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[Music] [Applause] [Music]
NASA's Fair me gam Space Telescope watches the sky for Gamay the highest energy form of light these detections
help scientists learn more about the most powerful events in the cosmos however a recent absence of
gamerade detection may have been just as informative cosmic rays are small particles like protons
and helium nuclei traveling at nearly the speed of light it takes a lot of energy to accelerate them to that speed
so scientists assume they're driven by powerful events like exploding Stars called supern
noi because cosmic rays are charged particles they interact with magnetic fields as they travel these interactions
mean they don't follow a straight line from their sources and so scientists can't trace where they came from but
when cosmic rays smash into other particles they produce gamma rays and gamma rays do travel to us
straight from their sources fmy has even detected such Gamay from Supernova
remnants which are thousands of years old if Supernova and their remnants
really are a key source of cosmic rays then calculations tell astronomers how many gamma ray fmy should detect but so
far the telescope hasn't seen enough Gamay from these sources [Music]
scientists had suspected this was because the supern noi were too far away or observations began too late well
after Peak production in May 2023 fairy observed
the most luminous nearby Supernova scene since the mission launched 15 years ago
it captured data from the first few weeks of the explosion when scientists anticipated the greatest production of
cosmic rays but fmy didn't see any games from the explosion
scientists aren't yet sure what this means for the link between cosmic rays and supern noi there's still a lot of
work left to do but fy's non- detection has added a very important new piece to
this high energy
[Music] puzzle well hello everyone this is Scott
Roberts and my co-host David Levy is on with us uh tonight and we took a fairly
long Hiatus uh we had a wonderful total eclipse of the sun we had also we went
we got back we rested a couple of days and then we headed off to the Northeast astronomy Forum uh where uh actually um
uh several of the people that uh are on or at least a couple of the people that were on that are on tonight were
actually there at NE you could have met him in person if you'd been there um
David Ley gave a spectacular talk uh and
I had many people uh run up to me and and uh exclaim how amazing the his talk
was and so uh unfortunately I was there working the booth at the same time so I
couldn't be there but uh I did see him on the big screen because they did project it out into the uh vendor area
which was kind of cool and uh so anyways uh but sadly David's got uh he's got
more than a cough he he got uh he somehow got Co during this event so he's
but he's uh taking it like a trooper and he's here tonight so David thanks for
coming on uh we're not going to make you talk too much because it's uh it's tough
right now well thank you Scotty I sound a lot worse than I feel I'm feeling a
lot better good I enjoyed the eclipse immensely it was probably a mistake for
me to go to neif but when I got back from NE I was I came back with Co and I was diagnosed
only yesterday but I tested positive for that so I'm just going to do the quotation
and then be be be done okay it's a very short
I hope I don't give any of you co through the it won't happen through uh the the global star party that that's
one thing I can guarantee you know you won't get Co for many of us okay anyway anyway it was so good
that need to see some old friends like Dave Vio and it's good to be back here and see Adrian and Don and some of the
other good friends that I've missed a lot any anyway my quotation today is a
limeric it was printed was written by Reginal Butler in punch magazine in
1923 and then it was eventually copied into the Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and it's
called relativity there was a young lady named bra whose speed was Far faster than
light she set out one day in a relative way and returned home the previous night
and that's it for today thank you wonderful wonderful all right well that's great um
uh we will uh um we will move along here
and uh David you get better soon I will try okay all
right uh our next speaker is um none other than and uh David AER David is um
uh a um member of uh uh not not just a
member he's pretty much embodies the spirit of astronomy magazine that's can
I just say that I mean you know can we just uh you know he is the spiritual Force the leader of that amazing
magazine which has been going on for many decades and um uh he's also one of
the organizers of uh the staris event that's coming up um and um uh he uh he
also established a an event in Tucson Arizona uh which uh I hope to attend one
day um but uh they have a star party out there and uh uh you know so uh and I
know that David Levy uh speaks at that event so it would be a lot of fun for me to be there uh you know hoping that all
of you are doing your best to stay healthy and uh but at the same time
getting out there because these events are starting to open up and um so it's
um it's a privilege I think at any time to be uh with uh your peers your family
of astronomers uh you know there's a there's a special feeling about that you
know going through the whole pandemic experience when we were in lockdown
and we couldn't go to such events because they they were literally cancelled um uh but you know feeling
that uh camaraderie um and that uh energy that
uh comes uh when you're out there with your friends and uh and with people that
you admire uh in the astronomy world and you know seeing them in person uh uh you
know speaking and engaging with the audience is really really cool so um and
David AER was right there he was uh with his uh his partner in crime uh behind
the astronomy magazine desk and um uh it was uh he was actually right next to us
so that was very very nice and uh so hopefully in future NE that we can
arrange that same kind of sit situation but uh David thanks for coming on tonight now you're going to talk about
um I guess it's a am I right it's a pair of galaxies that uh an interacting pair
of galaxies this is called Kenan system after the uh prominent Ohio State
astronomer Philip Canan who was around for many years um he passed away in the
year 2000 but he was a prominent professor and Galaxy researcher among other things and uh as We Know there are
many many many interesting interacting Galaxy systems in the sky despite the
fact that everything is you know the universe is expanding and of course the universal expansion is accelerating over
time as we know for a generation now from Dark Energy but of course on small
scales gravity winds Isaac Newton is still around for us and we have a lot of interaction between galaxies that are in
close proximity to each other and so this is another good example as we work
our way through many many many many deep Sky objects to talk about in the future
here um another good example of an interacting Galaxy pair which can be
observed in backyard telescopes yeah very cool okay well I'll let you have the stage here thank you Scott and I
sure I certainly hope that we'll be close together as well at Future kns um because we were close enough to uh joke
around a lot and cause a lot of trouble which is always good but we behaved ourselves for the most part didn't we
yeah next time I'm bringing spitballs though oh dear God okay well we're really gonna have to behave ourselves
then and and uh we'll have fun at starmus of course in the future as well
so I'm going to share my screen and I'm G to share the right thing on my screen
and then I'm going to see if I can kick out here and start a
slideshow and can you see the prominence speaking of interacting galaxies can you
see the prominent Galaxy merger Centaurus a in the wonderful southern hemisphere Sky yes we can looks very
nice good well don't pay attention to that it has nothing to do with anything okay forget that you even saw that never
mind it's just a placeholder but it is a great object and as we've talked about from time to time maybe long long long
after we're gone um from our planet here independent of not taking care of the
planet but five or six billion years from now the Milky Way in Andromeda will
merge and possibly produce something like we see in centor a so this may be a
vision of our future but for now we will talk about Canan system as I mentioned um and this
is a pair of interacting galaxies in Ursa Major we're still working through the through the northern sky uh it
consists of NGC 5216 and 5218 and also appears on our old friend
Halton Arps catalog as ARP 104 um so it has multiple designations
in various cataloges and was studied by Philip Canan um who was a longtime
professor as I mentioned of astronomy at the Ohio the Ohio State University um
and he collaborated of course a lot with among other projects during his long career with William W Morgan um and
produc produced of course a very important work the Morgan Canan classification system of Stellar Spectra
so that's a very important thing in the history of 20th century AST astrophysics
and if you want to know how old our friend Michael bit is I don't think he's watching right now so I'm gonna go ahead
and say this Michael had Philip Canan as a professor in Ohio State wow so wow
yeah yep that's all so time rolls on huh um NGC 5216 is a Bard spiral and NGC
5218 is a lenticular is this lens shaped um if you will between Spirals and
ellipticals with some attributes of each the galaxies what makes it really interesting here and and you can image
this of course uh with uh reasonably large telescopes and sophisticated
backyard uh photography uh very long bridge of luminous material
that's about 22,000 light years long that arcs between the two because tidle
forces of course as galaxies pass each other will draw Material off just as
tidal forces in the Milky Way uh this is why we we're not in the middle of an open star cluster after 4.6 billion
years because all of the Suns sisters have been scattered through tidal forces
as we orbit the galactic center so these are relatively faint galaxies
visually of about 12th and 14th magnitude uh but somewhat easier to
image um then observe uh the system was discovered by William hersel our old friend in
1790 and in 1935 Canan began to study this system
among his many objects of Interest which makes the fact that Michael was one of
his students at Ohio State even more impressed but Michael actually attended Ohio State
University a short time after the 1930s just seeing if you're paying
attention here okay I hope Michael isn't watching now
okay um so here is this what's what's I should call him and get him to watch the
yikes he may never speak to me for a while yeah um so this is it's this is
near a a juncture of one Edge now of Ron Stan's really nice interstellarum deep
Sky Atlas but over here near near the left Edge you can see the two galaxies sort of sitting on top of each other
Canon system in Northern Ursa Major so we're still working our way through here
and obviously Ursa Major has a lot of other faint galaxies in its
boundaries and here you go you can see The Bard spiral on the upper left and
the lenticular Galaxy on the lower well just right of Center there are lots of
background galaxies as well in this image really nice image taken from Mount Lemon by Adam block and you can see that
long tidal Arc between the two galaxies and extending to the right of the
lenticular there so this is really an interesting typical of many many interacting systems but uh Canan was
really transfixed on studying this and did a lot of work on Galaxy Dynamics
with the system so that's it Canan system again
I'm pleading with Astro imagers you know and observers who shoot the same 150
objects over and over and over and over and over and over to shoot some go out and shoot some different things because
the sky has thousands of interesting targets to go out and and observe and
image uh unfortunately it may not have quite as many faint targets as we used
to have a generation ago because the upcoming issue of astronomy does a full
dive uh as we do once in a while into what we can do about light pollution
which is not a whole lot right now unfortunately but of course as we learn
to aim photons downward toward the ground as they do in some places see
Tucson and Flagstaff for example rather than blasting them Skyward maybe will
save a lot of money and uh stop writing such large checks to energy companies
and not uh pollute the sky so much so that we have a dark sky perhaps sometime
in the future so that's what the next uh upcoming issue astronomy is all about
and again Scott I think mentioned it briefly here but we're on the cusp now that we've had an eclipse and we've had
NE now the third in this Trio of chaos here is going to Slovakia next week um
and Michael and I actually uh along with a couple of other folks will be doing an astrophotography school we'll be doing a
star party at a a at a castle that is mostly from the 12th century but
actually dates back to the 9th century uh called Devon Castle outside of bros
laava um and thanks to Scott for organizing and putting together a large
part of that uh event and it's a shame Scott that you'll be busy with things and we'll be there but we'll get you
there to the next staris okay and I will be hosting staris on stage and speaking
about galaxies and hanging out with our Board of interesting folks who were on
the uh board of directors of starmus and we've added two this year who we're really proud of one of them is Jane
Goodall you know you can't mention too many Sciences where one person is
essentially the the science the leader in the science well maybe Jane Goodall in primatology and studying chimpanzees
is that um for that area of science she's a terrific person of course and
the other one is Jean Michelle jar the French musician who if you look up in the Guinness Book of World Records has
played the largest concerts in history ever and the Very largest one was to a
live crowd of one and a half million people in Moscow in 2007 well we're going to start not to give too much away
with a spectacular concert event that will be open to the public in Bros laava
uh that will also include our pal Brian May and uh that's going to be the way that we're going to kick off staras this
time so we hope that if you don't join us it's a hop skip and a jump from Vienna Austria which is easy to get to
but uh you'll certainly be reading about a lot of incredible talks that will be given there by astronauts and Nobel
Prize winners and other leaders in many Sciences so that's coming up uh next
week already so Scott that's what I have uh
okay okay all right well there's H there are some uh comments and questions um and uh
so uh I asked the audience you know if they had ever if they knew about uh
canan's uh system yeah and basically a
lot you know in our audience anyways they're all like no you know have not one of the
questions is is you know what size telescope would you need to actually observe this and see or could you see
the light Bridge visually and of course it depends critically on how good a sky
you have you know and and how dark it is and of course you need a moonless sky for really good deep Sky observing you
can see some objects that are very challenging that are you know thought to be visible in 16inch telescopes in a
6inch telescope in a really good dark pristine sky for example the atakama
desert in Chile so it depends on the sky that you have but I think for a good
ordinary dark sky in a moonless situation if you had a 10 or a 12inch
reflector you could see this pair of galaxies pretty well now the light bridge is very faint so you have to go
up to a very large Club telescope to see the light Bridge visually but it's much
easier as Adam demonstrated there for us to image you know of course over a long
period so again it critically depends on having a dark sky to push the limits of
deep Sky observing when I first got into this you know the book said you couldn't see the veil nebula in an 8 inch
telescope well I got a C8 when I was 16 years old went out and the first night
it was the middle of the night you know and signis was up and I saw the veil nebula on the first night and you were
not supposed to see it so a lot of what's written about is because your eyes dilate to like what 12 millimeters
or something well that's true and and you know dark dark adaption is important as well but but uh but you know a lot of
what's been written about you know can be off because you know people are not
necessarily looking at ideal situations you know with a dark sky and Etc but I
think a 10 or a 12 in scope in ordinarily good Skies would show this galaxy pair pretty nicely you could see
it in a six or an8 inch scope but it wouldn't knock your socks off right right well I mean just seeing it at all
I think would thrill a lot of us that are into deep Sky you know so uh I mean I'm one of
those nerds that you know you just just a Whisper of a of you know the light
from a distant Galaxy gets me pretty excited so that tells a lot about me
okay so I'm right there with you Scott and I love Imaging and and what you can do as an amateur now Imaging is
astonishing compared to 20 or 10 or 20 years ago it's incredible now what you
can do and the ease with which you could do it you used to have to be in a sort of a servitude slave camp
