Global Star Party 6

looks like wade got it on skype
yeah let me see if i can get him
at least he thank you for the credentials that i saw on skype messaging 443
yeah so we are live again everybody um and uh
we're going to start off the second part of our of our event here so
as someone is calling me that's trying to get on i think
how you doing that wade hold on for a second
simon you with me yes yeah did you get the second email we
switched to zoom yep
yeah okay all right all right take care
so everybody just kind of bear with us a little bit uh we are getting people logged in
and the the here we go
there we go uh
um
there we go okay all right and we got martelo souzon with
us and so the second part of our global star party the global star party
six we were going to uh start off with um our friends in
uh the southern hemisphere and uh also in the philippines and so
we have with us right now christopher go from the philippines uh dustin gibson is on with us from opt and gibson picks got
gary palmer uh from the united kingdom with us rodrigo zaleda from north optics
down in la serena chile steve malia is with us at ontario telescopes and
in canada jason gazelle the vast reaches is with us and we've got astro beard
richard grace with us as well of course jerry hubbell and david levy decided to hang out with us
for a while which is really cool and uh marcelo souza is uh attempting to
connect um with his connection down there so we'll get him in a minute marcelo is a cosmologist uh he runs an
annual event uh which unfortunately might have switched uh
to a purely virtual type of event of course we can't do this
any other way uh and have a global star party and bring the world to you um you know northern
southern hemisphere asia europe uh without us being online together
so um and uh so uh and hundred hour wait is
now joining us so that's great great so uh let's go ahead and get started uh
christopher i can tell you're you're all set to go here so i'm gonna give you the stage okay
well hi everybody um first of all i want to talk about something exciting that's going on with
jupiter right now behind me is a pic an image of jupiter you can see above there's this bright
huge storm which is in the third north uh temperate zone of jupiter
this is uh uh this is actually a common event in jupiter which happens usually once every
five to six years but this one just appeared early this year um
it was supposed to appear next year but this year you have this huge storm
uh that's uh this is actually going to go around the planet and this is this has been um studied as the fastest storm
ever observed in the solar system it moves at 700 kilometers per hour oh
no 700 miles per hour um you know uh in that direction it it's it'll go
probably around the planet in less than a month uh so uh this is this is an exciting uh
thing that's going on with jupiter right now and right now professional astronomers are encouraging people to image jupiter as
often as they can especially as this storm develops this storm started as a spot
last week it was discovered by a japanese amateur issa miyazaki who lives
in okinawa and as you can see this storm has uh basically
increased in size by tenfold and it will get bigger and bigger as the weeks go go by
wow jupiter is exciting right now and uh of course um soon uh there will be a
perry job which means uh juno is gonna approach jupiter again we're hoping that uh juno will be able
to catch the storm so we'll have a very close-up view of this storm
so things are exciting here in uh in in jupiter
yes yes yes so is this um i mean being that this is such an unusual event i
mean how would you rank this as far as the on the excitement level from like a one to ten
you know anything anything that's going on in jupiter is always exciting probably this is number two after that huge storm in saturn
oh yeah uh yeah so that huge dragon storm probably the largest storm ever
this might rival that storm right well christopher you i know that you're
you're a um a very you're a modest guy but your work speaks for itself uh you
take most amazing planetary images i've ever seen in my life uh when i when i just think that it
can't get any better uh you make it better and so
uh i you and i had a common friend uh david levy uh and david or excuse me um
don parker uh yes it's very immature as well david levy is
also a common friend too but um uh don parker told me a story when he was
first making some of the really high resolution uh planetary images with the ccd camera
and he submitted them to a japanese astronomy magazine and they uh
rejected his work because they said that that's not possible okay
him by spacecraft okay and he had to prove he had to prove that uh
he was actually making his own work and wasn't uh
you mentioned the word doping okay image with uh with the spacecraft image
um uh are how close are amateur astronomers that
are doing planetary imaging now to achieving what let's say like the hubble space telescope does now
uh well compared to the hubble space telescope we're still still so far away uh
in fact um we're you know hubble is really uh
much much better in fact i'm going to show you in in now so that's my image this is what hubble
looks like so we're still you know far far away
from hubble but uh we're best basically getting image images right now
uh probably i would say very close to what spacecrafts were doing in the 70s
wow so uh and basically um the quality we're having now is uh
uh compare you know even even the observatory images in the 60s 70s 80s
could not compare to what we're doing now uh unless you'd have uh the recent
observatory images using adaptive optics that's what that's when you can get better
so uh we're actually doing uh in fact right now the reason why i encourage people to image because
professional astronomers actually use our images uh in the research right now
the quality of the images of amateurs right now are so good that uh professionals are using it to measure
wind profiles uh of jupiter and saturn uh it's it's that good right now and
right now especially with the juno mission and the problem with the juno mission is it's so um
high resolution i mean it's like a satellite here on earth where it it takes a high resolution images of the of
the ground and juno is doing the same with jupiter but the thing is uh
the professionals don't have the wide view so we amateurs are providing that wide
view wide view to them so uh it's it's amazing time right now
for planetary imaging uh with you know we have new cameras coming in which are very sensitive to ir and this is helping
us improve the quality of our images wow
that's great that's great um you have some questions here there's people that are literally blown away by
the image that you were showing earlier um one of the questions is do you have a social media page where you post your
images i have a facebook page but i also have uh
a website astro.cristone.net where i post all my images with commentaries
great
people are asking me about orthoscopic eyepieces right now obviously these are people
that are very interested in observing planets and orthos are still great eye pieces
astrophotography question to you jupiter is a failed star mostly
no wrong jupiter is a planet it's a planet not a field star
okay there we go uh so the question i guess do we still
consider them uh the the activity as storms
yeah uh well uh you know first of all let me clarify that uh you know what is
a star a star is an object that has a core that does nuclear fusion
now jupiter has an iron core it has a huge iron core it's in fact
it's heavier than our planet meaning you know just imagine when
does a star have an iron core just before it goes supernova
so uh you know you have what what you have you know what we have jupiter is a
planet to be a star jupiter has to be 80 times it's like saying that you have 17
000 and you're a million you're almost a millionaire so
so it's nowhere close to a star so uh it's it's a misconception to call uh
jupiter a failed star just as a person who has about twenty thousand dollars you call him a failed millionaire well
well he could be a failed minion this but he's nowhere close to be a millionaire so so
i think that misconception came from the movie 2010 uh space odyssey
right oh yeah yeah yeah so uh let's uh and also uh the way that
uh was created is different from the way a stars are created
stars are created with accretions of gas jupiter was created the same way earth
was created with accumulation of materials that grew the but uh you know jupiter just grow so
big and it caught more gas than than than the earth and for composition
most stars are 99 hydrogen helium while by mass jupiter uh i think about
18 uh 12 13 of uh jupiter mass is uh
heavy elements so jupiter let's put it to rest jupiter is a planet
yeah the rest uh you're here you're here um
uh let's see so let's uh let's go ahead and jump to rodrigo zaleda down in chile um
uh rodrigo how how is your skies down there these days
that's good hi today is a clear sky
cloudy sky again um in in
three weeks ago is cloudy days and i put my telescope and
shook to the globular cluster and 47 toucan in the in the south
oh this i chat with you there
[Music] um
they live imagine can you see
it's starting oh there we go is a real time
for my telescope for the cmos camera the globular cluster
the color is maybe clean for the
light pollution filter but tonight i move and
the light protein filter gives a green color
yes yes and little process
um
what application are you using better with the the this cluster
and last week and last saturday the
i have uh two days of clear sky
and uh i take this picture from the alex nebula
you're still on the globular right now
do you see the alex nebula or or no you're still on the um you're still on
your uh globular star cluster okay
okay this that's the helix yes it is
that's a beautiful that's a beautiful one yeah
two hours of position for a cmos camera and
[Music] a dual narrowband filter for the light
pollution in the city
beautiful this is my presentation scott
yeah thank you very much that's great okay all right so um
being that uh we're still waiting for cesar brolo and marcelo
souza to come on um i'm going to uh we're going to switch
to um uh jason gonzale okay
and uh jason how's it going out there oh you put me on the spot okay
not so good with the imaging it's um it's been raining so so i
got to switch gears a little bit here um sorry my camera's shaking the um
you know i was thinking i could just show a little presentation i put together actually
the one that i went through with you scott a few months back
just about sharing astrophotography so let me share my screen here
and uh i think i can share this presentation directly okay can you see this
oh yes yes this was a little
talk and i think when i talked with you scott we went through this in like
an hour and a half so obviously i'm just gonna skip through it but it was just talking about a little bit about um
sharing the universe through astrophotography as i said and um you know most of the imaging i'm
doing here is from my suburban backyard and
it's been a long journey for me and i started out very simply but over time really
started to become impressed with what is possible from a suburban backyard just using
uh more basic equipment are you able to see my whole screen because i have a pop-out window with the meeting in the
corner yes it's in presentation mode yeah it looks
very nice oh i can minimize it okay so yeah this is uh this is just a quick shot of the
um it's not a quick shot i took about almost 30 hours of integration to get
this but um you know it's just a quick look at one of my um images i'm
proud of this is the cat's eye nebula and um you might recognize the inner core here
of the cat's eye nebula from the famous hubble image but surrounding that and something you don't get with the narrow
field of view like hubble is the beautiful intricate web of hydrogen and oxygen
gases that surround that nebula with a long exposure you're able to bring that stuff out and
then that's an object that's relatively close to us at i think a few thousand light years
but this galaxy here is actually a 350 million light year distant galaxy um and so
you know imaging these things from your backyard you're able to get
some unique views that maybe are possible through scientific telescopes so that's what makes
i think amateur imaging still relevant and uh interesting um
as i said it's a long journey you know and i get a lot of questions from people um through social media and things like
that about you know how how do you start you know or can i even do this and i you know i i try to answer as
simply as possible is yes it's possible for anybody to do this and the way to start is to to jump in as
simply as you can if you have um even just a simple camera to start with you can start uh snapping pictures
and i have up here you know my first galaxy photograph that i took with my dslr and a 50 millimeter
lens i just put the thing up on a fixed tripod and i was gonna see what i could get
you know and that's 22 seconds of exposures but i was jumping for joy when i saw
this you know that i actually captured a galaxy from my back patio
with just my my camera um so obviously you know you can jump into it um at
little to no cost but once you uh once you start start diving deeper this that's uh
you can easily swallow your wallet but um you know i tried to show what's possible just an upgrade you know
between these two pictures this is the same camera this is just mounted to a six inch newtonian telescope and an
equatorial tracking mount you put a hour and a half of integration in it and a
ton of processing processing processing experience and you can pull out some tremendous detail in that galaxy
yeah and this just shows a one step further with a more advanced setup you know you
zoom in a little bit more and you can see that this is just part of that galaxy um you can pick out
individual stars in another galaxy as it still amazes me that these
uh blue supergiant stars here are available to to image
from anybody's backyard really um you know i image under pretty substantial light pollution
but you can see uh you know the hydrogen alpha nebulae in in the galaxy and individual stars
yes um i don't i won't uh take up too much time but you know i i had in this
presentation just a little bit about myself and the setups i use you know it's grown over time but you know i just
i have a few telescopes and a few mounts and a few cameras and you know i've been able to put together
quite a catalog of of images with that equipment um
you know we talked a little bit about how to you know the right way to share this stuff online
because this is really outreach in the modern age right posting your images up online and
sharing and i think you know what brought me back to this presentation and got me thinking about it was what libby
said in her in her little talk in the first segment um
there's a lot of people that don't have access to space don't have a telescope don't have a camera but there's a genuine curiosity from a
lot of people in the general public uh they you know they want to know about this you throw an image like this up you know
on the right you throw an image up like that and they don't think that somebody's taken that shot from their
backyard they think that's a professional observatory or or what have you so um it's always important you know when i
share this stuff i try to throw a little bit of science behind it uh you know explain
how i came to take this image and uh you know what they're actually looking at because
this seems like just a nebula but you know if you actually
dig into the details of this image there's actually a black hole sitting right here this is the closest black
hole to us uh cygnus x1 it's a stellar mass black hole and the tell or the giveaway is this
blue arc here is actually caused by the relativistic jet coming out of the pole of this black
hole and interacting with the the gases surrounding it
so yeah um you know i've got more in this presentation just other images we can flip through them if you guys want or we
can just leave it at that but you know the outreach part of it i just
you know i always try to stress to people that you know it's important to interact with your audience especially
if you've grown an audience and um you know engage them and people are excited about it and i think
it's it's worth sharing and it's worth starting that dialogue and bringing it to people that don't have access to it
that's great that's great i'm you know seeing amazing astrophotography it just
it makes you look longer your dwell times longer and that's important because uh
um you know the more that you you study
you know i mean like these towers where you see the these stars uh uh coming off
like seeds from the the dark nebula and uh yeah just just all the complexity uh
there is is just amazing and um it just makes you want to keep on you
know exploring so yeah and you know part of the reason i put this presentation together was to demonstrate the variety
of things that that you can do and look at with backyard astrophotography and
i'll just click through the slides one one after another here just to show them but um yeah please you know the beauty of of
things surrounding us um never ceases to amaze me um you know galaxies 50 million
light years away a nebula within our own galaxy um here we see the plane of the milky
way as a horizon line in the approaching andromeda galaxy off in the distance
um the constellation cassiopeia in the bottom planets i mean i can't
i'm following christopher go here but but um this is um you know mars opposition from 2018 we have another one
coming up in just about a month um so it's a great time to image mars
um so many planets up right now you can take a a tour with your telescope and see
almost all the large planets uh in one night and uh of course venus um
the atmosphere of venus image yeah now that this image really impresses me um
you don't often see um you know detail on venus
you know visually or in photographs you just you know it's pretty much so bright that things get blown out and
uh you know you do have the atmosphere there um i don't know if we're seeing any surface
detail or not but it certainly looks like it you know like you're able to the atmosphere is too dense but you do see
some variation in the cloud deck shooting through infrared and uv filters so that's what i did in this
image and of course you know i use the explorer scientific 152
extensively for solar so there's some you know high detail
sunspots and look in calcium light
prominences and here's actually a video time lapse video of some prominence movement
oh wow
excellent and uh the moon and full colors and the you know the colors just relate
to the chemical composition of the surface so you can saturate that out and get a good look at the surface unique look
um comets you know another thing that's in motion up there that that are accessible
um through backyard telescopes we just had a great one this was the one that was supposed to be the great comment of the year
uh atlas are these asteroids or what is this this
is a this is common atlas above the above the comet you can see yeah those are just satellites yeah
lights garlic starlink
speaking of satellites international space station transit yeah cool thing to shoot very cool
and of course milky way and nightscape stuff is always a fun thing too for for someone just getting started
yeah and special events uh eclipses and
solar eclipses beautiful yeah
so anyway yeah that's it so um just a quick tour of my photography
yep and people can find you on instagram looks like you're very active in social
media um where where do you post most of your work uh most of most of the stuff is on
instagram that's kind of where i tell people look because i i stay current on there so my my uh handles at the vast reaches
it's right there yep great great well uh marcelo souza was able to get
back uh with us and so we are going to go down to brazil
marcelo souza is a cosmologist he's a physicist
he has been he's run a regular television program on astronomy
and he hosts a large-scale annual
astronomy and space exploration events if you're into uh astronomy or space
exploration in brazil or anywhere in south america you definitely know who marcelo is marcelo i'm going to put the spotlight
on you how are you i'm fine that's great thank you very much for the invitation
yes great pleasure to be here greetings from brazil [Laughter]
well you have the stage okay can i i share a presentation here
it's quite yes you can how i don't know how to do this no i'm
not finding here here if your screen if you put the mouse over your screen you will see a green button and it says
share screen unfortunately i'm not fine
oh yes i found okay okay okay thank you
all right uh i wrote a script for my presentation because as a limited time i am trying to
to be in time i studied cosmic strings is what
was my research in cosmology that is a topological defect which may have from during the asymmetry breaking
phase transition in the early universe but i'm not going to talk about this i i
i in this presentation uh i will tell an extremely brief history of the
evolution of humanity's view of the universe i will start with an expert accept from
the poetry is up i need only to
make a change here [Music]
okay i need to move
okay this is a poor is a portuguese poet fernando person
and in like set of a famous poetry he says that universe is
not my idea my idea of the universe is that it is my idea
that is our our way that we imagine the universe
we build models to understand the nature
and the we know that astronomy is the others of the science the ancient peoples only
need to look at the sky to marvel at the beauty of the nature
in a place with literal artificial lighting is it is possible to have an idea for
the sky observer in antiquity one of the wonders is the observation of our galaxy
the milky way because i'm going to talk about the nuclei and they realize that there are five
bright points that moved between constellations the five planets we were visible to make
its eye the conception of the universe of humanity over a longer period consists
basically of our geocentric model we consider the earth in the center
with the sun the moon and the planets around and the with a border composed by a
layer of stars i have many other people that create different views for the normal universe
in different periods of our history during almost 1 500 years the ptolemaic model
why is the bathroom water produced by humanity i'll not discuss the importance
an important part of the shift with the change from the geocentric model to the other scientific
these are some fantastic maze and this is from hobbit feathers off of
the milky way now i have the opportunity to see in the desert in chile now that's a
