Transcript:
22 when I was working full-time for another company as a tech writer but anyway uh she just got home so um have
you heard from Jim tomney yeah I did get I did get information from him so uh I was able to
create a page for him and a link Alpo and all the rest of that
so we are who should be live now let's see
good evening Mr Aker how are you sir uh
I'm doing okay I'm doing okay and well that beat that beats the alternative I
think yeah well I'm above ground yeah well that that's good yeah that as
George Carlin says that's the whole point of living yes it is not dying you
know yeah pretty straightforward and uh how's Mr Levy oh David's doing fine
thank you good good good good GL to be here oh yeah let me
see you turn out the overhead light oh how
moody all right anyway okay well I'm here to watch and
see what goes on because um okay who was uh supposed to be the Alpo uh speaker um
David you know him Tim Robertson out there in California and unfortunately um Jim
lives about 30 minutes east of the latest fire now the winds are from the
East blowing it Westerly towards you know the the ocean so it's not really
coming towards his house however uh in uh in an effort to make sure that it
doesn't spread his way they turn off the power so they uh just connected the
electricity so he won't be doing but we've made arrangements for uh another Alpo person his name is Jim tomney and
he is our uh website guy our what do they call those uh webmeister or
something so he is supposed to be doing the presentation for the Alpo and I'll
be uh touch and base with him shortly to make sure that he is and he's agreed to
do it so he'll do the 15 minutes or so for the Alpo to talk about the new Alpo
website and so forth and uh other than that we had a really crappy rzz drizz
warm warm like in the mid-60s drizzly day um tomorrow is going to be uh
drizzly in the first part of the day and then it's going to get really cold for us it's going to be cold the high
temperature is going to be like 42 you know the next couple couple days yeah
what state are you in uh I'm in Atlanta that's right you said that yeah I'm I'm originally from
Cleveland Ohio I've been here since 84 uh I got my degree in uh news
journalism at Kent State in 74 which makes me old I saw the Beatles play live
in ' 66 and um I did newspaper reporting and then I got into Publications editing for
the next for about 10 years and the economy was terrible I came down here to visit family and got a job offer to do
technical writing so I took that and I'm glad I did for the job but I never
really uh really clicked you know the skies are a lot better down here than up in clev you
know less clouds but you know this is where I am so okay it's a nice place if
you like like two seasons a year summer and not quite summer this is pretty much
so all right uh so we are we're now live and streaming and um I have a a little
poem that was inspired by David Levy's um theme of
patan deelo vasper which is Latin for peace from the
evening sky so it goes something like this it's peace from the even evening
Sky gently unfolds where secrets of the cosmos remain Untold beneath the stars
with the comet's fleeting Hue we find Solace under a blanket of deepest blue
The Whisper of winds through Celestial Halls a Timeless Melody as night softly
calls through cherish lenses and mirrors we trace the glow charting the Heaven's
Eternal flow spiral arms with extended wide
nebula Bloom where Mysteries reside the moon ascends a pale radiant guide
revealing both wonder and desolation inside each pinpoint of light holds a
taale to share of fiery births and lifetimes laid bare in this vast expanse
a tranquil Cosmic sea peace unfolds us setting Mind and Spirit
free patcham deelo the we sigh renewed
and humbled beneath the infinite Sky gosh I hope I got that Latin correct if
not let me know welcome to the 163rd Global Star
Party um and here we go [Music]
[Music] we have always looked to the sky in
Wonder questioning the universe's story and our place in
it in the vastness of space are we
alone each generation of telescope and technology has brought us closer to the
answer [Music]
[Music]
human determination has taken us farther than we could have imagined
[Music]
[Music]
this Legacy leads to our next chapter
[Music] and the answers that lie in the
[Music]
Stars waiting for us to find them
[Music]
[Music]
on behalf of NASA I'd like to extend our deepest gratitude to each of you for your incredible contributions and
dedication during The heliophysics Big Year a global celebration of how the Sun touches everything your passion
commitment and tireless efforts have and will continue to profoundly impact our research from helping to track a solar
eclipse to discovering sungrazing comets and even spotting auroras your participation has been invaluable and
the insights you provide are not only enhancing scientific discovery but also bringing us closer to answering some of
the most fundamental questions about our closest star and its influence on the earth and our solar system one
spectacular example was during the 24 total solar eclipse when we witness 36,000 volunteer scientists come
together to collect over 60,000 data points this is proof that anyone regardless of background or expertise
can contribute to the progress of science to help make our world a better place by joining forces we are creating
a broader more inclusive scientific community that celebrates the power of Discovery thank you for your dedication
enthusiasm and support you are an essential part of our mission at NASA helping us to inspire future generations
to learn explore and build a better
future well hello everyone this is Scott Roberts from explore scientific and I'm
bringing my co-host on David Levy uh and um we're so pleased to be uh here
with you on the 163rd Global Star Party um we've got a great lineup of speakers
as usual and uh but we start this uh every time with uh uh an inspiring quote
uh some poetry and some thoughts from U David Levy so David it's all yours man
thank you Scott and I wanted to say when I got the announcement uh you sent to the
presenters last night there was this poem attach that I read and I thought
right away what famous poet wrote that but then reading it a little bit more
closely I thought I think it was Scott and I was right about that Scott you were writing fine fine works of art
better than much better than me and uh really really glad to have
heard that GE you recite it today well it was inspired by you so thank you well
this theme for today is kind of inspired by something you said regarding a theme
I had set a few weeks ago and you talked about the peace the
sense of peace that the nice guy gets and I couldn't come up with a theme that says a sense of speaks that the nice guy
gets because that would have taken too long so I tried translating it into
different languages and found a very nice nice translation into Latin and uh so I'm glad we're doing
that now and I'm glad I believe Scotty that you pronounced it correctly but
since Julius Caesar is not around anymore I think he doesn't mind how he
pronounce it yeah he might just slap me I don't know [Laughter]
so for real but anyway um I have several times used as the poetical
quotation Al tennison's great poem in Memorial of all the poems that I've
studied in my career this one was the first that really got to me because of
its its ties to the nice sky and I have um it's a very very long
poem and uh you know I don't think you want me to read the whole thing it would probably take 18 hours which is what I
originally asked for for today if we must we must but but anyway I've been reading
little bits and pieces of it and today I would like to read another one there are
three Christmases that take place during a memorial and each one is mentioned so
here he goes he plays with threads he beats his chair for past time dreaming
of the sky his inner day can never die his night of loss is always there the time
draws near the birth of Christ the Moon is hid the night is still a single
Church below the hill is peeling folded in the midst and Rise o Moon from Yonder
down to over down and over Dale all night The Shining Vapor sail and past
the silent lighted town and here at times a sentinel who moves about from
place to place and Whispers to the worlds of space in the Deep night that
all is well thank you very much and back to you
Scot we don't hear you Scott you're muted Scott I'm
muted David I I I know that you're working on at least one book maybe a
couple of books um uh do you want to talk about that a little bit or oh yeah
it's down to one book now I am working on a book that uh Dave rossiter's wife
Pam suggested because after I lost Wendy everybody was suggesting and telling me
that I had to eat more and um because I think in the six
months after after Wendy died I think I lost about 40 or 50 pounds but um it's coming back on now
and I'm feeling a lot stronger and a lot better but um everyone's still
suggesting that I eat more and then Pam came by and she said I have a suggestion
and it's not to eat more so that I listened to and she said today the
minute we leave I want you to start a new book M and I said Pam I'm a little
too old to start a new book now and she said you're never too old you may be too
old to um to run in a triathlon you're may be too old to join the
Olympics but you're not too old to write a book and the minute they left I took
this album that I have of all the poems that I quote at Global star party and at
other events and I put them all into an arrangement and I'm building a uh a
commentary uh a commentary on each one of the poems
and I'm working on that book now and uh I'm hoping to get the proposal for it
finished by the end of January and uh that's it the other book
I was working on I stopped because it was finished and that's called St star
dayses and it's kind of named for me in a way because I am not an
astronomer and so before you all go away and run run fast from me I've never taken a course in
astronomy so I have no right to call myself an astronomer I am a
stargazer I've done that all my life I'm still doing
it I I love doing it and I love the night sky as much tonight as I did when
I first looked up at the sky with a telescope in September of
1960 and saw the planet Jupiter for the first time but
now uh it is time for me to to to to enjoy again the concept of just
being a stargazer for example last night I was um observing the Geminis I don't
think I'll be able to get them on the maximum night because the moon will be too bright but I got a good hour last
night and five nice German meteors appeared breeding me from the sky so I
still love doing that and that's what I do I am a stard Daner back to you Scotty thank you thank you and David do you get
a feeling of a sense of Peace when you look look up at the sky and when you
search for comets I absolutely do and uh no matter
how bad a day might have been for me and there' have been a lot of them when the
sun goes down and the stars begin to come out and I go out the observatory and turn on the telescope and start to
observe with it this sense of peace and joy it's like taking a big huge
tranquilizer this big with no side effects and I really do enjoy that and
it's nowhere nowh no more than right now in my
life okay well that's great I think I get a sense of Peace too I know I do um
when things are not right in the world for whatever reason I all I have to do is grab a telescope go to a street
corner and show some people the stars or the moon or Saturn's rings and man that's that's it you know
I I am I am refreshed and renewed you know so I I appreciate what you're
trying to do I appreciate that my greatest sense of peace is when I'm
alone in the observatory and it's just me and the night sky and uh either a
telescope or last night no telescope at all just watching gemin oh wow yeah I
just was dressed warmly enough that it was um I was snug as a bug in a rug for
over an hour and uh really did enjoy those gminas last night that's
great well um we will uh we'll leave it at that and
we will uh transition over to the astronomical League uh this time uh Lori
Anor is uh going to be with us and uh I think she might have a few things to say
about
this hey Lori I'm here yours it's all yours
okay I will start a screen
share and I will start by saying hello from the astronomical league and thanks
for having us on the 163rd Global star party and I'm glad to be
here so a couple new things are happening with the astronomical League to let everybody know about the amount
of videos that are appearing on the YouTube page for the astronomical league
is continuing to grow and if you're like so many of the members in my home Club
up then you probably enjoy hearing little bits and pieces that are building
your education to enjoy your own stargazing so I highly recommend going
to that uh page and even the Facebook page and learning about astronomy and
seeing some of the one pagers that John Goss does for the astronomical League that he posts onto Facebook and it's a
pretty regular occurrence there's also a new observing program uh
called the extra Galactic objects observing program and so this is not a
Galaxy program but it's deep SC uh excuse me deep space objects rather than
galaxies um and they're these are familiar objects to our own Galaxy but
they are part of other galaxies like Andromeda so definitely check that out
on the website and in the background I have a little bit of a one of my recent images here in the middle the mini Orion
Nebula that I enjoyed recently that's on um actually that's on
the go back to it there we go that's on the solar Evolution program
list so that's kind of cool there's also a new Hubble Telescope 35th Anniversary
Special observing challenge this one one if I remember
right you don't have to even be a member of the astronomical League um but there
is a challenge every month now I have found that challenges from the league are a great way to put your toe into an
observing program without committing to u a yearslong work or a hundred
observations of something and in this particular case it's uh pretty easy to
earn the the silver level and not much harder but more involved to
earn the gold level the challenges usually involve some um amount of Outreach which basically means sharing
that with other people of of like mind um that's always a lot of fun and then
they're doing a part two to the Parker solar uh probe Challenge on account of
paron um this one also may not require membership to the league but I've got to tell you that membership in the league
has a lot of advantages you learn a lot you meet some fantastic people and uh
you're able to see things um that you hadn't think thought that you could see
before in the background here we've got a little Sunspot picture that I took this past
year so the Hubble um program basically
has 12 levels so if you participate each month in observing something and doing
an image or a sketch of it then you can earn a certificate at the silver level
for each of those months and somewhere in there you've got to do some Outreach
for the gold level you're um doing the same thing but you're doing four
outreaches in the year the neat thing is that you're then comparing your image or
observation to what the Hubble image is now I think that's really great because
I'm in that that sweet spot I'm not really an astrophotographer I am more of an EA
kind of person that's the enhanced astronomy kind of thing I want to see what I want to see but I have no
aspirations nor do I want to recreate the images that Hubble has created so
this is a sweet spot for me and I do invite folks to take a look at this one
and in the background I have uh the oyster nebula here which is number 10 on
the planetary nebula program list so we've also got asron AKA Alon
coming up in Bryce Canyon and I have the link here ason
2025. org and for those who are looking for a fantastic road trip for the
summertime uh one of our club members who lives in Arizona mentions that the
National Park Service Grand Canyon Star Party Starts just before it so you could
go to the Grand Canyon star party and then finish up with Aston and take in
Bryce Canyon and boy I can't think of a a more full summer um so uh do get your
reservations in though if you want to participate in Aston they are anticipating a sellout and certainly the
the rooms are likely to sell out because as I understand it you're not going to get much darker Skies to uh to enjoy
real dark sky treat that I'm looking forward to and in the background here I've got some plees Seven
Sisters now about that poem um the poem inspired by David
Levy's theme of oh dare I try it too pum day
Kelo Vesper um when I read through this poem
I personally thought okay when I go out and enjoy the the awe of the night sky
um I do it but without words for me it's feeling it's almost spiritual in nature
and so um being a photographer from a very early age from I think about age N9
or 10 I was given my first instatic with a little flash cubes um I've put together this uh photo
tribute honoring all those who look up and to me the experience can only best
be described visually so I'll start here with this background I have of the Helix
nebula and the first line is peace from the evening Sky gently unfolds where the
secrets of the cosmos remain Untold here we have the the Big Dipper with some
recent Aurora action beneath the stars with a comet's
fleeing Hue we find Solace under a blanket of deepest blue here's that
recent Comet The Whisper of winds through
Celestial Halls a Timeless Melody as night softly
calls those winds I was definitely thinking of the uh Orion Nebula that I
got recently through cherished lenses and mirrors we trace the glow charting the
Heaven's Eternal flow and that flaming star nebula just
uh came to mind for that flow spiral galaxies with arms extended
wide nebula Bloom where Mysteries reside and here we have the Triangular Galaxy
and the trifid uh not trifold sorry about
that the moon ascends a pale radiant guide revealing both wonder and
desolation inside and here's a little moon with Aurora and the teapot
asterism each pinpoint of light holds a taale to share of fiery births and
lifetimes late bear figure out where that is in the
sky doesn't much matter when you're in awe in this vast expanse a tranquil
Cosmic sea peace unfolds us setting Mind and Spirit
free and here's the cave
nebula hatam day Keo Vesper we sigh
renewed and humbled beneath the infinite Sky here's Copan
pereus dromeda this is so awesome I'm getting my moment of awe
here from from your well as you know my Facebook uh Alias is Lai stargazing awe
so I'm all about stargazing awe and to me this was like a video GRE read in
card and so I had to say seasons greetings from the astronomical league
and peace to all with the Pac-Man nebula and uh wonderful just wanted to
share real quick um in the season that we're in that uh here's the stepin
quintet which is also captured in lower right corner here by uh James web
telescope and if you remember from the uh James Stewart movie with Donna Reed
It's a Wonderful Life those angels were talking amongst themselves as they were
blipping through these U um these galaxies here in Stefan's quintet but I
want to punctuate the end here by just saying that the the best part when you
come from your um alone time and viewing the sky is then spending that time with
others joining a club that's part of the astronomical League of uh clubs there's
hundreds and uh sharing that with others and sharing it in Outreach and that just
helps to help others share that sense of awe and wonder that uh we feel when
we're looking up at that sky so that's why for me it went straight to pictures
with that poem and that theme and I pivoted everything I'd worked on and I said no I I got to shift this and go
straight to to the feeling part here and there you go Scott back to you that is
so cool thank you that is so cool thank you good Lord okay um well uh David uh what
did you think of of this uh I mean the poem you wrote was
fabulous but the way Lori put it together I love that really made it
unique totally locked into our theme of the day and our theme in the way of the
Year this was really really something I was thinking the word
vespera which translates to the evening and Catholic services that some
of you might be familiar with Vesper services from the Latin happen in the
evening so uh Laura laori you did a beautiful
beautiful job with that congratulations thank you I was
inspired yeah we're inspired back so that's very cool very cool thanks again
and uh yeah uh all of you watching uh you know you really need to go to this
next astrocon I think that's what they're calling it this time astrocon and um uh the uh when you go to
Bryce Canyon and you see the hoodo that are out there and you see your shadow
cast By the Light of the Milky Way because that's how dark it gets okay
you'll never forget it and um it will just be a wonderful magical uh week so
uh you got to go all right thank you so much
Lori and so so David our next speaker is going to be Professor Kareem Jafar and
uh uh he is a professor at John Abbott College he is the professor of astronomy
that all of us wish we could have U because he is uh he intertwines uh uh
native stories of of the cosmos uh he
there's just something magical about the guy uh as he does his Outreach work as
he inspires other people um and um you know it was great to spend some time
with him at the staris event in Armenia and I love the way that he kind of
Blends in other people and other things into his Outreach work and so this time
he's got himself and a student of um of his that are going to talk
about orientation so here we go uh thanks Scott hey
doid it's always a blast to come on to the global star parties and uh I I can never live up to the description that
Scott uses to uh introduce me but I'll try my best I wanted to uh spend a bit
of time today not just talking about some of the work that my students have been doing but I thought it would also
be nice to share with you a little of what's going on here in the Montreal Center and with the Rask overall um it's
been a while since I've been able to be on live and uh now that it's final exam season today was my last class periods
and uh final exam is this Friday so I actually have a moment to look up here and there and don't worry Jeremy I'll
get the labs in at some point so the marking will get finished um I wanted to
Echo what Lori said you know when I first came on these uh Global star parties and I got to know the
astronomical League one of the first things I did was I looked for a club that I could join uh virtually or from a
distance and uh the Michigan lowbrows the University of lowbrows there at uh uh in Detroit they were or in Ann Arbor
they're fantastic group they allow for some of their meetings to be co- modal
so I joined up with the University of lowbrows partly through looking up some of the clubs in the astronomical league
but partly through uh Adrien uh Bradley who's going to be one of the speakers towards the end of tonight's GSP and
getting to be a part of the astronomical league as well as already being a part of the Royal Astronomical Society of
Canada has really provided that that perspective that you get from across
North America in terms of the way in which amateur astronomy really does reach out and connect people from all
different walks of life from all different backgrounds and when doid started talking about being a stargazer
rather than an astronomer I think sometimes those mixed
perspectives provide so much more depth in when we look up at the night sky when
we look at an object and that's part of what we try to achieve within our astronomy course here at John Abbot
College but before I start with the astronomy course I do want to start with a land and Sky acknowledgement because
we are on unseated lands here in the Montreal area but we also share the night sky with ancient and Indigenous
cult cultur from all around the world and right now in December we are approaching what the settlers would call
the cold moon and the First Nations most of them had a reference or reverence to
