Transcript:
6:00 p.m..Scott Roberts - Introduction
was a lot of fun
6:05 p.m..David Levy – Intro and Poetry
well me too I really did enjoy it and I had a good talk over the telephone
with Carol this afternoon Carol orange is the president of the league
and we're together planning a junior astronomical League
6:20 p.m..Astronomical League Door Prizes – Terry Mann
uh which will be just a special interest area within the league yeah and that'll be fantastic I look
6:30 p.m..Karim Jaffer - The Universe of RASC Montreal Centre
forward to hearing about that yeah and we were discussing some of the
6:35 p.m..Lauri Roche - The Dominion Astrophysical Observatory
details of that today but Carol is such a pleasant wonderful person to talk with
I work with them and he's just he's just very nice yeah
6:45 p.m..Nathan Hellner-Mestelman - Astronomy and Astrophotography; Being Published in Sky News Magazine
he is him and Betty both his wife is just as nice as he is
when he surprised me in fact my wife is nicer than I am [Laughter]
7:00 p.m..Senthil Nagappan - Astronomy Outreach and Astrophotography
hahaha twelves Scotty you're just about ready
7:10 p.m..Ten Minute Break
to get started to get rolling aren't you yeah we are we are
7:20 p.m..Senthil Nagappan - Astronomy Outreach and Astrophotography
so I'm gonna have to put on my more formal hat for a few minutes and then but but I wanted to say sam it
was just a privilege to talk with me this half hour I really enjoyed it yeah
7:30 p.m..Jerry Hubbell - Live from the MSRO
I enjoyed reconnecting and I look forward to getting in touch
on a weekly basis when I can well if you could just stay on for another say 10 minutes or so
7:45 p.m..Jessica Dwyer - Live from Australia
[Music] um I wouldn't mind introducing them formally if that's okay sure yeah
8:00 p.m..Tyler Bowman - Live from Arkansas
how many uh do you usually have joining uh the session oh between Zoom we have
8:15 p.m..Maxi Falieres - Live from Argentina
just a few but anywhere up to about 20 or 30 but it's also on Facebook and YouTube and we
usually get several thousand yeah especially Vicky because they have the
link on the Explorer scientific Dash live where you can join and you can watch with whatever social media you
8:30 p.m..César Brollo - Live from Buenes Aires
want and that makes it very accessible okay let me Zoom is probably the easiest
one because I'm not on Facebook or yeah other social media well Zoom is a very
8:45 p.m..Nicolas Ariel Arias - Hammertime with Nico
convenient I'm glad you're on Zoom because it's it really allows us to have this conversation and the story
connection
9:00 p.m..Simon Lewis - New Zealand Skies
okay I'm all ready and this is my magic book that you will I will read from and
just has poetic quotations that I've collected over the years
but you're telling us your secrets to lead I'm telling you my secret I'm thinking I want a magic book yeah
9:15 p.m..John Briggs - An Observational Revolution: Video Recording of Meteors
well next time you come here I can show you this one I look forward to it yeah
hey Tyler hey guys how are you I'm just picturing if Terry took her
9:30 p.m..Adrian Bradley - Sky Scapes and Falling Stars
picture and started rotating it I'd get hypnotized and dizzy
I was actually at StarQuest out at Green Bank radio Observatory
9:45 p.m..End
and uh took that that's a beautiful one thank you
one of uh one of our colleagues in the UK Mary McIntyre she's one of the fellows of the Royal astronomic Society
there she spent I think almost 18 months slowly Gathering From the same location
to get an entire 360 and be able to stitch it together and I saw that and my
jaw just dropped I'm like I can barely get you know 10 minutes without without screwing up all the glitches and she got
24 hours somehow and so oh wow
I'll send you a link when I when I find it thank you
how's everybody doing today I'm so glad Sam that you got to meet and see Wendy this time
at least here well I heard I heard Wendy I didn't get a chance to see her
voice you're gorgeous sweetheart
otherwise it'd be like the ghost in Macbeth right it's just the boys coming off the stage and that would be no good
okay they return the camera so I can show them like this okay
[Laughter]
[Laughter] oh you guys have a great meeting I'm
listening thanks Wendy
the Pierce some pieces of asteroid Vesta ended up on asteroid venue according to
from NASA's osiris-rex spacecraft the new result sheds light on the intricate orbital dance of asteroids and on the
violent origin of bennu which is a rebel pile asteroid that coalesced from the fragments of a massive Collision six
Boulders ranging in size from 5 to 14 feet were discovered scattered across bennu's southern hemisphere near the
equator these Boulders are much brighter than the rest of bennu with some appearing as much as 10 times brighter
than their surroundings the unusual Boulders on bennu first caught the team's eye in images from the osiris-rex
camera Suite instrument the team analyzed The Boulders using an onboard spectrometer which separates light into
its component colors since elements and compounds have distinct signature patterns of bright and dark across a
range of colors they can be identified using a spectrometer the signature from The Boulders was characteristic of the
mineral pyroxine from Vesta and the vestoids smaller asteroids that are fragments blasted from Vesta when a
sustained significant asteroid impacts the team tested a few different theories to determine the origin of these
Boulders first it's possible that the boulders were originally part of bennu or its parent body however this is
unlikely based on how purexine is created this mineral typically forms when Rocky material melts at high
temperature bennu is composed of water-bearing minerals so it wouldn't have experienced very high temperatures in its history next the team considered
localized heating perhaps from an impact the scale of an impact needed to create large pyroxene Boulders is much more
significant than what is expected to take place in the main asteroid belt so the team ruled out these scenarios and
instead considered other pyroxine-rich asteroids that might have implanted this material to bennu or its parent this is
possible because as asteroids move through the solar system their orbits can be altered in many ways including by
the pull of gravity from planets and other objects meteoroid impacts and even the slight pressure from sunlight the
new result helps pin down the complex journey bennu and other asteroids have traced through the solar system
foreign [Music]
hello everybody this is Scott Roberts from explore scientific and the explore Alliance and welcome to the 73rd Global
star party with the theme of falling stars uh tomorrow morning is the uh peak
of the Leonard meteor shower although it's not expected to be a very significant event this time because of
the moon phase but nevertheless I think falling stars Meteor Falls are special
to all of us that watch the sky I have many stories of seeing a beautiful bow
lives of various colors coming down lighting up the freeway as I
was driving home I even heard one one time over a forested area near Chico
California that just really blew my mind um but you know the meteor fall makes
the sky come alive it always excites all of us when we see it light up the ground and Street week across the sky and it
really tells you that you're moving through space unbelievable speeds and
coming in contact with ancient commentary fragments and the occasional
um whatever random Cosmic debris so but that is our theme for tonight I
thought it would be uh appropriate and so we will turn our sights now to my
dear friend David Levy who starts off all the global star parties uh with uh his amazing poetry uh his stories of uh
his life and um uh you know he he is someone that has uh connected
Untold thousands of stargazers amateur astronomers uh people of all ages to the
sky and uh to show them uh you know that we're all kind of unified under this uh
you know we see we see the same sky and um so uh
I will turn it over to you David thank you so much Scott it is always
wonderful to be here and it's almost in a sense even though this is the 73rd it's almost as if it's
like the first one I just feel so special to be a part of this I have two
quotations I'd like to share with you tonight the first one definitely relates to uh to meteors it comes from
Shakespeare Richard the Second and meteors fright the fixed stars of Heaven I see thy Glory like a shooting
star fall from the basers from the firmament that is from Shakespeare and I
have one more I'm going to do in just a moment but first I would like to introduce to you someone
who is here right now a very dear friend of mine from high school we've
reconnected after what 60 years now his name is Sam morgulis
and he is here and we have finally uh been able to reconnect and he was kind
enough to agree to come on the show so if you could just say hello to everybody just for a second
hello hello got to meet everybody well thank you Sam and this is really a
pleasure Sam was a member and was a good friend of mine we were in touch in 1967
when a little incident happened at the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and
I was very nearly expelled I'm going to tell the story of that to the Montreal Center on December the
8th and xinjiang Curry may have something to say about that later it's always a little nerve-wracking when I
give that talk because I worry that the group is going to decide to expel me again over Bill
Center and I really wouldn't mind any of the other groups but Montreal is my favorite astronomy club and really that
would be quite a shame don't worry we're keeping you close Okay so we're
Thanksgiving anyway my second quotation is also from Shakespeare it is from
Romeo and Juliet and it's a famous one because it is the
only quote from Shakespeare in fact I think it's the only quotation on the moon right now
it is on the moon next to the lunar Prospect of spacecraft that carried a
few of the ashes of Gene Shoemaker after he was killed in 1997 in a car
accident and I think it's there in memory of both Gene and Carolyn
anyway it's uh from Romeo and Juliet come gentle night
come loving black proud night give me my Romeo and when he shall die
take him and cut him up in little stars and all the world will be in love with
night and pay no worship to the garnish son thank you all and enjoy your Global star
party tonight thank you thank you David thank you that's great okay
um uh up next is um is uh Terry Mann Terry uh and the
executive staff of the astronomical League put on an amazing uh event last
night their astronomical League live program which they do monthly uh but
this time they celebrated their 75th Anniversary it was just a an incredible
lineup of people and it was so wonderful to hear about the history of the astronomical league
and uh um you know I saw photographs that I had never seen before of some of the
founders of the astronomical league and uh you know to hear stories from like Chuck Allen of meeting like the uh maybe
like the first president of the league and stuff and uh um you know 75 years is that's a lot of
history and a lot of energy effort uh and creativity has gone into the league
to find ways to embrace the astronomical culture
community at large and to to inspire
people to keep going you know I think it's organizations like the
league and and mind you the league is now the and has been for a long time the
world's largest Federation of astronomy clubs over 300 clubs tens of thousands
of members um and uh you know largely all volunteer I always point that out because this is
a labor of love for them and it's wonderful that they come on every Global
star party every week uh to do our door prizes so Terry I'm going to turn it over to you but uh congratulations on
putting together an amazing event last thank you very much Scott I appreciate
that we had a great time and some of our speakers are even here with us today so I'd like to thank them all again for
being there and it was to me it was amazing to hear all of the information about all of the different organizations
that were here and the connections that we've really had during the years and
the new connections that we are hoping to make too so okay I'm going to ask three questions
and give the answers from three questions from that last star party we always start with never look at the sun
without correct filtration on the telescope on your binoculars whatever
you use to look at the Sun make sure you have the proper filters on the sun I
mean on the on the telescope now I'm going to start off with the
answers from November 9th here are the questions Venus currently
lies in the Southwest 60 minutes after sunset for observers at Mid Northern
latitudes Venus returns to about the same location in November early evening Sky every and
the answer is eight years next question is the great square is an
asterism comprised of stars borrowed from what two constellations and the answer is Pegasus and Andromeda
third question we have a lunar eclipse coming up well now it's not in 10 days
it's what in three or four days lunar eclipses can occur only when the moon is
full and when the moon crosses the ecliptic is the correct answer
and these are all of the people that sent in the correct answers their names
will be added to a list and at the first star party of the month we name the
winners for the previous month and we'll have three winners that we will name um it would be the first Global star
party in December these names will be added to that list
so the questions for tonight and please send your answers to secretary at
astrowleague.org within the large magellanic cloud is n44
what is notable about n44
second question what plans has the orbital assembly Corporation announced for 27 2027.