you know for five years to get be to be good at Imaging now you can go out and
if you drop some coin you know you can and there are people we've never heard of who were Imaging legitimately not
with any AI Tom Foolery who are legitimately Imaging things that are incredible now on on their first few
months of Imaging but like you Scott I'm more of of a visual guy I like those
live photons best striking the eye and seeing the real object as you really see
it as a human being there's something that's pretty special about that as well right because it's you and the you and
the instrument the night sky and that object you know then it's all happening I don't know it's hard to explain it
until you've done it and uh a lot of people here of course are the converted
and um and they know what we're talking about um but um aside you know broaching
the subject of astrophotography probably no magazine has shown more
astrophotographs um over the years than astronomy magazine you know uh when
astronomy first came out um I remember some of the very first issues they it
was like a uh scientific publication you know and and uh and some images but you
know and then later you know there was more uh amazing images that would come
out and it just and now it's like U it's beautiful you know the galleries that
you guys have in the astrophotographers that you guys find you know so I mean
what what can you tell us as far as today's astronomy magazine what does it
take to actually get your images you know in the in the publication itself
and what does it take to get on the front cover that's a good question Scott I was gonna jump in on that because uh I
saw the June issue and I saw some of the images in the June issue and it brought
a real big smile to my face one of our Pals here is is a featured feature
article Astro imager in astronomy magazine here for the first time and I'm
sure not the last time so adri can can talk a little bit about this yeah and
that you know it did help to talk to well to be here in global Star Party to
share the images on global star party and to talk to you about those images um I would say to anyone just be
brave enough to talk to the right people I think a lot of times you we want to
image and we want to show it off to our friends and post online and do things
find a theme for what it is everybody like you've said David everybody images
the rosette nebula and you know everybody images you know in in the
widespace field everybody IM is a certain way the Orion side you know
there's a lot of ha that gets shown and you know the images of our galactic
center to the point where a lot of folks feel like Milky Way season is when the galactic center rises in the Northern
Hemisphere and there's just so much more to that so you set your own theme and
your own Direction and say this is what I want to do this is my view the universe and I want to show it and mine
was I want to include Earth and I want to just show people when I go outside at night this is what I see and I think
it's absolutely beautiful and now I want to present it then you talk to someone like Dave Vier you get your chance to
share it um you know I have to thank uh you know deid who stepped away but um
David Levy yeah anyone who's a hardened astronomer who's been doing it for years
if they look at your work and it moves them you're going to have an opport and then
you have to want the opportunity to share it write an article about it and you have you have to want to share this
work it you know there are a lot of there are a lot of interesting images that have come out and as photographers
have done it for money this is your first time to be an astronomy magazine
okay publication on astronomy okay uh H
how I mean how does that feel to you what what do you what would you well relief for one because it finally came
out and you know despite the fact that here you have a Wolverine and all this
talk about Ohio State yeah you know it astronomy truly brings everyone together
and um it's one of those things that you know we had Global star party we were talking covid and and yet here we all
are together and we've been doing it when we could for I think I have something from three years ago when I
first started doing Global star party so you know it's going on it it feels great
to have those pictures and to be able to show them to people and say look I've
been published and in addition to that one of the pictures and one of the uh places that's bought some of my work
actually has some of it on a billboard on a highway so there's actually a billboard photo somewhere um and I think
I have it somewhere I'll have to find to be like the equivalent of being a musician and hearing your work on the
radio for the first time it is it really is and then there's two things you can do you can say look I made it and then
you can act like a celebrity and ask everyone to buy you drinks or you can say what else am I going to show the
people what else are you a drink can I write about well and I appreciate it we
whatever it is it'll probably be on the Rocks but um you know or just just take
me to the Green Bay Packer game d that's hard to get into so we can talk that
later I've been to 103 of them now we gotta go dude yeah we do yeah and so I
would just say you know keep your vision going and you know threaten to write
more and more you know don't I don't intend to stop at you know well I got
published I can go off and become a bowler now no I I want to continue sharing my vision of the world cool um
the universe with everyone come up with different images that um you know and
and hopefully through the Ohio State Green Bay border there and they get publ again
that's what's important though about getting published in a magazine like astronomy because it gives you the
energy to want to go out and share the knowledge share your passion share the
experience more uh because because uh it's it's not unobtainable okay to to do
this you do have to be good okay and and you are competing against
uh literally some of the world's best astrophotographers um because it's it's
uh it's the place well uh one of the um um listeners here U one of the viewers
said that the magazine used to be called astronomy the most beautiful Magazine on
astronomy right it it was called we we went you know being arm Twisted by the
marketing people to say it's the world's bestselling astronomy magazine which it is but for many years Steve Walter who
founded the magazine yeah he originated the slogan was the world's most
beautiful astronomy magazine that was the original slogan for many years even
after I started there so that that went on and on and on and I think adding to
what Adrien said you know adrianne's passion comes through for what he's
doing in the story that he's written and he has a coherent really wonderful theme
his images may not be limited to this but they're nightscape images that show
beautiful vistas of foregrounds of uh he's shooting them in Michigan primarily
so you know there beautiful Lake foregrounds their lighthouses etc etc etc with great Vistas and showing that
you can get a dark sky where you are there you have to be in the AMA you know so that packaging you know is very
appealing to others who would love to know how you do this stuff Adrien and
and what excites you about it and that's really what it's all about when it comes to one of those
stories um and so you know that's kind of different than what I'm saying you know what my frustration is that most
imagers who are shooting Prime Focus stuff will shoot you know here's another
Orion Nebula shot you know and it's 5% better than the one I sent you six
months ago and it's the 3,755 Orion Nebula that has come into my
inbox in the last two years you know and that's you know my my other point is
that there are and this is what I'm trying to do Scott with talking about these objects there are thousands of
interesting objects out there not objects over and over and over
Adrian gets this you know he's not shooting Prime Focus Orion nebulas but he's shoting interesting stuff that no
one else is really doing in the way that you're doing it where you're doing it and that makes it really interesting to
the readers y yeah anything different always comes sometimes it comes off as
well we don't understand it or it's not the norm a lot of folks will follow the norm they'll want images to look a
certain way in order to be considered good and in some cases not necessarily
again that's where you have to have your own vision and you know what you say is very important now editor and chief your
idea is I'll look at the same image five million times but that one image of
something a little bit different is going to catch your interest you've been at this for a lot of years and I think
you know as more of the um any of the magazines you know you your competitor
whom we shall not name S&T but um and I know there's a couple others but we we
actually hugged the S&T editors at NE by the way it's
okay especially Diana but but even Peter we gave you're watching that we're
talking we're talking about you but and I'll bet you even sky and telescope's like okay with the technology you talked
about David there are so many people that are getting their own versions of
the image and there's nothing wrong with that you get your own version of the image and it looks a lot like an image
that you may have seen published that's like that's great um where are we going with our images is one thing and who are
you sending your images to you know David you've always supported a lot of the slightly different from every image
the eclipse image for instance behind me is that's the time where you probably
don't really want to be looking at the Clips a lot of people got the corona
this year and they did a really great job with the tech that they did for me I
had taken a couple of different shots everything else was very similar but
that was one of them and a wider Field view a lot of the Widefield view images
of the eclipses as nice as they may look they kind of look like broad daylight to me and one of the things I wanted to do
and was to share that let's see if I can capture what it's really like to be
there including the darkness that's there and that color that you get as the
eclipse is almost done or almost start you know almost starting you know those
two you get those two bookends where you get that weird color I want it to capture that it's like I I want it I
want people to look at the image and you know really feel like they're there I don't really you know a beautiful
fantasy image that could come from some planet we haven't inhabited or terraformed yet those are nice and it's
great and it's great for your Instagram feeds and you know look at me I'm a great
photographer um I try not to look at my Photography in terms of look at me I'm a
great photographer I instead would want you to look at the photography and say I
want to visit that place or I I didn't know this was in Michigan and there are some Michigan imagers that you know
attempt that do the same thing there's some that work on the west side of the state and you know they really they do
some work there so and so it's not just me if there's a a group let me let me
say a couple of things here okay there's there's some comments coming over U and then we're we're just going to give you
the stage because we're running into your time right now Andrew corl is watching actually a number of people are
watching and I'll I'll touch base on on most of you here but Adrian he says this
and this is true okay uh and all of us have noticed this he says Adrien has
evolved over the years on global star party and is committed and commitment is really important okay Mike weasner says
image what you love I developed a love of asteroids while in college in the
1960s he says today I image uh asteroids named for people that I know and places
I've been the challenge is that most of those are faint so and there are very
very few amateurs who are Imaging asteroids that's a really valuable thing
for Mike to be doing yeah that's right that's right all right well thank you uh
Mr ier and uh we'll see you next time and uh thank you very much Mr ier and
you'll be getting some more articles for me I'm gonna we're gonna come up with uh some things here over the next uh couple
just don't make the images 5% better than they were last time same place no yeah we're gonna work
on that and although you say maybe you don't aspire to be a great imager you are a great imager yeah apprciate that y
I appreciate it I I do own that and I say okay great imager now go get
something else you know go share with the world what your passion is that's right we don't yeah we don't look at it
like you know but no it's what got me there well a lot of passion for what I
do and and in some ways kind of ignoring the status quo of uh WID Escape you know
those are Landscapes you know more photography stuff no there's something
that I saw and that you know that I'm sharing with everyone else and I appreciate appreciate you David and
Scott and you know de is gone D you know the it's good to get this out and and
like they said grow well it helps to get the practice to be able to explain well
here's what I'm doing and why so Absol really appreciate it keep on rocking man
you're doing the right thing oh I will absolutely and I will but I will keep wearing this Wolverine stuff wherever
that's okay that's all right that's yeah if I graduated 97 from U ofm and I wish
I had used astronomy I was an engineer but I wish astronomy was uh the topic
maybe there's not too late to go back maybe I will never too late never too late
yep okay all right let's give you the stage and um all right and I'll go ahead
and share my screen suppose I could just share
um so this is the this is the um teaser
I think what I'll do is I'll let people read the article um if you have
astronomy mag azine um chasing nightscapes and uh so that was the theme
that I wanted to use chasing nightscapes because that's exactly it and this
picture I'll go ahead and we'll go with two pages but that's it um this picture
was very important I may have this picture um let's see I can't get
to let yeah here we go so
so so here let see if I can get to that picture and talk about it so I keep a
gallery of everything that I take pictures of you know good bad or
indifferent and a lot of you have seen these images on global star party and
I'll stop at these three to um
illustrate kind of a point that I was making talking with uh David David Aker and uh Scott
um when I when you take images like this where you barely see a Milky Way you see
Orion you see the Rocks here you try and get detail all images are always
transition images to your next one the goal here was I was out here it was
hazy this represents exactly what I saw which was I saw Ryan it was dark enough
over the lake this is um basic this is uh not quite Lake hiron
it's Saga Bay but leads out the lake hiron in Michigan so this is an example
of an image where I simply wanted to share with you all what I saw looking up
and the camera gets a little more info you know here's the uh here's m44 over
here and then this one another hazy night I went out you know this
view will look familiar to you if you look at the uh magazine and the images
that were chosen it's the same view but on a much clearer night somewhere in
here where there's a plane you may not look at this and say well this isn't you know is this a great image some part of
my passion goes for enjoying the night sky itself um great
image isn't always the goal sometimes I'm here to document what what can I get
with my camera and might I be able to use that later now there's a comment in there somewhere and I think I tried to
blow that up and then this image doesn't look like much at all it was super
cloudy and I'm standing right at the base of this light Tower and there's the
moon and I got the moon with some detail in it and if you
look at this image there's some mistakes here where I tried to layer in the Light
Tower and the branches over here but the goal was can I shoot what I can see even
in bad conditions you know where the Moon is just barely shining through the
um you barely shining through the sky and the you know it's sitting next to
the tower can I take you to that weird night where I decided to drive a couple
hours look up at the tower oh there's the moon images like these are what
stretch your allow your imagination to catch up with what you can
photograph you and I would I would dare anybody to try this on a cloudy night
where the Moon is peeking through see if you can get an image like this where you've got an object that you're near
you've got an object like the moon and make it look the way it would look to
your eyes those are the sort of things that drive me you know you can we can take pictures
of the moon now can we take pictures of the Moon standing still no tripod you
know snapping the photo um if I look at image or if I look at detail here I can
see yeah this was me holding the camera and taking a shot at the moon when it
was 99% because you see the craters down here so this was likely a waning
crescent um and can you get enough sharpness
to you know to the point where you can see this formation you can see some of the other
formations in in the Mari here so it's uh you challenge yourself when you image
a lot of us have our processes down that do our Imaging and you know we like our process
