's practice right okay all right so
um we are running a little uh ahead at this point and so we are going to take a
break uh and come back with uh Marcelo Souza and a special
um uh first time uh person and I hope I don't ruin the pronunciation of the name
but it's Odin Ben Herron and Odin comes from Norway uh and he is someone that
loves to um mix uh different disciplines uh in
order to better understand um science and he is also someone that
is involved with the Global Science Opera a fellow musician Kelly so all
right so we are going to take that break and we'll be right back
thank you
foreign
right now
foreign
foreign
thank you we knew we were on a journey of
Discovery when we launched the Voyager spacecraft but we had no idea how much there was to
discover we had a sense that we knew what it felt like to be Magellan or Columbus
Time After Time were surprised by seeing things that we had not expected or even imagined volcanoes erupting from a moon
aisle the possibility of a liquid water ocean under the icy crust of Europa Titan
where we found an atmosphere Uranus small Moon Miranda which had one of the most complex geologic surfaces
we've seen even at Neptune Triton 40 degrees above absolute zero even there
there were geysers erupting it's gone by Uranus it's the only
spacecraft that's gone by Neptune nept everything we know about those planets we know from Voyager to see those first
pictures coming in from the outer solar system for the first time what had been a point of light in the
sky was a place I really credit the people that designed the mission both
the engineers and the mission planners and scientists because not only did they build an extremely robust durable
spacecraft but they had the vision to send it on a path such that it could get
out into Interstellar space and carry a gold record
and here was this Noah's Ark of human culture that was being sent to the outer
planets and then beyond to wander in the interstellar Darkness for a billion
years hello from the children of planet Earth foreign
's day 1990 Voyager 1 looked Homeward and what
did it find not the frame filling Apollo Earth
but instead that one pixel Earth that's here
that's home the Voyager spacecraft are in the outer layer of the heliosphere the giant
bubble the sun creates around itself with its supersonic wind Voyager today is headed for the edge of
interstellar space that's the space between stars and it's filled with material that has been injected by the
explosion of stars matter which came from a particular direction creating a wind which has shaped the bubble in
which the solar system is surrounded [Music]
Voyager really has changed our view of the solar system this will be a milestone in space
exploration leaving the solar system leaving the bubble and entering Interstellar space for the first time
foreign
[Music]
welcome back hope you had uh time to stretch and get that sandwich or nice
drink so that you can enjoy the second half of
our program uh you are watching the 131st Global star party with the theme
of the Voyager effect and so we've had some fantastic speakers so far we have
more to go here and so we will go to
um we will go to Brazil to Marcelo Souza
Marcelo how are you and thanks for coming on through the global Star Party
hi nice to meet you thank you for the invitations guys nice to meet you all of you it's a great pleasure to be here
thank you please thank you this week here we have a
a new activity that we are developing here uh Dr Odette
is here with us here in Brazil and the sincere Friday we have the uh
the opportunity to organize many events with the participation of doctor Odette
higher that yeah hi Marcelo hi Scott how hi everyone
yeah nice to meet you nice to meet you all I will show before
doctor that talk about the project I I will show some images
of part of the activities that were developed here until today let me share
here the screen
is the first event here friends Dr radage arrived here in Brazil was a
meeting of the with the Reds red of the Department of Education or throughout
the state of Hugh de Janeiro I have talked to the dead because Dr W will
talk about the Global Science shop and there's a fantastic in projects that she
Associates and Science and we participated since 2015 in this project
and now uh it will be developed in Audi States
in Audi public estate schools of the state of hid engineer that's something
fantastic they will give you opportunities for other schools to
participate in this project here in Brazil and the state of regional health almost 20 million people living in a lot
of state public schools then we're having many schools involved
this was the first meeting where during Friday
we have had the six events yeah
this was another event of the participation of students
and the many of the Global Science geography wise associated with astronomy
there is something different since the first one here the kids from another uh
institution here in Brazil I thought doctored visiting and he organized a
workshop for the kids that's it well there
we are together here this is a fantastic a resistance
refugees events this is participation for a lot of students
and another we had many meetings here with the red of the Department of
Municipal Department of Education of Municipal governments here is the staff
of a private institution that's very big in Brazil they have the institution in
many cities and states here I have visited to I state public
school design students around these states Public School
here located here encompasses with a cars
another image from an event in another seat with the staff of the Department of
Education of the seats and The Refuge students that already participate in
this fantastic price that is global science chapter this is part of the images of the events
that happen here in our region with the participation of Dr rodette thank you
very much to be with yours Dr Odette and I he is he is a creator of this
project thank you for that to be with you as here Andy who will be participating over
here
right okay thank you very much Marcelo and
for that wonderful introduction and Scott could you please confirm that it
would be my turn to speak now yeah sure yeah okay great first of all it's really
exciting okay yeah then we'll do it that way then I will start with an informal note it's
really exciting to be here for several reasons uh not least because as a seven-year-old
living in Florida I had the opportunity to be at Cape Canaveral in Florida and
watch the launch of of uh Voyager so this is an extremely nice um Circle so
to speak yes I was living in Gainesville Florida at the time so I'd like to say a few
introductory words about the Global Science Opera which is the education initiative that Marcelo was introducing
um a little bit of background about myself first I'm a musician and head of
Department of Arts education at Western Norway University of applied sciences
the Global Science Opera is per definition the first globally produced
Opera initiative in history to our understanding beyond that it is also a
creativity in education initiative that has been active in approximately 50
countries and which started um in the framework of the unesco's
international year of Light which was in 2015. literally what we do in practice is each
year we take a scientific theme
and in dialogue with um a an international level scientific
organization create a science Opera with mainly children but also scientists and
artists themselves in dozens of countries scientific themes that we have tackled
so far include light pollution particle physics ecosystems
um the human mind and creativity and very excitingly this year we are
receiving direct inspiration from The Goddard space flight center of NASA to
create an opera about the new science that is being discovered through the web
telescope our Opera is called unfolds the universe
and as Marcelo mentioned one of the countries that has been most active in
Global Science Opera since it started has been Brazil and we have seen
wonderful contributions um hundreds of students here in Brazil
and now I am in the city of Campos where Marcelo is living and we have had very
exciting meetings with with um the education minister of the state of
Rio De Janeiro in order to see how and in what new ways children
in many schools in the states of Rio De Janeiro can keep exploring science
through ART and keep exploring art through science and to see what arises
in the interaction between those and I think I'll stop there and I can
answer any questions about what I've present presented so far or if time allows I can go more deeply
into any of those issues thank you very much
I have a question I mean how how do you um I've seen music
combined with science and various different ways um but uh and I find it a recurring kind
of thing that happens uh where you know it's it's uh it involves astronomy I too
have hired I'm not a musician but I've hired musicians to perform live music
while people are stargazing and experiencing the planets or the Milky
Way or something like that and I think it really reinforces uh the experience
you know um I I think it creates experiences that that people don't forget you know
what is you what is your take on that
absolutely and we have research that supports that
claim and what we're trying to do with that fact or that understanding is bring
it into schools and see how this combination between science and the Arts
can strengthen both science and the Arts um on remembering retaining information
is one aspect of the learning process but of course there are many more we can
ask what kind of creativity arises in the interaction between science and the Arts what in what new ways can children
understand science in the art Beyond quote unquote just retaining the
information in the Arts and in the science so absolutely another aspect in
response to to that question Scott is what happens if we take that kind of
activity to the extreme and if we start with what you're saying
okay we are doing something fascinating by hiring a musician to create musical
or other artistic dissemination of the science and thereby creating a new piece
of music can we take it to the extreme and ask ourselves if we do involve arts in
scientific exploration could the Arts lead to new kinds of Explorations in
science and obviously if we're looking at the work of Leonardo da Vinci or things that
um uh Albert Einstein has been saying about the connections between Arts and Science then yes and there are
scientific instruments that are artistic works as well so I think this
interaction between science and the art Works in many ways and it's very well
worth exploring even further so thank you for giving me this opportunity to share some thoughts and some experiences
about what we've been doing in Global Science Opera fantastic fantastic well thank you very
much um my pleasure you are in Brazil now with Marcelo uh how much longer do you
expect to stay I will be staying in Brazil unfortunately just till tomorrow I'm
heading to Phoenix Arizona I'm going to do a Global Science Opera Workshop in a
high school in Phoenix and then I'm gonna head back to Norway where I am permanently based yeah wow fantastic
okay thank you all right thank you um uh did you want to add anything