and again send your answers to secretary at astroleague.org
the final question what well-known chefs helped NASA pick out the winning teams
for a second phase of the deep space food challenge
and send your name uh your answers to secretary at astrowleague.org
and the last thing I'd like to say is we have another astronomical League live 13
coming up December 3rd 2021 7 P.M Eastern Standard Time and our speaker
will be Matt Penn he will be speaking about the dynamic Eclipse broadcast
initiative so please join us if you can we would
love to see you there and thank you very much thank you Terry that's awesome
uh you have uh um as always you guys come up with great uh
questions um the orbital assembly Corporation is a
really interesting project so uh even if you're not participating in this
particular contest and you should anyways but if you're not you should check into this thing because uh what
they're doing is uh really I mean it's amazing it's like science fiction come true it
is isn't it yeah right so um okay so all the way from Canada we're
we're now starting to make the global Star Party truly Global here uh we go up to Canada first uh to uh Professor
Kareem Jaffer and Kareem is from uh uh John Abbott College he is uh with the
Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Montreal Center uh he heads up Outreach
with that group and he's been doing a heck of a lot of that uh through all of
his regular programming through his classes that he teaches through
um you know attending you know finding time to somehow attend our Global star party so that's really great we're
really appreciative and he's been bringing on some pretty interesting people as well he's got a couple that
he'll be talking about so Kareem it's all yours thanks Scott and uh it's a pleasure to
be here again tonight uh I can't believe it's number 73 this has been just a blast and uh it was great with David
starting us off with a fantastic couple of quotes and uh Romeo and Juliet I
still remember when I was in grade school and having to start learning that and watching the play and then finally
getting a chance to read it for myself not because somebody told me to but because I just wanted to pick up Shakespeare and read and you get so much
more from it when you do it for yourself and that's that's what I try to bring to my students as well this idea that you
gotta open up and read these books and watch these videos and learn this material for yourself because you're
interested not because somebody else tells you to do it uh tonight we're talking falling stars and I always try
to do a little bit on theme before I go off theme and just do a check-in with the Rask and so with the leonids I
actually wanted to share with you one of the Legends as our land and Sky acknowledgment for tonight and whenever
I think of meteor showers one of the legends that Ops to my mind is a hoopa Legend from Northwestern California from
a tribe up there and their story is coyote dances with the stars now coyote was lying on the ground and watching the
stars and he saw them twinkling he was singing a dancing song and he reminded him of dancing Indian girls dancing
girls from the First Nations there and he thought to himself I want to go and visit them I want to go and see them so he walked through the woods looking for
a way to get up into the sky and spider offered to knit a web to help him and
then Redwood bent down and said I will push you up into the sky and then your web rope will latch on and you'll be
able to climb up and see the girls so off he went into the sky and he found the girls and it turned out that they
weren't just standing and twirling around but they were dancing and he said can I dance with you I have really good
Rhythm you know I'm a coyote I can keep up with you and they said you can't keep up with us we dance day and night year
after year we don't take a break you won't be able to stay and coyote said no no if you you can do it I can do it and
so they said all right well join us but you're not going to be able to keep up and so coyote dance with them and dance with them and after a couple of nights
he got very tired and he said do you mind if I take a break they said no we keep dancing if you want to stay with us
you have to keep dancing he said but I'm hungry let me have a snack and they said no you have to keep dancing because we
keep dancing and so coyote got more and more tired dropped lower and lower and eventually fell back to Earth so when
you see a shooting star think to yourself coyote got too full of himself again and thought he could hang with the
dancing girls and so that's one of the legends that uh that I learned about meteors and about uh just shooting stars
in general but I wanted to bring that up because right now when we're in the middle of a meteor shower there's a lot
for us to talk about and see I'm going to come back to that at the end before I do but first I want to do
just a little bit of a check in here with the rasc so first off at the Montreal Center we have an event
actually tomorrow night we have a citizen science series that we're starting and episode one includes a
little bit about learning about solar science and auroras from David Schumann
one of our executive my group from Jack Astro is going to be talking about the zuniverse projects and sharing some of
the student work that we've done in zuniverse and then Russell fralick our Outreach coordinator at the moment he's
going to be talking about a simple experiment to measure the speed of light in your microwave and it's a yummy experiment because you get to eat the
leftovers so that's always fun and then in a couple of weeks David Levy as he mentioned he's going to be talking
a little bit about 1967 which was a turbulent year for him but also full of
friendships that really solidified his presence at the Montreal Center and he alludes to this sometimes and it's so
good he it would be nice to just hear the entire story and all the connections and so he's going to be sharing that
with us at a members Clubhouse but as always with the Rask Montreal Center guests are welcome to join us at the
rasc we've been doing a lot lately with the James Webb Space Telescope so we actually had an event uh just recently
on the James Webb and we've been hosting a lot of webinars in this afternoon we
had an Outreach training session for our Outreach coordinators from all the centers to understand a little bit of
the toolkit that's been put together to share the science of the James Webb with the entire Canadian constituency that we
have the audience that we have but also globally and in fact last week at Astra radio
after hosting David on the Monday we hosted Natalie Willett the science Outreach individual who was chosen by
the CSA she's a professor in astrophysics and the coordinator of the institute for research on exoplanets at
University of morial and she joined us on Thursday at Astro radio to talk about James Webb and to talk a little bit
about the telescope but also about the launch now this week astral radio uh Reach Out
And Touch space is taking a break from live shows so we're actually replaying the shows so you can hear David again
you can hear Natalie again and you can uh join us for this wonderful experience where we combine music and the talk of
Science and astronomy which is just a lot of fun speaking of one thing I really love
about meteor showers is that you get to deliver astronomy and science to
completely different audiences and at different levels and as a result it's a really great time to bring youth in and
Empower them to give talks and so one of the things that we've been doing at the end of some of my terms is I recruit
youth to come and give talks about meteor showers and so we have the Geminids in December we have the
perseids in August and we also have sometimes the lyrics that we talk about in April and it's a great way for our
youth members to step up and actually start to present and get comfortable with material and one of the reasons why
it's great for the Youth is because in school they learn about the composition of meteors they learn a little bit about the color that you see from different
elements and so it allows them to connect something that they've learned in school to something that they have a
passion of in astronomy to something they can see when they go out into the night sky so no matter whether or not
the moonlight is bothering you no matter whether you have clouds as we always do here in Montreal I encourage you if you
get a chance over the next couple of nights go out look at the stars maybe you'll see a couple of nice shooting
stars in the background and you'll get to enjoy the leonids meteor shower even though it's not it's maximum that it
does every 33 years we're gonna have to wait a few more years for that but it's still worth the evening to step Under
the Stars so that's our check-in for the Montreal Center but I'm really pleased tonight to be sharing with you some
amazing Rask members from Victoria so we're going to start off with the Dominion astrophysical Observatory with
my EPO Chair for My National Committee Lori Roche and uh I talk to my students
a little bit about the conceit of humankind and the fact that you know we always thought we were the center of the solar system and then we thought we were
the center of the Galaxy well Lori is actually coming to us from a place that's called the center of the universe
so Lori's going to be joining us from there and Calvin is one of the friends of the Dominion astrophysical Observatory so he's going to join us as
well so I'm going to turn it over to you Lori all yours
ready as Kareem said my name is Laurie Roche and I am one of the board members
and one of the volunteers who work up here at what we absolutely call the center of the universe
um it is a building that is um that is uh for the public
um that is uh with the Dominion astrophysical Observatory and what I'm going to do now is actually just kind of
turn my screen around here and I'm going to go outside of this building and I'm
so glad that we're still on when it's a little bit a little bit nicer out because we've got an absolutely gorgeous
sunset here after a few days of absolutely pouring rain we had you might
have even heard it we had the British Columbia has had some massive uh
rainstorms lately but we've got just a gorgeous gorgeous sunset here today and
over on the other side of the parking lot is our fantastic Dominion Dominion
astrophysical Observatory I'm up on top of a hill over a way over in the
background you have got the Olympic mountains of the United States up in Washington and the uh the Juan de Fuca
Street and I'm up on top of a mountain now yesterday when I was up here it would it was blowing so badly that the
um that the that all of the electricity went out and in fact the road up to the
road that kind of leads into the observatory was uh closed this morning when I tried to get up here uh and we
had to take an about turn route to get up into the observatory today but this is just absolutely magnificent here so
this is our hundredth this is our our our Dominion astrophysical Observatory
that is um now uh now a hundred and well I guess it's got about 105 sorry 103
years old is uh since first light uh since we've had that
um and uh I'm going to turn this over just if I can um uh Calvin are you there well I'm
there yep hello okay uh Calvin is our is a staff member with our friends of the
Dao and he is going to give you a virtual tour that goes into the um that
goes into the Dome and into the and into the um the uh the telescope itself and
then when you when when he's finished he's going to show you that telescope and then I'm going to come back and show
you a couple of other things that are in this building including the world's largest mirror in the world for a
telescope for a little while but I'll tell you that a little bit later so I'm going to turn it if we could get if we
could get Calvin on the screen to take over okay hello everybody yes like Lori
said my name is Calvin and I'm also from the friends of the Dominion astrophysical Observatory and this is
our virtual tour uh so I'm currently looking at the Dominion astrophysical
Observatory so this is um the building that Lori was just pointing towards just on the opposite
side so if I point The View over this way and zoom in you might be able to see
the outline of it um just us blue building here so Lori was over there
uh looking at the building so this view is from the opposite side where it's uh
showing the front the big blue door on the front if I turn all the way around
uh this would be the direction of the Olympic mountains somewhere beyond there and uh downtown Victoria
so I can go into the building
and this is the bottom floor and you can see it says Dao and then the
year that the building was built 1916. and I will move over here
you can look around here is the uh we're still on the bottom
floor uh this is the pier that holds the telescope up so it actually goes all the way up through the ceiling of the of the
second floor and so the telescope is up on the second floor and I will go up these steep stairs here
and we'll see the telescope so here's the 1.8 meter Plaskett
telescope so the the pier that cement Foundation just comes up from the bottom and then the axle is here
you can even see an electric motor here and some gears and this is the plastic telescope and
it's set up just pointing directly upwards in park position you can see the Dome up top and we also have a video uh
showing how the telescope moves around so I'll just play that quickly
so there's the shutter of the Dome opening up
letting the sunshine in of course this is filmed during the day
and it's got a curtain that rolls away as well so the it's opened up
and uh listening to this thing when you're actually in the building uh it's quite loud hearing those shutters Creek
open and also watching the Dome rotate around it makes a sort of a rumbling sound as
the whole Dome rotates you can see the that it's on wheels on tracks so these are made pretty much out
of train tracks I'm pretty sure rail company is the one that uh uh set this
all up
and you can see the Dome rotating so this is all controlled uh from a
computer in the control room uh you just put in the uh the ran deck
uh and then you can point both the Dome and then the telescope as well we'll see
that move around you'll be able to see the electric motors start to turn to rotate the whole
thing around
yeah it's quite modern for page yes
um so so right here I'll just quickly tell you that this part is sort of sped up I think a little bit it's in Fast
Forward um but uh it moves pretty smoothly and very silently for the telescope and yeah
it does um it does run pretty well modern most of what you see here the actual like material is still the 100
year old um stuff uh all the parts except of course it's got a few upgrades over time
so um like the the electric motor uh and uh it being controlled by a computer
that's all fairly modern I'm sure the spectroscope that's at the bottom here
is more recent than the original one that was installed
and the wheels uh at least I don't think all of them some of them have been
replaced recently but not all of them so yeah a lot of this stuff has just been
um really well taken care of the labor of
yeah yeah and just to give you an idea of the size of the telescope
um uh Calvin is about six feet tall and he would fit if you want to just pull it
over to the to the oh sure yeah oh okay yeah yeah so I could fit I could just walk right
underneath here um yeah where the spectroscope is and then I'd I'd be able to maybe touch up
top here so I'd be able to stand underneath this and then you can see
um how much how much further up it is
about the size of the child Motors that were added were added actually quite a bit later
um John Stanley Plaskett was the person who did all the design and engineering and building of this telescope and he
didn't he didn't believe in electricity back in 1916 he did not want to put
electricity in here so everything worked with pulley systems which is uh Kelvin
has got uh has got up there so the whole thing was completely controlled with
pulley systems and um you know wound up it wound up and then all at night time the whole pulley system would come down
to make the telescope work but finally a few people did
um decide that Plaskett had to put electricity the newfangled electricity in and he succumbed and actually had
lights and put uh and some Motors were put in to help with the telescope a little bit later right right
um this this in fact um was actually in installed even for an even longer amount of time so this I
can't remember what it's called it might say here once I click on it but it basically is the part that would control
um it would help the telescope just stay locked on it would rotate with the
rotation of the earth so it would stay locked on and there this was uh oh yes a
clock drive there it is um so yeah that's the pulley system and it would rotate the telescope at the
exact speed to always stay locked onto its Target and this stayed in use until like the
70s or the 80s or something um before they just used an electric motor
that was precise enough because before then this didn't have a problem this worked there
was no need to change it out for some other kind of system until they finally decided to and I believe I recall that
