Transcript:
well if we got any camel Whisperers out there you might be thinking about this
Eclipse I guess if somebody climbed on top of me and expected me to you know
walk across part of the Sahara I'd be a little cranky too
yeah that's right probably
most likely yeah so I guess it only takes 5,000
years for the entire planet to get in the shadow of a total eclipse that's
fascinating I didn't know that
yeah Andrew corkill hi Scott and teen Andrew is out there in Southern
California m wonder if he's got clear skies I know we're clear
skies in there in Arizona 400 years from
now yeah do you think you and I will be around to see
it well some of us will some part of us will yeah our Adams will be our Adams
will yeah yeah that's right Jim Mosley's tuning in
here
yeah so the visualization that you're seeing here is provided by NASA and it
is all that blue going across our planet is uh shade
from an eclipse so you'll see it run here we go all the eclipse is over
5,000 years
looks like somebody scribbling with kind of a glow-in-the-dark felt tip pin or
something that is a kid on too much caffeine with an etra sketch I was
thinking of the etra sketch myself [Laughter]
exactly that's how I used to color in my coloring book today it's going to be green yeah
mhm TX says so is this live so early maybe well it's live direct um but it's
right now it's six o'clock and it's time for us to go on here we
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go on Eclipse St citizen Kate will deploy 35 teams of community
participants with telescopes cameras mounts all the equipment that you need to observe the eclipse all the way from
Texas to Maine so that we can make observations of the eclipse of totality
in polarized visible light and get about an hourlong movie of totality when you
look at a total solar eclipse you look at that bright Corona you're not actually seeing light that's coming from
the corona itself you're look looking at light that came from the surface of the Sun it went out and then it bounced
around and moved through the corona to our eyes when we're looking with our
cameras in Kate 2024 what we're looking at is exactly how that light was bouncing around in the corona before it
came to us and the way that it was doing that tells us about what's happening in the corona there are a lot of scientific
experiments that have questions so big that you can't do it just with Scientists you need to engage a huge
huge team of people and the best way to do that is to engage with the public for Kate 2024 we need to have 35 teams of
people all along the eclipse path we just can't do that with professionals we need to engage with Community
participants that's the only way we can get the breadth of data that we need for this experiment anybody can join Kate
2024 people without a scientific background people who have never used a telescope in fact those are exactly the
kinds of people we want on the team because we want to train the next generation of scientists we want to
instill that love of Science in people that may otherwise not have an experience like
[Music] this
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more [Music]
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well hello everyone this is Scott Roberts with explore scientific and I'm about to bring on my
co-host David Levy here we go and uh our
uh our episode uh this time is inspired by uh David Levy's thing uh theme of uh
uh changing perceptions and that is something that I I think is near and
dear to all of us that do astronomy Outreach uh because it's something that
uh uh you know you certainly witness when someone uh maybe for the very first time
is looking in the piece of your telescope and they're seeing in the case of David Levy's telescopes probably a
comet or some beautiful deep Sky object and uh uh for me it would probably be on
a street corner uh somewhere showing Saturn or the moon uh that kind of thing
but you do see you actually do see that they they visibly are are changed uh not
in a good way um uh you know what is your take on that
David I think it's uh I think it's the reason that I am into astronomy into the
night sky actually I have to admit that I'm not really into astronomy there's a difference between the science of
astronomy and the beauty magic and Majesty of the night sky that latter
part is what I'm in for what I'm in for it with I I I would I would agree with that
too I I love hearing about the discoveries I love the adventure of it the exploration of it uh the personal
exploration side of it I I really uh enjoy but there's nothing that really
gets me excited like seeing someone else uh being affected by all this you know
and I think that uh um you know the the big thing that happens is is that uh
well several things could happen one is is that someone feels uh incredibly
small you you know uh once they start realizing the sizes of things you know
um after spending all day long thinking that they were the you know you know being focused on
themselves you know uh uh and then coming out at night and looking out at
another planet or um you know the moon or something uh that gives them a sense
of scale you know um that is something that uh humbles them
and uh you know it is you know astronomy is a very humbling experience I think
so we have um we have a great lineup tonight uh David um and we're going to
start off this program of course with you and uh you know if you have any um
additional words you'd like to add about uh uh changing perceptions that would be wonderful
well thank you thank you Scotty and uh welcome to the
146 and uh in honor of that I am Dawning today my McGill
sweater and I'm doing that because here's a little story about Migel I wouldn't mind sharing with
you I I flunked out of Migel my first try there I just flunked out I got four
fs and One D minus and uh so I took this first year
again and I flunked out a second time I had four d three D minuses and a and and
three fs and a D minus or something like that um hard
grade to get uh when I flunked out the first time
I my dad was really angry with me he was angry the second time too but the first
time he was really angry angry because in addition to flinging out of McGill I had also gotten very nearly expelled
from the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and dad took me for a walk after
in the middle of that and he was yelling at me and saying that you know if you had kept your mouth
shut all you had to do is keep your mouth shut this wouldn't have happened and we wouldn't have this Dreadful
embarrassment for you and I just kind of sat stood there and walked and took it
cuz he was right about 5 days later was my birthday and dad said he motioned he
said another walk we started walking and I said okay Dad well let me have it and
he said David I was wrong and I said what and he said David
first of all I'm not going to yell at you on your birthday and secondly I was wrong you were provoked there were some
people there who really yelled and screamed at you and you were provoked and you were defending yourself and I'm
proud of you for that and I said I said to dad with all du respect I think you
were more right the first time because I did have a lot of uh I did have I do
have a big mouth and I do talk without thinking and I make a lot of mistakes I
have a lot of growing up to do dad looked at me and he said I think you've just done some and that was really a
very special experience on that particular birthday for my poem today it
is an obvious choice it is the one that uh is the theme of our star party
tonight and one that I wrote In My Guide to the night sky which is apparently
still in print I don't know how that happened but it was published by Cambridge University press ages ago
and it's still around and this is the quotation our fondness for the Stars has
touched our souls and this is why I'm in astronomy we all share the feeling of
Discovery whether the object we have found is new to all or new only to us
the thrill penetrates our Dream our being as we try to describe through
drawings photographs or words how we have been Changed by the universe
sharing a secret with us thank you and back to you scar okay
wonderful wonderful okay um our
uh you know I love I love hearing the Poetry David and uh I know that uh you
and I talked about this a long time ago but uh uh you know we talked about the
idea that you might do a book on on uh astronomical poetry it's uh part of the
reason why you got your PhD and uh um are you uh are you expecting that book
to come out anytime soon uh not anytime soon I'm still writing it and uh it's
it's a big project but the person who really deserves the credit for this is my friend Dave rosser's wife ah Pam
Roser she was the one who suggested it do you remember after I lost Wendy I was
having a a very severe loss of weight and uh uh I put on a lot of that back
but not all of it and everybody was advising me including you that I had to
eat more and I had to drink more and I had to do this more and that more yeah and
even and then Pam was one day and she said I have some a suggestion too and I
said okay let's hear it I think you should write a
book and I said you mean you're not going to tell me to eat of course I'm going to tell you to eat and drink but I
want my suggestion is I want you to be writing another book I don't care what it's
about and I said Pam I got to tell you I'm getting a little bit old for that as
a matter of fact I could share with all of you right now that I'm one of the few people at the uh Global Star Park party
that was alive the very first years of my
life Albert Einstein who we're going to have later on today was also still alive
just for the first two three four years of my life and that's really something sure
someone something that I as I get older I'm thinking what a privilege that I was
alive at the same time that that man was still living yeah that was really really
something and uh uh did I answer your question Scott
or yes you did yes you did we talked about the uh uh the idea of the new book
and um and you gave us the backstory to that so that's great it's going to be a
while before it comes out in fact I have one before that that is about to be accepted by University of Arizona press
and then it's the one after that I would say about three four years three or four years okay a lot of time to work
on it and write it excellent excellent well up next is
going to be David aner who uh uh has written a book about galaxies um and um
anytime he's talking about uh a deep Sky object he knows an incredible amount of
backstory to it as well and uh uh um I I love to hear him describe uh celestial
objects and U if you guys are not familiar with David ier if you're W this
the first time you're watching Global Star Party David is the editor and chief
of astronomy magazine if you're not yet a subscriber to either the print or
digital version or both uh uh you should probably jump on that um he is also uh
one of the organizers of the staris event which David Levy will be going to
I'm involved with uh uh the star party and David Iker will talk about that a
little bit later um but uh he is going to talk about this really amazing Galaxy
NGC 597 and if you go to the link that's in
this uh um you know goes along with this post you can see a link to uh the bio
for David AER but there's also a link to NGC 5907 directly back to the astronomy
magazine website which I thought was very appropriate so um thank you for
coming on uh David you've been busy and um we're really privileged to have you
back thank you Scott it's always great to be here and uh having finished talking about the Civil War now I'll get
back to Pure astronomy and and objects and one of these here tonight uh the one
I'm going to talk about tonight is indeed a Galaxy which you know there are lots of them out there and they are
favorites so I will what do I need to need to do I need to share my screen I
need to share the right thing and I need to start a slideshow and I will hope that you can
see what I am seeing which is not the Galaxy I'm going to talk about this is Centaurus a which May long after we're
gone end up uh how how the combination of the Andromeda galaxy and the milkyway
appears something like this perhaps but that's not the point tonight the point tonight is to talk about NGC 5907 in
Draco which is one of the greatest Edon galaxies in the
sky sometimes it's called the Splinter or the knife edge it lies in the sky a short distance from what common has been
agreed upon as m102 NG GC 5866 in what were of course a couple of
those latterday extensions of the Messier catalog there was some controversy over m102 being a simple
error originally in a repetition of M101 but it was adopted by most folks uh a
generation or two ago now as NGC 5866 well anyway near this field of
interesting galaxies in Draco is the 11th magnitude very much Edge on Galaxy
NGC 597 it's about uh nearly 13 arc
minutes across and very thin it's a member of the m102 group
it's about 50 a little more than 50 million light years away so you know comparable if you will to the distance
uh to the Virgo cluster but in a different direction uh it's a prototypical warped
spiral in 2006 a team of astronomers detected an extensive tidal stream
surrounding the Galaxy uh and the hints of a warping of of the dis and of course
tidal forces on very large scales across portions of neighborhoods of or entire
galaxies work on very large scales um very effectively and we can see the
interaction of many galaxies and clusters with title forces acting on them and pulling things out of
galaxies this galaxy has a very strangely low metallicity and a very small number of giant Stars it's almost
entirely composed of dwarfs so star formation has not occurred in this
galaxy for a very long time on anything but a very small
scale there's a single Supernova that was recorded in in this galaxy 597 in
1940 it was a 14th magnitude object and here we go back to Ron Stan's excellent
and fairly compact inter stellarium Atlas and see the field of NGC
597 in the center here and you can see m102 down near uh to its lower right and
uh we're kind of on an edge of Draco here as you can see by the constellation border fairly Rich area of
galaxies this is a very nice amateur high-end
amateur image of NGC 597 um here and you can see this truly
is very much Edge on we're seeing the dust Lane which you know of course runs across the edge of the Galaxy's bright
disc almost oriented exactly Edge on it's off a a fraction of a degree from
being exact by Edge on this is an infrared image of ngc1
9007 the dust in the galaxy is in red this is a spitzer image just to kind of
show a very dramatically different look at the distribution of dust in this
galaxy and that's it and all I have is to present another and we only have I
think about 400 objects now to go Scott so we're making progress here um we're
starting to run out we're starting to run out I have to think of something else to do in another seven or eight
years um but we do have as you may know an eclipse not only is there I'm not
talking about the eclipse on March 25th which you may know of also there's a
nice penumbral lunar eclipse coming up on the late evening of March 25th and
early morning of March 26th which you may know about it'll be very visible
from the Americas and from the Pacific Basin but we also have a big total solar
eclipse coming um and where be in Dallas uh with Celestron and with the uh
Weather Channel and possibly some other television folks who are joining on will be at Lovefield in Dallas and we'll have
uh nearly four minutes there of totality and I hope that we'll have clear weather everywhere and you'll have a great
Eclipse experience if you're going because that'll be here before we know it our April issue is devoted to the
eclipse a special issue packed with everything you can imagine Steve om
Michael Zyer Michael bakit and others Rich Talcott writing about everything
you need to know about the eclipse so there you go also as Scott mentioned uh starmus is
coming up only about a month after the eclipse and a little change in Bros Slava uh we have an astrophoto school
that we're going to run there Imaging becoming very explosively popular of
course with all these smart telescopes that now exist one of them is behind sky Scot's right shoulder there in His image
the great unistellar scope and uh so Imaging is really becoming much easier
to do and facilitated by filters and other uh Hightech data such that Imaging
can be done really in in more light polluted sites with great results now so there's really a revolution in imaging
going on we'll have an astrophoto school going on at staris many many it's
already I think the count is already up over 50 of speakers who were Nobel Prize
winners who were astronauts who were rock musicians who were involved in the starmist board uh with me and with
others and so we are very excited and hope that you'll be able to fly in which you can do very easily to Vienna Austria
and that's practically right on top of bros laava so uh that's in miday it's
actually very easy to get there and and to partake in this we expect that we'll have 6 or 8,000 people at least there in
pris and we'll have lots of stuff to write about and some rock and roll with Brian
May and Rick Wakeman and others as well as um Jean Michelle jar the the fellow
who has produced the largest outdoor concerts ever in world history um the
largest one in the Guinness book being in Moscow a number of years ago but there are very special plans with Jean
Michelle and Brian to do some things that will be unheard of that have never been done before to open staris so we're
excited about that we will have a star party with Scott being involved with telescopes there um to observe with a
large crowd this time there at a 12th century castle of all things this time
so really incredible and exotic locations and many many many Talks Of course from scientists of all areas not
only astronomy um and lots of excit surprises to come there too and I know
that Scott and David you will also be there um so we're looking forward to a
lot of fun and we're hoping that we don't have to just report on all the cool stuff that's happened that you'll
have to miss we hope that we'll see some of you guys there as well in person because really there's nothing else like
it that's right yes invited we're you're all invited and it's actually very cheap
to get into the festival um because the Slovakian government and other folks are
helping to sponsor you can see esset that's a major company in Slovakia is
sponsoring much of the festival so it's really cheap actually to buy the ticket to the festival most of the cost to is
to get over there uh to fly over there you know it's flying to Europe um and then of course a hotel so so you don't
want to miss out on this we will not have another starmus for a couple of years after this one so uh there
there're really is an incredible um series of events waiting there for
us wonderful wonderful well thank you y and I can I can say with great
enthusiasm that it is hands down one of the most amazing uh astronomical and
intellectual events that you could ever attend so um it's quite something and to
have so many Nobel Prize winners so many astronauts stretching from a Charlie Duke will be there and others you know
from the Apollo days right on up to the modern astronaut you know Chris Hadfield
and many others will be there as well talking and Performing and to get close and talk to all these people and hear
their thoughts about the world about science about where things are going with the world the theme this this time
will be Earth and how we're taking care of it or maybe not so much so yeah it it
is really there's nothing else really like it at all as a science festival goes right you're absolutely right about
that well thank you so much David thank you David I thought that was particularly good and interesting and
insightful thank you thank you David and and thank you Scott as always and um
delighted to be I was away the a couple crazy things going on in trips but I'm glad to be back now and we'll have
smooth sailing right up until the eclipse here Mike Mike weisner's uh offering to
Pilot pilot the uh explore scientific supersonic airliner get starus you can land it
right in Vienna and in a half hour you're in Bros laava it's very easy right yeah wonderful well thank you so
much David thank you thanks guys take care okay well H Dr Levy we have our
friend Chuck Allen uh from the astronomical League up next um and I
love his presentations he always gives uh you know the biggest the most
furthest away the most amazing uh types of uh talks and he really stretches your
mind uh you know as far as he can he can take it um uh in his explanations about
the Universe I got to know I got to know Chuck I say uh at very well at last
year's baton rou astronomical League presentations all right parties and everything is that
really the first time for you to meet with Chuck I think we met him before but but but that that was the time I really
got to know the man his passion his love for the night sky and I'm really really
so that we're sharing the stage today oh yeah that's great well um let's
bring him on now I also like his setup right where he's at right now he's got
Clyde Tomba behind him okay A Portrait of Clyde uh actually there's a few
things that's kind of behind him that are very interesting sometimes he points them out when he's when he's giving his