beautiful place to look to the sky another beautiful reef is from huslan
mesliakov our this both of me is wearing airports
here is the division of the first vision that we had of the universe
with the layers of stars and during almost one or or as i said
five 1500 years the ptolemaic model as your central model was the bastion
model produced by monets
was brilliant defended by galileo galilei um [Music]
1 1609 and
we celebrate the international year of astronomy in 2009
because of the contributions of galileo and the unemployed it was an important
model moment for astronomy yeah comprehending his contribution he
value and the use of telescope and the what's his first presentation you
highlight the fact that he observed that the milk way as a huge made
of a large number of stars isaac newton was born in the year of an earlier's death
the newton's law of an inversal irritation changes the way we understand the universe
thomas writes an english astronomer royalty
the book an original theory of new or new parties of the universe
in this public publication he explained the appearance of the mercury as an opto
effect due to our immersion in that locale
locally what locally approximates to a flat layer of stars
is the first then and here his idea was considered by
emmanuel kant and by william herschel i had gone from a model where the earth
was the center of the now universe to a model where the
sun was the center of the normal universe now the sun is in a region with other
stars it is an important philosophical change
another of his ideas which is also often attributed to kent that is the idea of
your islands universe uh wise in his book and he wrote like the
main cloud spots that's perceivable by us as far away without our style regions
you know is the visibly luminous space no one star or particular constitution
what can possibly be distinguished those in our like likelihood may be
standard creation whether in apple the number one to remote for even our
telescope to reach what is the idea this is the modern
day of the iceland universe from
and in this in this period nobody believes that see we have different
regions in space like the mucoid and they call the andromeda is a nebula
but see everything changed this is a model produced by william
herschel after the our milkweed and the american astronomer inhibitor revit
discovered in 1912 the relation between the intrinsic brightness and the period of the surface
variables a kind of variable stars and as a result of her work and knowing
the period of the variation of the brightness of the safety variable is possible to know the
distance of this task this is very important because this information that allows
herbal to calculate the distance between
john droma de andromeda galax from us after he had left edwin herbert
determined the in 1923
using a safety star here is the maze of the surface star here
and using the the model of levite
he proved that this nebula were much too much
distance from to be part of the milky way return to the idea of thomas right in
the manual currents and the milky way as a galaxy and we have other garlics
in the universe this is another important philosophical change
and then we had one from a model where the earth was the center of the known universal motivated the sun was the
center of the universe then now to a model where the sun was in a
region with other stars now the sun is a star in a region where
there are there is a concentration of star and there are other regions with concentration of stars
spectroscopy is a very important tool for a sun each chemical element has
characteristics spectrum lines analyze the spectrum we know the chemical composition and the velocity
here are two elements hydrogen and oxygen
and the vesta some stars the absorption
lines of stars and vessels leaf performed the first measurement of the
radial velocities for galax and discovered that the distance galax i had shift
combining his own measurements of galaxy distance with vastly
theory the results obtained by versus leaf
was very important to herb trading herbal and the other herb combined his our
measurements of distant scallops with vested leafy measurements of the redshifts associated
with the galax he herbal and mutant homosexual
discovered a proportionality of the objects distance with their head
shifts and herbal and mutant humans that he was a fantastic person i don't
know if if he everybody knows his history but he worked with who with herb
and the the this result provides
the base that are that we consider now
university in expansion in spanish expansion of universe
begin with the contribution of a herbal
but not all the garlics are moving away from us we have a garlic that approaching the
milkway as in the case of the andromeda andromeda galax what happens
that in the local group the gravitational force making the galaxy approach
now we are considering the high spending universe but in the local groups of
galaxy the most important are the gravitational forces between the galaxy
then we are talking about the galax that are very dist they're a long distance from
us batodic galax that are not in our local groups
are moving away from us then he enjoyed enjoying a move here in
the media of the movie of the galaxy the local group dysfunctional
response of the universe and george gamora based on the dot initially presented by herb put forward the
reports that the universe would have had a moment the past with extremely high
values for its density and energy from that moment universe begin to
expand according to the big bang model the universe expanded happily
fast from a highly compressed primordial state which resulted in a significant decrease
in density and temperature soon the dominance of matter of antimatter
may have been established nobody knows how this happens because one of the
problems that you have in the model is that you don't have so many antimatter and don't have so many antimatters then
we have a method in universe nowadays this is one of the problems that you have in the mood that we don't have an
explanation for this during this stage many types of elementary particles may
have been present after a few seconds universal enough 12 to allow the
formation of a structure of small mucus
but in the theory predicts that the air we can in the pigment model we have
only light particles like a hydrogen aluminum
leaching very produced a derivative now in the universe agreed
with the observation but to have many problems with the model
is the best model produced by the germanics we have a moment in the beginning that you have a high
energy levels and the universe begin
to expand any we have a moment that to have the domination of
radiation after that likely we have the phase transitions that occur when you
have to water transforming in ice then you can imagine as a simple
model about what's happening with universe when they cool it
and during the sponsor then you begin to have transitions face
transition then you have the appeal the first matters
then we don't know how these structures begin to
produce large structures in the universe why in a place we have a and kind of an
isotropy in the other place you don't have this kind of energy but this is
uh quickly view whatever to have in the universe in the dispensary of the universe now uh the
observed results indicates that sid universe is moving is
spending faster than who is predicted and we
have considered that some kind of energy that is doing this that they call dark
energy then our viewing composition of universe nowadays we have
only five percent of the universe are the matter
as we know 25 percent the darker matter that
is we have to consider to explain what happens with the rotation of the galax
and seventh percent approximately will be the dark energy
this is our decomposition of universe this is a brief
history i i hope i'm when i was trying to
to make a brief history i missed
some important information but i tried thank you very much it's great
thank you thank you very much thank you uh at this time uh we're going to go
back to um we're going to go back to christopher go
you mentioned that you have some exciting news i have some exciting news right now because i just received a message from
my friend eric susabek he lives in the caribbean and uh what's
happened right now there's a new outbreak if you look at behind me there's this is an image from the uh
you know eric was just processing software and you have that bright spot this is a new outbreak on the ntb this
is just a fresh discovery so uh we're very excited this is the second outbreak in that region
so um [Music] we're uh hopefully i can image this region
tonight but uh so far eric has made this discovery today which is very exciting
for us this storm is actually a like a huge giant thunderstorm in
jupiter you can see that this storm is very bright in methane band which which means that it is a very high altitude storm
which really punched through up to the troposphere if you notice this is uh these storms
are even higher than the great red spot so uh the these are very vigorous uh
thunderstorms that that occur in in jupiter so uh yeah it's just exciting
that you get these discoveries from ordinary imagers that come out almost uh
you know uh two weeks ago there was one and there's this one uh you can see amateur astronomers contributing to real
science here that's right that's right that's amazing yeah the pro-am um uh
collaborations are so the most exciting things that amateur astronomers could do and uh it's great to see this happen
right in front of our eyes you know this i was surprised because uh you know
after i talk i think about a minute after i see this message that this thing has happened and uh
i was looking at it i imaged this region a few a few days ago and there was nothing there
so uh this is just an instant where you have a discovery happening live
and uh i think uh professional astronomers are gonna go over this one um hopefully we're gonna have some
hubble time to image this uh this storm yes that's awesome thank you very much
for sharing that thank you you're welcome all right so um
dustin gibson uh it's time to uh to meet back up with my good friend
uh the captain of uh of opt and uh sharing his uh universe on gibson pics
so how's your how's your week gone so far it's been crazy man i've been quiet
here because i think i may have broken my audio is it skipping at all no it's it's good it's all okay so i had to take
i had to take it off the other mic and go back to this one because you know growing up in alabama we kind of figured
out you know if you can't fix it with a hammer it's not worth fixing but my computer doesn't respond as well as most things
do so uh i seem to have really messed up my audio for things but hey man can't win
them all um feeling pretty good about that sounds sounds as good as it ever did so
okay well good good but yeah man it's been uh it's been super busy um things are
things for the entire astronomy community it feels like you know we we get this really unique perspective where we get to see kind of globally
what's happening in the amateur and professional spaces and i think both right now there's more
momentum than i've ever seen ever ever in astronomy um with on both sides you
know the professionals uh it's like discovery after discovery and then
because of elon musk you know forcing this rapid evolution of the privatization of space
now all of these communities like the ssa space situational awareness communities
have all of this new government funding not just in the united states but all over the world because space junk now is
more important than it's ever been and you know they have to know where are these problems that are circling the
earth at 18 000 miles an hour that could take down a rocket or take down a very expensive satellite it hasn't already
happened frankly i mean you know amazing yeah there's just all this stuff flying
through you know they must be just tracking it to an unbelievable degree and going okay there's your window go
for it so well what's scary is that you know uh so when we do a lot of work with the ssa
companies and so they'll they'll call and the plan is always you know we're going to build a lot 100 observatories
around the world and we're going to track every single piece of things we can find but in the conversations we
always talk about what's what's your resolution what's the target what are we trying to find exactly you know because
they can find if a solar panel comes unhinged you know you can find that pretty easily but the problem is even
tiny things in space i mean something you know half the size of a penny
in space moving at that speed will just absolutely devastate something and so they're having to get bigger and bigger
scopes with better and better more sensitive cameras and so these uh these systems are becoming extremely elaborate
but they're getting very good at it i mean they're finding things that are smaller than bolt you know at this point so they're starting to track it all down
but the problem is there's there's new stuff every day yeah
hermandus87 said flecks of paint even they're tracking oh you have to yeah you
have to i mean anything think about think about the james webb right yeah so
you know it's going out far enough where it should be pretty safe but think about on its way there after all of this and
everybody giving nasa such a hard time for this insane delay and the money that
goes into it and then it's on the way there and as you mentioned like you know a piece of paint a flake of paint
hitting that thing at the you know at that velocity it's just like wow you know
yeah it's terrifying but uh that's you know on the pro side we're seeing a lot of that and um you know
elon is just i mean there's that guy's unstoppable yeah and so he's gonna just keep going and going and he's making it
possible for everyone else to even you know we're we're invested in a satellite company space fab one of our
ex-employees built a satellite company and even that that was never possible before
elon's projects before spacex because now it's affordable you know relatively
affordable to get things in space to companies that before you know there was no startup that was
going to put something into space right but now it's happening all the time and so um it's really really exciting on the
pro side of things i think it's just going to get better and better but this is how you see exponential growth
of interest and industry because you know you get more people interested by access and then when those
more people get interested innovation follows right and so it's uh it's fascinating
watching it happen in the same exact thing is happening on the consumer side on the amateur side
and you know social media and all of these vehicles that have now kind of coalesced into this machine this you
know this this uh ability for people like jason and christopher and on and on
i mean we see so many of them here that can reach out and you know
touch thousands of people with a single image i mean jason you post something you're gonna 20 000 people are going to see
your image that day you know and so you can communicate a space message better than ever right now and all of
this stuff is forming these positive feedback loops of excitement and productivity in an industry that we all
share a love for i think it's the most exciting time ever i think the uh for me
i think it's a rebirth or uh it's like we're repeating history where you know 60 years ago it was the
government now it's commercial and and consumer and commercial space uh activity that's that's it's a
new rebirth to like what i we experienced scott and i experienced in others in the 1960s and 70s it's the same kind
of thing yep that's right you know right we are we're in the age of astronomy we really
are you know we're all lucky lucky to be alive to see it and to experience it
because every day every day there's some amazing discovery some breakthroughs some
uh amazing thing is either uh uncovered discovered uh imaged uh
you know reassessed you know uh to be a real working uh professional
scientist today and to keep up with the bleeding edge of what's going on uh
i can only imagine that you're throwing out tons of old ideas that were benchmarks um you know that are having
to be reworked and as cosmologists marcelo uh you know
just to every with every new discovery uh it's got to add to
um you know that model of what what is our reality what is how how do we get here where are
we going you know what what is ultimately going to happen with the universe will it
evolve again and again are there multiverses are there you know so it's uh
it's just an amazing time to be alive it really is and uh uh astronomy being the gateway science
that it is any of you out there watching this show right now no matter if you're just a casual star gazer or you're deep
into amateur astronomy or you do pro-am uh projects or if you're a professional
you know it's uh it's just uh the best time ever to be engaged so
yeah we talk about that all the time on the space junk podcast um actually this is the first time i've seen chris go
since the the space junk podcast we recorded in the studio they're so good to see you chris um you know he's one of
the living legends in the world for planetary photography every time i see his stuff i'm like i'm
never shooting planetary because he's already just like he's already beat that
that's done because christopher go attacked it you know it's already so good um
but we talk about it all the time how this line has been blurred between like
you just use the word professional right and so that's that's astronomer with a capital a
but that line has been blurred so much now i mean i'm wearing a shirt right now
from uh some of our team asteroid hunters um which if you guys aren't following by the way
i would correct that mistake immediately because they are absolutely incredible what they're doing
but these this is a father and son duo that is now actually in their backyard
doing real science and contributing in meaningful ways and you know they're
also educating on science and this is you know when you're doing it with like i just described that vehicle now you're
taking information that for you know one time was so esoteric it
was just for a handful of people that had an interest you know deep enough to go spend their lives researching but now
you can have a father-son combo in their backyard taking pictures of asteroids and
explaining the process and you know getting this stuff scientifically validated and
communicate communicating it to the masses in a way that's actually you know understandable and you know i don't want
to say that it's not interesting stuff because it is but i think that the way it was communicated for so long in the
academic space made it very hard for people attached to because it felt it felt detached from a day-to-day reality
it's like well how does that affect me right but that's what it allows you to do when it's somebody that's just a father-son combo communicating this
stuff and that's why i'm just saying like everything right now is primed for that
reality to set in to the general public that this is
the only time that we've ever been able to say we can explore
our own universe we are the only living humans that you know that could ever say
that we can do it in a way that's like i can go in my backyard and see right now in higher resolution
than anybody that came before me ever did because of the tools available to us and
the technology available to us and i can do it on budgets that are laughable to scientists you know that
have had you know looked 10 years back scott you remember what ccds were costing you wanted to get something full frame yeah they were a fortune oh it's
so much man it's like all right i'll get one but i got to sell my house first right now it's like you get full frame cameras
for a couple grand that i remember going to palomar and seeing uh the
the four shooter that uh jerry nugebauer had designed and it was four ccds that
were stitched together so they could have a decent sized chip for the two and this was millions of dollars for
this you know today it's called getting off to the side you know in in the
in a a pile of other instruments but uh um
dustin brings up a good point with uh and i we talk about it a lot with personal discovery
and that's what this journey is about it's not just uh a national discovery and when we learn new things and brand
new stuff but when when you go out and observe the the universe
you make the same observations that scientists have made or that other uh
people that do imaging great imaging uh like jason and you personally discover oh look at
that look at that star there that's something new i haven't seen that before you know so you personally discover
everything in the universe just like everybody else that observes that's right and i always refer to people as a
are in the community as astronomers i don't i try to not say professional or actually i try not to
say amateur so much anymore so it's just astronomer we're all astronomers yeah and that's that's
why we love you jerry because it's that's right man that is
right it's like why do we need to if it's not for ego why else would we need to have people
distinguish themselves as amateur in what other space do we do that if somebody just has an interest and
they're actually doing it right a painter is only a painter while they have a paintbrush in hand and other than
that it's like i feel i feel like there's no there's nobody there is going to be like oh oh so you
you didn't how much time have you spent you're an amateur you're an amateur painter i need you to say that when you
speak to me like why would we do that if you have an interest in astronomy and this is something you're spending your
time doing you are you know in especially now that it's possible to contribute to scientific
data that designation is not only inappropriate it does a disservice to
the entire community well you know sometimes amateur has a uh
a negative comment connotation like you're not very good at it or something you know
um well yeah and that's exactly what i mean yeah sure yeah it's not to take away from anyone
else but it is to lift the entire community up you know i i respect you know uh
the academic world i've spent 11 years in college myself right it's just i do also know
that uh there are ways to learn things other than sitting in a
university and what i always found is university measured my discipline more than it did my intellect
that was the hard part for me was just showing up and you know being present um
but i think that it's just right now the entire world for astronomy is open to anybody to
contribute and participate in at whatever level they choose to from what we would have called amateur all the way
up to the most professional space and i absolutely love that because it should be inclusive and it is now