some astronomers even complained that the new electric motor was not as smooth
as this clock Drive
yes please do that that hey so
um so as we as said the in one of the introductions is that this was a
um this was uh somebody could highlight me that would be great uh you can you
can also stop highlighting me and then yeah your camera's off oh oh I'm sorry
there we go let's try this but to blow up her image you can uh take me off the spotlight if that okay all right
so I'm back in the center of the universe building and the first thing I wanted to show you was the original
mirror from the telescope um I can I'm just gonna wave inside you can kind of see me inside the mirror
here and this uh mirror is 1.8 um 1.8 meters
um it was built and or it was casted in Belgium in 1913 and if anybody knows
what was happening in Belgium in 1913 it was just before the first world war and
uh and it in fact we were very lucky uh in that uh this whole casted part of the
of the mirror was put on a barge and uh I'll put on a boat to be sent over to
the um to the US um in Pittsburgh and two weeks later the
the um uh the entire Factory where this was casted was bombed and everything else
was was lost so we were very lucky because if this had been two weeks later we never would have had the we never
would have had the mirror um this uh is 2 700 uh 2 700 uh
kilograms in um sorry 2 300 kilograms in in uh in uh Mass when it was first done
it's uh over uh over a foot in diameter here uh for the entire for the entire
casting process and we actually have got still in the mirror we still have got
some of the original um uh uh air bubbles that are in the
back side of the the side of the mirror um that are there so if we ever wanted
any air from from 1913 all we'd have to do is go in there but the but the but
the um the mirror was taken to Pittsburgh where it was
um it where it was Polished by Amanda uh Mr Brashear and unfortunately there was
a bit of a problem with some of the some of the work as sometimes mirrors get to that and he we had to actually take it
back and have it redone again and it was a total of three years that it took in
order for this beer to be completely finished polished and then sent um then
sent uh by train uh to um to Victoria so on the on the bottom end of the at in
the telescope uh or sorry in the dome you saw that it said 1916. well in fact
that was when the telescope and when everything was built and everything was ready to go
um and even Dr Plaskett would even have people up to the top of the hill to kind of to to see what was going on but there
was no mirror in it until 1918. it was May the 6th 1918 that that this uh that
this telescope was brought in and had its first light and the first light was actually the first it was us was a
um was done by the spectroscope and we have a we still have that first um we
still have that first um image um on the spectroscope and it's really quite cool to be able to see it
it actually just says number one up in the top of the corner for for where for where this was this mirror was in the
telescope until the 1970s and then a new one that was made out of ceramic glass
was put in so the one that is in there now and in fact just last month it was
re-aluminized um and uh is a ready to go for probably another four or five years
um uh ready to be working the telescope even though it's over 100 years old is
still working every single night that it's clear in fact I would think if I look back outside again here that if it
clears up a little bit the telescope actually might be uh might still be used just the last little thing before we
turn it over to Nathan I wanted to show you this model because this is a very
specific a very special model for us Dr Plaskett made this model it's made out
of iron uh made out of iron and has got all the wheels for the domes and the whole thing was made in 1915 when even
before the telescope and the Dome was made here on the hill he had this made
so that it went to the uh to a Pacific exhibition in San Francisco in 1915 and
it was an absolute hit of the exhibition for people to see because he had as he had said he wanted to make the world's
biggest telescope and so here he here he has got this has been painted in the
same the same way it was and uh and it was a very a very different type of
mirror in that if you noticed when I first had it there is a hole in the middle of the in the hole in the middle
of the telescope where they where the uh the light from the secondary mirror
would come down go through the back and and have a spectroscope at the bottom bottom and that was one of the very
first ones that was ever done that was made like that many other telescopes
have had that same that same design but he was the very first one so in 1918
when this telescope was built and when it was when it was put online it was the
biggest telescope in the world for exactly six months and then the
California telescope came back online it had it had been made it was ready to go and then something happened with it they
were it took was taken offline uh Plaskett went in and said okay we've got ours ready to go and so we had ours for
about six months was the biggest telescope in the world and we're still very proud of that fact I am wearing a
shirt that says 100 actually on it um and it's that's not my age it is the
age of the telescope in 1918 when we had a very big happy birthday anniversary 100th birthday and uh anniversary for
the telescope so I'm going to just uh just uh stop
stop here because I know our time is my time is up here I think but I just wanted to let you know that the friends
of the Dao um uh friends of the Dominion astrophysical Observatory we do uh when
before the pandemic we had lots of star parties and tours up here we have a
gallery that um has uh that has a little planetarium we don't have a big one we
just have a little one uh a little one set up lots of different exhibits and we
have our very own um Rift uh Rift Oculus our Oculus Rift
um virtual reality already set up and our own meteorite that came from the Arizona crater we've got lots of things
here that uh that are for people to see we do have school tours up everything
now of course is virtual but we will be inviting people back up to the center
um very soon so we're looking forward to that so thanks for letting us uh show
show you around a little bit if you're ever in Victoria BC oh please come and visit we'd love to have you
that's great that was incredible everyone question Laurie uh someone
wanted to know the F ratio of that telescope um Calvin do you know that
I don't know that off the top of my head the focal length
sorry I sorry do you know I I don't I don't know that right off the top of my head I'd have to look it up and I could
do that and maybe put it in the chat yeah all right no problem okay yeah thank you so much as a wonderful tour
and it's uh great to see an observatory like that so yeah a really really
beautiful historical one that we're really very proud of yes and Lori did you want to mention the virtual star
party coming up on the James Arthur Space Telescope yes yes um yes we are on this
Saturday coming Saturday we are having a a
virtual star party that is uh that is part of the community Pro to the the
community events that the that Nassau and the Canadian space agency are putting on and uh we have got two people
that actually work here at the Dao at the Dominion astrophysical Observatory and the uh uh both of them are involved
with um uh the for the cycle the first Cycles in research that are going to be that are going to be used on the um uh
James Webb Space Telescope and so they're coming and giving a presentation uh maybe uh Calvin do you think that you
could put the link in um he already did oh good thanks thanks that's great good
put in the link uh for Saturday so if anybody's interested in in hearing about some of the more Canadian programs um
that are taking place that would be we'd love to have you on and that's an open it's an open Zoom for people that would
like to uh come in we're also on our YouTube channel for the friends of the Dao okay thank you that's fantastic
thank you Lori thank you Calvin that was amazing and it was a great visit out to the uh to the island there uh if anybody
doesn't know where Victoria is definitely look it up on a map they're off the coast of BC out away from
Vancouver's horrible light pollution and they get a really nice climate really
nice area uh she she actually comes out to the Eastern Area to you know to Toronto Montreal when she misses snow
oh yeah but we have had huge amounts of rain lately so we don't so just yeah
don't come out right now you can't get through the roads yes and from Lori's neighborhood we have our next uh guest
and our next guest is someone I'm really happy to have on Nathan Heller messelman now one of the things that I've Loved
about what Scott's done with the global star parties is he's had on a lot of the youth astronomers and I was really happy
when Nathan said yes to joining us because I've been enjoying his work lately and I want him to Showcase his
work to the world so Nathan tell us all about your journey and a little bit about your actual work and what you've
been doing with Sky News okay um first of all uh thank you so much for
having me um and thank you Lori for passing along the message I don't know if this was like a game of broken telephone or
something but if it was I liked the final message so yeah thank you uh anyway
um uh also thank you Lord for that presentation that was out of this world anyway
um so yeah I'll get this presentation set up how does this look is that good
that looks great okay um so yeah uh hello my name is Nathan
helner-restelman uh I am this person who likes cookies Space and Science I think that sums it
up pretty well I'm a high school student and a proclaimed nerd by everyone who knows me
uh for example I'm the kind of person who thinks about parabolic trajectories and the lift drag ratio if I'm playing
frisbee or like electrons and ionic bonds when I'm making things um
so yeah my favorite dwarf planet is Maki Maki I also love Star Wars and most notably I
draw the webcomic nerd anomaly which I'll get to later um so today I'm going to be talking
about how I got interested in astronomy and my more recent publication in Sky
News Magazine and I'll also be showing some of my favorite cartoons from my webcomic nerd anomaly I was told that
puns are appreciated so I apologize to everyone in advance uh I will try to
keep the space puns to a minimum yeah I'll try to space them out you know
um sorry that was such an empty joke
you're gonna have us rolling on the floor laughing so some people when they imagine a
science Enthusiast they picture a person who sits in a laboratory and does experiments and then eventually like
blows themselves up I almost did that when I accidentally blew up a bottle rocket right next to my face but luckily
it was only filled with air so I was okay uh people also might imagine that
science enthusiasts are boring people who love graphing numbers and have no imagination and in my experience with
science fairs that does seem to be a major aspect of putting the data together at the end so
I don't think it's the whole process though it is a solution to settle anyway no we got it we got it
uh the first thing I want you to know is um how I got interested in space
uh and one of the things you should know about me is I'm at my best at night I don't necessarily hate the sun in fact
I'm I should be reasonably thankful for the sun's existence it's just that I don't really reflect on it that much
because that's the moon's job you know it does dawn on me occasionally though
actually you know what there there are a few reasons to hate the Sun for one it's it's selfish it assumes the whole world
revolves around it yes so I really like the night uh thank goodness for the Earth's rotation it
really makes my day anyway maybe I should call it a night uh
so I've been interested in space since before I can remember um but I became really excited about it
when I was five like really excited I poured over an astronomy textbook that I
was given that year and then um later I actually decided to audit
astronomy 101 at UVic and then I took astronomy 102 and an astrobiology course
the next year and obviously I didn't write any of the exams or anything but I
was just trying to identify myself as the mega space nerd that I am today
um so in 2017 I really didn't know that much about telescopes I was actually in
search of the type of eyepiece that Rask members used okay let me explain a few months earlier
I had been at a Saturday night star party if if anyone actually remembers those
um and I had seen Saturn uh and it was like so much bigger and
clearer through that telescope than I'd ever seen it before uh and I knew that the person who had showed it to me was a
member of uh the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada so I just assumed that every member of the Royal Astronomical
Society used that type of eyepiece and that that eyepiece was specific to them so when I went to buy
um my dobsonian telescope I just asked what eyepiece do Rask members use
and I was informed that there are a few other types of eyepieces too
um so yeah after using my telescope for a few months I eventually observed Saturn as you can see in this picture
here it was just a little Dot and I realized I must have had the wrong
eyepiece um so I wanted to be part of a group of people who shared my passion for space
and the people who I suspected of having the right eye piece and that's how I became involved with
Rask and that summer I volunteered at one of the summer Saturday night star parties
and I showed off Saturn with my own version of that eyepiece that Rask members used and um in case you're
wondering I actually found out it was a five millimeter Celestron eyepiece which
I've still been using to this day so um the thing that I find amusing about
being a member of Rask is that when someone asks me if I'm part of any extracurricular clubs and I'm
like oh yeah I'm a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada in their mind they probably think that I'm
working with space agencies around the world pioneering a revolutionary scientific discovery that will win Nobel
prizes and change our understanding of the entire universe you know in reality I know that I
occasionally go up to the Victoria Center Observatory and on Mondays I meet virtually for Astro Cafe but you know I
wouldn't tell them that uh there are of course many other things I like about Rask uh it let me know that
there's more than one type of eyepiece for one and back in the day when people met for Star parties it provided a great
opportunity for me to show off the night sky and I I have I still have a mental checklist of how many people who've
stopped by have said like oh my gosh is that Saturn um
yeah I've had a great time at being a volunteer at the center of the universe which I must say is a little misleading
but it's awesome so I wouldn't change it for anything um the members of Rask have also been
incredibly supportive throughout my time as a member um so from helping me with
my various science fair projects to encouraging me to submit my work to Sky News which I'll get to in a moment and
even lending me a telescope which is kind of a Rask way of saying lending me a hand except it's literally a telescope
when I was out of Province um yeah they've just been incredibly supportive and another thing that I've
enjoyed about being a part of Rask was that it let me try out my cooking skills uh now I know what you're thinking was
there a serious misunderstanding because everyone knows the C in Rask is Canada not cookies
and I'm happy to say there was no such misunderstanding it just explains why I've never applied to be the president
of Rask Victoria I just really like cookies in space like I said at the beginning
um I have baked themed cookies for several astronomical events such as the
Mercury Transit um November 2019 and the solar eclipse
of August 2017. um I've had that passion for baking cookies even before joining Rask but
after joining Rask it gave me a place to share them at Astro Cafe which is where
we meet to present every Monday before the pandemic we met in person now I'm
conflicted actually because uh before the pandemic we met in person so I was able to share but now that
we've been meeting virtually I get them all to myself
um so the next thing I'd like to talk about is my publication in
Sky News Magazine um so I've had an eight-inch dobsonian telescope for about four years now the
day that I got it I looked at the Moon um and which is the the picture on the left here I was very impressed I guess
you could say I started seeing Stars um I loved the view I wanted to try to
capture it on camera um you know what to say it's all about the photo these days uh at the time I
just simply held an iPhone 5S up to the eyepiece and got this picture that you
see on the left um and I'm pretty sure I was like I
looked at this photo and I was like does the moon really look like that well in hindsight I think it was just a
phase thank you
so 2020 was a great year for observing Venus because it was up around the
springtime and the ecliptic appeared highest for Canada um there was also a friendly competition
among Rask Victoria to capture the phases of Venus on camera
um I was also slightly Revenge driven for missing the Venus Transit on the previous good show year in 2012.