processes we use them um but we you know
how can we stretch what we what it is that we're doing and so when I chasing nightscapes
yeah we let's look at that one more time because this is a non-descript image but you've got
Taurus the head of Orion here you've got a planet now I believe this was Mars at
the time when I took this and I you had this Halo going around the moon but you
also had the glow of the Moon and so one thing I've been continuously working on
this is Gemini over here I believe one thing I've been continuously working on is star you've got stars and you've got
the moon shooting those together most nights
scapers wait on you know your your Milky Way Photography like this and even at a
location like this where there's a lot of light pollution when I first started doing
this I was taught how to get rid of the light pollution and I decided Well no this stuff is really here so I keep it I
keep it there I want it to be a part of it if you read the magazine you'll see this and you'll see that there's a bit
of a there's a mistake so there's always room for improvement even in images that
you know that make magazines you can look at him and say can I make these trees a little more stationary can I
make that Lighthouse a little less blurry and
then let's see this one of these
images I'll click on this image even though um you know there may be someone
watching along who left a comment about this image that it was rather plain and
um you know of it is is amazing right and there
plain I see as peaceful yeah or composition is lacking was the uh
comment that came about this and and it those sort of comments come out you know
those you'd never let things like that stop you because there's a purpose if
long as there's a purpose behind what you're shooting and that purpose lead
leads to you know every image you take leads to a different image later on you
go to that local again you know this I think this these were more images so I
was still there you know and it was getting darker and so trying is trying
different things nothing wrong with it and um you know so what I'll do is I'll see
we'll come back so we came back to the lighthouse and look at these images is
now we knew the area we said hey we were over here what would it be like to be on
the beach and that's where we found Rising Milky Way We and you take a number of
different shots in different locations and you try different things like this is a mosaic of an 85
millimeter lens about 30 seconds each you know with um yeah each of these
shots had these settings right here F28 30 seconds and I took about nine or 10 of them so your detail in the Milky Way
if that ever Pops in um and it just might not quite but yeah your detail
becomes good here so what's my next step get some get a good Lighthouse that's a little you may not see it on your screen
but it is a little out of focus so there's always something always something to try and the one one thing
about landscape nightscape photography you get to try again A lot of times if
you're just aiming at a particular object Ro Fuki for instance a lot of you
great images out there do Roa Fuki that's your target you got to put
the hours in you got to put the time because in order to get the detail that you're looking for you need to you need
to image for enough time a lot of images that I began you I began you doing doing
4minute images um real quick I'll talk about this why is this so faint there
was a really bad time period where there was Smoke in 2023 in the areas and it didn't stop me
from shooting so you know if I can tell you anything don't let
local stop you from doing what you can and then when you do get out to your you know your Dark
Skies you can compare the same Imaging techniques the same time spent the same
you know your same process and then you see the difference in how many stars you
have sometimes you leave them in sometimes you overdo your you look and you say I kind of overdid my uh
sharpening process so we'll you know we'll we'll tone that down and you know
then you look and you say sometimes you have an opportunity to try and catch things that you normally don't see in
the sky sky is great oh but there's you know there's all sorts of things here
it's always a challenge to you know you do your best to smooth things out um you
want to and in the end you just want to capture what you see and not everything has to be perfect
you know even I work long to try and get a accurate Rising Moon off of the lake
shot and this is its close close as I've gotten so there's always more to shoot for your imagination is important even
if you go to a local and you got nothing but an iPhone use your iPhone just do
what you can because you never know and then I'll I'll close on some of these
eclipse images this is this was from northern Michigan um this was a learning exercise
because this showed me that I didn't need if there were enough clouds in the
sky you could still see the Sun and you could still see the part of the eclipse
so when the forecast for the total solar eclipse was high clouds I still felt
confident enough that I could get some kind of image and that I could get some
kind of a Widefield image there's the barely eclipsed Sun I think it'll come
through there you see the barely eclipsed sun and if you move back there's the a bunch of clouds here and
you've got clouds Sun's peeking through these are sort of images that's you know
you're not just trying to get the Fantastic image for the Fantastic likes
and things you're trying to share with people this is what it looked like when I went and stood in the middle of the
road no one coming you take some chances when you take images like this and so
when you go out to perisburg Ohio and and your Eclipse your eclipse
pictures may not be as great as a lot of other people you got some of the prominences in the detail you know but
at least this wasn't your end goal was this this was in Michigan you know this was in
Ohio with Bailey's beads so which one would you have rather seen most of you
out there you would have rather seen this and this leads to why I took I did
this composite because a lot of images when you try and do a Widefield image you end
up with a brightest daylight land but I wanted it to this is what my
eyes saw this is this is the color that was there this is the
uh this is what it looked like being on the mommy River and I know a few of you may have a similar comp composed shot
but everything here says like this takes me back when I look at it it takes me
back to that moment that I looked up and said I better take a picture and taking the pictures of the eclipse and bringing
them down to a proper size not you know you're you talk about your AI well the
first thing if I wanted to do an AI type picture I'd have this Eclipse Larger than Life and a lot of folks may love
you know this this picture would be in there and it's say it's great but you go
for realism that's why on this one it was a slight Miss because this was a little larger that's cool but it is I
like this yeah and and we darken the photo um this represents you know this
is a stepping stone image because while it is a very realistic view of what it's
like to look up at the Sun during totality I'm going to share a little secret with you that's a little big and
I'll show you why because later there's the moon that's the same
size lens that I took that other picture but that's the size of the Moon and if you can see it's you know
you extrapolate this so if we go to full and you extrapolate this it's not very
big at all so truthfully it could have been a little
bit smaller to be the actual size in a 16 mm photo the actual size of the sun
Andor Moon because they're the same size is smaller so a lot of the images get
the size right but not the color of the sky and this is its totality and you're
looking up at it that's that was the goal behind that and getting a chance to
see totality again it's going to be you know there's going to be a little bit more it'll be a full
circle it's it's not going to be very much but then the surrounding area you
know is what I would be looking for and you know this goes to the point of
um you know why I do the why I do this there isn't much in the sky the Moon is here it's bright you can you see planes
everywhere um but sometimes you get lucky so you have this you have the moon
you've got a plane but look where it points plees so if you're looking for objects in the
sky it's it's pointing right to the plees here and then this little streamer
is pointing right at Orion that's a great so you've got sometimes you get
image to close on absolutely and so I do I do want to uh one of our uh John Ray
who was watching earlier uh wanted to uh point out that uh uh you should um you
your any of your published work should come with a recommendation of stimulate your rods and cones he says your work's
always beautiful so well I appreciate that and I'll definitely keep that in mind as I wipe off whatever I should
probably go eat something after this but um and I'll be heading to a star party here soon um okay after I'm gonna listen
to Don NAB because Don I plan to come to the astronomical uh Al con astronomical
League I paid for my tickets your first one it'll be my first one so I'm looking forward to seeing all of you there at
Alcon I'm GNA drive up and I'm gonna find a place to stay if I can't stay the
whole time I'm gonna I'm definitely coming Wednesday to see uh D's talk
David Levy um yeah and get to see my uh good friend in person after uh so many
years so so don I'm looking forward to uh looking forward to seeing you maybe
in Focus but uh looking forward I know you're looking you're working on
that yeah guys now Don before you start your talk I have a very very short video
uh which I think you might appreciate okay Adrien thank you thanks again and uh next time okay all right
congratulations once again on your thank you and hopefully there'll be many more
you know I got to go out and get the work on that somehow got a lot of work to do now while working did that's right
yeah well we'll work on that okay all right okay so uh don let me take over
here a little bit I think that this is this is kind of cool um and I found this
and I don't know uh being that you are uh an Enthusiast of George jelly hail
and Palomar and you know this whole era you know that was that was the moonshot
for us at that time and uh this is a historical news reel just a a piece of
it okay here we
go the Mount Palomar Observatory on top of a towering California Peak above mist
and fall high up where the air is the clearest for stargazing the $10 million apparatus
built by the Rockefeller foundation for the California Institute of Technology there the super giant telescope with the
200 in Mirror to magnify Heavenly objects a million times eight times greater than any other telescope the
moon brought to within 20 mi of the Earth the secrets of the canals of Mars to be revealed maybe even the secret of
life they call it the eye of the world but wait just a minute I forgot it's
only a model I forgot it's only a model now
this obviously uh was uh done before the 200 in was finished um uh and uh but uh I I
loved I love the little the way that the people were moving around and that was great they had like a little Highway
which does not exist where it shows cars buzzing back and forth and stuff like that but but uh anyways I I know that um
the last time you were on uh you gave a wonderful talk about Palomar and uh the observatory and so you're going to come
back with part two so thank you okay I will share my screen
so I got this one coming
through uh yes slideshow from beginning all right oh greting presentation mode
there you go right greetings greetings fellow stargazers so uh this is part two
this is sort of the modernday hail 200 in uh back in February I did the
history so this was just a quick review this was the most important telescope in the world from 1949 until
1992 uh before I get into that I just do want to mention as Adrian mentioned Alcon is coming up in Kansas City uh
July 17 to 20 and uh reservations are open you can sign up at any time and I'm
going to do one brief plug here for one of my favorite events probably my
favorite astronomical event and that's green Bank Star Quest oh yeah coming him in July and uh it's a wonderful
conference it is if you dropped a uh a line straight south of Pittsburgh and
west from Washington DC that's about where they meet is pretty close to where Green Bank is is it's not the middle of
nowhere but you can see it from there so uh it's a it's a radio quiet Zone because it is it is a radio telescope
active observing side I think during the week we're there they're on uh maintenance mode uh but it's wonderful
little camp in sight of this the Roberts Z bird radio telescope this is the largest fully steerable radio telescope
in the world and it is you know doing active research all the time uh the
great place to camp uh there's plenty of room and if you don't like to Camp there is a bunk house
and there's a science center where all the uh presentations are done and I'll be giving a presentation this year and
having a meeting for the mid east region of the astronomical league so um all
right so palar Observatory uh this is one of the most magnificent magnificent
structures in all of astronomy and just a real brief look here here's a couple
deep Sky images pretty common uh uh things but things that are beautiful and
these were not taken from Palomar these were taken by this guy dear friend of
mine Brent crab he and his wife Mary the tall one my wife Barb the shorter one
Brent and Mary live uh close enough to Disneyland that you can hear the fireworks at night so a lot of
challenges of light pollution they still get some amazing aop photography photos this is our little group we are waiting
for the tour uh Brent drove a down from uh just you know the admim Fountain
Valley area it's about toour drive and [Music] um the drive itself is entertaining when
you're starting to go up the mountain you're getting higher and higher obviously Mount Palmore is a mountain
and it is a pretty high one uh every turn you take gives you another
Vista uh it get starts getting a little bit dizzy at times I think when we were going up there was a group of
motorcycles doing like I call it a race but they were flying the mountain is twisty and curvy reminds you of um um
kit peak in Arizona and then you come around the corner and you find this beautiful
stately amazing Dome and it it's hard to imagine the scale of it from this photo
uh here's an aerial view uh of the the campus now the The Visitor Center is to
the lower left there's a couple of uh Scopes here the main one being the 200
inch Hil telescope up in the upper left here this is all some things left over from the
construction and I want to point out one thing down here if you can see this spot
we're going to zoom in on that and that's this spot here that is a concrete
mirror blank when you when they built this telescope of course as if you saw the part one it took two tries to get
the mirror produced so they didn't want to put this mirror up to balance the scope
you have to just like like any other equatorial telescope you have to balance this thing precisely so they didn't want
to uh risk the main glass mirror uh they use this concrete blank you know as as
you're waiting for your tour you sign up for a tour you can walk around the visitor center and then you go over to the telescope and you got to find
something to pass the time and you know this warm sun you get a little tired you hang around here and it's also a great
place to uh rest while you're waiting for the tour to start so that that's my wife Barb catch a little nap waiting for
the tour to start okay so you know the upper Dome itself it's a
th000 tons now how do how do you get that in perspective I was thinking that's about 400 cars okay the Dome was
400 cars worth rotating on Wheels the doors themselves each one is 125 tons
wow and between the outer steel wall and the inner is four feet to try to
maintain cool temperature the nighttime temperatures uh so it doesn't warm up too much for and that's why this thing
is white to keep the Sun from heating up the scope during the day but yeah it is
it is just a massive thing can see my wife she this probably being in awe of This Magnificent structure it is it is
an amazing thing to see in person so here's another telescope a model uh not
as big as the one you had in your video Scot but this is an equatorial Mount and uh any of us who are photographers or um
amateur astronomers recognize you know this is the north the polar AIS and this
is the Yoke that the whole telescope rotates on and the telescope itself this is when it spins left and right here
that's the declination access so you really have to get your head around that this is a it's a horseshoe
structure gives access to the entire Sky you know I've been contemplating I I looked and I couldn't find but um you
know some thoughts why why are why was this scope built like this modern day
Scopes like the kek the Subaru they're all all asmin mounts much simpler way to
construct and I think the reason for it and someone can certainly chime in the reason is that when you have a modern
scope doing everything electronically you can compensate for field rotation but if you're using film you cannot
compensate for field rotation so this telescope had to be an equatorial