and i think all of these vehicles are moving in that same direction yes
yeah excellent excellent i love the way you put things dustin you are
you're very eloquent and uh you were definitely on the mark you know so
and that's what alabama is known for right that's right
uh that's great that's great um uh you know i'm looking at the at the
wall here and we've got um gary palmer here kind of sinking back in his chair a
little bit how are you feeling there gary it's all good here scott
yeah yeah it's uh nice and relaxed and chilled out
skies are a bit cloudy high clouds coming in so uh yeah so good enjoying
the show enjoying the guests on there tonight yeah we're glad that you're hanging out with us so
uh anything that you want to share with us tonight at all or are you just saying yeah i think um
really i wanted to keep things quite simple what i wanted to do was look at what we could get on a budget
okay because quite a lot of us are experienced and if we um all track down
our equipment on the table here um there would be quite a lot of money spent
and i thought um let's have a look at what we can do on a little bit of a budget so i've just put together some
issues from um this week yeah um really what we've been playing around with and i have to
say the weather has been really really poor here um seeing conditions being quite
bad um so we've been playing around with the um
ixos 100 and the exos 200 mount this week just on some solar and some
planetary stuff so if i share the screen up i just put a
couple of images in some folders um this
i was actually quite impressed with um i'm hoping you can see that there
we can see it this is off of a 102 mil telescope
rgb um [Music] and it was just a thousand frames
captured for each filter and then put together now considering how bad our weather is here um and the aperture of
the telescope really we're taking images like this for around
um if you include the amount somewhere around the seven or eight hundred pound mark yeah with the camera um
and this is sort of some of the um setups we've had running this way this was a little bit out of the
ordinary there was a little bit um something we were just trying out and testing weights
uh so we did put the 10 inch um casa grain onto the exos 2. that's the neuron
yeah it's okay and it imaged um one of the images here let me go back to that
one there that was taken on it that's the two panel mosaic that was put together earlier this
evening and it's not even finished in photoshop or anything it's just literally the mosaic to put together
um we've had soda running this week so the little 100 has been doing solo with the
pork that's been working quite well so that produced
this image yeah earlier today same setup everything on it so uh 18 millimeter
standard quark on there running on the iso uh ixos 100 so
again budget mount um really quite a small telescope small aperture on everything
but we're getting quite close to the sun um which was quite nice uh the
mars shot was taken on the 102 as i said that was on uh last night
um again it's all both been basic equipment this week um and we've had
some fairly reasonable stuff out of it so again the mosaic was just literally a
quick throw together just put it into microsoft ice um stitched it together
cropped it up yeah and then exported it out and then sent it straight into um
[Music] still image so we've not even done any uh any real processing on that at all
um i'm really impressed with that mars shot though that's really
nice for the aperture you know if you actually saw what what i was imaging in
on that um i did try uh saturn on the
uh category and i was actually getting two satins the the atmosphere was that
unstable and i had two saturn's bouncing around in the image so it was just take the
scope down and put a smaller telescope up so for a nice simple
reasonable image tonight's moon i did that a little bit
earlier that was using the um
that was using the apm 107 and we used the
explore scientific 7mp camera on that and
that worked out quite well another one there a game from last night
so we've been getting a few bits here and there um let me just see what that open in there
so we could just do a quick basic process on this drop it into here split the channels
again this is just to get rid of the green and then we're just going to do a quick
linear fit to balance the colors out so just go to
the green channel select that drop it on the blue
and then drop it on the red channel
and then we're just combining back up so channel combination
image processing demonstration if someone is as good as it added as you
are at warp speed that speed that's right
there you go so now we need to do is bring the color back out in it a little bit so
um just go to uh curves transformation
select the image put a live view up and then go to saturation just bring a little bit of saturation
into a little bit of color back out
now just a little bit reduced on that
and this isn't even really sharpened or anything it's just uh as is at the moment so
um that would be our final image and we can brighten it up and contrast it a little bit and go from there
so it's nice and straightforward but that's really all i've been working on this week it's all been
that sort of stuff i've not um not managed to process the image from friday's star party yet
hopefully we'll get that done over the next few days right um but they look pretty reasonable
from that right so that's it from this side so we're we are planning on another uh
european edition of the global star party um uh gary's already talking about going
from like norway down to australia or something like that so
yeah i think that'd be good fun i think if we actually start um imaging somewhere
um over in the other side of europe and then we can continue it through the uk and people
can drop off once they're finished and it can run through the us and start
running down and see how far we can go with it in a short amount of time right yeah
probably a cloud outlet in both hemispheres all over and but we're writing then
the ideas there to have a bit of fun yeah and just see who we can get involved in it that's true that's true
but the next european one i think we're looking at uh the 11th
yep and we've got quite a few people um grants on about
bringing the uh observatory in spain on uh
primevera is not about coming on and discussing some of the stuff she's doing at the moment um australia right now
that's right yeah um she i think she's back in california now so she
wasn't back now but she's doing some work on um on the remote observatories and some
other bits so she's looking to come on and we're talking with a few more people at the moment beautiful that's great
okay so let's go back down to argentina uh where cesar brolo is uh
is uh waiting for us caesar we had a little bit of trouble getting back on
but uh yes we're very happy so
so what what is uh what can you share today well we can talk about a little of optics
how normally we talk with the people about to to ask about
the the capacity of the telescopes at the fragility that hold the telescope
can modulate the waveforms that coming from very very far away away
place in the space sure and we can i can show you first of all
a small video of a little experiment that i'm making again
let me check
first of all i show you
a short video where i am polishing uh uh
a interest mirror and
this is this is why optics is are for astronomy also
difficult to obtain the people think sometimes that is the same
is the same if okay
if is the same type of optics the industry of of astronomy
this is my my driver machine actually it's a driver machine that i have from
my 16 years old my father oh wow
yes this is the the part of my history in optics
well i i turned the cell phone was my my and you got today when you
were 16 years old is that right really yes i worked the entire summer to
buy the parts yeah my father said okay you like i can i can make
my father actually he have 84 83 years old and he's a specialist in
machines he is from the mechanical industry
and this this machine is is a it's a
rubber machine that have two two different eccentrics to polish
the polish glasses mirror glasses and actually
i i make the the last of of uh
the grinding and i go into polish and
next next as you say next project is put uh
28 10 yes a 12 inches mirror
and something that normally um i need to talk with the people uh
about how industry in astronomy optics is
is that that is not for um
for only let me check
to the industry of astronomy uh optics like optics for glasses
um where where do you have maybe um
the the high error that do you can have in in a glasses
and glasses you can have an excellent uh authentic glasses with a with an
error of maybe uh
10 or 100 part of a millimeter sorry that i i don't talk in inches
you might have more more millimeters the metric system fine but but
of course in comparing with
medium quality uh astronomy optics uh is
more that are more than
a part of one one [Music]
thousand part of our millimeters is so different the the
that is sometimes it's difficult to uh to us uh show
how how we can uh explain to the people
uh why you can you can't don't use a single
a single uh system of of uh
[Music] optimic lens that have for example one
meter or half meter of focal distance and the people say okay i
can i can make a telescope with this okay you can try
and when they put in a tube an optimic uh
good quality of thalmic lenses um it may be half better that is 2.2
reactors similar that you you can use for
reading glasses and they expect that they can get the
same quality image that in a regular telescope and
when they discover that it's unable to have an image
from from a regular lens from the industry often industry
they start to they start to understand that
the precision that do you need for for astronomy optics is
really high it's really a lot of uh time more precision precis precise
sorry that and regular uh regular uh of the glass but in the
middle some people say okay i have a lake or i have i don't know
stay second and sometimes i explain that okay the
lenses are excellent but sometimes are not so precise like this surface that
are made for to be an of our telescopes
i see i see so how long have you been polishing optics for telescopes marcelo
or not martial caesar sorry i'm sorry okay but
um i i start to polish to make mirrors for me not for sale or
for for my experiments from the 16 years old and if you told me
if you asked me sorry how many times have polishing uh for example
eight inches yeah normally do you need for a
cerium oxido certain absolute that is the typical with that with uh
maybe the best is 20 hours
oh wow but you have yes i for me ever ever was different at
the time because sometimes uh uh is between 15 to 20 uh 25 because
you know a changing sun condition of temperature or humid
you have a different different effect of of the how the polishing
uh is is or when the polish is ready because it's
something that you can't you can get the totality at the totally
uh time perfectly this is the problem why the people say okay
you don't have more telescope that is the problem is now and for me it's not a surprise that for
example if they tell if the manufacturers in china for example
they stopped maybe 15-day in our industry in telescopes is a
disaster because it's an industry that is very very small a quantity to make
is is very difficult to make a
each piece of of a mirror or
a lens for uh you can not make
um uh something in syria and serious and something
like like uh i don't know make uh
well i don't have in my in my mind now but many many things you can make
the machine and the machine can leave maybe 100 in one
minute well this is not the this is not the
the reality for optics especially astronomy optics in a thermic optics you
today made by by something like casting it's not really
casting but it's similar but for astronomic uh optics you need a a really
really process that you cannot
you cannot live outside of of the line of production
and right and and uh is is one of the things that that
and normally we i use to explain
something like uh like the size of um
let me check if i have a small presentation with a table of
of the size sometimes i i give to the people the idea of who is
the size of a planet of or especially small planets in a telescope
because normally we talk in small angles for us is easy but
to understand some fragility of uh the telescope that that need to be very
static appointing to the star or a planet normally i i talk with the people that
for example say okay your your image of jupiter for example have maybe in your
telescope three millimeters people say what it's so
tight yeah they are expecting it to look really big right yes and yes and before i explain that
the another the the magnifice of the eyepiece is that make the the
entire miracle but first of all
the things are that you need you need to have a stable
uh mechanics air in the mother or uh well
the people start to understand how fragile is
their telescopes yes yep and how precise they are it's uh
it is uh it is amazing that um that telescope sell for the prices that they
do the last time you were absolutely you were talking about uh the you know
just the amazing low prices of of precision optical telescopes and it
is absolutely true um you know that it is such a bargain um
because the amount of effort that it takes for someone like you i mean you have made telescope optics it is a lot
of work it is a lot a lot of work absolutely if if i can
yes if i i need to put a price of this for me is
entirely a passion yeah but it's impossible to to
to calculate because do you have a lot if you need 24 hours only for polishing
in the mirror maybe in the industry you can start to make more more faster
because you can use a a diamond system where you can green the
curve the cure of of the of the mirror to start more fast but
you need maybe from 10 or maybe 30
hours of polishing and you can you can't make
something magical to be to have at a at least today
something well i remember your video where you we
where you show the dropper machine in in in the factory
yeah and they yes this these machines the first of all that you can see
is that work at no more that maybe 30
rpm and this is the the typical velocity in
astronomy optics this is why the people say okay it's a miracle that
i i listen to jason to sorry uh
dustin sorry to dustin talking about the is we live in a
miracle age where we have more affordable
things uh that we never expect this is incredible and
is is so hard and so complicated make an astronomer and uh
up astronomy uh surface optics sorry that i
mix the the words but they're so different to the rest they're different to the photography industry
photo industry they are different to the industry because the
the typical error of a or lambdas or the
the long wave of uh
where you take 550 nanometers and you say okay i need
a the the eighth part of of the maximum error for my
say this is so difficult to obtain and is is something that they hit that the
industry today can give you and maybe in this in the 1965 the industry
was unable to to give you uh this quality and this prize
if you have in the in the 70s a telescope with a position that today you
can you can get uh maybe the price
in in the 70s was well i i i listen the same that that
you talk about about this it doesn't say the same it's
it's so so incredible the difference yes uh
we are living in in a golden age about astronomy and i think that we are in the
in a new the new uh space race
that well uh my in my country in my country we have two satellites that was launched by
by space x the the the last one was was the this
weekend and the cell com uh
one the the the cell cone one a was launched in
in 20 and now this is the second one and together make a uh something like a
consolation of satellite and this is the the i listen just
to to dustin that for me i think the same i ensured the vision of the space x
put the the the reality of the a new space
era age in a level that we never expect that
is so fast and so strong the changes right right
i agree i agree okay well thank you caesar thank you thank you what's the pleasure i have i
have my my exos 100 but come on today is cloudy
it's raining buenos aires so i can give you any
image today tonight next time next time yes next time i
prepare this with this
so let's uh let's go to uh the astro beard uh
uh richard grace how you doing richard not too bad how's everybody doing tonight yeah it's all good it's all good
thanks for coming out to the party control there yeah man i got a few extra screens uh
going on tonight uh actually was something i wanted to show uh was uh my portable power system
so i'm going to change cameras okay
all right let's see now i gotta face the other way and make sure the microphone still works so i'm gonna try and use the laser
pointer here okay hopefully it doesn't blow out the camera but uh essentially if you can
yes you can see all the uh large blue things in the bottom those are
individual lithium iron phosphate cells uh 90 amp hours each wow eight of them
total uh which uh adds up to 180 amp hours of uh 12-volt equivalents
uh i like to go camping for about 17 days at a time uh when i go for three
weekends in a row so we use this to recharge the electric chainsaw and
way way more than astrophotography gear uh we we have uh worldwide hf communications vf vhf communications
charging docks for the uh the small radios over here on this side we have a mppt uh charge controller
uh we're turning the 12 volt here into 19 volt uh with a little uh dc boost
converter and we're using that to power the dell box back here which is actually a
thunderbolt 3 interface to the laptop so it is
one wire into the laptop and you can run your other usb cable to
your camera and everything um so i mean i guess it all depends on you
know how you're doing if you're automating you're probably not going out camping and automating too much but uh i
have no idea because i'm still pretty new at this um also oh and and be
automated from anywhere yes yes absolutely we've got a massive gopro effect happening
with the uh the camera angle here but uh essentially this is all put into a 42-inch uh like pelican double rifle or
carbine case uh which was basically the width of the back of the trans am uh so
i built all of this within my own uh dimensions but you know anybody could
do pretty much anything like this and in the days of uh people doing a lot of
uh you know ride-along raspberry pies and stuff uh this kind of the opposite approach you know bring a table throw
this next to your scope or in my case put it in a eight-man tent that has a wood stove
jack and you know yeah go for a few days and uh do my thing so uh i just wanted to show that
and i guess real quick here let's change back to the uh this camera this kind of highlights something i've talked about
quite a bit over the years scott is that not just amateur astronomers but a lot
of people are become system integrators now we we have so such a wide range of products to buy
from manufacturers all over the world that we can we become system integrators to build up
our specific uh systems for our application in terms of astronomy that's uh
that's a big part of the deal um but i think we're starting to move well we're as a company we're trying to move
a little bit beyond that to provide turnkey products uh that are highly integrated systems like
this i think i'm gonna share my screen if that's all right sure
should be sharing uh do we have a picture of andromeda yes
we do you do okay uh this was just a uh a test image i uh wanted to see if i uh
messed up the alignment in my triplet which i did um but uh it uh still turned out pretty good for some test footage uh
the the best that i have done thus far and i want to thank gary for showing me what i could do with uh
some of the other footage uh footage the other uh data that i had and uh i spent
a little extra time on this one and it turned out really good you know i did end up with a little bit of blue on some
sides of things and changing but uh that that'll be all fixed up soon here and i just wanted to show that because
that's uh pretty much all i've got for the night i am clouded out but i'll be hanging around for the party
it's a beautiful uh andromeda galaxy you got going on there and so you're working a little bit with gary
gary we sent a couple emails uh back and forth i think at some point we're probably gonna do a skype call or something like that i'm not sure yet
very cool all right well i know that uh one of our customer service reps here uh tyler bowman is
anxious to start working with gary to learn more about image processing so he can take his astrophotography to the
next level so that's that's really great uh let's jump over to
a hundred hour wade
and you are muted how about now that's all good hey how
are you doing we're good well i feel a little uh um out of place here with all these uh
professionals so um you're doing pretty well yourself wayne
you your images are are incredible and uh um
i i watched a bit of your show on twitch uh and uh you're running a great show too
awesome thank you very much yeah um you know i i'm so i'm still you know i've only been really doing this
for about six months so i'm still new at it and i'm just you know trying to help out
um you know everyone else else out there that's new that's you know found it you know tough to get
into it and to get results so um yeah that's pretty much what the uh you
know the that my part for the clear skies network is so um
but um yeah i was just gonna uh you know tonight uh we we got rain all of a
sudden um you know i i have a friend that's a uh that that is a um
meteorologist here in the area on one of the news channels and me and him we're gonna have to have a chat because uh
um they uh uh they're they're uh this guessing game
with the weather man is killing me yeah yeah now uh uh one of the guys who was
watching earlier his name is dan scoff dan actually made a video for us
so to teach amateur astronomers how to really
judge the weather like a professional meteorologist does so i will i will run that video again
not tonight but um uh in the future i'll run it on one of our shows and you can watch it
um it is i think it is also up on facebook and and uh you could re-watch
it when you want to because he gives you the mother load of of information and
sites and ways to look at uh the data so that you can predict weather so that's awesome
yeah like the rock hanging from the post if the rocks wet it's raining
that was some of the early instrumentation that the biologist yes but
and maybe still some of the best that's right go outside is it hot yes
okay that's right um well great uh so um uh
anything to share with us uh uh this time wait or yeah i was going to uh so i
actually got a um let's see i'm gonna transition over to this so um here's my
uh this uh explore scientific ixos 100.