um my lifelong goal is literally lifelong to survive to 110 to see another Venus Transit but in the
meantime and I do have a bit of time to spare I decided to put together this Venus Mosaic showing the change of
phase um that is incredible yeah thank you so much I don't think I've ever seen a mosaic
like that very nice thank you um no as you probably know Venus is
usually the easiest planet to see but near the end it got really difficult
um and when I took the final picture when it was just a thin Crescent it was only 2.8 degrees from the Sun
um for example just to give you a comparison if you hold out your hand and
stick up your thumb it's about that wide it was that far away from the Sun
um obviously observing things that close to the sun is in an analogy that I like
to use a lot like asking someone out on a date uh like if anything goes wrong no Second Chances and when you say that
it's melting your eyes it's literally melting your eyes so um I was pretty pleased when I captured
the last image and was still able to see it afterward um and I received a lot of positive
feedback about this and one of my fellow Rask members or as we affectionately
like to be called Rascals suggested that I write a draft for Sky News
um I had never done anything like that before so I typed up a short article about iPhone astrophotography and I
submitted it I wasn't really expecting a reply so I was really excited when I got a reply that they hadn't just read my
submission but they also liked it um and that's when I got to get in touch
with the editor of Sky News alendria um now one thing I've noticed about alendria is she definitely doesn't have
type O blood because I haven't seen a single grammatical error in all the 48 issues I've received so far
and after making a few edits to the article throwing in some images and adding some Jazzy Sky News formatting
over top we managed to produce this Parting Shot page which I was very
excited about um what I didn't expect was that the year afterwards there had been several
letters to the editor with positive feedback about my article and they expressed an interest in a second iPhone
astrophotography article for the September October 2021 edition of Sky
News uh this time I thought I'd include my family portrait of the solar system with
all the eight planets together um I know you're probably realizing at
this point that there's something a little off about this image because I mean like you really only see seven
planets in the sky so what is the eighth planet and as I like to say which rock have you been living on
uh so a little story about space junk uh there's a lot of it and it's not going
away um I mean space is literally a vacuum and it still hasn't managed to clean up
so yeah it's not going away uh and there's a lot of satellites up there too most of them are shaped like a regular
stereotypical satellite shape which is like a little Cube shaped thing with the two solar panels sticking out one of
them is shaped like a disco ball uh the Japanese ajisai satellite or as I like
to call it the space disco ball um the satellite is covered in reflective tiles
um and I figured that since it's covered in reflector tiles if I manage to image
it it could count as a picture of Earth so as it flew through the eyepiece at
seven kilometers a second I managed to capture this one frame which I've shown here
um which is a tiny and blurry capture of Earth's reflection on a small orbital
disco ball actually it's a reflection of a reflection of a reflection of Earth
since I use a reflector telescope oh God now the word reflection doesn't even sound like a real word anymore
um so I even thought of writing my own rendition of Carl Sagan's pale blue dot
speech um but you know I figured that the image wasn't quite that momentous so
um speaking of satellites I also imaged the International Space Station um that is remarkable
it actually worried me afterward because someone mentioned that according to Canadian law I was technically illegally
spying on someone's private property but then I realized that the ISS is
international obviously and it's in space so it's available for anyone to observe so I was never prosecuted so
yeah um as I was writing this article
I also started making the cartoon series nerd anomaly uh which is a whole other
story um so it All Began 13.8 billion years after the big bang
I was in grade seven uh basically after getting a Infamous I'm sorry famous reputation for writing
a new bed pun on the Whiteboard every day I started to uh write my own puns
separately and afterward I started making stick figure sketches and eventually I decided to put together
a collection um when I called it nerd anomaly so when I wrote this other article for Sky News
I was also like uh hey have you noticed that Sky News actually doesn't have a cartoon section and also hey I have this
cartoon series um so I um this cartoon which is called Life on
Mars was published with my iPhone astrophotography article this one is obviously just a bad pun on curiosity
killed the cat uh but in the next issue of Sky News I
had this one called lunar landmarks um published in Sky News and this one is
a joke on the lunar X um which I'll talk a little bit more about in some of my other cartoons in a
moment um basically a joke that the creators all look like O's so you got the lunar
O's as well um so more about nerd anomaly nerd anomaly
is my daily cartoon series about physics astronomy chemistry science in general
mathematics and of course bad puns uh it's kind of like the grand
unification Theory or Theory of Everything uh for signs and bad puns we
finally discovered it it's called nerd anomaly um if you haven't already seen it then
as my math teacher would have said you've left me with no choice but to
tell you about it for the first time so nerd anomaly is a place where I can
show the world that science nerds can be funny too um and all the cartoons you've seen here
so far are actually From Nerd anomaly um nerd anomaly is also a place where I
know people will actually like understand my puns because I can't tell you how many times I've told someone a
joke and they give like this default laugh it's like and then they just walk
away so um yeah it's a place where I know people will actually get them a question I
frequently get is why is it called nerd anomaly now the nerd part shouldn't be too hard to figure out the anomaly took
me a while to think of and it was carefully selected from a lot of words that could have been in its place I hate
to say it but not many of my friends are like that interested in say quantum mechanics uh so yeah the Nerds are the
anomalies a question I've been asked an unusually high amount lately is whether I believe
in the Multiverse well not really um but I do believe that the universe is
made of dark matter and dark energy and most notably dark chocolate
I prefer milk chocolate by the way um so to finish off I'd like to share
with you some of my favorite space related cartoons that didn't make it into this presentation and some of these
cartoons haven't even been released to my website yet so you're getting a sneak preview
um so this first one um is about Mars chocolate um and I made this one the Mars
exploration program released images of Earth as seen from Mars and it made me consider the other unconsidered
possibilities that might arise during a Mars mission um I would if I had the money fund NASA
to develop this chocolate brand and I think this would raise a lot more funding for a Mars mission from people I
mean me by the way a fun fact about Mars Bars they were
actually called Aries bars in the time of the ancient Greeks foreign I don't think they existed
um so this next one is also about the lunar X um for those of you who don't know the
lunar X is a feature on the moon um and so when the lunar X is on the
Terminator uh and that's like the division between light and dark not the robot that tries to kill Sarah Connor uh
it looks like an X from the Shadows cast um
and there are already enough conspiracy theories about the moon so I thought I'd just make one more you see my theory is
that the lunar X is buried pirate treasure and you see I usually refrain from making puns about the moon
and what's there like uh Apollo 13 jokes they don't really land well do they
oh too soon
um so this next one is about New Horizons there's already enough talk about
Voyager 1 leaving the solar system uh they kept saying that it had left the solar system because they kept
redefining what the edge of the solar system was the first one was when it passed the orbit of Neptune and that's obviously
when they first said it left the solar system and then it passed the termination shock and they were like okay now it's left
the solar system then it passed the heliopause and they said okay well now it's for sure left the solar system when
it passed the bow shock it it really has left the solar system this time uh so there's not that much talk about
the other space probes um I'd like to congratulate New Horizons for passing my definition of the edge of
the solar system um so on those charts the m in solar system is literally the end of the solar
system and on my solar system chart I actually mapped out New Horizons current position
and it's actually past the M as of this year so congratulations New Horizons
um so when Richard Branson went into space on the Virgin Galactic rocket-powered
space plane I think it's called Unity um I realized that they weren't actually
using a proper guidance system which of course is Siri uh you know the other
thing I didn't consider is that the distances Siri would be talking about would be much larger I think the largest
distance I've ever heard Siri say was when we were on the trans-canada highway on a road trip
um and I think Siri said something like in 530 kilometers make a slight right
and I'm like okay we're driving in 100 kilometers an hour and 530 divided by 100 is 5.3 so let's all try to remember
that in 5.3 hours uh now in space you're talking about at least those distances
so it'd actually be something like uh maybe like in 1500 kilometers make a slight down and of course you'd have to
consider up and down too and you know what it actually wouldn't really be a sudden turn it would be more like a make
a gradual down as if you were driving on a parabolic Arc because you would be anyway if anyone here ever goes on a
Virgin Galactic flight I'd love to see what Siri thinks and to finish off
um uh I've been a huge fan of the test mission for those of you who don't know
um test stands for the transiting exoplanet survey satellite and it's doing a survey on thousands of
nearby stars to search for Earth-like exoplanets um now the only problem I have with this
mission is that Tess is also the name of my sister so anything I hear about the satellite I
automatically associate with my sister um so like it's like uh Tess has
captured images of thousands of exoplanets using four separate cameras
and I turned to my sister and I was like I didn't know you liked photography I didn't ever even I didn't even know you
had four cameras uh when the heck do you find time to take all those pictures how
come NASA doesn't know about this and then I'm like oh yeah they do don't they um and then when when I hear things like
Tess was launched on April 18th 2018 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket out of
Cape Canaveral you know that's when I realized okay maybe this is the satellite they're talking about not my sister
um so the real reason I made this cartoon was to imagine a humorous scenario where the scientists at tests
think they've discovered an Earth-like planet and after getting really excited about it they run some Telemetry data
and realize they've accidentally discovered Earth I thought this would be a funny cartoon scenario but at a recent Astro Cafe
meeting I was able to talk to it with the UBC astronomy student Michelle kunimoto and it turns out this actually
kind of happened um so it turns out that the original exoplanet searching telescopes that were
put into orbit didn't take into account that Earth would intersect the light of certain Stars every year as it made a
full revolution around the Sun so they ended up with thousands of stars that apparently all had planets around them
with orbital periods of 365 days uh eventually obviously all these
planets were removed from the catalog but I personally love that an oversight like that actually happened
um so there you have some of my favorite cartoons and my astronomy backstory uh so if you really like my cartoons and
want to see more I have a nerd anomaly Instagram where I post these things and just recently I finished setting up the
Official Nerd anomaly website so that's the new home for a nerd anomaly
um I'm going to show the link for the Instagram and the website in a moment and I'll post it in the chat afterward
um so uh yeah that is my presentation um I'd like to end on the words keep
looking up because you obviously aren't going to see any stars if you look down I don't know why anyone would do that
also we're all ridiculously small because I still like to point that out every once in a while um so yeah thank
you so much thank you that's great that was
incredible oh Nathan I loved it I love the puns thank you me too
Nathan I think that uh uh You're Gonna Go Far In in science and um uh and also
maybe interpreting science you know and then uh you know if that's something that you're very passionate about but I
love the idea that you're making cartoons you know because that's something that totally makes um uh
things accessible and um uh it's it's not easy to make a good cartoon you know
so thank you thank you well
um okay so we are going to transition now um our next speaker is uh uh is naven uh
sentil uh Kumar and uh he's been doing uh uh astronomy Outreach uh work and um
he's a young astronomer uh I think he's about 12 years old and um uh his father
asked for him if he could be on the program and said absolutely so uh Nathan
do you want to get started here thank you Scott for um like inviting me
and giving me this
on a second all right so one will be talking about
my journey about astronomy and my Outreach Journey um
so big so you want uh Evan you want to bring this up to presentation mode sorry okay
okay so uh I'm going to be talking about astronomy and astrophotography Outreach
I mean even Naveen Center Kumar and my brother Ajay sunderkumar
um so he's my these are my telescopes I had
this is the Celestron extra privacy um the Celestron power saving 127 EQ
and the Celestron Cosmos 90 GT I think
so I remember all right so my first image is using the Celestron extra five weeks this was my
first image of Jupiter which was like and this these were like a teeny tiny Moon so as you can see over here
like this was like my first picture of like the moon to like an apple like
telescope and they were all using like a basic DSLR and the Nikon d51
Celestron g-ring or Barnwell as you'd call it and these are more images of the Moon I
mean they look pretty good for a first image but like I don't know
and this is my current asset photography setup it's a the optical two but I I'm
seeing here as you see in the middle is the William Optics Gran Turismo 81.
Generation 4 on top of the William Optics unit guide
um 50 millimeter telescope and then my gliding camera is my the
zwo ASI 100. Mini and then this is my DSLR an icon D5100 and then my Mount was
this guy I'll watch your easily six star Pro all right this is also the side view
um you can see a more closer image of the telescope and and then like you could see you're
in a more closer closer view of what the um camera I mean
I don't have a field flattener because that was like when I started it was just a g-ring and then later on I got my fill
platter and then next these were my upgrades I had the ace and
um DSLR to like a dedicated astronomy camera this is the zwo ASI 533 MC Pro
color cool camera um I'm still having issue with something though and then my Outreach I I had
Outreach Of The Many my locals running club in Northern Virginia surrounding Club um
and then as you see I'm at Christian Crockett Park um like at a dark sky site I'm doing
some obser I'm describing where you do some Outreach right right over here
and then this is me on the web page
great um that's a great astronomy club it is yeah
and then also um a brother my dad all getting ready for
Imaging and Outreach right now and waiting for Nightfall
and then my brother is going to talk about his Outreach his school and all those things
yes this is like this is the hello this is the world full
Galaxy chat I'm seeing my Whirlpool Galaxy and
in my classroom and and this
and two questions or in my classroom which it was 12 and the other thing was
the dura last is it the Wormhole Galaxy you don't even will it bring you
anywhere okay and then I'm gonna go and I'm gonna
go to the next slide
which is my first ever image this is unprocessed
um this is M51 it's pretty small it's like right over there
and then right and then like the surrounding Galaxy right over there
and then I I um photography
um this is like an iPhone shot of the Milky Way in like a remote on website in
like Goshen Virginia on the Boy Scout Reservation and then this is another one
like a Milky Way image at the same area also an iPhone 12 Pro Max
literally um and then another Milky Way image I'd go from
Virginia with the same equipment and that's my that's the end
[Music] any questions
well I think people are pretty much impressed the maven um am I pronouncing your name correctly
Navin or is it Navin me okay uh uh you know you have a really amazing
uh telescope setup you know configuring an ASI error uh you know progressing to
an asir plus um you know and and setting up that uh you know a refractor like that is uh uh
you know something that really uh generally you would just see a very
Advanced amateur astronomers getting involved in so that's uh you know I know that you're you're 12 years old is that
right yeah yeah and so uh that's that's wonderful and how old is your brother
only seven seven okay but he loves astronomy as well I suppose
that's great that's great and what inspired you to get involved in astronomy in the first place was uh
someone in your family or was this something that you just wanted to do
I I firstly got inspired strongly by myself I just like um
like for example like I I'd see my friends do it yeah I always look up the stars and have
questions like what's this because I'm always a question asker I'm like a chatterbox always so I don't I'd always um asked
why I asked the question what why can't I just do astronomy and then I wouldn't
ask my dad if I can get a telescope and he's like
and like firstly like in 2016 I got my first telescope which was um
[Music] and I got to do pretty like visual observing and I was pretty fascinated
when I first saw everything [Music] and then nextly I want like a like a
step further which is like um the next star Pharmacy um
I I I got to look at Jupiter and all those other things which I was pretty fascinated with two it wasn't so clear
but it was pretty good and then next thing I I went to a