the winter solstice full moon referring to it as a chief moon or a spirit moon
or a guiding Moon because in those longest nights that we have in the
northern hemisphere in the wintertime come close to the winter solstice that
Moon Rises to its highest altitude it's up for the longest period of the night and so when we're close to the full moon
we have an incredibly bright shining light guiding down on us on those cold
nights where it's sometimes difficult to kind of know that there's still many cold months ahead of us so it's soless
it's peace it's a point of for us to actually Center ourselves around that
full moon right near the winter soul and this year the full moon is rising
pretty much on the max of the Geminids so it's lovely to hear that uh David
Levy has been out in Arizona looking up and capturing views by his naked eye of
the Geminids because I don't know how many we are going to get to see this weekend with the incredibly bright moon
with the weather that unfortunately we have coming through the Montreal area but we do have our in-person Geminids
event this weekend and across North America most centers most astronomy
societies will be having some type of Geminid viewing event so for our Global
Star Party audience wherever you are look for those events nearby because it gives you a chance to share the
experience with others and gain from that multiple perspectives that you have
and if you want to hear a little bit more about David Levy's experiences through the years and the benefits that
he had of being part of some of these societies I haven't had a chance to come on since we had our event with David
leevy on Friday November 8th and I unfortunately missed that event because of a personal uh emergency that came up
but I've watched it afterwards and actually watched it more than once because he shares so many personal
moments that it gives you a chance to view or relive viewing object
through somebody else's perspective and that somebody else's perspective where you get to watch as those shared
experiences and the friendships and the relationships grew with him over the
years and you know he talks about his first view of Jupiter and then Shoemaker
ly n being the comet that collided with Jupiter and now this coming weekend with
Jupiter having just passed opposition on Saturday night the full moon will be
very very close to Jupiter in our sky and so just all things keep leading me back to wanting to spend more time with
David Levy Under the Stars hopefully one of these days I'll get that chance again I also wanted to share with our
Global audience uh if you're interested in joining one of our rasque Montreal events on Saturday January 11th we've
set up a co- modal event so that people can join us from all over because we're really excited about this one um one of
our former students from John Abbott Emily lefes she's pursuing her PhD in
astrobiology at Purdue University and she reached out to me to say that uh a colleague who's actually a a postto now
he's the Carnegie postto for astrobiology research in Washington DC
Dr Michael Wong is going to be in Montreal and would be open to doing a
public event and I was like I jumped at it then I found out that he also runs a podcast strange new worlds which
explores all things science and astronomy from the Star Trek lens and so
I'm really looking forward to this event I think a lot of people will enjoy this perspective on life in the universe and
I had a chance to listen to his podcast a few of the episodes and I'm hooked I think I'm going to be listening to all
of these episodes over the Christmas holidays so if you want to join us uh bit. le11 genan 2025 you can register
for the zoom option and a zoom link will be sent out to you closer to the date
last thing I want to mention before I jump into the my my my overview of our student work this term is that space
audities has uh morphed uh space audities is the group that I work with based out of uh the UK and Europe and
they are a live show on YouTube every Tuesday afternoon and this term and next
term I'm teaching on Tuesdays which is very frustrating because I don't get to be part of the panel but they've we'
morphed into more than just the weekly shows there are astrobites there are uh
videos on different thematic uh um um parts of of just trying to understand
not just astronomy but also space exploration astrophysics cosmology if
there's a topic that you're interested in odds are space Oddities is covering it at some point and all of the videos
and everything are now archived on a website uh to find the links it's a space AES dospace and every Tuesday
there is a show uh we will be taking a little bit of time off on just around Christmas and New Year's but we'll be
back in January and already we have lined up the Polaris Dawn astronauts uh for February 4th 2025 so if you're
interested in any of that please join us on the space oddies YouTube channel now
fortunately as Lori was inspired by this poem I was inspired by this poem too and
I didn't realize it was Scott's poem and I'm really glad that doid pointed it out cuz I keep going back to this poem and
the different lines each bring back a different moment a different memory a different part of the curriculum and
then one line just jumped out at me because it almost encapsulate the way in
which I approach this course because this idea that each pinpoint of light
when we look up at that night sky no matter how wonderful a night Sky we have
if we're in wonderful light uh dark sky skies in Bryce Canyon or down in Arizona
or if we're in badly light polluted night skies like here in Montreal the
points of light that you see all still hold these Tales to share and those
Tales to share are not just ours and they're not just being viewed For the First Time by us and I talk about some
of the constellations and I talk about some of the stories from different cultures to give us an idea of how some
of the stories of the pinpoint of Light have been tied into stories for cultures
or for tribes or for areas where the knowledge needed to be passed
down from generation to generation of what to beware or what to be careful of or what to be prepared for and so when
we look at something like Orion which I always use Orion to know when my garage
has to be cleared so that my wife's car can come inside because my wife's car comes inside so that in the mornings
when the kids need to go to school if they've missed the bus if there's a lot of snow or ice on the driveway one car
is ready to go and doesn't have to be cleared so if after Sunset I look out
the window or I go outside for a walk or I set up a telescope at the end of the driveway if I can see all the stars of
Orion peeking up above my neighbor's roof that driveway better be clear because
that means that winter has come and the ojibway actually refer to that constellation of of Orion as winter
maker because when the ples are first shown and then when Sirius comes up
behind winter is definitely here but then you have other cultures who had
different things that they needed to keep an eye out for so in China they would refer to General Sao who would
protect the rice fields from bring bands who would be wanting to take the villages while The Villages were huddled
down for those brief cold nights uh in Hindu literature they would talk about
the power of the god Vishnu when they would look at Orion and they would sometimes have him with an axe or with
the bow and arrow to talk about how he would slay the demons because as the winter moved on and it became more and
more prominent in the South and then towards the Southwest at Sunset that was
when animals would come out of the Jungle and then you have some of the First Nations here in North America and
you look at the the D or you look at the uh hopa tribes in the sou West us and
they would talk about the Slender Man and they would have different roles in the early fall when Orion would first be
appearing versus in the spring when Orion would be right at the ground ready to set at Sunset and so it would be
preparing for planting of crops or being ready to protect the village in the
upcoming winter and then you had the yonglu people in the southern hemisphere
who would tell a story around this Orion constellation which had a different
orientation for them in the southern hemisphere so if we turn it around we can see this idea of three Lads in a
boat and a fish that they have caught and the fish that they caught was a sawfish and they ate the sawfish and the
sawfish was not a fish that you were allowed to eat and so they were banished to the sky with the soul of the sawfish
following after them to remind everyone not to catch the sawfish now why don't you catch the sawfish it's because it
tends to move along the shore near the end of the island and as it saws through
that loose dirt it pulls up plant particles and small bits of life that bring larger fish closer to shore which
makes it easier to catch those large fish and actually be able to feed the entire Village but if you kill those
sawfish now most of the village will have less food as a result so this was a
way to tell that story and pass it down from generation to generation similarly in Botswana they would talk about this
as the warthogs on the belt and the dogs along the sword belt chasing and warthog
should never be caught at this time of year you should you can chase after but you should never catch up to them and
the reason was because warthogs when they have their litters typically have litters of three and they have their
litters in the spring and so if you catch a warthog now that's three less
warthogs for next fall when it's time to prepare for the winter so this idea of
using Orion to tell story and to pass down the tales of those points of light
are in many many different cultures and in a little bit Jeremy is going to talk
to you about uh one of the projects that they did and a different way to use Orion to actually give yourself an
orientation in the sky now Orion's also where I start my students on their
project skills and I start them off by teaching them a little bit of astrophotography because like Lori I I'm
starting to dabble and I like capturing the night sky but I'm not anywhere near
as good as Lori is in terms of capturing those photons and bringing out the story that they have to tell so I use some of
the skills that I've gained through some of these interactions like with the global star parties and we have access
to archived files from different telescopes from over all over the world but Orion is one where you can actually
capture some of those images directly on your own telescope so when you capture an RGB image and you get that little bit
of nebulosity you can start to draw it out and pull out more sorry more
nebulosity it's not coming out more nebulosity you can see a full color
image and uh with my sear now I can actually do it within a minute during public Outreach but there's something
wonderful about starting off with those three images that are almost all dark
and just seeing those little points of light and then drawing out the rest of the photons that are there in that image
so my student get a chance to play with these RGB filtered images and a workflow
that they put together after they follow my workflow and this is a sampling of
some of the ones that Jeremy's class came up with this year and these are gorgeous with different types of tools
used to Showcase different parts of the story of the Orion Nebula in some parts
you can see the brightness in some parts you can see the change in energy in some parts you can see the extent to which
the nebulosity Rises and in some of them you can still see the trapezium poking through that Center area so every
perspective starts to provide a different part of the story that is ours
to tell and we talk about this when we talk about the different wavelengths to observe the Sun or when we talk about
some of the two-eyed seeing that we have from historical perspectives on
understanding why we went from geocentrism to a heliocentric view of the universe and how we still very much
in most of our decisions on how we explain things tend to put Human Experience and the human entity and
Earth pretty much at the center of everything and so that idea of telling
stories then is taken over by the students and they get to choose an area
for them to focus on for their major project and last Wednesday we had our major project poster session so on the
Tuesday night I go in and I set up all the posters that they've submitted and we have it set up so that the entire
student body gets a chance to walk through and view the work that the students have done through the term and
then during the actual Wednesday afternoon lab period the students in their groups get to evaluate each
other's posters and in those posters in doing this evaluation they're then
walking through the process of telling that story of the project that the group
did that they're reading so they all get the benefit by the end of the poster
session of having gone through 11 different project processes so this term
we had two groups that worked on exoplanet transits and there we had some remote access archives from the rasque
robotic telescope that used to be in California and we wanted to try to get some new data and so I actually worked
with the mark Slade remote Observatory and a big thanks to myON who stayed up with us at night and and helped do a
couple of uh live streams to show the students students how to program the telescope we also had three groups work
on different aspects of astrophotography we had one group that did both nebula and planets and managed to capture uh
the tatlas comet uh in their observing and the Jupiter files it was actually very interesting they wanted to do a
planet and we didn't have any good weather to try to capture a good video of Saturn or Jupiter so I reached out to
Christopher go and he sent some of his raw data of jup and the students learned
how to derotate the images so that they could stack them which is a skill I have
yet to spend much time on we had another group work on uh elements of astrophotography for Galaxies trying to
pull out very specific features of those galaxies that matched our current
understanding of those galaxies and then a group that did astrophotography of nebul and they had a little bit of a
struggle with the actual image processing part so they spent more time focused on doing
the research of different types of nebula how they're captured what type of energy signals you see and they put in a
lot of incredible work into actually building the understanding of why nebula
looks so different between Supernova remnants and planetary nebula and when
you have dark nebula and emission nebula and reflection nebula and they tried to capture all of that within their project
we had two groups work on the Spectra of stars and in previous Global star parties we've had Tom field come on and
I've been a big proponent of our speec and so getting the students out there running a telescope for themselves when
they've never looked through a telescope before that evening was incredible and they were trying to capture the Spectra
of the different stars and then one of the groups spent a lot of time following
this precise steps to reweight the Spectrum to try to match it
to the library Spectrum for that type of star and they had an incredible amount of success for that we had a group that
looked at the James web and the Hubble images taking them off of the massed archives and spending some time
processing those and another group that worked on the Orion's quest which is
looking at biological studies done between Earth and the International Space Station to look at the effect of
microgravity we had a group that was working on a research project that I hope to be able to present to the global
star party sometime next term we're working on this with Mill University and University of Victoria to try to set up
a high altitude balloon Beacon to measure atmospheric turbulence and it's
for an incredibly cool goal so I'm going to leave that as like a little uh seed for to come back to sometime probably
around February or March but the group that I want to showcase for the rest of today's Global star party is the one
with uh Jeremy sterino who's joining us here tonight and they worked on a topic
that I introduced during covid as a new area for groups that are interested and
that's putting together short videos to try to communicate an aspect of
astronomy specifically with the goal of Outreach and so they put together three
videos one was on the history of astronomy with Galileo galile being the principal role that they focused on one
on the Earth Moon system which talked about the Dynamics between the three
bodies but also focused on the idea that we actually got to just see a total solar eclipse so let's talk about this a
little bit more so when Lori was saying that you know a lot of people got that chance and we we we got to observe that
you know getting a chance to explain it a little bit I heard today that on Google one of the most uh searched
questions in 2024 was what is a total solar eclipse so having these types of
tools available to us would be fantastic and then the third one the video that we're going to share with you tonight is
astronomy and nature and this one I really enjoy because it's uh an idea of
taking a topic that I talked briefly about in class and expanding it so that this reaches a larger group a larger
audience that is out there camping orienteering uh skiing going to Chalet
but may not not really associate understanding how to use the Stars to navigate themselves so Scott do you have
the video or should I play it from here play it from there okay perfect so here
you go and then we'll bring Jeremy on right after imagine you're out in the
wilderness and it's night time you don't have a map but the stars above you can guide you one of the most reliable stars
is Polaris it is located almost directly above the Earth's rotational axis with which makes it appear to stay stationary
in the sky unlike other stars while the Earth spins the other stars appear to rotate in circles around Polaris we call
those circum poar Stars since Polaris stays roughly in the exact same position it becomes our fixed anchor in the skies
that always points to True North now to find Polaris start by looking for the Big Dipper the two stars at the edge of
the bow called The Pointer Stars create a straight line that is approximately 1/5 of the distance between them and
Polaris when you follow that line it will lead you straight to the North Star once you found Polaris you know where
the north is and from there you can easily figure out south east and west sometimes however the north Horizon
might be covered you might think ah no I'm screwed but that's where Orion comes in oryion is one of the most
recognizable constellation and is especially visible in the winter month if you look for a Ryan's Belt it's a
line of three bright stars hanging below the belt that's where you'll see his sword that looks like two bright stars
and in the middle you'll see a nebula which is why it looks fuzzy Oran sword will always be Point pointing roughly
South and it becomes a fantastic guide when you're navigating Southward because it's large bright and easy to find in
many cases it's easier to use Orion for South and poer for North and then turning around because this would cause
an inaccurate estimate okay now let's talk about how you can use the Stars to tell the time
at night as mentioned earlier since Earth spins the Stars appear to rotate around Polaris the North Star this
rotation is consistent making it possible to estimate the time by observing their position we can now use the Big Dipper to make an imaginary
clock imagine the two pointer stars as the hour hand on a 24-hour clock unlike a regular 12-hour clock this imaginary
Celestial clock takes a full 24 hours to complete one rotation now here's the first key point the Big Dipper moves
counterclockwise around Polaris if the bll is directly above Polaris it's about midnight Standard Time if it's directly
below Polaris it's roughly 12:00 noon the next step is to do some ccal calculations in very basic math first
look at where the hour hand the bow of the Big Dipper points in relation to an imaginary reference line running through
Polaris each 15° movement of the Dipper corresponds to 1our passing now this
system works for when it is March 6th for other dates you'll need to adjust the time using the simple formula below in order to get a good estimate let's
break it down if it's June 6th which is 3 months after March you subtract 2 * 3 which is 6 hours from the time on your s
your clock so if the different points to midnight on the imaginary clock the time would actually be 600 p.m. finally don't
forget about daylight saving time in the months when it is in effect like during the summer you'll need to add 1 hour to
your calculation with some practice you'll be able to tell time just by looking up at the stars now that we've covered orientation
and timekeeping let's talk a bit about another way the Stars can help you survive in the wild predicting the weather yes the night sky can actually
give you clues about what's coming one of the most common signs to watch for is how much the stars are twinkling when
stars appear to twinkle a lot it is often a sign that the atmosphere is unstable such as when cold and warm air masses are beating this instability
could mean that bad weather is on the way on the other hand if the stars are steady and clear it usually indicates
stable weather you can also look for Halos around the Moon a Halo forms when high and thin clouds filled with ice
crystals scattered to moon light if you see a Halo it's a strong sign that rain or snow might be coming in the next 24
to 48 hours after exploring navigation timekeeping and weather I hope you see
the stars as a practical survival tool kit that can help guide you whenever you're lost in
nature that video was put together by Jeremy lck and Petra they were the a
group that worked on the communications aspect so Jeremy if you want to come and join me here uh on the global star part
excellent yeah hi hi Jeremy it's good to have you on and uh now the world gets to
see you and uh how did you find the project process well it was pretty interesting I mean at first we picked
the topic because while making videos it sounded fun and teaching a topic sounded
interesting um and we thought it would be kind of easier than a lot of research that didn't really fit our interest that
well when we started doing it though we realized that cramming all this work into a FIV minute video was really tough
it's not easy to teach keep engagement while also giving good info I kind of got a a a big respect for teachers you
know especially you there who have to fit such a big lecture in such a short amount of time um it was fun though it
was good to do the project so why did you end up choosing these three topics you know the history and the uh
Communications of the sun earth Moon system and then specifically this orienteering yeah so the history there
was an option I forget what the other option was but the history just it's it's a part that you cover a lot in class two not specifically Galileo but
just the history of astronomy and it's always as good to know I mean history we often Overlook it because we have so
many tools now to look at the stars and you know all the time and the summer the the moon cycles but it's really good to
get a look about how it all came about the sun earth Moon system um that just really interests me I mean it's kind of
uh it's good physics to know it's also cool uh talk about eclipses especially since you just had one in Montreal and
the orientation well it's something practical I think that a lot of stuff in astronomy nowadays A lot of people don't
see it as having a practical use in their life but there's always stuff you can learn and and kind of put the
so I'm going to ask you a question that I you don't even know I'm going to ask you this but because doid brought it up