talk but uh uh Chuck thanks for coming on to uh Global star party this time
what is the topic what is your uh uh the title of your presentation well we're
going to be talking about how people who did not have the tools that we have today began to try to
figure out how far away things were how far away the moon and sun and stars
were wonderful okay all right well let you take it away uh I do want to say
that uh we are very pleased to have the astronomical league on every Global star
party it's it's wonderful um even when Terry man was up in Alaska you know
doing her Aurora uh work up there she made sure she dashed into her hotel room
and and uh made made sure that she made connection so that she could come on to the show that was our last program uh
and I'm looking forward to seeing some of her auroral uh imagery it's beautiful
stuff that she does um but uh I think our whole audience really loves hearing
your presentations Chuck so no pressure don't put me under any
pressure and he is hands down the best lecturer in astronomy in the world today
so right right yeah thank you so much yes um you know what I think at times
you do achieve that so you're really fantastic thank you thank you Scott
thanks for all you do for the league too thank you by the way and I met D I think
the first time at britland maybe back in the late 90s uh I think the first time at least we were in a car together and
uh I don't think we had a lot of time to interact at that particular time but at hiden Hollow anyway um imagine that
you're U an ancient um and you're looking up at the
night sky and let's get this going
here and you're constantly wondering as you look up about the moon the Sun the
Stars you have no telescope you have no way in the world of really measuring
distances to the things you see and you're really curious about just exactly how far away these things are uh humans
have been around 300,000 years until the Greeks uh about two or 300 years BC
began to figure out some things using their heads they became very scientific
very mathematically inclined and they were wonderers they wondered about the distance to the Moon and the Sun and the
stars and the first attempts were really uh what you would call relative ones
that is they knew they couldn't measure the distance to anything but they thought they could figure out how far
for example the sun was in relation to the distance to the Moon how many times further was it or perhaps how many times
further stars were than the sun for example and the first to really
undertake a project along these lines was aist starus in about 250 BC and he
made the first attempt to determine how much further the sun was than the moon
again not the actual distance just how much further it was he came up with a brilliant idea he said if I could just
measure the angle between the Sun and the Moon when it's exactly at first quarter which does not occur as you can
see when the moon's at a 90° position from son uh if he could make that
determination he could use trigonometry which the Greeks had basically invented in order to determine how much further
the sun was he wouldn't know the distance to the Moon but he would know how many times further than the moon the
sun was that's what he was looking for he did a calculation and it came up with 19 now he was way off he his calculation
was uh beset by problems one was determining the exact moment of first
quarter on a very rough surfaced moon and the second is measuring this angle which he measured to be a little too
small compared to what it actually is because the moon's actually or the sun rather is actually 400 times further
than the moon but it's a brilliant idea and it might have worked um karus came along in 150 BC and
uh armed with information about the size of the Earth which ostan measur he
decided he had a way of measuring the distance to the Moon the actual distance
and he did it using Eclipse observations and that data from OS and the way he did it was this he knew that the eclipses uh
total or Eclipses of the moon were uh evidencing Earth's Shadow being about
two and a half times wider than the full moon itself he also knew the Greeks knew
that any sphere no matter how big at roughly the Earth's distance from the Sun would cast a shadow 108 times its
diameter the actual appearance of that would be the little diagram you see at the bottom there the long thin Shadow
108 times the diameter but he now knew the diameter of the Earth because of osan's work and so what he did and you
don't have to get all messed up in this diagram but just understand that what he figured out was that when the moon
eclipse the sun its shadow only barely reached the Earth on a small Point as it will on April 8
he also knew that the shadow of the Earth was two and a half times bigger than the diameter of the Moon during
total eclipses and from this and just using a law of congruent triangles he figured that the moon's distance was one
part in 3.5 of that length of the Earth's Shadow and he came up with
24685 Miles and that is right exactly in the true range of the Moon which ranges
between 225,000 and 21,000 miles now this is a man who was working without
telescopes without instruments really of any kind really an incredible
job but the sun remained an enigma how far was the sun nothing cast a shadow on
the Sun so it would be another 1,800 years before people finally figured out
how to measure the distance to the Sun meanwhile in roughly 1618 Johannes
came up with an amazing uh study of planetary motions
and he determined that there was a relationship between the orbital periods of planets and the semi- major axis of
their elliptical orbits and from this he was able to calculate in relation again
to the Earth's distance from the Sun how far the other planets were once again
the distance between the Earth and the Sun was unknown but he was able to determine that mercury was about 38.9%
as far away that Venus was 72% as far away as the Earth was that Mars was one
and a half times further than Earth was that Jupiter was a little more than five times further than Earth was and Saturn
9 and a half and over on the right you see the actual distances compared to the
earth sun distance he knocked it out of the park it was an incredible study and
it was followed up a few years later by Johan bod Johan tius who came up with a
mathematical construct that matched what Kepler had found exactly he simply took
a series of numbers 0 1 2 3 4 five he multiplied them all by3 and divided them
all by4 and he got the same ratios that Kepler did for the distances to the
planets relative to the Earth's distance but once again nobody knew how far that
Earth Sun distance was once we figured out how far the Sun was we would there know how far all the planets were from
the Sun as well but that had to wait for that ultimate determination of how far the Sun was and that's still a big
problem until a man by the name of James Gregory comes along now this was a
brilliant mathematician he made advances in trigonometry he was the first person to prove the fundamental theorem of
calculus he developed the Gregorian telescope and unfortunately while
showing his students Jupiter and its moons one night he suffered a massive stroke at the age of 36 and died just a
few days later a terrible loss at a very young age but during his life he came up
with a plan it was a plan for determining the exact distance to the
Sun and he also had a plan for determining a distance to a star he started with that first one how far was
serious in relation to the distance between the Earth and the sun which again was still unknown he figured that
if he observed Jupiter and Sirius roughly the same time when they're in the same place in the sky on the same
night um he could make a comparison he knew that Jupiter was five times further
than the earth from the sun because of Kepler's work so that the light from the sun reflecting off of Jupiter had to
travel about nine times the distance between the Earth and the Sun to reach
uh the Earth so he compared the brightness that he received Jupiter with that of Sirius and he came up with a
number of 83,1 190 times the Earth Sun distance
whatever that was now that would be equivalent to 1.32 light years or what
we would call 1.32 light years today but he assumed that Sirius was no more
luminous than the Sun that they were stars of equal brightness that's not true Sirius is about 25 times more
luminous than the Sun and had he known that he would have multip his result by the square root of that number and
obtained a distance of 6.6 light years which is really not bad considering the
series is actually just 8.6 light years away so this man came up with a way to measure a distance to a star before the
distance to the Sun is even known uh at least in relation to the Earth Sun
distance but then he came up with a magical plan he came up with a plan he
knew he could not execute in his lifetime that was a plan to determine the distance to the Sun using the
transit of Venus two of them that were going to occur in 1761 and
1769 now he wasn't going to live to see that he would be 123 years old before
the first one but he wrote down his plan and it involved measuring from two
locations on the earth now this is a simplistic view of what he did imagine
you set up two observing stations on the earth a known distance par hypothetically 3600 miles in this case
and you both observe the transit of Venus across the face of the sun naturally they would observe Venus's
image at two different locations on the sun's disc well suppose you measured the angle as seen from the earth of those
two points that were observed from those two observing locations you would know
since Venus was known to be only 72% the Earth's distance from the Sun that if
You observe those two points from Venus that angle would be bigger so let's suppose for example that on Earth the
angle appear to be 005 de and from Venus we would know that it
would be 0.008 degrees if you were on Venus observing those two locations on the Sun the opposite angle would be the
same and if you split that angle in half it would be 0.004 degrees and you can
erect a right triangle with half of that distance between the observing stations
and once you have right triangle it's simple trigonometry again the tangent of
that o4 angle equals 1800 miles over D and once you have D you will have the
distance between the Earth and Venus which is 28% of the distance to the Sun
this is the man who actually executed James Gregory's plan he did careful
observations two teams did careful observations at different locations mapping the trajectory of Venus acoss
the face of the Sun the result he got was a d of 26,6 1900 26
m619 600 miles which was 28% of the distance to the Sun the result he got
for the distance to the Sun using James Gregory's method was 95 million miles
that was less than a percent off the actual distance that we know the sun was
from the earth on the day of that transit in 1769 look at that
0.6% and even that error was because of something called the black drop effect
which affects the timing of the transit when it's near the edge of the sun you can see it here kind of affecting the
image of Venus well now we have the distance to
the Sun and with that we also had the distance to the planets thank thanks to Kepler um and that is a remarkable
achievement but Christian hens came along and took a second attempt of trying to find the distance to sirius
trying to improve on James Gregory's estimate and the way he did it was to
erect a screen and to get in a dark room behind that screen and use different size pin
holes until he got a pinhole letting sunlight through such that the pinhole resembled the brightness of Sirius and
then he would measure how different the angle of the the width of that pin hole was in terms of angular diameter
compared to the half degree image of the Sun and he determined that the pinhole
was 27644 times less than the sun's angle meaning that Sirus if it was the same
brightness as the sun would be 27644 times further that would be what
we would today call 0.4 Lighty years but once again he didn't know the Sirius was 25 times more luminous than the sun had
he known that he would have estimated that serus was about two light years away it's actually eight but we're
getting closer now things were getting a little better until Friedrich Bessel
came along much later in the early 1800s he decided to apply this Parallax method
that Gregory recommended for successfully measuring the distance to the Sun and he applied it to the Stars
what he did was instead of using two observing points maybe a couple thousand miles apart on the earth he chose to
used the Earth itself in its orbit around the Sun a baseline of 186 million
miles observing a star from one location and six months later observing it from another and then noticing how far it
moved against the background of stars the first star he applied this to was 61
signal and he was able uh in 1838 to get a result of 10.3 Lighty years that's
been refined today to 11.4 Lighty years but he got it within 10% which was the
first measurement using Parallax method to the stars and after that things just
improved andrietta Swan Lev discovered a relationship between certain variable stars and their absolute brightness and
was able to establish a relationship between the period of these special CPD variables and their absolute brightness
that turned them into standard candles and with that uh they were able to find CP variables center of the Milky Way and
determine the distance to the center center of our galaxy and she was even able to study variable Stars cied
variables in small and large magentic clouds thus determining their distance
as well and then of course Edwin Hubble took the CPD variables a step further
finding one in the Andromeda nebula as it was called then uh which helped him
determine using that as a standard candle that it was not spiral nebula within the Milky Way But actually an
entire another galaxy another quote Island universe as they used to refer to
them that lay far away from the Milky Way itself and so that's how we
discovered the distance to the stars and it's a remarkable progression that started with some very bright Greeks and
progressed maybe slowly at times but progressively with some very brilliant
people working on it and Scott I'll turn it back to you wonderful
okay gosh it's so amazing and several of the people on uh in chat
here were commenting how remarkable it was to uh you know have mathematical
insights or or to develop these methods to try to measure um the distances I
think some of the the methods were quite clever so um but uh but it did take uh
took you know several hundred years to do it but but uh but we achieved it and
it seems like now um you know one of the things that uh I you know in this theme
of perception changing perceptions um you know when information like that was
first revealed I think that perhaps there was some uh yeah a great deal of skepticism
on distances and and this type of thing uh and you know even today uh people uh
sometimes have a very tough time believing uh in the distances and the Scale of the Universe and all the rest
of it but um uh the other thing that uh
uh that I often think about uh is you know the rate of which
our or not the rate of which things happen but it's not infrequent that we
get a a complete reset of how big the
universe is or how old the universe is you know I think that we just had another reset here fairly recently uh
that I was reading about and uh um it's uh you know and it's not over you know
so there's no fixed uh scientific facts it seems like it seems like the process of science is
to constantly kind of try to tear down um uh a hypothesis or a theory uh to get
at what is a more accurate number and I'd like to make a comment about something you just said um there
are a number of YouTubes out there now that are proclaiming that the universe is 26 billion years old and far larger
than we thought um and that's based on some jwst observations of seemingly
welldeveloped galaxies that have light travel time to us that places them at a very early stage in the universe of life
if it's 13 billion years old and um I've talked to some professional astronomers
about these uh these YouTubes and a lot of it is an effort to gain
clicks if you will uh Paul steinhardt has come up with a plausible explanation
for why these galaxies appear appear to be more developed at an early stage and it has to do with the very large number
of massive stars that were created out of only hydrogen and helium before there was a lot of metal available for Star
formation in the early universe and so don't be too quick out there to buy into
these rather hysterical YouTubes that are claiming wild things about the age
of the universe because uh it's very very tentative
yeah C I wanted to add you sure as heck weren't kidding when you said how good
and fine a lecturer Chuck Allen is oh yeah yes I knew he was good but I didn't
realize that till I heard you say that and I paid extra attention to today's lecture yeah and I he
really gave me a reset on on my my own
ideas about the age of the universe and I really did enjoy that one of the
things that one of the people you did include was harlo shapley I never got to
know harlo shapley although I did know his very close friend Bart Buck very
well but I one of the things is if you've ever
read his biography through rugged ways to the Stars it
would he he has a section in it in which he really comes down hard on Henryetta l
um what she did with the sea feeds and she he says all she did was come up with
a couple of stars and come up with the method I was the one that crashed
through on the distances to the globulars you might have been the one that crashed through on it but I think
you're a little hard on on levit she really came up with the method message
which was really really important and I just wanted to add that yeah I think
that I think that letter by shap was actually to the Nobel committee that was
considering Henrietta Swan lit and they asked him for a recommendation and he included that in the
letter um so who knows I that was that was
something anyway Chuck wonderful wonderful presentation thank you very much I appreciate it another Deep dive
into the universe here that's wonderful all right uh our next speaker is uh Ron
breacher Ron breacher goes by the moniker of astrod do uh he is uh uh one
of the leaders of um of a group or maybe is the master of pxs insight uh Ron
breacher is um uh you know an incredible astrophotographer he shares his work uh
uh with me routinely uh I think I'm like in a group email or something but uh I'm
happy to be counted among the people that he passes that out to and uh so um
I will bring if Ron is on
here hey I great had 18 people there
they had a Coronado PST uh that they there we go I am here
are you there okay yeah and I've got video and everything going great okay we
had someone else coming on Ron thank you so much for coming on to Global Star Party thanks for having
by the way the go ahead I gotta say nice to see that Miguel shirt my dad was an
economics profit Miguel and I'm I'm a Montreal boy of
course you're muted go good yeah thank
you well um the uh the title of your talk Ron is um rediscovering the secrets
of the cosmos and yeah so thank you let me uh let me share
my screen with you okay and uh start as a slideshow you should you should see my
screen now I think we do good so
um you know my titles and my my ideas for talks they all come directly from
the information that Scott and doid provide and uh the theme this time
really struck me this is uh from doid our fondness for the Stars has touched
our souls boy do do I ever get that we all share the feeling of Discovery whether
the object we found is new to all or new only to us the thrill penetrates our
being as we try to describe how we've been changed by the universe sharing a
secret with us boy that just it's like you reached in and pulled that right out
of my head um so that's that's what I want to talk about tonight and I'm going to talk
about it um from two perspectives because let's face it I've never discovered
anything but I've rediscovered all kinds of things and um so I'm going to tell
you about some of those that had the biggest impact on me and also uh one of
the things that has a huge impact on on how I feel about the sky is watching
other people react the first time they see something
and so I want to give you some of the some of the things that I think are the biggest highlights that I've had showing
to other people and uh I'm going to start out with this image of Carolyn's
Rose this is named after Carolyn hsel it's NGC
7789 and uh it's an open cluster in
copia and you'll see the brightest star in the image is this uh orangey red star
to the left of the main cluster that's Wy
copia uh any any Star that's named that way with two capital letters or one
capital letter um is is going to be a variable star so T Tori Wy copia and so
on so we know this star is variable but again I didn't know that at the time
that I rediscovered this star so there's there's the star as it looked in October
2011 and um 5 years later I was with a mirror
making friend of mine in Sudbury Alan Ward and he said you know that picture
of Carolyn's Rose is one of my favorites could you shoot it for me again and I went out in 2016 and I shot