Mount uh here's another model this I went to visit the founder of our my local astronomy club he's 95 he has this
model that his father built so that had be built wow 40s or 50s that's cool buil
this a kit you know you know when I was a kid I was building like Redstone Rockets but this is the kind of Kit they
sold then and this train is the same scale as a telescope so this just gives
you an idea of the scale of this machine the Magnificent machine that uh uh Mr
hail built um just amazing scale so these are photos now from when my friend
Brent Krab his wife Mary and Barb and I went on a tour and a lot of people call this Dome and the the telescope the
Cathedral of astronomy I think is a good good description for it yeah so who
better than to image first light or even see first light than Edwin Hubble
Through The Hil telescope he did that in 49 and this made continuous significant contributions quazars were first
identified spected from the hail telescope H H's Comet my I bought my first telescope to
see H's Comet it was actually detected in 1982 even though it didn't come back visible to ' 86 and that was done by the
hell telescope and not just looking back you know decades just as last December
the hail telescope is the receiving antenna for the deep space communication experiment on the psyche Mission psyche
is visiting a metal Rich asteroid and uh it say actually a laser space laser
system that will have performance improvements 10 to 100 times over radio so even within a few months ago the hail
telescope is still actively working and doing modern-day very important
science so here's a telescope when it's parked aiming straight up that is of course the two the two Dome doors there
you can see uh the mirror is at the bottom and the mirror can be lowered for
maintenance and that's done every 2 years they stri the aluminum coating off it because as any of us know who have a
reflecting telescope mirror over time they do degrade and they have a vacuum chamber and they put a uh a thin chamber
a thin coating of aluminum on in the chamber every two years they do that so this was during our tour that's a that's
the dosent given a tour and just to stand under this thing
the the the scale the scope of this uh the massive Yol that this whole thing
wrote so the telescope can see any part of the sky and then this is the outside the
bearing the two bearings that support the telescope itself it's just a massive
massive device later in the tour you get to go up on the steps on the on the go
all way around the top of the the bottom of the Dome so this is a view from the uh from the top of the
Dome and uh this is the Prime Focus cage this is where people would ride out the
entire night uh changing plates and films and uh
keeping track of the focus and the and the alignment they would spend entire nights in in that little Prime Focus
cage and then the final part of the tour is you get to walk around the outside and again the the view from outside is
stunning I'm not sure which telescope that is there are there are two other telescopes working of course Dave Levy
could probably tell us because the 18in is somewhere on in this campus yes I
think that is the 18inch that's the 18inch okay yeah and uh there's a close
above it my camera and the one thing you don't want to do when you're taking this tour is if you're scared of heights you
don't want to look down because it is an open grate walkway so you're way up
there so um so that was our tour it was a few years ago now but uh as George El
halil said make no small plans and dream no small dreams yes
wonderful that's great um you know uh George Ellery halil's grandson Sam hail
uh is is of course still with us and he is uh director of the um Mount Wilson uh
Observatory up there and uh uh he is also um uh you know certainly one of the
leaders of the alliance of historic observatories of which AR Observatory is one of these members Mount Wilson lick
um lol ures you know several of these uh observatories and uh they are starting
to um form an alliance organization uh to support each other um because a lot
of these historic observatories have faced problems with either being uh uh
potentially shut down Mount Wilson has faced that a a couple of times yks actually did get shut down uh by the
University of Chicago they they stepped out and uh but a nonprofit came in their
place and saved the observatory and they're still in the process of restoring it which is wonderful um um
but um you know I'm I'm glad that a hail a genuine hail is uh involved in all of
this and it's a lot of fun to talk to these guys you know because uh the the passion and the thrill is
still there and um that statement about make no small small uh plans is
something that Sam Hill uses a lot so I love it I love it anyone's in ever
possible to visit Palomar put it on your list and our next Target is going to be Mount Wilson next time we visit our
friends in California very good we've been to the Griffith so now we want to get to Mount Wilson that's great well
Don um I also want to thank you for all the great work that you do for the
astronomical League you've been with them for how many years now well I've been uh our club has been active I've
been part of the club since 2006 but I've only been working I've in Merill chair since 2019
um since the mid east region Church 2019 Wow since Star Quest at 2019 that's when
I was first introduced to it John the fellow that was doing the mid East stre
chair having some health issues and uh I had a conversation with John Goss in the camping field and I thought you know
what I guess I can step in and help out here so I've been doing that now for five years that's scary that's wonderful
it's wonderful and it was good to see you too at Northeast astronomy forum and I assume that you'll be at Alcon as well
in Kansas City yeah got to get plans made yep yep okay and you too watching
out there should well before I go I want mention I do hope to get out to Neath
one of these days and see everybody in person um all the astrophotographers and learn you know
there's even more to learn and who says that I might not try and Dabble in some
of the they have they have an photography conference yeah it's a short
eight hour drive so I just gotta sometimes the the day job gets in the
way I recently changed positions at my uh day job so it's less stressful but
we're Al we're always busy near my phone a lot uh but I will be looking forward to
seeing everybody in Kansas City so that'll that'll be a fun trip all right
all right there is a uh Star Party the university lowbrows I can never find my
Logos um the university low brows who come from or based out of the University of Michigan are doing a member night
tonight and uh if you're in Michigan watching this and you want to come out
um of course you have to be a member of the lowbrows the actual open house star parties I have two clubs that you know I
represent the Warren Astronomical Society and then the university low BR astronomers and there were a lot of
mentors there on the Imaging all astronomical League members um Don I'm
the chair for the Warren Astronomical Society so it's getting high time to see
who's going to join the astronomical league and uh who wants to reup their membership of course I do
so I'll be sending that into you all pretty soon um for the lowbrows we have
someone uh I'll give I'll throw his name out there uh Doug uh Doug scoble is our astronomical
League member for the lowbrows um we have a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada
that joined the lowbrows because he wanted to be an astronomical League member so um so I'll actually throw a
question out there for you if you are from Canada and are interested in
joining the astronomical League can you still do so as an at llarge member from
Canada or can do you have to join a membership group from the United
States I think you can do from anywhere in the world you can be an at large member okay which membership at Large is
is a worldwide thing but you could join uh a club that is an astronomical league
and now aren't there discounts for joining a club as far as membership dues go yeah okay so that may be the the
reason if you if you're in Canada and you're close you know you're close to a uh a club in the states that may be why
that's our own Karine Jaffer is an astronomical League member and he joined through the university low BR
astronomers so um that was you know in addition to the low brows getting a
great speaker um the astronomical League got another really good member through
um you know through our club so but it sounds like you don't have to do that um
if you're listening around the world and you want to uh become an astronomical
League member of course I'm kind of plugging it as if but why not if you want to become an astronomical League
member you've got a you've got an astronomic League couple astronomical League members right here on your screen
I think that makes four because D has joined us and um you know you ask
questions um I think it's al.org is that that's the site Astro League asue AST
league.org yeah I'll put that down in the uh in the chat here so if you guys
not already members uh you do want to get in the cool kids club and yes be one of the
cool kids you never know where to take and it'll teach you the night sky that's something I didn't mention one of the
things that being in a club full of visual astronomers that led to my
Imaging was you know de well one D's picture of the Southern Cross that
showed me you can get Starlight from a camera that blew my mind and sent me on
this journey um the other thing is it's nice if you know the night sky we do
have a lot of good Astro imagers who know the process who know the how to do
this stuff um there's you know there's prizes I won't say prizes but there's uh
I know there's things you can certifications you can earn in the astronomical League oh yeah you know and
there's they have all these observing programs I think 80 observing programs
yeah and I think there's some astop photography programs now if I'm not mistaken and um so there's there's
something for everyone in you know in this great hobby passion we call
astronomy and the astronomical league is one great way to you to continue
challenging yourself and uh knowing the night sky to me was very important
because there are things that I try and marry the night sky with the ground so
it isn't just throwing a background full of stars um I look at those Sky I look
at the sky and say oh there's a couple things here that I recognize and you know and put them in so and you
astronomical League um some of those certifications you can get really do
help with that or you can sit with all these gentlemen when they're observing and you can just learn when they when
they put you on the telescope and you say what do you see I see a faint blob
well that's 51 million light years away and if that does something for you you're in the right place but if you
pull your phone out afterwards and ask to take a picture well you're also in the right place but that's not quite the
way to go around about it and if you pull out your phone and you ruin everyone's night vision you're in the
wrong you're GNA hear about it learn some manners you're turn those bright lights off um so all right me uh I'll
let you all take it I'm going to go to our member night and uh get some photons
in great try and get them in the eyes have fun I'll go from there care take care thanks for letting me blab
everyone's head off have fun and thanks for letting us know about it I will all right uh don
thanks again joining us and um uh at this point
I am going to um I'm going to uh recognize some of
our uh viewers right now um we have um
uh David we got quite a few people uh checking in here we have uh Ed Gunther
uh whom you know an Andrew corkill uh someone I know I worked with
at meat instruments there is the astronom Mater the cycling ace and I just love the name I think it's fun and
um but uh he's also up there in northern Michigan uh Mike weasner great friend of
both of ours David uh out there in uh Oracle Arizona um put on uh the uh the
last David Levy uh Arizona dark sky star party out there um uh we have um John Ray who's
been uh commenting quite a bit uh we love your comments there John it's great
uh you asked if we would ever do a tour of Palomar Observatory David have you
ever given us talk at Under the Dome of the 200
inch uh I've never actually given a a lecture Under the Dome of the 200 inch I
have however given a lecture Under the Dome of the 100 inch and you were there
I was there that's right it ter no you were wonderful you were
wonderful it was it was incredible really so um uh John Ray is uh we put we
made a global Star Party hoodie which I'm going to have to get for uh one of
those for uh Dr Levy here uh to wear it's it's the one with Saturn's rings
and stuff I know Jupiter's your favorite planet but this yeah I couldn't resist putting Saturn on it um I can't live
with Saturn that's right uh who else David
samard um uh who's been on um in our audience many
times senil nagap pan uh and his son who has given many presentations uh um
Adrien norwi Norwick is on uh uh rayap not sure what APL means but we're
glad that you're here um and um who else we've
got uh TK from the AE watching you know so this this is truly a global uh
globally watched Star Party um and um so thanks for tuning in Dusty H Haskins
Dusty actually left
me this little note he he was driving through uh Arkansas and left me a note
saying hey just wanted to let you know that I shop I stopped by uh
uh to check some stuff out and was passing through and last minute decided to stop in couldn't resist um uh
stopping in and at least uh letting us know so thank you very much Dusty that was wonderful um and uh who else here um
it looks like that that's it for right now now David at this point I have several videos of uh that have to do
with um you know the incredible energies that are in the cosmos um and also the energy of uh you
know space exploration a little bit and uh there's a part about the Sun and then
we kind of ease into Aurora and so I'm going to show you guys a series of these
videos um and uh let
me bring you in and here we
go hi my name is Aaron Cara and I'm an astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard space
flight center and the University of Maryland I was part of a team who used x-rays to map the environment around a
recently discovered black hole learning new details about how those surroundings evolve as material swirls closer to the
black hole we made the Breakthrough using observations from NASA's neutron star interior composition exper Explorer
or nicer on the International Space Station nicer let us watch a flare of
light from the area around a black hole called Maxi J1 1820 plus 070 or J1 1820
for short this Stellar Mass black hole is around 10 times the Sun's mass and
funnels gas away from a neighboring star and into a dense ring of material called an accretion disc magnetic and
gravitational forces compress and Heat the gas to millions of degrees hot
enough to Glow in x-rays we think the flare of x-rays nicer spotted was due to
an instability in the disc which caused a flood of material to move toward the central black hole above the black hole
is a region of subatomic particles called the corona the corona is extremely hot 1 billion de and shines in
even higher energy x-rays not a lot is known about why the corona is so hot
this outburst provides an opportunity for us to study how both the dis and the corona change as the black hole consumes
this material waves of x-rays from the corona Echo off the accretion disc like
the sonar we use to explore the ocean floor these Echoes tell us about the size and shape of the disc and Corona
iron atoms in the disk absorb x-rays from the Corona and then Reit them
gravitational Distortion of SpaceTime stretches the wavelengths of the x-rays reducing their energy the farther from
the black hole they are the less the light is affected as we watched the system over weeks the light Echoes got
closer together this suggested that something in the system was becoming smaller the low energy emission coming
from Iron atoms close to the black hole didn't change at all suggesting that it was not the disc moving in but rather
the corona shrinking the team and I estimated that the corona contracted from roughly 100
miles to only 10 the discovery reveals that Stellar
Mass black holes behave similarly to their super massive cousins which are millions to billions of times the Sun's
mass those monster objects are found in the hearts of most galaxies like our
Milky Way but their slower Evolution over millions or billions of years is
impossible to detect on human time scales Stellar Mass black holes on the other hand evolve much more quickly
thanks to ncer scientists like me are observing the evolution of black hole
systems and learning more about how our universe works
[Music]
[Music]
in 2011 NASA's Swift satellite caught an x-ray Outburst from a small Galaxy 3.8
billion light years away within a couple of days researchers realized they were witnessing the aftermath of A tital
disruption event a star ripped apart by the monster black hole at the Galaxy's
Center some of the Stellar material fell toward the black hole forming an accretion disc and a jet pointed in our
Direction title disruption events offer us this rare View at the most common kind of super massive black hole in the