what was your first astronomy experience um my first experience just
uh on my own or what yeah just either either on your own or or out there at an event or what was the first thing that
you remember in terms of looking up and saying okay that's interesting well I
live near a beach and so it's pretty close to my house 5 minute walk and
every summer or even Winter's actually Winter's especially good you go out there at night and you could just look at the stars or look at the Sunset and
I've always been just I don't know kind of interested in it's always nice to look at and what do you think in terms of now
you finished the course you're almost done your Sage program looking forward do you see a spot for yourself in space
Sciences do you see this as a hobby down the road or do you want to just make awesome pictures and that's the
direction like what are what are you thinking in terms of staying connected with astronomy I mean for starters it's
definitely a good Pastime if anything um I I don't know I've always wanted to do something in space I did have an idea of
astronaut although that's kind of a bit extreme for me it is a cool idea though um after a tour we did went to a MDA lab
here in Montreal it's a very good uh space lab and after a good visit there it was it was really interesting and you
could find that it's not you don't have to do stuff in space directly you can work on stuff that can actually be used
in space and and so yeah actually I I've been thinking about that excellent so I
know I know you were with uh with uh others for dinner tonight uh your girlfriend and and their family do you
find that you bring up things about space as you learn them uh in
conversation now with your friends and family and others definitely I mean at
the family dinner I didn't really bring it up but with friends or even when I'm out walking at night and I see something
I always say hey look so we learned that in class the other day or I'm like oh the moon the cycle is a waxing Gib so I
learned that in class and it's always is cool to kind of think about so I got to say what really I loved about this video
is the Orion trick I knew it but it had never connected to teach that and so
after watching your video on the poster and looking at that I went to stellarium
and I took a couple of different screenshots for next year's slides so that I can show this fact that you
actually can see the sword belt looking pointing South the entire way through as
it moves through and it immediately was like yeah of course it does right because we know that orientation from
the summertime we know that that's where Orion is standing but the fact that I
know it but it never occurred to me to teach it I got to thank you loic and
Petro for putting that together because that was a fantastic tip that I'm going to take
with me and I'm going to be bringing it out on Saturday night at the Geminids when the sun sets and you're come out
and Orion sitting there nicely to the southeast I'm going to be pointing to people that look that points to the
South look over there there's the North Pole and so I'm going to be using this for outreach from here on in so you've
had an instant impact the three of you well I'm glad that was our goal you know
uh we made the videos not with any specific teaching purpose I mean at first we we did our research and we we
had a lot of info and it was kind of deep info into the topics and then we kind of stood back and we said well we
know most people who watch this they're probably not going to have a knowledge on this topic at least so we kind of had
to make it all very precise while still kind of giving info like that like cool tricks that maybe maybe you knew but you
didn't occur to like think about and understand well I want to thank you Jeremy for joining me on the global star
party and uh Scott and doid back to you okay all right that's
great um let's uh I'm seen a David clapping in
the background there um uh David it's always nice to have uh young uh people
come on to Global star party and share their knowledge um as uh and I learned
some new stuff too you know there's uh um I'm going to try out uh uh
understanding the uh way to tell time I knew some stuff about the weather uh
with the uh glow around the Moon Etc but um uh it's all good stuff to know and it
helps you get more in tune I think with nature you know to be able to just look up the sky and kind of know what time it
is so I really did enjoy this wonderful
presentation by kareim and Jeremy yes Kareem I think you know now that the
teacher who does not learn from his students or her students never becomes a
better teacher and you shall during this presentation you are learning from your
students what they taught you about Orion you will turn around and add it to
what you teach other students next year next year next semester I I hope I'll get to see you in
person next summer and in the meantime excellent show Cong
congratulations thank you David thank you Scott and thanks again Jeremy thanks yeah thank you so much
guys it was such a pleasure to be here um I know km talk about astronomy for hours I mean in class it's always great
to hear about it and this just felt like another another class lecture always great I do have to go study for my
physics final now oh I'm still still in school sadly I can't enjoy astronomy to
full well you know when you can uh you know look up and and explore more dude
so thanks no worries take care okay all right uh David well our next um speaker
is David AER from astronomy magazine and from the uh staris uh organization and
um it's great to have him on uh almost each and every Global star party so let
me bring Mr ier on and uh [Music]
um there we are David's in his new home there and
how are you doing tonight Scott what's son how are you doing tonight Scott I'm
good you know I'm I'm uh I I had really a u a fantastic day today there's uh you
new developments happening that could potentially um uh uh be um working with
the staris so it's a little premature to talk about it right now but uh I'm all excited so far um talk to do you
remember sep husar uh from Iran there was a documentary made I think about
2014 it was called sepid reaches for the stars and it was a she was um or she
still is a Iranian uh she was an Iranian
teenager uh now she's a young woman uh with with children and um uh uh but uh
her story was really inspiring she was taking a dobsonian telescope that was
given to her and looking up at the stars and um uh you know the uh
cultural uh challenges of being a young girl that wanted to go out into the
darkness of of the night and explore the stars with uh boys and girls her age uh
was really a big challenge for her family for the local community around
her and stuff that she wouldn't give up her father had passed away and there's a great story if you haven't seen it um
I'm G to have to turn you on to the uh documentary and maybe sometime I can get her on global star party as well so I
seen that a great story that would be inspiring I think to all of us yes yes
uh the the ju just the fact that we can all go out and uh observe the sky at any
time is a huge privilege and um uh you know and for some people they their very
lives are at stake for for uh uh trying to challenge culture and Community uh
you know to learn more about the natural world it just you know when I think
about it uh now it's it's it seems like it could have never have happen but uh
not so many years ago and especially with sep um we were discussing it today she
was uh uh saying that um you know I mean
people have been stoned to death for doing the kinds of things that she wanted to do you know so it's it's
really great that she's still doing it so incredible bravery given the the
politics and culture yeah to to pursue it yes yes so but she's inspiring
another generation to do it now as well which is really cool but
um but I digress a bit here um uh David
uh has a very interesting object called Jones emberson one you know so when he
first uh brought it up to me I Saidi was jonesing for the Jones emberson uh
catalog but um uh I think John emberson is a really fascinating object and
um and I'm glad you're here to tell the story well thank you Scott it is a fascinating object and actually the last
time I stopped in to have my car worked on in the shop the guy said to me I'm
not making this up he said well you you know what you need is to replace the Jones emberson one you know valve and
then you'll be good what no so you know it's it's a nebula and you know it
sounds like something that may be a medical procedure also yes I think you know so I think this could go anywhere
we want I believe you know my Jones emberson one is just out of whack it's
fatigued I need a minor procedure here can you help me out yeah so you know but
also is a planetary nebula and we'll talk about that aspect of it tonight okay all right well it's all yours uh
David thanks for coming on to the 163rd Global star party thank you Scott and I
will share my screen I'll share the right part of the screen if I can and I
will start a slideshow if I can also um where am I am I here um can you
you see not Jones emberson one but Centaurus a well you may be looking into your
future six billion years from now but that's a different story never mind it has nothing to do with anything tonight
we want Jones emberson one so this is an unusual planetary nebula it's in Lynx
we're still working our way Southward with a list of many many interesting unusual objects uh because now better
than ever although the Sky darkness is a challenge for a lot of people of course
in our day and age but it's easier to observe and also to photograph with a
lot of the go-to uh systems that we have now uh fainter and fainter objects so
I'm trying to encourage people to um get away from those same hundred objects and
and go and explore some really exotic strange stuff Jones emberson one is one
of those objects it's about a 14th magnitude planetary nebula it spans about six arc
minutes so it's reasonably large and uh it's sometime you might have heard of it because of course now we have a common
name for everything you know I think a lot of people in the 1990s through about
10 years ago just hid in their basements coming up with indices of common names
for objects so this is sometimes called the headphone nebula and you'll see why it's shaped similarly to that uh it was
discovered Ed uh very recently in terms of astronomical Discovery by Rebecca
Jones and Richard emberson um and it's quite incredible
that it remained because it's fairly large and it's reasonably bright by professional astronomy standards so it's
kind of remarkable that it remained undiscovered for so long as quite a few other Oddball objects
did it's about 1,600 light years away and it has a central star that is quite
challenging certainly for visual observers just a tick brighter than 17th
magnitude um but this is typical of many unusual and fainter planetary nebula
that are in the sky this is of course the end point in a uh solar roughly
solar mass stars lifetime So eventually we will end up our solar system will end
up inside a planetary nebula uh long after we and everyone else on Earth is
gone um it has a unique shape as I mentioned this headphone nebula nickname it has
two prominent loes of sort of brighter material where the uh later higher
velocity uh uh material came off of the uh dying star and ran into the lower
velocity uh uh slightly fainter material and created this front of ionized gas uh
around the perimeter of the shell that we see so it's a challenging visual object object uh it's a reasonably uh
doable photographic Target though depending on the system that you have to go out and capture images of especially
with a lot of these automated Imaging telescopes that we now see a real wave
of phenomenon of them happening the Celestron origin and all the others as
well so here's the chart from the Fantastic Ron stoan interstellarum deep
Sky Atlas showing the Jones Ember one he calls it the headphones nebula here and
you can see it's in a uh um in links in this sort of scattered field of mostly
galaxies a lot of ugc galaxies and some brighter ones as
well here it is and this is Serge bernier's uh image of it and you can see
this is a fantastic and pretty deep image and you can see that uh shape of the disc here the bluish Central Star
and he's captured a lot of really remote uh distant background galaxies in this field as well so really beautiful image
there and we have one by my pal who co-wrote a book with myself and and my
pal Brian May a few years ago JP M metano um who is a great Astro imager as
well and this is really a high resolution but somewhat shorter exposure image of the nebula and it shows the
structure of the nebula really really impressively so this is a good
photographic Target and probably if you have a really dark sky you avoid the moon um which we won't tell this to
Robert Reeves but the moon uh is terrible and interferes with everything no lunar observing is good too I'm sorry
Robert um he's not here tonight but uh for deep Sky observing the Moon is not
good um and uh if you have a an eight or a 10 or a 12 in scope and go out you
should be able to see this visually under really good condition
I can mention the December issue of astronomy magazine is out there there's a story by Mara arusc and collaborators
about perhaps renaming the Hubble constant uh because after all at our uh
favorite Arizona Observatory here one of them at least LOL Observatory up in Flagstaff nearby here uh as early as
1912 vesto M slier uh detected with his spectrograph that many spiral nebuli
were receding away from us at High Velocity so that was a more than a decade before Hubble's Imaging of the
so-called Andromeda nebula as it was known at the time so this is talking about the discovery of the expansion of
the universe which actually predated Edwin Hubble staris as you mentioned Scott
we've got a lot of irons in the fire and some exciting things to talk about and to perhaps announce in the future here
lots going on with it uh but we've got the main staris will happen again uh next spring this coming
spring here uh if you've never been to La Palma it's easy to get to because if you're there and you close your eyes for
one minute and open them again you could swear you're in Hawaii it's a Hawaiian analog off the Northwestern coast of
Africa and it's a very uh popular and easy destination to get to for Europeans so it's not that big a deal to jump on a
plane and get over there we're going to have starmus again um next spring it's going to be late
April and Scott I think he'll be involved David David maybe will get you there as well uh we will have a lot of
as usual astronaut explorers and Nobel Prize winners in astronomy and physics
but also all the fields of Science and a little rock and roll as well as we
always like to say um it is a good thing to exercise both hemispheres of the
brain both the analytical and the creative uh sides as we like to say so
that's going to be a big event coming as well and I don't have all the information in front of me or a slide
created yet but I think I can mention because David is here with me tonight
that in Flagstaff uh in February on the anniversary of the discovery of Pluto uh
we're going to have a fun event and and David is going to be there with me and with some others as well because on
February 18th 1930 you know our old pal Clyde tomall um discovered Pluto um on
Mars Hill and then he the telescope is reassembled and back in the dome where
it was in 1930 when he discovered Pluto and then what did Clyde do but he went
down to the Orpheum Theater in Flagstaff and he saw the Virginia starring Gary Cooper what do you do after you discover
a planet go see a movie so we're going to have an event and David's going to be
there Allan Stern is going to be there and uh Adam neoy Leonard Neo's son is
going to be there as well and I'll be moderating a discussion about Pluto and about astronomy and what we think of the
universe uh on the anniversary which will be part of the iHeart Pluto
Festival so uh we'll talk more about that in the coming weeks and if you're in Flagstaff we'd love to have you join
us there in the very theater um where Clyde went after after his big Discovery
day so uh that is what I have Scott
today and I will stop uh screen sharing thanks for having me again it's always a
joy um to uh be here with you Scott and I will run it's been such a busy day I'm
Gonna Leave This on but I'm gonna run off and go do an errand and pick up some stuff and I'm almost done assembling
this house in two and so I got to go get some more stuff for the house but I will
be back a little later to hear and always a pleasure Scott thank you so much David all right that's great thanks
pal all right okay so um uh Dr Levy we
are going to um move towards uh Jim
tomney am I pronouncing that right Jim yes you got it right Jim tomney okay all
right and Jim I would like to say that I particularly enjoy David presentation
just now come with new things that I'm not
familiar with and it's wonderful yes and I love being able to be introduced to
stuff that hasn't come up yet and see the skies see the night sky through
other people's eyes last November I got to meet my great great grand my great
grandson just went great so far I'm the first person in our family to have a
great grandchild and I'm hoping that we will become good
friends I really did enjoy it the best part of it was when my daughter
suggested that I get onto the floor and crawl about with him and I knew once I'm down on the floor there's no way I'm
going to get up with a help but I didn't care I was down there and following him
wherever he wanted to go this one of the places he told me was
a sky that I haven't seen yet a sky like the one that David iker's been trying to
show us a sky that will forever be part of our lives and thank you David for
that that's great thank you David and let me know where to send the check
[Laughter] okay you're a good pal as always and I
will uh catch up with you guys when I get back from uh the store here in a moment all right sounds thanks guys
thanks all right okay so now we will move on toh Jim tomney um Jim is uh
agreed to come on uh to uh tell us what's going on at at the association of
lunar and planetary observers and so another great organization over 75 I
think over 75 years old is that right Jim that is correct yeah founded in
1947 1947 Walter yeah so I think that um
uh you know the United States was uh really getting
um very inspired to look up at the sky and to
uh make sense in the universe and uh organizations like the association of
lunar and planetary observers uh took them Beyond just looking up but uh also let them
understand uh more about what's going on in our solar system and to let just
Everyday People start to understand the process of Science and uh Alpo has lots
of programs like this um and and um so we'll let Jim tell us more about the
association of lunar planetary observers observers or alpos it's called and um so
uh thank you for coming on and I hope that we can make a regular habit of this
so thank you well thank you very much for having us and for having me I am as
a full disclosure I am pinch hitting tonight for Tim Robinson our uh uh vice
president and uh he right now apparently is without power because of some fires out in California so a little prayer for
uh his safety and that uh hopefully soon they'll have that under control yes but
um basically I'm in the uh I'm what they would call an assistant coordinator in Alpo for the digital or online section
and one of my big uh contributions has been trying to redo our website so since
you know came up this afternoon I really haven't had time to do a slide deck or anything but I thought I'd kind of uh
walk you guys through the website a little bit kind of talk a little bit about the Alpo and um you know certainly
field any questions if you have any so let me see if I can do a screen share
here yes alrighty looks good perfect
move this out of the way so basically we had a website we've had a website
probably since the 1990s and we decided I guess in 2022
that we really wanted to give it a refresh and so uh couple years of work
and we launched it this past August and we've gotten pretty good feedback about
it so you can take note here that it is Alpo
dastony do org um that is our URL and this is the landing page when
you come in um one of the thing one of the things we wanted to do with the
website is we have a couple of different goals one of which is we want to keep
not only our members but just visitors we want to support the community at large in terms of what's going on in the
solar system so a lot of times there will be a particular announcement uh in this upper
leftand section uh you can see that today's here is about a Jupiter eruption
in the South equatorial band um this is something that actually broke out in
November it can be seen in amateur telescopes and um we scroll down a
little bit further we actually have an image of it from one of our members Mike Hood and you can see this like tear in
the in the uh belt here so this is really interesting according to John
Rogers uh it's been almost 10 years since we've had an event like this and
we're all going to kind of be watching it to see what happens you know as this spreads um on Jupiter the the winds are
going to tear this thing apart and and this is by the way much larger than the earth and so as the winds kind of tear
this apart and spread it you know what will happen to the coloration of the
band here and I think that is just a small example of what people in Alpo are
interested in and what we do we we love observing this kind of stuff documenting
it you know we we've been talking this evening a lot with the poetry about some of the the peace and the calmness well
you know the solar system is really kind of almost 180 degrees the other way because
it's very Dynamic and I think one of the attractions I know one of the attractions for me with planetary stuff
is you don't exactly know what you're going to see when you point that telescope to a planet like Jupiter this
evening you know you might catch a new eruption here um in very rare
circumstances you might see a a large or smaller size certainly nothing on the
size of Shoemaker Levy but a small impact uh you might catch a flash so
there's this Dynamic aspect uh to the planets that I love and I think a lot of
our members love too so over here we have news headlines
uh again talking about this thunderstorm on Jupiter here's a headline about the
Parker probe going by Venus and imaging Venus and for each of these you'll be able to click and go to the full
artical the other thing is you'll notice that Alpo has multiple
sections and so no matter what your interest is in astronomy in terms of the
solar system if it's the Sun or Saturn or comets or meteors there's something
uh a section devoted to whatever it is that you're interested in and I
certainly invite folks to come by our site and check out the various sections that we have um we try our best to keep
them up to date and you'll certainly find resources for viewing the planet and um we'll skip down here to our
Gallery a gallery is another big big uh feature in Alpo a lot of our members
send in their images and sketches it's not just images and we publish them in
our gallery when I started doing this back in the spring of 2020 we we take
your image we also require that it has a certain amount of um information on the
image as you can see here and the reason for that is that we want these images to have some scientific value so things
like what telescope did you use um what your location what is the date and time
uh any particular filters that you used those sort that sort of information we ask that you annotate on it but you
don't have to be an Alpo member to send us your observations we're very happy to receive observations from all over and
we do in fact get observations from all over the world um and since I took over
the indexing and Publishing to our galleries I've actually indexed over 36,000 images to our