the same cluster and the star was
gone I thought that I had discovered a star that disappeared
I searched for it as well as I knew how to and couldn't find anything about it
so I figured I'd discovered a disappearing star or maybe a Nova maybe it was a Nova in
2011 and I sent a message to the Central Bureau for astronomical telegrams that's
where you send uh messages about astronomical discoveries it may not surprise you to
learn that I never got a reply because this star had been
discovered as a variable star back in the 19th century only I didn't know it um you may
also be entertained to know that the story I just told you is now part of a case study that's told by my friend Rick
husc out in Saskatchewan uh Rick is a variable star
expert and he teaches people on how to do the research to see if something
really is a variable star and I guess I've got uh some infamy in that case
study Chuck was talking about the Venus Transit and I was so lucky uh the Venus
Transit happened on my birthday in 2012 and I had just got a new hydrogen
Alpha scope and this blew me away one of the reasons why the Venus Transit blew me
away by the way I sketched it at the same time I was photographing
it you know most of the stuff we look at when we look at the sky everything looks
like it's painted on a flat surface like a two-dimensional
thing the time where you really get the perception of three-dimensionality of
the universe is when one object passes in front of another and this one only happens every
you know between 100 5 and 120 years and then you get two of them I'm lucky I got
two in my lifetime and I got to photograph and sketch this this blew me
away another rediscovery so I'm not the first guy to discover
quazars but I find them really really interesting to read about because they're so far away and they're so
bright and of course I never imagined that Imaging from my obser atory that I'd be able to image
quazars but when I made this annotated image I included the Milly quas the
million quazar project catalog and all the quazars in this
image are marked in white and I've circled a couple of
them the top one there inside these crosshairs you can barely see it 9.3
billion light years away and um I didn't look up that number I
calculated it so I rediscovered that information I I looked up the red
shift and uh I looked at the formula for determining light travel time from Red
shift the bottom quazar here that's circled is even further away at 12.8
billion light years that's tea time after the big bang that's not too long
after the big bang so quazars uh really blow me away and then
um all with all the new fangled equipment and my Imaging gear and my fancy Dancy
telescopes it's easy to forget that um people were being Amazed
by the sky long before we anybody on this call was here to appreciate it and
they Ed that as above so below as my wife often says this is uh a picture I
took of the constellation of Leo just with my DSLR one night and
um here's Leo in the ground you can see this Effigy here it's part of the
glastenbury zodiac or the somerset zodiac which is a huge circle of
effigies in Southwestern England and you can go and walk there
and uh many of the constellations of our of our current zodiac and some older uh
Effigies are there as well fantastic and um you know I can take a
beautiful picture of the PES but again I wasn't the first one to notice the
ples this is a a photograph from the lasar caves on the left and you can see
here a drawing of the ples the horns of Taurus the Bull and
the eye of the bull here corresponding to my star Atlas here's the
ples the hiades and the horns of the bull so that blows me away too every
time I go out and look at that stuff I'm one in a line of people that have been
looking at this for thousands and thousands of
years so sharing the cosmos is the other thing that I really love to do and I've
ordered these you know more or less from closest to farthest away just a few of
the things that I like to show people because they're really impactful uh they're not the faintest
things that I image in my in my uh Imaging Endeavors but when I'm standing
out there with my 20-in job or my 10-in job with friends friends this is the
things that we love to ReDiscover and the first one of course is the moon and
I tend I don't know why but I tend to shoot it a lot on Canada day so this is from Canada Day July 1st
2020 and uh you know just a little further than the moon or the planets and
uh I love to sketch this is just a sketch that I made of Jupiter by the way if you are thinking of sketching if you
want to try your hand at sketching something the easiest thing to sketch is
Jupiter um you can you can draw the outline of the planet with that um you
know 9% bulge of the Equator you can do that before you go outside you can even
place the major uh darker bands before you go outside and then fill in details
once you get there so uh don't hesitate to give that a try and while we're
talking about planets um Saturn is absolutely amazing uh I wish this was my
photo but it isn't it's by my friend Daryl Archer he took this image with a with a new telescope back in March
2014 and um probably after the moon the thing that blows the people my friends
away the most is Saturn you just can't beat it and I love showing people star
clusters both open clusters like the double cluster in pereus this is fantastic in binoculars
you just can't beat it it is fantastic in binoculars photographs in my opinion
don't do it justice get your binoculars on this object as soon as you can I also really
love globular clusters but they're a little further away a lot further away
actually so I'll come to them in a moment but planetary nebulas and in
specifically the Ring Nebula is fantastic visually through an eyepiece
now it doesn't look like this you don't see that outer flower uh the pink flower you don't see
that 15th magnitude Galaxy to its upper right and you don't see any of this
color but you see a beautiful perfectly formed smoke
ring and uh it's just unmistakable very easy to find even
though it's small it's quite easy to find because it's located equidistant
between two naked eye Stars again get your telescope on this object any size
telescope is good on the Ring Nebula and I mentioned globular clusters um my
mother-in-law Joy bat this was her favorite object it's probably my
favorite object I've looked at it in every size of telescope from four in to
20 in and um one of the things I always look for visually and I always look for
it in any photos that I take of this object is that there's a propeller
feature um this is blown up a little bit I don't know if you can see it it's kind of it's quite
dim uh but it's darker it's uh one vein up here then there's one sticking out to
the right and one down to the lower left so uh the next time you're at the
eyepiece let your eye relax and see if you can spot that uh beautiful propeller
feature I've seen it very clearly in my 10 in and in my
20in okay uh I said uh M13 was quite a
bit farther away than these other objects uh obviously the moon and planets are our solar system the double
cluster and the Ring Nebula are in the main part of our galaxy um M13 is in the Halo of our
galaxy now let's leave the Milky Way Al together this is my favorite Galaxy to
show people through the eyepiece um it doesn't look like this
through the eyepiece it looks like a little gray puff of smoke
elongated nothing like this uh this is my own photo of it from uh just from
last month actually it's not the biggest galaxy and it's not the brightest Galaxy but I think it's
the most beautiful galaxy to show people in the eyepiece because it's easy to see
and you can put it in the same field with another galaxy m81 bod's
galaxy both of those galaxies are around 11 million light years away and a
million light years apart and just because you can put them both in the same field of view
people can see a triangle in their heads and they can get that 3D that
threedimensional sense of the universe that sometimes can be so challenging to
get um so let's come back to that theme just while I close off and then I'm
going to leave you with one one last rediscovery here I've
highlighted some of what I've been trying to convi to you and that is that
we all share that feeling of rediscovery every time I look at the Ring
Nebula it's almost as it's almost as good as the first actually maybe better
than the first because I know what to look at um that's such a special feeling
and that thrill really does penetrate my being I hope it penetrates everybody's
being because by appreciating the beauty that's out there you're more likely to
take care of it and we we all need to take care of the planet and of the night
sky of course and um I hope you can tell just from the passion in my voice that
um I I feel honored that the Universe shares its secrets with me and that then
I can go and share them with my friends and my family and uh I said I was going
to just leave you with one last little secret uh a rediscovery or a
discovery and I didn't discover this my wife discovered it my wife Gail when she
was looking at uh this or one of my earlier pictures of this region so we
have the North American nebula on the left and uh you can see it it's shaped
like like a nebula over here on the right we have the Pelican nebula which I always thought was a misnomer that we
should have called it the terod nebula has kind of looks like a pterodactyl to me uh but I'm going to
show you something now and you're never going to be able to unsee it after I show it to you it doesn't have a a name
that I could find or a designation in a catalog so I call it the Lizard Head
nebula and it's this little guy right here with his head sticking out of the
cave let me show it to you through my 14 inch there's the little lizard head
nebula and now that you've seen it you're never going to be able to unsee
it that's right thank you very much Scott for having me on I'll stop my
share thank you that's wonderful one thing that I would like
to one thing I would like to say Scott and um I'd like to to say that the
lecture that I just heard captured the emotion of the night sky and that is so
important uh I did mention this last week but I think it's worth mentioning
again since you're here and that is that um my dad was a student at
Mill and uh one of his professors in economics was Stephen
Leo and uh you didn't learn much about economics from him but you learned a lot about
humor and dad was at the roted gates at the front of University once bumped into
leok and leok said Levy I have your marks of your on your last test and you
were horrible it was the worst test of anything I ever saw it was awful and Le
went all along about how awful dad did on that test and finally he said Dad ly here is
your paper enjoy it and you thrust dad's paper back at Dad and Dad took a look at
it and and the and it said A+ one of the best I've ever seen good work wow oh wow
dad looked up at his Professor Stephen leok who was walking away and leok turned around waved at him with a big
smile on his face and I don't think Dad ever forgot that story and I never
forgot it either well coincidentally my dad was in the economics Department as
well and I think a contemporary with Steph Leo for part of their careers yeah
I think that would have been exciting I never got to know leok either but I do
believe that um that his humor was just
something absolutely Unforgettable and I want to share that with you guys again
thanks so thank you Scott and I guess I you can I share an update with everybody
from my last talk I had of things on my bucket list yes you can because it's my turn to B yeah one of my one of my
bucket list things was to attend staras yes and I now attending staras as
a volunteer I'll be working at the star party there in May that's right that's
right I'm so excited so I we're excited to have you so you're the perfect kind of guy to go to staras and and to be at
the star party so you're going to really I I know you're going to be blown away so uh it's I'm looking forward to Brian
May coming and looking through my telescope there you go awesome thank you again for having
right thank you thank you okay see you uh
thanks uh David I wanted to just uh recognize um uh some of the people uh
watching uh we've got people watching again from around the world uh from the
UAE uh into right here in Arkansas we've got a
local on um we have um also young
nicolina do you remember nicolina David she was recognized as one of the world's
youngest astronomers and uh yes yeah so
I'll I'll read some stuff from her that she's she's posted but I I asked a question uh of the audience you know who
uh might have had their uh perceptions changed and what that what that story
was all about and um uh John Ray had mentioned that uh he was an engineer um
and uh he said he said that uh uh for me it was in my teens and well into my 20s
after after I was brought into the be into the engineering field for the first time I rubbed elbows at people who are
much more Highly Educated than myself and uh their input caused me to really
pause and Ponder um nicolina uh is studying uh asteroids
she's doing a citizen Science Program where she identifies asteroids uh from
one of the uh surveys that's going on out there and uh I think the last time
that she was on our program she had like 18 uh asteroids uh detected she's now up
to 55 asteroids detected and but she hasn't
received any confirmations yet she said this process takes a long time so congratulations nicolina for doing that
work uh we look forward to having you on global Star Party once again um and uh any anyways um um our
next speaker is um is uh uh Adrien
Bradley Adrian is uh a photographer of
some uh renowned talent and he is uh doing uh incredible work both uh uh for
you know um what you might call regular photography but also night sky
photography uh which he shares with us on his chasing the dark Series so
um Adrien thank you for coming on to Global star party and presenting with uh
David Levy here yep coming to you once again from Seline 300 uh the bowling
alley uh I think it's station 300 and Seline where so far I haven't missed a
spare but I told everybody I had a very important uh date with my friends here
at Global star party so let me get on with it deid I know last time I just
talked and talked and talked but this time I want to share a story even with
iPhones you can share your story um and I'm gonna pick the right
application good to see you Adrian it's great seeing you de and oh I'm making an
announcement I am going to attempt uh well not attempt but uh I am going to
come to um Alcon um astronomical leagues
conference in Kansas City I've told the wife we're making the trip I hope to see
many of you there in person for the first time um I will just share my
screen because I think that'll that should work and now I can
go where I want to go so I am going to share my
trip to um poo bark Lighthouse Park in
uh Fort Hope Michigan hopefully you can see the uh picture I have of the Milky
Way Rising that um let me see if I can put myself away
can you all see the picture the Milky Way rising over uh oh yeah very nice so
this is what all the night photographers are going after right now 5:00 a.m. in the morning this happens Milky Way Rises
so I'm going to flick through some of these photos I was supposed to get Milky
Way rise here but when you get out of the car on the highway and you see this it stops you in your tracks and that's
um I think goes right well with the theme but one night I went to poo bark
Lighthouse Park to see the stars and to catch the rising Milky Way at I think I
started at 3 am after moon set and and by the way if you hear any loud noises
or announcements well I'm in Abola alley and let me flip through what I saw
sometimes the stars have help sometimes the Aurora is out this was Soul this was
three years ago spring equinox and we had a fairly large storm um
electromagnetic Storm Large enough for the Aurora to be seen here in Michigan
in the thumb of Michigan which is around somewhere between 42 and 43 degrees
north latitude so I'm flipping through some pictures where you can see the um signis
and copia part of the Milky Way inter disappearing into the Aurora and here
you've got that Lighthouse so I did what I could to capture the moment this is
one of the very few times that the Milky Way played second fiddle some of the exposures I used back back then this
blew the core out um sometimes there's more to get than just the uh galactic
center and as you can see you can you turn your attention North to the Aurora
you get beautiful pictures now I've processed this a number of different ways as you're seeing here but if you
Aurora chasing and you're in Michigan and there's Aurora on the horizon this
might be all you see this is when you really bring it out you
can bring it out in levels this was the best for me this was kind of the best of
both world you see what's there but you kind of get the same sense you know that
you're there watching it so let's continue we've got some uh panoramas
that I did it was just a beautiful night wasn't too cold turned around I tried
some different contrasty things looking back at the Lighthouse and then you turn around and you see all of these colors
there is some purple on the crown of this Aurora that's visible look at all the stars we talk about the Stars
sometimes it's okay to not see constellations or not see exactly what's there just take the entire Starfield in
and realize that every single dot in that Sky there could be a world orbiting
that star look how many stars and and yet there's even more than we can see in
our galaxy and for photographers you just try and take it all in and capture it in
a way where you show people you say go outside sometimes it's restrictive
because you're this is 4 in the morning and I think I had to work the next day and I still made this
trip um I probably called in sick the next morning this is all you can do
sometime sometimes the the terrain doesn't allow you to get the type of that you want you want the galactic
center with the lighthouse you have to go to another Lighthouse for that some time but um just look at you know Ron
breacher was talking about just enjoying the night sky well here's what it looks like you're out there there's some sort
of glow coming from Canada across um and then you're looking up over you're
looking over like Kiron you're looking up in the sky and seeing endless stars and that faint glow of the Milky Way
then you go back over look at some more aora couple different ways that I've processed the same image over time I've
learned to pull a little more detail out this is one shot and then this is a
different shot at a different time there's the galactic core Rising use a a
little less shutter speed time you can see the detail but again it wasn't really the stop are
and yep my uh I'll be leaving soon cuz my bowling partner just told me it's time to bowl well all good things come
to an end Sunrise began this is civil Dawn and this is what that same scene
looked like with birds flying landing near the lighthouse if you've never seen
a sunrise go see a sunrise just be careful with your
eyes um once the sun gets to about here as you can kind of tell it's starting to
get bright and then do some uh compositions
with it it was cool that morning but we survived and so that was my story of
um of being at poo bark Lighthouse Park March 21st of
um 2001 going to figure out if I can stop sharing here here we go March 21st
2001 a beautiful night under the stars and
so let's see am I still broadcasting or did I stop my
share I think I stopped my share so are you all still there oh yeah okay beautiful as usual
Adrian thank you yeah so yep it's my turn to bow so
we'll move on I'm looking forward to seeing you all too at Al Con in Kansas
City I'm going to love it and uh if you all out there watching can go too I
highly recommend it so now here this is my bowling partner say
hi he wants me to bowl so I'm gonna go it's been a wonderful star party as
usual and and looking forward to coming back to share some more of my Adventures
out in the night Sky all right Adrien thank you so much take thank you all okay well uh up next
uh David is Katherine Al and Kent Marts uh they are uh G to be leading the um
Eclipse event that we're going to in uh Hill Country of Texas it's called The Crossroads of the eclipses star party
and I'm going to bring Kent on now and I is
um is Katherine Al available as well yes she's there I'm here there you are okay
let's bring you on as well uh David I
think that you have met both of these people um you came to Arkansas to do a
talk in at the Shoemaker uh Auditorium and uh I know that you met Katherine
during that time and you've met Kent on another number of times um they were
both at the site for the annular Eclipse where we're going uh and they'll
describe more in detail about where it is and uh you know all of that to our
audience but uh we have um a number number of people already signed up for
this uh there is still some space left if uh you're so inclined to uh join up
with us uh David Levy will be speaking at the event um and uh I'm excited
so I'll let you guys take it away hi everybody Kent Marts um
Katherine and I uh were at the site for the uh annular Eclipse with a a small
group of people uh you know it's so close together one big trip and a few people made that one but we're going to