universe these so-called dormant super massive black holes 90% of black holes
in the universe don't have a lot of hot material orbiting around them they don't
form these accretion discs and so we can't observe them title disruption
events where the Stellar debris causes the formation of a temporary accretion
disc offers us a way to probe this population of super massive black holes
Swift monitored the outbursts progress and was joined by the European space agency's xmm Newton Observatory and the
Japanese suzaku satellite recently astronomers introduced a new analysis technique that
for the first time allows them to peer deep into the gravitational well of a normally quiescent black
hole called x-ray reverberation mapping the method charts the region close to the black hole using light Echoes from
x-ray flashes similar to the way sonar uses sound to map the ocean
floor x-ray reverberation mapping has been very successful at probing the
accretion flow in well-established accretion disc structures but had never
been used to look at title disruption events my collaborator at the University of Maryland and I were having lunch one
day and she says has anyone ever looked at title disruption events with x-ray
reverberation mapping that night I stayed late at the office and just tried
it out on this data from Swift J 1644 and and much to my surprise the result
was amazing and I could see that we were looking at the structure of the inner
accretion flow around a normally dormant black hole for the first time it's not
like a normal accretion flow in an active Galaxy that's a flat disc this is
something that is extremely puffy very turbulent and we are measuring flashes
of X-ray emission deep within this newly formed secretion
disc Stellar material streamed into the developing disc turning it into a thick
chaotic Whirlpool of X-ray emitting gas funneling toward the central black hole deep inside this cavity multiple
x-ray flares erupted providing a flash that echoed throughout the
region previously astronomers had thought that the X-ray emission is coming from far out in a jet but what
we're finding with these observations is that the the X-ray emission is coming from flares very close to the super
massive black hole and we can use these observations to probe properties of the
black hole itself for instance we found that the mass of the black hole is something on the order of a million
times the mass of the Sun the first observations of X-ray reverberations from deep inside an
accretion disc are providing new insights into a rarely observed class of black holes they're also laying the
groundwork for a better understanding of tital disruption events and the black holes they
illuminate well that was a a pretty interesting set of videos uh from NASA
about black holes and it's great to uh you know just to learn more about what
we're finding out about these things things that you know not too long ago these things were just uh they were
almost the things of Science Fiction so um but uh um you know today we have
actual images of black holes and uh you know I can only uh imagine what we would
expect to see in data collection and more research into black black holes in
the next five to 10 years um up next is uh Carrie latell and
Carrie has been on adventure after Adventure making some of the best Astro
photographs or night sky photographs they're both one and the same to me um
but uh she uh provides some really really stunning work and I think she's
been concentrating uh recently on Aurora which we all love so Carrie thank you
for coming on I think you're muted at this moment here so there we go
hi SC thanks for inviting me it's great to have you back you know
i' we missed you I've missed you and uh you know I've been watching you through
uh your website and your Facebook posts and all the rest of it so um but thanks
for thanks for taking some time out with us tonight here on global Star Party thanks a long for thanks a lot for the
invitation and yeah I've been running a lot a lot um since I fell in love with
AAS it's been it has been like more complicated to to to have more time you
know as I have to travel I can see them in here well it's something we will talk
about now and I would like you to to to be part of the discussion that I want to
present about AAS okay so for that I will use uh
something here let me just share to you yeah
as you were telling I'm now back here in Chile but I'm now going to I don't know if you can see the screen it's
coming give it a moment oh that's nice wow that is
beautiful that's real I mean that's yeah it is a huge Panorama of a
geomagnetic storm level uh level G3 with kp7 over gfus the waterall of the Gods
in the north part of Iceland so well AAS is something that we all dream about to
to catch it right we all want we we all have in our bug list to watch AAS
sometime in life yes so I think it's it's kind of similar of what we we do
here at least here in Chile in astrophotography looking for the best dark and night skies ever well it's it's
something similar with because you definitely need to go H them you need to go find it it's not that easy to to
watch them and it's not that easy to catch them and to make photos of them so
I wanted to just uh talk a little bit about of how our
form let me just contining here and
to propose you a discussion about aor s scam there's a lot of people that
suggest that Aurora are a scam because they can't see the colors as the color
appears in the photos or in the videos right so what do you believe do you think it is a scam or
not I don't know about you Scott Have You Been Watching Over Us in the past I
I the best view I've had of Aurora was actually flying over Greenland and uh we
could you know we're at 30,000 ft or whatever and we could see them down below us and you know I'm I'm like
screaming I'm like going this is amazing and I was telling people on the aircraft
that are with me you know they're all like sleeping or reading a magazine or watching a movie to look at this amazing
auroral display okay and uh for some reason I guess they maybe a weird gas
was in the airplane that made everybody body have the you know kind of the harps but you know they were not excited about
seeing this and it was right out their window I mean people pay big money to go
see Aurora and they travel around the world like you did to go uh to go see these things and um uh so yeah that was
my best view ever of an aurora but I have seen them from Canada uh and um
I've actually seen them from the United States so not as amazing as what you're
seeing here but still it's fun actually for people traveling to Iceland or maybe
to Scandinavia like no part of Sweden Finland or
Norway uh what I try to tell my Travelers when they are booking their
flights is try to travel from North America pring for example from New York
Toronto or Boston because from there you will have the chance to see
theas a over Greenland when you're passing over in Greenland in the in the
flight you can see theas in there and actually it seems like you are over them but you're not because theas is acting
like very very high in the sky actually the lower one that is the pink one is at maybe 80 kilometers I know you you
thinking miles it's difficult for me to think in miles that's all right it's like 80 kilometers over the over the
surface so it is because you're watching theora maybe more far from where you are
actually you can see theora at far as maybe 1,000 kilometers
from the place you are depending on the geomagnetic level uh that you're having
right there for example in here oh my my internet is having a bit of lack but for
example in the aora that I have in the middle of the screen yeah if I didn't
have the lag well the video will show you it is a video in real time and it was a kp6 we were able to have the red
that is the one that is like higher in the sky it's like at 200 250 kilometers
over the surface and it's could you see this visually could you see it visually this
red color or or yeah you with your own eyes wow yeah but it will always depend
on how strong is the Oda that you're working actually I didn't I don't know if you knew it but there was a time
where we were able to watch AAS from Chile we are here in Latitude 33 degrees
south and people in Colombia were able to watch Thea in Latitude 3 degrees
north that's in that's insane yes right and if that happens no
days it will be so crazy and it will be so such a chaos and disaster because of
all the internet and all the satellites they will all start start failing
because of this huge amount of energy acting but we will be having a us and
this happened in 1859 during the Carrington event oh yeah
the Carrington event that's right exactly and scientists are afraid that maybe this year we will have that
because the sun is acting the behavior of the sun it's been like
so strong but weird for example this year it has been like everywhere that
this will be the best year to watch the Norther lights right so there was a lot of people traveling to Iceland or to
North SW Sweden or to the Sweden Leonia or Finland Leonia looking and trying to
CH the nol lights and many people many people very frustrated because they spend like many days staying in those
parts of the world waiting for the no lights and the think is that it this season was not as strong as the last one
the last one was Stronger but much much stronger than this season that just
ended and it's because we can maybe predict what is going to happen with the
Sun but it's just a prediction it's just that it's not something something like certain so it's exactly the same for now
with this year maybe this next season that will start for the Northern Hemisphere it will start during
September maybe we can try to forecast hey we will have a lot of AAS very
strong odas but it's just probability it's not something certain so maybe that
can be not this end of the year and can be next year or at the end of the next
year the thing is that what we will have from now till
2027 is aoras because when the sun is not active at all we have the chance to
have noos like in many nights in a row but what we're saying now is that before
during the maximum of this solar cycle and after the this maximum solar cycle
we will have the chance to have a doas because of the activity that we're having from the Sun I I really like to
show about give me one second to show about the sun and the
layers that the Sun have and how these auroras are formed that we know that is the interaction of the solar wind and
the solar wind is formed in the Cor in the Corone right in the one of the outer
layers of the Sun that is always sending all these emissions in to all the solar
system and the space and when this is exactly in the direction of the earth
and we know that the sorin will take this highway that are the interplanetary
magnetic field that will uh result from the interaction of the
geomagnetic uh the Earth geomagnetic uh field and the sun geomagnetic field we
have this interaction that will be the highway for the solar wind to arrive to our Earth
and once uh when this solar wind arve there will try to enter to the
atmosphere through the pulse because it's the parts where we have that the magnetic the geomagnetic field is weaker
and when this geomagnetic field I want to show another slide of what I'm
talking about one second so as you can see in there in the
earth you have that the weaker part of the geomagnetic field will be in the
pulse and this geomagnetic field can be like pushing to the South or pushing in
to the north for the north hemisphere we need it to be pushing to the South so it will be like more open there to let the
solar wind enter and interact with the gases that are in the upper
atmosphere from the 8 80 kilomters and
upper let me just go back here and what is happening with this
solar cycle what is the solar cycle well we have this changing of the different polar uh the different magnetic nodes
right and they will try to switch between them and that it's what is
making all the solar flares and we can see it like from here with the dark spots right in the Sun or maybe using
some special filters right to see the Chrome that we can see it only during a total solar eclipse or using filters and
if we have like too many dark spots we will know that the sun is active enough and we will of course have outd this and
this cycle it has been from the beginning from before uh this approach
to the maximum of this cycle has been like very very strong what I was saying that this the last season that it was
during 20 2022 and 2023 it was stronger
than the season now from 2023 to 2024 and actually during this was during a it
was a huge Sol flare that has a coronal mass ejection and it was so intense that
people were able to watch the northern lights in Texas that is insane that is
latitude 29 degrees north and but the thing is that right now
we're having like some problems with the forecast actually all the apps that we use to to forus this because I think
that the best way to forus is to analyze the sound not to just receive an app a notification in an app like hey there is
a 30% probability to watch Noland now no the thing is that analyze the sun
analyze the activity of the Sun that will be the best way to chase the no lights for
example there was a forecast ER late in late March we were uh going
around Iceland with another client of mine Mexican photographer and in this
video in the middle if we believe back that day uh to
the forecast we were not in there this night as this other girl is also an
astrophotographer we really wanted to reach this place to make astrophotography that night and that was
the only thing that was like uh for us it was better for us because
we reached that place and we reached this storm this geomagnetic storm that it was not forecast it was it was
forecast for next night not for this night and the thing is that as we were
chasing the the nice guy besides the aoras we were able to have it and next
night that forecast another Geral storm even stronger with kp7 it didn't pass so
all the people that was meeting this place the next night they miss the AAS
because they didn't have this chance of aoras but it's because they only stay
with what foras in the apps are saying and the things that you need to
understand how is this phenomena happening that is uh happening because of the sun activity and if I have Sun
activity I have to measure for example the solar wind and how many protons per
square centimeter we have like the density we have to measure all those that things that what I'm doing is
watching and all this thing all these issues I mean all these uh parameters um
following all these parameters in space weather live or similar websites and that's a way to hunt a because it's not
only following what the apps are saying is understanding what the sun is
doing and I wanted to show you something else in
here I can find my other SL give me one second
um and well what I was saying about the aora to be a scam is because we can't
see Thea exactly like the camera is watching at it it's exactly the same with the nice guy and it's because our
eyes are not adapt like biologically bi
like in biology adapted to watch that spectacle in the sky right
so I wanted to show you this oh I have there about the Currington
event during 1859 back that time there was a collapse
in telegraphs and many many places and many like electrical things uh start
failing with that huge geomagnetic storm so if we GNA have it now it will be like
a very amazing and beautiful
disaster right we won't have cameras like that's right well you know
hopefully our electronic cameras can capture it somehow well or maybe we can use our
analogical camera like the old ones yeah that will be
maybe yeah oh yeah so what I I wanted to add to this is what people are saying
about outo to be scan because they don't look exactly the same than the cameras so and as we were saying is because uh
our eyes like they're not prepared to watch in the night sky and to recognize the colors right and also our vision
like humans don't work only with the ey size is only because we have these uh
cells that are receiving all these photons from the light uh and they are
treating all these photons and and telling and sending that as an electric
impulse to our brain and our brain is the last part that will interpret yeah
it will interpret uh this electrical impulses and tell us what we're watching
but that means that not everything that we're watching is completely real
because our brain will be the last one to analyze what we're watching so what I always like to
show to people to analyze if they they really
think what they're watching is real is this photo this is like a optical
illusion so what do you think is the color of the eyes of the girl
blue yeah many people say like uh turquoise or blue
or the thing is that the colors of her are in fact gray and the thing is
that as we're using that red filter over here our brain that out let's see that
again one more time our brain try to
compensate what with watching them and it's all it's almost the same what happened with the night sky yeah
the thing is that our eyes are not for sure for sure I mean we only see a very
narrow part of the uh Spectrum anyways you know actually what we see things in
exact real time you know so there's many many um distortions that uh we work with
you know hopefully you know you see a truck coming right at you uh in time for