um this is uh pretty close to the setup that um that i've been using lately and um i
just want to you know point out again if you're if you're looking for something small and light that you can throw in a
backpack and you know those uh you know the the the star uh
trackers have caught your eye i'd really uh you know um i'd really ask you to give this a look
you know um this the the price is very similar um it comes with i mean pretty much
everything you need to uh you know to use it it comes with a tripod it comes with um
you know the counter weights and everything and so uh this thing but it gives you that deck motor also not just
the ra motor but the deck motor so you can use it with uh you know a computer and allow the computer to
to fully control it you know there's no uh guessing for us new guys where something
is in the sky you can you know you can plate solve to a lot and a line to find that so um
yeah so this is uh this is a great great telescope mount now what kind of cam
what kind of this is a camera lens that you have your your uh zwo attached to is that right
the um this is uh the space cat this is that william optic space cat i see it looks like a camera it looks like a uh
it does a lot of camera lines very similar and if you if you were lucky enough to get the um
the uh night cat it's all you know it's a cool black on black so it will definitely
look like a uh a um you know a lens sitting up there telescope lens very cool so um the uh
but yeah we've got um so that and that's just that that's the 533 um up there uh
on it the asi 533 and okay some other stuff so um yeah so it's
a great just a great setup to take out and um so uh you know i use it with a
asi air pro and um you know i can here i'll even show you
um this is kind of cool uh the uh i have my ipad here you can see that
and um you can still see the camera in there but i can uh you know select a target
um let's see i'll go to you know this is the north america that
i had been shooting and uh you know and just you know hit go to and that bad boy will start
moving and away and and away it goes you know and what it'll do is once it gets there it'll um
it'll actually take a photo and it'll plate solve that photo and learn you know how far off it is from the actual
target and it'll you know it'll make the adjustments and then re-slew to it and it'll do that once or twice but usually
before and it'll it'll you know it'll be dead dead center of that target
so um awesome so just a really awesome uh tool to use and wade yes sir
since i've corrected that one issue with the firmware with it missing the target when you did a short slew is you have
you found it working good for you now yes now i mean look look honestly with mine the
it was not that far off so i mean it that wasn't even really uh you
know a a real concern for me on there i mean it was it was already
very close it's very minor uh um
adjustments that it makes when it when it um when it sinks so um okay good yeah so it
it's done it's done a great job with you know as long as i'm you know have a pretty good polar alignment um i'm level
and i have a good pretty good polar alignment it'll it'll come really close to the actual target you're looking for
so um and then um so uh yeah so that's uh
pretty much that and then um the uh one other thing i wanted to show
was um you know so i'm gonna bring this up this is uh
this image i took um this was one of the very first um
deep sky images this was the second so i took one the night before i took with the night before and um no
no i'm sorry this is my first that's absolutely wrong this is the first image i ever took
okay and and i tried to process it so um
i don't believe you're sharing your screen oh here we go how about there you go all right
so this is the first this is the first image i ever took of a deep sky object it's orion of course it's the
you know the pretty much the easiest one for uh new um you know hobbyists to find and so
um i was able to get this and um now i took another one on the the second
night not the only difference is i used a um i used a focal reducer on it so this
was at 23 50 millimeter and the next one i'm going to show you is at 1645 millimeter so
that's the only difference um but the the difference is is i i processed this
after i took it this is as this is as good as i could get it with the limited amount of knowledge that i
had the next one is um i i processed in you know
about three months later and after you know working with a ton of people um
you know dustin and hi in helm starting the twitch stream was just a huge
um you know uh just a huge breakthrough for me in doing this um getting real-time
answers from people and getting real-time help um but i just wanted to show the you know
everyone out there that's new to this um this is where i started from and three months later this is
uh pretty much would have looked the same if i would have processed it that day it's just that focal reducer
but this is the neck this is that image
what same camera same same scope just a focal reducer wow
so that's the you know that is just um so my point in all this is stick with
it um you know stick with this and you know keep learning because
um you know any i mean you can do this you can be
very successful at this and um so uh yeah i mean that's
that's really what i wanted to to share tonight thanks for saying that it's all about
your skills and knowledge it's not about your equipment right i've always said that
so and and again this is with a uh this is with a this is not with an astro cam this is a nikon d750 just a it's a stock
camera that this is what we had my wife is a photographer and so i uh i um
liberated her camera from her and um hooked it up to my telescope and
uh you know and started using it so yeah so this is uh so you can start you don't
have to start with you know the the most expensive stuff and in fact um
i actually owned this telescope for a year before i could take this image
i bought too much scope right i bought too much i bought i watched these youtube videos of these
awesome guys doing this and i thought oh i'm going to run out and do that right away and i bought this super expensive
equipment and um just got lost in it you know and really what probably would have been better was
if i would have just got a you know that that is 100 and used you know my uh you
know my um camera and lens you know um
with it for you know for that year i would have i think i would have gained a you know i'd be ahead of where i am now you know so um
just use you know you can use what you have going back to what jason was talking about you're pretty far ahead
right now 100 hour wade i mean it's pretty amazing
thank you very much appreciate that i don't know so so anyway
that is excellent well scott we're bumping up against my bedtime man i've got super early meetings in the morning so i've got to
dive out but real quick i just wanted to say thank you to everybody here you know putting in the time on both sides uh
just watching the channel and also participating it's so very appreciated scott and i talk about
this all the time on the phone just how dedicated everyone is and the contributions and how much they mean
because it hasn't always been the case that things like this have happened so truly uh thank you so much for doing it
and thank you for doing it here on clear skies network um thank you for letting us be on clear
skies so so glad to see it that's what this is about and you know the panels here are always
incredible it's it's uh every time we pop in it's intimidating seeing everybody here like man just gets
better and better gets better and better so yeah just wanted to say a quick thank you but um i'll be back on thursday for
my my twitch crew um but again thanks everybody and i'll see you next time for
hanging out take care man thanks dustin
okay so our next guy that we're going to is simon tang
scott i'm sorry i'm sorry to interrupt you i don't know if you want to do another question before we get because we have three questions all right so
let's we we did two already right so no we did one we did one okay all right
that's all we've done let's do question number two then so question number two is um
uh going to the the prize will be um
the galileo scope which i happen to have right here
here i got let me put the camera on myself there we go galileoscope which is the
the telescope kit developed for the international year of astronomy 2009
international year of astronomy it has been used as an educational tool for
hundreds of thousands of kids maybe millions of kids around the world um you will uh once you assemble one of
these you'll know how an eyepiece works you'll know how an objective lens works you'll know how the whole
telescope itself actually operates it's got a quarter twenty thread on the bottom
uh it's it you align it by gun sighting this uh it's like gun sights up on top
of it and you just sight right along the tube like that and uh to check out things
like the moon saturn and jupiter so this uh the price will be
this telescope and a 52 degree eyepiece of your choice so
what's question well you want to send the questions to kent at explorescientific.com
can't not you don't want to answer it here on the chat but you want to send it here
scientific.com there you go and you need to join
the explore alliance at least as a legacy member legacy membership is free
i'll put down the website for that what a bargain i know but you get some what else do you
get with that membership though scott don't you get something oh you get you get the opportunity first off to be
involved in all the um the other prizes that we have uh you get um
uh you if you have not uh registered your products uh you can get
in and get your products registered so you have some protection on your on your product if you want better protection we
have it okay um we have something called uh uh
you know alliance care and alliance care at its best in our hundred dollar package
we'll give you a hundred dollar gift certificate which you could spend back with your dealer or with us um
for explore scientific gear you then have something called advanced
product replacement okay so let's just say that that's basically free product replacement because you get
your hundred dollars back yeah that's way [Music] but but let's just say that uh
you you you're you know you you're out observing and uh
somebody runs over your telescope okay and you want to go to you know you're heading down to
australia and you want to have another telescope right away we will
in advance send you a replacement telescope okay
and in the continental united states we do this if you are an international person you
want to do this uh type of uh thing uh you have to have a way to get it to you
okay so a lot of people have channels like that but um uh
the uh we do replace the product um and uh
you know uh it's it really makes it worry-free you
know is is the is the main thing so um and that's at the hundred dollar level at the 30 level again you get a 30
gift certificate it costs you nothing um and uh you still have uh all of your product uh
uh with the no fault warranty so not advanced product replacement but no
fault which is nice that's a nice yes yep all right so the question is
how many minor planets have been visited by spacecraft
how many how many minor planets have been visited by spacecraft
that's an excellent question okay yep all right while you guys are
trying to figure this out we're going to bring on simon tane simon are you uh
i see his telescope working here there he is there he is
simon how are you i'm good can you guys hear me yes excellent um
so i've got one heck of a setup not from a um
telescope standpoint because obviously you guys can see it but it's the ability to jump between multiple cameras
which is probably something that you guys haven't seen yet um
i am literally looking at jupiter right now and funny enough i can actually just press a button it just goes to it
that's cool you guys can see it so i don't have to always do the screen share so seeing is actually pretty damn good right now yeah
it's swimming yeah it is a little bit off the ripley side so um
it was actually really really solid earlier on but i don't know if chris um saw my message but i was asking him if
we can actually see [Music] uh this storm because this is what i just got a few
seconds ago so i don't know if this is the storm that he's talking about
chris you're still there yeah i'm here what what time was that image taken uh literally 15 minutes ago
oh what time is it now ut um uh well it's uh 10 10 p.m my time
let me check so universal uh it's it's it has already moved out
because it was captured at two o'clock duty oh okay so i'm probably not even looking
at it then it's four o'clock ut right now 410 and then 5 10 5 10 ut right two hours
ago so it must have moved oh okay well i tried
you miss it but that that that image wasn't that bad it's actually quite good
no i mean it it turned out pretty um pretty good i mean my scope is not brilliantly aligned so uh the planet
keeps wandering off um i kind of had to slap everything together uh
because with all the wiring and all that kind of stuff so you can kind of see my scope is there i had to run off and
do a meridian flip so i didn't even bother to do an alignment i just uh did the meridian flip and and
just started doing stuff you know like i always do i never align my scope
well that's great though but i love your setup there with the multi-camera you know that's that's slick
oh yeah so i can just literally just jump around i mean it's weird when i do that because it just uh tiles off
to infinity but i can kind of see what's going on and i have like a fancy camera here so i
probably look a lot clearer than usual yeah that's good you got good lighting
you've got yeah as far as somebody making a presentation for uh you know uh this kind of global star
party you're doing the you're hitting on all pistons i think so that's really cool well you know you know the funny
thing here is though when i was at the store um you know that was the biggest thing that
people missed was seeing the equipment seeing the setup seeing the scopes and seeing uh all the different things
through the telescope so i thought you know what it's it's really just a lot of us just
sitting around um on a computer screen and people don't get the idea of it but when you get to
see an actual telescope in action yeah um it it
there's something about it that feels really cool i mean if i can reach across without
knocking everything out of the way you can actually see i actually have my green laser because everybody loves
green lasers yeah and um it basically is pointing at
jupiter essentially so you can you can get an idea for it i mean that's
the whole point the idea of a star party is is to allow people to experience
you know space and astronomy in ways that they've never thought was possible and i kind of like this method of doing
it like this because it it's like an electronic version of the
whole thing or what's more commonly known as eaa electronic assisted astronomy yes and it's become so popular
uh and it's and you can do this from home that's right that's right you know and a lot of people that are uh
that are involved in educational outreach uh you know people that might have been sidewalk astronomers um
uh you know or you know who did the you know grand outreach programs uh they're
now especially in this this uh time with kobit uh they are looking at uh
electronically assisted astronomy uh quite a bit you know how can i get
channel up how can i how can i share this experience you know so uh we're looking for ways to get around
uh and to show and share well i mean even doing i mean even if we could have parties
again and instead of having people come up and touch the eyepiece and things like that with eaa it allows people to physically
be there in person and still see things i mean i know a lot of uh traditional
astronomers who do a lot of visual don't like all the light pollution and having you know white lights turned on
everywhere but you know sometimes technology has gotten to the point where we have to do something in order to
please the crowd so having this kind of a setup i mean if people on the streets
could see me right now i mean they'll be swarming all over me right now but it'll be done in such a fashion where
it's it's safe so people can actually see the screen and see what's going on
yes yes it's fantastic i think people also like to see
when you click on your planetarium program at an object so i'm going to go to this object and they see this they
you click on it and they see the scope move like it's magic you know the first time you see a scope slew from a
computer that people that aren't familiar with it is pretty pretty neat for them i think i get that all the time
when i was showing people how you could use a computer to point the telescope oh totally oh totally i mean it's like
if i ever want to attract attention even when i was doing outreaches um the minute i pull out that green laser
people just swarm in from nowhere you know because they see that green line that just runs out into the sky and
then you know i'll always like say to people it's like oh what do you want to check out i mean we could do planets we
can go look at this we can look at that and off the scope moves i mean i remember once when i was doing the iss
in the middle of the daytime obviously because it was a solar transit and i was in a parking lot in valencia this
is the day when my laptop shut down and i had everything all set up and
there's these this family that was riding around on their bikes and just basically enjoying a sunday night or
sunday afternoon even and it just caught their attention and these kids just came
running towards the scope because they were so fascinated thinking what are you looking at
and unfortunately their parents kind of pulled them away uh before i got a chance to even say anything to him but
you could see that look in their eye and they're going what what is that you know it's so cool
right right well thank you very much simon that's awesome that's awesome so
yeah no problems yep uh so any more news out there coming from the philippines there chris
you're still muted there let's get you unmuted here we go well uh it's the same thing
here uh we're in the moon soon right now so it's kind of tough imaging
uh seeing isn't that great uh but uh overall uh we still try
especially excuse me with that with exciting things happening on
on on jupiter right now yes right
well excellent that's great yeah that's great um
awesome that's an awesome image of saturn there that just was amazing is that yours
this is a hubble image oh by the way i i just want to comment uh
earlier uh on uh you know a comment of uh you know
uh since i've imaged it it's not no longer worth imaging really uh the planets you have to image every day
because things change and right now um we we have a guy in florida who images once in a while
and it just so happened that his image was a confirmation image of the discovery of the storm
so uh you know this thing this thing gets exciting uh people who are even not normally imaging get to
contribute in science where where is that stuff um
logged or you know these discoveries
now how's that communicated when someone confirms a discovery is there facebook
facebook facebook yeah someone posted in one of our groups called uh pro-am uh
community uh for for jupiter and uh when i looked at it and uh checked that
there was no moon then i knew it was a it was an outbreak so i told him that he discovered something and there's this
another guy in uh in miami who also was imaging
a few hours after and he caught it probably one hour after and he caught the same storm
so uh things move fast now
i think scott is out right now jeffy on something guys but uh
well excellent um we have i can see that um
that mattia schmidt has logged in here are you uh are you with us matthias
there we are so matthias uh we've we've talked to everybody uh with
us tonight you are uh uh you're out there at cedar breaks national monument
looks like you're actually in in space though right now so i hitched a ride on the on the last
starlink satellite great
um well you're you've you've uh you've changed your life to take up the
challenge to protect our skies and
you are uh we talked a little bit before on another program you you've taken up an
internship at uh cedar breaks net uh national monument to be involved in their dark skies program
what can you share with us at this time um
so first of all thank you very much for having me i i appreciate all these presenters and their amazing
knowledge and what they do with their technology and with their ingenuity
um and so i feel honored to even though it's
really late uh but it's never late for an astronomer because you want to
look up at the sky when it's dark so which is my forte since
um i will be starting at cedar breaks national monument which is an international dark sky location
um in two weeks and i'll be the dark sky coordinator
and i will be involved in astronomy outreach and also um
running the master astronomer program which is a 40-hour astronomy program for
novices to learn about the night sky and also how to work with a telescope um
[Music] and i want to share a few images with you that i took over the last two weeks
ever since i got here so um you know i figured every astronomer wants
more of one thing other than sleep and money for better equipment which is
dark skies um so i lived in new york city for 15 years
and let me share my screen with you
let's see so this is the light pollution