Marcelo before we go on to our next speaker
I wonder what it was like to emphasize that he is a fantastic project that is changing life of the students here in
our country because many of the students says that after participating this
project they feel motivated to study science
to have they have the opportunity to in every
participate since 2015. it made a difference gods of Science and
the happy students here that they develop the music they write the lyrics
of the music then the Fantastic experience experience and photos we are
very happy with the opportunity to be involved in this prize and thank you all
the edge for the opportunity it's fantastic thank you very much in scratch for the invitation it's a great pleasure
yeah oh thank you for bringing on your special guest that's wonderful thanks for sharing okay all right so we
are going to transition here um uh to uh Robert Reeves Robert is uh
an extremely gifted uh photographer uh astronomer Communicator in his own right
he's got some books on astrophotography um but uh he uh shares with us his love
for the moon through uh his uh of his lunar postcards
or his postcards from the Moon program that he runs here on global star
party I know that's not what he's all about but good Lord this guy knows more
about the moon than I think all of my friends that I would uh have considered to be lunar experts combined so
Robert thank you for coming on to the 131st Global star party yeah my pleasure
being here uh uh can you hear me okay hear you just fine okay good because I'm on a
different laptop tonight my normal laptop is in the observatory controlling my telescope as we speak so I'm kind of
keeping an eye on it here by um a wireless or a Wi-Fi connection
um screws it along on the wild duck cluster as we speak so um hopefully everything will work well
with this different laptop I do enjoy the moon but uh you know as
you mentioned I I have experience in other areas of astronomy as well written three books about astrophotography
um and uh but I have always liked to return to my original
my roots and astronomy the um the Moon is what got me into astronomy to begin with before there was even a space
program the moon already had my attention so I love promoting the moon
and talking about it and I just recently uh released a book about the moon it's
available on the Facebook Facebook available on Amazon and uh I'm gonna go
to screen share uh I've got to fill up the obligatory uh initial
okay uh is everything screen sharing okay
uh we see thumbnails oh oh here we go again different laptop same problem let's back
up here and uh uh you are sharing what do I have to do
to make this work we made it work last time
yeah double clicked on it I'm seeing it on my screen
and it's not really all you're saying is the uh
okay let me stop screen share and we'll recycle
stop the share okay you should be saying me again
um go back to screen share and um bring up
now you're seeing the screen of the thumbnails correct yes
and now we'll click on one and still thumbnails or are we seeing the full
screen still thumbnails well health
I don't know what it is about my connection that creates this issue
we got it to work last time okay let me stop share yeah we were
seeing the images over your thumbnails last time yeah I think what you have to do is you have
to open one and then go find it and share it after
you've opened it okay well let me uh oh man
dropped out of there have like a player that's playing one image after the other
okay now what is sick okay full screen looks
good exploring the moon with Robert Reese no cool
but I've got another problem I just realized this laptop does not have my
slide player I can't Advance the slides I trapped myself by switching laptops I
may have to I may have to anyway okay uh starting off like I said I just came out
with this new book about the moon that's been out on um Amazon for about a month now and uh
getting quite a quite a bit of good um feedback about it um people seem to be enjoying it so uh
I'll uh let's take a quick look here uh the title and just do a search for
exploring the moon with Robert Reeves on Facebook it'll take you straight to it available in the hardback and paperback
and uh away we go let's back out of here and
try to break up the next one green sharing has stopped what
well you want it to okay yeah okay the next one and then
we're just gonna have to cycle back and forth I've got a
yeah well trouble is that I don't have the slide viewer on it that will advance
to the next one so I've got to bounce back and forth in and out in and out trap myself I didn't realize that my my
player isn't on this anyway the title side Postcards From the boot postcards from the Moon is uh my theme
is um exploring some of the um sentimental favorites on the moon uh
that's what I started to do last week that I had forgotten what the title was because it's been several weeks before
since I was last year but we're going to look at a couple of areas on the moon that are sentimental favorites for all
observers they enjoy these particular areas and want uh to know a little bit
more about them because they're just naturally drawn to the beauty of these areas when they're observing so uh uh
we'll uh back out again advance to the next slide oh boy stop this and
where am I here I've got a screen share and my uh one of the slides that I bring
up every time though is to remind everybody that there are only two primary uh landscape making a process on
the moon it is either a feature on the moon is either created by volcanism or
by an impact the gross features on the moon the giant
basins of the craters these are all Impact features of the dark areas the basalt is the result of subsequent
volcanism and sometimes volcanism modifies existing craters uh definitely
have modified the great basins and filled them with lip assault and turned the
basins into the character that we see as the face of the man and the moon
and back out of this one go on to the next one this is this is going to be a
process uh bringing up the first one and back to
you and back to screen share and boom here we are the serpentine rich
there it goes okay the serpentine Ridge is our first feature today
um it's on the on Eastern Mari serenitatus the uh man of the moon's basically the man on the moon's right
eye uh uh the Sea of Serenity and um it's a wrinkle Rich which is a feature
that is created when sheets of Basalt slump toward the middle of a basin uh
the the weight of the basalt flooding the Basin uh has mass it depresses the
uh the center of the Basin so all the basalt tries to slide toward the middle
that creates ridges where Basalt buckles up and crushes into itself another form
that creates these wrinkle ridges is a buried Basin impact ring so uh
what's a single image doesn't reveal is that the serpentine Ridge this twisty
ropey looking feature is actually part of a
a series of ridges the completely encircle the inner part of Mars Serena
Thomas just offshore so this could very well be the the manifestation of a buried basic impact ring in Mars
cernitatus in this case the serpentine Ridge is actually the Twisted joining
Twisted form of two different wrinkle ridges the upper one uh
uh doors that are called dorsal Lister and dorsa Smirnoff
these wrinkle ridges on the moon I have the the scientific name of dorsup and
they're named after well-known earth scientists so in this case dorsolister dorsal Smirnoff and uh well navigate it
over to our next slide
whoops okay I've lost my screen let me come
back there we are already now go back to screen sharing
what a process I'm not gonna this isn't going to happen next time I'm going to be ready with this laptop okay
um your screen share is loading Come on
load are you seeing it yet there it goes okay
you should be seeing another view of the serpentine Ridge yeah yeah here here we're seeing it just is breaking into
Sunrise now the sunrises is uh streaming across uh the eastern part of serenatus
and we see the uh the sort of the serpentine Ridge uh just cresting into the Sunrise it's a very shallow low
feature no more than about 300 meters high they they can be up to oh five ten
meters across and they can be hundreds of kilometers long so they are among the
shallowest features on the moon but at the same time among the longest features on the moon
so let's get out of here just age or what do you think no it's
just just the nature of how they build up uh through the uh process of uh the
basalt buckling up against each other and uh where am I here
back to screen share back to the next picture and once it loads up we will see
in Mari nectarus and hopefully the entire nectarus basin
and this is taking some time no that's great there it goes there we go now we
Mari nectarus and you will notice down on the lower left from the circular
Market hours a very distinct Ridge it's in Shadow here because we're seeing
at the sunset that arcing Ridge is the ulti scarp
um scarves on the moon have a scientific name of rupus r-u-p-e-s and this one is
rupas all type it is actually the outer the surviving portion of the outer
impact ring of the detector's basin uh the inner ring is uh the shoreline of
Marie dectarus and if you look closely between the altai scarp and the South
western shore of nectarus you can see the faint outline of a third impact ring
uh just very faintly uh I just have to mentally connect the dots almost there
here we see all three of the impact Rings surrounding the nectarus or the
nectar's Basin impact Rings nowhere else on the moon that we easily see this uh
of the impact Rings like this except on Mario Oriental but it's so foreshortened
on the western side of the moon that uh it's really difficult to pick it out so here we we have the best example of
basin impact Rings uh facing us on our side of the moon so
let's get a little bit closer look at this thing and uh get a closer view of it and
and wait for the uh bells and whistles to work and one two three come on giddy
up go there we go wow got it okay now now this this is sections of the
Alti scarp at sunset uh casting a shadow at Sunrise the sunlight uh fully
illuminates the face of these glyphs and uh we see the ulti scarp is a white line feature and uh Sunset we see it it's a
black line feature now the salty scarp is so prominent you can see this thing in the binoculars
just looking at the uh the waxing this feature is so prominent that is easily
seen simply with binoculars and let's go on to the next slide and we'll see the
opposite sunset view of it or Sunrise view of it and uh
up we go
now this is clunky but it's working I did notice
there there are it looks like there's a little arrows to advance and go back
right underneath your image they work you're right let's see if they
do I'll try that next time this thing may have a built-in viewer in Zoom that I'm not aware of uh okay we'll try it uh
anyway here we see the sunrise on the all-time scarp and uh I've always thought that uh it's so cute how Piccolo
mini crater at the middle right just acts like a cork and just stops the the
flow of the Ulta scarp that's just Coincidence of course uh Piccolo media overlaid the surviving
Eastern tip of the uh the scarf to begin with it didn't necessarily physically