have a much larger crowd uh at the the site which is in Texas Hill Country
Katherine why don't to tell us about the side a little bit and why well we know why we chose it but also it's really
it's dark there too so go ahead well we're about uh 90 miles as
the crow flies uh Northwest of San Antonio so the San Antonio light bubble
is about that big on the horizon and other than that uh there's a town about
20 mil away of 400 people so no lights and and it's my family property that
that's one of the reasons why we're there and the other is well there's an eclipse in totality is just right there
so we'll have four minutes and what is it Kent 23
seconds see I was pretty close and um and it's dark like looking
looking to the South you have stars to the Horizon so uh Omega
C should be visible about 2 a.m. should be crossing the Meridian maybe 5 or six
degrees above the Horizon so for people who haven't not been this far south this
is going to be a treat seeing that big headlight uh just over the horizon but uh when we were there in October I was
just Center trying to find a picture of and while while you're talking I'll look it up a picture I took with my iPhone
that shows stars to the Horizon with an iPhone that's so that's how dark it is pretty good
yep that's dark I took some uh uh light meter
measurements from the site uh and was able to get down to like 21 21.5 21.6
something like that so it is it is a dark site um and of course uh being
close to a total eclipse of the sun it is New Moon too so it should be uh
extraordinarily good what was the uh during the annular eclipse what was your
experience U during that time you know I know that how do I share my screen yeah
Arkansas was clouded out during that time so it was dark it was dark and it was was it
clear yes um it was it was clear most of the nights we had one night that was
sort of Cloudy um and the morning of the
annular uh everybody woke up and they were thinking that I was crazy because I
told them these clouds will clear and luckily I was clear I was right we we
were prepared we were preparing to take off and uh you know go chase clear skies
but we made the choice to stay there and we did U I'm sharing my screen now
here's Scott let me okay oh and I just shared mine okay I'm going to do my
reflection photo after you share yours that's a photo I took with my iPhone with your iPhone okay with my iPhone
that's definitely some good Milky Way there and not manipulated either no I've not done anything to the raw image okay
that's just the raw image somebody some point is going to teach me
how yeah so you know it it's dark especially to the South and West uh nice
and dark here we go so there is a little Pond yeah and
you know again with an iPhone for 10 seconds you know propped up I think
that's handheld if I remember correctly I didn't even prop that on on anything um so This Little Light bubble right
here is Lakey Texas um and that's the light bubble from Leakey pretty um which
is the closest town we're going to be at so um it's dark and that's why this is
not an eclipse event well yes it's an eclipse event but it's a star party you know this is not to show up the day of
the event and then you know fight your way into stand still traffic this is um
come days come on Friday Friday night Saturday night Sunday night Star Party
eclipse on Monday and we're using Sunday afternoon encouraging people to uh make
sure their telescopes are polar aligned practice run with their cameras uh to
make this a truly um enjoyable experience right um so I got one other
picture I want to show and then Monday after the eclipse let's all hang out relax chitchat and leave Tuesday morning
after the traffic that's that's the picture I want to share let me get this picture I downloaded a little while ago
um because you know everybody talks about how bad the traffic's going to be
Road um PE you can't imagine how bad this traffic really
is um let me this is
from I'll get it here in a second or I won't one of the other there it is well
the picture's worth it well it's not downloading I may have to go on
to I know where it is I did a p I did a PowerPoint presentation today on solar
astronomy and uh I know it's in there had a nice little crowd at the fville
library uh we used an exos 100 with a
uh um first light telescope and people were just blown away by it um so I'm
just going to share this PowerPoint window let's just do
that so this is the easiest way to do it there we go is that sharing yes it is
yeah put it in presentation mode and you got it
set did that do it perfect yes so this
this is so Clint brandom a good friend of ours we went drove we were going to
go to a totality no matter what and we looked at the maps and the weather and we decided Casper Wyoming was the place
to go so we drove straight through on on the day before the eclipse got about
three hours of sleep and then drove up on the back side of Mount Casper which is south of Casper Wyoming did the
eclipse got the full eclipse over with and then he said well we're going to take the back roads through the Badlands
and it w traffic won't be as bad yeah we got about 8 Miles and we sat in this
spot for two hours so normally this is this road is about a 4H hour
drive to Denver because we I want to go back through Denver I've never been to Denver and uh we sat there for an hour
and a half and turned around and drove back to the interstate through Casper and before we hit the bad
traffic Gym East of Casper we uh got on state highways and drove through the
Wilds of uh Southwest um Wyoming into
Nebraska we made it to um uh North Plat
Nebraska at 4 in the morning we got up at 9:00 and start and finished driving
home now we have a friend that lives in uh Fort Collins which is about a three
and a half hour drive from Casper where she was yeah we started
driving the next day before she made it home it took her 16 hours to go three
and a half hour drive traffic was so bad and people don't believe it's gonna be
that bad but Scott you experienced it as soon as totality saw people we saw
people on the side of the road that had run out of gas yep uh people's cars had
overheated and broke down um you know and it was just uh
there was nothing you could do it's just sit there and wait uh that looks like they're all moving but they're not
they're stopped uh for miles and miles and so that's uh that is a uh a real
frustration especially when you go gosh I could have hung back in Casper a Wyoming and be drinking a nice cold beer
right now you know and that Scott is why we're having a star party the night after and telling
everybody stay don't worry about it have another night nice and right in bort two
looking into bort one skies get up the next morning and have a more pleasurable drive home you know out of there let let
the traffic mitigate so you know it's about 3,000 feet above sea level um it's
the highest point around um we're gonna have a good time it's gonna you know as long as today when I speaking at the
library and she said oh good it's clear today we can do some and we did some some looking I said that's all well and
good it can be cloudy every day from now until April the 8th as long as April the
8th is not cloudy I'm happy it can be cloudy for the next whatever talk about
the weather just a little bit uh you know we studied uh quite a bit we had
quite you know of course we knew that this Eclipse was coming for quite some time and there is a website called
eclipso file and eclipso file collects weather data for like 20 years okay on
on any given day and uh uh so you can go search it and see areas that are clearer
most of the time than other places uh you know and so uh it turns out that
southern Texas if you're going to be observing this eclipse in the United States has the best odds for Clear
weather still not a guarantee you know of clear weather but um the best odds so
the farther south you go the better it is you know better it is you know but again statistics tell it gets even
better but statistics tell you that they can't predict the future they can only tell you what the average for the past
very true and hopefully somewhere in the United States people get to see the eclipse and
you know I don't I don't wish clouds on anyone that day I'm not gonna you know that's like that's like being in the
newspaper business and wanting somebody's hoping for a good car wreck or a house fire yeah what if it's your
house or your parents you know in a car wreck you never wish for that right so uh yeah you don't we don't want we want
everybody to have a clear day that day one thing that I could add Kent is that the most beautiful darkest Eclipse I've
ever seen in my life was totally clouded out it was March the 7th 1970 in Halifax
Nova Scotia and there was this layer of stratus clouds covering the sky we saw
the great shadow of the moon coming in and during totality it was so dark I
couldn't see my fingers in front of me it was just almost black and I'll never
forget that so because the cloud cover caused it to be even darker the cloud
cover made it even darker I hope it's clear this time but uh I'm prepared if
it's cloudy to see a very dark dark Eclipse but where we were in in in
Wyoming uh Fred espenak was like 15 miles 10 miles north of us and you know
the last 10 or 15 minutes of the eclipse he got clouded out we could see the clouds yeah so so so tell the audience
who Fred espenak is um what Mr Mr eclipse or
Eclipse yeah he's AA scientista scientist y go ahead for his Eclipse
yeah yeah world famous for his Eclipse chasing and uh he's actually been on on our programs before but uh uh he is uh
one busy guy right now uh preparing for this Eclipse so and I think I can't
remember how many eclips uh David Levy do you know how many he's he's uh
he's seen I know that uh he lives in he now lives in Arizona um I think out by
portal but uh he's seen he's seen a lot he has seen a lot dozens dozens yeah
that's right okay so here he's he's got a wikip there's a Wikipedia page on him
it says he's attended more than 20 eclipses but who knows how current that is
right um you know one thing I want have been talking to people about and CLP Brandon was here just a few minutes ago
that I went to the eclipse with and Casper we were so tied up trying to take
pictures that we literally have barely looked at since that we're both committing to just sitting there and
enjoying the eclipse enjoying totality and trying not to be caught up in
documenting every every moment of something that yeah you know I I see
people go to sporting events and they don't see their kids play live they they put their camera up
in front of their pa face and take pictures and videotape and it's cool right then but
they're never going to see it again and you know you can make pictures or you
can make memories and I'm going to try and make memories with this one you know four and a half minutes and enjoy it
with my wife and my friends there around me and my new you know crowd of friends as well but I I want to try and make
memories you know and yeah I get some pictures but but not have it be about
the pictures Scott can't you do both in four minutes maybe but two
minutes two minutes and 20 seconds or whatever we got in Casper that went really quick and you know yeah I was
more worried about every eclipse last is only a short eclipse and never I was
worried you know and go wow that was really long I was getting I was getting bored yeah that that's not gonna happen
that do not happen but I I just want to I want to enjoy it the moment right and
not just be hung up and worrying about exposures and focus and all that stuff I
I want to just enjoy it I want to see the Corona and you know and for those people
look where we sit right here in Spring Arkansas we're 98 and a half% eclipsed right and I have friends that going oh
that's good enough I'm like no no it's not good enough you know 98 99% 99 and a
half percent you know I saw somebody on Facebook a few weeks ago say that totality is like having a 10day all
expense paid trip to Disney World for you and your family
and you get to stay in the castle you get to go to the front of every line all the food everything's free 10 days and
99 and a half is like loading up in the van with four screaming kids and your wife driving straight through the Disney
World pulling in the parking lot getting out stretching your legs getting back in
the van and saying well we've been to Disney World kids and going back home that is almost
totality but but it's cuz you were at you were at Disney world right you were
really close to Disney World but totality is Disney right yeah it is cool
when that Corona appears K always comes up with an even better analogy of what it's like to that not not mine I saw it
on Facebook but I'm I immediately said okay it's hard at the speech today there
was some some teenagers there and and they had seen an eclipse in 2017 and
they they said you can't explain what it is the emotional impact yeah it's too
much it's it is is emotion overload it is yeah it is y so anyway Crossroads of
the eclipses star expedition to totality is what we're calling this one so let's talk about let's talk about uh arrival
times uh what's you know walk walk us through this event so um gates are going
to open on Friday the 5th uh at noon um
so we're not letting anybody in uh after dark uh if the sky is 75% clear um
because it's a star party and we're going to enforce white light regulations so uh you'll have to park and walk if
you come in late and if you're camping um you know we want you there at least an hour before Sunset so you can get in
and get set up and and an hour is probably cutting it close but at least get you in and
um uh it's going to be you know a pretty laid-back Affair we're going to have speakers we may have some speakers on
Saturday afternoon uh certainly we got three or four speakers on Sunday afternoon with doid being I think the
keynote speaker uh I don't remember what time we've set yet but uh there's gonna be a food trailer there we're gonna have
restrooms it's dry camping dry camping no water there's no unless of course if
you want to bring a filter and drink out of the stock Pond there which you can do
with Filter I would do it with Filter but bring your water bring your food
when you get close stop at the last gas station and fill up your gas tank
because you want to have gas when you leave um you can bring you know small generators no open frame
generators um you know those big loud ones uh to provide your power um there's
little cell service uh we'll have a St link with an eem emergency phone number
we're going to provide to everybody so if somebody needs to contact somebody at the site they can call that number and
get a uh uh get a message to them we'll have somebody with that phone 24 hours a
day answering it even middle of the night and middle of the day but we're really encouraging people to have a star
party you know and I've talked to a number of people and they are all coming for a star party uh there's there's one
couple has bringing their kids has no astronomy experience but they're excited
to come and be around astronomers for the weekend they were just excited as could be so everybody that's coming is
going to be astronomers and uh we have room for trailers uh motor homes um
tents people are camping in their own Vehicles you know have a bed in the back of their van whatever so it's it's going
to be a uh you know I know we have one like a 3 for
this how do you sign up for this event it's really easy you go to explor scientific.com and search just put in
the word Crossroads and the page comes up I'll make sure that's right I'm sitting here
in the office so you could also go to explor scientific.com if you just type in the search bar type in the word
Crossroads and the first thing that comes up is Crossroads of the eclipses Expeditions it's
$599 that's not per person that's per vehicle with three people possible in
the vehicle so you know if you got you and two friends who want to come say I
want to take John Johnson who's joined us and uh Chuck Allen we can all pile
into a vehicle and for $600 we get Friday night Saturday night Sunday night Monday night okay so that's four nights
that's only and an eclipse and an eclipse that's right for
$50 a night go find that anywhere else it's a
heck of a deal now if John just comes by himself John's going to have to pay $600
so you know JN should find some people to share the load and split the gas
with and we did say camping but there are absolutely no trees for hammocks yes
there's you you you can bring a hammock and use and lay it on the ground and lay
on it or you could spread it um in in the the mesk trees and use it as a shade
canopy because there's no shade either you know not not mosquite those are not
mosqu what are they we're 40 miles too far south for mosquite what is it in
that area um Mountain Laurel oh Mountain Laurel don't eat the red berries on the mountain laurel either they are very
toxic yeah so you know um it's been very dry one thing we're concerned about and
I sent a message out to everybody who had registered yesterday they had like six inches of rain last year when they
should have like uh 13 12 or 13 Ines it's extremely dry and so uh no open
campfires you can have a cooking stove on a stable surface not on the ground um
for the smokers they have to smoke inside a vehicle or a tent um and you
know I start thinking okay what if a fire breaks out so I'm asking people that have them to bring their little one or two gallon pump up sprayers because
you know if a fire does break out there's not going to be a fire department there we're have to be our
own fire department and uh so we do have First Aid on site we've got a couple of
uh Wilderness trained um outdoor First Responders who
are going to be there Katherine is one of them um who are volunteering to provide you know first aid service
obviously uh um we're not capable of you know major
best first a is don't get hurt yeah best first AE is don't get hurt but do not get hurt splinters and bandages and cuts
and things like that and sure you know um helicopters can land there we're going to leave have leave an open spot
up on top for a helicopter to land because you know if you get hurt bad
we're you're G to get flown out right your insurance will fly you out into San
Antonio uh but I I I just can't stress enough traffic is going to be bad if you're coming you might as well just
stay Monday night relax don't go through the stress you know John where were you at
for the eclipse John Johnson okay may yeah I am well I uh for the 2017 one was
in a little town called steer Nebraska which is in the Southeast corner of the State uh right on the
center line uh I was the Bill Nye for Steiner bill was over at beatric and
they got clouded out but we had clear skies and it was awesome yeah how bad
was traffic I stayed at a bed and breakfast there was a bed and breakfast believe it or not in this little town it used to be
uh where the nuns they had a poal school so uh we stayed over until Tuesday and
we didn't have any traffic problems yep that's the way way to do it
absolutely so you know there's plenty of room it's on an old Runway and we just
uh Katherine is currently assigning uh sites because we asked we sent a survey to everybody who who's
coming you know what are you camping in so we're trying to put people in spots where they'll where they're fit and
Katherine how big are the SES that you're putting together they're 40 feet wide 40 feet wide and between 30 and 50
feet deep depending upon generous how much the mountain laurel has encroached on the dirt Runway so you know we're uh
we're not packing in like sardines you're GNA have plenty of room around you to set up and spread out and not
feel like you're in a RV park with a trailer that's 18 feet away from you
right right all right well that's great so uh again uh you can go to you can
either uh search for the crossroads event itself on our site at explor
scientific.com or you can just do explor scientific.com for eclipse and it'll put
you right on to the uh to the homepage uh for all the Clips products and uh and
the event itself so hope you can make it um it's going to be a lot of fun and I
don't know I'm predicting clear skies so let's hope let's hope all right guys
thank you thank you all right so um let's see we've got uh our next speaker
is going to be Caesar brolo Caesar is uh down in Buenos Aries
Argentina and I know that he was out uh hopefully earlier getting some images
but it might still be clear there now so let's see what uh what Caesar has to say
here hi guys hi GSP friends it's a pleasure share with the
audience um again well tonight I don't have I don't
have uh live image um because it's a stormy weather um earlier earlier um I
had in the forecast that the idea that I
in Buenos syis well the conjunction of the verbs
in the past that never appears is that say we we had enfor forecast
the the situation uh tot totally free of
clouds between the 7 o' and now but the
storm that was in the in the forecast
that coming from the south came fastly and stronger that we really we we was uh
having the idea of say okay oh it's a big storm uh but but um I
participate last weekend last Friday for another
virtual um virtual astronomy meeting
Congress in Argentina call Eva um was a pleasure share with my
friends um many many uh people that is
uh astrophysics astronomers amate astronomers and professional