I've tried an equatorial knot which is manual and a reflector yeah that was even better
because you could see more light spectrum from a reflector
it was hard to focus but I got a new experience on that and then I came even I got the next door again
and then I start and then that served as my bridge to astrophotography okay and
then I came in chapter photography and I I'm where I am right now I'm here wow well you've progressed really fast you
know that's fantastic and do you find uh do you find kids at your school really interested in astronomy or
um or not so much pretty interested some are just like
[Music] and it's your brother Ajay uh he's uh I
I have you guys both up on the screen side by side right now um what is his interest level like right
now in astronomy so this
he's just scared
he's a little shy that's that's normal well that's great um
oh wonderful uh is there anything that you guys would like to say to uh young people out there that are just getting
started in astronomy yeah we had very good time with bias codes uh I'm his dad
um we had a very good time with the boys codes troops uh shatting the Outreach
yeah we had very good events with them and I'm in a very bad counselor for for
the far out Troop yeah for astronomy yes that's great
well I'm glad that you're supporting them uh sentile and uh
um you know we really thank you for bringing them on to Global star party and they're welcome back you know so
Navin if you have uh new presentations you want to give um just get in touch you are part of the
global Star Party group at this point and um very pleased to have you guys uh
share with us tonight share totally I'll come up with more things I'll always use research and I'll
come up with more slides okay thanks for having me thank you so much that's great thank you so much for providing the
opportunity thank you thank you so much okay so we are going to
um uh we are going to go to um a 10 minute break and then we will
come back with um uh Jerry Hubble uh uh and Jessica Dwyer from Australia will be
up next Tyler our own Tyler Bowman from uh setting up in his Observatory I think
here in Arkansas well I know he's in Arkansas and I think at his Observatory and um uh and then we go down south uh
to Argentina with Maxie Caesar Nico the hammer
um and then um uh and then we go to Simon Lewis in New Zealand John Briggs
is also joining us from New Mexico which is great uh Adrian Bradley as well with
his skyscapes uh so uh stay tuned uh
stretch your legs get a sandwich and we'll be back in about 10 minutes truly Go Global tonight Scott this is
fantastic that's right that's right now we just got to get everybody to stop
having rain at the same time how's that happen I don't know Jessica was just saying that Australia has it BC
has just gotten flooded we've been having rain and snow for the last few days like flurries not snow but snow in
other parts of Canada already right it's nice here on the east coast of the United States
Jerry rubbing it in a little hard to say Jerry an hour ago online this is us this is awesome it's
been it's been beautiful this past few days got up to like 76 degrees
Fahrenheit wow pretty warm you know and we've already had a day down or a night
anyways down to about 28. so are you gonna have uh good do you have good skies in the forecast for the
lunar eclipse of course somewhere well I'm asking for Jerry because he's
got the clean Skies now I have to see I'm going to look at the clear sky chart I've got it up here let's see what it
looks like so that's on that's on Friday or Thursday night right early morning Friday morning yep Friday morning uh
yeah of course I have to share this but there's a block of clouds during that
time and it's clear on either side I'll throw it I'll show it when I come up right here on there's that cartoon
Nathan might know this one there's a cartoon out about uh you know meteor shower clouds uh fantastic uh you know
lunar eclipse clouds and then amazing cloud formations clear skies yeah yep
hey uh it's Adrian I'm on the road
um about let's see what lens can I use for
DSLR I think it's for night photography start wide angle because it's easier to
get stars with a wide angle lens 14 millimeter 17 even 24 millimeter if you
you have to use a tripod if you don't have a tracking Mount then definitely go
with higher isos and you can get stars in as little as 10 seconds
um something around 10 or 15 seconds and that is your starting point so I think for Jeff Weiss
um be sure to look into a wide angle lens if you get a you get another lens
um like a zoom lens or something with a higher um
with focal length you're trying to you're doing wide field classic astrophotography and you'll need a
Tracker so so there's the answer to that and good evening gentlemen can you see this
dedication he's on the road he calls in and he's answering questions in the chat yeah
yeah and I saw him he said you're welcome Jeff um
just to let everyone know during the break I have I think I'm a couple of
images away from um maybe being considered from my Rask certificate for Whiting
now the problem is it looks like I'll be waiting until Friday because I let him know you know that forecast is for
clouds I'm going to prepare to drive up to four hours away to try and get
something for the uh 97 lunar eclipse since the Pleiades is next to it I'm
curious to see what I can get but I know I can I have a wide enough angle lens to
have the pilities near the moon I'll show one of those images later tonight when I set up and get in front of the
computer but um Pleiades are going to be much closer to the moon so one of the things is a
deep Sky object next to a moon or a planet we're gonna nail that one with this
upcoming lunar eclipse and there I'm sure there will be some other fantastic images of it
um there will be some where you can it'll be dark enough to get enough data
to stack the Pleiades so that you see the nebulosity around it and slap in a
uh it'll be a composite photo but it'll it should be a beautiful photo and if
I'm hoping to get it I know there will be some other uh top gastro photographers going for a
similar look so it's going to be beautiful one way or another when we get done shooting this image
it's great framing for the lunar eclipse uh color me I want to see your pictures
and I'm going to be watching the virtual telescope feed because right now for us it's looking well it's been cloudy all
week it's looking like it's going to stay cloudy but just today they updated the forecast and we might get a little
pocket of clear skies sometime around the max so I'm hoping I can get out and take a picture or two
that would be yeah and we should be able to do
a long exposure like a 10 second for the lunar eclipse 10 second exposure
um 97 is darn close to full but um your ISO could probably range somewhere
between 800 1600 and you should get a pretty good shot of at least all the stars of the
Pleiades and the eclipsed moon with that orangish color in there almost it was
nice last night during the 75th for the astronomical League Alan Dyer did an
entire he did 45 minutes on everything you would want to know about photographing the lunar eclipse it was
really well done and it's on their YouTube channel if you get a chance I don't know if you'll take a look at it
yeah yeah I'll take a look at it and see how far how much more
um I should consider because that's my plan going in but I think that'll uh that'll prepare me for
uh oops that didn't work what do I do now and just so that you're not just taking my word for it Norm agrees with
me I see it on chat he agrees that Alan did a great job so there you go I've got I've got valid validation here for the
chat yep all right well that's definitely something for me to take a look at and
uh combining with what I think will work if I'm close great if I'm way off the
mark then don't listen to me we're always listening to you man your your
work has been awesome I and I enjoy getting out and getting it
some of the the tough part is when there's clouds and that's one of the images I got
you've already seen that image it's a gorgeous one though yeah and it didn't look like anything was gonna happen how
I'm going to relate it to Falling Stars I'm not sure because it was falling rain and not falling stars but the image made
it presented itself and I happened to catch it so it's well I think if you
strain your imagination behind one of those dark clouds I'm sure there was a meteor you just didn't see it
you're right you're absolutely right I think I'll I'll go with that later tonight I'll I'll spin it up one way or
another now I do see Nathan go ahead Kareem no I was saying I did
you see Nathan still here I'm not sure if he's still there Nathan are you still around
uh sorry uh yeah I'm still here what sort of stuff do you like photographing uh you've shown us your planets and then
the phases was just gorgeous but what do you do some of the deep Sky objects as well
um well oh sorry one moment no worries
well the um the Deep Sky objects I mean I really like to look at them um they're a little hard to capture with
a phone yeah because phones aren't really able to capture that much light
um so I really like Imaging planets um but I do really like looking at Deep
Sea objects too um I just don't really image them no worries look at you know observational
side is is still my favorite I go out and I don't take any equipment with me other than the telescope and I just sit
down and enjoy a few objects at night if I get a chance yeah hey
hello yep okay hello everyone and I think
you can do for astrophotography with a cell phone that's all we're going to say
so what advice do you have for him for deep Sky objects with the cell phone well basically a you need to get a phone
that allows you to take pictures uh more than
10 or 20 seconds and if more is great and also
get a an ISO for maybe 800 or
1060 uh depends of the object but uh
you can do for example if you want to do some Global clusters you don't need more
than 10 seconds and if you want to do some nebular
nebular City pictures and maybe yes you maybe need more exposure but
you can still do it remember that once upon a time
you even think of think about that
[Music]
well hello everybody I hope you enjoyed your short break there um we are uh uh we've had a wonderful
lineup of speakers so far a lot of young astronomers here with us uh which is uh
you know I think makes everybody happy to see um up next uh we are going out to uh uh
to the east coast um or Eastern Area not not all the way down to the coast uh with Jerry Hubble
from The Mark Slade remote Observatory Jerry hi Scott hi everybody good to see you
that's so so earlier today I was talking about on the program uh that I was on
with Scott we were talking about the tools I used to observe the Moon and uh I know this the Moon is
everybody's friend right everybody loves to see the bright full moon out there uh you know hogging the view right
basically you can't see anything else but the moon so you might as well look at me
anything that we could see in the sky that's right so look at me look at me as far as it's the moon that's right look
at me look at me on the moon right but I always love looking at the moon
that's one of that's one of my favorite if not the favorite object I have to observe so I I get the best of both
worlds that's another pun I get to look at Deep Sky objects when
uh when they're out and then when they're not out I get to look at the moon so I think everybody should to learn to love
and look at the Moon that's the way I think about it um here here
right plus plus it's if you're ever
if you ever dream about space and you really want to be out there that's the
first place you're gonna go so you might as well get interested in it that's right
that's right so let me share I'm gonna share my The Observatory
uh window right now I've got a live view of the Moon that's what you
see right there with sharp cap and just to give you an idea this is what the observatory looks like and I've
got another still picture of the Moon I took earlier so you can see it um
telescope now now this is a very this is a zwo webcam that we have it's actually
a deep Sky camera that we turn into a webcam and you can see how bright it is in the
observatory with the full moon or nearly full moon shining through the slit
when there's no moon out it's really dark and again this is this is a three second exposure so you can see that the
moon really takes over the sky um
so I've got the telescope trained on the moon and I was talking earlier about a
tool that I used when looking at the moon this is the this is the sharp cap view of the moon
so one of the questions that we talk about is how do you how do you know what what you're looking at on the moon how
do you know what craters are what so people typically know the really famous ones like for example
this is Tycho which is nearly one of the brightest craters on the moon and there's another small crater up here
that everybody can see it's called aerostarcus and my my dogs decide to bark whenever I'm talking so
that goes on
um for you right right and then and then
you got Copernicus here which is really famous so I use a program that's called uh virtual
Moon Atlas and uh it gives you a much nicer view
it's like it's a good Atlas to figure out what you're looking at so for example aristarcus is up here
um and I'm gonna I'm gonna get in pretty close so and then I'm going to zoom up on our
on our picture of aristarchus that's probably a good view right there
and it's one of the one of the newest craters on the moon it's really fresh that's why it's real bright because it's
it's uh it threw up all this fresh material
when the impact occurred and it's lighter and then when as time goes on as
millions or hundreds of millions and billions of years go on then the lunar surface becomes darker
after all the impacts from the micrometeoroids and and cosmic rays and things
so let me I'm going to zoom in I'm going to see if I can do this I'm going to zoom in to aristarchus
actually I'm going to start by changing the size of the region of Interest
found that and oh it so happens that I'm nearly
there see it right there now I'm going to zoom in
a little bit and see if all right so now you can start to see
now this is a live image and this camera is set up it's not it's not a
it's not a planetary camera it's a long focal length it's not a long focal length scope but this is my astroscope
that well you can see it takes a full full-size image of the moon right so it's it's actually it's a one degree
field of view on this camera but you can see I'm zoomed in quite close actually I'm going to go in a little bit
further uh so you can really start to see there's starkas is right there and then
you can see the other crater behind it let me go to the uh so that's Herodotus and aristarchus so
you can see those clearly eroticus is right there and heires
darkness is right there and aristarchus has got a plateau and you can just barely make it out I don't know if you
can see it if there's enough contrast to make out the plateau uh and then there's also a reel that you
really can't see there but you can see um on this image right here
Schroeder's real or Schroeder's Valley is what this is called and and this is this whole complex is
located on a plateau um so let's so let's look at the details on aristarchus so aristarchus is 24
miles as a crater that's 24 miles in diameter 40 kilometers
so you can see even with a simple backyard telescope
that's 25 miles across you can see that much detail now typically you would take
a video of the lunar of the Moon and then you would use software like registax to stack it and bring out
the full detail of these of this image uh that you were able to Cape that you
were able to capture and um I'm not really going to demonstrate that tonight but I wanted to just talk a
little bit about uh the Moon is your friend please
observe me [Laughter]
don't don't curse at the moon when you see it out just because you can't see your fancy galaxies and all your little
planetary nebula nebula [Laughter]
because nobody nobody lives on the moon right now everybody lives in the Galaxy so don't so don't worry about the moon
as far as living beings but just know that it's there and it's there for you to visit one day that's right
that's right you'll be taking a vacation there that's right that's right
yeah and once you take your vacation there then you can go after your faint fuzzies that's right then you go visit
The Other Side of the Moon away from the Earth and you can see all the galaxies you'd ever want to see
okay well naked eye on that note
on that note I think we'll go all the way down under to Australia uh with uh
Jessica uh Dwyer who um has been on our program before
um and uh she uh she actually used to work here at explore scientific which is very
cool uh and uh but she went down down under and uh her her life I think you
probably love Australia what do you think about Australian Skies Australia has been incredible
um I have had such a good time I've been here for about three years now uh three and a half give or take
um and the southern Skies have been unlike anything else I really had this moment where I got down here I was like
oh my gosh I have no idea what's up there but it was like a whole Blank Slate there's so much more to see and
learn and it's been beautiful it has been very rainy though I'm part of the
rain all over the world that's probably my fault because of my
jealousy I sent the rain to you I'm sorry I'm thinking somebody must have bought a
very expensive telescope and asked to give us all rain you know it's directly proportionate somebody's bought a huge
telescope and we're all paying for it at this point from the Northern Hemisphere yes
the James Webb Space telescope's getting ready to launch so
Cloud on that day that's right it is a completely it so
um with that being said we've also been locked down for quite a long time here we haven't had a lot of movement uh and
living in a bigger city than I've ever lived in coming from Arkansas which was very nice shooting stars I think I used
to take them for granted because you would just see them really all over the place
um and now living right smack dab in the middle of Sydney I haven't seen them at
all so um again living and having this bubble put around me I could only move about
five kilometers which is what 2.7 miles for my my Americans uh so we just had
this bubble and I've been doing lunar work so I agree with Jerry uh the moon has been my friend that's been the only
friend I've had this entire year it feels like uh but we had a fantastic so
we had a flower Moon we had a lunar eclipse flower Moon super moon one of
those triplet where it just all came together perfectly and we had a fantastic view of that I think I can I
thought about sharing my screen here let's go so we've got share
can you see oh nice we had yeah so we had that come together that was pretty
perfect um there's also a local Southern Sky tour guide here
um and I just kind of coupled up with them and and we all went to the Centennial Park which is pretty much