stop it when it when it formed but the overlay creates a nice artistic effect so let's see if this
will advance hey it does there we go all righty learn something
new every day alrighty another view of the all-time and uh here we see it later
in the day we're getting some more shadows and these Cliffs are very very high they're almost two kilometers high
so they will cast some significant Shadows whenever the uh uh the sun is low
now moving on toward the center of the Moon almost to the very center of the disk of the Moon uh we're looking at
near sinus media the Middle Sea on the moon oh actually closer to the Murray Serena thought uh
Tranquility uh the Apollo 11 Landing site is on the uh
left hand side underneath that ghostly spider looking uh Apparition of
Lamont crater uh the uh we're looking at here are the cracks and splits in the uh
middle of the picture of the reels on the moon and uh looking down toward the
lower left we also see a a case-shaped cluster of rules
um this area of the Moon the very center of it just fortuitously has quite a number
of these features on it these cracks in the moon and each of these is formed by a
different type of uh of volcanic activity uh let's advance I can get a
better look at some of these here we see uh in the center of the hygienist reel the goldling shape reels extending on
either side of hydrogen is greater a hygiene is greater about eight kilometers in diameter is the largest
non-impact crater on the moon it's actually a volcanic collapse bid
and you look very closely at the branches of Rhema hygienists and you can
see smaller collapse pits within the real most of them are in Shadow in this
particular picture but there's over a dozen of them and these are all volcanic features the real follows this uh this
chain of volcanic collapse bits uh going down toward the left-hand side
oh we see the tree's neck are reals so named because they're right next to
trees Decker crater which is just splitting the edge of the of the image these reels are unlike any others on the
moon they're not linear they're not curved they're not the sinuous
they have a structure all their own and they are uniquely called irregular
branching rules they're the only example of this on the moon whereas the hygienist reel is definitely a volcanic
uh feature and we'll move on to the next one and look at the hygienist real
uh excuse me the area day is real uh this one
um is a feature called egg graben a uh area between two parallel faults where
the land has slumped down what happened late in or a long time ago in the moon's
history a volcanic Dyke which is a sheet of magma that pushed upward from the moon's
molten core but didn't quite reach the surface but what it did was split the surface so the land in between collapsed
and created this real it almost looks like a interstate highway excavation
like a Caterpillar tractors have been up there very busily carving out this region on the moon it's about as long as
it is from here in San Antonio over to Houston so it's it's a considerable considerable feature
and uh a better look at the uh
increase their careers and all right Deus I mean you know the uh hygienists
real above it and uh up at the top of the picture I noticed a very dark pyroclastic area of the mountainous
region and we'll take a look at that here in a minute where we can see it better in in all of its uh form uh this
region is dark because it was dusted with volcanic ash that blew out all these vents volcanic vents along the uh
the hygienist reel
and uh here we have a wider field showing them all we've got the the tree
snack around the uh on the left hydrogenist in the middle Aria Deus
squidding off toward Mario tranquilitatus uh got uh Julius Caesar
crater off at the right hand side uh gripper crater down at the middle bottom
and moving along hello there we go now a little bit higher view
we see them all but now we see that pyroclastic region just above the
gulling shape of uh the uhness real I
mentioned that it's dark because it's been dusted with volcanic ash
the shape of this area vaguely resembles a heart so I have personally named this
area the heart of the Moon and uh like names of deep Sky objects
um they become semi-official in the Lexicon if a lot of
people accept it and start repeating it like uh you know the swan nebulous the swan because everybody agrees well I'd
like to throw a few names around on the moon as well so hopefully the heart of the moon will stick
and moving on to our final area just west of the Alps mountains which
are the rough region on the left-hand side that are bisected by the Alpine Valley and then just below them we see
the uh the kind of snake-eyed crater uh Cassini got the two secondary craters inside
its lava flooded interior but we're really looking at is uh Aristotle's and
your DOCSIS craters Aristotle is the upper right hand crater uh slightly smaller eudoxis at the bottom uh in my
uh semi-dyslexic use I used to call that Exodus crater and didn't really realize
it that it was incorrect until maybe about 10 years ago I've called it called
it by the wrong name my entire life it's actually eudoxis not Exodus
and uh eudoxus lays in a rough mountainous
region north of Murray Serenity but uh Aristotle is actually lays within the
band of uh Mari figures the long linear lunar sea that kind of flows across the
man in the moon's forehead and kind of forms his eyebrows and uh just off to the east of
Aristotle's kind of midway between aristotles and the the Alpine Valley we see that very distinct uh circular ghost
Creator Edge the EDG he
and he well edgedy my spelling is failing me it's a late at night I'm
sorry anyway named after a um I believe a a Norwegian naturalist
and finally I last look here at uh
Aristotle is in eudoxus um you can see the interior of Aristotle
has been flattened out a little bit it's not uh not as rough as eudoxus impact
melt will uh sometimes flood the interior of a of a crater and pave over
its floor in this case we see very little evidence of a central Peak the crater could also be if it's old enough
it could be filled in with debris thrown in from uh other impacts or Basin impacts but in the case of Aristotle's
it's not old enough for that to happen so uh this is a
probably impact melt it's flooded the interior of it now you DOCSIS on the
bottom you can see remnants of the central peak in the
middle you can see the collapsed terraced walls that uh crumble and flow
downward into the interior of the crater those are also very visible up and up on
uh Aristotle's the Eastern portion has a stair step
Terrace the walls where where they they go down in a series of uh of benches but
look at the Northwestern side that particular side collapsed in one giant Landslide there's no Terraces on that
side it just flat collapsed and down a limp no gracefulness about it at all so
uh two different types of collapse on this
on the walls of this crater the lunar soil the surface is not strong enough to
support massive 5-10 kilometer High walls so uh once the
craters formed gravity takes over and they crumble and collapse inward creating these Terraces on large craters
smaller craters like for instance like they won immediately off to the left of the
Aristotle's a very simple bold shape Creator if they're smaller there is
enough strength to maintain the physical shape of the crater but if they're larger complex craters larger than about
15. into these uh my thing really quick
well I'm about 30 seconds from Finish if the bran has something to say
anyway so uh these are my lunar areas for this week uh the uh sentimental
lunar favorites that people like and over the next couple of weeks we'll progressively trudge across the moon and
look at other areas so I hope you got a little bit out of this and uh if you uh do uh consider getting my uh new book
about the moon it's got lots more where this came from and I hope you enjoy it so I'll see you all next week now there
is a question here um Natalie Davis Olson said I'm late is this the Moon
yes Natalie sure absolutely yeah Robert Reese is uh one of the
big experts and uh one of the finest lunar photographers uh around so
anyhow there is a question here uh from John Ray and this is he's watching on
Facebook uh he wants to know how you feel about what appears to be a future
population on the moon for commercial purposes they could visit your targets
for example Annie thank you for your presentation what are your thoughts on that
well it's inevitable I mean the the um
development of the new world back in the 16 1700s was driven in part by uh the
trade by trading uh by commercialism and
um well the Americas wouldn't be here if it wasn't for that driving factor and uh
you're not going to be able to stop it um there's going to be commercialism on the moon we're going to find ways of
developing its resources to help us on Earth because you know uh let's face it
there's more of us every day and our resources are getting less and less and we've got to get smart about uh how to
keep this place going and if the moon can provide those resources uh it's going to happen it's a matter of making
it economical enough getting to the Moon right now is viciously expensive
but a hundred years from now transportation of the Moon could very
well be a uh uh affordable uh feasible cheap uh we just don't know uh 100 years
ago we would think that the flying across the Pacific Ocean uh uh or was you know the possibility well now we do
it routinely uh for fun even this will happen on the moon as well uh whether or
not that's a good thing depends upon how good a steward we are of our our world
and the moon itself so uh I hope we take better care of the Moon that we've taken
care of our own world right yes that's right we don't want a bunch of uh more trash out there you
know right uh last question about the moon uh Natalie Davis Olson watching on
Facebook uh Natalie wants to know what your thoughts are on the upcoming South Pole exploration
well I'm excited about this uh for various reasons one of which a very good
friend of mine is an astronaut that's uh very much involved in that and it would
I've assisted him uh on three of his space flights so far and uh if he goes
to the moon uh have a sneaky feeling I'll have a front row seat of the whole action so yes I am very excited about
this kind of stuff happening and I pray that my my friend is going to be part of
that but in the meantime
going to the South Pole is well the North Pole would work as well but we're
going to the South Pole of this place uh is is a necessity because we've got to
develop the Water Resources if the moon is going to sustain human colonies if
it's going to be a base to further explore the solar system to uh
to leave and go to other worlds uh we've got to find a way to
efficiently harvest the water ice on the moon and turn it not only into water for
human use on the moon but to create Rocket Fuel hydrogen oxygen to
carry out our Explorations further out into the solar system using the moon as a as a base for that and uh this all
sounds very science fictiony but uh it's a very practical plan once the
transportation of getting to the Moon is uh the expense of it is no longer an
issue hopefully um Elon will get his Starship
percolating here in the next few years and it will become a an economical means of getting to the Moon just like his his