astronomers um I really uh I had the honor to share the
sky the southern Sky um with uh in first of all was my
first time to share image in Spanish in Argentino
because ever ever uh um I speak English
sh in the sky and say okay what's my first my first uh sh the sky you know in
in a because how many three years we are working the here we participate at Le
three or four years I I don't remember how many times because we started the
pandemic time and today is 146 SC and
increasing the number near we started in August of 2020 is when yes it's
incredible and this was my first time in making the same in Spanish um I felt to
say okay it's my language but I everever I I need to to make this in in
English and of course that um that was a a great A great experience
and something that uh like uh my son Austin had a this weekend for for run
his first um Triathlon is the same name in English the triatlon the the the
competence of swimming oh bike ride yes triathon and
yesong yes yes I don't know if it's a it's a what kind of number you know the
war is maybe from Greek asien Greek um and
uh my my college and friend U we was we
had the the the the same weekend to transmit the image
can you believe that this weekend we need to to to
to get all the keep and go to Marvel Plata that's a city at uh three 300
miles from from buenos Ires approximately that is our of is our
biggest H Beach City in Argentina is it where where many many people in January
and February go to the to enjoy the the sunand the the Sun the
sand and you know and the and the Sea um
and fortunatti was so great because when Ides In This Moment had a a lot of
clouds and in Marvel Plata in the another city we have totally beauti
beautiful clear skies um unfortunately unfortunately
tonight I don't have ready a picture that I need process for the next that is
a picture of Austine Austine made a a great picture OFA Karina nebula from the
balcony from the city of Marvel Plata um but is for for I I I tell him
that he need to make a presentation because every is me
but we need young people in the in the global St party um we are young of
course but younger and um well I share the experience I share
the
screen let me see if where I
have um well maybe if here you you're watching the the ah
okay yes because it's the thep
presentation you can see the presentation Scott yes uhhuh okay okay I
we can M mdq Mel Plata marel Plata it's have
something with this Cube something interesting because Q is the the sybol
the chemical sybol for the Plata for for for the in English is plate is is
um you have a gold or you have a uh silver sorry silver not plate silver
marel silver silver is the mineral well and they they need to change the the
code for for erh their own airport
because mdp does existed in the past and they need to use
mdq and this is the name of AA virtual meting that our friends do you remember
the people uh in the in the windy Eclipse um the people from the cities
yes yes yes yes I thought I thought just I thought you you have to yes yes don't
worry don't worry about the the the weather in the clips because we still
alive with a a winter not winter a wind a very wind situation maybe maybe it's normal in in
the eclipse sometimes especially in Patagonia but I I thought I think that
you are having a a great gray weather in in Texas well
and this is our our um really I stopped to work and I just drive and go from
buenosaires to marel Plata I rented an apartment finding an apartment with an
open bcon Scot and say it was I was lucky because how many
possibilities do you have and say okay I need to rent apartment by booking application and say okay but I I I need
open balcony for what to put telescopes the the owner of the of the the owner of
the of the apartment that rent me the the the location tell
me maybe he thought you know the the black the black cases and maybe they say
okay this is a sniper I don't know this is safe
this yes yes every every amateur sters are we we
really we pay ATT the people pay attention in us because say yes yes I
can imagine law enforcement people yeah yes sure in the eclipses is yes
absolutely absolutely um well this is the the telescope we had prepared um we
need to drive a safe but but in the just time we need to go to the apartment we
need to to prepare the telescopes I use
two telescope because it's more safe than on one and um here is Austin in in the
another part of the of the table and this is the the city of of Mel Plata the
problem is that maybe around Mel Plata I have places uh with um less uh light
pollution but the problem is is that you know that I need to rent something you
you don't need if the place is safe or the exist a lot of problems but well we
resolve in this apartment that work very very well um we was ready to to transmit
the sky we have a lot of of uh different object for the southern
hemisphere um for example a unfortunately ER I don't have H
recorders but um the some people send me
for example this is Omega centri the Galaxy from the another people in the in the screen that we show to the people
maybe do do you know the the hamburger Galaxy you know yes is it uh maybe if we
are if we are lucky n n uh Lal surari I
try to to show you from the rooftop a live image of of Omega centuri is
possible to make something live sure because andry sorry Cesar that's not the
hamburger Galaxy that's the alpha Galaxy ah yes for Argentina where Maxi you tell
me something that I you told me the program to to to explain the Argentinian things to the
people alores you have to bring me alores remember that yes yes ah yes yes
I I understood completely because Maxi Maxi is sad because all people that go to the to the to the marel Plata bring
alores that that maybe do remember Scot that alores is something Max explain that is alah hores
it's like a small cake very very oh very tasty uh full of chocolate
I sh a link in the yes yes next time Maxi next time yes we we went to the to
the triathlon in an order to to be a a health condition because you know I I
don't run the theatrum the triathon well this is a um um another
capture of the screen of another people I was uh we was uh what um show in the
tarantula nebula that that many times we watched in in the in this
show and this is this is was interesting some some experiment that we need to
make a game but because um do you remember maybe the beta Cruis and the
red star of um what cruies do you remember Maxi the name of the of the El
Ru or or we call it El Ru
or the redest star in the in the in the
sky and we uh I found something interesting because maybe in the in the
quiet image Scott you you don't see the difference between the red and the blue
but I started to to move the telescope with the hand with a cell phone and you
can see the trays totally totally different a very red and blue Max it to
uh the difference of colors because you have uh instead that the that the ccds
don't have anti blooming the the professional ccds or the the coolant
ccds but you lost the color in a live image and when you move the telescope
you can see the colors you can see the colors that's right yes absolutely it's something that right the smearing of of
the I don't know if it's because it's there for shorter exposure or whatever
but you're absolutely right yes short exposure absolutely because it St Trail
uh photographs even back during film days would show the colors of stars much
better than like a long absolutely that's true as well yes yes and um I I
was happy moving the the telescope and um and of course that we U something
that these guys are friends and say Well when
another our friends in the another part of of the of the meeting say well after this
guy sorry uh sorry
I I um that was very very interesting that um it's like a experiment for for
people for the kids that are interested and it's something easy to to see and
this is captures of the of the center of the event in in the
Patagonia where they they was um making the transmission and here is
is the for example here is all about the group of cities um we make a and this is
well the staff of organization Al Mo
abon Gabriela my friends do remember when we went coming from from the
Patagonia and we talk in the in the in this trip with you Scott and Gabrielle coming
with me the car because we was returning from the from
the special meeting for astronomy in in BMA
pagon and this is a capture of the of the screen with many friends and people
that are really really yes really a great a great staff of physics amateur
astronomers H you know um really really what a great a
great uh an interesting interesting meeting I can
share um in the same
way h no no
sorry let me
okay
hi Maxi get pass ah now yes right SH
now you know that if we don't have problem with sharing screen we are not
in the global St party yeah that's the law of the GSP yes is it's very
important if not prog of the GSP absolutely yes it's a spy or something
different yes absolutely yeah I show you in the in the web page of the of the vaa
you can see now um there are the
Dantes Matias alaga do in physica Gabriela Gonzalez is the is the auor for
the on grait is is a is um many of them work
actually in United States uh you can see you State University univers for
advanced studies um maybe we can contact for next Global St parties called I can
I can contact that I would love that that would be great yes yes go Daniel golom sorry um this is this is an staff
that it's a luxury staff you Maron that explained the pictures while we was was
uh showing to the audience and is a he's research in conet Gabrielle Beno my
friends my Coe keeper Mar Rivas from the planet from the planetary of Bueno ciris
cintos Andre ravo Diego Diego galperin is the is the the master the the the
brain of all of this is is is the man that is a great great amateur astronomer
and specialist in and all about how to explain how to teach astronomy is doctor
in and is is specialized in education but concerned and the group of a cities
the group of the kids the the students of high school students is a he formed
from many many generations of students and this is really great another friend
Pablo Gonzalez Joseph malez is is actually
um um he he work in University autonoma Barcelona Marcelo Alvarez Eno bernardini
a great friend that that I know from his was an an teenager uh Leonardo Ria they
was an excellent an excellent maybe you do you think I I I say okay it's full of excellent
excellent stuff and me um you know this guy
okay and this is uh well a lot of collaborators and and people that work a
lot in in three days uh and really was an an excellent excellent meeting that
we are thinking in make in in in next year of
course and and finally something short that is
a the last um open cluster that we show last Global Star
Party um I I'll show you just I
I recover some exposures that we made in life and uh I make a an an fast um a
fast uh
process well here I'll show you to the audience the where is the the the
cluster do you remember that we had last week this one in a position where was
outside the C the the field because I had the roof the roof of my
balcony covering the part of the sky of thear nebula but
we we could capture this
cluster okay and
I'm going to
show here you have the the process match
of course that is not something perfect it's not I'm not Maxi remember I am
Argentina but I am not Maxi Maxi have a picture that is totally uh how do you
say mindblowing mind blowing yes mindblowing yes yes but for me it's impossible make
things that make some Maxi but I think that that I'm happy with the small
information that I I could capture uh because what was the AO AO self stacking
you know AO stacking um here we have a lot of stars
look the difference between the blue and the red stars
is it very interesting open clusters sometimes are outside the the interest
object in the skies but the science about the open clusters
are very interesting and have a lot of secrets about their their uh gravity
forces that are very interesting to un understand more about about gravity it's
very interesting that I I listen many many times astronomers that work in open
clusters and really is something that that ER is uh something to to know to to
to be uh interested in things well this is my other presentation for tonight
rainy day stormy night in Buenos Iris and uh well this is all for for
tonight well thank you so much uh thank you to the all audience thank you to you
Scott for inviting me and well I'm still enjoying the the show great great thank
you thank you okay all right so our next uh our next speaker uh David is going to be Robert
Reeves and I know that you really enjoy uh all of his knowledge about the moon
how would you rank I mean David you've met many so many astronomers uh how would you rank Robert
Reeves as far as his knowledge of of the Moon with other astronomers that you've
known I would think I would think he's right up there with the best of them I think the person who probably knew more
about the moon than anybody else was Jean shoem maker but Robert is really right up there with it and I think if
Jean here now he would say go for it Robert
well thank you for that uh that comparison that that really really touches my heart because uh I've met
Jean Shoemaker and uh um he's an absolute science hero of mine because he
would get out there and get dirty in the desert in the dirt doing the research
crawling in the holes in the ground so uh he was no armchair um mathematician
type astronomer he actually got out there and dug in the ground to get his evidences and and make his theories so
uh he was a really special person great well okay you've got the
stage all righty well um glad to be here and kind of slow down
and relax the whole day has been supers Sonic like I've been pushing a whole box
full of wet noodles but uh um tonight uh uh we'll um kind of jump back and forth
in time the the whole theme of this thing is uh U the um U changing
perspectives of U how we see things in astronomy and the moon certainly has gone through its um changes in
perception over the years um let me get my screen share going and uh do that
great experiment and uh make sure that this actually goes and
you are now screen sharing boom yes hopefully we got my uh
title slide up there and
uh we'll move on to my first slide which is standard in all of my moon presentations you've seen this slide
again and again over the many times that I've uh been on global star party and
it's a very important piece of information everything we see on the moon was created by either an impact
You're just showing thumbnails right now uhoh nuts um uh let me see how do I how do I get
back out of this um still thumbnails or am I still
thumbnails okay uh okay how do I do this we've done
this before we can get past this
little oh heck how do I do this how do I do this
okay let me go back here
and something is not might want to stop sharing you oh oh oh yeah yeah that's
what I need to take you out I yeah okay I could do okay now let me uh okay now
let me find the rest of everything and
bring no I do not want to start fire capture that was the wrong button push
sorry maybe if you open um one of the of the thumb Nails that's
what I'm that's what I'm doing and now I'm trying to find find of course that is this the same that I said few minutes
ago that it's it's our our mark I have the same problems with this yes
yes I'm totally yes I've run into it too the system is is not so friendly really
okay now do you see Perfect all righty oh Lordy uh I I do not know why
Global star party is the only platform where my zoom does it work right I
really can't answer that question but uh trust me I've done a ton of Zoom present
and it works flawlessly except here yeah well anyway uh we're we work
our way through it with the group expertise uh so I hope you're seeing that uh primary Landscaping process
slide that I was talking about I begin almost all of my lunar presentations with this because this is a very
important piece of information to know about the moon everything we see on the moon through a telescope or by
spacecraft orbiting the Moon was created by only two different processes either the impact of a meteor
asteroid or a comet or the subsequent volcanic modification of the lunar
surface so uh with that little piece of information which uh the realization of
it didn't come until fairly recently in the um time scale of lunar studies um uh
we had Apollo Astronauts on the moon before uh these the two basic truths
were universally accepted by by astronomers and geologists so uh the
perception of how we understood the moon um it's taken a long time to get there
and it's only within our lifetime that uh we have a universal understanding of
how the face of the Moon came about so U pressing on uh come on there we go um
the basic Moon uh let's drop back to Antiquity the moon was perceived by the
Ancients very civilizations to be a God in the sky it wasn't until uh the
Renaissance period where uh great thinkers began to realize that the uh um
the moon was an object in orbit around the Earth um some uh early Greek
mathematicians and astronomers suspected that but uh it wasn't until uh
telescopic astronomy um over 400 years ago when uh uh Galileo first applied the
telescope to the moon and then uh other astronomers followed that uh we accepted
the moon as a separate world but 4 years ago in the crude era of Early Astronomy
uh telescopic astronomy uh the astronomers thought the dark areas on the moon that we see uh create the
caricature of the face of the man and the moon they thought those were actually watery oceans like the
terrestrial oceans on the earth so it took a couple hundred years to sweep
that aside and uh in the meantime um various
uh um astronomers started charting the moon through a telescope the first was
lrus and he applied a whole bunch of different names to the Moon features on the moon uh but um although he was one
of the first to chart the moon his um choice of names didn't stick they
were very politicized uh favoring royalty and um um um people who
sponsored him uh and and various regions uh in Europe which kind of made the
other royalty not too happy so uh his his uh names fell by the wayside fairly
quickly um hus the U polish astronomer um did an excellent job of charting the
Moon uh named um lunar features um in his own
way of doing things but um here we see like cernus crater he has it listed as
monz Etna a mountain the same with Tao mon sin uh they are these are craters
not mountains um so um almost all of havas's names have gone by the wayside
uh around the same time um giovan rioli uh Italian monk U created the system
that we now use for naming the moon um he uh named all of the major dark Mari
areas procellarum embrium serenitas Chisum tranquilatus The Familiar names
the ones around the outside of the the lunar Globe we see here holti mangis imaginist those austral Oriental those
were added later u in the um 19th and early 20th century but um
toward the middle of the Moon just above U Tao crater you notice uh there's
Marin nubium and then go up one more Marin cognitum and above that more
insularum those last two cognitum and insularum were named during our lifetime
indeed since I graduated from high school u cognitum in 1964 insularum in
197 76 that is so recent that I had
bought the house I am living in now in 1967 uh 1976 when Marian solarum was
named and um that particular Mari came about a rather curious way
um um Don wilhelms Got U very famous
lunar geologist uh got tired of Herold mzeri proclaiming that there can only
One Ocean on the moon Oceanus prum so we went out to to rename another portion of
uh prum partition it off and have it named oceanis in solarum uh the ocean of
islands so named because of all the mountain peaks that protrude through this particular area uh Mari area on the
moon but the I um initially approved that but by the time the name came out
in print as it refered back to Marian solarum so heral mazeri still
had his One Ocean on the moon but moving on because this covers almost a 400 year
time span of naming things on the moon
um uh Robert we lost your audio you are and you have muted
yeah the problem with the mute the mute is real close to those arrows that I Advance
with okay we've done that before I'm doing all the tricks tonight well anyway
my U uh reoli 400 years ago not only
named some of the areas that we still recognize on the moon uh the the dark areas and so forth and craters he named
the bright areas on the moon um like uh right in the middle Terra sanus the uh
uh the the the uh land of cleanliness below it um Tera fertil fertilitas the
the land of fertility um these names fell out of favor in the early 1800s we
no longer have separate names for the bright areas on the moon like we did uh
well like we do with the dark areas so uh changing perceptions again on the moon and let's make sure I hit this
button correctly this time um but throughout all this time where where these people were mapping the moon um
maps of the Moon in print look terrible I I don't even recognize this as the
moon and uh I I probably uh I have a a better um geography recognition of the
Moon than anybody but uh uh maps of the Moon from 1002 200 years ago uh they may
as well be an alien Planet so uh getting a little bit closer
uh to uh to what we see here's a picture of Earth shine um the uh Shadow Side of
the Moon illuminated by sunlight reflected off of the earth we see the the regular phase of the moon below the