you to get out of the way you know but um but there is uh there are many such
um you know uh effects you know that you can look at where things appear to move
or you know uh you start to recognize the patterns and things it's it all has
to do with our mind doesn't it exactly it's our brain that will interpret we
will try to interpret what our uh
in in our eyes are receiving from the light so the brain is the one that has the last word and it's not always the
whole truth so that's the thing what I try to explain when people tells me that
outar come because they can see it as they see it in the photos but the thing is that if you do have a very very
strong AA you will be able to see the colors all the colors uh under some
geomagnetic storms I be I have been able to watch yellow orange pink the red one
the green but it's something that we can't
really say hey it's going to be now so what I recommend to people is to if if
you're going to some location to hun the no the lights well the first thing is that you have to understand that the
clouds won't allow you to watch them so you really need to to have clear sky to
watch them and also to be very aware of the solar activity if you see that there
are sunspots or maybe solar flowers that is a hint to to to check that that night
maybe to check about the nor lights and if you see that there are notifications
about the geomagnetic storm just try to be very aware if you have a very strong
geomagnetic storm with a KP over let me just look for the slide where I have
KP okay so this is KP that goes from zero to 9 what does KP stand for is the
interplanetary uh K index and it will measure the geomagnetic activity okay
just that so the thing is that if we see that the aora will go will act let me just one second
to go back to show you the a oval in here so we know that this oval will be
around the magnetic pole it won't be around the geographic or the terrestrial
or the southern or the celestial pole is around the magnetic pole that is is not
exactly in the same place that the terrestrial pole and this OV is where
aor is acting so if we have higher KP the KP Z will be almost no activity kp1
will be in around the 66 degrees where we have the Arctic Circle right and when
the KP Rises and get higher the a will go more far right and it will go far as
two yeah it will be nearly 2 Dees in
latitude to the Equador with each KP level so if
we reach maybe a KP night we will have from 66 degrees latitude uh we will
reach maybe like latitude like for example in Texas the one I show you back
that April in 2023 where they have AAS in there Thea was not over Texas but you
were able to watch it like to the north because as I said in the beginning you
can see the almost 1,000 kilometers far from your place but you have to have
like very wide view to the north in the case of northern hemisphere in the case of southern hemisphere to the South
that's what happened in Tasmania that's why they can watch the the the S lights
and we can't watch them here in Chile and it is because the oval is move from
the pole because it's around the magnetic pole and you know it's pretty
sad that in here there are people scamming with trips to the Antarctica or
to places like very in the southern Mall part in of till and they're trying to
scam saying that you're able to watch the so lights in there and that's not true you can't watch it from Patagonia
or magayanes so uh horn Cape you can watch it from there actually you can
watch it from the you cannot watch it from the Antarctica military bases that
we have from CH that are like in the tip of the Antarctica penino now it's 90
yeah 900 kilometers to the center of Antarctica that you can start watching
the the so the lights so please don't be as scam by this
companies uh I I I wanted to tell about that and also to be like very yeah and to be
very aware as if you live like in very in medium latitudes for example 40
degrees 48 degrees I don't know in Canada or in North America you really
have to be aware because right now people in the northern hemisphere that are making all these tours like the
people near to the Arctic CLE won't be able to watch the Norther lights because
they have the midnight but that doesn't mean that if we don't have if we do have like a very strong
geomagnetic storm produced by a huge flare or a chronal mass injection we
will have the lights maybe in in in latitudes more near to the Equator so
you have to be like very aware to that very aware to the sun activity uh in in
this next season because these days we will not have like this information from
the art to cool people and it's going to be just on you the responsibility of be
aware about that so Carrie are you leading some Aurora um trips
yourself yeah but not right now actually I'm going to Sweden next week but it's
only in scouting to start another expedition in Northern Sweden and Northern Norway and Finland okay it will
be a photography Expedition oriented or oriented
to uh wild photography to the local fauna the Arctic FAA and also to the
nolet we don't have nlets now but it will be uh for the Expeditions that I
we're looking for some uh in the calendar to make some of these Expeditions during September to have the
birds that are already awake and during January where we have the polar night
and the light the light during the day those days as we don't have the sun
rising the light is like a blue hour magic hour during the day so it's
amazing for photography and we have a lot of snow like this trees that are
overloaded of snow so that's what I'm doing currently okay traveling next week
yeah so I'm super excited about that that is awesome so your whole life has turned into just one Grand Adventure and
I I love it I think it's great yeah yeah I always say people used to say people
that does things like me and traveling a lot used to say that they are nomads digital Nomads well I'm not I'm a kind
of a homeless because I don't have like a place where uh where I live I actually
don't have like my own my own flat or something like that because I'm always moving but I have very good friends and
I have my family that re me when I'm back here in Chile but it's it's cool to keep looking for new night skies new
photography experiences to new aora experiences in other places of the world
so it would be so cool to go to America to go to Alaska to watch the nor light
someday or to the north Canada also it's it's on my bucket Le is part of the
dream I have for the future wonderful wonderful well that's great great um
thank you Carrie and uh um I am uh you know always excited to learn about your
um your new images and your um um you
know the work that you do and uh you know I I try to imagine myself uh also
in such Adventures that you're on and so thank you for let go someday Scott we
need to plan that go Som day all the lights okay okay yeah everybody tells me
so I want I want to go but um Carrie thanks again uh we are going to uh our
next presenter uh Robert Reeves down in Texas and so thanks for tuning in uh
with us Carrie and Chile thank you very much thanks SC thanks to all byebye
byebye okay so we are going to go to um
as I mentioned to Robert Reeves down in Texas Robert probably knows more about
the terrain of the Moon and you know there's probably only a handful of people on the planet that really know it
as well as he does and he makes fantastic images of the lunar terrain so
if you've been keeping up with global star party and watching his work I mean
sometimes it they're they're so highly detailed uh you know it's uh it looks it
looks like maybe he made a model of the terrain and photographed it you know somehow but uh we know that that's not
true and that these are real lunar U astrophotographs so uh let me bring on
Robert and uh Robert thanks for tuning in and presenting with the 148th Global
Star Party my pleasure and uh trust me it is a lot easier for me to take a lunar photo than to make a model of the
Moon my artistic ability is well my sculpting ability is nil not not going
to happen okay all right well that's great um but um you I'm I'm I'm glad to
be here and uh we survived the eclipse we've survived NE uh my next big
adventure that's right yeah my next big adventure is going to covo to install the telescope in the new National
Observatory over there that PR Vera heini has um U ramrodded and U finally
got into fruition and uh we'll be over there in June having fun there so uh right but in the meantime um a little
bit about the moon um car's Act is going to be a tough one to follow uh that was a fantastic presentation yeah um but um
the Moon is close to my heart and U I do have to mention of course that uh I did
write a book about it recently it's available on Amazon exploring the moon with Robert leaves um if you like what
you see tonight um screw down over to Amazon do that title search and I think you'll find something that will uh bring
you up to speed about the moon in a hurry so tonight uh I'm going to go to
screen share going to hopefully you see my title slide Y and uh that's a good
thing so um now um first few slides you've seen
them before but I like to repeat these uh to drill home the fact that everything you see on the moon were
formed by only two primary landscape forming processes either an impact by an
asteroid meteor comet or volcanism that subsequently modified that U uh that
impact or uh was released by an impact so uh everything we see on the moon will
create it only one of two ways impacts or volcanism so
again uh following a theme that I've done before if my slide would Advance there we go um I like to tell people the
Moon is a world that shows us uh the Moon shows us a world that is rugged yet
Serene it is a world that is Harsh yet beautiful it is a world that is alien
yet appealing it is a world that is very tortured yet today it is calm and
finally it is a strange world yet a friendly world uh we can become friends
with the Moon by just understanding a few basic facts about it and then it's not a stranger in the eyepiece it's a
companion for a a summer night or or light our way on a cold winter day or
cold winter night tonight what I'm going to talk about are floor fractured craters um those of you whove been
following me on Facebook on my postcards from the moon for the past week have seen that this has been my theme so um I
thought I'd bring it over here to a wider audience I think the if I read the statistics correctly
there's probably about 10 times more people watching this than see my Facebook page so let's let's spread the
word a little bit floor fractured craters a prime example is 96 km
diameter posidonia here at the upper left uh floor fractory so named because the floor of the crater is covered with
cracks and reels uh the original crater posidonius almost um um four four about
three and a half billion years ago uh looked very traditional kind of like what Cernic's does today um um
indentation in the ground collaps Terrace walls around the outside a central peak in the middle but like I
said all things on the moon are created by one of two things either an impact or
volcanism in this case floor fractured creaters are are created by both
initially there's an impact that creates the crater and then there is volcanism that significantly modifies the interior
of the crater uh floor fractured craters are universally found near the shoreline
of the Maria the Maria are the dark Basalt fields on the moon that create
the character of the face of the Man in the Moon and these are volcanic features of course the Mario were formed by erupt
from subsurface magma chambers that flooded the the low-lying basins and
created the Maria and a crater that formed near these Maria also tapped into
the same subsurface magma Chambers the fractures in the floor of the Creator
created by the impact of the crater tap down into these magma Chambers and the
lava flowed up from under the crater through fractur in its floor they didn't
flow over the rim of the crater and spill into it the it came up from underneath push the floor of the crater
upward um in the case of posidonius here um it's U the floor of the crater is
actually 200 meters higher than the surrounding Maria um Mario seratus to be
exact uh no yes serenitas it's been a
long day I'm kind of tired um but um uh like I said the the the floor of the
crater volcanically pushed up to it's actually 200 meters higher than the surrounding Mario now the
um the case of posidonius uh other volcanic activity created the very
pronounced raised Ridge on the east side um you can see it actually casting a
shadow in this this image that Ridge is almost 200 meters higher uh than the uh
opposite side so it's casting a shadow in this case and um just for artistic effect um
posidon a the 11 km diameter crater whacked right Square in the middle of posidon is created a kind of a bullseye
effect and excavated down about a kilometer and a half into the basalt now
bear in mind that a crater of the size of posidonius is probably going to be about three and a half four kilometers
deep so as deep as posidonia a is in the middle of it it didn't even begin to
excavate down down to the original floor of posidonius so uh um moving on to our
next example also up in the northeastern Side of the Moon up above Mars ritus the
crater pair of Hercules and Atlas uh both of the mythological Greek and Roman
strong men they side by side in this area of the Moon Hercules on the left um
um about 70 kilm in diameter uh Atlas on the right 88 km in diameter although
they're they're next to each other and considered an observational pair they formed about a billion years apart U
Atlas on the on the right formed first uh during a time of more intense volcanic activity on the moon so its
interior was pushed up by subsurface volcanic uplift and uh created the uh
the fractures the crisscross across its face uh giving it kind of an oatmeal
cookie appearance now Hercules on the on the west um like I said formed about a
billion years later and experience much uh more subdued volcanic activity um its
Interiors smooth and flat as opposed to um Atlas being very rough elevated and
uh um covered with reals um if you look closely at uh uh
Atlas you can see some small secondary craters inside of Atlas uh this is
literally um the result of the sand that U Hercules kicked in atlas's face when
when Hercules formed a billion years later and showered the interior of Atlas
with debris and created those secondary craters
um notice a buried almost
obscure um crater protruding out from underneath atlas's Northwestern Rim um
you barely see it's a rim it's almost 55 kilometers in diameter but uh after the
creation of both Atlas and Hercules of this crater is almost buried you can
barely see it just just its Rim protruding up um um creating just enough
Shadow to see the the low black protrusion uh going Northwest from Atlas so lots of
action up there pre-existing craters new craters even newer craters so uh um the
Moon is evolving ever evolving and over the periods of billions of years uh
crater overlays crater um moving on a little further south we're uh now on the Eastern side
of Mari fundus um getting near the uh
um equatorial region on the moon um um petavius is the seventh largest crater
on the near side of the moon but in this case it's also a floor fractured crater
uh we see the volcanic uplift has pushed its floor up it's fairly shallow um a
measure of the form of a crater is what we call is depth over diameter ratio D
overd um depth being a certain distance diameter being a certain distance
generally the smaller the crater um the small the higher this ratio uh excuse me I got that backwards the smaller a small
crater may have a depth of say a kilometer be 5 kilometers wide but we're getting up into these huge craters the D
overd ratio gets progressively bigger in the case of um of um bavius um its depth
versus its diameter is 1 over 88 so uh uh the higher that ratio the uh uh
shallower uh the the crater is instead of being a crater it's more like a a a a
pipan very shallow and Broad in this case we see U this uh rather pronounce
real protruding Westward from the central Peak and then another one um
branching northward and ending in a fork this is actually the same real Ram
bavius it uh bisects the uh um Central Peak and due to the Shadows
um on the central Peak you cannot see that that channel marches over the central Peak and continues on as that
north-facing uh re um that um scoots off about 70 kmet from the central Peak to
the uh Outer Rim Western rim and then branches upward about 45 kmet and it
gives the impression of a clock face showing uh about 20 minutes to 12
uh other Curiosities uh in the region though look uh just to the
southeast into the Shadow from pavus uh you notice there a lengthy Ridge
protruding into the sunlight that's the other Rim Outer Rim Easter rim of uh
valys pitz and I cannot pronounce that it's a German name with p's and T's and
Z's in it and my simply will not create the proper word but it's a fascinating
feature to look at and U it's a an example of one of the few uh Valley
features on the moon and scooting on down between uh uh
Mario tranquilatus and uh U
um like I said I'm kind of tired today words are evaporating from my head
between the yeah between tranquilatus and U um funus uh right in the channel
in between those two Mario we've got uh U this uh little floor fractured crater
tunus um now uh U it's a significant little crator but it's not exactly one