Falcon is an incredibly efficient and uh inexpensive way to put satellites in the
low earth orbit I'm praying that uh uh the the super heavy uh Starship will
follow the same kind of technological lead and allow us a cheap routine easy
access to the Moon of course it's got to be perfected first it's had one flight that didn't quite go well but then again
look at elon's initial flights with the Falcons it's a learning process and they
mastered it they made it work extremely well I have confidence that given time
it will become the taxi that will be taking us to the moon on a routine basis I have the feeling it will be so elan's
been able to work out a lot of these things and really learn from you know the the crashes and explosions and stuff
because uh you know that's kind of what it takes to get to get it right so
all right well thank you Robert uh we are um uh we are going to transition to
Primavera highsini for a moment uh Prim Vera uh is uh from Kosovo she is
currently living in the United States she's getting her I think she's studying for her PhD and she is fascinated by
asteroids I think she just got back from a conference do you want to tell us about it primavera
he's got uh nice seeing you and I seeing everybody I've enjoyed hearing your
talks I was having dinner and kind of overhearing all of your talks uh yeah
today was a significant moment for me it was the first time ever that I shared my
actual research in a conference this was the Bay Area planetary conference that
was hosted by my department in Santa Cruz and all the universities here UC
Berkeley Stanford UC Santa Cruz UCLA uh all the Californian universities kind of
came together and there were participants from all these different schools and also from study Institute
and NASA Ames who happened to be in this area and it was really amazing because
uh there were talks on all kinds of uh planetary science starting from Jupiter
and then Saturn rings and ryugu samples asteroids
um James Webb Telescope and it was really nice it was a full day of talks
and each talk lasted about 15 minutes I personally didn't have a talk but I had
a poster a conference poster where I presented my current research research work that it's focused on
understanding hydrated asteroids and what's controlling the spectral
um classifications and spectral absorption vendups exactly uh these are
measurements and uh meteorites we have been working with my advisors Dr Miriam
Tellis Andy rivkin and Dr Carl Hibbetts from Maryland so we have been testing
out um meteorite samples mixing them with different ammoniated salts and organic
compounds and trying to make their Spectra look like these hydrated asteroids and we're trying to figure out
what's controlling exactly especially the the area the region around three
Micron 3.2 Micron Bend up and it's been amazing because I've been working in
this project for like several months and not being able to talk about it publicly
like now they've been able to share about it probably on social media or anything it was kind of very immense to
keep all of it away but today was the day where actually could present it at
the conference and the poster talk about it and I will be posting the actual
poster on social media now and it was really really nice I have never done
research before I did my masters and I did my bachelor's but it didn't really
involve any actual lab research and this has been amazing so this was my first
um PhD project this has been going on for several uh months this is just my
second year of PhD and I still have more projects that I'll be working on mostly
focused on minor planets understanding asteroids and comets uh I believe those
are objects in the space that they don't probably get enough attention because we
all look at like gigantic planets and their moons but we don't look at the very dark mysterious mysterious stuff
that it's just wandering around in our solar system and I'm very curious to
understand uh what's going on with these uh planets with these minor planets and
what's happening in their surfaces and trying to understand their formation histories and I'm just going to say that
it was such an exciting day for me and I'm glad to be here and hopefully I will
be back here again next week with you Scott thank you thanks for the special
update that's wonderful okay uh you know any of you that are really interested in
asteroids uh you can follow up with uh pram Vera on Facebook she's uh I'm sure
she would love to hear uh your thoughts on on certainly water these tiny water
worlds you know it's because they're hydrated you know maybe that's a place where we could Harvest our water as
we're trying to go through the solar system thanks very much absolutely take care
okay up next um is uh uh Steve seeden top Steve is uh
an astrophotographer but he's a lot more than that he is very involved in
astronomy Outreach um and uh he is uh having met him in
person I can tell you he's extremely enthusiastic guy with a ton of energy uh
and his somebody that's uh uh you know can sustain uh you know the important
work that you have to do in Outreach you can't just kind of jump in and jump out of it you could but uh if you really
want to make an impact like Steve has you need to stay in and so uh Steve
thanks for coming on to Global star party I know that you have a big star party of your own that you're putting on
thank you Scott I will share my screen I've got a PowerPoint presentation uh
I'll try not to make it too uh too painful I don't know about you but I do power points for a living so uh let me
know if you can see my screen I think there is something called Death by PowerPoint so indeed and death by a thousand power
points okay so um my name is Steve sedentop and I am
currently serving as the director for Charlie Elliott astronomy and we are a chapter of the Atlanta astronomy club uh
we meet once a month on the east side of Atlanta at a place called Charlie
Elliott Wildlife Management Area and we have some land out there and in
Observatory with a few concrete pads uh we have a conference center where we
meet and we usually uh have a presentation By A Working astronomer or a PhD candidate we are blessed to uh to
have both Georgia Tech and Georgia State uh within driving distance of Charlie
Elliott astronomy and um we do we do a lot of work with the astrophysics
department at Georgia State Dr miss defense is always very helpful and very kind in sending us speakers we're kind
of the uh The Proving Ground for uh for a PhD candidates who want some practice
defending their thesis and talking about their information so one of the things that we put on every year is the peach
state stargaze and um my my wife affectionately refers to it
as astrodork week and so it's a uh it's the week-long event and it takes place
at Deer Lake astronomy Village which is a uh is a dark sky Community uh east of
Atlanta the Atlanta astronomy club and Deer Lake astronomy Village hosts the peach state stargaze and the star party
has taken place every year since 1994. uh even during covet in 2020 when it was
officially canceled uh about 50 people still showed up and fortunately the
field was big enough that we were able to stay far enough away from each other but we still the the star party sort of
self-organized with kind of the core group from people in the club and people in close in the area the Atlanta
astronomy club was founded in 1947 and the uh Stark party is held on Greer's
field at Deer Lake astronomy Village so what's Greer's field so uh you might
have heard of Greer's Almanac Greer's field is the main star is the main field where where we set up camp it's named
after an astronomer named Greer born in 1780 died in 1848 and he published
notable Eclipse calculations and uh ephemerides he is
the the founder the founder of guru's Almanac and actually his astronomical calculations are what led to the
publishing of the almanac and uh it is still published annually today and with
about two million copies a year sold and the chimney of his home can actually
still be seen at the entrance to Greer's field so as you're driving through the stand of trees if you look to the left
before you see the sign that says five miles per hour no dust uh you look to the left you'll see the chimney that's
uh that's a a few hundred close to close to 200 what 250 years old if my math is
right uh it's been a long day but it's uh it's kind of cool to know
that that's there so uh if you're wondering where it is the there are two stars on this map here
so we have Atlanta and we have Augusta and um contrary to popular belief
there's a lot more than in Georgia than Atlanta and Augusta uh you know the Masters and uh and the Falcons
um but about halfway uh halfway between off of I-20 is deer like astronomy
Village and it's placed uh conveniently close enough to things like Walmart and
restaurants so you know if you've been to the Nebraska star party if you forget something it is an all-day event because
it is out in the middle of nowhere and you are gonna drive uh my my son Connor
and I went to the Nebraska star party this year and um I think the second night there we had
some really awful thunderstorms roll through and they they have this huge uh
tent set up circus tent type thing set up where everybody covered Gates and
eats well the storm blew it away and it also blew away our canopy so we ended up driving the 150 some odd miles to uh
North Platte to go by the last remaining canopy because everybody else that had
canopies was also their buying canopies so we cleaned out Walmart
um we have a we have a new uh a new mall and I use air quotes around that fairly
close to deer like astronomy Village it's a Family Dollar and a Dollar General store across the street from
each other so the locals refer to it as the mall um you know if you forget something it's
uh probably a 20 minute drive you know you forget a pillow forget a blanket forget stuff like that or if you want to
go grocery shopping they have the Bare Essentials and uh if you notice there's another
star uh down south and west of uh over
the pan I dropped so that is uh Charlie Elliott Wildlife Management Area and
that's where the Charlie Elliott chapter meets every month and uh if you are in
the general vicinity of the Atlanta or the Augusta area are our meetings our
our meetings are open to the public they're free you don't have to have a telescope you know we love it when you
ask to use ours so feel free to join us sometime so why would you why would you bother to
attend this dark party um so this picture was taken a few years ago uh and I I think I was probably the
first person in the club to buy and explore scientific telescope and I liked it and I liked the way the company
treated me so I told everybody that would listen to me about it and so we kind of became the explore scientific
astronomy club but uh this is uh one of the peach state star gazes and this is
imager row so um there is there is something about
gathering with people of like minds and interests and a a Synergy almost emerges
that that becomes it turns into something that becomes greater than the sum of the parts uh you can learn more
in one night at an event like this than you will in a year of immersing yourself