Crescent but the rest of it is illuminated by light reflected off of
the earth and uh um back in the early Renaissance period um various
astronomers profess that well the Moon is translucent um uh and this is sunlight
shining through it others thought well the face of the moon is phosphorescent and in the shadow side it glows but
nowadays we uh we recognize what it is Leonardo Da Vinci was actually one of the first to deduce that earthshine is
light reflected off of the Earth but his thoughts on it weren't published until the 1700s long after his death so
Galileo gets first crack at a major publication in siderius nunus where
where he analyzed the the situation and correctly deduced that uh Earth shine
was reflected light sunlight off of the earth so uh that's me yes um more
changing perceptions about the moon all of my life until I visited Ying
Whitaker's house in Tucson Arizona a number of years ago uh Whitaker was um
one of the early U people at the lunar planetary laboratory with Gerard Kyper
and he helped create the famous uh kper photographic lunar atst now all of my
moon career if I you could call it that um I have revered the photographic lunar
Atlas put out by Kyper and these people but had never seen one I thought it was
supposed to be this magical thing that had all these marvelous pictures well
this is the first time that I saw it sitting on the floor of uh Whitaker's Moon Room at his home in Tucson and that
dear in the headlights look on my face is my realization that these photos in
this Atlas that I had so revered all of my life were absolute junk compared to
what we do nowadays with our own amateur telescopes from our own backyard using Digital Imaging so U I got brought back
into the 21st century in a hurry uh right then and there so um moving on with changing
perceptions um my my concept of the moon is is is still changing I took this
picture and um July 19th 2018 and uh I know that well because I spent two hours
last night reprocessing this very same photo and
uh going through it just detail by detail getting it right so uh it's a
constant learning process what the Moon looks like what's real what's not and uh
um I could probably spend the rest of my uh my living days going through the Moon pictures I've taken and hand correcting
everything every little blemish and every little um artifact in them but um
the fact that we can do stuff like this from our own backyard is is just absolutely marvelous because these these
pictures like this just blow away what used to be or what was in the uh famous
Kyper lunar Atlas now um progressing up through the Space Age early
1960s uh this was 1965 actually um here we are um the
American space program is finally succeeding in getting spacecraft to the Moon Ranger 8 specifically is what I
will get to in a moment but here we see a shot taken through my telescope of
sabean and Ritter craters in 1964 the big argument amongst uh
professional astronomers and geologists was that saan and Ritter were volcanic
calderas so 1964 that's how late people were still absolutely convinced that
there's Volcan the craters on the moon were created by
volcanism and then we started sending the ranger spacecraft to the moon and started
getting the preliminary first close-ups of the Moon the uh first Ranger went up
in January of 64 and it failed it crashed into the moon without taking a
single picture but Ranger 7 followed that summer and uh was a spectacular
success um we recognize Garrick crater here as the spacecraft drops a lower and
lower broadcasting picture after picture after picture before impact and then finally the final frame just before
impact uh several hundred meters above the Moon the experts look at this and
those who thought the moon surface was hard and with support of spacecraft were convinced that it was those who looked
at this picture and thought the moon's surface was soft billowy dust and swallow up a spacecraft were convinced
that's what it was so uh it really didn't prove much so uh U perceptions
didn't change all that much now here's saan and Ritter again as seen by Ranger 8 you know compare it to the picture
taken from my backyard uh not that much difference but um still it did not prove
one way or another is Saban and riter Volcanic calderas couldn't tell
um more chasing volcanism on the moon Ranger n zoomed up to the moon and early
1965 and U everybody in the United States was able to to watch this if they
cared because NASA broadcast the images live on National Television as Ranger n
got closer and closer and closer to the moon and the this view of alfonsus crater they were searching for signs of
vulcanism in alfonsus now we can clearly see past evidence of volcanism and we'll
jump up to the next photo which was taken with my telescope and very similar
to the Ranger 9 but you notice at the 9:00 3:00 5:30 positions the dark spots
of volcanic ash blown out of volcanic vents so yes volcanism occurred there at
one time but is it still ongoing nope afraid it's not uh chasing another uh
volcanic goose chase now here we are at
1971 the Apollo Landings are well underway we're up to Apollo 16 Apollo 16
landed uh just north of uh discarded crater um in a on that smooth plane
where the little pointer goes uh today we call those KY ples named after the
smooth uh um areas around uh the crater Kaye just west of Mars renatus um but um
the term applies to um any smooth area uh that's been filled in with with
debris and ejector thrown from a basin impact but when they sent Apollo 16 up there they thought this was a volcanic
field uh ancient Lava Beds uh John Young and Charlie Duke set u the uh Apollo 16
Lander down and the first thing John Young saw out of the window rocks lots and lots lots of rocks not volcanic
smooth uh uh lava flows so uh even as late as Apollo 16 they were completely
wrong in the assumptions about lunar geology so uh we we're getting really late in the
astronomy game uh uh just 50 years ago and we still don't understand fully
still didn't fully understand the moon now um another thing that uh
people uh astronomers for centuries crater rays and we see this spray of
rays splashing across the entire southern hemisphere out of out of Tao U crater rays were called a an enigma
wrapped in a riddle and they didn't understand what they were because they didn't uh comprehend that craters were
formed by impacts of the giant explosion that created the crater splattered this
Ray material across the face of the the moon and uh the same with Kepler
crater very distinctive ninja star looking ray pattern or
um well cernus as well but uh we'll go one more picture here's here's Kepler again uh sitting the stage next to
cernus Crater and cernus uh the Ancients used to call it the monarch of the Moon
uh uh here we see the the ray pattern of of uh from cernus splattering uh over a
thousand kilometers across the face of the Moon um only after the impact origin
of craters was finally universally accepted did we understand what the crater rays were uh ejecta blasted out
of this crater out of the craters by by the impacts and then we came to realize
that well every crater doesn't have a ray system because Rays fade in time uh
they're um splashed across the surface draped across the surface and as meteoric impacts continue on and on and
on over the millions of years uh after about a billion years it Gardens the the
surface and erases the race so uh Tao looks pretty now Copernicus looks pretty
now but uh come back with me in about 500 million years and we're not going to see these Rays
[Music] anymore um getting down to the end of it
um other perceptions of the Moon that's changed um straight wall is a very
popular non crater Target on the moon just this linear uh Ridge that it casts
a shadow here as we see it at Sunrise and uh uh later on as the sun is higher
well um this picture here um perpetuating the perception that
straight wall is this imposing sheer Cliff uh artwork from the 19
uh early 1900s uh all the way up to the beginning of the space age uh like this
Chesley bonestell U painting uh depicted straight wall as this imposing straight
drop off cliff well um straight wall isn't necessarily a cliff after all uh
here we see it uh casting a thinner Shadow the Sun is up higher the straight wall is actually um a um not that steep
of a slope uh about 20 25 Dee inclination slope I predict that a
spirited astronaut in the future could Traverse this thing on foot if they're very careful so uh another quick look at
straight wall at Sun set and here we see that slope face fully illuminated by the
Setting Sun so um straight wall is another feature that's gone through a
change of perception over the uh um past recent
decades so um yeah that's over with quick my usual ending slide uh there's
much to love on the moon and I invite everybody to come out and join me on my playground the the Moon is available in
your own backyard it U laughs at light pollution it's a marvelous View and even
the smallest of telescopes and uh all of these features I've been talking about that uh puzzled people for so long and
uh finally came into Focus just in the space age are are right there for you to
observe and enjoy every night so uh I uh invite you to come out and uh play with
the moon with me there great I really enjoyed that I uh your knowledge of the
moon is second to none well thank you very much but uh I would like to show you my
own little map of the Moon which I keep on this is the book that I have all of my poetic
in that I use most and there is a map of the moon on its cover ah is partly based on uh on
the uh craters I identified myself during the 1960s from the SK telescope lunar map
and I just wanted you to see that well welcome to my
world wonderful wonderful okay all right so uh David our next speaker is uh John
Johnson um John is uh the one of the leaders of the uh um
Nebraska star party uh he is uh you know lifelong astronomy Outreach Enthusiast
uh visual Observer um and um has made uh
the Nebraska Star Party what it is today and so I wanted to bring him on to uh
have him talk about the reasons why you might want to go to one of the darkest sites in the whole world which is up in
uh in Nebraska okay take it away right yeah
take it away how's my volume can everybody hear me perfect Perfect okay all right well thank you so much Scott
uh this was a bit of a surprise uh I regret my absence from the global star party for quite some time I
won't go into the details but suffice to say it's been some health issues I've had to deal with but anyway uh Scott
called me at 9:30 this morning and said hey you want to be on tonight so how can I turn that down I of course so I've U
scrambled around I I have a PowerPoint I'll go through some of it I'm sure if
you been on and saw me before is going to be repeat but um it'll refresh your
memories as to who and what and where we are so I guess uh without any further
Ado we'll try it uh is seem like everybody always has a little issue
getting their PowerPoints so I'll what share screen right share screen yeah
bring it up now will it go to full uh you're on the right application
but you take it presentation mode now there you go perfect there we go
let's see if the button works okay it looks like it's working yeah okay just real quick I'll breach
through this as fast as I can uh we're uh a fully registered 501c3 nonprofit
chartered to promote encourage both public and private astronomical observing activities uh we encourage
dark sky friendly outdoor lighting practice in the state of Nebraska and we sponsor an annual star
party at what's called Merit Reservoir actually it's the State Recreation Area up in north central Nebraska which is
about 35 miles Southwest of the small town of Valentine Nebraska uh this year
2024 will be our 31st year of holding the star party uh here's a map of Nebraska as you can see there's
Valentine we'll zoom in there oops too fast back up one here right okay we SLI
that oh right back up one thing's very sensitive I
see okay it wants to bounce on me here I
guess huh there we
go okay uh it's right by uh what's called the samel mckelvin National Force
which is more grasslands Sand Hills grassland than Forest but there's a a
lake there that's called Merit Reservoir here's why we go there and I'm sure many of you have seen this um sensitized
image of what light pollution is done uh in the whole United States uh as you can
see anything uh east of this line which is kind of the western edge of North South
Dakota Nebraska Kansas on down to Texas is almost impossible to find a really
dark sky we'll zoom in what the Nebraska area there uh for reference here's om
Nebraska here's Denver Kansas City down here but as you can see we have this proverbial black
hole in north central Nebraska the reason being of course a very sparse
population there are more cattle in that area than there are humans here's a closeup of that dark
area and x marks the spot that's where we hold the Nebraska Star Party annually
at the near the new moon in either Late July early August uh it's uh incredibly Dark Skies
I heard earlier uh Kent and Katherine talking about where you're going to have your solar star party here in a few
weeks uh I'll beg to say that our site is just as dark or darker up there in
north central Nebraska I'll show you pictures here a little bit later okay we emphasize education we hold an astronomy
beginners field school for all ages we hold two three hour sessions on Monday
Tuesday and Wednesday uh Wednesday we have a full lecture series at the Valentine high school and we also uh
offer a children's program for K through seventh grade uh during that Wednesday
day at the Valentine High School uh the beauty of night sky from there is truly
unbelievable uh pictures obviously don't do it justice but here are a few and
I'll try to give you some idea what it's like
I'll just run through some Milky Way shots I see this thing is acting up um
that's a shot I okay this one was mine I I can't uh say I'm as good as some of
the other presenters on here this one shows you uh this little Loom down in
the lower right there is Valentine 40 miles away just a little tiny Loom and
of course if you're out and you've been in really dark skies and Astro Imaging
I'm sure you know what these greeny streaks are they're they're uh oxygen
three uh you know greenish streamers in the in the night sky almost like natural
Nature's light pollution there for re orientation there's Andromeda of course there's the double cluster in
pereus there's another shot the beautiful Lake this is a a dear friend
that also comes up from Omaha uh nice you know landscape shot there I got
a series that were taken a couple years ago by gentleman by the name of Matt bsky comes out from Chicago he's a
regular uh he obviously you can tell he's very very good at it uh these were
just some incredible views of of what we uh have to offer up there as far as the Milky Way beautiful I mean you can
see clear night to see how dark is the you can see stars you know right down to
the Horizon and the foreground is is what we call our do R it's a an area paved off
with asphalt I suppose about maybe half or third or half a size of a football
field makes it very convenient to set up the big Scopes which I'll show you some pictures of it later
there there's an example of a of those of you've never been out to a really
major star party uh what you have to look through um uh you get some
incredible views through these giant dobsonian
telescopes and of course it's all about looking at Deep Sky there's a a closeup of or a little bit closer to view of
Andromeda and 110 and 32 now we do get a lot of natural light
pollution different times of the year up there um of course aurora borealis but
uh makes for some colorful Imaging but we also have to contend with
nature in other ways too uh fortunately this particular Cloud was way off to the
east so it wasn't going to be any problem for us that particular night you know we're in the the Westerly flows up
there so if you're looking at Clouds building up the East you're pretty confident they're not going to back up on you and give you any problems
however we do it experience some weather and this was one night uh it was just
really incredible this was shot again from this Matt bski um believe it or not all that stuff
moved around to the west and south of us that's looking Northwest right there you
know sun was setting you see a lightning bolt over there and and so if you're
into shooting awesome cloud pictures there's another reason to come up to the star party yeah incredible it is okay here's
another set setup scene uh it becomes just one big party I mean you say star
party yeah you have there look at the stars but this event is a friendly
family oriented um this becomes a part you people pitch their tents right on
this this mod off area it's all uh Nebraska gaming Parks Manny's property
uh they're kind enough to come out the big mowers and mow off all the grass uh
and the only thing you got to watch out for is the prickly peirs they have these little prickly peirs so don't uh don't
bend down and and kneel down on it or make sure at least you look before you
do they'll even stick to the bottom of like tennis shoes rubber sols but
usually they don't go through but just little thing to be cautious of I never experienced this problem well it you
typically I don't yeah but but they they're out there just gota be careful out there
okay uh but you can see that just uh all sizes
uh we haven't seen this particular scope for a couple years but they come down
from I think it's a 36 come down from Rochester um Minnesota you know our bulk
of the people that do show up and we now in recent years we we're getting up to
375 380 we haven't hit 400 uh in recent times but we have in the past I think
that was a yeah 36 in there another shot of the the the asphalt area we call Doo
although it's more than just do sonans end up sending up that the gentleman here on the left he he made this all
himself with a you know his own CNC machine Machining you see The Rocker
very low to the ground I think it was a 22 inch scope there
beautiful and of course as Falls you get some amazing silhouettes of the sky and
the big Scopes all set up to start viewing but it isn't all just viewing we
also have a a cater that comes and and that sets up and and provides an absolutely delicious meal on Sundays
Mondays Tuesdays and Thursday nights and nobody goes away hungry from those
meals U a lot of people a lot of a lot of fun
just meeting greeting renewing acquaintances as those of you that are a
regular tende is the star parties that's that's probably half of it is just getting together and and and
reacquainting meeting people you haven't seen for a while now so John there's there's
someone named Astro Mo watching on YouTube and uh they say if you do go to
Nebraska Star Party make sure you visit us at the campside Village uh known as Dandan Dandan now
that I didn't ask dandans all I didn't ask him and I I don't know if I got that
picture in but uh um astroo I guess that
must be uh Michael Merson he and this this is the gentleman started his name
is is Louis dorland so that's where we get doryland from and they've combined
their tents our the Omaha isical Society President John Larsson usually shows up
he and a friend they usually bring an RV but we just becomes one big camp area
and uh so we uh we have
discussions uh especially if it's a little cloudy um you know Libations flow
and we just have a wonderful time but it was all this gentleman right here uh Louis dorland is where we got the name
and uh there I happen to be my years truly there however and it it can really get
crazy uh if it's really a night not to observe we get break out the musical
instruments and uh we party hardy uh
singing songs playing the instruments so as I said it's it's an allaround party
atmosphere up there U and I said very friendly very very good time had by all
you soon okay uh just another little thing as that was announced in 2022 just
shortly after star party uh working with the international dark sky Association which I forgot to change that it's now
called International dark or Dark Skies International they just took the first
three words and changed them around and with a lot of help and collaboration from Nebraska gaming parks and Nebraska
tourism commission the big announcement that this area Merit Reservoir is now a
international dark sky Park and it was uh the 200th dark sky Park registered or
or designated in the world so that has added a lot of uh interest and
excitement not only for the star party but for just Astro or destination
tourism uh for the area up there to go see truly truly dark sky Okay so
specifics about this coming year uh the dates this year are going to be July 28th through August
2nd uh We've kept the registration fees the same $60 per adult uh if you
register early we up at the 75 after July 1st because it's always just kind of a scramble to get everybody in then
and with children we emphasize um bringing kids you're off summer break
break so we keep children's prices still at $15 as I said before catered meal Sunday
Monday Tuesday and Thursdays uh beginner Field School those
Monday Tuesday and Wednesday and and Wednesday we go to the high school in town which is has a nice beautiful air
conditioned Auditorium it's always a nice midweek break if it's been a hot week to go in and listen to some talks