galleries so it is um a wealth of imagery out there and again you can come
explore our Galler our galleries uh I can I want to move this up this is the
one thing about Zoom hide the floating panel there we
go all right so taking a look at the gallery page here um you can do again
it's laid out by the various objects you can uh select one let's go into
Venus and you can look at the current year and in bringing over our old site
to the new site there is this huge backlog of images and I am still working
through publishing them so right now we have the two most recent apparitions for
Venus but others will be coming as we go along and you can either search for a
particular user like if you want to toy things by Frank this will filter it
down Clyde Foster is another frequent Observer of Venus and does some great
work you can click on the thumbnail and you'll get to see the full image
here going back to all the galleries our comic Gallery which I'm very pleased
with that is a little bit different in that you can begin to type in the comet
name so if we do c2023
a three is it yep A3 here is this wonderful Comet from the
other month and we've got just tons of great
photographs here uh Carl hergen rther who's our comment section coordinator
does a magnificent job every month he publishes a uh a newsletter about what's
going on with comets and again this is just kind of fun to kind of flip through and look at the various uh contributions
that various members and non-members have made in documenting this beautiful
Comet wow you know I I make websites as well and I my hats off to you uh to get
this much information all organized and and you know so neatly laid out uh and
so easily accessible with such great navigation uh you know
congratulations thank you Scott I I really appreciate that thank you
much um so at any rate one other thing I do want to point out is that if you are
a member of Alpo you basically get to see pretty much the entire gallery that you go into you get we we have to limit
somewhat um with the old website we saw instances with web crawlers and AI Bots
or whatnot just sucking down huge amounts of our data and so we basically
are saying if you come to our website and you're just a guest we're welcome I think to show you like a hundred images
you can see up to 100 or 75 I forget if you register for our website we bump
that up to like 250 but because membership has to have its privileges you you know we Grant
basically Alpo members a full uh access to the galleries but you can still see
quite a lot even if you're just coming by as a guest very cool all right so let's HP
over here to if we were to go to the eclipse section and just take a quick
peek so here we have on a lot of the sections you get an eclipse you can get
a Blog where the section coordinator will provide um their thoughts or you
know have they have something to discuss they'll put it down in a blog and so same thing with the Mars section or the
comment section or the medeor section um the other thing is that you'll notice across the top on most
sections you'll have a link directly to that section's Gallery but you also will
have Publications and each of these kind of again depend upon that particular
Target so for eclipse is we end up having what
we call field reports where people members and again not and even
non-members can send in a report about their experience and we publish that here so
part of what our mission is we're trying to get people excited about the solar system and we want them
to participate as well um so for example you could go here on the recent uh
partial lutter Eclipse you could go to a report on Crater timings by David tesy who is our
lunar coordinator the other thing is that we
offer resources so a lot of these will end up being links to other Pages out on
the internet so again sections each have their own Publications and resources and
if you would want to reach out to one of us you'll be able to go to the contact page select the individual and then
create a message and send that on to us so I don't want to run over my time
here but I'll also mention that another part that we have is the Alpo
organization itself and here especially what we're proud of is our Journal which
has uh Ken Pedley and um Sean I'm
pulling a blank here Sean's last name at the moment are basically uh publishing
every quarter our journal and if you are a member you get to download the four
most recent journals if you are not a member the journals older so a year and
older are available for you to download and the journal is just jam-packed with
uh more scientific reports it's it's a higher level than like the the field reports that I was showing you um it's a
little bit more scientific but again uh you I think very interesting and uh
again these come out quarterly so fantastic the other quick
thing I will show you one of the major things we wanted to do was to make this website what we call responsive so if we
shrink this up and kind of make it look more like a uh phone you can see that it
collapses nicely and so our website you should feel free to log in on your phone
or on your tablet because we've got you covered with a responsive website and if
you would like to join us it's very simple you can come here and click this
link our dues are only $22 a year wow and um I think that you get a wealth of
information so if the dynamic nature of the solar system you know from
prominences on the sun to you know eclipses on Jupiter if if that stuff
kind of interest you come join us um one other thing we're going to try to do I think in 2025 is start to do some
webinars where some of our really skilled members are going to share with
you how they do some of their image processing so I'm really looking forward to hopefully being able to accomplish
that in the year upcoming that's that's an incredible deal Jim I
mean you can't you can't even go and get a hamburger and a and a drink for $22 so
um you know if you love if you love planets you love the solar system you
should definitely be a member of the association of lunar and planetary
observers couldn't couldn't agree more thank you Scott appreciate you
having us this even thank you so much thank you okay all right so um we are
moving on and uh our next speaker is uh
Ron breacher Ron is hailes from uh Canada and um uh he is uh he's always
someone I you know it's so fun to work with Ron because Ron kind of tunes into
uh our themes extremely well and uh he's so knowledgeable about astronomy and
astrophotography and all the rest of it you know uh he has every right to kind
of be uh you know well he could be snoody about it but the
dude's anything but okay he is H one of the friendliest most accessible guys
that you could meet you know and if you ever go to like um uh one of the big uh
astronomy events like the Northeast astronomy forum for example uh you're likely to run into Ron and uh uh he will
definitely give you the time of day and so um he shares his images with uh a big
audience regularly regularly and uh uh and if you want to know how to take your
astrophotography to the next level um all You' got to do is sign up with a a
class with the masters of P's Insight which he is every bit of so um thank you
so much Ron for coming on to our 163rd I I love coming to these things
and this this was a particularly interesting one uh you know you asked me
for a title and I said I was waiting for the theme and then we had a short
conversation about it yeah and I gave you a title in about five
minutes right and uh I'm going to just share my screen with
you and uh let's so your theme was
tranquillus yeah sensus tranquillus filus
census and uh they say latin's a dead language but clearly it isn't based on
the theme of tonight's show right uh based on the beautiful poem that David
wrote uh um you know even in in my day job I'm a
toxicologist and the most famous phrase in toxicology dos solum is Latin the dose
alone makes the poison um so I enjoyed playing a little
bit with Latin here uh the theme Here of course is the Peace of the night sky so
I thought rather than you know I always come on here and I show pretty pictures and I'm still going to show
some nice pictures but I I thought you know when we talk about peace of the
night sky that really gets to how people feel and so rather than talking about my
technical aspects of my image I want to talk about how I feel under the stars
and when I started reflecting on that I came across some very interesting
tidbits about about myself and the way I perceive the world how I have for a long
time and then of course the pictures I'm going to show you I'm going to show you just a few that I think capture some of
that feeling they're not all spectacular deep Sky photos but they all uh capture the
feeling that I'm going to try to talk about a little bit so here's what I took from the theme
the Preamble that Scott sent to all the presenters it was about uh the sense of
peace that astronomer feel that we find beneath the starry Skies so that that just that feeling of
Peace um and the the idea that astronomy uh is an encounter with the
vast Timeless expanse of the universe and I've highlighted what's really important to me it's vast it's unimag
unimaginably vast and yeah there might be an arrow of time there might have be
been a beginning of time but to my little puny human brain it's Timeless
it's vast it's Timeless it's expansive it's amazing and then the moments of Serenity
that really struck me about the theme here uh and you know uh Sor
astrophotographers for me the most Serene moments are not when I'm doing
astrophotography it's maybe not even when I'm with a telescope a lot of the
time the most Serene moments uh come without any special equipment I'm going
to talk a little bit about that right so why do I have a
canoe in a picture about astronomy on a slide about how I feel
under the sky it's because when I uh when I
started thinking about this the feeling that I get under the sky started for me
when I was in a canoe when I was about probably 14 or 15 years
old I might have been sneaking across the lake to the girls
Camp can't be sure but but I was about 14 or 15 years
old and I was out on this this Lake by myself in a canoe the Milky Way was
overhead and I I remembered feeling that I was
part of something really really big and being aware of how still everything was
around me all I could hear was the paddle and
um the notion of being like quiet in your own
thoughts I I remember feeling that really strongly at that time and feeling very lucky that I got
to experience that um I don't always feel lucky when I'm asro Imaging and the autog guer
fails or a cable snags and something bad happens but you know at this time out in
that canoe or now just standing out in my driveway in the quiet of my own thoughts
I feel lucky um one of the things that I really
notice about the sky now I've been been under the sky probably since 1998 when
my daughter was born she was KY and she screamed a lot at night and I
carried her up and down the driveway and I got hooked on the sky and I gradually
learned the sky and became really familiar with the
sky so with a visual telescope I can probably find I don't know 50 or 100 objects
without a map without a star chart um so the sky is
very familiar and I you know sometimes I look at night and I see Vega coming up
over the horizon in March and I think oh that's my summer stars
coming so that sense of familiarity is very important too and um
of course tranquilis filus census is a peacefully easy
feeling and that's describes how I feel when I'm under the sky not with
equipment not with other people just when I'm by
myself and you know I talk about familiarity or not sometimes there's so
many stars you can't even see what's going on uh but we'll come back to
that so let me show you some of the things that make me feel that that that
same feeling now things that I see from time to time most of these are shot from my house
some of them are nighttime some of them are daytime this one is a corpuscular raay
that's the scientific term for what we're seeing those rays of light that seem to be coming from somewhere behind
the trees and going upwards in a fan-like shape um so those corpuscular rays are
just rays of sunlight through clouds where the sun is just below the Horizon it's just after
Sunset and um I when I see a sunset like that I get that feeling and I think I've
got a couple of sunsets to show you in a minute cool clouds every once in a while
I get stopped in my tracks by a cool cloud and my wife she looks at Clouds
all the time and sees all kinds of things all kinds of shapes things but me I kind of see
phenomena and here there was this rainbow in this one cloud and I looked
it up it's due to ice crystals and um I never saw one before and I've never seen
one since this was a couple of years ago lenticular clouds so these are these
like stacked clouds they're not supposed to happen where I live at 43 North
but here they are again I've never seen this before or
since this happened a couple of summers ago maybe it has something to do with the change in climate don't know maybe
the POs you know the bands with which um different phenomena appear is
changing and um you want to get a peaceful easy feel and come to my place
around sunset in the middle of winter um the sun sets just to the right
of the right edge of the picture and it really lights up the clouds with every
color of the rainbow it's kind of interesting because during the day uh
other than the bright red cardinal birds bright red birds um the scene is very black and
white especially on a cloudy day it's it's you know very
monochrome uh but then at Sunset you can get it lighting up like this and that
gives me that that feeling when I see a sky like this my wife and I stop whatever we're doing to see these things
because they're so ephemeral you know they come they go by the time you get to
the window or to the door to see it it might be
gone October 10th we had the best Aurora show that I've seen
since um March
2004 so in March 2004 we had a similarly intent show but in March 2004 most of us
didn't have cell phones with cameras I think some of the cell phones
were still plugged into your car at that time but at any rate now we have self
phones and all of these were taken with a handheld iPhone steadied up against
the roof of my car and uh so these are two around 1
p.m. and this was straight overhead this was an all Sky Aurora just incredible
look at that uh and you know I don't know if this qualifies for Peaceful Easy
feeling it was kind of exciting now that I think about it it was changing all the
time and it's the kind of thing it's like when you're under a really really
still quiet dark night and you see a shooting star a
meteor oh yeah and you feel like you should hear something but it just
stays you know definite and quiet it's
crazy the moon of course now I don't take a lot lot of photographs of the
moon but it's been known to happen I mean it is in my sky two weeks of every
month you have to get good with the moon and um you know standing again
taking me back to that canoe it was often a moonlet night when I'd be out on
the water and uh you definitely get
that that feeling that you're part of something really big
Venus at Sunset so this was taken on a beach in Costa
Rica and um I think 10 minutes later we had a nice zodiacal light show slightly
to the right of where this photo was taken uh but again you know tropical
beach sun setting Venus in the sky every color of the rain from Red all the way
up to that beautiful Indigo that gives me that feeling too I I you know I got to see two of
these and this one was on my birthday again I don't know exactly why
I put this in here because I did not have a peaceful easy feeling when I took this
picture and I I guess I put it in here so I could tell you that I mean it's a nice shot and everything but I almost
miss seeing the transit because I was so busy trying to photograph it fortunately I did not do that at the
eclipse I knew that hundreds of people that I know were going to be taking
superb images and I just enjoyed it because I'd never seen
one so you know I talked about familiar skies skies can be familiar where you
are but then if you go to a dark sky you can get lost in the star there
can be so many you can't even recognize the patterns but um I've gotten really
pretty good at recognizing my friends in the sky and you know um one of the things
that I know now as a result of my astrophotography when I look at Leo like
this with my naked eye I
know that in that lower leg there's some
galaxies I can even catch them they're in they're in this picture right they're
right in this lower leg here and I can capture them there so I
can go back with my big telescope get him
there that's kind of cool and when I go outside by myself
with my you know everybody's gone to sleep I can pull those little galaxies
in in my binoculars I know exactly where to look now halfway through that hind
leg of Leo I can find him in my binoculars but when I find them my mind's eye sees this
picture MH so that's kind of the the cool aspect
of the astrophotography and of course you know know the ples same thing when I look at
the ples I don't see all of this faint nebulosity that my picture
sees but it's just as beautiful it's just like a somebody spilled a bag of
diamonds on the ground and and the ples looking at the ples with
binoculars that really does give me that peaceful easy
feeling and sharing that feeling is also really makes me happy makes really makes
me feel good and um on the left is my my
father-in-law uh who passed away a few years ago but not before he looked in every telescope he could of
mine and then uh you know sharing with kids this summer looking at the sea Star
the sea star is right over the coffee cup protecting my coffee cup with the sea star as opposed to the other way
around and uh you know showing that little girl what the sea star is seeing
and then this the T the picture on the right the uh guests are standing behind
my homemade dobsoni and I ground the mirror myself and my friends and I'm you
know help make the uh body and uh I learned so much about astronomy and and
about telescopes doing that so all of those things that's where I get my my
Peaceful Easy Feeling so that's all I had for you tonight so I'll stop my share it's a lot
so it was uh it's it's nice to take a peek uh
behind all the astrophotography and uh and to learn more about um you know how you connect
with the sky so yeah you kind of it was fun for me to put this talk together
because I I had to really think about that yeah wonderful wonderful thank you okay all
right well thank you very much okay all right okay um our next uh speaker is
Robert Reeves Robert is um uh we talked
a little bit earlier in the day and uh I know that he had some um family things
that he had to uh um deal with and um uh
but I'm very hap Robert I'm very happy to see you here tonight so thank you for
for sacrificing for us and um and being here on our 163rd Global Star Party well
I'm delighted to be here and uh actually take it as a few moments of Peace
compared to the uh activities that we've been involved in and um Le and leading
up to what happened today but um um can't hear in my mouth good
greef U delighted to be here and u u the
um other issue that was um I have is my main computer is uh in the shop I won't
be able to get it until tomorrow so I'm operating off of my laptop with almost no resources so um um I was thinking
what can I do tonight and um how did I get really um interested in the Moon
know the moon like the back of my hand understand it well that all took place
back in the uh 1960s um during the lunar orbiter program uh Nas's lunar orbiter program
leading up to the uh Apollo program you know charting the moon in preparation for the man Landings and fortunately on
my laptop I have a program that I presented to Southwest research not too long ago about the history of the Luna
Orbiter project so I'm going to steal part of that uh tonight uh first though
I want to U mention something uh almost everybody involved in astronomy um uh
knows about the app or the program um the clear sky clock clear sky chart that
shows the U um yeah astronomical weather
for your location that was created by a Tilla Dano in Canada and I found out a very sad thing uh today that um at the
end of last month the Tilla passed away oh and um there's a group of people who
want to perpetuate clear sky chart they call it clear sky chart now uh it used
to be clear sky clock but uh it had to change its name because of a legal issue
but uh we want to perpetuate clear sky chart and keep it going not only in
atilla's memory but it's such a resource for astronomers so um there's a group
that are looking for people who are good at coding who uh we want to talk to atilla's Widow
and see if she will release uh clear sky uh clock or clear sky chart as a open
source so that it can be perpetuated by uh a team of astronomers and and programmers so if you're uh good at
programming want to be part of this um please contact me so I can get you in contact with the right people for this
uh my email Robert re 400 at gmail so U
if you're interested in this please let me know uh of course the other thing that I U have to mention of course
Christmas is around the corner uh let me do the 10 Penny commercial don't forget about my two Moon Books um the uh
photographic atlas of the Moon and exploring the moon with Robert Reeves if you are searching for a last minute
stocking stuffer both available on Amazon so let me get over here and do a
screen share and get to my
slides okay let's get this up and hopefully it
will do you see a screen share of my stack of lunar orbiter pictures not yet
okay whoops I pushed the wrong button let's get back to zoom well let's try
this then and
uh now are we seeing a stack of lunar orbit pictures yes oh okay well um like
I said I I really got interested in the moon during the lunar orbiter project as
an amateur astronomer for 10 years before that of course I'd looked at it through my telescope I'd photographed it through my telescope I've been taking
pictures of the moon since the 1950s but U the best we could do from Earth through any telescope uh would
show features on the moon about a mile in diameter um the film photography
would create these fuzzy images even in the best telescopes that uh just look
terrible compared to what the bare amateur can do nowadays W with ordinary Digital Imaging but the lunar orbiter
program came along back in the 1960s and photograph the moon in Exquisite detail
uh detail down to several leaders in resolution so that uh we know where to
safely land the Apollo um um spacecraft and fast forward about half a century
and by U sheer chance I inherited 3,000 of these original Luna Orbiter
photographs the ones that I have were the very ones used at the mans spacecraft Center in Houston Texas
during the Apollo program and of course nowadays uh man spacecraft Center is known as the Johnson Space Center but um
these pictures that helped guide Apollo to the moon are now uh on the table just
across my computer monitor it took me several weeks to sort them all out uh the largest place I could find to spread
them out was on my bed so that kind of um slowed things down had to clear it every evening and uh next day sort them
out by by Mission and U uh frame frame number order but um today I've got them
all sorted out and uh stored away and uh Rusty the famous mooncat keeps a close
guard on these pictures so Nobody messes with them and uh in the meantime I've
had a awful lot of fun uh talking about the lunar orbiter project to everybody and uh uh so we're going to um um
jump through mini I'm trying to figure out how to do this well nope it's not
working that way there let's Advance through the program very rapidly lunar
orbit of spacecraft of course this the spacecraft that five of them orbited the moon uh used a repurposed um Air Force
um spy satellite camera system to photograph the moon and transmit the images back to Earth and
uh let me advance through it to get up to the actual pictures of the Moon that