in cloudy nights and any other astronomy forms you might be able to find and I
say that from experience because I languished for a year by myself and then I went to uh a Charlie Elliott astronomy
meeting and uh and there were some very kind people out there that uh that
filled in a lot of gaps for me but if you've never been to a star party there's a lot of them going on uh take a
trip you will not regret it and and you also get to look at big telescopes uh this is a folded refractor
I this was taken uh at one of the peach state stargazes several years ago when Damien Peach attended and uh this was
pretty impressive to look through and the guy built it himself and that mount is actually the machine gun mount from a
submarine that was being scrapped from a Navy submarine that was being scrapped so that that is quite a piece of
equipment Steve are you able to presentation mode so we can see that a little bit bigger
oh can you can you not see it I'm sorry am I sharing the wrong screen let's try this again
it's bigger
PowerPoint makes it tricky sometimes PowerPoint does so here's what I will do
no one was complaining but I want to see that mount yeah yeah definitely no problem
so uh let me PowerPoint wants to let me switch
screens and then re-share
we'll try this again
it's still okay still didn't like it one more time
all right can you see it yes okay very good apologies for that so uh
yeah this is a folded refractor uh sliding counterweights um not that I think that you know a
nagler 31 is going to change the balance too much on it but uh it it was a really
cool telescope um Jupiter was up if I recall actually I think it was Saturn I forgot to look at
through that telescope but uh as you can see there are RVs in the background so
we've got RV hookups we've got real bathrooms we've got Wi-Fi hot showers uh
all of the accoutrements of uh civilization so uh at Star parties
there's always the imagers and The Observers and I've kind of myself I kind
of cycle between Imaging and observing uh I find deserving to be very
therapeutic especially with my Imaging equipment is not working the way I want it to because you know that just kind of happens
so uh we have something called that's affectionately referred to as imager row
and it's a row of concrete pads and electrical outlets where the imagers can
kind of keep to themselves and then we have Dobb Hill which is on the other side of the road uh the other side of
the drive that separates the two parts of the field where uh the visual observers can set up and uh and have
some uh have some separation between the equipment and the light and the stuff
that that visual observers try to avoid so uh clouds clouds happen this is the
cloud witch we set this up every year uh Sometimes some years it works some years it doesn't but uh
in Georgia as a general rule October is a fantastic month for weather it's
usually dry it's not super hot and super muggy and humid in the daytime and it's not it's
not too cold at night but on the nights uh that that we do have clouds we have a
pavilion and we set up a set up a projector and we'll see we'll show a
movie of some sort sometimes we'll play Armageddon and make fun of Bruce Willis all of the uh all the inaccuracies in
the movie um but uh it's always a good time and and you know it is it is a star party
it's a party so you can spend time connecting with old friends and making new ones and that that's that's always
that's always uh very enjoyable and I I find that connection
um something that I need on a pretty regular basis so uh this is a shot on the field from a
friend of mine this was uh his uh very high tech uh ventilation system for his tent uh and we we do have uh the the
basics of civilization so uh you know we have concessions out there we have hot
showers we have Wi-Fi internet RV hookups electricity uh pavilion picnic
tables a grill uh if you are not the camping type however uh if camping is
not you it's not your jam uh there are some there are some good hotels within
about a 30 minute drive of the uh of the field so you can and and people do set
up their stuff uh Park in the uh we call the offside parking it's an area where
you can park and come in after dark and leave you know before rise and not uh
and not upset everybody with your headlights so even if camping is not your thing you
could still uh join us at the star party and enjoy yourself so uh that is what I have I have a few
links here uh the peach state star days and uh Scott I'll be happy to send these to you if you uh questions and I'll uh
I'll put them up on the live chat will do all right we'll do okay very
good anybody have any questions concerns emotional outbursts okay uh let's see
um yeah we're just talking about the mount um but I think it's great that uh I think
this is the maybe only the second time that uh Pete state has uh been uh really
discussed on um on global star parties so I really appreciate that
well thank you thank you thank you for letting me come uh come and talk about it I really appreciate it uh Atlanta
Hobby is a supporter of the peach state stargaze and a supporter of uh the uh uh
the Atlanta astronomy club and if you're in the Atlanta area they are a stocking Explorer scientific dealer uh they they
sell we actually have telescopes in Atlanta again if you remember years ago we had a store called camera bug and
camera camera bug closed but yeah yeah camera bug uh worked pretty closely with
them for a while but uh yeah if you are if you're in the general area uh check
out Atlanta Hobby talk to Cliff he's a good guy and he'll give he'll take care of you wonderful thanks so much
all right um so uh we are uh nearing the end sadly
we're nearing the end of the global Star Party 131st Global star party but we have uh you know our uh very special
presenter John Schwartz uh he's a uh
he's an artist uh an astronomer extraordinaire but I think tonight he
wants to talk about what could be the ultimate way to Star Party
hello everybody hello
I'm in the cause an incredible Starburst behind you man I will tell you I've uh
these meteor showers have been getting to me lately uh it was so beautiful at
the Tsar party this week um the Marine layer came all the way into Southern
California and basically our Summit was just above
the cloud cover which means we have uh the most incredible
you know viewing conditions possible we've had um insane
deep sky uh really nice transparency and there
was a lot of people there and we were breaking out all the stops to show them the universe
so we were doing first and foremost we must never forget that we are visual
astronomers the only way to get photons is through
the eyepiece and they do affect you trust me I've been seeing stars for days ever
since I stayed up for three days straight but uh we had you know one of those
great nights um and everybody was there we had uh four Giant dobsonians
uh the fabulous four who had merko the king of course with the 32-inch
slipstream telescope then um second is mine it's a 28 inch
and then I sold my one of my Scopes to Bjorn and uh he bought the 24 inch
and then Jerry was there with the 22 so when you can only imagine when the
public comes up they're like what is going on this weekend I go I say I
always tell them I'm looking for aliens foreign you know especially after Mexico they
they released those pictures yeah of those aliens and um
on the mine belt with one of those things because if you remember Independence Day that can give you an
excruciating headache those uh you know whining hiss uh
you remember but that's scary I'd be careful with those aliens is that the reason why my ears are ringing that is
it that's it's not tinnitus it's aliens they want us to be green
a green Universe you know no Atomic waste that's what they're
they're telling me oh man that's why they've tried to tell Tesla to create this energy they were
communicating some say but yes I think he was just a gifted person but
it sure would be neat to know so it was a real incredible you know weekend I would have liked to have slept
a little more but I brought my little buddy boss and um you know what he does at night he's sleeping and I was viewing
and showing people so it was really a great night to share the sky with new
people that came up that have never seen anything through a telescope and I I
might have blown their mind with all the different tools I used so we're using visual astronomy with uh
many various giant telescopes and eyepieces comparisons we were doing
comparisons nice then we shifted to um cell phone
astronomy uh-oh so the question is you know cell phones are extremely good
what don't we do on a cell phone I mean I'm telling you I do so many things on my cell phone
it's kind of scary but um we were taking Galaxy
photos with a cell phone if you can believe this it really did happen Galaxy shots
I have seen some some galaxy images Mike wiesner's
presented some stuff like that to us there are a couple of apps out there which are very good for the doing this
kind of thing do you guys use apps or yes yes we do okay sure and I'll tell you um if you have a Samsung phone it
has the ability to paint so you can actually paint in some detail if you're not happy
with it and rework your images on the fly like I did at Mount Wilson for my
friend and at the end of the evening you know when you're at Mount Wilson that's a
giant telescope and and there's a huge line so you're all waiting to get and you know there's a lot of older people
and they get tired it's really late I go to bed at seven o'clock sometimes I'm so
tired but um you know standing up and waiting to go view it it becomes kind of
a tedious you know and tiring so what I wanted to do was show them how
amazing I would take pictures of the cell phone then I would work with my free program to process
so Photoshop Express number one great program it has all the levels it has
contrast filters I mean it does it does text it does borders it does a whole
bunch of great stuff I only use some of them because you know it's it's limited for astronomy
application you can do stuff with regular photos you can create other stuff and it's amazing
it's free free app it's called Photoshop Express even if you want to retouch your
photos at home you know I've I've remastered some old photos that were Polaroid
you know remember the Polaroid you take a picture and it comes out you have to wait for it to dry or cool
whatever it does and then the picture appears and so you have an affordable you know you don't have to send it out
to develop it and that was like the the first you know cameras but
so anyway uh we we really killed it we had a great time so let me get started
and show you guys I don't want to bore you too much with my talks
so let me get here I'm going to arrange these in proper
order so now I do them I have a GSP
files that I create albums and each GSP I have a record of
and I get to um go back and look at some of the stuff I've resented
and it's a lot of fun I mean I have really enjoyed this I couldn't wait to share this stuff with you guys
because you can't imagine if you go to a star party when you see that big
telescope the first thing you're going to do is go to that telescope and there was four of
us so it was uh the best one of the best nights uh for public work and we showed