map for the united states and i basically lived here in this really
wide spot which is new york city for 15 years i think this is jenny jump in
pennsylvania which is the closest really good dark side for
um astronomers and they have an excellent astronomy and star party
so this is not a very good place to observe the night sky
um and i joined the local astronomy club three years ago and through
fueling the flame through observing my first total solar eclipse in oregon i got into astronomy i
got involved into the club more enrolled in a master um of science and
astronomy program and then um i got
um in the pandemic i found this urging me to do something meaningful
with my life so i applied for a job in cedar breaks national monument which is the national park
in utah and i moved from new york city here i drove across the country
to cedar breaks which is let me zoom in a little bit
let's go to utah um [Music] the grand canyon is down here
so the cedar city is here it's the spot and the national park is
here and um to give you an idea how
you know you probably all have heard of the portal scale which basically was
created by a um astronomer and he wrote a big article in the sky
telescope magazine about 20 years ago and he came up with a more
generic scale for measuring the darkness of of
the sky because we all have a very subjective perception of how dark
a sky is and how bright this guy is because our eyesight is different some have
really good eyesight and some have a little bit worse eyesight uh so he came up with
with the portal scale and i'll uh um
let me just where's my uh
so the bortle scale i'll i'll show you a nicer picture and then we'll go so the portal scale
goes basically from one to nine so nine is the inner city sky
where you basically see which is where i have been for the last 15 years
where you basically see maybe the 20 brightest stars at night
um and you basically i basically move from bortles scale nine to right to the edge
between two and one so if you have ever been to a a star
party i um i was at one in oklahoma the oaky tech star party which
has an excellent dark sky um i actually on the way here i stopped in punxsutawney in pennsylvania if you have
ever heard of a groundhog day this wonderful movie with bill murray who relives the same day over and over again
um it's probably probably around here so suburban rural transition so the the
more i drove west the darker the skies got um and um
but then again you know this is this is the portal scale and uh this is a generic scale from one to nine and how
do you actually get it a little bit more refined um
and um there is we're not seeing the screen update here
i'm sorry at least i'm not let me let me try this again thank you for
uh yeah this one okay so here is um a little bit more
uh uh detailed comparison and how the bortle scale which is here in the center which
goes from one to nine fits in with several measurements of sky brightness
and i have a um a sky a quality meter by uni hedron
which is the small you know the small box um where you actually measure the
magnitude per arc second of the night sky and um
so i took a measurement during new moon about two weeks ago in cedar city and it
came out to be 21.6 oh
so which is which is down here okay so i'll show you a picture of the milky way i took with my camera in a
moment so essentially i went from when i in in new york once i got this
sky quality meter um [Music] i took a measurement in central park and
it was about 16 which was just a month ago so i went from 16 to 21.7
wow and um um [Music] you know the there is an app on the on
the iphone or the android where you can actually and i encourage you to do
wonderful guys to start taking measurements um to measure the
light pollution of your sky because that would be really valuable data to have
to do local outreach and encourage um
you know cities for example to better manage their uh
their electricity bill and their light pollution because all of you
have maybe more or less an amazing connection with the night sky and are awe inspired
by what you see i mean i see some of your pictures that just fantastic um
and um it just helps connect people to this amazing
place in the universe in which we live and especially our milky way so um
let me just show you just a few pictures that i took so you can actually um
believe me that i'm not lying when i tell you the skies are really dark
so and by the way all of you always welcome there will be a star party uh the southwest astronomy festival next
year in september um so all of you guys are welcome to come to this star party um
i i don't live in a big house so the first three people that message me after
i'm done they can stay at my place okay sorry scott and jared can stay at my place so maybe one more person
yeah that's awesome i'll i'll put a tent up in the yard so five people okay okay cool
um so let me uh so which one this one i want to show you
this first okay so this is uh i took this picture two weeks ago with my sony camera this is 10
seconds the iso is 25 600 and the measurement of the skm was 21.64
that i took and you can see you know this it was really difficult for me for the
first few days because i'm supposed to be the astronomy educator and teach people
about constellations and star lore to figure out the constellations because
there were so many stars and i just had trouble
making out the constellations so i you know i used a lot of help you know i used my
my app on my phone uh to make sure that i'm actually looking at the proper constellation and the star but there's
an amazing amount of stars so you know jupiter is here saturn is here the milky
way sagittarius is down there here's the center of the milky way um
and so this was one image that i took and [Music]
i went just the one night i went camping to a uh um
to a campground actually let me show you this one before i go to the campground picture because i took a picture with
the with the camera of the andromeda um
and i'm a beginner in this some of this astrophotography stuff okay so um
so here's the picture of the andromeda okay this is with my 70 millimeter this is a six second exposure
so here you can see the andromeda galaxy and it's i wow
you're not going to miss it you're not going to miss it you know you would easily catch that naked eye
yes you easily easily naked eye so
so and then let me just show you this the picture of the
of the campground which was the uh even better
which was the even better this one okay so this is the sqm 21.94
this was this is a portal one um and this was even a little bit better
than the cedar breaks national monument and here again you have jupiter and saturn and it's this the milky way is
just striking and it's detailed and you know this is a 30 second exposure so of course you see a lot more
because your your eye does not capture the milky way like this but you can make out
as soon as it the sky is dark you can make out the milky way and it's
amazing detail with your naked eye and it's it's just it fills me with wander
and awe to be in a place where every time i look up at night um i can see that many stars and an
amazing richness of detail in the milky way um i remember
uh matthias that the first time i saw the milky way out west like that in a really
really dark sky i'd never been in a dark sky like that i i saw the milky way up near the horizon i said is that clouds
coming thought it was
i experienced my available solar eclipse in 2017. it's like the difference between a partial eclipse and a full
total eclipse that's a big difference yeah yeah you know the funny thing about um
you know you mentioned that about clouds thinking clouds are coming in when you're in truly dark skies you know the
the clouds you can't really see them they just start blotting out stars there's no light underneath them
reflecting back at you you know i had that experience where you just you notice that stars are missing
and um you know i was taking pictures at the time and you look at the pictures afterwards and you can clearly see
there's a giant cloud there but visually it's it's hard to even recognize that's what it is
yeah so uh you know in a few weeks or in a month i'll i'll i'll be worked into my
new job and uh hopefully i'll be able to give you a better overview of
what we do here um exciting so far it's great it's it's exciting so far yes it's very exciting
so far yeah wonderful well um we have uh
we have dave ing uh joining us and uh
he was uh chatting online and caught my attention and said he had a he had an image you'd like to share with
us so how's it going dave oh it's it's going better now
it's been kind of frustrating last few hours installing a new camera on my rig i
replaced the dslr with a cooled uh asi 294 uh pro
and when i did that it uh changed the focus point a lot
so i had to find the focus for the new camera but then i have an off axis guider with my
guide camera and that messed up the focus and it took me forever to figure out that i
just need to remove my helical focuser and i had to search my house for the stock
uh little clamp right with the uh off access guide here so that i can actually get it
push it all the way down get it close enough to where it would focus anyway i think i finally got that done
i wanted to uh marcelo just uh sent a message to us saying that he needs to
call it and i marcelo thank you so much for joining us all the way from brazil uh sharing your
knowledge about cosmology with us and uh i hope to have you on another program in
the future thank you thank you thank you very much it was a great pleasure thank you very much to meet all of you
thank you yeah yeah thank you that was a great presentation
thank you thank you bye bye right thank you all right all right now back thank you dave
i also wanted to uh say to uh mathias i think that's an excellent program and uh about the
having your uh uh clubs or people you know look at uh your
night sky and light pollution and do something about it my club actually
is uh starting to give out awards uh for local businesses
um that both make an effort to curb light pollution
and also they want to recognize companies that actually have too much
light pollution send them a little notice saying hey you know you're actually polluting the night
skies so that's what my club is doing here to try to help recognize people that are actually doing
a good job for that and then also recognize people that are could do better right
yeah um anyway uh from uh last week
i was uh capturing the bubble nebula and let me share my s my screen here let
me uh can you see that yes okay great so
i actually have a few different pictures here this is one that was just stacked
no processing and you can see down here i think this down
here in the lower left hand corner is from my off access guide right i think the prism kind of sticks into the frame
because i noticed this on all of my pictures but um you can also
uh well let me go to the next one so i cropped that out
this picture um also is not processed yet but i i wanted to leave it in here to show you
the noise that i was getting you can see all this red you can see these lines in here
so that was kind of a pain to deal with
and this third picture um i actually uh
i think this is where i did started to do some pre-processing are you are you dithering
uh yes i am actually um i i've looked this up and and i understand this is considered walking
noise and that dithering is supposed to take care of this now i was dithering one pixel every four frames so
maybe i wasn't doing it enough um yeah i mean generally you'd want to gather out at least a few pixels if you
can and more often yeah you know if you're not taking a lot of subs the limited number of subs
every every frame is appropriate um what i'm starting to do now is uh
well tonight i started with my new camera i'm actually moving over three or four pixels instead of just one and
doing it every two or three frames i think now we'll see how that works out
um this one is after some
processing it's my first attempt um i went through the pixensight
easy suite or you just click on a few buttons and it does the deconvolution for you it
does the the automatic background extraction dynamic background
extraction and then finally this is what i ended up with
oh wow so that came from and then i here's the the first image it's just a little
comparison compared to that very nice
so very nice yeah thanks but um i'm hoping that as as i uh
progress along i'll get better at picks inside site you know i keep following different uh
youtubers and whatever i can read on the internet but um
i actually visited your site gary i may end up enrolling in one of your
programs and then this is uh let's see where is
it i have one image of what i'm doing tonight that i got so far just a couple minutes ago
i'm shooting the elephant trunk this is one sub on my new camera um
this right here is amp glow that i heard the 294 has and yep it's right exactly where i or
they said it was going to be i understand that uh if i do the calibration frames i should be able to
get rid of that or at least yeah your dart frames will pull that out completely
um i don't know how well this image is coming across but i think you can see some of the the structure here
here and over here i think these are probably just dust on
my yeah that's your flats will take those out yeah
isn't that amazing these calibration frames you can just fix so many things so
yeah it's great so anyway that's what i had to share and
uh all right what i've been doing the last couple hours is dealing with this but it looks
like that i'm on the right track so i think i i got it going that's very cool well i promise that we would show some
microscopic animals too so i actually i actually got uh tardigrades in the
mail and um and uh some green hydra okay so
i hooked up uh my microscope which you can kind of see behind me here and that whole thing is uh now connected
to zoom so uh you can see the um you can see the uh microscope uh slide
here and i've got the lowest power on it this is just a drop of pond water um
i'd spent uh roughly with shipping and everything roughly 90 bucks or something like that to get
some stuff next day aired out to me because you know living animals have to you know
they have to ship them quickly and i actually i have them and everything but kent kent mart's got me uh some uh
pond water out of his horse tank from his farm and uh and lo and behold there is i mean
there's a ton of different animals in here and i'm going to switch i'm going to show my uh my screen here so let's
see uh here we are this is through
this is through the uh uh bresser uh science infinity microscope
and i'm at it's lowest magnification which i think is like um uh roughly like 40 power something like
that and uh you can see towards the middle there you see some activity in the moss and those are tardy
grades eating away there so i'm going to switch magnification that's my stuff
that's your stuff yeah hi everybody
here we go
and let's see so you can see in between those two pieces of moss you see
something moving around and that is a tardy grade you said this was kent's drinking water
yeah this is ken's drinking water it's very flavorful oh and there goes like a paramecium or something swimming
around you know what be really scary scott is
if um if this was just regular drinking water
so the software that comes with these uh these uh bresser microscopes is actually pretty cool
um it's attempting to do a auto exposure here but
let me pull down the exposure time i want something big
there you go yeah there's some big stuff in there there's some little stuff yeah you can
see him he's moving around in between there but yeah i promise that we would show these and uh
um i think it's very cool um i
i i did a video a while back of tardy
grades and uh uh just in the course of the day i had
almost 100 000 views people love to look at them i mean they're just fascinating
creatures and uh there's so many different kinds of things you know in the microscopic world so the universe doesn't start
or stop anywhere it's it's uh it's just amazing um uh you know with
different optical instruments what you can see this setup that i have here is roughly
about a thousand dollars and uh you know it's it's um
you know you could do research with it you could uh just uh explore the microscopic world
with it so uh and being that you know i'm never able to go out there with my telescope
when i'm doing these star parties um you know i figured that this would be my
way to look at the universe tonight so well it's kind of interesting when you think about
the reason we're trying to go to mars and we're searching for life in the universe and this is
this could be very similar to the life that that we might find somewhere in europa or someplace like that in the
future of mars that may be very true it would be really cool to find out that it's rich with microbial life so
more drinking water for kent that's right that's right
um simon are you still with us i am still with you guys um i mean i set
all this stuff up so i'm not gonna break it down in less than an hour but um you know what i'm gonna show you
guys a couple of things real quick okay so i'm gonna actually share the screen this way because uh you
wanna see the full resolution of it so to speak and then you probably see me in a little
corner here but it's not jupiter that i'm showing you it's just it's still up and running so
let me move this screen thingy out of my way even though you guys can't see it
um we were talking about looking at some of our old pictures and
how far we've gotten so i thought i'd dig out some older shots unfortunately i can't get
that far down into my instagram because i have too many posts so we just won't get to it
so i was looking at the guy who was who posted that picture of um
uh orion who was that i know he was hiding in here somewhere
who who was that that posted the picture of um oh ryan
yeah wait wade yeah oh that was wade yeah so it kind of reminded me of where
i was and where i am now and the funny thing here is this was
actually um not that long ago but i i wish i could have showed you the picture of orion
that i first took and it was this hideous uh blob that i got with a 200 millimeter canon l lens
on a dslr with no tracking i mean we're talking two second exposures here at
like maxed out iso and stacking a million frames literally
and the more i started to get into this because that's what actually got me into doing astronomy in the first place the
more i started doing it the more i started to learn and every time that i would capture orion i
eventually built up a picture till i got to this point here i mean i don't even want to know how many hours
worth of data has gone into this picture but that's a version of orion that i
ended up getting beautiful that is beautiful wow
and it just shows how crazy everything actually is and the fact that we can't actually see any of these with our own
eyes and the funny thing here is when when kids come up to me and ask me it's like oh wouldn't be so cool if we can go
into space and see all of this stuff and the sad truth of it here is the
closer you get to something like this like orion the less of it you can actually see because the gases that you
see are so heavily diffused and the molecules are so far apart that when you get closer they move they look like
they're moving further apart to the point where you just simply don't see it any longer so it's it's weird from our perspective
that we get to see things like this but i can only imagine if there was actually life inside of the orion nebula
they're looking out at us and fall we know we're inside of a nebula apparently we are yeah and they have no idea that
they're surrounded by all this craziness right and then of course there's the
the pillars of creation uh this one was again a collection of all my data
crammed into one big massive image over the time that i've collected
uh i believe there was another guy called tim he ended up sending me some of his data
as well so it's really good fun to collaborate with other people and
um it it's almost like a challenge for all of us that if you can imagine
100 hour wade sending his data out and then somebody else getting another 100 hours and this
guy here gets 50 hours and you combine all this data together you know we're going to end up with one hell of an
image yeah right so yeah um it's
beautiful it's something that's um i'd love to see i mean if you can imagine all of us getting together and
and showing off everything but what happens if we combine all our data together i mean
what kind of monstrous thing are we going to end up with well if it's me you're going to have a tardy
grade in there so that's all right they had targets in uh star trek so why
not in our space pictures that's right yeah if we all combine our pond water
oh yeah well if we if we end up combining our pond water i think we'll end up with cement or something
[Laughter] wow well it's been a lot of fun you guys
um i uh if anyone else has anything else to
share you know i've got one more question i think yeah
you do have one more question but guess what the prize is ooh oh man look at that announce the
winners of the last star party but this is an ar 102 um a smaller version of what jason
is using um to do narrowband imaging with he's using a six inch model of this
but this is the four inch that's a great starter for diet for uh narrow band imaging sure um
you know nice four inch aperture at 6.5 um
and so um it's not a great starter i mean that's i would like to have that right about
now all right i would i have customers that have the
the four inches a doublet achromatic and are making