we want to talk about tonight instead of the rest of the program come
on nope there we go W so finally we get up to these lunar orbit pictures that um
started coming back to Earth 1966 6768 and showed us a moon that we never
saw before uh we had a one-sided view of the Moon uh our perspective from Earth
uh never changing uh we never saw The Far Side of the Moon we never saw the limbs of the Moon from overhead to
really understand their geology we saw much of the Moon along the edges of the moon at an extreme slant angle so uh
understanding its geology was was very difficult and then lunar orbiter one went an orbit around the Moon uh 1966
summer of 1966 and one of the first public relations things it had to do is
of course take a picture of the Earth rising above uh the limb of the Moon and here we see The Far Side of the Moon jov
crater the Black Lake and the moon the Earth rising above Robert I'm sorry I
think you've got uh your temp folder showing and not the images that you're speaking to you're
kidding but we love the picture of Rusty on the pile of photos Okay uh you got to
reshare I guess stop sharing and then reshare and uh go back here and uh see
if I can get down to whoops too
far okay is it still the folder or is it showing the actual it's it's stack of
pictures Ah that's that's that's that's the how do I do this um we've run into
this issue before um
share okay Earth Earth with moon there we go we finally finally got it working
yeah every time I get on global star party it's like a roll of the dice will
my show work properly or not but anyway like I said first thing U NASA had to do
is this PR photo the Earth rising above the Moon and this just absolutely captivated the public first time the
Earth had been seen from the Moon from uh far out in space uh astronauts of
course had taken pictures close up from Earth orbit but uh never see the entire Globe so U this this was a revelation
this back in 1966 and then uh as more and more of the moon was was revealed by Luna Orbiter to
release to the public uh we saw things that were impossible to see the back
side of the moon uh the Russians had photographed it in 1959 but it was such a blurry fuzzy picture basically all you
could do is establish that the moon was round uh details on the far side were
were few and far between in those early pictures now Luna Orbiter was was scratching the surface down to to the
tiny crater level and whoa I didn't mean to advance that
fast um one of the uh uh things Lun Orbiter 2 did was turn over on its side
and photograph the limb of the Moon not straight down like it's doing mapping of the uh of the
U Apollo sites but uh tourist picture so to speak and they returned this picture
of Cernic's crater uh this is looking from the South toward the north because we see the figure8 shape of fouth and
fth a about mid picture and cernus Beyond it so we know we're looking North
and then u a u high resolution image of the same um area looking into the depths
of cernus Crater from The Edge a slant looking at it from an impossible view
from Earth uh we see cernus from straight overhead and here we see the depth of the walls and the mountains in
the middle of the central Peak uh a view of cernus that uh Humanity had never
seen before this was dubbed the picture of the century by the press and uh it
again a sensation um more slant views from Luna Orbiter
we're looking at the Marius Hills and we've seen Marius Hills on oadus proelium for for uh centuries uh this
little dimple likee uh uh volcanic domes U splattered across ocean proelium and
here lunar orbiter finally gives us close-ups we get to see the the the the
the shape and the formation and understand these are small shield volcanoes on the moon uh some of them
are cinder cones but others are are small uh shield volcanoes very shallow
uh uh spread out kind of a analogy of the Hawaiian Islands prot treating up
out in the Pacific and uh an overhead view of the
Marius Hills in detail that we could not get from the earth now remember this is 1966
1967 uh these are utter Revelations even to the professionals we had never ever
seen the moon with such Clarity to understand the Dynamics of its the
vulcanism on it how it came to be how the uh forces uh impact forces and the
volcanic forces modified the moon uh this was a moment where everybody in the
world who had any kind of interest in in in lunar geology lunar astronomy were
all learning together at the same time as these magnificent images were being shown for the first time now um uh we've
all seen the Alpine Valley um extending through the Alps mountains near Plato crater but uh very few people up to that
time had seen the real running down the middle of the Alpine Valley uh the time I had a 4-in Criterion dinos scope U 4in
F10 reflector and it would showed me reasonably good views of the moon but I
never knew that real existed uh this this image came out while I was actually
in the Navy I was no longer at home playing with my telescope but uh I was
dumbfounded when i s saw this image released at the time I was stationed at the Yorktown Naval weapons station just
down the road from Hampton Virginia and Hampton Virginia was where the Langley Research Center is the Langley Research
Center managed the lunar orbiter project so lunar orbiter was in the news all the
time so uh whatever Luna Orbiter found the local papers were all over it uh
finally we get down to the real moon that lunar orbiter was was studying the
actual closeup surface of the Moon where the astronauts would land and walk what
was the the flat surface like we figured it' be very heavily crater Pock and sure
enough it was uh the the small the smaller the crater the more numerous so
u u the I mean you can get down to the point where you're on your hands and knees on the moon looking at with a
magnifying glass and see tinier and tinier and tinier pits but these images
did show there were sufficiently smooth flat areas that Apollo could indeed land
on the lunar surface another far side view uh the U uh broad expanse circular
expanse of Mari ineni uh the Sea of Ingenuity on The Far Side of the Moon
and the figure8 shape of vandra crater right next to it uh an object we see from the earth um
the trees Necker reals very close to the center of the moon but in Exquisite detail looking right at the center of
the K where the uh the reals break up and form this kind of enlarged letter
k um the um Rainer gamma on oan proera
very unusual albo feature it's not a depression it's not a hill or a mountain
it's just a different color region very light colored instead of dark like the rest of the balt and uh we see the
circular uh head of it off to the left and then extending up off to the upper
uh right uh the tadpole tail uh extending out from it so as we look at
it from the earth in a a backyard telescope it looks very much like a a
frog tadpole and then here we we're tended to think uh tempted to think that we're
looking at cernus Crater again that picture of the century that I mentioned but no this is actually theopus crater
over by Mario nectaris and uh just above it on the horizon
U theop theopus and um okay I'm getting
brain dead here um creater names that I've known all my life that one vanished from my
head just when I needed it so we'll move on U it's been a very long hard day like
um um um he mentioned um a funeral for a
very dear loved one and it's essentially drained everything I've got out of me so
I'm I'm just very grateful for a few moments of Peace where I can talk to my friends about something that I love and
get this out of my mind but uh here we go we're looking at the hortensius crater which is just west of Copernicus
crater and the features of interest just above hortensius notice the little Dome like structures with the little Caldera
right in the middle of it the hortensius domes more lunar domes volcanic uh shield volcanoes on the
moon and Kepler Crater from a slant a view we cannot see from Earth we see
Kepler from almost overhead uh it's a ray system splattered out kind of like a
ninja star but here up close uh the rays are not that obvious but uh Kepler
itself uh remains quite obvious a lot near the uh lunar
limb getting up to the poles of the Moon looking down from on top of the North
Pole we see a region now that we only see from Earth at a highly um uh slanted
U compressed View and here we're looking at uh the combined form of the crater we
call meon uh from our view on Earth uh we see these four craters that have
merged and overlapped and been filled in with debris and that from Earth they look like a fourleaf clover and I call
it my lunar good luck charm but from this overhead view we see uh how the geology really is how these craters
merge together and then were filled in with debris from um the emban Basin
impact um I'm rather delighted to see this picture from Luna Orbiter because
my backyard EarthBound shots through my C1 are U almost as good of course this
this particular image from Little orbit was taking at an extreme altitude almost 6,000 kilometers above the Moon and I'm
taking mine from uh you know 200 almost 400,000 kilometers but U uh the details
in the craters U tus at the top alonsus in the middle arachel almost the same as
what I can get in my U CLS under very good seeing
conditions and another crater we see from Earth but uh Schiller uh uh shikar
excuse me shikar down in the lower leftand um um quadrant but at an extreme
elong or slant angle it's very elliptical from Earth but here we see it is a uh huge 200 kilometer wide circular
crater that's been flooded with mults now all of these views like I said they were there were
just Revelations 50 years ago when years ago when we were received these from
from lunar orbiter and U um some people made a lifetime out of studying this uh
some people uh looked at it and said oh that's nice uh and moved on uh but U um
these these images stuck with me the uh lighting and the contrast of them
colored the way I see the moon and often I get complaints from people on Facebook
saying my pictures are too harsh too contrasty well I'm sorry that's how I see the moon I see it as the lunar
orbiter saw it and I strive to uh create images like that with this particular
image a carpenter U the round crater near Center and uh uh anander A and B uh
the loes going off either side from Earth this this these two craters look
like a valentine heart but here in an overhead view we see their their true form and uh near
the very Western limb of the room we we can see these craters craft and uh
cardas well we can see them but a very slant angle but from this overhead view of Lun Orbiter this is actually two
lunar orbiter frames that I photoshopped together um we see the ca craft uh the
Crater Chain uh between them and this this this view uh always brings joy to
my heart because is I see these two craters as a as children's balloons tied together with a with a ribbon so uh just
just a very playful Apparition on the moon and uh Tao crater we can see this
one from Earth of course but uh not in detail like this of course lunar orbiter
is a lunar orbiter provided these images but lunar reconnaissance Orbiter and
orbit around the moon now uh has prated even more details and uh we can see that
Boulder sitting on the the peak of Tao and that's always
fascinating uh the inside of pavia's crater and if you hear a cat fight in
the background you know that's what it is our kittens are getting rambunctious U the ryop bavius from
Earth it looks like the hands of a clock but um in this picture we see that the
two two um separate arms are actually uh an extension of the same U re across the
face of the crater they uh they're not two separate reals they're joined in the
middle and uh cernus crater almost like we see it from Earth an overhead view
but in detail that we just cannot get from Earth uh the the Terrace walls
collapsing and tumbling down into the uh the crater the walls too big to support
themselves the the the crust is not strong enough and it collapses and then
of course the central Peak very classic uh feature of large craters uh the rebound of subsurface Rock protruding up
creating these Central Peaks so uh always fascinating to see familiar
craters in such Exquisite detail uh you know so details that we cannot see from
the earth it's like seeing the Unseen and uh it just gives you a funny feeling
to to see these things that have been hidden from mankind for Millennia and now we have the ability and the
technology and the smarts to not only see it but figure it out and understand it my oatmeal cookie on the moon on the
moon oatmeal cookie crater U Cindi uh
just above Mori humorum uh this is a composite of three lunar orbiter
photographs that I put together and we see the entirety of gassendi and the Magnificent real system crisscrossing it
that gives it the appearance of Grandma's oatmeal cookie right out of the
oven and U getting close to the end of this Prince crater up near the aist
starus plateau has always fascinated me because of the Rima Prince complex the
reals extending downhill flowing downhill uh they look like a pitchfork
uh almost uh some like some satanic symbol on the moon this this Pitchfork
and you you think of the devil for some reason or at least I do
uh and uh more rules and craters that we barely see havia along the the limb of
the Moon we see it at such a slant angle and here we see the interior of it and how it's just crisscrossed by dozens and
dozens of reals the intense volcanic activity that fractured the
floors and the far side and the near side in one view here we see the
familiar Oceanus proelium on the left excuse me the right and portion of the
far side on the right hand side uh a view that we cannot see from the earth
and uh we'll examine that uh ring likee structure on the lower left here in a
moment um the um craters missier and missier a we see them U up Mari fundi
tus small craters about 10 15 miles in diameter but here we see the Dynamics of
how they came into being before it was thought there were two separate impacts now we're quite convinced both craters
were created by a single object that struck the moon skipped down range
impacted again and uh created the second
creater a question there's a couple of questions um Robert Jeff wise is
watching on YouTube and um there are people that think that the
Earth is flat okay well so he wanted to know are there any flat Moon people I've
never heard of that U for some reason is flat isn't the moon also flat well uh uh
I think they're smart enough that they can look up in the sky and see it with their own eyes and uh realize that well
maybe that one round maybe not I have never heard of a flat mooner
anyway and the second question is is U uh is the faint John Ray is asking this
question on Facebook sure uh is the faint banding in the photos due to a sort of raster scanning artifact yes
portions of my actual lunar orbit of program that this is these images are being stolen out of explains the
photographic process that uh how these images were broadcast back to Earth and
yes that is a part of the uh the photographic process the scan at how the
film was scanned electronically and then broadcast these images are not TV images
uh they're actual photographs that were developed on the spacecraft scanned
electronically and being back to Earth line by line and that's what creates the uh the stripes and the U the varying
densities of adjacent banding uh of the images but um to not run too long here
and get going uh finally uh last the couple of pictures uh there starkus
crater in schroers Valley seen from overhead uh we we we enjoy shorters
Valley in our telescope this massive real that once flowed molten lava onto
Oceanus procerum and uh oops sorry one more picture before I
get to the end uh Hadley real um well known for space flight enthusiasts as
the landing site of Apollo 11 uh excuse me Apollo 50 PA 15 Dave Scott and Jim
Irwin landed the lunar module Falcon not Eagle Falcon uh on the
the extreme right hand side of that senous real now we're at the end
where I thought I was getting um this one picture sent back by Luna Orbiter 4
back in 1968 changed our thinking of the Moon forever it this this is Mari Oriental we
can see portions of it from the Earth but it's right on the limit of the Moon we can barely see it at of extreme slant
and we only see half of it because the other half wraps around on The Far Side of the Moon and we never see it from the earth but lunar orbit are s back this
picture is showing the impact ring structure how these uh impact Rings radiate out from uh the central impact
each ring being 1.4 times further out the the than the previous this one and
with this single image we understood the impact nature of what created the basins
on the moon that later filled with lava to form the Maria and the face of the
moon now Maria Oriental was the last of the last Bas Great Basin impacts um um
almost four billion years ago so it was not obliterated and altered by subsequent impacts so this one
image made everything snap into place and we could understand the impact
origin of the great basins on the moon and how they were subsequently Modified by volcanism and all of these pictures
came back in a gush back 66 6768 and it took a little while to digest them by the mid
1970s um we had a really good idea about uh the basic evolution in the lunar
geology uh and the evolution of the face of the Moon of course we're tweaking it now uh more more more data coming in as
more missions go but Luna Orbiter these images that uh came down when I was in
my early 20s back in the 1960s these are what really solidified our understanding
of the Moon and made me see the moon as I see it today so uh my next slide yes
my classic one that I always end with there's much to love on the moon and I invite you to come out and join me on my
playground so it's been fun and let me stop sharing here and let you move on to
our next speaker all right may I this is Ken may I interject something first of
all uh Robert this is just absolutely great you and I talked on the phone some years ago and I would like to uh add
that um the Alpo itself uh you know with the various observing sections the lunar
observing section that we have is is extremely comprehensive we have the
lunar topographical studies program that's part of the lunar observing section we also have the lunar domes
studies program which is part of the lunar section and uh raphaelo Lena of
Italy uh who is active with both the baa and the Alpo is our program coordinator
for lunar domes what I call I guess failed volan Volos yeah and um we also
have uh another program within the lunar section meteoritic impact studies which nobody
thought would be that active and now we're routinely getting people sending images and videos and so what I'm saying
is it ties in with your really really great stuff to show what is on the moon
and if you're interested in studying if you were inspired by Robert's work here
uh his pointing out of things please consider um looking into the
AL yeah agreed yeah it's it's a fun outfit I've been uh recently been
contributing to the lunar Observer the publication and uh having fun with that
too thank you good job okay thanks guys thanks okay um so uh our next uh speaker
uh is is marchello Souza down in Brazil and marello is going to take kind of a
mindbending uh approach uh which I think that when we try to wrap our heads
around some of the the stuff that really kind of is kind of numbing okay now this
this this subject that marchello is going to talk about is uh the fact that
um there are things that move faster than light and uh it has to do with the
expansion of the universe and so uh marchello is a
cosmologist uh and uh I think he's going to give us a great insight into what's
going on with our universe thanks for coming on
marello hi thank you very much for the invitation thanks for joining us it's a
great pleasure to be here I'd like to share my screen now
one moment uh let me see if you we work
today one a moment okay something is happening
here I I sh I have
another let me see if you work if
the I what I because I I yeah have many video
conference ever work only when I am participating glal St that didn't work
let me see this is a Asom before I talk about this I
something that's very curious also is this because space where publish this I
imagine that this happen in many places in the world but now we have here proof
that solar storms are driving Farmers crazy because he affecting the TR the
automatic tractors that they have because they need the GPS then during
the a strong solar activ that you have had in
May 10 affect the movement of G tractors
then and it happen again in October two days in October but maybe it's not only these
that was affected now many different kinds of equipment that use GPS and that
is an automatic equipment may be happening the same thing the a the
history is publish in space we that's and is a fantastic thing then we have
now proofs that affect the effects of
the the strong solar activity and now something that for me
every something very curious because it is associate with our view of the
universe is the model that we consider that is the best model that you have to
understand the universe that this plan we consider that the in one moment we
have have the H expansion the beginning of the expansion of the universe we call this
moment a big bang that's not an explosion let imagine that is a big
sound something like this that begins to expand
and we have different moments but we consider now that Universe has
approximately more than 13 billion
years but H what is curious is that we
can consider now that the observable universe is approximately 93 billion
light years in diameter this means that we needed to
consider that the Universe the expansion of the universe happen
with a velocity higher than the velocity of the light in vacuum that some is
prohib that by the special relativity this now I will return to
this and but I only show the equations from the I think Theory you
have the time direction that happen different
servers and measure different times interval of times and how the factor is
this one that you have here associated with the velocity of the differential uh
Square uh divided by C squ that c is the
velocity of light in vacuum and also we have the contraction of space but it's
not about this thata talk is the you had also the mass that change with
velocity and this that's important to for we understand why it is impossible
for us to move faster than velocity of the lights in vacuum you see here m
m0 is the mass rest mass is a mass that you
measure when you are not moving if you can imagine this and if you have someone
moving relatively uh with you they you you
measure a different kind of mass a different Mass but as you have this
Factor what happens is that when is moving
faster the mass is growing up very fast
and then when is near the velocity of the light in vacuum happen this
it is impossible to reach this because you need H infinite energy to to move
this and this is impossible then we live in a world that you have a limit of
velocity the the mass the matter can't reach the velocity of the light in
vacuum that's impossible from theing Fury then how that you can consider that
you have objects in the universe that is moving faster than the velocity of light
in vacuum then let we I'm try
to to show what's how that you can imagine
this here we can see h a from also from
relativity what you have is this that the velocity of light didn't change
from different observers is the same for all observers but what Chang is the wav
length of the light frequency and then when is moving far from us goes to h
lower energies and when come our Direction high energy that we call the
red shift when is moving far from us and the universe is EXP
like this have all the parts of the universe and moving far from the
others this is the Mage that you have like a balloon that is
growing and is affect but what we need to consider also is not only because the
space time is expanding then space and time is moving then you don't it's not