of the ones that roll off your tongue first when you're you're talking about popular lunar features but it is a floor
fractur greater the theme of our our talk tonight and uh here we see uh the
AR curved um ridges inside durus that U um
follow the uh the inner rim of the uh of the crater walls now there's um another
class of craters we'll see an example of it pretty soon called concentric craters that have a true complete circular inner
wall inside the crater's wall a natural wall and that was that concentric
craters those were created by um volcanic u u eruptions that forced up
through a circular crack around the uh uh crater that was formed by the impact
that created it uh it provided the circular conduit to allow basalts to
flow up and form a complete circular inner wall now there's a size limit to
concentric craters and they're typically no larger than 15 kilometers but here on
torus uh we see this inner wall um very clearly not
completely all the way around not 360° but we can see that even though torus is significantly larger than a
concentric crater typically is uh that inner wall tried very hard to form so I
consider uh some um floor fractured craters to be failed concentric craters
and on the other hand uh concentric craters are just baby floor fractured craters
so moving on and uh looking at the next one um also up in the northern latitudes
again above Mars seratus uh we have a feature dead center in the field of view
here um called lacus mortis the Lake of the Dead um this was named by giovan
rioli back in the 17th century and at the time uh they didn't recognize um
some of these features for what they really are uh he he designated it as a lake a circular Lake but today we
recognize it as a 150 km diameter crater that filled in with lava balt completely
paved over the the stal peak in fact the uh the the basalt within lacis mortise
bulges upward 200 M so it it's it's bulging in the middle and then the
crater Berg um crashed right Square in the middle of it gave it that U Bullseye appearance
but um lacus mortise still qualifies as a floor fractured crater because of the
series of of reals crisscrossing the western side of the of the basalt plane
within lacas Morse those were created by volcanic uplift so even though it's
classified um historically as a lake or lacus on the moon it is a floor factured
crater uh moving down toward the Southwest now down below Marin nubium um
another really good example of a floor factured crater and the upper little right we see U
um the um I'm having memory problems
patas potato yeah patatus I was having fun with somebody about that the other
day are doing way better than we are oh I I apologize for being no no no no I
I I'm I I did an awful lot of mechanical work today on on my uh uh some U
equipment that my son owns for for 50 years plus plus you've been running all over the country yeah this I get it
blame it on jet lag blame it on jet lag there we go so clearing my mind patas
yes I was having fun with somebody the other day about that because they got they confused this one with pavus as a
bavius potato potato potato but nonetheless um another
magnificent floor fractured crater that's about 100 kilometers in diameter and uh the central Peak just barely
protruding above this this lava flood that uh completely filled it in and um
um the uh the salt fill within it is again
about 150 MERS higher than the Maria just north of it so considerable amount
of volcanic activity pushing up into this crater it almost just a little bit of the central Peak left showing uh the
circular reels are just inside the uh the rim of it uh giving it the
designation of a floor fractured crater now look just a little bit to the left of patus and notice the shadowed um
crater that has another Rim inside of it uh that is one of the examples of a FL
of a concentric crater I was talking about um and this particular one is called hotus a um a satellite Crater of
hotus which is the smaller crater just merged cheek to cheek with with patas
and U again this this inner Rim pushed up in a very Sim way to the basalts that
push up into these four fractured graters and U just for funsies take a
look at Rima hotus that long linear reel streaking down to the southwest and then
uh go all the way over to the left and the circular ring of the ghost crater
Keys a crater that existed uh prior to the flooding Basalt flooding that
created Morin nubium it left only ring of the rim protruding and then just to
the lower left of keys look at the little tiny shield volcano with a with a Caldera on on its top oh yeah yeah that
that we call that Keys pie uh like like the Greek letter Pi that's very cool and
moving on right Square in the middle of the moon face of the Moon uh we've got
the triple creater combination very popular observational Target uh tus at
the top arachel in the middle and uh excuse me alfonsus in the middle and
arachel at the bottom uh the lower two are floor fractured craters so we get a
twofer two of them in one view here uh alonsus on the top um I've previously
talked about the volcanic activity within it because we can see the ash deposits around the volcanic Cinder
cones at the 9:00 3:00 5:30 position but the crater is also a floor factured
crater it floor is elevated pushed up by volcanism we see the uh the riddles and
cracks arcing around the uh east side of the crater's interior and uh notice the
ridge vertical Ridge bisecting the middle of it this is pushed up several hundred meters Higher by a volcanic
uplift than the the rest of the crater floor and then down south of it also our
Z crater uh floor fractured crater because of the the real creeping around um the
little um crater in the middle that arachel a that is kind of almost exactly
balancing Rachel's offset Central Peak so uh both features neither one directly
in the middle but they kind of balance each other and put a little good symmetry there uh this no I've got one more one
more to go um call this the granddaddy of all uh floor fractured craters gindi
up on uh Northern Mar humor now it's not the granddaddy for any geological
feature or or or Reason like that I call it the granddaddy of all uh four
fracture creators because it's the first one that caught my attention back in 1962 um back in those days I was active
uh with the uh local satellite observing team here in San Antonio Texas and uh uh
my good friend Paul mey uh he's now a well-known Eclipse Expedition leader um
he and I were part of that and he loaned me what was called a 5-in apog scope it
was a a special telescope designed specifically for observing very faint
fat satellites and I a that thing at the Moon one night after a satellite run and it was just the right time for gassendi
to be on the Terminator and just it's just stuck in my memory for the for
the past decade all half century um it it it's one of the things that really
endeared me about the moon early on but um here we see that
um like all other Flor fracture craters that's on the edge of Amaria it's about
111 kilm in diameter and uh its floor again uplifted by a volcanic Uh u
activity From Below um push the floor of the crater up almost level with the uh surrounding uh uh Maria below it um the
basalt that within gindi did not breach over the uh Rim from Mari humorum it
came up from below and uh created the series of fractures and reals now notice
up in the northern part of gendi um those reels tend to taper off and and
become more muted uh that's because look at 33 km gassendi a laying on gas's
upper Rim um and then look at the inner wall of gendi below it uh it doesn't
have the typical stair step appearance uh of normal craters where the wall
collapses into Terrace walls this is a more smooth Landslide and that was
created by the impact of Cindi a the size MC shock uh collapsed the inner
wall and it tumbled down and obscured part of the northern uh region of the
rules within gendi so um floor fractured craters um
like I said a different class of crater they started out as a traditional complex crater that uh U was a
excavation into the moon filled in with Basalt leveled it created the uh
fractures within it so they just add a little bit more spice to uh cruising around the moon and uh um prowling the
uh geologic features the different things to be seen so uh I encourage you next time you um explore the Moon look
around for some of these uh floor fractured craters they're very distinctive and uh now that you know
what they are I hope you appreciate them a little bit more so uh with that I will
say that there is much to love on the Moon the Moon is my playground and I
invite you you to come join me on my playground it's been fun thank you
wonderful wonderful thank you so much Al righty I'm trying to stop take care of
that I'll take care of that for you there Perfect all righty wonderful presentation Robert wonderful thank you
thank you thank you so much okay all right so um we will uh um move down from
Texas just go straight down and we're going to Brazil and uh marelo Souza is waiting
for us he is our southern hemisphere South American uh astronomer U uh
professor of astronomy and uh an incredible icon of astronomy Outreach
and public education you know he inspires uh youth uh thousands of Youth
uh to get involved in exploring the night Sky uh protecting Dark Skies uh
heck they even sent uh some uh sat cubes into space and um uh he is uh every year
he doubles down on what he does to uh get people interested in uh science and
astronomy and uh spreading the word marello thank you very much for coming
on to Global Star Party hi nice to see all of you thank you very much for the
invitation Scot ever is a great pleasure to be here thank you thank you
yeah marchello is also the editor of Sky Up Magazine so there is a new issue um
coming up pretty soon so yes and I'm recovering from our event every year
organize international meeting here in our seity but this year we had a
challenge a Big Challenge thank you Scot because SC introducing me to the our Sky
team and we already built an observatory here in
six days oh to to participate in the our Sky
Network our Sky Network okay I will show the pictures to
I'll try again just is it okay no it's
coming yeah need you just need to take it in presentation mode no is okay there we go perfect
perfect okay okay this is our international meeting that he finish it
last Saturday two days a three days ago there are the people that
participate have a lot of students that receive certificates for the the project
that they develop we have people from other countries here and this is a
report that where show in a Brazilian TV
like showing what happening in our events we had the opportunity to talk
about the new technologies and the as photography
dark skies and the AR tourism and also we had the opportunity to talk
about astrobiology during the event and we had
workshops and many different activities organized dur the
events and the for us ever is a great
opportunity to De to begin new projects well then this had the participation of
Jeffrey Wallace that's here that's was involved in projects
witha and many universities from United States
and now he is moving to Brazil he's a not American Research that is moving
to Brazil and is bringing new also we had the opportunity to talk
about the Sun during the event we organizing a sun observation a public
Sun observation in a public square of our
city and we celebrate the anniversary of
150 years of birth of one of the person that
was the pioneer of astronomy in our city in Brazil and ever is a great opportunity
to motivate new students to motivate the public and to show
that to De participating in scientific events is an opportunity to know new uh
models new theories and know what's happening now what is being developed
and will show I will show the results and the big challenge that you had that
has the opportunity to build a new Observatory here in our city and this is
theise that one of the most famous Brazilian art
photographer Denise he has 18 years old and he is a doctor
he is a cardiologist and he he loves astronomy and
photography celebrating and here is Jeffrey W that
work at Nasa in many different universities in United
States that's where he is and this is a I show in Brazilian TV
well report about what happened here in our
event here are some images of
the fabiani that's responsible for the dark sky in
Uruguay and also have the participation of a person that is has a TV program in
Colombia about astronomy that is Salazar that's is here he has a program in
Colombia on TV in Colombia about astronomy and the
astronautics this was a great opportunity for us this is our team the team of the our astronomy club the Louis
Cruz astronomy club that's a respon for the part of the speakers that
participates in the events these are the National
photography Workshop that the organized here and this was
inauguration of Observatory we received from the our Sky
uh the equipments that we are installing now this is a 8 in ra haa salr telescope
that is the first automate that we are going to use there and now I will show
your Observatory that build in six days Days six days this is we are inside
this is a big challenge to all of you watching to build your own observatory in six days yes is that
wood had Wood Walls yeah yeah people are
inside the observatory we have Internet we have power supply have electricity we
have everything automate and we can open the Hof and close the H with a
motor that's here the major of observatory near it's not ready in this
image I I'm showing the process to build this is you have already the walls you
have the Hof and you have the motor here but it's not with
door yeah when it was they R building
is the size is have 3 m by 3 m 3 m by 3
m is a square Observatory 3 m inside
inside we use W here is the representative of our sky that visit us
that's zero new that bring brought the
equipment my daughter inside no if uh
it's not from our sky this is our equipment that you use that and you can see here the circle here in the floor
we have here a a small part of the circle that is separated from the floor
of the observatory and it has a high of one meter deeper in the
soil to to where we be we are in ing the
the telescope the main telescope of but it a big challenge to building
six days to be ready for the meeting with and is located in a
region protected because is a protected Forest
near the ocean Forest that have near the ocean and this
region is developed astronomy projects and they
already have Futo mitigation there because of the turtles because they need to protect the turtles that you have the
ocean is located in front of the Reser K the coast then they need to protect the
coast and inside the Reser only head you have lights according to all the HS to
protect the T and and inside the the protect Forest they
don't have electricity and lights here is the activity developed in
Public Square of the solar observation had the participation of
many people ever is a special moment to show
the sun in a safe way for the population
here our see there many people
participate and not to say that I didn't talk about astronomy I talk I something
that I read these days is about the
Saturn and here is a painting of of Galo
in as you know in
1610 G sat and here in one of his
book you have the here he draw what he saw in sat he
didn't dentify the Rings he imagine that to to what she was
looking giant moons of the planet is what he imagined
these moons these moons appeared fixed in position un like the four satellites
of Jupiter and what happened that is curious this J them talk about this
because the moon that's that Galileo who I
seeing disappeared in 1612 and he didn't know what happened
because he the moon disappeared what he imagined that where
moons or the planet many
explanation uh they try many explanations to
explain try to explain sat strange
appendage which GRE shrunk and this appeared every 15 years
since the observation made from Galileo only in
165 five that Hans uh propos the correct correct
explanation for what is around s Saturn is what happened every 15 years
Saturn Str appendage are a flat a disc of material as proposed by H in
Saturn's equatorial plane which appear to vanish when the
earth is in the direction of the plane of the dis of the Rings and why I'm
talking about this because in 20 25 this is how we will see s we will not
see the links from left now this year it we have the
opportunity to see part of the Rings to show
that we have a ring around rings around SAT but next year probably we will not
see the Rings and this month we can see Saturn we
begin to see Saturn par in Brazil here we can see
3:00 a.m. in our city here in Brazil and we are preparing to organize many
activities showing prepar to next year we show that people can't see the Rings
probably can't see the Rings because position now and this is something that began the
first who saw this happening was Galileo in
1612 thank you very much for the opportunity Squad thank you thank you so
much marello thanks very much and congratulations on um uh you know
building an observatory in such a short amount of time you know hey has a big challeng sure that
the concrete was dry you know yeah they have three teams working
three teams one for the concrete one that made the walls that we bought wood
to make the walls then they prepar the walls soon that as possible they bring
the walls to to the place where they already have concrete okay and then they