and and enjoy we have a astrophotography contest uh Imaging uh and swap meets and just a
a good day to relax and enjoy Valentine team this year okay I missed one there
see I was scrambling I didn't get them all 31st year here's our t-shirt design this year uh our oh guy that makes this
up uh he's quite quite quite an imagination and um so we were kicking
around this whole idea just imagine what it could be like and he came up with this it was put on our brochures we
were a little late getting uh mailing out the brochures this year uh they have been mailed out now the website is now
open for online registration I'll show that here in a second uh but this will be and blazing
on the uh commemorative t-shirt for this year and uh if you haven't caught it
already look at the bottom what it says there that's the complete address for
Meritt res there you go Meritt Nebraska USA
Earth Soul system Ryan signis arm Milky Way galaxy ask for us nerd types yeah
anyway uh we got a couple great speakers uh or lined up so far we'll probably
have one more we're still working with uh a gentleman by the name of James schwitzer he's got his PhD in
astrophysics University of Chicago uh he was International in creation the center
of astrophysical research in anarctica uh which uh he's been there what four or
which found you found with him twice at the South Pole um we're not sure exactly
what his topic is but I understand he's an engaging speaker and and we'll
have a very informative talk another one U Michael and Kendra sson uh and wife
team they also run what's called Branch Stoke Observatory a nonprofit Observatory down closer to Lincoln
Nebraska the capital of Lincoln and their members of the prair Asic Club will discuss uh they they involved with
What's called the national Eclipse ballooning project this year so they'll be presenting their results um from
their hopefully successful uh total solar eclipse ballooning
project uh okay here's as I said that's the website Nebraska starp
party.org you can go there and you can download if you prefer mailing into
registration or uh you can register online uh walking through all the the
various steps that are needed to register uh we also have a Facebook page
if you're interested in following us on Space Facebook I just course s Nebraska
start as I said earlier early registration will be open July 1st uh so
reg early take advantage of the discounted price [Music]
um and or you can mail it in as I said okay short and sweet but any questions
comments I guess I can revert back comments um let's
see astroo says come for the star stay for
the music yep if it's cloudy there's always live music
um and that food tent reminds me of stalhane so there okay and then there was the
mention about dandia which is how did he get the name dandia
well uh that gentleman in that with the beard uh he's been a fix just like me
with the Omaha Astronomical Society for many years uh he served at president one
time as but then uh he is a a consumate
camper he brings up his Minivan and pitches his tent right there and he's been doing that for years um and
then couple other I mentioned this Mike Merson and John Larsson and kind of
thrown in with him and and they set up a whole kind of tent city there
uh and it's just uh south of the area that I was describing and had pictures
of of the the asphalt area which is really makes it nice now you doo we just
nicknamed it Doo because that's otherwise I mean there's you know people that will pull out in the on the general
field if they can fly flight enough spot to uh load or unload a big telescope
because as most of you know the the dobsonian type telescopes need a a flat
surface uh to work correctly uh contrary to maybe somebody having a you know a
tripod and everything and we do we do have another area we have a lot of property up there as those of you whove
been there and uh we try to concentrate the observing area around this do R in
that area uh but uh we are getting more and more Astro imagers very serious
Astro imagers that and we've kind of designated a separate area on the property where they can set up and they
can you know have whatever lighting they need to run their laptop computers and
and equipment to do their Imaging so it um so I try to accommodate everybody um
and and as I said we're we're not as strict with light pollution is a lot of places but uh we do encourage you to
follow the guidelines we put out in our uh program guide and everything that to
avoid you know turning your headlights on of course most modern cars now you have no choice so typically what we do
is we set up an area as far away as possible from the observing actual
observing field where you can park your cars especially if you have one of those that you know blazes light as soon as
you unlock it or open the door but um uh but like I said and then you know if
there's any kind of emergency or anybody has a medical issue then all bets are
off and we do whatever we required to do to help everybody so sure a great place
to go to and uh very accommodating and some of the nicest people in the world are up there so thank you thanks very
much John thanks and appreciate it uh I know that there's people in our audience that want to go so yeah yeah more than
merer we we have more room I don't think we've ever what a limit the limit would
probably be if just getting everybody fed in the evening meal so uh but
we we manage that pretty well too and so yeah I I been doing it I think
I'm as I said I've made all but three them them in those 31 years plan on getting up there this summer I also just
another plug I I plan on doing uh Eclipse chasing too but I'm going down in your neck of the woods I'm gonna try
to get down to around Russellville um to observe the eclipse um so hopefully I
can find a a back Highway down there
I yeah well good luck to you so good luck with everybody on the eclipse yeah
all right looking Fork you thank you all right thank you okay good
night well that was nice to have John on he's been uh running that star party for
quite some time now so did you ever go to a Nebraska Star Party David did you
lecture up there I believe I did once I'm not 100% sure D I'm tring early
early on and there was the first few years uh I I just was not that involved
basically because I I didn't have a vacation I'd switched jobs and and you
know working for a company you may take you two or three years to build up enough uh time I thought we might have
had you up there in one of those early years um oh what was some of the I know we had the Brian skip up once from
L we might have had you up there yeah sounds like a place I'd love to go
back to you're always welcome yes yep okay all right well thanks again
okay so David our um our uh next to the final speaker is marchel Suza down in
Brazil uh and uh he is getting ready I think he's getting ready for the 16th
IMA conference which is uh had uh astronauts and all kinds of really
interesting uh speakers down there I don't uh David did you go to Brazil to
uh speak at one of those conferen that was that was one of my most memorable conferences yeah and there was a special
thing there while I was doing my lecture on sl9 um I was showing the slides with the
music yeah and the translator who was running the slideshow looked at me and he interrupted me and he said I think
you want to turn it around and look at the uh Auditorium and I turned around and what
the kids were doing was that they were shining their lights to the music and
dancing a as the as the music went on and I
don't think I've ever been so so moved by one of my own presentations helped
Along by those kids with their flashlights and uh I ended up that in the ending the last page of my
autobiography I mentioned that as one of the most important events of my
life wonderful wonderful well uh marello
is also uh the editor of Sky Up Magazine uh Sky up uh was started uh with David
and Wendy Levy and David of course puts in an article on every issue as do I and
uh marello thank you very much for coming on to the 146th Global star party
so thank you very much You' got the stage thank you so
much thank you very much for the invitation and Dr David Le be sure that
a very special moment for us also one everybody don't forget these moments
during the event yes thank you very much for coming I hope soon you will be with
us again I I would love to go back it is a fabulous place and uh uh for everyone
who has not been to Brazil it's definitely a place you have to go to at least once so
yeah I I wish share my screen
here on a moment because sometimes this
computer don't do what I want but today I think that everything will work fine
can you see look like it's going to looks like it's going to start sharing here in a
moment let's give it a couple of seconds can I
see not yet oh no moment here maybe it's loading
oh maybe yeah yes this
the last week we had the opportunity to organize an event for almost 9 students
that visited Thea that's a very special place here
and is my daughter was there also because she studed in the school
and we had the opportunity to show the Sun for these kids and talk about
astronomy for them it again ever it is a
very special moment here and the opportunity to to talk about astronomy
for kids then you can see you have a lot of kids that participate these are all the
teachers involved you have four classes is off
students on the S grades and
the now we organizing events with students with
frequency here preparing
for the international meeting that we organized in in
April and this was an opportunity to show them talk with then about
astronomy and I also had the opportunity to participate in a national
conference about science and technology for Social
Development and during this events this with the Tha in the middle he is
responsible for the popularization of Science in Brazil he's a representative of the
ministry of science for popularization of Science in Brazil
and I had the opportunity to talk to make a short presentation about
astronomy very short because each one of us had the opportunity to talk a little
about the S presenting suggestions for the global uh National plan about the
popularization of astronomy and science here in Brazil you this conference that
organized here this was the first part of this conference H that they
organizing in different Brazilian regions and then in June we are going to
have a national uh final meeting to
write the plan for the next years here in Brazil for the plan for the
popularization of science here this was a great opportunity for me to
be involved and now I will talk about
tithes because I I show something that happened here in Brazil that is
different from other places in the world I think so I think that this only
happens here in Brazil and what you have here in schools I think that is the same
in many place of the world because when they talk about Tides generally they
talk only about the gravitational influence from the Moon and the
Sun that they say that is responsible for the ties and you know we know that
this is not the H explanation for ties
this explains part of the what what happens but but you
have to consider also that the Moon and the Earth the op
around the the moon up around the Earth but the center of gravity of the system
earth and moon is not in the center of the earth is located in the Earth but
not in the center of the earth then when the moon is rotating around the the the
Earth we the moon the Earth also
rotates and this we we have the we as we
are in a system that is rotating we have for us we need to create a natural force
that call you have the C centrifugal effect then this H when we consider the
centrifugal effect for in Earth and the influence of the gravitational field from the Moon and
from the Sun then we can explains what the
ties here you know I I show I this for when I make presentation about Tides
here in Brazil because ER students generally in their books have ever the
moon the Sun and the Earth in the same
Direction then they I don't know why they don't ask why you don't have
eclipse every month because they are in the same direction now we know
that the the moon has the Orit of the moon has almost
five degrees of inclination
and from the equator of from sorry from
the eclipse that is the pl that J of the
Earth around the Sun and this is the correct image and this is what I said here in this dot in
the blue dot here is the position where
we have the the AIS where is the center
of gravity between the Moon and the Earth as a two
system and then when the here I I'm only
showing the in this image the moon the earth and the C the effect of this
rotation of the Earth when the the Moon is rotating around in his and here we
see in the white is the effect of the gravitational
field of the moon on the different parts of the Earth the
blue is the effect of the centri centrifugal effect from the earth
rotating when the moon is rotating around the earth and this is in this
direction and here have the results between the two Force that is the green
one then this explain we have tides in the two sides of the
earth we have this side in the direction of the moon and the other side H the
here the effects of the centri centrifugal force is stronger than the
effects the gravitational fuds the effect of gravitational
fi uh from of the Moon then have TI in two sides and and
to understand what's happening with we need to consider also the influence of
the gravitational H field of the Sun and in the two sides of the earth and the
difference between the gravitational field in one side and the other side of the Earth the same what happens during
from the Moon and the the tides are stronger when you have new moon and
the full moon because the Moon is in Direction almost in direction of the sun
then they sum the the first the influence of the Sun and the
Moon and here is when you have the
Cresent the first quarter and last quarter here the they are not so strong
the ti are not so strong because they are in different directions the Moon and
the Sun and here what happens in a normal
place we have four tides during the day generally we having more this because 60
hours and 15 minutes more or less for each tide then we have the low tidde and
high tides during today and they also depends on the
latitudes in the Earth on the earth near the equator are stronger and when you go
in direction of the poles they are not so intense only if you have a bay
because one of the highest tides in the
world is happens in Canada in a bay in Canada
I saw also in here in Brazil in Mar a place when I arrived there is a is a bay
and when I arrive you have all the boats there 6 hours after all the
boats don't I didn't see water because the BS Bo were on the
soil with no water now you know that in Portuguese I don't know how to say the
correct word in English but for in Portuguese isia and you have
the tides of the full moon and the new moon and quadrature for
the the first quarter last I don't know it's correct sorry I don't know it's
correct word but this are something that I think that's important about the tides
what is the tides why you have high have the
waterers more water in Direction in Opp position and the less water in other
position H what happens is this that in this picture here
because the gravitational fields the force gravitational force is
in Direction uh to the Moon then you
have here a component of this for that is represented here by the white
arrow that represent that the water move in this direction then we have the water
moving in this direction then you have the high TI and here is the position
have the low tides is a movement of the water in One Direction caused by the
effects that I showed before for the three years that the movement of the
syst and Earth Moon and the gravitational difference of gravitational field of the Moon and the
Sun in the different parts of the Earth but here is what I like to show
here is uh the highest tide in the world is more than 33
M that in na Bay in Canada that
is here I don't know if you here show the tights
here the [Laughter]
disappear some finger yeah so I saw something like
this Brazil but here you have some think that is fantastic that you call
pora that's indigenous name for a effect caused by the tides in the Amazon
River and the rivers near Amazon here you see the Amazon
River here is a position where the the region where the river meets the
Atlantic Ocean and during the all the full moon and New Moon the
water from the ocean enter in in the direction of the
river and move and have now the current in the
different direction the influence of the this Tides but during the
eox they are more intense than the water of the ocean
moves more than 800 kilomet in the direction of the river
crossing the river then this movement you have you have
waves big waves these waves H they surf in these
waves and this wave have duration almost of one hour or more than one hour
then have is someone that suff one wave
during almost 40 minutes is some is this what
happens you have a wave that moves in info to the
river that looks fun and we have a lot of people that
s doing stff in this we have waves with four met four met
wow and and they goes inside the r and
moves almost 800 kilometers during the EG nox I hear a lot of people
surfing I show now only for a short minute a
video uh let me see if if you work showing the
this only [Music] moment let's me
see okay uh I'll share the
screen now okay
fantastic I think that's here
I don't know if you can can you see yes all right what happens oh wow look
at this the Perpetual wave this
incredible movie almost 800 kilometers wow inside the river these
are water yeah it very
cool during almost 40 minutes in this in this
wave man yeah you can perfect your surfing technique this way that's for sure these
are Paradise for the people that like surf yeah when I was young I used to
Surf we never had a wave like that and this is something that we
happen we have here in Brazil m and it is associated with the
influence of the gravitational fields of the Sun the moon and the movement of the
system earth and moon and now we are organiz we are
preparing to organize a festival of as tourism before our events because
between ER in April for April 2nd to 8th it is the
international dark sky week that is proposed by dark sky and we
coordinate here the dark sky in the state of janir here in Brazil and we created here
the that is the of the Stars something like this in English I
don't know the road of the stars and we have also
we visited more than 10 seats and
we organize here informations about the best place in this C to see the stars in
a dark sky and they having many place here that
separate and our international meeting that happen from April 25 27
we inviting everyone to come here to participate to be very welcome here in
brail here is the link 150th anniversary of uh of yes 150 years yes the the the
person was responsible for the beginning of for develop astronomy here in our
city in the beginnings of the 20 Century he published observations from our city
here in the bulletin of the Astronomical Society of
France in he was the last person in the world that saw by naked eye the har
Comet that announced that the register of the last observation was made for he
made from compus here now and this is the sky app magazine and now
we are receiving articles for the next magazine next edition of the magazine
everyone that wants to send contributions will be very welcome thank you very much Scott thank
you very much Dr David Le ever is a great pleasure to be with
you thank you yeah thank you so much that's
wonderful okay um well we have uh a special
presentation uh to follow up on um last Global star party we had um uh part one
of Einstein's life um and uh we will finish off uh this star party with uh
part two uh it's about a half hour presentation uh but uh this focuses on
Einstein's uh um belief that the world could be
disarmed and uh you know he was uh indeed a pacifist um but
um on any account uh you know uh his role with the uh played out with the
atomic bomb and atomic energy today is still um still something of controversy
and uh but also hopefully uh the source of clean fuel
for the um and power for the future so uh I
will go straight away to the uh to the video and I hope you enjoy
it just arrived in 1930 he called called for full disarmament suggested that if
2% of the military refused to serve disarmament would
follow each visit was a platform for internationalism socialism civil rights
and disarmament the public tolerated it all a legend was growing around
him there was the story he asked chaplain what does all this agulation
mean chaplain replied nothing
but Einstein had learned how to use his public images with
effect behind the scenes academic politics were at play when he left in
1932 Caltech Oxford in England Princeton were all courting him with permanent
appointments Einstein was undecided events were soon to force the
issue the leaders of Europe had debated disarmament for three years hoping to
spend less on arms and relieve the depression it was our last chance for the League of
Nations we believe that Progressive disarmament will not only relieve the
burdens now pressing so heavily upon the backs of our taxpayers a progressive
disarmament will make you will make us more
secure in International
Peace Einstein was outraged this is not a comedy it is the
greatest tragedy of modern times despite the cap and bells and buffoonery we