only the object object itself that's moving is all the space that's moving when the univers expanding then you need
you need to consider also the velocity of the expansion of the universe and as it is not is the
universe that expanding not the movement of these object then you can H this
object can move faster than the lights it's not prohibited by the theory of hel
because is it Al is the universe that exp the space time that's
moving ever when in cosmology you talk about this everybody
and something that you need to consider when you say the university spish if the university is
everything he is expanding in what direction from is something that we
can't answer this is like a I don't know how to say in engl
but important s Austine that is asent from the Catholic
church when someone ask something like this associated with the when God
created the the universe and he asked what he did before or he said that he
build the hell for people that make C like this then something like this that
have now because we we don't know it's like
this small fly that lives 24 hours trying to understand our life why we
have something a kids an adults and how they know that the kids will turn an
adult it's same that you do with the universe we live few
years very few years we are talking about the
and half and 500 million years old and
univers more than 13 billion years old and how that can imagine what is
happening but we try to understand if the result that we have today and you
have from the beginning of the civilization the observation of the sky this is an object that is called gnz11
this is one of the highest a red shift this object have objective High
head shifts this is the reason that you can you have you need to consider that
is moving faster than the some object in
moov FAS than veloc of the light and the the here why send the the light for it
was 43 B years ago the light is
flying from 13 billion years and now the distance is more than 30 billion years
and because some moments the universe moved faster than
light space time H with the movement of the object of expansion then we need to
consider that moving faster than light and what something is this
also the observable diameter is 93 billion years
this means that the present size of the observable
universe is for six billion light years have object that will never receive any
information from them because is they located after this limits of the
observable universe and nowadays now if you consider now we
can we can receive in the future all information about objects that they are
inside this this pinky region here that is a radius of 18 billion light
years after this we will not see have information from these objects
then is something that we need to think about because when you talk about the
the special relativity I in the past I give many classes about this and whever
say that don't have n object can move fast than the
lighting vacuum but see when we talk about the universe you need to consider
different things and you need to imagine a different situation that is the space
time itself is moving with the object Insight something that is crazy it's a
crazy Mage that you need to consider and you have moments that
moving faster than it's moving today and it's thing that is but is the
best model that we have to understand may be one day everything change you
have another explanation for what's happening now I will talk about
the uh the last event that you organized we organized uh last week a
special events with new technologies that we are using you receive the students in this
place and we are going to organize in the spirit because now H for us the academic year only begin will begin in
February now have holidays in schools is the finish of the then we're organizing
events for the public in general public now not only for the students then we
have this a special place that is AER protect place and we create a
special uh condition inside this room associated with astronomy and space
exploration and we receive students in this space and talk about astronomy
astrona have using all these resources now that are available and when possible
because now during summer is different where many people imagine because in
Brazil rains a lot during summer then have a few days sometimes have few days
if the sun and the possibility to to see this the sky at night but we have TR and
this day it was fantastic because it was possible to organize the solar
observation for these students and now we organizing our
7 7th international meeting of as Edition
of the international will happen April 102 2025 here in
our you are invited out the friends here
are invited to participate it be an honor for us have participation is a
onsite events Insight events we organize we receive International speakers here
in our city in Brazil and this is what Ian to talk with
thank you very much for the invitation Scot is a great pleasure to be here with
all of you thank thank you
great okay um so um and thanks again
marello our next speaker is Dr Daniel bar uh Daniel and I go way back um
several decades uh when uh he was working at a scope City
store selling telescopes he then took all that interest and inspiration to um
uh you know get his uh PhD in astronomy and he became a professor of astronomy
and taught in California and eventually made his way which seemed very kind of
maybe it was fate I don't know he ends up out here in Arkansas uh to go to
University of Arkansas and he walks into explore scientific and we reconnect
after many uh years had ped um uh for a
little while Daniel also worked here at explore scientific and he was a great uh
um you know contributor to our customer service department and also uh to even
our repair department and our um you know uh he's the one that if you bought
one of our refurbished uh 10-in dobsonians they were likely rebuilt by
Daniel so uh and he did a really expert job with that uh anyway he is uh he has
now moved a little bit too far away to drive to work here at explore scientific
but I know he's having a great time because he's building an observatory and maybe it's almost finished at this point
not sure um but he's a great friend and and uh um a lot of fun to listen to and
so Daniel thanks for coming on to the 163rd Global Star Party well thank you
Scott um it's uh it's really nice to be back and uh I'm having fun with the
observatory project trying to see if I can uh um how I'm supposed to do a share
my screen oh goodness
you got two screens up
uh yeah I've got a second screen and or a second window open
okay no bother so just find the um app you'll
find the green share button at the bottom CH video
settings share screen here we go all right let's try that share
screen and are we seeing anything not yet
you're getting close I share [Music] screen you can feel you're getting
warmer maximize
window share individual window
okay
so I'm not successful ah where's a 12year Old when
you need them uh okay so all of you who have uh
felt felt clumsy on felt the frustration of trying the frustration of
uh it's happened to everybody and this used to be this used to be easy because I did this uh in class all the time all
the time that's right I feel your pain I've been there okay audio I'm seeing
video video settings uh share
screen uh Advance there's like little icons at the bottom underneath the okay
and there should be like a share here we go it's a green one says share there you are lovely and I'm going to pick this
one and share and there we are okay this
this friends is the telescope that we're going to be putting back into service
and uh with the observatory project at that thing and uh there's always been
the question of why you why don't you get a dome uh and this maybe answers
some of those um this is the aamax it's 133 mm aperture it's an F12 system so
that that otaa is basically 2 m long 7 feet for all of us in the states and uh
you can see that the center of motion up here is somewhere up almost 7 feet off
the ground and so if you're you're going to have something like this in a dome it
takes a large Dome and it kind of it fills it occupies the space uh even like a
2.7 uh meter dome which is why we're doing the roll out
system where this will be uh stored in its most compact form into a shed and
then when it's time to use it it will roll out onto a platform into a
preposition uh spot where it will be lined up and ready to go so that will be uh that will
be exciting and we're looking forward to that we uh con we uh did all the
contractual details for the uh storage building on the slab and that's supposed
to be delivered and installed sometime before Christmas so I should have a
functional Observatory and then it's just up to me to get all the uh the dolly based uh platforms built and uh
this telescope here the uh electronics
and the motors on here are almost 30 years old so we're looking at rebuilding
that or replacing them with a new Mount so that's where the uh that's where the
observatory Adventure goes and that will be uh that will be exciting um
so I was interested in the uh the piece under the stars
um and I got to say that uh a lot of times one of the most fascinating things
about teaching introductory astronomy uh and some of us know this a lot of us who do Outreach know this you
go out and literally at times the experience brings people to
tears uh they go out and they look at the sky and they see it and they they
find uh pieace or stimulation some of them but uh sometimes the meaning goes
deeper and sometimes you help people find meaning there um more than 20 years
ago teaching high school at that time two of my colleagues teacher colleagues
in the school each had children who were in high school there at the time
and both of these young people uh uh a young guy and a young gal passed through
my classroom and they took many of our most most of us saw them and uh
these two fell in love and got married shortly after graduation and uh they had a first child
but unfortunately uh there were severe medical problems and the first child did not live very long just a few days
passed away my colleagues who were the grandparents were obviously very
distraught and this happened uh the baby was born in October and buried in
November and so Christmas time comes around and my colleagues come to me Dan
you're the astronomy guy we want your help with this okay um they had gone to one of the uh
buy yourself a star services and I know as astronomy people we all kind of cringe
when we hear the buy yourself a star um you're buying a name in a catalog that's
published in one copy in the Library of Congress uh but beyond that they came to me and
they said well you know about our our kids you had both of our kids in your class and and the baby that passed away
and so we bought the baby a star and we want you to help us get a telescope
so we're going to give this to our kids at Christmas so they can look through the telescope and see the star that
we've named after their little child and a very very sweet and
emotionally art story and you go wow what an exciting uh gift for you to give
to your children and uh my students and you know fully behind that let's take a
look at the map here they had sold them a star out of the
uh uh the parkos catalog I think and it was a uh 15th magnitude star somewhere
within about 20 Dees of the uh Southern Celestial pole so to see this uh star
that they had Chosen and paid for first book your trip to Chile or somewhere uh
points well south of the Equator so um at this point you say to yourself what
do you do and uh well frankly you
lie um this was the season and so I said oh how nice of you look here and uh I
pulled up stellarium and uh I'm going to share another screen
here so I pulled up starium and here we go and uh I said look at this it's right
up next to the north star and I said next to the North Star there's this pair
this double right here and that's your star and that bigger one that's your
child and the little one that's your grandchild and I said you know you can
see this with any small telescope and you can come along anytime we're out because this is up all year
long and so I showed them how to find the North Star with uh Ursa Major the
Big Dipper and with Copa and I said with one of those two you can find the North
Star and if you're looking at the North Star you're looking at your special star and that's the star that's named for
your grandchild wow was it
true well it was as true as the book that's published somewhere in a Dusty
closet that has their grandchild's name on a 15th magnitude star somewhere down
near the South Celestial pole is it true um in their hearts it's
true and at that point um you're confronted with
data and you have data and then you have
the other uh bit of data which is in front of you which is uh here's two of your friends whose uh children uh got
engaged and then got married and then had a child and then that child
tragically was lost to them and so was it true yeah it was true and did I tell
them never ever never ever are they watching
tonight maybe and uh I would like to to think that my my old friends would uh
say a rather than rats and uh and would would understand what I
did and what I said when we talk about finding peace Under the Stars ultimately we all bring our own
meaning we all bring our own meaning and uh I often point out to my science
students when we talk about topics which are any any life L discussion with young
students gets you to the edges of well we're not sure about that pretty darn quickly uh because they want to know
what's inside the middle of a black hole and uh where do things go when they fall in and what's before the Big Bang and
you get to these edge of the universe edge of reality kind of topics pretty
quickly and you make clear students that there are things that you believe are true things that
you I know in my heart are true and there are things that I can scientifically prove are true and uh one
is a much smaller Set uh the things that are scientifically
provable uh are small and they're limited by our own technology and our vision and our
Ingenuity um the uh Sun Center and Earth
centered models of the solar system coexisted for a millennia and a half
almost two and they coexisted and they fell into and out of favor um but really
there was no data to distinguish one from the other so sometimes we have things
which uh cernus died I'm sure certain in his heart that he was right that the sun
was in the middle had he ever been able to prove it in his lifetime no
uh that would be left to Galileo and Galileo died uh being cursed for his
accomplishment uh he was forgiven he died a heretic he was forgiven uh in
1992 uh which is kind of uh fun we think that uh God in his heaven was in on the
joke and forgave him first uh but we we find Solace under the
stars because we bring our own meaning there and whether we love to look at the
Moon deep sky or galaxies or uh we look at a constellation and say that's Fred
because uh when I first saw that I was with my friend Fred and I remember Fred
and uh we bring our own meaning to the night sky and we bring our own meaning
to the eyepiece every time and uh when we bring a little knowledge and a little meaning to the
eyepiece piece we bring Away We Come Away with a lot more value we don't walk up to a very nice expensive telescope
and look through and say oh yeah it's the moon I seen it you know we bring a little more
meaning usually look at the Moon and go wow
yeah yeah one would hope but uh to uh to get meaning out of it to get Solace from
it we have to bring some meaning and some understanding to it so we have to
start out with improving ourselves and then we go look at the sky and then we
are paid back for our sweat and our study and uh uh we are paid back
and again the coin is that we improve and enrich
ourselves so it's lovely
yes okay okay thank you very much Daniel thank you I know that that the night's
uh running late um but uh um but you are an astronomer and
so I appreciate you coming on tonight late nights are thing sometimes yeah I'm
not even sure if you all can hear me maybe not a Tuesday night I don't know well I used to listen I enjoyed the
presentation Dr bar to the point where um you know when I think about being
under the night sky giving me peace and there are a lot of things yes you mention just briefly and Robert's still
here we had all walks of life come up at a you know showing the moon through a
telescope people with you know chest out folks who didn't think we landed on the
moon all sorts of just different beliefs the one common denominator to what you
spoke to at the end of your soon as they looked at that Moon they all dropped that facade and went wow
yeah and uh that it it the moon just seeing the Moon closer up pulled them
out of whatever shell they'd learned to be in for you know how we live life and
genuinely be impressed at something you know in this world where being impressed
you know it's kind of hard to find um they were very impressed just by seeing
even in my little spotting scope and I'm I'm still getting wow that that's
amazing that's and it just you know it just goes to you know kind of goes to the power of
the night sky there and um so I I kind of want to add that to and Scott just
said we're running late and here I go I still have a presentation I have to do later uh but um yeah just uh you know
very inspiring and um um I get that all the time I've been the one to say oh ho
it's the moon um but at the same time I go but I'm thankful it's there and I'm
thankful that I recognize that it's there and sometimes on a cloudy night the Moon is all you've got and you just
have to apprec if for the Harden astronomers we have to appreciate the night's guy every time you get chance to
look at it so so more on that later from me but um thank you again and I know
Cesar wants to show us the night sky over there CU he's he's got it all set
up I I will get out of the way but uh really appreciate it and glad
that I jumped in when you were giving your presentation but before I let you go
Daniel what gives you the greatest sense of Peace in
astronomy for me personally yeah
ah you know I think part of it for me personally when
I got my first telescope when I was about 10 and the moon program was going
on and looking now and seeing where these Adventures were
occurring and uh it really took me out of my backyard and it
it put the universe in my pocket it it really I I can't describe it it was
uh I looked up at the night sky with a sense of an owner's
Delight something a jewel I possessed and delighted in and wondered at and
that was mine to share and or not as I chose and
um just to look up and see and to know and to say ah I recognize things and I
know this for a star and that for a planet and this is not just a name it's
a world it's a place it's not just a thing it's it's an entire
planet um and so that and that's driven your
whole life I mean yeah here you are you're I think we're about the same age and and uh it's it's been an
incredible uh ride you know so yes yes not over yet no no it's not
so but I love your uh I love your library and your your celestial sphere
up there and yes all of you know looks like a moon glob off to the left so it
looks like you're settling in nice into your new yes place and um we still have
we still have stuff to go and uh the observatory project has uh has absorbed
a lot of energy and uh I am so excited to recommission that uh that big F12
refractor um and this will be the first time really ever I've owned it
for going on for 30 years now yeah uh
1995 yeah 95 96 somewhere in there
uh is when I acquired it from Fred marosek and uh um 23 of them made this
Fred told me was the last one oh wow and it's the only one in that dragonfly green mhm uh and
uh it is it is so big 7 feet long 40
pounds with an eyepiece on it uh that it takes a lot of uh it takes a lot of
Mount yeah and because you you don't want to be lying on your back to look at
the Zenith the I height changes by a meter right you think of the challenge
of that from The Horizon to the Zenith the height of the ipce changes by more
than a meter and so um it's definitely
it's it's challenging to house but i' I've got the plan and we're moving forward and everybody here on global
star party will come with me step by step okay as we as we get through the the next steps and it will be exciting
yeah yeah excited for you man okay all right well thank you so much
Daniel and have a good night and we'll see you next
time okay our next speaker is uh Cesar brolo uh down in Argentina and uh
I don't know if we got a clear sky tonight or not yes I have I have clear sky but but
wait wait wait wait we have we have something special here okay uh we have
um John Ray uh watching on Facebook and today is his birthday so happy birthday
John Ray oh happy Birthday Ray yes okay okay now back to
Caesar yeah but it's great yes the the rounds about around the the sun is a
great thing and it's an astronomical number that's right it's an
astronomical all a very personal absolutely astronomical
number totally um yes I have um a clear
sky but unfortunately I couldn't H prepare my equipment tonight because the
weend yes the I left a wires and cables
that I need this tonight in s Miguel Observatory because we was working in
the night of the books or uh or libraries it's a a meet of a lot of
people that every year in December the municipality the government of San
Miguel that is a town in the around in the metropolitan area of uh of
w city is outside the W City and well I
left equipment in in the observatory because maybe next Saturday uh yes really I forget there
some wires and things that h the the show that is that I I I prepare the the
Rooftop in this 37 floor but yes but I don't have the wire that I need to
connect the the mount wire okay ah yes yes my my wife too yes my my wife uh
listened to me um protesting you know saying the things you know yes and this
is something like I thought uh the different things that H we live and we
enjoy in astronomy uh because tonight we are talking about about how uh we
found a Tranquility we found a good feeling about watching the sky or um
sometime watching the sunset watching H sunrise and all and it's astronomy too
um many many times when I'm uh in the last years something that I start to to
to uh to make is sailing and sailing is so near to the every time I took a
picture of the sun of the Moon from the from the boat when I'm sailing because
it's so connected the ties is totally connected and you are talking about all
time about about uh sun and moon and H
the connection between astronomy in everything um sometimes well I have a a
couple of of uh pictures and um videos about that we are talking now yes um the
first thing
is in a in a short video
where move something a little well this is a a a um a a typical night from the
balcony that I enjoy that I found h a nice feelings uh watching the sky maybe
it's in the city maybe it's with a screen a computer you know it's not a
under the the Dark Skies but you know
still under Sky yes yes this is the I for example I found I found good
feelings uh uh in my balcony where I have connected I have connected my my
computer to the telescope and find uh very very far away like for example
Omega cluster in this case h where I I found a a a a beautiful
image sometimes I change I put the ipce instead of the camera um and is is
really grateful when um I remember the the about the price for you is rewarding
for you some some feeling the of
rewarding uh uh for for yourself is something that every night that I make
astronomy I
found well talking about Sunrise um
you this is the the sunrise from from
yes a sunrise uh over the river place
Rio de La Plata the size of the Rio is inario is so big that uh we have 60
kilometers of fresh waters uh we sail I sail ER in in this
place our our Port is in in the in the right side of the
picture uh this is the port but this is a commercial Port but but we have have
an entrance a door for for to the open to the to the driver
and uh this picture have the sense of uh
the magnificence of of the the the river and do you have a
beautiful um a beautiful sunrise and it's astronomy it's