like Sydney's Central Park um and it was within my bubble so we got to to have that so I'm very excited to
have another lunar eclipse coming up I think it's happening early in the night for us it's about 8 P.M Sydney time so
sometime in the morning for you guys um no we also so I wanted to talk
um a little bit about an exciting project down here called The Huntsman project
um this as the name suggests is a telescope brand solely by Massive spiders
our massive yeah so we have this array uh which if you've seen the dragonfly
array up uh put on by Yale I believe it's in the New Mexico Observatory
um this is dragonfly inspired not quite as big as the dragonfly but it's got 10
Canon lenses uh they're the 400 millimeter telephoto lenses uh but when
they're all stacked together like this you get a massive surface area a massive aperture but a very very fast speed
um so these all together I think they're clocked down at like f 1.4 something
really low like that but it's the equivalent of a half a meter telescope
um aperture sizing um let's see so all together they also
will have the Celestron rasa um put on there sometimes just for fun it feels like but
um at the end of the day it's solely designed to do really really faint stuff they are teaming up with
um and looking at the uh the test information that Nathan touched on earlier uh so the the transiting
exoplanet survey satellite will say hey there may be an exoplanet here and these
guys will be trained just to see those really faint differences and see if they can take a look and get some more of the
data on on exoplanets um so exoplanets faint anything
um and it's all spidery uh here's a photo of it with the rasa attached as
well so rasa up top up here and five of the ten telephoto lenses all together
um the fastest thing I've ever seen here is the dragonfly though
um that's 24 lenses in total all together with the dragonfly up on the Northern Hemisphere uh I got the specs
on this one and just pulled them up I've got them so the dragonfly
um is the equivalent of a one meter diameter refractor with a focal ratio of only F 0.4 so not even F1 it's lower
than that and and just absolutely egg yep I'm sorry so I guess the cameras
they're not aligned with each other they're all covering a portion of the field and they integrate the data into one big image is that correct you're
exactly right Jerry so it's super wide Fields another benefit and you can have a composite image just with a massive
portion of sky on there so not only can you get that faint detail but a huge
chunk all at once you're exactly right
um what oh and here's the siding Springs Observatory it's about a seven hour drive from where I'm at in Sydney uh
which again too far to drive this year unfortunately but I really want to get
out there uh see this for myself I've been you know in talks with the the guys over at McCory uni
um and just helping them with their cameras they've got some zwo 183 monochromes on the back and uh just
helping them and any questions they've got helping with the rasa and stuff like that so I want to physically visit their
Observatory after hearing so much about it and helping them as best as I can from all the way over here in Sydney
um but it's it's definitely been a little bit of jealousy I want to go out to some Dark Skies as I've been trapped
Cityside for this entire year it feels like
right but that's been uh definitely what what
I've been up to um that's Australian astronomy right now it's all had to be done from Sydney and
and that is all that I've been up to yeah uh Jessica you mentioned that you
guys are are have been in lockdown or I mean what's the situation are you unable
to travel at this time or is that uh kind of prohibited now uh so October we hit a huge
milestone and we've been all released out and and I've got some big trips planned including coming back to
Arkansas so hopefully I'll see more shooting stars there but now yeah right
very excited to be released from all the lockdowns and uh but and that's been just about a month or two now so I'm
planning some trips out to some dark sky sites I'd love to go out to kuna bear brand we've got the parks Observatory
that I have only spoken with people who work there I'm so happy to be able to speak with them on the phone but every
single time they're like we've got to get you out here and I'm like I know I have to come out there there's so much astronomy down here
um that I still have I mean I haven't even touched the bottom of all of it yet but
um it's been so good just learning and seeing everything the the deep space down here is fantastic we've got uh
Omega Centauri cluster I still to this day it's my favorite cluster in the entire world I didn't think that I was a
cluster person until I saw Omega Centauri [Laughter] um
magellanic clouds uh just everything's so new it's still new down here you
could spend your entire life down here and still not see half of it it feels like so I've been very blessed to see
both northern and southern skies and and they're both great I can't complain
wonderful well Jessica thanks very much for uh coming uh on the global star
party with us what time is it there now we're looking at about one in the
afternoon so 1 p.m right now or 10 minutes off one yeah time for lunch
and you're in the future you're in the future you're tomorrow you're not today right today is Wednesday yes
I'm sorry to say you may still be looking at Clouds tomorrow I don't have it's not in the crystal ball for you
just yet well great okay all right Jessica thanks very much
uh party sometime in the future for another Australian astronomy report so that's
cool yeah um uh I didn't know Zoom was a time
machine [Laughter] lottery numbers are
right I'm listening just kidding okay well I'm next here is um uh Tyler
Bowman Tyler is uh um heading up our customer service department here at explore scientific uh
he is one of our resident astrophotographers um and he is the host of focus on
astrophotography which we run on Fridays uh usually except for this weekend so or
this this coming up weekend and maybe next weekend too because of Thanksgiving so but uh anyhow uh Tyler this you're in
your are you in your Observatory right now if that's what you want to call it yes
um it's my he she mainly he she or he should
um I've I've bought I purchased the shed a cup about less than a year ago I
finally got it set up I don't have a camera that I can show you all yet it's coming
um but I have to kind of poke at Jerry a little bit because it's fun to poke at
Jerry astrophotographers don't like the moon because we can't see our distant faint
fuzzies um but at least that's why they have narrow Bandit narrow band so and that's
what I was wanting to show everybody today is even with a almost full moon I
can still get Imaging done um excuse me so what I'm Imaging tonight is
the uh I believe it's called the milot 15 which is in ic 1805 or the heart
nebula so I'm doing oh it helps if I actually do a screen share
that's what it would help to do stand by I've never done one of these before universe live broadcast of uh
first
yeah so now there we go everybody can see it can everybody see it yes perfect
so I use the eagle um the Eagles basically kind of like a Nook computer I'm able to remote into it
I'm sitting in here sitting at at work when Scott's making me work long hours I
can still get Imaging done um so again I'm Imaging them a lot 15 which
is again an IC 1805. I'm taking uh my light exposures and hydrogen Alpha at
900 seconds I'm trying to get at least 40 on the stack I'm probably gonna go
with a Sho palette but as of right now that's what the image looks like
at 900 seconds and you can definitely start seeing some
of the heart around the area but I'm mainly wanting to focus on this particular object here
oh scope that I'm using is an explore scientific FPL 53 140. the native focal
length on the 140 is 910 I'm just using a standard field flatter for it and this
is the main image that I'm loving so much um again I'm trying to get 40 then I'm
going to stack it and see what I can get I've worked on so far uh the Andromeda same telescope
but it is with a full-frame camera now you can notice that there are elongations in the stars I have to tweak
the field flattener a little more but I can at least get in the full frame this is a luminance filter at 120
seconds so I can definitely start making out some of the dark nebulae here and in
here dust Lanes yes and yes the core does look a little
blown out but it will definitely calm down once I get the processing done um
and the beauty part about having this particular equipment set up that anybody can remote into it
and what I mean by that is um Jessica or cherry or even Scott can
if I give them a certain login credential they can control my whole setup and they can image whatever they
want if they're having terrible skies at their place or if I'm having great Skies here they can image this thing does auto
focus routines it does guiding as well which my guiding is not the best because
we are getting a little bit of a high cloud in the area and the moon doesn't help either
um so because that Moon's wanting to say look at me look at me which I don't want to um
I'll be there in a minute buddy again sometimes I get a visit from my
little one who's my little four-year-old he likes to come visit um oh I didn't mean to get out of that
so this is what I'm mainly concentrating on what are you doing so there's a question Tyler uh before
the account you're using say it one more time Scott they want to know
um Mike overacker wants to know which Mount you're using uh right now currently I am using the cem-60 for my
optron that's what I'm currently using
um but hopefully this will turn out because everybody always says that I never produce images so here you go I'm
producing an image now you're producing an image so we'll probably see a finished version
of this maybe in a couple weeks I imagine uh yes in a couple of weeks
um I'm wanting to get a little bit more I gotta get out of my screen there we go
um definitely wanted to get a little bit more data acquisition on those uh the easiest Parts taking the pictures the
easiest part processing it is the hardest okay
and then I gotta hurry apparently daddy duties is calling um but no guys and Scott I I really
appreciate you guys what you do the Outreach and everything almost done
you're welcome Nathan it does kind of make me Unstoppable doesn't it
laughs
I got nothing by Tamba the discoverer of Pluto that's bad yeah you got to learn
about that so next time you come on you need to talk to David Levy about
his panology so because he was like one pun after the other so
that's that's what I got hopefully I can actually produce an image um for you guys and then maybe I can
actually become more uh present here on these star parties um because I know I I want to
um so I can kind of inspire the future generation to get out there and actually
take some images of the stars um even if it's with a cell phone because you can literally take an image
with a cell phone Mike Wiesner does it and it's amazing and he can get some great Galaxy shots oh yeah Maxie is
another great example of somebody who's done a ton of deep Sky uh cell phone
astrophotography so yeah so I'm gonna get him so he doesn't Rock the day there
we go there we go well Tyler heard that you have uh you have family responsibilities right now but I really
appreciate you came on for a few minutes we will uh transition over we'll go from
Arkansas all the way down to Argentina uh to uh Maxi filari's our uh the guy
that did all those amazing astrophotographs with a torn apart uh
smartphone so Maxie hi everybody good night uh well thank
you again for inviting me and it's a pleasure to be here of course there's a lot of people
tonight with us so basically what I want to talk about is
what we did last a week because we we
met with some a high school uh young
people from him from chili from three different schools and we met in the what
we call the the the parque de silos the southern
Skies Park in my city and
because there was a class that there was a teacher that presenting some kind of
astronomy and you know they never saw it
the moon or planets through a telescope and they are 16 17 or 18 years and
you know it was a um a very good
exploration because they of course they they are young they they
want to to hang out and and everything but when you
uh when you um tell them what you you are seeing and what it is uh they they
listen the yeah and that's surprised me so let me share my screen
uh okay do you see it yes great
so this is a kind of well this is my equipment a little one
this is a maxuto here I was using a a Barlow and a 25 IPS and I
think here we're watching Jupiter uh in this picture I I'm behind this
young man and there's another one well this is a
dobsonia that we that that Armando sandanel builds a
by hand a couple years ago and
well here's me again because I was uh pointing with my laser
where where are we pointing because they only saw in the at this time the moon
but now I I say more down there is a planet there's no there is not a star
so of course there was a families that they that came to the park
to to to to to have a good time with those skills and of course they they are
very curious to to see what we see so and and you know I I felt like like they
have a little fear because they asked can I can I watch what you're seeing of
course you can why not that's why we are here
exactly and and there are some young
kids that say uh you know my teachers sent me that the Moon is are satellite
and they are there was a very surprising and
and of course I I I I'm glad that the the the teenagers
are still involved in this kind of a
a well uh meetings and an astronomy of course there are there was too much
taking matters chatting telling jokes and everything but there are another ones that they are
really curious and and of course that everyone's to to ask what we do and what
we are seeing and they are invited
this is a a photo taking uh of a up in the in the
some area or here's me with my my scope and and
some teenagers here's another one and they of course they are like I said they
are chatting they're taking matters but it was a really really good night it was
this the last Saturday I think uh well this is another one
well he's me I I think I was watching Saturn and you know
um they are when they saw Jupiter they see oh is surround you can see some lines
and I tell them they are big really big storms and they don't they don't work
very impressive but when I pointed to Saturn they they really say whoa man it have
rings you know and they say it looks like when you see in a
book yeah but you're seeing it with your eyes and and that was standard and well
like I say we we have a we have a good
time and maybe the next 70 it is sorry
for the numbers the next um 27th uh the Saturday
uh maybe I will be with if of course is
the weather helps us I will grab my my entire
equipment with my a Newton my deep Sky camera and my notebook and everything
because we want to uh share with these people of course
anyone is invited that to show the Deep
Sky objects that we have above our heads maybe m42 maybe some galaxies and you
know we have some light pollution but it's a will help with the camera you can
see it and of course I I said we are pointing to this place right now you're
seeing and a Galaxy for example
and this is a taking pictures with a cell phone of this one of the kids
because I I went with a a holder for a cell phone to
and when we when everybody saw the moon and the planets I say Okay who wants to
take pictures to the Moon and in this time there there wasn't too many young
people because they are a understand
they are the tire and they are still chatting so but there's another one who
say oh I can take a picture of course you can I that's why I I'm having this holder so let me put your cell phone
let's uh you have to to get a precisely with the with the eyepiece and the the
camera of the cell phone uh but you can do it and when they see that when they
saw a the entire Moon a very brightening but when I touch the
the screen and it gets all the shapes and you and then you see the craters
they say oh my God I'm I'm having a really good picture of the Moon and of
course I get so much they they can take the the X the lunar X that shows a
couple minutes ago Nathan and they they are really surprises
and well also what I what I want to share
is a what I was doing yesterday now I went I came back from work
and and I was taking mate with my girlfriend and I say okay honey
in an hour I will go outside hey where you go I'm going to do some a storm
chaser chaser so because uh to uh to the southeast it
was a forming a storm and I want to do some pictures with the
sky also and you know I in I was taking up for for example
this picture because it was maybe in one minute there was some
30 like lightings and they were very very fast you can see the the the rain
down here and this was going to the east beautiful
and I I was only myself having a good time clearing my mind
watching this it's a big storm a passing by with the moon with the well the the
the mosquitoes was really annoying but uh I I I really love to to watch the the
storms you know and of course uh I I was
doing some animations of taking pictures you can see this
a I I don't know how to say in English the song well you're seeing this
this yellow uh that's I think we call those lightning bugs
exactly from the summer and there's a lot of lighting bugs wow that's good
really a lot but that was magical very bright look at
that mm-hmm also well uh here I think there's a
light lighting just a touching ground
and well uh of course I was I I want to do
some animations uh with the magogenic cells
I took pictures and I think it was from here
I'm going to put it more faster I think
you can see how it moves and how it rotates
let's put it back a look here
and here oh the large and small magellanic cloud
yeah you can see how it moves yeah and also with the storm here you
can see oh the lightning box and some lining of the the song that in this
case was really far away and then I went more uh more far away
from this place to taking pictures again so this storm you know
here's the you can see this light is the national route five
and I was a a couple of kilometers but it doesn't
it doesn't have any problem and when I was taking these pictures particularly
I I turned to the uh to my backside and I
saw there was another storm coming to where
I was so I did this video that I want to show you
I think is uh yeah this
no sorry this it was before sorry it wasn't no well I I didn't do it yet
uh well let's do some the animation
it was in the yeah it started here yeah when I saw this it was really shiny
and here's for example Jupiter and when you start to see it
it's come really far fast and then uh the the storm they started
to decrease the the potentially and there was an any more lighting so I
pointed again to the to the east and this is what I get here I did the
video and you can see this Orion but down here