should be standing on rooftops denouncing this as a travesty if you want peace we shall ask
the workers to refuse to manufacture and transport military weapons and to refuse
to serve in the military governments could go on talking from now to Doomsday we must prevent the destruction
of Western Civilization that summer in Berlin saw
the last days of a culture that had bridged the 19th and 20th centuries to those born before the Great
War there was the security of the things from out of their past
the atmosphere of gracious ideas the Civilized ways it seemed Comfort enough against
the [Music]
future the Nazis were now the political force of Germany controlling the streets and
polls that summer Einstein finally agreed to spend part of each year at a new
Institute for research at Princeton when he left for his visit
that year he knew that he was leaving his home forever he called himself a bird of
Passage across the Atlantic the Nazis came to power Einstein's house in Kut
searched confiscated his colleagues in the Prussian Academy for forced his
resignation the events demonstrated to Einstein the failure of international
order now there was a conflict in his mind could a pacifist commit himself to a military struggle against
fascism at a 54th birthday dinner in New York he had spoken English for the first
time in public a dear friend I was so covered with flow that
is very difficult for me to bring to you my humble work but I do it
in Jerusalem university has particular meaning
now Jews in Europe are being extensively denied access to education and the
professions over the years I have read and heard
much of this sorrow it is not easy to say where the
Western boundaries of Europe are to be found Einstein made one more trip to
England that summer he went into seclusion the Nazis put a price on his head in London he made a last speech to
Europeans before he left for Princeton his person Al despair for mankind was apparent I am glad that you have me
given the opportunity of expressing to you here my
deep sense of gratitude as a man as a
good European and as a Jew I should like to give expression to
an idea which occurred to me recently man like every other animal is
passive by Nature unless goed by circumstance he scarcely takes the
trouble to reflect upon his condition and tends to behave as mechanically as an
automaton as a child and a young man I passed through such a phase one thought only of the
trivialities of one's personal existence strove to talk and act like one's
fellow there are forces at work which seek to destroy the European Heritage of
Freedom tolerance and human dignity fascism nationalism militarism and
communism while constituting diverse political institutions all lead to the
subjugation and enslavement of the individual by the state and put an end
to tolerance and personal Liberty individualism recognized basis of
European civilization is more seriously threatened by the military organization
of countries than anything else but war is not a parlor game to be
played according to definite rules in London Einstein also had spoken
about places Even in our modern society where the creative mind could pursue pure thinking the institute for advanced
studies became that place for the remainder of his life here he continued a lonely search for a unified field
Theory one which would link the physics of particles with the physics of space a
Hallmark of Newtonian particle theories was action at a distance however this
did not suit Einstein because theories of action at a distance he felt could not describe the RO experience of daily
life because occurrences in the world in which we live occur not by action at a distance but by touch and since in
Einstein's view science is a development of pre-scientific thought then the best
scientific theory is a field Theory however neither special nor
general relativity Theory removed the disturbing dualism of particle and field
that is both particles and Fields existed side by side so it was natural that Einstein's next step after the
general relativity theory was to attempt formulating a unified field Theory which
could describe the electromagnetic and the gravitational field and out of which particles would emerge as knots in
SpaceTime later in his life one of Einstein's colleagues asked him why he wasted his talents looking for a unified
field Theory after all by the late 1940s it was known that there were more Fields than just the gravitational field and
the electromagnetic field T which Einstein answered well it's good for somebody like me to look for a theory of
that type because a younger man has to establish his reputation and cannot afford the time and besides perhaps we
can learn something new from just this even restricted line of research but he was still tied to the
political realities of American Science refugees from fascism like Einstein
himself were pouring in by 1940 100
scientists in isolationist America Einstein spoke out for the oppressed of
Europe the effect upon All Nations and not least upon the Germans of the fate
of these innocent people so Mal maliciously persecuted
must not be underestimated to leave these victims to
their misery would be a heavy flow to all those who believe in human
solidarity and would encourage Soul who believe only in force and oppression and
who act accordingly the refugee scientists could not easily find jobs funding had dried
up in the depression but with the argument that science should be used for social engineering not for proving
relativity big physics and Technology still attracted some money such as the Palomar
telescope scientists like milikin lobbied hard arguing that the Natural Sciences would pay off in the
end frustrated milikan approached the Army for help Einstein who was actively
opposing Franco in Spain was sympathetic there was a common cause and argument
the defeat of the Nazis the New York World's Fair of 1939
was a showcase for the promise of Science and Technology although the government had not yet seen the light the public was
fascinated with the world of the future the possibility of atomic
power Einstein was there to dedicate the Jewish Pavilion appealing again for aid
for refugees a war was beginning in Europe
drama of equal magnitude was taking place in a laboratory in Berlin Han and stman in Berlin had
discovered that the splitting of the atom released a tremendous energy an atomic bomb might be
possible their findings were rushed into print in early 1939 what happened then is one of the
first Legends of the atomic age here reenacted after the war by the scientists themselves the news was
rushed to a physics conference in
Washington Leo sard another Refugee brought the information personally to
Einstein along with a draft letter to the president they told Roosevelt that an atomic bomb was feasible for both the
United States and Hitler link should be built between the government and American physics they wrote the
government should fund a research
effort this was Ein Stein's last direct contact with the Manhattan Project the
building of the bomb the irony was bitter for Einstein the pacifist 6,000
was invested by the government initially by 1945 nearly 2 billion the effort
involved the physics Community as a whole including the elite theorists who had come to America as refugees during
the war he worked with the Navy on explosives he was approached about a
problem relevant to the bomb that when he sought more information the files indicate that his history
prevented him being given every confidence a security risk a new and
Powerful relationship between science and government was
emerging the development of Science and creative activities requires Freedom
independence of thought from the restrictions of authoritarian and social
prejudices theoretically there is no Authority whose decisions and statements
can claim to be the truth is that time forever past when aroused by his inner
freedom and the independence of his thinking and his work the scientist had the opportunity of enlightening and
enriching the lives of his fellow human beings as he not forgotten about his
responsibility and dignity as a scientist
as the possibility of the bomb became a reality in early 1945 scientists at Los alos and Oakridge
began to express doubts about its uses in June the Fran report warned that if
the bomb were used on Japan International control afterwards would be impossible an arms race inevitably
would follow but the bomb was dropped national interests prevailed the atomic bomb is too
dangerous to be loose in a lawless world that is why Great Britain Canada and the
United States who have the secret of its production do not intend to reveal the
secret until means have been found to control the bomb so as to protect ourselves and the rest of the world from
the danger of total Destruction I shall ask Congress to cooperate to the end that his production
and use be controlled and that his power be made an over whelming influence
toward World Peace many scientists Saw World Peace as springing from a free
exchange of information the old ideal of international science they began a
program of public education and political lobbying the proposed atomic legislation
would have put nuclear development at the hands of the military under rigid security the war department will always
have a vital interest in the use of atomic energy for military purposes despite the efforts of the military
represented by General Gro head of the Manhattan Project the scientists helped defeat the bill a compromise the McAn
bill created a civilian atomic energy commission composed of government the scientists and the military a new group
was formed the emergency Committee of atomic scientists with Einstein as chairman once again they appealed for
direct International control of atomic power and launched a program of public education
Einstein was more militant than others in the winter of 1945 he had outlined what was to be his position over the
coming years world government and supranational authority over the
military he argued for freedom of scientific research and in the Atlantic Monthly article remains skeptical of the
potential of atomic energy to give any estimate of when atomic energy can be
applied to constructive purposes is impossible
what now is known is only how to use a fairly large quantity of uranium the use
of quantities sufficiently small to operate say in a car or an airplane is
as yet impossible so though the release of atomic energy can be and no doubt will
be a great bound to mankind that may not be for some
time an American Plan was proposed for for international control of materials
but the United States to retain Vital Information on atomic bombs Einstein's committee rejected it
and as the Russians were considering the plan the first post-war test at bikini took
place now the Soviets vetoed the plan Cold War politics had taken over the
crusade of the scientists had failed in Washington there was
increasing concern for secrecy America clashed with the Soviet Union over Eastern Europe there was Espionage
rumors of Espionage the house on American Activities Committee investigated American loyalties The
Truman loyalty oath was created for civil servants scientists and government work included and now so much research
was for the government scientists were seen as weak links in atomic Secrets
over 150,000 were investigated now Einstein saw another
imperative academic freedom with universal order should come Universal
freedom on this confidence and loyalty would flourish but the existence of the
bomb created dangers in the hearts of men he said he made one of his rare public
appearances at the 1947 Princeton commencement Truman was the guest
speaker Universal training represents the most democratic the most economic IAL and the most effective method of
maintaining the military strength we need it is the only way that such strength can be achieved without
imposing a ruinous burden on our economy through the maintenance of a large
standing Armed Force we must remember above
all that these young men would be training in order not to win a war but
in order to PR EV one the Cold War escalated Soviet and American Challenge
and response Einstein wrote political rhetoric is taking on a life of its
own the emergency Committee of atomic scientists linked to One World movements
lost credibility in the public eye magic of the atomic scientist was
tarnished for some Elite scientists such as Neil's bore International ideals were
preserved through UNESCO with its programs for International Development of atomic
power science flourished but the context had changed before the war Government
funding of basic research was obtained only with difficulty a few million dollar now the linked government and
Military interests provided a billion dollars for research and development it was the payoff sought in the
1930s there was a certain inevitability in this in the fall of 1949 the public
learned that there were other bombs in the [Music] world in January 1950 the announcement
was made that America would develop a super bomb the
hbomb Einstein had been ill a heart problem dating from
1928 he had continued his work toward a unified field Theory alone
but he had not lived as a recluse at Princeton since 1945 he had worked actively for his ideals now Einstein was
offered a new medium to speak to the public a televised response to the hbomb
decision had been organized by Elena Roosevelt at 70 he spoke with the same
idealism as in his youth the am race between the USA and
USSR originally supposed to be a preventive measure assumes hysterical
character on both sides the means to mass destruction are perfected with
feverish he behind the respective walls of
secrecy the hydrogen bomb appears on the public Horizon as a probably attainable
goal its accelerated development has been sented
if successful radioactive poisoning of the atmosphere and hence an annihilation of
any life on Earth has been brought within the range of technical
possibilities the ghostlike character of this development lies in it in its
apparently compulsory Trend every step appears as an unavoidable con quence of
the preceding one in the end there be more and more clearly General
an is there any way out of this impass created by man
himself all of us and particularly those who are responsible for the attitude of
the US and the ussf should realize that we may have
vanquished an external enemy but have been incapable of getting rid of the
mentality created by War it is to achieve peace as long as
every single action is taken with a possible future conflict in
view the leading point of view of all political action should therefore be
what can we do to bring about a peaceful coexistence and even a loyal cooperation
of the Nations the first problem is to do away
with mutual fear and distress Solen renunciation of violence
not only with respect to means of mass destruction is undoubtedly
necessary in the last analysis every kind of peace
cooperation among men is primarily based on Mutual TR and only secondly on
institutions like courts of justice and police this holds form naations as well
as for individuals and the basis of trust is loyal give and
take Einstein brought his ideals to America he took only what he needed out
of the American dream a simple house on Mercy Street was never a barrier to the outside
world over the years the public somehow accepted two Einstein one was the
advocate of unpopular causes the other here offered the presidency of Israel
the most famous living
scientist in 1954 an amateur astronomer Z gazari
visited Einstein his 9-year-old son made these home movies Einstein told him this
story when I was young I wanted a telescope but I've never been able to
buy one because then it would become commercialized so gazari built one for
him Einstein admired gazari because he could not himself build one with his own
hands yet on his work was built theories of the universe
one of his last public appearances was to dedicate the Albert Einstein Medical College in New
York I am grateful that yiba university has honored Me by using my name in
connection with the new College of Medicine there is a shortage of
physicians in this country and there are many young people able and
eager to study medicine who under present circumstances are deprived of
the opportunity to do so shortly before his old friend from
the burn days besso had died Einstein wrote this death signifies
nothing for us believing physicists the distinction between past present and
future is only an illusion even if a stubborn one would
you this way please that's it and over here
[Music]
thank [Music]
for
[Music]
well I hope all of you enjoyed that um I know I did and uh I certainly did yeah
it's it's going to be something to I think uh watch once again here so but uh
David thank you for a fabulous uh theme to uh Global star party and um we will
reconvene next Tuesday uh for the 147th Global star party as we get closer and
closer to to the 150th we'll have to make it something really special uh
young nicolina um uh will be appearing on the
next Global star party as well so uh she just announced in chat that she's got 55
detections of a asteroids under her belt right now so um so I think that that's
fabulous and U uh we will have her on um I also
wanted to mention that uh yesterday you know I I was looking for a uh a good
video of uh of astronaut Stafford who was on Gemini six and uh Apollo 10 and
um was one of the first astronauts to um uh get close to the moon and um you know
so I think that uh at age 93 lived a good long life and and U you know he had
a a bunch of uh great adventures in Exploration
so is there anything that you'd like to close with David just to say that I'm really
looking forward to next week I am looking forward to seeing you in person at the eclipse Y and uh likewise and
we'll see you next week okay all right thank thank you thank you and thanks to
all of our audience for watching and tuning in so you guys have a uh a great
night and keep looking
[Music]
up
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music] how do these features in the Solar Corona this atmosphere of the Sun how do
those change sometimes they escape from the Sun sometimes they go back towards the Sun and that region is hard to um
really study and we're going to get this little Glimpse from Earth my name is
Laura pacis and I am the principal investigator for the eclipse Mega Movie 2024 project so what's really unique
about the eclipse especially one like the one coming up is that it's covering a very large path on land and that means
a lot of observers can be viewing it over an extended period of time in this
case we are able to take images along that entire path in ways that you can't
just do from one location on Earth or one location in space and that gives us this really unique data set in 2017 we
made a movie of all the images this time we know how to make the movie more
Dynamic and we're going to have more Expos ures meaning that we'll be able to see more of the features in the Solar
Chona than we were before and although it's maybe not what one might think in
terms of a movie in terms of people and a plot but for us solar physicists it is
very exciting to see even the smallest changes in the corona at the time scale we're going to [Music]
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did you know that you can participate in solar eclipse science with NASA NASA's citizen science projects are
collaborations between scientists and members of the public no matter your citizenship the general public is best
suited for these kinds of projects because they will be on the ground over the whole path and that really can be
kind of a force multiplier for how many observations you can take several
volunteer science projects are gearing up for the 2024 total solar eclipse that you can join there are many Mysteries
that come about during a total solar eclipse ranging from the part of the Sun that we can very rarely see the Corona
and the birth of the solar wind really close to the surface of the Sun as well
as the effects on Earth using telescopes and cameras that are safe for viewing the sun volunteer scientists across
North America will capture images of the total solar eclipse scientists will study these images in detail tracking
how plumes of solar material move through the sun's atmosphere but be careful without proper tools and
techniques you can damage your eyes and your camera amateur or ham radio
operators will send radio messages to one another during the eclipse to see how changes in the upper atmosphere
distort radio signals the opportunity to conduct research and participate in
citizen science during the upcoming total solar eclipse is really special
the sun is always changing so we don't know what it's going to be doing right at that time as the moon blocks one
portion of the sun it can make other portions easier to see working with local scientists at an observatory in
Southern California participants will observe magnetic hotpots on the Sun as the moon passes over them revealing
details details they normally can't detect we have a public who's interested in different aspects of heliophysics and
can actually contribute to our science and so we really invite people to participate and we need all Hands-On
deck for that follow du NASA science on X and Facebook to see how you can get
involved in NASA citizen
science
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