everything that you can get the uh Feel the Moment feel the the sensation
because is a snap in a few seconds is changing because ER the colors are
changing too and all is about astronomy science but you change this in a good
feeling in a beautiful feeling uh because it's the the natural in the opposite this is from my
my home from the from the rooftop of of the tower where I
live this is the sunset uh very near from my home
normally where I go to to make running or Bike Run bike uh
riding um you have a small lakes with Parks like our Central Park in
buenosaires is in the area of palm very big parks uh it was is the same kind of
of thing in the middle of the city do you have a small
Oasis and the people the people in in this ER area
enjoy this in in in this kind of of
Summer uh sorry this is a this is where the the sun fall in winter in summer of
course that you have another position and this is the the small things where
when you watch the different place where the sun fall where the sun where where is
the sunset um is is something that we uh are
talking about astronomy too and we found the beauty of Nature and the sense to
know something different you are are going to you feel good about no the the
small thing about the for example theala the position of the sun in different times of the year you can see that all
people is is winter because all people is H with with a cloth because it's it's
uh it's a time of the year very very cold well this is another thing the
constellation from the balcony here you have antaris this is
Scorpio um you can find the the the
playing with the sky the now the constellations is a little moment of a
of uh enjoy good feelings um especially enjoying the things
because you found in in your sky in the middle of the city in a moment h a nice
moment H sometimes you are with people that say oh this is Scorpio this is oron
and it's it's something great it's a small moment maybe it's not this the the
the things about um you're going to to to to to have
peace inner peace you know but this a small moment that is a beautiful short
moment and it's great it's great for for for you you can talk something about
this and it's something that I am sure uh well ER amateur strummers that
we are we have filtered small telescopes and we we can make this with very low
price equipment uh we are lucky
to to for example to to watch this or
take a picture with a cell phone like this and it's some is beautiful because
you have uh things that with an entry level equipment you can make something
different it's another way to to enjoy a short moment and make something rewarding for
you the uh another things about the con despite the constellations is not or
or pay attentions to con Huns between stars and
the and the and the moon I don't remember
exactly who which star is but I remember that I took this picture after sailing
in the night this is the port the the the port where we
we uh uh we we parking it's not parking sorry in the natic talking but we put
the the boat in this area and ever I yeah the cour yeah yes yes it's a port
but boat parking yes boat parking yes yes but I I know in Spanish we use the
the specific natic talk words and I know that in English too but I don't remember
the name in English to to say or well put I don't know use the
Spanish one it's okay yeah yes it's our our Port yes uh um and this
is something about very beautiful about to know or what or pH pH in your cell
phone which conention do you have you're watching and talk with the people and
say okay this is I don't I don't remember La Luna the moon and anaris I I
don't remember which star is but uh for example well the sun the sun were
you are not um taking a picture of sun only or
Sunrise um a sunset in this case because it's in the west but the this idea of
geography or or where where you are go we are going to the West in in which
part of the of the year um this is this is small part of
astronomy uh if for example in this picture was in the
equinoxio and it's a real we are we was going to the to the West really because
the sun was was had the sunset in in the neino day over the west
and this is something the fact that you can talk with the people in your in the
boat and say ah no no it's the West is because uh because today for example is
the kinio another picture well Solas Solas
is it pronunciation Solas Solas
no well look that this is a conclusion ven beautiful moon this is my my
church my church from my childhood and this is
and this is where my mom ashes are oh
and this is H I was going to to my father's house and I I ER felt the
sensation to stop the car and take the this picture outside
the go go out to this to the to the uh outside the car
park the car and go to take this picture and visit
the Small Monument where the the the common place for the ashes is and
remember my my mother that she pass away two years ago and and the mix between
the notes that you are you have about the moon the Venus and and you are just
I choose I choose it something H because uh the
sensations um the the the feeling was
special In This Moment it's a mix and something that that uh thanks to my
mother the education that she gave me uh I can uh I can um enjoy the about this
this is very important um you know this is what this is my church from the my
childhood and uh we have we are in the in my
family we are Catholic or the tradition Catholic tradition and they has this is
a very nice Church Ur yes and sometimes with my telescope I
have a the my maxo from here the church is at 15 kilometers from from here and
from from my roof to I can see with a
yes yes yes I next time I I prepare a picture uh from here H and show where is
yes because okay yes it's it's something very interesting um well I enjoy my
work yes yes yes maybe it's around this year is going to be 95 years
old I see yeah yes yes and this is my my store I enjoy
working with shomy too um uh well here
you can see that I normally to the next day I put everever
I put in the screen um streaming all time the the the last
night ER Global Sur party thank you is something great I need something
to start conversation with the people that say which is which which is this ah you are you are you this
is talking in English yeah it's great well equipment in the store uh this is
the this is the a a new h no it's not new it's an old neutronian telescope
that we recycle um put a new uh
fiberglass fa glass look it's not carbon fiber sorry carbon fiber look it's a
it's a a wrap with a yes yes with a plotting or I I don't know the name in
English but it's wrapping because it's is this is a and the exos does MO we prepare this
for the h this weekend I'm sorry this is another
another uh conention with Venus moon this is very
near from here I was running and stopped to take the picture wow and this is the video of H
the last last uh Friday and Saturday this was the Saturday the Friday sorry H
where uh we ER we show uh we support to
the bav vist cosmo Foundation this is Santiago ma uh this is our
stand uh with a geologic parts and this was a very very
fun uh uh because we uh we show to the
people ER Jupiter Venus the
moon um here there is is our flag and we receive a lot of people to
watch the moon you can see the video I don't know if okay and um we really
enjoyed to show to the people in a screen and by ipce in two different
telescopes and another one we use a maxutov uh 100 uh two for for
um to project the moon in a screen uh we used the recycle Newtonian 10 in
telescope with a exos to mount here are the the equipment and
uh well the people enjoy a lot and we talk a lot about uh we really needed in
this moment to Robert rib really
yes and uh yes because the kids ask a lot of question about you know the
moon surface or or it's possible to watch where the astronauts er er Landon or yeah they
Landon or yes it was a beautiful beautiful night two different nights
this was uh the Friday night and a full full of people wow full of people H this
is our meteorite huge huge yes yes is from is
from the the foundation and yes we was a a Harry
Potter them ER look from from the the
the entire the entire event uh was beautiful really beautiful she atina
atina is a geologist specialist that she talk a lot with the
people about you know gems Stones
meteorites right another picture of our recycled teles
and explore scientific maxutov uh with explore scientific mounts we really
enjoy a lot a lot full full of people that looks like
the yeah yeah totally
totally ariela volunteer that is a Le is it a live view of the Moon yes of course
of course you know me you know me never never a picture no no I live
VI this was because this is what because I say we needed to to rubber
ribs I see last night yeah another video another video beautiful was a look the
the entire the entire um Fire have a a four blocks four
five blocks of long um uh they have a different
tents with books and different companies books dealers and and we are we have our
special place every year because it's a it's a municipal uh fire and really we
enjoy a lot and this is our Voldemort
[Laughter] because we one of of our
team he he put because it was a Harry Potter Harry Potter style night um
because you know the about the books um we put H in the fire our
baldemort I see yes yeah Baltimore
yeah okay well this is was
yeah for for tonight and I let me check
how I ah stop sharing okay ah well this is was my entire presentation my talk
about the feelings you know now it's really late
here oh it is late that's right 12:30 yes I I'll continue
watching the presentation tomorrow in my store Adrian
sorry uh because I need to go to sleep yeah go ahead go to bed but yes
but tomorrow I put your presentation too in in in the store in the screen ever
ever you are famous in my in my store every everywhere yes it's a
pleasure really thank you very much it's called me thank you Caesar thank you for
sharing tonight okay thank you Adrian okay all right all right so
Adrian Bradley so as usual trying to close down a wonderful Global Star Party
um you know so many Reflections from both um professional amateur
astronomers uh folks with doctor in front of their name um but we all think
we you know this whole Global Star Party comes together because we all love some aspect of
astronomy the night sky um and I think a program like this Scott for those that are watching
hopefully reminded all of us that you know we can get caught up in the minutia
of the moment we could get caught up in that's right you know why is sky so yeah
it's not a great Sky it's not world upside down yeah and we're worried about
world all about that you are flying on a little planet through the vastness space
you know the the pale blue dot which I actually exactly um I think I'm going to be picking up again and I have the
audiobook version to listen to and and some of what I wanted to do with my
presentation I'm going to see if I can share um my screen over here let's see I have
desktop too um yep
so how's it look Scott all my uh older pictures showing up yeah so you see like
um a group of pictures that's right yep so there's a group of pictures here I
should be able to click on this so we were just talking about you know the the
piece that the night sky brings and and because I capture it in images
sometimes looking back over them will rebr some of those feelings of Peace
here we've got one of the folks here has recently passed away we passed away as
of around 2019 um he used to hold star parties at his house and um here we're at one of
the star parties um you know there there are some folks here that still do go go
out under the stars and some that um have reud it but this used to be the
scene anytime it was somewhat clear I you can see it was very cloudy at this
point but the Scopes are still pointed up um I bring out you know the Ursa
Major the plow one of the you know one of the first asterisms that I'll bet those of us in
the northern hemisphere tend to find in the night sky and and if you think about
the fact that these stars have been here way way longer than any of us and you
know they're here before and you know now that a you know one of the gentlemen
is now gone from us um but those stars are still there so when you look up at
the night sky you see the stars you see
you see the night sky exactly as it appears um it's fairly unchanging
compared to the events of the world can change um this is an image I haven't
shared as much of global star party but uh as you can see Scott you've probably
recognized the Golden Gate Bridge here in San Francisco and you recognize that I've got some dots around it I was able
to manage to catch a little bit of Starlight I do believe this this part
over here here ukas this was November of uh 2019 and I wanted to use this image
because this is a world that we once knew
2019 the way things were people's thoughts towards going into work uh
people's thoughts toward the world General now was interesting is I was with my wife and um she was at a
conference and a lot of people got sick at this conference remember this is November
2019 we all know what happened in March of 2020 the world goes upside down as we
deal with a uh illness that appeared to have you know no cure in sight a new you
know a novel Corona virus comes along this was all before that happened and um
so a major change in now this building is still here this bridge but the
sentiments the feelings um you know even the thoughts about
maske wearing all would change within a few months and um yet this night sky whether
you can see a lot of stars or not remains unchanging and that's that's that's
pretty much the theme of the entire set of pictures whether they be older
pictures you know evidence that there's life on the planet Earth because of this
picture um this we've seen Ro Fuki
taken you know with a lot of astrophotographers very
colorful at the core of Ruki are a couple of objects couple globular
clusters couple bright stars and then there's so much nebulosity I take this
picture with far less um you know far
less time than your favorite astrophotographer can do can produce a
very beautiful image but the interesting thing about this looking up at the sky
it's unchanging enough that if I have time
I can try and get some of that nebulosity for my myself the sky is in
our lifetimes it's pretty much unchanging no matter what goes on we
still have an opportunity if another Comet comes along we're going to have another opportunity to chase it even the
moon with this image here Scott was one of the one of the first times I ended up
with what I thought was a pretty clear image pretty nice image of I was yeah I
was very happy with this image and I'm I still don't remember exactly you know how it just sort of I I
call it a lucky image because I remember I was using a crop sensor camera with a
uh one of my long lenses and it it worked and I got a
pretty good you know that things are going to fail as we get closer here there's only so far you can go
but sometimes just looking up at the moon when there's nothing else can give
you peace because you're still looking at something that in our lifetimes has
been pretty much unchanging yeah and then you're seeing all these scenes the sun we're happy
that it's unchanging and sometimes it's worth noting you know there's a bank of fog the sun rose over that this was a
fairly dangerous image to take because the sun was beginning to blare you know The Horizon is where the lake is here
all this fog and it was beginning to blaze as soon as it came out of that fog
bank and I still took an unfiltered un furnace you know furnace
coming from the you know what looks like Rising Steam and and uh this reflection
so how powerful you know our son is it's amazing it's yeah as part of a as a
power ful image yeah yes how could this bring you peace well you know this this
orb that looks like uh you know it's part of Dante's watery Inferno is
still you know it it is a lifegiving
orb and here's a wider angle there's the cloud bank there's the Sun and at this
wider angle you know you're looking at a you're looking at a
sunrise and um you it's the night sky the daytime sky can
give you peace what about a cloudy Sky you know it gives me peace is to
see these pockets in the clouds where all the stars begin to appear yeah soon
as I see that no matter what's around me um the those Stars let me know
they're still there and they're still shining and as soon as the clouds go
away and you get to see them all and and it's a beautiful site so we're going to skip to when I went back and I did get
to see them all and here's here's one of those
images now of course there's some Aurora going on but there you there is a clear sky there's that same Tower
and they are all the stars and oh yeah you finally get to see
it there's both wonder and a sense of Peace because you're under those stars
and if you can recognize constellations you know they can tell you what what direction you're in where
you are and so we're going to skip through there may be Aurora that may happen but
but you know you know you you can try and predict whether you'll see it or not and if you see it take a beautiful
picture of it but all of the stars behind it um as I just looks like I just blew
that away so we will let's go back
okay there yeah you know all the all the
stars are still here those Stars remain whether there's Aurora um in front of them or not Milky
Way remains whether and this was from the same night you know the Milky Way which I of
course love taking images of so maybe maybe you get peace from seeing
the morning sky and yeah many ofation peaceful they do yes Reflections
upon the Water the reflection you have some shots with the the Stars reflected
in the water as well and it's just very contemplative you know and yeah for me
it's the entire the entire thing the sky the sunr That Was Before Sunrise now we
got sunrise at this location and then I immediately skipped to another Sunset
yeah um but yeah the the location those you know images location
sometime you know helps but the location may change or you may not be able to get
to a location like this or you
may as I'm gonna I'm probably going to skip down you know some of these other
locations um as you can see I do like taking pictures alongside what bodies of water
but when I'm out here there aren't many bodies of water so you take your pictures over you know
desert land and uh and yet the sky is unchanging it in a sense it changes
because you see more of it you're in a dark sky and you take an image you know suddenly with your you know with a
little time and you know a camera that can let in more of these uh you know
infrared and you know lower red heads on the spectrum that our
eyes can't pick up um you you you see more things because the sky is dark it's
the same Sky it's just a different location that allows it to be
um allows it to be seen so there bringing me peace there's solace in the
fact that no matter where I go back home Michigan or out here I'm looking at the
same Sky I'm looking at the same Moon even if it's on a different part a
different phase where lunar X and I do believe that's lunar V right
here become visible and [Music]
um and I could go through seeing the moon get eaten up
by our shadow
um you know it's it's it's great when you can go out and that's one thing Scott about media you know it'll it'll
mention when something great is going on
or there's there's something that you know Aurora is going
to happen or you know there's this great alignment of the planets
and um and people suddenly want to go outside and look or they suddenly want to you know come ask a
Spaceman what does it mean to those of us who love the night
sky just looking at a nice picture of the Boon like this is of could often be
enough and wondering you know these craters were formed I know this kernic is Robert Reeves I don't he's still on
he could tell us you know he studies the moon enough to be able to describe some
of the things that are easily visible here um you know and you get lost in that it
doesn't have to be a sensational um it doesn't have to be
Sensational to be worth looking at for
me you know and I put this here nautical Twilight's beginning to fade in the
Civil Dawn and there's a point at which the Milky Way is still visible and you
can see here I even got a one last meteor stars in the sky and you know the
glow is over here now is it this bright when you're standing there it isn't
quite this bright uh when you're looking because nautical twilight is not quite this bright but you're exposing for the
Milky Way because you can still just barely get it you know this is a unique situ this is a unique look to the sky
that happens almost every clear sky every
um you know every time um Dawn is coming or the opposite
when Sun's setting and the sky when the sky is dark enough the uh Milky Way
begins to appear that alone is enough I don't you
know special times like you know lunar
eclipses are great to look at um but times like this when Milky Way
is rising and or the moon is out and there's clouds you to me that it's worth
capturing maybe it feels mundane or the media didn't tell you that it was going
on sometimes the media gets its information at a certain time and pushes
it out tends to push urgency more for me because lots of things repeat you're
seeing repeated images of some of the same angles of the Milky Way
here um things on earth may not repeat and you know this is a you know on a
personal note here because this image which isn't you know it's not coming in very sharp it's still loading I'll see
if I can trick it into coming into view for us um at the time my priest was
alive and this was his Northern cabin Retreat and he'd often let me come and take images here that's a cool picture
um times change
and you know throughout all these sunrises sunsets we're just going to
we're going to skip right down to the sad parts of life
where [Music] um you know where we're appreciating
life here because somewhere around here there's okay it wasn't when I took those
photos but somewhere around here I took pictures of my priest
um priest's cabin he was no longer there he's no longer with
us there's a different this is similar angle to the one that I had different
constellation is up there it's oryan um you know this chair one of the
chairs he may have sat in but this was not long after he had passed on and
there you know this this is all no longer there and everything's being changed
around um but this was an image the sky
again un almost is unchanging the sea itself self could change more you know
this is Lake hon the sky itself still unchanging um as far as a sky just
different different Stars different constellations you to Mark a different
season it might be a different season in human living eclipses they do happen
again it's great when you can see it this is one of the things that you know a media Outlet will say go try and look
at it and here are the places and to me it's always well worth it it's well
worth it to try and get a nice beautiful shot of the eclipse if you can or just
see it for yourself see the difference in the colors
um being out here in the middle of nowhere gives me peace when I can look up at the night sky the Aurora may come
back and it may come back strong like like in this photo you know which you've seen it
before Scott and you'll see it again it's pretty amazing yeah it's amazing those the stars are still there fan of
bursting forth like that it's incredible yeah just looking at the
photos I mean like a photo like this this just you know you're kind of
immersed in all this you you're you know that we're looking at at Aurora okay you
can see stars in the background but this is a natural phenomena uh and
um you know it just uh it's a it it's
overwhelming okay uh and then just trying you know because you're trying to take it all in but it's beautiful at the
same time you know and so uh that right there just kind of brings a for a moment a Stillness and
that that Stillness you know is something that um
for maybe just a few seconds but you forget about whatever
problems that you might have had U absolutely during that time you know or or little concerns that are always kind