is the storm that was taking pictures more earlier oh
the The Crossing back it's
and you can see how it rotates and it starts to comes up
here's series star Beetlejuice the later Maria that we call
the the Royal Belts the the three Maria's because uh that was the from
Columbus the de Nina the Pinta and the Santa Maria
the worst their boats and Columbus came to America
this is another story um well this is my little presentation I
hope that ah sorry sorry I want to show to Nathan if he he's here
uh these pictures that I took was with my cell phone that I did in 2000
19 to the lunar eclipse that we have in January
you can do astrophotography and everyone that tells you nuts is wrong
because today we have a really good technology
inside of our pockets so uh thank you and I hope that you like my
little presentation thank you thank you very much we did like it excellent presentation Maxi storm
chasing you're adding that to your uh yeah see when the you know when clouds come up you know like the moon clouds
can ruin your fun for deep Sky photography yeah that's why I I have to
say yeah I had to say okay I didn't go out we have them on also I I don't do
this coyote when we have Moon and I say okay now I I have to to clear
my mind so yeah yeah
that was a that was a great presentation uh thank you I think you're a great Pioneer for the iPhone
astrophotographers of the world I think uh some people might think that iPhone astrophotography is a little phony but I
think that that's not great absolutely not and I'm using a Huawei
and I like about this in December of 2016 17. I finally it had to
to in December yeah three four years it's going to to and I honestly I'm
still using you know I can do uh pictures with the the format that uh nef or raw
format and and I can do exposures like 30 seconds
and 3 000 and 200 ESO is there's a lot and it's a
four-year-old cell phone today with an iPhone you can you can do
anything I started to follow you in Instagram if you want to to well my my
is my personal Instagram is open to everyone and also I have pictures when I
started and I this picture with myself on the that's why what what I have in
that time today I have well like a couple months ago I I could
upgrade to a a deep Sky camera and it
was I have a a huge equipment but with simple
equipment and also a legal that and maybe I don't know is here he's doing
astrophotography with a planetary a camera taking pictures to the Galaxy
without guiding and without motorizing he's doing with his back and also and he's
having a dobsonian and if anyone's
maybe that they they say no no you can do it no you can do it
maybe it's more harder but that's the
the the satisfaction that you have to to say I did it
I here's the results so and I I was I
was uh talking with a Kareem Murray earlier anyone that have some questions
uh and if you want to to ask me if I can
tell you the answers it will be my pleasure because a nobody oh well I
there are so many persons that say okay you can do this but you can do that and and then start to figure it out but it
was seeking for myself and and that's like I said that was the the
really satisfaction that you have when you when you start from really down to
doing step by step you really enjoy the travel today if I go if I look back
I say oh I did all this maybe it will be more shortly by now I did all this and
that knowledge uh makes me feel more
happy that I really did great wonderful
well actually may I ask Matthew a question a question we need to move on yeah very no problem hi Maxie I I was
really interested actually just in the little wee tiny thing you just said about the three stars
oh the three stars in Orion um is that something that is still is
still kind of told to people today I mean yeah you know I remember one time
that a little kid uh itself to her mom
because I we are we were in the southern
Sky Park and say Mommy I want to see the the three Maria's with the with my
telescope whether it's a telescope and I say you know honey you can see the three
together because we have so many uh soon uh we can see one and then we can see
another and then we can see another but when she wants to see the three at the same time you know in that case you need
maybe a binocular yeah and are are they individual like one is
the Santa Maria and the other one is the Santa Ana I mean which one is which
yeah we have a well Orion we we're seeing upside like we see in the
northern the sky and we call like
Santa Maria in that order because uh that's was the the ships from Spain
Spanish ships close when Columbus came to America and in that order the Chinese
the another one the medium the Pinta and the another the bigger the Santa Maria
the holy Maria I I hadn't heard that before that was that's it's lovely I
really like um I'm gonna pull that one in for sure when I thought thank you
yeah you're welcome great well folks Maxie thank you very
much um up next is Cesar brolo from Buenos Aires
oh how's it going down there fine fine Scott how are you yeah good hey by the
way Maxie it was nice to I can tell you're much healthier now uh you're it seems like your cold is almost gone
uh uh my my sorry what I I didn't know you had a cold before ah yes my is yes
I feel much better thank you but Cesar umbrello is uh an enthusiastic
uh Optical uh uh fabricator he he's made
his own telescopes from a very young age uh he works at uh Optica siraco uh where
they make they sell telescopes but they also make eyewear and um uh he is uh uh
also someone that's very passionate about preserving uh the artifacts of
astronomy in Argentina uh they're very involved right now in trying to re
reclaim a uh aging Observatory complex and
um uh he loves to do astrophotography from his balcony and
show other people how to use relatively modest equipment to make great images
from home so uh Cesar thanks for coming on again yeah it's got it's a pleasure really uh
be here in in the global Safari uh association with an excellent a lot of
excellent presentations of maxillary uh Tyler
um really uh it's every night is a pleasure to share some some image with
that with the group and with the people with the audience and
um really well last Saturday uh I I had some of uh some uh
some fun with the telescope my small telescope in the balcony uh with an
excellent at the same time that Maxi was in the in the uh
do you do you make the third party in
Friday or Saturday uh last weekend yes in the park in the
plaza no it was it was um no it was Thursday Thursday okay
Thursday yes uh well I I used the telescope on uh I don't remember love it
was I think that was a Saturday it was that no it was the same night
absolutely because I I started to text to Scott to to Maxi uh well I don't have
the the WhatsApp through Adrian if not I can I like to to take the pictures
um before uh before Megan put the pictures
in Social Nets I prefer send by WhatsApp to my friends
and and I can share some of those images right now unless you you've got yes
yes yeah yes
uh to Discord but another in another way uh enjoying that gelato with my family
do you see that on Sunday yeah there was not of astronomy
well let me share if I can
let me uh you can you can see the the screen
yes well this is the equipment uh that I used
uh uh it's a maxutoff cassette rain uh five into telescope
um here what is impossible to see uh Symone camera it's a planetarium camera
but with um now the cameras uh most of it of the new
one cameras uh have a back illuminate
um sensor and this was make a a much better
quality process to have um to have a better image to to to
really have the option to to get something that we can get uh easily if
we have a good Optics uh we can make a better work in in our planetary match
um first of all I was again amazing with the Optics of the telescope
that I use is an extra scientific magnetov telescope over uh ex's 100
Mount and here you can see the moon and
Jupiter Jupiter and here I put again the
the last picture of who Peter that I took in a live Global surprise
uh maybe five weeks ago and in a night
that was really really a very how do you say very
with a scene really strong with turbulence
um but last night we I I couldn't I could sorry
I I have a uh get a really great image
let me see if I can
ah okay
ah look at that yeah yeah lots of detail yes a lot of details uh
look at the Moon yes yes the position of that Moon and that
as really was for me for a small telescope is I wasn't surprised and this
was when I say okay I need to send this to Scott
come on yeah I was coming back to my home from
the park and I saw the text from Cesar I said no man are you kidding me yeah yes
good yes it's it's a it's a it's fun because
um with a before the social meds I prefer uh when with the friends and send
by uh whatsapps and many of them have pictures that I've taken pictures in the
same time the surprises they say ah you're taking pictures too of course and this is this is nice really because it's
something that that you can found that your friends are making the same
a new Maxi with a lot of work what uh showing to the people the movement that
this is fantastic the your work with the with the the the group in in the place
the Plaza well here the first of of
um Luma lunar lunar moon surface sorry nature
really it's full of details it's nice because
um I I could make the the process only
with registax I I can I can get maybe more quality uh details
um like I uh I started to to process at the same time
that I was I went stuck in another picture
um I don't pay the total attention for the the best how do you say for the best
parameters to choose but I can I can try to to
process again the videos to and maybe I can get more more quality because
the level of definition I I I found that
the level of definition was exactly uh connected with the quality of the Optics
and the possibilities of of um resolution uh
for this diameter in this Optics and this is very interesting
another one in in the area of Shadows here you can
see here I never took an X lunar with the all completely details
because you can see a lot of details inside the lunar X and this is what's
was whoa and really really
was uh I don't remember if this is the V
but the X this is the X and it's a huge if x it's really really full of details
here another one maybe another picture that I have the excluder X
but I think that this one have more details
another part of the Shadows of the Moon
the Terminator we call it Terminator uh I I don't know if if it's Terminator in
English for the the area of the limit between the shadows and the
lights that's definitely a Terminator it's a Terminator yes like yeah
laughs this one was a uh today's before
from the balcony with a lenses photographic lenses
and this was uh very interesting because this was Venus um oh it's really good really good yeah
business is another easy planet and we for this size of telescope I think that
I I really I I felt very very happy to
to to have this results in this picture
I must have been very steady it's very nice yeah yeah yes I think that I feel
really happy to share and you know especially this one I was wasn't
surprised um because these details are in the limit of 5 inches and I if you
can get all that is that is possible to get in details you feel really happy
yeah I mean so many you know worlds and festoons and uh details on Jupiter you
know and uh also with the exposure to get the moons at the same time it's uh
really fantastic absolutely and the price or the the kind of the camera the
size of the telescopes all these in first life is the is the name of the telescope because it's a fierce lag is a
um first level entry-level telescope yeah and maybe the second one maybe the
second one I think that that uh um well you know that we are importing
and are coming to Argentina the national graphic telescope from explore
scientific that the 400 and have a Newtonian and we choose
that because it's you know that that we are the people many many times and thinking in the same
way that Maxi um really uh will have we love the idea
of very short focal in Newtonian because you have a lot
explosion of light in your in your hands and the possibilities to have my idea is
is encourage to the kids especially that that maybe they receive this kind of
telescope for Christmas is encouraging to the to their parents
and the kids to take pictures of of um of a nebula
with this kind of telecast with their cell phones and many many of them they
can they they can do it because uh do you have a
um a razor focal razor very very short
um enough diameter to have a and of course that maybe an Orion Nebula and
maybe you know you can get some some uh something moving the picture of the
stars but you can the magic to took the color of the nebula in your cell phone
it's amazing and this is the idea how how the people can start to be
interested in the in this kind of magic that is when you when you see the first
time a color of the nebula and actually with a cell phone
is incredible that's great it's wonderful yeah well Cesar thank you so much thank you
uh you know people love uh uh seeing you make your presentations and inspiring
them to you know take those next steps to get involved in uh exploring the skies from
the cities from the Valley Cities absolutely yeah right so and I I promise
you that I can uh I'll make it uh tries
I try to took pictures and show to the people in the max seafari ladies away
with the cell phone with this kind of telescope with that mount and or Nico de
Hammer Nico Nico does this really well doesn't it yes absolutely a customer
this week that sometimes to our customers in the in the store we we all
the time we make support for astrophotography too um not only for the equipment the uses
of the equipment and um this guy told me uh that sometimes he have a lot of win
like me sometimes and their home and and he showed me an excellent picture of uh
tarantula nebula with uh only uh three seconds of
exposure each of course and a half a hundred exposures of three second inch
and the picture is wonderful and this is like like and it was only with a 80
apochromatic 80 millimeters uh
uh Telescope yes and he can do it and he's he is happy to say because I said
because I told him uh don't don't listen that foreign the
rules are not the the rules that you expect to have because it's all time is
different like Maxi or Nico or uh or many many people I saw a picture of
Adrian with the photo lenses uh I think that maybe without tripod I don't know
oh no we try but without a mount and this is called Nico with a Dobson or
Maxi I remember the Maxi that that Revolution making a revolution in the
social Nets in Argentina no I used my phone and the people said no it's a
serious business oh and ever ever if you try and you say
Okay work you you follow this line no problem don't don't the rules are not
Reals in astrophotography because any any um each telescope and sensor and phone
and smartphone works apparently and the conditions and you can you can need to
to try to get a choice of your equipment and the condition that you have and try
only try that's right and that's something you'll often hear uh about
astrophotographers they will you know somebody will ask a question you know should I you know because they want to
work it backwards they want to know the exact right answer okay of the combination of equipment and which
sensor which camera which telescope which which you know yeah but you know I
I I always recommend that everyone wants to they need to try you know yeah
absolutely I always recommend that everyone's that wants to start in this
kind of business for example uh anyway that you do it you are the
important of this that you are doing science any kind of way
it doesn't matter it's a cell phone it doesn't matter it's a deep Sky camera it doesn't matter if you are drawing or
anything it's science and that's the big important thing in this case
right right absolutely wonderful well uh uh our next astronomer
from Argentina is uh Nicholas Arias his
nickname is Nico the hammer and I've given his presentation his presentations uh a nickname also and I call it hammer
time so Nico you are on perfect patio
you can hear me yes we can hear you yeah we can hear you I was just trying to give you a proper introduction yeah man
Nico the hammer okay well hey we have a a really nice
presentations uh really a really good picture it's a really Advanced with with Jupiter
and and I was thinking while you were you were talking and that is true that
there are no no parameters and no limits on equipment you can do
when anything you you got you can do uh one thing or or maybe two stars Mario
Stars there are a lot of things you can do and well for tonight I I was thinking
that yesterday it was the anniversary of the birth of William herself
and uh as I several times I thought that I I used to
to do double stars and I like to do it with my thoughts and so tonight uh we
will I will show you how to capture and measuring uh those are live with
adoption so let me share my screen
yes tell them how he calls your dobsonian your substance oh my job is called
Herschel of course
a proper name David Levy who names all of his telescopes okay
now you see the screen yes but it's just a black Square yeah
yes because I need to find my star I will I will okay yes I I put a special
double star it's a double star that has been discovered by her here so let's do
it okay so we have a double double star
discovered by Herschel which Herschel is about to view this is awesome
right okay that's it there it is the double star and okay I I will blow my exposure
and as I work with adoption I I have a short time to do the capture
because they're the rotation and I calculate with my sensor and focal
length that I can do it like 20 seconds without suffering the
the fuel rotation this technique yeah now the techniques
is called a lucky machine because I I shoot a lot of frames in a short time
uh and then I we will use the the only the best thing so
let's be the the you see the the seeing
students so we have the the capture and let's do the
the maturing let me show you how we
okay as you can see in 20 seconds I get a
360 frames
and this is the the application is called relook it's an application that
has made for a High a floating loss it's a it's an
astronomical astronomer in France and it's a free software
and you can ask him and and she she sent the the application to you for free
and is an is dedicated to those Stars so
firstly first thing I need to do that's because I work with adoption and starts
are moving I need to calculate uh the position and
the inclination of the camera and we have a through here it's called synthetic drift
that is takes very much and calculated the movement to get the exact North
of the camera so this is the the only thing that takes
a few seconds and I will show you while it works at
here in the Washington double Stars catalog the system
H for Herschel and this is the the number of discovery
and there are stars of magnitude 7 and 27.5 and the last measure and the first
measure the last measure we have a 302 degrees in the position angle this
is a a position from the north to the East and a separation of