people things that they've never even heard of before Oh yeah and um see
through a smaller scope right well with the scene was extremely good so everybody was getting absolutely amazing
views I mean there wasn't a bad View the only bad view was the light
pollution these uh some of these people come up with their white lights and you have to teach them
the etiquette but anyway I never got to show you my plaque so this is me at Wilson
and this is uh the reflector magazine and it shows that I'd won the contest
and gives a little description of my thing so it was nice to see that in a magazine
very rewarding for me great there's the plaque the one I couldn't
get focused look at what a beautiful plaque oh yeah yeah and it's astronomical League I have to say they
always do a great job with the their presentations and their plaques and uh yeah earlier in the program about all
the award programs that they have and this is just one of them I mean there are some awards there's
some very very dedicated people that have Master observing Awards Master
Outreach Rewards and um you know just incredible venues
and different things you can their goals you know it takes a lot of work to to achieve that level of you know to get a
plaque for some of these like the horcrimer award I mean I'm not nearly ready for one of those I would like to
try for some Outreach Awards because that is my my mission is to share My
Views with the public and that's what I'm there for you know a lot of people they don't like
to share and I tell them hey come over here let me show you guys what I got it's very rewarding and you know the
astronomical league has actually brought my uh viewing sessions to a newer level
um there's so many different uh people in there and so much knowledge and
information uh that'll make you almost a professional astronomer but
we're still amateurs you know uh someday maybe we can graduate I might
join the face uh space force again you know I would did the Marine Corps maybe I'm not too old maybe not I want you
know it's a great uh great thing that's my little buddy again he was up
there with me such a great guy he just lets me do my thing doesn't bother me at
all I love him dearly so here it is uh these are some of the
views so what you see here is that Mount Pinos this is our viewing location
and we're all set up it's a very strenuous I can tell you this you think of astronomy as a bunch of
scientific people and guys that are very technical and and they have you know
surgical type instruments the refractors and you know a lot of astrophotographers
there's just amazing uh variety of people up there and we all get along
because you know they're saying well look at my astral image and I'm like hey man check out the view through my scope
or or look at my drawing or check out this cell phone snapshot of NGC 253
mind-blowing and I couldn't have done it without that program Photoshop Express yeah free program you forgot to mention
something here John what did I do that you forgot to mention is how friendly
amateur astronomers are you know that's the thing they are the nicest people
they just uh love the you know companionship with with the public and
showing them and the interest and and you know it wouldn't be fun at all if people didn't come up and oh yeah you
know you're right the caveat is always sharing your image and enriching
someone's life uh having somebody see both stars in A Ring Nebula that was
like one of uh maybe three times in my life I've seen it and I showed this mom
and two boys and um I was doing you know photo clinics how to take
pictures of the sky with your cell phone and all these people are taking pictures and this one kid runs up to me goes sir
I took the best picture of my life look it and I was like blown away I was just
it made me feel so good yeah and um you know that these people are that
interested in um they were getting results so great time uh here you oh you know I wanted to
say it is not for the week these telescopes are three to four hundred pounds
the amount of work setting up and tearing down and then you know we always have technical difficulties where you
you get these things that happen I'm not sure if it's because all the um zwo the
air modules and there's so many different signals going on up there that were Wireless that our signals get
crossed and our scope will just start slewing on its own that does happen but I could tell you I've seen a lot of
these guys with these big dogs after that weekend they were crippled putting that stuff in and you know thank God I
work out and you know I'm just driven to do this hobby so it is a it's very tough
on you you know staying up late I mean you wouldn't think but you got to be astronomers do yeah it's
uh it's quite an amazing um you know not only are you using your your mind and
all your facilities your vision and but you have to have a physical prowess you
know that ladder you see is uh like an eight foot ladder now you I put wheels on it because I by
the end of the night lifting it I couldn't even lift it anymore I'd feel like I was going to collapse so I put
the wheels and I just rolled it around so visual astronomy with the big dog it
can get to you after a while so I was like not enough we stayed up all night
until daylight and then I'm gonna show you in a minute I don't want to ruin it
too quick here's my 28. look at that beautiful Dom and um it's all go-to it's just very
elegant and to look through that eyepiece and see that uh we were
comparing your um 98 millimeters and and the ethos and boy those are the two
eyepieces we really use most is um explore scientific and ethos
an occasional Nikon nav or a pen tax but um you know the wide field is very
captivating it it creates like a spacewalk effect and when you see the stars that sharp to the edge
you know you can't really see the whole field with your pupil you can see the
center but when you scan around and use your averted Vision it just comes alive
there's depth to it it was amazing we even were using bino viewers we're using
uh doing filter comparisons on planetary nebula in uh the Ryan nebula which was
the most amazing views we had this weekend that's the daytime
again here's Mount Pine also you can see we took up about a third of the parking lot now why not people why do you uh I
know why I would do it but why why do you think most of the people put the carpet down or something oh
if you're an astronomer and you know in the dark you drop a lot of things or
stuff just falls off like you forget to tighten your bolt uh on your eyepiece
whoa what was that oh that's gonna leave a mark a 700 Mark and then my tail rad
fell off because I didn't have it screwed in and it shattered luckily I carry about five or six of them with me
uh you know that's the other thing you always want to have some you know extra critical items
uh because if you don't you're gonna be sorry you'll be kiboshed for your viewing session but again I want to tell
you there were so many great people there that they just come in Bjorn
couldn't get a scope working Don penzak came in Mike Garrett you know my friend Mike and Merkel everybody helped
everyone and he was able to get it up and running and um I had some issues but you know
the funniest thing is I told Merkel one time we get up there and I go murko
don't you have a carpet so I don't need a carpet I go well what if something Falls I mean or you have an action I
don't have accidents okay well a few minutes later yeah
oh no I go what did you do he understood
look it I look at it the 30 millimeter explore scientific
the feather touch focuser and the paracore the whole train fell off oh my
God because the three set screws on the feather touch They Come Undone because when you're
driving these Scopes in a trailer there's some serious vibrations vibration so you lose screws he said
that's one of the things you need to check when you always checks
yeah take them with you because later you'll know what they were and merko
showed me on his upper cage you see on the cage here how they have those the spider mouths right
and in between ours because they're real heavy they have a square tube for extra support three of the four were missing
the screws they were gone and I go Marco those so I
told them if you ever need parts a great place is McMaster Car they are like they
got everything you could ever need and a lot of it works well with telescopes they are the astronomer's friend yes
they are great so this is beyond scope the 24 which I I sold to him
and then that's my 28 right there merkos oh sorry merko's 32-inch look at
that thing it's an F3 and it is stunning uh how
sharp the mirror is it's really a fine piece of work Michael Lockwood here's a
fella that's an astrophotographer so the funniest thing was we're trying to get close to each other and you know the
astrophotographers they're in their motorhome chilling they're just doing their running their you know script they
set up uh you know okay let's take uh for an hour uh you know 30 second
exposures at you know whatever they pre-program the script and then it just automatically does it for you
so and he was getting some great images That's The Takahashi that's awesome yeah
and then having a trailer like that just makes it and it's like you have your you
know your warm room oh yeah you know you need it you do need it it doubles as a
transport for instrumentation so you know I like to carry several
scopes with me at all times just because I have scopitis you know so
we start small and when somebody hurts me with a better bigger scope I have to roll out on them you know
so maybe one day I'll be able to kibosh everyone with the 40 inch but uh I got a
quote for one we won't be getting that one just severe it's like
it's more than like a mobile home believe it or not
uh that that told me this is just sums that we're all waiting here so you can
see everyone that's America he had his uh girlfriend's dog sweet puppy uh boss
I didn't let him get too close because she's a big girl I didn't want her to hurt him
and that's Jerry in the background not Jerry is um an amazing astronomer uh he
has incredible he's like me he has probably 20 scopes and um this is a Star Master with a
Lockwood so Merkel and him had Lockwood mirrors and Bjorn and I had Kennedy
mirrors so we were team Kennedy but and uh that's me of course I look a
little weathered I'd been up a while I'm still looking okay you know the guns
but I'm still standing so yeah I mean you could see my feet I was like my legs
were killing me that's why this night I chose to use the Mallon
camp so okay mercos tell me don't do it it's too
much I had to take off my uh Focus or knob and and mount all these gears and
then put on a motorized uh Wireless unit feather touch I think I have
12 or 15 feather Touch focusers four of them are Wireless um you know I I like the way they
sparkle on the scope in the night plus they work very well hey there's my baby right there
uh just a great scope this was the first one that uh Tom ever made here let me show you my feather touch see the big
knob oh yeah and I have the cover so the gnats don't get in there but um you know
converting that and then doing all the wiring I had all this stuff packed in about 10 giant cases I had to go through