amazing pictures they they don't uh they don't
suspect that is an excellent option for for astrophotography to start is
excellent yeah oh yeah yeah i think that you can do i mean after seeing some of uh jason's i just
stacked another um ha image if you want to see it yeah that's just while we were sitting here
yeah why not yeah with the 152 yes yes i i can confess that i changed the
the option to my customer from from
another brand yeah and another brand uh in the market of the same size of
four four inches acromatic refractor and because another company don't send me
the the option but the the difference
of course that he can put a little of difference in money
but when he received the rta
he was he uh was amazing with the difference between
the another brand and the the four inches from explore scientific
achromatic because it's the same mechanic it's the same the same
structure all the same that apochromatic with the achromatic
it's great and this this shot right here what is this object this is the the wizard
nebula um oh yeah i'm sorry i don't remember the name i think it's ngc 73
don't quote me on that but um so this is uh five hour
hydrogen alpha integration beautiful yeah so it's uh and this is unprocessed
i just stacked it and this is a screen stretch so um wow how
what's exposures length so this was um shot with
four minute exposures and the camera is an asi 183 and then oh
so the scope definitely makes some great data i'm i'm really impressed with this
i mean the more you zoom in it just it's um it's it's great quality
it's great it's beautiful look at all that
it makes me nice enough planets are out there around all those stars
oh yeah so all the tardy graves out there yeah party grades and all the mud out there
you know the funny thing here is though it's it really does look like a wizard
it really really does i still can't see the wizard i've never been able to see this wizard what really
yeah i don't know where where is this wizard it looks like a guy with his hands held out i mean there's no other way in fact
let me see if i can demonstrate i mean i don't know how to handle he's doing this this is actually maybe the first time
i've actually seen this but i i uh see how to rotate it and the mouth and it's his shoulders and those two
see there he is this so these two this is his hand and this is his hand yep yeah and then you
can see the big pointy hat and yeah oh yeah yeah he's got a cone hat there's gandalf
i mean the funny thing here is is like people see uh a skull in the rosette nebula sometimes which is a funny one
that's that's a tough one to see but the funny thing is though once you see it you cannot unsee it that's the sad part
that's that is the sad part yep
all right so the question very cool so what's the question jared the question is
what's the last question for the big prize is when does haley's comet next pass closest to the sun which is
called perihelion what date does halley's comet
next pass closest to the sun or the perihelion
send your answers to kent
at explorescientific.com
you think that's a fair question yeah anything's fair when it comes to how
hard you want to be jerry well i want people to work for something i want them to learn things while they're
searching for it too that's really the key goal is for me is to get people interested in what they run
across when they're searching for the answer
all right that's cool well i am holding in my hand uh last
um the european version of our star party uh
which was um on the 28th i guess
and um question one was how many objects in the yale bright
star catalog and um
the prize was a the the person's choice of a 52 degree
eyepiece um and um
the answer the winner's actually with us here who do you think it was david
daving is the winner 9100 oh wow oh cool yes yep yep congratulations dave oh
thanks there we go
all right and question number two was the iau minor planet center certifies
observatory locations and assigns a code to each of these observatories
if you were to look for a list of mpc observatory codes
what is the name of the observatory signed to w54
and the winner once again is
dave ing oh wow that's cool oh mark slade remote observatory so congratulations dave wow
yeah got fast fingers you were good question number three okay uh and that
was for another 52 degree series okay so then question number three was what is
jerry's local astronomy club name uh
and uh the winner was uh brett uh we've got his email address here i won't say
it on the air but uh and it was the rappahannock astronomy club ra club and that was for that was
for an 82 degree eyepiece of choice uh the inch and a quarter size
um and then um question number four was where in the united kingdom is the beckington
astronomical society located and the answer
was back to beckington village somerset england and the winner was chuck star
okay who actually was on the program so very very good
how come it's the same audience every time
and then for question number five okay was for an ar-150 or 102
and the question was uh how many miles in total did the cassini spacecraft travel
in total wow the winner was zach krueger uh and the answer was 4.9
billion miles which is pretty amazing that wasn't my question i was uh
whose question was that was that david levy's i can't remember who came up with that question
i don't know but those those are our winners and uh we will read off the winners for
our at the next star party which is of course next tuesday and i am already starting to send out uh
or make up the uh invites and posters and all the rest of it uh richard grace
the only guy i didn't do a poster for was for you and i just didn't have time to get to it but uh i have your portrait
now so we'll we'll do that and um of course all of you are invited for the
next star party um and uh you know gary palmer and i are dreaming
up this uh uh norway to australia uh event but that doesn't preclude anybody from the united
states or anywhere else from joining uh you know if you got something to share whether it's images
solar images live stuff uh no fake stuff it's all gotta be real
um please uh join us uh we're gonna see a lot more of
libby and the stars uh that was such an amazing uh first section of our star party this
uh when we got started um libby is uh uh she says she's gonna do uh i guess
distant galaxies is going to be her presentation so that's going to be very cool little 10 year old libby um
and um i promise to bring on more microscopic animals because i love them and
uh and i think i sense that they love me so you know somehow especially those uh water
water bears the the tardy grades so anyways uh i want to thank you
all for real quick yeah um i'm just gonna show everybody uh a
solar animation real quick before we run away okay let's do it all right so share screen
so this was taken um wow yesterday this is actually a three
hour time lapse wow it's beautiful
and then you'll see another close-up of the other section it looks like something just blew up a dust storm over there oh my god
and then they see these are ones from the other from a few weeks back yeah i just did like a compilation type
thing look at that look at the it just looks like melting candle wax or something
it's crazy awesome and this was taken a while ago as well but it just
goes to show how crazy things can get on the sun yeah
i feel like this time around like you know we've been in the solar minimum but the technology has come so far
in the last few years and once we get back to solar maximum i can't imagine
what kind of images we're going to see yeah because i don't even know what i'm going to look
at during solar maximum it's going to be just nuts yeah yes
simon why was the color um on one orange and on the other one it was kind of
grayscale um so depending on what i'm trying to show sometimes i do high contrast
imaging so if it's like very very high contrast then to make it go color is really strange
looking so it's better just to leave it in monochrome because i shoot all my solar in monochrome
hey scott that might be a decent uh door prize as a solar filter you guys sell those don't you
we have white life filters um uh but i i don't do any h alpha stuff
yeah i meant the white light filters yeah sure sure yeah we can do a white light filter no
problem good idea good idea so we'll do that at the next uh star party we'll give some of those
away i'll have your paycheck and i dave
oh yeah i got another tardy grade right here munching away actually a couple of them
uh here's that's a good view of a tardigrade right there all right i'm going to share this
[Music]
you can see them up there at the top there's another one down there at the bottom and they just love grazing on this moss
you know the funny thing is they're just completely oblivious to us yeah we're in another universe that's
right oh there's two of them see there's two of them right there
i wonder if aliens are looking at us like that they're completely oblivious to us
yeah i could watch these guys all day long it's so cool
and those are pretty big ones you know they're probably they're probably still smaller than a
millimeter but um so that's a good size for
for a tardy grade a wolf a deductible animal
you're able to survive the now you can start to see its speed
as it's climbing around what's also really interesting is to watch them uh their their body if they
dry out their body um forms like almost i and in fact i guess it's
described as a glass shell i think it's a it forms like a silicone like shell
around them and they're able to survive dried out for years uh
and uh you know they get back in water and they're able to rehydrate and they will climb in fact if
you look to the right of the one that's really active you see a transparent
body there and that is that is a body that one of these tardigrades is climbed out of it's shell
so it was dried out before he's really going for it
it's time to eat man you think he's got some ranch down there with that
that's some ranch he's getting on that other one he's like
wake up i think he's sleeping or something you know they they do go into this uh
you know state of um you know
i don't know you know preservation
and you can see his little eyes there he's just covered in moss what
magnification is this um this is um [Music]
i i know it's over 100 magnification uh it's it's probably more
with the camera and everything it's probably something like three or four hundred magnification okay what's the max on
that thing uh depends on which objective you put on it you know you i have
a hundred power objectives you know that i can put on it so you can go over a thousand
he's trying to climb out in my field of view he's shy i think he now is suspecting
that we're watching him i'm just barely touching the stage
adjustment right now and you can see that
and just like putting slight pressure on this on the stage adjustment to get that centered up
and then you can just you of course you can just zoom in on it too you can do this
and you can see and then there's a two-speed focuser on this too just like on your telescopes
so you know if you're into uh if you're into astronomy and you have
some cloudy nights uh microscopy is also a great way to go
and uh you can either shoot with the software that comes with it you can capture video
or you can you can capture stills and process them
probably use all the same processing techniques that you use in in astronomy
and yeah he's just tearing it up
i had heard that um that they had
crashed something on the moon and that it actually had party grades on
board uh-oh yeah and so there there may be a contamination of
tardigrades on themselves they're not tardy grades anymore
yeah they're 18 tall right you're gonna have to call sigourney weaver or someone let's handle those
dudes that's right kind of mesmerizing these things
and i was looking at the green hydra earlier but they're those are truly tiny and i didn't get the right objective
lens out um so i'll have to do that for the for the next live broadcast or something
but i'm having fun watching these guys yeah and it's cool too because uh you know
i really don't feel uh bad if my glass slide will dry out
which it will you know it's just a drop it's just a drop of water underneath the uh
uh the uh the objective and uh
they'll dry out they'll they will dry out they'll form their their uh
glass-like body you know armor on them and uh
and then i could just reintroduce more water later on you know next year sometime and uh they'll come alive you
know it's just amazing
super super duper yeah you can see his legs are like waving he's waving at you right now have
you named him yet uh i think i'm going to call in terry
now you can't get rid of him you got to keep him yeah that's right that's right
don't ever name them or feed them if you do right dog don't give them mostly these things because
they'll ruin your life sorry i didn't realize i was looking at
the moon and i i've just got some massive close-up of it right now this is nuts go to the moon let's check it out
i'll stop sharing here i'll do a screen share as well
might be easier that way um it's uh it's excessively high-res is all i can
say oh wow look at that yeah i'm literally just looking at the
edge of some random cr i'm trying to move the scope around i'm like oh what's this and it's like oh
okay it's the moon beautiful
what can uh jerry can you tell us what what crater we're looking at
yeah i'm just looking at that i'm wondering if uh it's i'm thinking it's near organ
which is a shallow really we're getting is a crater that's like a overflowed
uh bowl you can see there's there's really this is
i'm thinking this is near the region of that i don't know maybe it's you're really zoomed up
really close it's hard to tell yeah we're on a limb
i guess your optics are set up fixed for that scale so maybe scroll
up a little bit on the limb and let me see if i can recognize anything
um look at this shot oh that's so cool well that's the neat thing about the limb is
you could pick out mountain peaks that stick up above the limb
of the moon yeah i this is the um this is a 150
refractor see that mountain right there see that right there damn the shadow behind the
mountain anywhere now tart grade that they left there is just going to pop up and there
you go grades out there oh look you can actually see the inside of the the crater here
oh yeah it's like you're you know you're in a high flying aircraft flying over the moon and you can see down you know
you can see the central peak there a little bit you can see the shadow of the rim
well i mean i'm on 5x 5x barlow with the with the 150 and this is what
um a 462 one of those new cameras um for qhy zwo both make uh the same camera
so this is actually the first time i've used it yeah this is a zoomed up this is very
high uh high magnification but you can see the mountain there on
the left you can see the mountain and the shadow behind it that is casting it's kind of cool
the uh the lunar lander that spilled the tardigrades was uh from uh an israeli
uh it's it was called the bereshit lunar lander it carried thousands of books dna
samples and a few thousand tardigrades to the moon
so let's see what's the story here
what do you think of that camera this camera yeah oh
you know what i i've seen dozens of astronomy cameras now and
i wasn't expecting this to be something weird like this because when i first got it out
it was like bad seeing so i didn't even bother with it but i took a picture of myself and the first thing i noticed is i've
got very very dark colored eyes um they're like brownish black almost and i had the camera right my face and i
took a picture of myself in fact uh i got a picture of it on ins uh instagram so we can actually look at it
if you really wanted to and it just it's just crazy
what it sees oh gosh yeah there you go i'll scare the snot out of you
and it's just infrared yeah that's the that's the infrared i actually had a six 680 nanometer
um ir pass filter so anything below 680 is blocked
and just held that up to my face just to see if i could see anything thinking you know this thing's going to be like overrated
no it was clear as day and i'm like this is just nuts i could see the veins in my in
my neck i looked at my arm it's just nuts i've never seen an astronomy camera like
this and then for the price of what i paid for it was like what yeah
uh the moon's beautiful man look at that let's see if i can find anything else i
mean i don't know what even what the orientation of the moon is right now but this is just the uh do you have the ir
filter on there right now no this is there's no filters on there because obviously i was doing jupiter i didn't want to
um block anything out i mean i'm working my way around the
edges so it's usually the most fun part just see if i can spot anything else
uh it gets relatively smooth here yeah that's the lit up part of the limb
of the moon that's really the yeah it's starting to blow out a little bit here but there's not a lot not as
much action on here it's just good to scoot all the way
around what a desolate place man
hey man i'd love to live here would you sure
nobody would ever bother me ever again [Laughter] but you want to do a star party it can't
get any better than doing it on the moon i think seeing all the time that's true oh here we go again there's another one
that's a nice one yeah i'm impressed you took us all the way around without a single wrong turn right
you must be good at that just sketch [Laughter] this thing is really good i mean it's
really pretty stable this is pretty high that magnification oh yeah
look at that back like it's got like uh it's kind of spilled
if you go back down a little bit a little bit there see that it's got like um
it's got like something spilled off to the side there was that do you think that was from lava
or whatever that's um
those are so this you see the shadow behind it into that crater there's a
lump of like a mountain range along the edge of the crater that's in the at the top middle
is that what you're talking about there's kind of and then there's a little lava they're kind of closer and it's got like this little valley going
into it yeah is that just a a
a mountain in front of the crater or what do you know that's part of the that's part of the rim
yeah i think it does kind of look like a valley dropping in though it does
i mean this is all parts of of the moon i mean we're literally looking at parts that we just don't normally see i mean
i'd love to see the other side because there is this great big crater on the other side of the moon which we
refer to as the dark side of the moon
you know you could probably go there sometimes well i'll see you there then scott
you know what i tell you one thing when spacex does the um the starship launch because i know there's that guy who paid
um uh to do his own private thing i swear if if i ever get a chance i will try and
sneak aboard that as a stowaway just just to be able to go around it
that's going to be a cool trip for for those guys and [Music]
yeah amazing things are happening every day man we can see the inside of that crater
yep oh yeah yeah you can see the central peak there and then you can see a little bit of shadow from the rim that's
closest to us casting a shadow on the floor of the crater [Music]
you know we can we can sit here all night looking at this i think the show was supposed to be over
you know actually the best part of the show often is at the very end of the show yeah i guess so
everybody kind of relaxes they start to pull out all their stuff and uh you know so
i know it's it's only uh 11 20 for me so yeah yeah it's 220 for me yeah it's 120 here
see the see there on the right hand side you've got these little mountain mountains there
that crater right there oh that's what he's looking at oh i see i don't have a
it's just about kent just came in with uh with a map he's got it he's got it figured out i don't know oh okay
sorry hold that map up so maybe jerry knows it
yeah let me stop the screen share so you guys can get a close-up that creator right there
that's what we're looking for okay let me see i don't see it full screen
past this mario right here it came right up here so the limp the shadow it's almost full comes right in
through there it looks like you're so you've got south up on that picture i'm i'm used to looking
at south down but that's that's on yeah so that's the way i'm used to look so that's mericrisium
there on the right which is where near that crater was on that limb
yeah so let me we're right in between the rabbits here
if you see it as a rabbit i see that as a woman a woman's face looking up to the
up looking up towards the left upper left as the woman's face i i see it as a rabbit so you got the
butt you got the ears the ears right here yeah the ears coming out right here
right and the bunny rabbit tail
that's cool you know i'll be really really cool right now is if a meteor just hit it
yeah that that would just be like the end
be the greatest sign off ever that's kind of how i want to go out you know the people different people say
well you know if you had to choose how you how you end this life i want to end
this life by going looking up at the sky and seeing a meteor coming in and just smacking me in
the head and then they just preserve it right so your hair yeah the head with the meteor is still
in there right that'd be okay the day before the election right
i don't care what day it happens yeah i'm going back to the tardigrade
here for one long last look no don't we have that big or that close
i don't know if it's that big but that close uh asteroid yeah the day before the election the day