another group that was responsible for to bring the power supply the energy now
we have tubes of energy and also the internet to the because everything will
be controlled by internet automatic and thank you very much to Introducing
Me sky thank you very much I'm glad it's all working out um regarding where the
pier will go uh in the observatory uh did you guys take care of
to isolate yes it is isolated and one meter
one meter deeper one met deeper okay that's good that's good 60 cm of
diameter uhhuh separated from the the of the side of the observatory floor
and one meter deeper with concrete yeah that's good inside wow then I hope
they not vibrate when people walk around because separate from the other part of
the obervatory and is a very dark place very dark place with no light
pollution and with nothing in rizing
around only is only one floor and I don't have
enough your eyes H and so when will the telescope arrive when when will you be
ready it's here everything already okay yes yes we we are planning to install
this week they are supporting us the a technical from our Sky arrived last week
wedes they here with the telescope yeah and with the camera the mount the
computer they bought everything wow that's great now congratulations you
know now our challenge is to install and calibrate everything sure that will be a
big challenge to calibrate to install it is easy part to calibrate that will be
hard for us year but now we are working this I hope that next we week everything
will be working everything will be controlled by internet yeah
they we open close the H by internet and the Maze everything will be and we also
we have you one telescope from us in at the observatory ah
wonderful a fantastic opportunity that you'll have to you'll have to give
us a followup report uh maybe next week on uh the installation and I hope that's
next to everything will be working but that's great I don't know because it's something different for us because we
need to move for a place that is far one hour from where I
live it's 40 kilometers far from from Easy just get over there yeah but it's
but I I will be there with frequency to to check everything and to
be working we have also a they will are supporting us to have
people there to make the maintenance of the obervatory and also to solve
technical issues then and they also have the security St a safe place everything it
needs that's great now thank you very much because you you
that responsible for for to have the opportunity I just connect friends you
know that's all so that's good that's good well wonderful wonderful well thank
you uh marello and uh we're going to finish off uh 148th Global star party
I've got a couple of more videos that I think will interest you uh one of them is about uh our near and dear star the
sun and um and also about um a new uh
Mission uh to observe Aurora so I think if if uh Carrie is still watching this I
think she's going to really like that take care and good night marchella thanks bye
bye thank you bye bye bye okay here we go
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well I hope you really enjoyed those videos uh see Jim Hendrickson is asking me to link to this video please I will
when I end out the program just keep watching the uh uh chat and I'll try to
uh find the link and post it there for you uh where I get these videos from is
NASA's uh G media um uh archive and also
from the esa media archive they these two organizations put together the best
programs of all I think um and it's uh really cool to see some of the
historical stuff uh like the news reel that I have for Palomar Observatory for
example where you go into archive.org and you go into their media archive and
so there's a lot of cool stuff there are you know uh famous astronomers and stuff
you can find in news reels and in uh presentations that uh are you know now
out of copyright and you can freely use them for educational purposes like we use them here um I am a NASA solar
system Ambassador and I love sharing uh uh the NASA stuff they just do such
incredible production work and all the rest of it so but um anyways I hope you
guys got a nice feeling from this Global star party and uh had some nice presentations that it was the right mix
of you know these kinds of videos and presentations that we have from our presenters uh that uh want to do
Outreach that really want to um you know share what they know and to help uh help
you uh in your Outreach work you know so uh um so that's that's the that's the
deal in being in this community is that we're all out to help each other and uh
to wake up people to learning more about science and because you know the world's
got big problems today uh growing population uh uh big issues that
challenge us uh but also as maybe as dangerous and as um um tough as the
world might see see seem in the future it is also uh you know wrapped in
incredible uh adventure and hope uh and uh there's exciting times ahead so um
anyways thanks again and uh we will see you uh on the next Global star party our
149th I'm really excited that the 150th is coming up I can't believe that we've
done 150 Star Party events you know so um take care and uh as my friend Jack
horkheimer always used to say keep looking up good
night when considering the possibility of life beyond Earth we look for three main ingredients the first one is key
elements such as carbon hydrogen oxygen and sulfur the second is a source of
energy and the third and perhaps most important is the existence of liquid water water is a necessary solvent in
all chemical reactions that have to do with life energy is required to drive these chemical reactions and organic
matter is the material from which all life that we know of is made Life as we know it requires liquid water scientists
believe that life on earth started in our oceans now through our exploration of the solar system we've realized that
the moons around the giant planets have the right conditions that there could be liquid water underneath their surfaces
so that really sort of expands our whole concept of where you could have a habitat where we might find
Life water is fairly common in the universe we've seen traces of water in large molecular clouds between Stars
we've seen traces of water in protoplanetary diss we've also seen traces of water as water vapor in the
atmospheres of giant planets around other stars and we know that water is in the atmospheres and Interiors of our
solar systems giant planets so we know that water is ubiquitous throughout the universe as far as liquid water that's a
little less common Earth is the only planet in the solar system where we see liquid water at our surface moons such
as incus and Europa may have liquid water beneath layers of ice we're really
expanding our understanding of what makes a place habitable instead of just looking for an earthlike terrestrial
planet that's a very specific distance from its star we're learning that there can be hidden habit
that are underneath icy layers and they can be a lot further out from the Sun so we believe icy moons in the solar system
actually Harbor kilometers thick oceans underneath their icy surfaces these icy
moons and their subsurface oceans may be some of the best places to search for life elsewhere in our solar
[Music] system Enceladus is one of Saturn's many
moons and it's a very small Moon that people tend to kind of ignore cuz it's so small about 500 km in diameter but
decades ago in the 1980s from groundbased observing we found out that the location of Enceladus relative to
Saturn happened to coincide nicely with Saturn's e-ring and so we were thinking
that Enceladus had something to do with the e-ring particulates the icy material but we weren't sure what we later find
from Cassini was that we directly determined that there are indeed plumes jetting out of the South polar region
from crack in the South Pole of Enceladus in the crust and it's dominantly water-rich material just
jetting out into space and so the way we saw it Cassini happened to be located where Enceladus was back lit from the
Sun and so you saw this curtain of beautiful diffused material jetting out of the South po region quite
breathtaking actually even more we were able to use the different complements of instruments on board Cassini to go after
the chemical composition of the plumes and that's where things got really interesting number one that's because of
liquid water there's definitely a liquid water reservoir subsurface below the icy Crest but that is there number two the
chemical composition of the plumes told us that there's a lot of Organics things that make up amino acid and things on
life that are very interesting and number three what we are really looking for is a source of energy on Enceladus
photons from the Sun aren't going to work because you can't penetrate the tens of kilometers of icy crust to get
down to where the liquid water reservoir is but what Enceladus does have is hydrothermal vents it's very hot into
liquid water that has a lot of analogies with the ocean floor where we have a form of releasing chemical energy via
something called serpentinization and so we think that in celus might have that potential to have an energy source being
chemical not sunlight and so you put all that together and Enceladus has all the
ingredients or most of what we need for life that makes it a very astrobiological interesting object to
study Europa is one of the largest moons of Jupiter and we believe that Europa has a subsurface ocean tens to hundreds
of kilometers thick and so this ocean may be one of the best places to search for life in the solar system there's
been three space missions that have provided evidence for Europa harb ing
liquid water the first one is Voyager in the late '70s the second one is the
Galileo mission in the late 9s and most recently H which detected plume like uh
emission from hydrogen and oxygen which is closely related to the existence of water beneath its surface these plumes
may be directly ejected through cracks in the surface of the Moon and therefore what we're seeing in water vapor plumes
is the actual ocean water from the subsurface surface of the Moon as these plume particles are ejected to space
solar radiation is going to excite these water particles creating vibrational modes now these vibrational modes are
signatures that can be detected at infrared wavelength by the C Observatory
so we observe Europa on 17 days what we found is that the majority of
observations have no presence of water however on one of those dates with thech
detected water we detected H2O in the past hav provided indirect
measurements of Water by detecting hydrogen and oxygen but now we have directly detected Water For the First
Time both the web telescope and the Europa Clipper Mission will give us a much more detailed picture of the
surface of Europa its cracks and crevices detailed pictures of the water vapor as well as other molecules that
may also be emanating from the subsurface of Europa so both of these missions will give us a great picture of
whether Europa is truly [Music]
habitable Titan is a moon of Saturn it's the second largest moon in the solar
system and it is about two times larger than Earth's moon and actually bigger
than the planet Mercury and Titan is also interesting it's the only moon in our solar system with an at spere it's
surrounded by sort of an envelope of gaseous nitrogen just like our own Earth is Titan was first discovered by
telescope observation back in the mid 1600s the first spacecraft observations
were made of Titan during flybys through the outer solar system that was in the late 7s and in the 80s but we really
were able to explore Titan in depth with the Cassini hyan Mission the hyan probe
was dropped into the atmosphere of Titan and it made measurements of chemistry and it took images as it felt to to the
surface and that was back in 2005 and since then the Cassini orbiter made over
100 close flybys of Titan Cassini in its design with the different instruments we purposely were picking instruments that
could go into longer wavelengths into the infrared so we could really understand the moon we were able to
basically peel back the layers of Titan to really see what was below and it was
remarkable very earthlike the landscape is similar to Earth's in many many
anyways but with a little bit of a Twist so on Titan you can find Dunes you find
Lakes there are river channels the atmosphere is very dense and you can get clouds and Smog and you even get rain we
saw winds we saw seasons and one really important thing we saw was liquids
pooling in the polar regions on the surface a lot of it but because Titan is so cold those features are all made of
uh very exotic materials compared to what we would find on Earth so the lakes and the rain are made of liquid methane
the crust that forms the surface of Titan is actually water ice but it's so cold that it's as hard as rock and in
the atmosphere we get this organic chemistry that forms large organic molecules and particulates they fall
down to the surface and then behave like dust or like sand does so it makes us want to go back to really understand the
complex organic environment of that surface and what it means for either past life or maybe future life
life dragonfly is a mission that was just selected by NASA to fly to Titan
and arrive in the mid 2030s dragonfly is going to make a whole bunch of measurements to help us understand the
environment on Titan and its potential for habitability we'll be taking measurements of the atmosphere that
includes things like pressure temperature winds we'll probe the surface to try to understand what
material is the surface made out of we also be drilling into the surface to look for the types of IC molecules that
are present and to try to see if we can find any examples of compounds that mimic the types of building blocks we
know we need for life on Earth we don't really know how life started on Earth we don't exactly know what the chemical
environment of Earth was like before life started so with Titan we have this really unique opportunity there are
times in Titan's past where there could be liquid water on the surface impact craters can generate impact melt and
there's a potential for a possible cow volcanism to erupt some liquid water onto the surface and so we know that
there's a rich organic chemistry going on in the atmosphere we know that's depositing to the surface if there were
times where those Organics and the liquid water environments were mixing then there may be some really
interesting chemistry taking place when you have these processes operating for hundreds of millions of years how far
can they get you down that path of chemical complexity and can we see reactions and molecules that start to
look something like what we think of as essential elements for our biochemistry for life on Earth in the future looking
forward as as opposed to looking back and thinking about Titan as a chemical laboratory for the Prebiotic Earth I
like to look forward thinking about what's going to happen when the sun evolves and warms up in the habitable
zone actually moves out to where Titan is and it will you have all the Organics you're going to have a source of energy
all we have to do is melt the frozen water and we're going to have a pool of Organics just embedded in liquid Titan
might actually have a chance at that point to Harbor life
so when we think about ocean worlds it's good to compare them to what we know about Earth in total proportion Earth is
about .1% water an ocean world is a body that has in proportion about 10 times
more water than Earth does and when we think of the trapz planets those planets have about 50 times more water in
proportion to what Earth does ocean worlds do appear to be common in our galaxy as far back as the early 2000s we
had astronomers some of them still here at Nasa GD that suggested that we would have ocean worlds or in low mass stars
recently we've looked at about 52 exoplanets and these are low mass exoplanets and what we found is of these
52 planets one out of every four may be an ocean planet and when it comes to
these ocean planets over half of them may be ice covered ocean worlds and so
Enceladus and Europa may serve as small scale analoges of these planets so there are a number of different ways to search
for life on planets around other stars but the key ke method is the study of
the atmospheres we can search for signs of Life bio signatures we call them things like oxygen water vapor carbon
dioxide even more unusual bio signatures things like chlorofluorocarbons or other
things that are only produced by intelligent life by looking for these key constituents of planetary
atmospheres that signal life we can discover life forms on other planets that we could never actually visit in
our lifetime so this is very analogous to how we study the atmospheres of moons and planets in our own solar system and
really makes the connection between studying the plumes of Europa and the atmospheres of planets around other
stars what I would like to see is the definition of a habitable zone expanded
we don't want to keep thinking too narrowed about liquid on the surface but broaden the scope and really try to
embrace other worlds that might seem too far from the host star and frozen out when they really aren't Frozen at all at
Great depths they Harbor a warm hydr driven liquid water environment
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