every case but I did it I got it done and I succeeded and I sat in a chair and
my go-to's were dead on because I was using the camera to do my star alignment
which is a lot easier looking at a TV screen dead and going up that ladder going down
going up going down I mean if you don't have your towel Red by
Nightfall The key is you want to have your scope set up and collimated first and foremost then you've got to get your
tail rat aligned and your your guide scope I use a five inch guide scope on
the back so I have to get them all aligned so if you have a distant tree or
something that you can do that I would recommend highly doing it because if you're trying to get your show up and
running and people are waiting you know there's a lot of pressure there for me I
I can't stand when I can't get things in working when you're trying to do it too
hard that's when you get stricken with it's just you can't find it you can't get it in an eyepiece it's just the
craziest thing but if you take a lot of astronomy Outreach people can can uh relate to
that um I think it's always best to have you
know another scope that can set up quickly you know and doesn't require any
special doesn't have any Electronics nothing you know and and uh people can
start looking right away you know because they'll the I mean the super
eager people uh that will come out from the you know from the public that have
just been dying to look through a telescope they'll they'll just want to get their eye right on the eyepiece immediately you know so oh yeah they're
so enthused yeah and if you're not this Outreach with a telescope that requires
some setup uh yeah and you don't always have this luxury but it's best to arrive real
early you know and get get everything all dialed in and then you know and then
you can patiently wait while people while a crowd comes up so
for sure I agree that this was um you know I sat down that night and um I wanted to see
what m74 because in the eyepiece it's very faint even we're border three
even you know with a 28 inch or a 32 it it just doesn't show you like this and
for me honestly it's good to do all of them really because they're tools of the
trade each one will show you something different you know the astrophotography is a passionate uh it's similar to my
art in the processing aspect and when you can create some of these pictures
and with zwo it's easy it's easy to do uh there's people that have only been
doing a couple years and they showed me their image I was blown away so I I wanted to sit down and see because I
drew this object and I went to three of the objects that I that I drew and I and
the Mallon cam revealed you know that detail incredibly well for
instance the one Galaxy NGC 7753 in Pegasus which is 270 million light years
away we're all looking at it in the big dogs and it really it's nothing like what the
Mallon cam is going to show you um and you know if you do use any kind
of a Mallon cam or any kind of Imaging you really got to control your light pollution
and I had a couple fouls and some serious people they're like John you know better
I was just wrecked I couldn't stand up anymore I mean my legs cramped up because Bjorn and I we don't go to bed
he's he's like one of the only few in Andrew Clark the artist he'll he'll stay
up all night we're all-nighters but a lot of guys they go to bed early yeah I
only get to do this clock yeah I I gotta I gotta go the best observing starts is after midnight so well we were observing
um nebulas and um planetary nebulous and Jupiter
and Venus I was viewing NGC 7662 at 7 15 in the
morning how did I do that with a 28 inch and the
uh lumicon 03 gen 3 filter oh wow
I was looking at Orion at seven o'clock and I could still see the stars and the
trapezium you know about 6 30 6 45 you start to lose the nebula how did this
guy look to the naked eye to you during those times was it already started it was um the sun was up
son the son was just when I looked at Emma uh NGC 7662 you know this is the
greatest thing that you know it's when we went up there this time we did stuff it's The Proving Ground I mean yeah
we're like we set the bar and and we loved it we had the greatest experience everyone else went to bed when we told
them yeah you guys are lying I got the best view of Venus uh I got the best
view of the Trap stars that when the light comes in it's light like when you
look at the planets that dusk or Dawn that's the best time because when you have the yeah
the contrast I mean the sky's really still at that time you know so and you
know with with the night sky in in a bright star because there's so much difference between the two
that they just don't pop it's good unless you have perfect scene but I'll tell you something the Trap stars were
so separated I've never seen them that separated before I had these in order I don't know what I did but let's keep
going here's the view looking up my ladder it's a daunting task do you want to go up 118 inches in the middle of the
night looks like the ladder to the cosmos it's really cool yeah this is the Milky Way shot at Pinos you can see my
eyepiece right there yep and that ladder I patted each step it's a tall man
ladder they're eight inch rungs and it's designed specifically for astronomy
and it's a a fruit picking ladder it's a tripod not a by a four-legged ladder and
that's another thing be very careful if you have a long focal length telescope
with a four-legged ladder because I've seen a lot of bad accidents you lean over just a little too far and next
thing you know wow what happened and then you hit the ground then you know what happened it's very painful
look at this one look at that Milky Way man I mean it was such a great night it was
so dark because all the clouds covered all the coastal valleys Bakersfield
Fresno San Fernando Valley Palmdale Malibu La I mean
you know that's what really bothers me about this whole thing is we're losing
our skies we're losing a bat because the light pollution and we really got to do something about
it because in 10 15 years I don't even know if I'll be able to see stars
you know it's it's really but this night those clouds covered all that stuff it was like
the universe was giving us a gift to share and there were so many people that we were sharing with and they saw
everything we were doing it was absolutely amazing uh this is um m33 through a cell phone
folks through a cell phone look it it was unproven ground to see if we could
do a Galaxy the very hardest thing this is um like a 15 second exposure
uh with the speed in the iso set very high
uh so you can get you know the reach but I mean for a cell phone are you
kidding me you know you don't even see this with the 60 inch or like a hundred inch like
I mean well you probably would in a dark sky there's my drawing
of m33 which one through many different Renditions to get there
what was ironic is I had completed this and then then I wanted to see on the
cell phone and this shot is actually my friend shot Wayne and I go would you try m33
and he did and look at it's better than my drawing well maybe not but [Laughter]
this is the one that was incredible too uh 3338 you know
you look through the Mallon cam yeah you can see the bar in it that's cool yeah I
mean visually this just looks like a little fuzzy spot in the 28th I mean
so now I'm using my Mallon cam to take my images even further because you know
the whole reason is is when you do your hobby or something don't or you go to an
amusement park where are you gonna go on the the Merry-Go-Round or are you going to go on
the the giant coaster right or free fall I mean
you know it's just you always want to get the best experience you know and
this gives it to you because you're really seeing stuff you know and you
don't want to forget your where you came from photons and visual astronomy is so important that you do that first and
foremost sure or or at least enjoy doing it you know I I do many I'm trying to
get the um night vision set up uh hopefully I can work something out with David nagler and uh and get myself one
of those for outreach purposes then we have uh intensifying eyepiece yes yeah
I've used I've used one on a big telescope and I can I can say it's very
impressive it's grainy you know the Astro photographers so always about what you
can see is is incredible and uh you know it is get it it looks real time when
you're looking through the eyepiece I mean you bump the telescope you can't see jiggle um how about star hopping let's go
galaxy hopping all right yeah that's right so this is cool somehow my order got
mixed up this was the rocket launcher of course we were treated to a rocket launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base oh
yeah uh was in uh the Grand Canyon and got
this beautiful display what it looked like a comet you know wait till you see
my other one this is done with my cell phone so this is it just came up this
vandenberg's not far you know in the flight path is similar uh right over the mountains sort of towards look at the
separation look at that there's the rocket I got the view the the stage look at this it's
over process I'm sorry I just wanted to enhance it yeah I have enough this is
look at the separation it's cool okay I just thought I'd throw
it in there so here is m74 taking a picture of the screen you know it's very
lines it's not you know like like a um high definition 4k monitor this is a
spico uh color monitor for security cameras but it's a very good one because
of the adjust but look at look at what you could see you'll never
see that in the IVs there's my drawing
I think you know I love those little brown things that go on top I mean that
was so impressive to see I showed you this last time I'm going to
move it forward this is it through the cell phone so that was the test I couldn't believe it
I've got three ways I've I looked at it in three different platforms and then of
course if you ask your photo this you know what happens it's it's going to show you the most yeah but come on a
cell phone can you believe it look it I mean there's some detail you you used
your telescope in three different ways this is all in one night correct uh three nights three nights but we we
would go back and forth I only did Mal and cam one night because it is uh hard
on you know the astronomers I try to control my light but when I'm just staring at the screen
I'm mesmerized you know and they're like John John snap out of it cover your light oh sorry I have um also video
visors uh Vizio and I put them on and I have a wireless transmitter
that transmits so I put the uh transmitter on the scope because I have
a power for three items so I can power my camera my focuser and the
the transmitter so it plugs into transmitter transmits your signal up to a thousand feet or 100
feet and um I put my visors on and I'm looking at 51 in my scope in my advisors
wirelessly I've got my receiver in my pocket my jacket pocket with a small
little uh 12 volt seven amp hour battery and the visors are connected and the
receiver connected and I'm looking and I go over to somebody's hey you want
to look through my scope John it's it's across the parking lot I can't do no no look
and I take off my visors and you can't believe it there's 51.