before the election tardigrades
can grow up to a millimeter and a half and um if they have sufficient food and
water will live for about two and a half years which is the average age of a guinea pig
so there's that that's pretty long time but they can they can live they can be in a uh
suspended state of animation for years with no food or water but i found it
fascinating oh yeah you guys found it fascinating that something so small can live two and a half years
yeah there he is is that one of yours or is that
yeah this is one of mine yeah we already looked at yours yeah i saw that heard you just left god
yeah now there's over a thousand different species of these things it's amazing to read about them yeah
so for those interested in uh and lunar lunar observate observing i use a program
called virtual moon atlas which is uh free
it's a great it's a it's it's a great atlas for your computer to to identify
craters on the moon i use it all the time hey jerry
you need to we need to rig up a pmf pmc8 system on a uh on a microscope microscope so people can
run it remotely well i talked to scott about running the xy stage and you could actually track an
object on the you know with the mount controller keep it you know i don't know how fast
we could make it move but you could you could maybe track an object all around the slide and lock onto it quick there's a
little tiny thing flipping around here okay yeah
it would depend on how fast your camera is what your frame rate is let me get a
little bit more light on it the other way scott
there we go now you can see the inside of his body he's uh he's he's looking up and saying
turn that off turn that white out i'm trying to i'm trying to eat here i'm
getting it's getting hot it's scott you just scoop up a little
pond water and you're sure to find them or search for them these these i bought
from biological but uh the the other ones that we looked at
uh were gathered from kent's horse tank
so but uh where you can find them i mean they're they're everywhere there they find them underneath the
the ice in antarctica they find them on i guess thermal vents they find them in
moss they're aquatic they're aquatic animals um but uh
man they can oh now you can see that see the uh the exoskeleton of one of them
right there so that one probably climbed out of that
and he's going to town it's time to eat
hey you can see the little legs on that exoskeleton that's cool yeah you sure can you can see everything
i think it's time for bed it's time for bed
oh i'm gonna wait for mars to come up so oh it's not up for you yet
uh i'm gonna no i'm gonna wait for it to really get up there probably around about 60 degrees so
three o'clock in the morning maybe four so are you going to broadcast or
wait well if you want to run this until four o'clock in the morning my time that's up to you
i don't think i can handle it yeah i also have a full day tomorrow
we've got uh morning uh marketing meeting to uh
to to get involved with but i am i am having a lot of fun
and so this is great oh yeah look at him he's just he's gonna
hey guy you know he's eating up all the moss and and uh
anyhow stop sharing
and i just wanted to say thank you thanks dave for coming on at this late
hour uh simon your your uh expertise in
broadcasting sharing and image problem amazing you know
jason your work is incredible to look at every time you know astro beard thank you much for showing
your cool setup uh your you know all your new equipment and uh and your
images you're you're getting better and better all the time thanks for having me on yeah don't try to take that case on an
airplane [Music] i used to i carried the pmc8
when i traveled back and forth and they they ripped my my case up yeah
looking at it they don't mess around actually i had something very interesting happen i meant to say this
earlier but uh when i went camping uh last fall uh on my way to out to west
virginia my alternator died and i managed to use uh said case to get
to west virginia use solar panels to charge said batteries and drive all the way home uh almost three hours um
with no alternator yeah with no alternator cheese
lucky to have the power on board oh yeah that's right you can never have too much power and
hundred hour away that is an amazing image of that planetary nebula man thank you
thank you and i'll i'll thank uh
uh terry the tardigrade you know for putting on a great show um [Laughter]
and uh we'll uh and we're going to conclude so i want to thank everyone uh
we will be back next tuesday uh jerry and i will be on
uh tomorrow for a regular program at uh four o'clock and um
i'll make an announcement uh when libby's ready for her next presentation which might be at the next star party
so we'll we'll have to check that out but uh um
anyways as jack horkheimer would always say keep looking up i do want to thank um
i do want to thank our uh sponsor for door prizes which is the astronomical league i want to thank the
clear sky network for letting us broadcast cast on their channel um
i want to thank cloudynights.com the forum uh for broadcasting us on our
homepage which is great and uh so that's uh i think uh
i think i've thanked everyone if i've missed anyone thank you so
have a good night and thanks for hanging in there with us and we'll be back once again uh next tuesday with another
global star parties take care thanks everyone good night thank you thanks scott thanks
good night [Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music] that's some stuff [Music]
the pirate ship explorer scientific
[Music]
you

Transcript for Part B:

[Music] so
[Music]
wow
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
it took me over 300 days to finally get to work on cold atom lab but it was worth it and i'm looking forward to next week too
thank you so much we're so happy you're helping us
[Music]
well hello everybody this is scott roberts with explore
scientific and we are here with uh david levy um
kelly beatty rosalie lopez vivian white and uh libby and the stars
and um uh it's uh it's been a uh it's been a great day today um and i'm
real excited to uh get the sixth global star party underway
uh this will be a um three-part uh program tonight so
the first when i end this you're going to see it go off the air you'll have to come back on
okay because we're going to move to a different platform currently we're on skype we're going to move over to zoom and for
me to do that i have to kill the stream and start all over again but i think it's best because we have a lot of
people coming on and it's just going to work out better that way but i first want to introduce
my my dear friend david levy who has been an inspiration to me
for so many years as i know he is for so many of you um he has uh tirelessly
uh worked towards educating the public about astronomy through his numerous books through his
uh uh his comet discoveries through his asteroid work uh through um all of his lectures
and uh uh i don't know david do you ever get tired of doing astronomy is that is that everything absolutely never
scotty yeah right yeah so anyways i'll introduce uh i'll uh david
i'll turn it over to you and let you have the the stage here well thank you scotty can
you can everybody see me okay good okay um i'm david levy
and i'm really privileged to be part of this global star party each week as we uh discuss things that are of
concern in the night sky and the day sky and uh just try to go out and enjoy it
i uh my topic tonight is darkness and i'd like to begin that by saying
that a lot of you especially when you were younger are or were afraid of the dark
you'd want to have lights on in your house lots of lights on to keep keep the darkness out some of you even
when you were sleeping would have a night light to help keep the darkness out
and although i've had a very long and interesting life filled with various
moods including depression and things like that being afraid of the
dark has never been part of that i've always loved it and i remember oh i think
when i was at summer camp in 1956 walking back from a july 4th event
and looking up at the night sky and seeing a shooting star i was eight years old and i was quite
startled by it and i looked to the others i said did any of that and the other kid
i described it a little bit and then the thought hit me was that star was that shooting star
meant just for me and i put that away into my little brain and let it
fester for a while and grow a little bit and a few years later it developed rapidly
into a lifelong passion that i've had to this day i typically go out observing every clear
night and every cloudy night and i have here to show you my latest observing log
and tonight's the observing session that i will have tonight will be
remember though they're all numbered from session number one and tonight's session
will be 21 726
and uh that's a lot of observing sessions to remember and of course wouldn't be able to remember them if i didn't write them
down and that's one of the first things i learned as a kid if i'm going to go out and see something
write it down make sure i'm writing it down that is so so important to be able to do that
anyway i've been outside i've uh did a lifetime of
visual observations of the planets beginning with jupiter in 1960
and saturn also that year into the stars particularly variable stars
and especially into comets in case any of you aren't aware i'm interested in comets i enjoy i enjoy
comets i really do and uh comets have really been very special to me for
many many decades and we all have seen that this terrible year we're having
was made a little bit less terrible by the by the chance most of us had to see comet neo-wise and i'll never
forget that day on the 5th of july right after july 4th going outside with a pair of binoculars
with the rapidly brightening sky in the east looking down looking
to the star capella which was just rising in the bright twilight at the time and going down and
down and suddenly seeing this extremely bright object with a tail
going up that could only be comet neo-wise and and it was just so special and
i was thinking well this is a comet i haven't seen before and i said hello there how are you this
morning what brings you to our neck of the woods are you gonna make our summer a little bit better i
certainly hope so uh even though we've had a lot of clouds this summer i have nonetheless
enjoyed very much going out and observing the night sky i've
uh one of the reasons i'm concentrating on the darkness tonight because i would say
90 plus percent of the observing sessions i have take place during the dark hours
but i do look at the sun every day today there were no sunspots but
there were three prominences on the sun that i was able to count and to see how our local star
behaves how it observes is so special and so wonderful just to me
if all you get out of astronomy if all you get out of your
hobby time of of your relaxing time looking up at the stars is just to go
outside and look you don't even it helps if you write it down your experiences
but if all you're able to do is go out and look it's enough dayenu it's fine to go
outside look at the night sky and enjoy it i always end these talks with some sort
of a quote and i found a good one for tonight and considering my phd dissertation was
on shakespeare and his love of the night sky you'd think that i'd be quoting from shakespeare not tonight
it turns out i'm going to quote from what i believe are the four most beautiful lines
ever written in the english language they were written in 1751 by thomas gray
and i'm going to quote to them quote them to you right now the curfew told the knell
of parting day the lowing herd whines slowly or the lee the plowman
homeward winds is weary
and to me thank you and enjoy your observing tonight thank you very much david thank you
very nice very nice well up next is uh is the senior editor
of sky telescope magazine kelly beatty kelly beatty is someone that i too have
admired for many many years uh he was for me the voice of
sky telescope and really one of them bought me the sky uh every every day
that i would call in to sky and telescope and find what's up okay because he seemed to have the most reliable
information to me and uh and and frankly i think at that time skying telescope was the only one
that was putting out that regular type of sky information that you could easily access by
telephone this is of course way before the internet and
but kelly is uh to me the the face of sky telescope
magazine and uh he is a genuinely nice guy
extremely knowledgeable great astronomer this guy loves to uh travel the world
chasing eclipses and uh informing people of of all that's uh up there so kelly
thanks for joining us again and uh this is the i guess the second uh installation of your seven-part series
about the state of amateur astronomy right and uh and scott thank you so very
much uh a pleasure to be here a pleasure to share the evening with all of you uh wherever you might be uh david those
are those are great words i i had a question for david if i can before i get started which is having
seen comment neowise and the first time you had seen it did it remind you of other comments from your
past for me it reminded me of comet bennett in 1970
oh i thought it reminded me of a lot of the different comments neowise wasn't quite as bright as comic
ban it was kelly but um but it was it was certainly lovely to see in a welcome sight and i
gotta tell you i echo scotty's introduction of you i really think the world of you and your wisdom
and what you've contributed and your roll over sky and tell well thank you very much it's all it's all
smoking mirrors you know you stick around you stick around in one place for 45 years and you're and you're
bound to uh uh to get your name out there so what uh what i talked to scott about
you know scott is uh being modest he has been instrumental
uh through his various roles over the years in in really trying to uh
enhance the outreach the appeal of of astronomy to the general public and
uh and that was that was actually what gave me the thought to to do this series on on the state of amateur
astronomy so those of you who were here last week might recall that i talked about
uh the beginnings of amateur telescope making uh beginning in the 1930s and
the beginnings of sky and telescope first as two magazines the telescope and the sky becoming
jointly skying telescope in 1941 and in those pre-world war ii years it
was very difficult to get a telescope of one zone um they were just they were just not really that available
and so if you if you hope to own a telescope uh often you resorted to making one yourself and and there were clubs
the one that comes to mind is the springfield telescope makers in vermont uh that that uh you know if you were
handy with machine tools and could uh connect pipes together and
have the right equipment you could make a telescope of your own that was was quite serviceable well i'm picking
up that story in in sort of the post world war ii years
uh we're talking beginning around you know the late 1940s when when several things came together
in a in a sequence of events to really spur interest in astronomy worldwide but
especially in the united states one was that 1948 saw
the first light of the world's largest telescope the hale 200-inch reflector on mount palomar
which by the way had gotten started uh to be constructed before world war ii in the 1930s but the war intervened and
it didn't actually finish until until 1948. and so here we had the most powerful telescope in the world
uh so huge that uh it you know it dwarfed uh any other telescope i think at that
time the the second place was the 120
i was born and raised in central california and had a chance to go down to palomar on occasion because my grandmother lived
in san diego and i was just so impressed by that surely that telescope the existence of that
telescope was my trigger point for getting interested in astronomy
but also in those post-world war ii years there was suddenly a glut of surplus equipment
uh world uh you know wartime equipment uh salvage companies army navy stores uh
things that really are kind of uh quaint and holdovers from from the bygone era today
and you could pick up optics for what had been binoculars or uh uh sighting cameras or whatever for
for dirt cheap i'm thinking of companies like edmond salvage which became edmond scientific
familiar name to many of us uh a yeagers albert yeagers out in california who had all kinds of
of uh cameras and and optics eyepieces anything you you'd want so we saw through the
pages of sky telescopes and the advertisements there we saw the emergence of a whole industry
of places where you could either buy components to make your own telescope or to buy your own telescope
and for those of us who've been around a long time the sort of iconic amateur telescope of that era
was made by a company called criterion and it was a six inch reflecting telescope six inch
f8 uh with a a clock drive mount and it was uh it was not even not
exactly stylish but it was certainly a good quality telescope and i i remember that it
i looked back on i thought oh yeah this is the everyday telescope that everybody wants to have but in those days it cost
almost 200 this is in the late 1950s and in in modern dollars that would be
almost a two thousand dollar telescope as as a starter six-inch telescope so
telescopes were still very expensive yes uh uh unless of course you made your own
and then in the meantime in those post-world war two years we saw uh a huge
number of amateur telescope amateur astronomy clubs forming is in the early 50s in the mid
1950s they were springing up all over the country now a few had existed up until that point in the big
cities like boston and new york philadelphia and so forth but all across the country uh these
these clubs were bringing up where were like-minded people like us realized this is pre-internet of course that
there were other people like us who love the sky who love telescopes who love it's just exploring looking into the eyepiece and
and imagining what's out there now all of that was kind of percolating
along and then in the late 1950s uh the space age began
that's an interesting story there was an event called the
international geophysical year from 1957 to 58 an 18-month period when
all the nations of the world agreed to study every corner of the earth as best we could and that included
near-earth space it was for the igy that both the united states and the soviet union
announced that they would launch an artificial satellite and this would be the for the first time
and of course everyone expected the united states to win that uh that race that two horse
race and and so the problem was that we knew satellites could teach us a lot about a
part of earth that we didn't really hadn't explored the the just what is where does the atmosphere
end how wonder where does space begin and so we needed a way to track those satellites
and through um because the orbits of those satellites could teach us a lot
just just by circling around the earth so uh a project was born called a
project moonwatch it was spearheaded by the smithsonian astrophysical observatory in cambridge
fred whipple was the director of that and he enlisted the aid of amateurs all
across the country uh to set up a kind of um i don't know sentry stations uh groups would look at
the sky and record anything that might be flying overhead and if it was a satellite then they
would record the time and date and send that telegram that over to a cambridge and that would help
professional astronomers try to pin down the orbit and so it was this project moon watch
that as much as anything was a a spur to to get amateur astronomers into
groups and and start talking about you know what it was like to own telescopes and to share their knowledge and so
forth now many of you know the story here we did not win uh that space race here in the united
states the soviet union launched sputnik one
and suddenly we the u.s found ourselves in second place and that's the last part of this story i
want to tell the fact that we were suddenly the uh second place finisher was a wake-up call
across the country that we needed to beef up our science and mathematics uh in our
schools what we would call stem or steam today for science technology engineering and
mathematics uh was given a huge boost so everything everything changed
practically overnight all the curricula in our schools were revamped to be more
science-minded it was no longer unfashionable to be a science geek like i was in school
and so that helped propel uh to propel amateur astronomy really into the
forefront and just gave a tremendous boost to all of these clubs across uh across the country and then around
the world and so it was against that backdrop that uh that telescopes became more
plentiful we started to see telescopes uh becoming more affordable many of them were coming
from japan long skinny long skinny uh refractors
that um sorry long skinny refractors on spindly white tubes
and and that continued into the 19 late through the 50s and into the 60s
and it was it was really sort of the heyday of amateur astronomy light pollution had not really taken
hold yet the skies were still pretty dark everywhere uh i myself living in central
california i could go out into my backyard as a as a you know a teenager look up
into the sky see the milky way immediately not having to worry about whether there were lights nearby
and it allowed me to sort of imagine what is out there what what does it all mean
what is my place in the universe how did the universe come to be and uh