of there you know um yes and and we need we need a break from that stuff you know
because um you know if it's something that happened in the guess what there's nothing you can do
about it if it's something worrying about in the future it ain't happened yet okay right you know and therefore
really there's nothing you can do about it so but being confronted by Beauty
like that and immensity and something of awe it takes us into it puts us in the
zone and uh and that's that is something that that you need as much as POS
possible yeah and now this image the same Aurora is going but you can see
there's some blockage you know where I took the picture you've got brush you've
got clouds you know clouds show up Stars always show up it looks like lace it
looks like black lace against Aurora you know yeah like that you have the opportunity the Aurora changes the
entire thing you know the composition of this without the Aurora is probably not a shot I would normally take but when
you've got those colors streaming in the background it's
basically showing the image shows what it's like to just look
up um at the sky and take it all in
now this is of course spectacular like you said Scott and you know it's definitely worth seeing something like
this sure but for me you know then going out and seeing
meteor crater or seeing Omega Cent Tor for the first time yeah
and for me I try to find beauty
in a number of different things and if the camera picks it up and I don't see
it yeah then there's still sense we can make of it you know this one for
instance that's the probably the deepest and it's I doubt it'll come into okay it
came into Focus normally images with the Andromeda galaxy in them and
unfortunately m33 won't make an appearance in this image because it's too low to the Horizon and you have
image going on over here but uh that much of the Andromeda Galaxy in a wide
angle shot is something that you know you're
you're you're bringing in something you see you generally see this in the sky every night double cluster heart and
soul all of the sky glow will change as the sun goes to minimum there won't be
as much of that Sky glow but part of what I think brings you
peace if you love astronomy is there's always say something
amazing that everyone agrees is amazing you I click back here and I go back up
to those Aurora Pictures everyone's going to say well that's absolutely amazing but you know I would I would
like to submit that it isn't just about these
curtains of Aurora and nothing else the stars that have been that are shining
through this shimmering Aurora have been there
for a much longer time and are more likely as long as it's not cloudy you're
going to see those stars um long as you have sight you're going to see him when the Aurora comes
it's an absolute bonus to be able to see that but more Aurora typically is going
to come this was the I believe the May 10th Outburst there was there were a
couple more outbursts including one and not October you know
which you know had people concerned that uh maybe they weren't real another thing
that with this Milky Way photo some detail that I tried to get you've got
air glow or Sky glow that looks like it's in ripples that is actually a thing
that's called gravity waves where the sky glow actually forms instead of this
where the green is they actually form in these lines or these waves and that was
something new that I learned when I captured this image over Lake
hiron and captured a couple different versions of it but just being out there when I was
out there taking the image I was at peace um yeah just from just being out
there and and then when the other astrophotographer came over we ended up
having a good time just you know trying to create some images while we were out
there yeah and um very cool yeah this is it clicks a couple times here if I use
this mouse it'll work even when there's a distant storm what brings you peace is the fact that
you're not underneath that bolt and you're able to look at a distance and you're able to see this and enjoy it
and without um having to deal with the after effects of a lot of lightning and
rain on you so even just being out there at night taking you know close-up looks
at um you know at a part of the sky stargazing is a you know can be a real
it's a real pleasurable thing to do and if you image it once you image twice see
if you can get even more detail um sometimes you miss sometimes
you don't and so that'll take me to down
to just about the end of the presentation I'm moving towards what
ends up being I'm gonna I'm actually G to close
this because the last image I'm going to share happens to be another rendition of
my favorite image now out here with these Allosaurus tracks you've got
something 150 million years ago that made these tracks but you're looking in the distance at something that's a
roughly 13 billion years old when it was formed no sign of human presence
anywhere here and you know true it's true isolation
and the only thing that can be a little intimidating a little daunting you can
feel you're kind of lonely You're vulnerable you know what if something some animal comes walking up to you and
you know all of these thoughts can race through your head but when you look up
at the night sky and the night sky becomes your familiar point of reference
it when I was there and I looked up at the night sky while these images were being captured that's where I found the
most comfort and that's where I said well I belong out here you know I'm o
I'm okay I'm not you know it suddenly it wasn't just unfamiliar territory it the
night sky makes just about every place you go something familiar whether it
gives you Direction you know which direction South is because that's where
the uh center of the Galaxy in the northern hemisphere rolls over
um stars in the sky some of the brighter stars in the sky you can
identify um maybe even some star clusters that are bright enough it gives you a point
of reference and from that point of reference yeah you uh you can be at
peace and then you can allow yourself to imagine what it would have been like if
you were in this very spot 150 sad million years
ago um and I I wouldn't recommend you travel back that far without something
to defend yourself with um like armor and yeah a suit of armor and you know a
claymore sword you know if you more powerful than that yeah ifus was a looks
like a vicious Beast for sure yes now my footprints fit inside but it was they
didn't dwarf my foot um my foot went from end to end the uh rest of the
footprint was wide enough you know to supplant it so this particular
Allosaurus likely would have stood I would have stood face to face with that as it walked because as you know the
dinos hunch over and you know they're bipedal and they balance this salosa
surus and I may have been face to face um just so you know it may have stood or
if I'm more realistic about how large allosauruses were yeah I'd be looking up and it would be looking down at
me um you know this particular these Footprints veered to the right before
they disappear in here so you get a sense that the creature came this way or
based on the direction the toes look it came this way something caught its eye
and it began to turn you know in this ancient Creek bed
here so you know your imagination can wander when you're in a place like this
as it gets dark you know things can be unsettling the night sky can anchor you
and you know to answer the question what brings me peace is um just just knowing the night
sky is there it's it was there before I was born and will very likely look very
similar um when I am gone and in fact when you're at a scene like this where
you've got petrified footprint you can often look up and imagine what you're seeing may not
be dissimilar to what those dinosaurs saw and they looked up um it's been said
that they're they're not still here because they didn't have a space program to where they could deflect any uh
incoming asteroids coming their way but um well the question is whether or not
our space program would be able to do the same if faced with the same uh
incoming um we'd like to think yes but um you know we we've I know things
are being tested but the funding has to continue in order for us to be able to
keep going so so that's got I think we are going to be all done with uh Global
star party I never remember the numbers when I get on I think this is 163 right this is 163 that's right so Global Star
Party 163 of course the picture that same picture of the tracks I'm covering
them because um at moment I'm larger than the Allosaurus in your screen but
um yeah you know at at night this place was Pitch Black it was like being in a
forest um up in the uh in the thumb of Michigan where you can hardly see in
front of your face well this is wide open space you could hardly see in front of your face there and um but you look
up and you see the stars in the sky and you're comforted they they really really
do comfort me when I see them uh whether there's something incredible going on or it's just another clear night where I
get to see the Milky Way show up um I try and take all of it in you know and
take none of it for granted um seeing the night sky can you know it can it can
really do it can do some wonderful things for you it's stress relief one of
those um well it's been absolutely I mean it's been studied you know you're
blood pressure comes down your um you know there your dopamine is
released uh uh it's a healing thing you know so um yeah the best thing next to
sleep yeah it's it's it's a it's a nothing because uh um you
know whether you're someone that gets your peace and Solace from walking
through a forest or sailing or playing a sport or you know for us that are
astronomers being under a star Sky you know um all this stuff really does uh uh
help you um uh find that moment of peace that flow that you can experience the stuff
that you saw some in in some of the uh presentations that some of us
struggled a little bit in trying to explain what this feeling is like
because well it's kind of unexplainable you know it really goes beyond words and
so yeah the word I like to use is grounded because uh no matter where I've been and where I've taken my
images um to me it's the same night sky and you whether it's something going
on that um as I've you know I've mentioned for the media the media can be our best
asset because they a lot more people will go outside when something
spectacular is being said yeah this is going to happen you want to go see it well it brings people outside now if
they can't see it yeah yeah it's a start and I think we ought you know we ought to recognize that because we can take
over from there you know so what if it's cloudy uh you know we we probably
shouldn't be the ones to tell people well the caveat is they they didn't tell you this or they didn't think about that
or they didn't you know that that feeds into the same sort of reasoning you know you've got your flat
Earth Society that starts with that word they well they aren't telling you and
they are saying this and they are doing that if we adapt that we're no one can
distinguish between you know those of us who love the night sky and you know love
what's real out there in the night sky to you know a society that thrives on
conspiracy and you know making you feel if you have time for all that for consp
conspiracy yeah and it you know wanting to be right became a somehow became more
for wanting to be right right and and see we we take over what we do instead
is we take over and we say there's still some amazing things to see out here oh yeah and you point at something you give
you give a little bit of a fact about it or you showing them through a telescope
has been one of the best ways to do it we have um you we have a new member and
her and her husband she was in she was at the uh okite Tech star party and was in tears
looking at some of the things that we take for granted I I forget what they
put they may have put like the Crab Nebula or some they put something in the telescope yeah and she went absolutely
crazy um I've seen men do the same thing so it's not you know it's a human thing
um whatever your base emotion of Wonder and amazement
something you may have not not done since you were a child if you're an adult
um is you you resort to that when you see something like this and even if it's
for that five or 10 second span where something you're seeing in the telescope
or something that's been pointed out to you in space drops your facade and you suddenly
like wow this is amazing very put that Adrian yeah it's yeah it doesn't have to
be Michigan's went over its rival school who oh by the way
the Rival School Ohio State's in the playoffs this year Michigan isn't you know there's when it comes to things
of sports and politics and things here in the United States or versus other
countries and what's on people's minds because of the phone that we pick up
which you can't see here and that's actually appropriate um you know these
we can have our minds distracted by a number of things and the social media
tends to find the most controversial of things because that's what we're drawn
to negative news a lot and yeah exactly you we we tend to see it you have to
work to get your feed to avoid reading something that's going to trigger you um
the there's been talk about you know instead of trigger you know triggering good feelings astronomy is one of those
things that can do it the hard part is having to get out there and see it um
but we seem to be born with this innate ability reason I know we had a nice sunset or a sunrise recently and I was
subject to pictures people took on their smartphones because it looked the colors
clouds whether the sun was in it or not looked so beautiful the instant reaction
action was to pick up that smartphone and capture it as a picture yeah you
know people are doing that and maybe don't realize that no matter what's
going on in the world the beauty of space and time and the beauty of oh yeah you know our world still will draw you
in it goes beyond this mundane stuff you know so yeah and it's what and I'm sure
it's why you do this weekend and every other week out and it's I I really
believe it's kept our beloved de alive through all the heartache he's gone through this uh you know I was with him
when when his um when Wendy passed on and uh uh he
was his wife wanted him out observing okay she insisted that he went out
observing uh because yeah she understood she really I I'm sure she didn't want
him to have to uh suffer watching you know that moment and uh
um and David uh really did get through it uh by doing you know being the
Stargazer and um and and yeah and then later I mean of course when he said
tonight that he lost 50 pounds he did and everyone was was fearful that uh he
wasn't going to uh climb out of this you know and uh but every night that it was
clear David was out observing the sky and searching you know he loves the
search for comets it's it's not it's not like Oh goodie uh you know maybe I'll
get one tonight or something like that it's the it's that process of searching
that that he loves and um so uh yeah I mean
that's his situation with Wendy was probably the toughest moment in his life but I remember years ago when he had
cancer and he was diagnosed with cancer and um I believe that his
observing the sky uh you know helped him heal and as
he was going through chemo and all the rest of that stuff again it was just something that made him uh get better
you know and then he had stroke he had a stroke years after that you know and this goes back years ago and U he kept
observing he kept observing and I kept encouraging him to um do things in
astronomy and I was finally able to get him out to Mount Wilson Observatory and
there Under the Dome of the 100 inch uh David gave a talk and you would not have
known that he had had a major stroke before you know so yeah well you see him
on on the shows now and it's you would not know all these things but uh right he's faced hardships and stuff and we
all do um and so uh David likes the
method of uh stargazing because uh there's no addiction well there is an
addiction but there no it's one that after effect yeah there's no bad after
effect think bad after effect exactly yeah I think it gets a different word
it's not Obsession either it's uh you know it goes beyond hobby because a
hobby part of your life yeah this is a it's kind of a livelihood it's yeah the
people that are it's an integral part of that's right who D is and it's an
integral part part of who who we all are um yeah including our audience so yeah
you know we we're grateful yeah we're for that the fact that this has grown to
where you know it it started from that picture we showed to in San
Francisco I I don't recall if you had maybe you did have Global star parties in 2019 I don't recall um uh it has been
if about four years um that would be 2020 August and um I'll have to I'll
have to go back and look but it's been yeah 163 Global star parties ago yeah
163 Global star parties but I don't think you were doing them the when I
took that picture of the Golden Gate Bridge we weren't thinking about things
and there was a group of people you came on later you did yeah so yeah I know I
came on a lot later and it the that um yes that yeah let's bring him on on it
that's right and I you know I'm forever grateful to De David AER who's a regular
and um to have them see my work the goal wasn't to begin to have the ability now
to write for astronomy magazine and be able to you know pitch
ideas um articles you know trying to get my experience things out there it was just
love of the night sky and you know it it's opened up some
Avenues um that I may not have thought I'd have the opportunity to enjoy
otherwise and you know it's I'll forever be indebted to all of you um here at
Global star party and all I can do you on a yeah all I can do keep going on the
journey uh put my own spin on it and if if only one person out there in this
entire world who watches you know at 11:23 p.m.
Eastern um if one person is saying hey I
can do it and you know I I rarely bring up skin color or background or you know
anything that could end up in a political realm um because that sky
behind me is unchanging and doesn't you get out to that point and look back at
the planet it doesn't matter as much uh you know some of those political
things are things we we keep ourselves busy with here on Earth but um you know
out there in space you're allowed to just you're allowed to exist you're allowed to just be and I think uh I
think something like that you know we all need to slow down a bit um the night
sky yeah is free it helps you with that just like I didn't have to pay anything to see these dinosaur tracks and I you
don't have to pay anything to see the night sky and the more you the more you learn about it the more you appreciate
it yeah um and you know that's just sort of the thing I like to
continue talking about as I come on here even if if I haven't taken a new picture
in a few in a month or so um there's always something you know that there's
there to share about the ones that I have and uh hopefully I will get back out there and take a few new ones um
Orion is still there and actually the uh the Milky Way core does disappear at
Sunset but the rest of it above it is still rolling to the Southwest as Orion
Rises and late oh real early in the morning
you begin to see signs of the southern part of you know the Milky Way beginning
to rise again everything kind of goes in a circle I last one last thing um a
photographer caught the moon next to Venus and um said this is be you know
this is beautiful I was not sure what you know star or what planet this is does anybody know everyone chimed in
it's Venus it's Venus you know things like that and then I chimed in and I said okay so I gave them the little
astronomy minute and said the moon will be by different planets as it goes you
know goes through and grows in the month so if you missed a lot of photographers
that aren't as familiar with the night sky might think well I just missed an opportunity because the media says this
is a one in a 4,200 43 chance don't miss it it's like well no and I tell them ah
you if you miss the Moon being next to a planet this cycle next cycle it'll be
next to another planet so you know it's it's on the same line as all the
planets um you'll have plenty of chances to catch the moon next to a planet so
fear not if you missed the moon and Venus you know the moon and Saturn were together the other night I a chance to
see that visually and I got to see Venus on one side setting Jupiter on the other
side rising and the moon sitting next to Saturn I don't have a picture of it and
sometimes I think it's okay to just VI visualize it I've missed more images
than I've taken but they're all up here and it's just as enjoyable to sometimes
just sit and look up and that's usually how we uh in our you know presentations
and star parties and even as the esteemed Dr Tyson NE degrass Tyson
always says keep looking up and look up the rest of us say the same thing and uh
we uh we hope you all out there do the same that's great Coro and Lewis says
thanks Adrian a brother watching here from London UK and then he asking if
you're on Instagram I am it's uh ATB Sigma 713 I think I
have a uh professional um presence there it's like
Adrien Bradley photography but I like to point people to the personal page because that's where any old thing that
I come across I tend to post there um and I'm gonna type it in chat
Scott if you wanna I'll paste it into the and then you can paste it in sure
I've still got a lot of these images uh there and more to
um more to post the uh this is Instagram right that's Instagram yeah I had I do
have a Facebook presence where I'll throw images and I'll repost Facebook's probably the best way because I tend to
post there first before I go to post to um you know some of the other social
media sites but Instagram is one of them and it's there where I've met some folks
who read the astronomy magazine article and you know just a couple of people who
sought me out and I was able to help further their interest in all things
space and astronomy and it it gives me great joy to do that because it's uh like we've been talking about this whole
time um you know it's something that stays with you
no matter what things happen or change in life that sky that we were all under
is unchanging and you know can bring stability to belongs to everything to everything and all of us you know so yep
it uh it's unchanging at least at least in our lifetimes we know it's moving
fast we know these Stars aren't going to look quite the same and a couple million
years we know the sun's going to be a little brighter and hotter but not yet
that you know so yeah a the fact that we can figure that out so that's right and
give credit to the scientists who study it you know devoted their whole lives to
it yeah yes that's right that's right all right Scott well thanks Adrian I'm
gonna have to go to bed too I got an early morning as well but uh thanks to everyone the gentleman from uh London
thank you glad you're on and um what 4:29 a.m. in London so okay
well we've been on long enough yeah everyone uh get some rest and don't
forget when the sky clears because it will even in London even in the UK where
the skies are cloudier than they are here in Michigan um they will clear up and when
they do take the moment to look up and see you know see the night sky even if
you've seen it a hundred times before there are people who will grow up not knowing what's up there and you may be
the person to educate them and they will be grateful um and so will you you get a
deeper appreciation of the night sky and the power it has just by being just by
existing so that's enough for me Scott I am turning it over um have a great night
and I'll be looking forward to the next I guess GSP 164 164 this is the last one
of the year um so we'll be back in January so all right January
2025 yeah take care we'll keep it rolling thank you have a good
night
okay good night
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