it's another great tool I didn't bring him this time this is NGC 253 through my 28 inch with
the cell phone let's go edge to edge look at that
and I have to say I've done a lot of processing these require processing your
images are are very faint there's structure and Detail in the brightest Parts this is all extracted the data is
always there you just have to know how to extract it and you just play with your all your tools
in that Photoshop Express and then bounce it back and forth if you don't like something you can paint over
it or you can uh remove Reflections and shadows and you could take out anomalies
or bad pixels or with the healing tool and you know I I go back and forth
between Samsung and Photoshop Express maybe five six times for my best images
believe it or not and that will appropriate too but I mean when I'm out in the field I bounce them
back and forth can you is that amazing or not it is amazing look at the straw I
mean any Astro that I would be happy to take a picture that good with a oh of
course you know on my scope unfortunately it's beyond edge to edge the resolution
I only get the core so you're not going to believe the next
one NGC 891 with a cell phone
you know how hard this object is to even see it's fake
not not a big scope it's not but well yeah but I mean look I've gotten I got
starbirth and you could see some H2 regions in there I know it's blurry I
apologize but this you know I'm not stacking these and using real Photoshop these are just Fields I didn't have time
yeah right I just put these together for all of you because I wanted you to see
what you can actually do with a cell phone even on the moon in the planets in your backyard you can take amazing shots
amazing yeah yeah it's it's so rewarding when you can um take a shot and show
people and say hey look you took that yes I mean galaxies this is new to me so I'm
I'm kind of excited this was tough 78-14 you're familiar
with this I apologize about I I processed the heck out of it because
I'm working in Pro mode on my Samsung phone and it has a blue cast the s23 has
a very strong blue uh signal so you get things look blue
the brighter stuff even the galaxies uh some of the brighter ones but in the scope
you can barely see that kind of detail yeah look at that look at that Pencil
Thin yes that's Lane you know you've seen that one 78-14 I mean it's a it's a
nice Target when it opens up and you can see that and we were seeing it not like
this though it you know that's the beauty of the melon cam I mean it gets you real deep
you know the stars are bloated and stuff but the the galaxies and nebulosity even the planetaries were amazing look at
this this is NGC 246 in I think it's sculptor or
I'm not a hundred percent it's a you're real near there it's by 253. so this is
a triple star system it's also has a mission nebula as well as a planetary
cell phone snapshot some would have never known it yeah
I haven't really worked on it that much because I haven't had a lot of time but
that's 23. uh eyepiece projection with the um 10 ethos
fantastic Orion cell phone snapshot Andrew Clark iPhone Andrew Clark the
artist who I'll be bringing uh on the show look at that yeah with a cell phone
are you kidding me and that was done with a 14-inch
telescope that's really impressive a smaller
telescope though any scope a 60 millimeter refractor you can do it yeah
you guys gotta practice this it's so fun if you have a Galaxy I know how to use
the Galaxy and there's YouTube tutorials that will help you with this stuff there's there's a lot of people
and um there's a lot of information out there on how to do this
this was mercos 32 look at the depth look at that that cloud and the way the
trapezium so when we're looking in the daytime that's our Trails those are diffraction Spike diffraction spice
they're so bright it's a 32 inch it's from his um spider
but look at that it's a much deeper look at it wasn't a great shot that's merco's
253 with a DSLR camera
so look at look at the the difference so this is a step up from your cell phone but they're basically the same camera
yeah but this is a like a Canon Rebel or a 60da
and and these are old school Nikon has them the reason is is
the DSLR um and the new style of cameras that we're
using make it so much easier so zwo they're not CCD cameras anymore they're
see uh they're CMOS yeah so technology got so good yeah and they're now coming
out with night vision with CMOS um the option is one in the um Aurora
from sionics their digital night vision and I've seen some people starting to use the option to get some good Galaxy
routine and also it's color night vision that's the beauty of it it's almost
there they're going to need about five more years and you'll be able to plug it in your scope and go live color
this is M22 cell phone snapshot notice the stars are red
this is a very old cluster a lot of those stars are in the later stage of their life
the the camera even the big Scopes does show you the color that's the thing you notice in these big Scopes there's color
in the Stars coloring the dumbbell nebula color in the Tripod
color in the lagoon very faint but you know Reds and Blues
Percy a double cluster look at the colors oh yeah that's cell phone snapshot yeah
look it I mean come on Isn't that cool diamonds pour it out
yeah it's really nice actually one of your uh great clusters to look at the
Double cluster because you have they're almost like gloves you wouldn't believe how M11 turned out
uh this is M11 I believe
is that crazy it's awesome looks like a globular cluster doesn't it yeah
again look at the color M11 is a beautiful uh cluster open
it just it's an amazing one to see in the eyepiece this is the Trap the trap
in the daytime look it I got one two three four five six seven stars at 705 A.M
cell phone snapshot remember Jack Newton did it was you who
he called yeah we show stars in the daytime the stars in the Big Dipper hey what are you doing well I'm looking at
the my mizar yeah just I heard that if you
know where these things are actually you can impressively find it with um you
know scuffs like you know I've found um uh you know splitting Caster in broad
daylight you know with an eight inch telescope isn't that amazing look at the separation on that that's that's
impressive that is the snowball was the most impressive that lumicon filter you wanna you know
when we were we start getting anxiety dude it's getting light yeah what are we gonna do man get out the O3 filter I'll
show you what we're gonna do we killed it I I did the um
in Aquarius uh SEPTA Rosette nebula
it was Daylight because you're not going to see that be orange Omega dude check this out so it's
such a dense filter when you look through it really kills the Starlight and they're like blue they turn into
like blue and they're very dim but the nebulosity is insane perfect for doing daytime viewing you
know if you stay up all night you don't have to try to find the stuff your computer is still on you just press go
to and you're there couldn't see Uranus I was seeing the most amazing detail on Jupiter even the
seeing was garbage because it was boiling by then but you know with with
the color uh the Blue Sky your Jupiter will reveal colors
right after you know the sun goes down a little bit you know you don't want a tube right and same in the morning
is the best time to see color again because you're not so uh far apart
from dark and Light that all the mid-tones open up and you
start to really see some fine detail that you never see that was the Venus shot daytime
I mean that was a pretty good disc I know it's a little fuzzy universe is still out there even though it's daytime
it was almost showing some clouds uh there's my little buddy again
huh and I'm closing with him we want to say good night thank you everybody thank you
hope you enjoyed this and um I really hope you get out and and try
some of this stuff for yourself because it's amazingly fun and it's really easy to do you just have to show
up and play with it and you'll figure it out this picture I created uh my
background yeah I was trying to create the magic quality that this Global star party is
for me thank you it just explodes with amazing people and such great
information and and um people that dedicate so much time for public and and
to get the word out and um I am so grateful to be a part of this yeah thank
you I appreciate it Scott thank you everybody thanks thank you everybody thank you very much man so all right
well I want to thank uh if there's some presenters act uh
um they're all closed down on the zoom uh uh side of this but
um uh you know if you're out there watching right now in on YouTube or one of the social media channels thank you
very much for all your great work we want to extend a special thanks to uh Dr
Linda spilker for uh coming on at the first part of the global Star Party to
talk about the Voyager missions that she is now in in charge of um and uh you know uh
all the all the presenters really brought their game on for this particular Global star party I think
they do every Global Star Party anyways I have yet to say no they didn't really bring their game on this time they
always do and uh and that makes it special um we will be back next week uh with the
132nd Global star party so I'll be making announcements on social media
um you know and until that time you guys keep looking up thanks again and uh good
night thank you Scott thank you have a great
evening take care all right all right and um
we will uh um I wish you all a chance to have some
clear skies and to keep looking up
come on come all to the Southern Cross astronomical societies 2024 winter start
partying 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 on or about October 1 2023 at
scaz.org see you there
such 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 uh 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 parcel 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
and 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 the 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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