the thing that i want to leave you with was that was a time before the internet before spacecraft
had visited other planets before the hubble space telescope when professional astronomers using the
hail telescope or whatever telescope they might have would peers out through the atmosphere
fighting the scene you know trying to gather photons either with their eye or with crude instruments or crude cameras
and imagine what the planets were like imagine what other galaxies were like
and i a young man growing up in california could have those same questions what was the surface of
mars like was their life there or not and are in a way the the the thought
processes the questions that we were asking for the amateurs and the professionals were very much along the same lines and
that that began a a partnership if you will between amateur
and professional astronomers that continues to this day and we'll get into that more in the weeks ahead
it was uh that that golden age from the post world war ii late 40s through the 60s up until
about 1970 was just a marvelous time some of us are old enough to remember that
for those of you who weren't just imagine a world essentially without light pollution
where you could just go outside and see anything you wanted anytime you wanted it was a great
great time and i don't have a quote to end with but i just want you to to you know
picture those super dark skies uh anytime you wanted them scott back to
you thank you very much thank you yeah that was awesome it was incredible
well uh gosh um the last program kelly lamented you know
thanks a lot for making me come in right after david levy well coming in after you two guys is uh
is pretty tough and uh um anyhow but i'm really um i'm really happy to
introduce someone uh that is um not entirely new to astronomy
but uh pretty new um i'll tell you a story a couple of days
ago um a family came into my showroom and they were looking around to
upgrade their telescope and i you know started to realize that this
this telescope upgrade was for a a ten-year-old girl you know and um
so you know i was uh you know any time that uh a young person is getting into this into
this hobby in a serious way uh i become very very interested um
we all uh in astronomy outreach in our activities are always looking to
the younger generation because we know that they're going to carry the torch they're the ones that are
going to uh inspire and illuminate and uh you know uh you know future
generations so um and i think a lot of us just feel it's a duty uh to to do our best for them um
i asked her family to come into my office i showed them uh some videos i think a
clip from perhaps uh one of the other global star parties and i asked i asked libby uh if
she would go on to our show and which she agreed to and then we started talking about
upgrading her telescope she has a she has a small
50 or 60 millimeter refractor she'll tell you more about it when she comes on here in a second
but um she she uh uh she knows how to use that refractor
which i was impressed with and her family was looking to get the next level up and so i started to show
them a four and a half inch newtonian and her father said well what is it going to take to really
go the next level and i said well to be very honest with you out of what i have to offer it would
probably be an eight inch or maybe even a ten inch newtonian and so i immediately started showing
the dobsonians that we have because i know that those are more affordable
anyways once they got into the office um i had made up my mind that i was going
to uh to sponsor libby if if i could be convinced that libby would
uh would work with the community to uh help them learn
learn more about uh space exploration and astronomy and so i'm going to bring libby
uh libby in the stars is is her stage name um and uh
she is uh libby's the real deal she loves nasa she loves space exploration
libby how are you doing good good good so libby i brought on
a couple of other people here to uh to help you
learn more about all the stuff you're interested in one of them is rosalie lopez and i think
i just have rosalie's audio with me right now which i'm i'm sorry that i can't bring the video on
and then i have uh vivian white which i'll bring her on she's with the
the night sky network and the astronomical society of the pacific she's an educator in astronomy
and she is you know so i just wanted you to have a
chance to meet these people i want to let you know that you have resources
uh beyond your wildest dreams okay so what do you think about all this vivian
i don't think i'll get off there we go there we go i got bit audio right now hi libby welcome i'm
glad you're with us what what is one of your favorite things about doing
astronomy amateur astronomy um
i used to watch a lot of marvel movies and i really i quickly got into like
seeing like all the space scenes and i would only watch the movies that were like in space like all the sci-fi movies
and i decided that i would just start studying so i read every single space book that
my school library had and like i used all the resources i got
the nasa app i watched nasa tv daily and then
i just quickly like learned the basics the planets in order the temperatures
and then i i mostly enjoy learning about nasa history too
because back then there was a lot of
like decisive stuff on who can work and who cannot
right that's fantastic yeah that is a really good place to start now
i have i finally have rosalie's video uh um
hey scott yes i just want to suggest maybe libby might scoot over a little bit
uh so she's centered in the frame better yeah there you go there you go yeah put your head right
over that nasa meatball there that's cool okay because that's probably where you're going to be working one day
so um libby rosalie is a senior scientist at the jeb
propulsion laboratory she i'm sure as a young girl had dreams
of uh of exploration and uh you know these kinds of seeds are born
in a lot of us and so um rosalie i'll let you uh
i'll let you introduce yourself a little bit more to uh libby sure yes hi libby so i
i started getting interested in astronomy when i was a young girl too and in fact what
did it for me i i think most of all was the apollo program and we had the race to the moon and
it was a very exciting time and i actually wanted to be an astronaut but
i realized that i was female brazilian and had terrible eyesight so it wasn't
likely to work out and then i thought well i really liked
everything to do with space and i like the stars and then i thought i'm going to study astronomy
and uh you know in the beginning uh no one took me very seriously when i had i was like you know seven
eight um and i'm really glad that your your parents uh seem to be taking you
quite seriously uh and my mother was very worried about how was i going to be able to get a job
uh but but when they saw how really determined i was they really
um were very supportive and i ended up going to study in england
and uh and eventually came to the united states to work at jpl
and it's so it's funny that my dream was to become an astronomer a scientist and
work for nasa and it happened so you know if you just push that dream
it will happen yeah yeah and libby did tell me earlier earlier
that her dream is to become an astronaut can you tell us more about that dream libby um
i uh about a month ago two months ago i went to space camp in
huntsville for a week and it was
really fun and i was lucky enough to get in we wore masks for 15 hours a day and it
was so hard but we did still learn a lot of stuff and it was easier to go on stuff like
simulators because you have to wait in a line and there's less kids there so i got to do more learn more and i was
like the blast and then uh we recently my mom she found this like
15 dollar cheap telescope online and it was like a someone else's like
first telescope from like a long time ago so we bought their telescope
and i started like observing every like night that wasn't cloudy
and my friend would sit out there with me and i get on focus and i look into the telescope and i'm
focused mostly on saturn because the moon was never out at my
house always the other way and then the moon finally came out and that was one of the best things i've
ever looked at so i really want to go to the moon a lot
that's great that's uh that's great libby i hope that you'll be able to go
so remember that it's important to do really well in school
and if you were
if you carry on learning a lot about the space program you know i think you have a good
chance yeah she is i can attest that she's very
sharp um vivian you're working with a lot of um
amateur astronomers and
through the network what kind of uh what kind of path could libby take to
get to those next steps what do you think wow well i think that you know joining a
local astronomy club finding a group of people who have the same interest as you is a really good start
also quite a few girl scout badges that have just come out that are space science badges that are pretty fun
to complete and give you like challenges and different ideas about ways that you can explore space
and the um path that you lots of different paths that women have taken
into so that's a fun one
yeah i mean definitely math and science in school as much as possible i did not take math and science in
school and i regretted it i had to go back to community college when i was in my
20s and start over in algebra and it took me a lot longer but if you
want to do it anything you want to do you can make happen truly yeah that's great
well libby uh what is it that uh i mean you've you've been involved with this
since uh how old when did you first become interested in astronomy and space
exploration it was about eight
nine and um i used like i said i used to watch a
bunch of avengers and i was like oh i
i just loved only the space movies and star wars and i used to watch all
the movies i would only like the ones of space in them and then i was like hey they actually do this look at that
your your brother your older brother uh was on the chat here i'll just read this part
he says as libby's older brother i can confirm she cannot stop talking about space
right now [Laughter] great that's great um
you have lots of people you already got some other fans out there dan scoff is on the uh on with us right now in
chat and you were on with her uh he says libby was my super weather girl
she was amazing and she got back from space camp too and she also just got back from space
camp too uh christopher uh says i'm suddenly less
worried about the future go libby that's great yeah you've got uh you've got already a lot
of built-in friends here uh libby and and uh
i asked libby if she would uh consider putting on a weekly 10 minute program
with us and she pretty much immediately agreed and then
uh that afternoon i got a list of about 55 different programs that she wants to do
so they range everywhere from uh the planets to black holes to the structured nebula and
distant galaxies uh space travel all of these things so uh you know i'm
i'm very excited to to work with libby on that and
we hope that libby can come back and do more programs with us but you know you this is your first time
to be on uh our program are you at all nervous at all
buddy um no not really i'm actually in calls 24
7 now school and this and then after school
yes yeah so you're used to the virtual world right now
yeah i have a whole desk set up i have like books keeping my ipad uh another laptop
right so what if we do another program what do you want the subject to be
what do you think um
probably other galaxies because we just know so much about ours
like there's so many other ones like space never ends there's so many other ones
we don't know them right well any any uh anybody that you think that
you need help with um you know we've got lots of astronomers here that that can give you some ideas so
i think dave eicher would be a good one to talk to dave vikrey he just finished a book on galaxies that's right he'd be happy to
help i think um uh i'm i'm curious uh rosalie are there
what what is available for young people from the jet propulsion laboratory as far as materials well
there are a lot of materials online uh for for teachers and um and students
i mean one of the difficulties with the nasa websites is that there is just so much there
when uh you know once she becomes older and uh and she goes to high school
i think you have to be at least 16 you can apply to do a summer internship
and in fact other nasa centers and definitely when you are an undergraduate uh there
are a lot of undergraduate programs uh for
students to come and um and spend the summer uh working at jpl or one of the other
nasa centers fantastic fantastic yeah 16 is not too
far away living so it's it's going to go by like that so yeah in fact my son um
did an internship with uh amy mainzer who you probably know dr amy mainzer when he was 16
and and he was looking at data from neowise and he actually discovered a
comet neo-wise [Laughter] so that was pretty good yeah that was
very good nearly the uh it didn't get his name it
it got a near-wise name but he got his name on a cup of papers and
uh and he was nearly the youngest person to discover a comet i checked at the time but there
had been another younger 16 year old some time ago who had found a comet
[Laughter]
libby the question for you someone wants to know what are your thoughts on astrophotography
what do you think about astrophotography um i think it's actually pretty cool
because some people don't have like the money or like the time to go and get a telescope
so like they can basically view other people's telescopes from looking through actual photography
so like if i took a picture for you my telescope and my friend was like
hey i don't have a telescope i want to look at the moon can you send me a pic or something you could send pics and like share what
you're seeing for your telescope that's right right very good very good
um so libby uh what um what is your uh
what is your advice i mean your we talked we talked earlier today about
this um and i asked you are there a lot of your friends that are really into
astronomy uh and and you said no
why do you think that is goal sees days just uh
they never like kids just think oh i have to wake up early i have to get ready i don't get to sleep
in i have to go learn don't have to listen to boring conversations but it's actually the opposite and they
don't know that school can actually help them like get a job and go out and
be able to get like a good job at nasa and
you have to like listen really well at school for you to really get a job and my school
doesn't really talk a lot about space so if i
am like sometimes i'll just read all the books they have because like they just they don't teach a lot of
space and science and stuff at my school but i would just take every opportun
opportunity that you have yep you told me that you read all the
books in the library about space and astronomy is that true yeah wow okay hey scott this is kelly
can i jump in for the question for libby sure sure okay so libby are you able to
see any of your friends from school do you ever get together at all
um i have one friend who goes to blended school
and we'll facetime usually a lot on my ipad and we'll just play games on
there just talk and play games because uh there's no way for me to meet
up with my friends so we're gonna go for this desk and i'll
play with them and talk and have fun because it's the only virtual connection
well one of these days when we can get back together again i think you should invite your friends over to show them saturn through your
telescope for a lot of us what got us started in astronomy was seeing saturn for the first time and
realizing here was this planet a billion miles away that was so big and had these beautiful
rings around it it was just like a shock you know and i'm sure that's what you see when you look through your telescope
maybe your friends will be more interested in astronomy if they actually got a chance to look through your telescopes
maybe i could use astro photography maybe like i said before maybe
so vivian do you have any any advice for her uh for libby going forward here
wow i think you are on an incredible path forward already i think you're light
years ahead of most of us at your age so um i would just say you
know i love your love of learning if you just keep that like growth mindset of wanting to learn more and
more about the world you can't go wrong at all um
i was gonna um david inspired me i looked up one of my old favorite poems that i was gonna
share just two lines of from sarah williams who wrote the old astronomer
the old astronomer to his pupil and i thought it kind of pertained to this when
he says she says though my soul may set in darkness it will rise in perfect
light i have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night
that's a beautiful i love that one yeah so there's a lot of there'll be a lot of obstacles you'll have to overcome um
as a young woman in science as a young woman studying astronomy it is not always the most welcoming
place so you might come up with challenges but you absolutely have the brains and the
gumption to overcome any of those yeah yeah and she has a very supportive
uh parents as well so that helps a lot they they love it and you can tell they
love her very much rosalie any any parting words for uh for
libby just do what you love and uh don't be discouraged
there will always be um some obstacles along the way uh but just keep pushing forward and
um you know i actually think that uh science on the whole is
very welcoming to people of diverse backgrounds and
i can't say that i have had problems and there were very few women in science
uh when i did my uh you know my degree and my phd
but um in fact my advisor told me that i had an advantage being female because
everyone would remember me because there were so few females while you know i mean the the the young men
they kind of might not remember but when there was a young woman is like wow
you know so i i felt good about that i was different
but these days um amongst the younger set of astronomers
at least in planetary science is about 30 or 35 percent female so
it's it's not it's not a big deal anymore yeah yeah good things have changed
and libby uh there might be other young uh young students out there watching
right now what what's your advice to them my number one advice right now is take
every single opportunity you have like literally i read every book in the library
anyone says hey wanna do this and it's with astronomy i will say yes
immediately because like one little tiny thing like saying yes to getting that 15 telescope
i saw the rings of saturn for the first time it got me even more interested oh yeah
yeah right well that's wonderful okay well well thank you very much i i
think that we're coming to uh the end of our first segment
of this program um and uh so i'm gonna put the spotlight on
me for a moment okay so the way that this is going to uh to go down is we're going to end this
first segment of our multi-part uh global star party tonight we've got lots
of uh of astronomers from around the world waiting uh to log on uh and
um uh so we we are going to um uh in this program at this point um
unless uh david or or kelly has uh or anyone has uh some last words um
uh do you want me to you wanted to ask the first question scott or wait till the next segment yep
yep let's ask the first question for the uh for the door prize now the door prizes
are sponsored by the astronomical league um and uh they um
uh you know they're answered by sending an email and i'll write it down in chat so you
guys have it it's kent at explorescientific.com so
you're not going to answer in chat okay you're going to send an email there
and then you're going to join um you're going to join the uh explore
alliance um by going to and i'll give you the link for that too
because you have to be a member to win and you can get a free membership you can get a free legacy membership so
you go to explorescientific.com forward slash alliance and join and then
you're eligible to win but it is the first answer that kent gets that's correct
with the person that is also an explorer alliance member can win the prize and the first prize is
going to be your selection of an 82 degree inch and a quarter ipcermar for the explore scientific 82
degree waterproof series very popular line of eyepieces uh
warrantied forever with a no-fault transferable warranty so so what's the first question jerry
all right so david levy and the shoemakers discovered a comment
and it was they named it scott roberts so what is the number
what comment number i'm sorry what what minor planet number is scott roberts
what minor planet number is scott roberts [Laughter]
yeah scott is i'm jealous of scotland i yell out no no i'm really jealous of scott having
a co i have an asteroid named after him that's really an awesome uh honor really yes it is i was uh
pretty much speechless when they told me so yes that's a huge honor
so anyhow um i think that concludes our pr our first part of our program
and uh we are going to switch right now all of us are on the skype platform and we're going to switch to the zoom
platform which means i have to stop the screen and start it back up again so
we will see you in about 10 minutes or so and uh you'll see the uh live
programming come back on wherever you're watching right now if you're watching explorescientific.com
forward slash live you just have to refresh the page and you'll see the live stream come back on
again but give us about 10 minutes or so and we'll be right back thanks