8.8.7 Arc seconds and we will expect some similar
okay this finish and now
we will uh make a cut of the images to work with a
small images
as you can see it's a it's a it's really fast the to to do this this work and
I like to to encourage the new astronomers that want to to do double
stars that is really easy and here we have the twisters
we will order it by quality
and use this tool that called our outer Relic that measure very much of the 360
360 images thank you and then a
we will get the the medium measure
you can see this these values are the the position angle and the
separation that is eight point six nine almost is
the majority we we expect we will do some reject of bad images
now if you're just now watching um Nico is using his dobsonian telescope
it does not have a drive okay no drive only by hand
yeah you you like to to have a ibuprofen on your hand if you do this
yeah two hours amazing okay and here we have the the material you have we have a 302 ra
on the position angle exactly because the double Stars
and this is a an orbital double star that is maybe hundreds of years and make
an Arabic so the the changes are really really small
and the last measure was 8.7 Arc seconds
and we have 18 7 8 6 7 so
it was a a good maturing so what that it was
what I want to show you how you can do a double star measuring yeah in in a
really short time even with adoption and in this case I am
using a camera like we could why which I a
camera but before I was doing this with a webcam
and it's the same process so as as I say and it's got the same the
you can do a lot of things and without
getting the best equipment around so
yeah we say if anyone have any questions
you can contact me anytime that I will help you to do this so
uh okay it was my leader presentation from my patio
I'm very inspiring so uh you know it shows uh that uh I mean really for sure
you can you can get involved with astrophotography with uh minimum
equipment and uh and do science with minimum equipment as well so that's that
is uh very important and uh Nico you're a big inspiration so thank you very much
I think it's good thanks guys we look forward to the next hammer time okay that's fine
stop [Laughter]
[Laughter]
okay all right um Simon Lewis who's supposed to be up next is running just a little bit late
so uh we will bring on John Briggs next um John is uh uh well known uh at uh
most of the observatories across the United States He is uh uh someone that
has been very involved in um restoration of antique telescopes he knows more about uh the uh the
instrumentation that helped uh astrophysics uh the whole field of
astrophysics come of age um and of anyone that I know
um he's inspiring uh he's you know he's got a great nature about him uh you know
uh his uh stories and his manner is infectious and um you know uh I am you
know proud and happy to call him a friend um but he's a friend as many of
of our presenters are to astronomers everywhere you know and uh so John thank
you for coming on to the global star party yet again it's great
hey Scott uh very much my pleasure are you hearing me okay yeah we hear you fine yes sorry Mike I have low light
level in my room so my um my video isn't very good of myself but we don't have to
worry about that I'm gonna try to share screen okay the lighting looks dramatic so it's cool
I guess I go like sort of and I I failed to mention too that John
is the uh that heads up uh and is the
owner I guess of the astronomical lyceum in uh in New Mexico so that's that is
something definitely it's on my bucket list to go visit and uh and see all
that's there well uh Scott you and everybody of course are uh wonderfully welcome
and um so you know when I saw I I hope this come through okay
um when I saw your your theme tonight uh falling stars right yeah it it I it
reminded me of a presentation I gave um a few years back and a really fun
project that I have been involved with in recent years and that is video recording of meteors
um this has become uh technically possible now uh with shareware and
relatively inexpensive equipment it's a fabulous thing and
um so here's the presentation that I uh I'm recycling actually from cellophane
uh 2012 and um it's um uh talking about uh how
to record meteors with video recording and I just want to mention uh Circle uh
molau in Germany and I I don't speak German so I'm sure I'm doing a terrible job pronouncing the gentleman's name but
he is a Pioneer with software and science uh backyard science on on meteor
observation and uh Chris Peterson of cloud bait observatory in Guffey
Colorado built a system using this German shareware
um and uh anyway and my friend Alan slisky ended up building the camera that
that I used for the observation so I'm going to share with you but uh thanks to
the work of these people it's possible for a non-specialist like myself to get
involved with video observing of meteors and man it's really fun I want to encourage everybody to try it so you
know what was it like in the old days in the old days media photography was
something like this uh this was obviously an array of large cameras on
um on a on a on a polar axle uh looking at slightly slightly different
declinations in the sky in an attempt to
photographically record meteors it was tough this was expensive equipment if
the picture is coming through clearly you can read that this mounting here which was set up at Yale was actually
built by Warner and Swayze one of the great famous early American telescope
mounting makers but boy this is one Warner and Swayze Mountain that I have never seen and I fear perhaps it no
longer survives but this is how astronomers 100 years ago struggle to uh
do science with meteors but I love this picture and I also I should just point out
but it came from I reproduced it from this book astronomy at Yale
1701 to 1968 authored by the late Dr Doris hoflight who
um uh lived to be 100 years old this uh fabulous scholar of astronomy a research
astronomer at Yale University and although it was never a student at Yale
I got to work for Doran hofflight one summer in 1977 so she was a mentor of
mine and she knew personally people like Harlow shapley and um Bart Bak at
Harvard and she uh and even she was early enough that she overlapped a
little bit with people like Annie Cannon but she also was keenly interested in history and here's a crazy fabulous
cover illustration on the dust cover showing someone's uh uh uh meteor
Impressions from early media research at Yale University but that's where that
illustrates reach a game from but let's keep going so what Hardware nowadays is
required to video record and measure medius and what software well let me
simply show you some examples a place where you can learn about it is from the
international media organization and they publish this journal on I happen to
be a member of the organization anybody can join it uh it's really I think you
could describe it as a very serious amateur organization and that these are
I think principally amateur scientists but the level of the work is it's very
technical it's it's it's very specialized that I'm proud to merely
subscribe to this publication which is open to anybody but I have to admit that
the papers are actually so Technical and advanced it's hard for me to follow many
of them but yet you can communicate with the people in this organization they can help you set up your copy of their
software which typically is distributed free and follow the camera designs the
video camera designs that they suggest then you can get going in your own backyard
uh recording meteors in a very exciting way at least that's what I was able to
do but let me keep going what does one of these modern media cameras look like
well typically it's an all Sky camera with a wide-angle lens under a plastic
hemispherical Dome to protect the little camera from a rain and everything
um but it's a simple in this case the camera was made by my friend Alan slisky
and his sons well Alan happens to be president of the antique telescope Society right now but he's a fabulous
instrument uh man himself and inside it's really just a relatively
straightforward but sensitive video camera with a fast lens and let's see I
think I have a picture oh yeah I just wanted to repeat the title slide again to so you can see the names of the
people who were really involved designing this stuff of which I am merely copying okay and using but anyway
yeah there's the picture again let's see uh that there's a a top uh showing the
camera inside the um plastic uh hemisphere now my friend Alan had a
metal lathe so he did a particularly beautiful job turning the plastic pieces
to build the enclosure for this camera thanks to the fact that he had a metal lathe you don't have to enclose a camera
as fancily as this one has been done but it this is just an example of what is
possible without um uh without too much trouble if you happen to have something like a metal lathe but let's keep going uh this here
is showing the outside of the plastic camera case
removed and there's like an internal layer that holds some Electronics then
the camera and the wide-angle lens the electronics are actually very simple it's just a sensitive video camera there
but the little circuit board you see actually just has a heating element and a tiny fan to help circulate warm air to
fight frosts in cold weather and things of that nature so this thing is really not as complicated as you might think
looking at these pictures let's keep going okay let's look at some uh movies of
perseid meteors that I made above Vale Valley Colorado where I used to live
back in 2012. so I'm going to escape this presentation and I think if you see
yeah you still see my screen I hope and I'm going to change to this and so if
you're seeing what I'm doing I have my mouse moving these are yeah files that
were recorded automatically by the German shareware over the course of of
just one night okay back in what was it 2012. and you get
um some indication of how big and interesting the meteor was by looking at
the size of the data file but see the software automatically is able to
recognize and Trigger the recording When a meteor passes through the field of
view you don't make a recording like all night long here's a here's a file 129
kilobytes let's click on it and it brings up a little screen here and there
this is the view inside the window I'm sorry I can't make it real big there's a limitation of the shareware but this is
actually a nearly all sky view in that box this bright object is the moon now
obviously over there there's a meteor but this picture is sort of a summary of
all the data files for this particular um observation if I press run you can
see what happened look at that and press run again
so on what visual observing where you see the meteor
whoa that's great and then it's gone well it records sort of the summary of it and man you can press run as many
times as you want keep looking at it and that is cool so let's take a look at some of the others I'll just pick a
random one well I don't know I'll pick this one let's run this is there um John is there a way to enlarge that
another one that will be better so if this doesn't seem to see uh but the
unfortunately the software doesn't present these files really big
um but see down here there's there's the meteor and this is just a little meteor and of course that's not that impressive
but the fact is look at how many were recorded over one night if we go up here
looking at this one 257 kilobytes let's double click on that
and there now I'll press run and this is a longer low lumbering
meteor that actually that I mean given that this is an all Sky image man this
meteor was going across a large section of the sky and you know it's fun you can
play them as many times as you want and there is a little labor involved because
once in in the case of this particular software you record more events than
what I'm presenting right here in a given my there might be a couple hundred and in
the morning you go through them yourself and you pick out the ones that are real meteors and you throw away ones that are
uh not uh not real and what what's their yeah I guess I was I'll show you maybe one more that looks fairly big well
let's look at this one man this one was kind of in the morning Sky oh and it's down there and it's Overexposed but you
get you get the basic idea on that but it's I found this very exciting now
occasionally something special would happen and in this case
um I can make the screen big I believe there how about that now if a meteor is
unusually bright the algorithm can be overwhelmed and confused what I'm about
to show you is a movie that I had to make somewhat manually from the individual frames that this camera
produced because towards the end end of this recording the meteor which was
flying over Arizona west of me and I'm in New Mexico but this this meteor
became so overwhelmingly bright that the camera was confused let me run it and
you'll just see boom boom
well I'll do it again because you can do it as many times you want man this thing goes off like an atomic
bomb or something this is down here if you can see my mouse that was to the
West for my house here in New Mexico I'm 100 miles from the Arizona border this
meteor and the associated media right
um fell on on on on an Indian reservation and you know
a Native American reservation um uh west of us they ultimately
recovered the Stone from this object wow
now uh the the the the algorithm is getting overwhelmed because the sky was
so bright that I had to assemble the few final
frames that if you look down over here look at the the tree look at the Earth the ground around my house I'm just
gonna put my mouse over here to on the right hand side you know the world around me was being lit up darn near
like daylight when this one went off and Isn't that cool
directly to the recovery of this particular uh meteorite but cameras
similar to this were used to literally recover this object and at least I saw
it at least with the help of my camera uh like it recorded it while I was sleeping it was magnificent so anyway
let's see I should go back and finish this up because I just wanted to enthusiastically
um um show that this is really relatively easy to do nowadays
and how do we show the slideshow again from current slide from from there we go
there we go so we looked at some movies from the perseids and then the other night which was more recent much more
recent when the bright the fireball over Arizona uh the next slide shows all the
meteors recorded in 2012 on the night of eight nine and that was for my backyard
back when I lived in Colorado this down here is actually the the image of the
Moon moving through the sky as all of these individual short movies were
recorded this thing here that looks like a zigzag and personal media wasn't really doing that that's some kind of
pixelization in in the something to do with the way the software was working as best it could some other dotted lines
like these here were probably planets or Bright Stars this was probably a bright star but you can see how a camera like
this can be used to to present
All of Me years on a given night and if you're very good handling these images
through the software like Chris Peterson is in in Guffey Colorado he could make
these um uh uh mosaics or uh much better than than I have learned how but here's
an example of what Chris did and he was my mentor setting up my camera initially
and uh look at how he uh presents many meteors over the course of a perseid
shower and uh it's a lot of fun to get into this the associated equipment is
not terribly expensive there are more than one software packages available
there's one available from Japan you've got to buy it it's called UFO capture
this one here is called met Rec it's from Germany it's shareware from Germany
if you want to learn more about meteors in general their um uh this book I I
bought I actually read it I thought it was absolutely wonderful Peter gen
janiskins is a world Authority on meteor showers nowadays meteor showers and
their parent comets the really really excellent book I learned a lot from it
another one that's great is the heavens on fire the great Leonard meteor storms
by Mark Littman Cambridge University press and thank you very much for your
attention I hope folks get more involved with meteors there's a lot to learn
about it yes there really there is and it's great I love I love seeing all the
especially that first meteor camera that you showed the uh oh yeah
I had learned that uh November 26th is the anniversary of the first meteor
photograph which was taken in 1880 s 85.
I bet you that was done at Harvard I'm not sure it was it I I don't know I don't know I'm just seeing an entry
about it but um uh where was this instrument set up this is discriment was
set up at Yale and this picture again is out of Dora hofflight's book related to
the history of astronomy at Yale and it turns out that Adora who by the way I
might have mentioned it already but she lived to be 100 years old and I was grateful I had a chance to
attend both her 90th birthday party which was put on by the astronomy
department at Yale University and her 100th birthday party was celebrated uh
at by the astronomy department at Yale and I was able to attend that too
um but um she uh spent the first half of her her life as a research astronomer at
Harvard she was the president of the American Association of variable star observers she became rather irritated
with Harvard when the avso was somewhat unceremoniously kicked out of Harvard
College Observatory and about that time she decided to take herself uh to Yale
University where she spent the rest of her life and uh as a research astronomer
at Yale but anyway I was what I was trying to get to is what did what inspired this wonderful scholar of
astronomy during hoflight who authored the the recent editions of the brights
catalog very important fundamental reference it was a very very bright
meteor that she saw as a girl growing up rather in poverty in Mississippi she was
German but somehow she was in Mississippi she saw a big meteor and she
she dedicated the rest of her life to astronomy and so it's not too surprising
that she chose to put meteors on the cover of her history of US of Yale
astronomy appropriately because they did study a great deal of a strong of meteor
science at Yale so anyway again thank you for your attention everybody Scott
for the opportunity to share of course I enjoy it very much thank you so much
John always a pleasure and we look forward to the next time you can come on that's great okay
um so up next is Adrian Bradley uh Adrian is um uh someone that has
delighted us with his skyscapes uh you know both up in uh Northern Michigan
where he often uh haunts uh you know lighthouses and uh uh this the scenery
the natural scenery around uh Michigan but he also made a travel down to uh
where the Okie text star party is and showed us yeah Milky Way shots from there and I know he's got lots of plans
to do other travels to other parts of the world to go see um uh you know the
uh the Milky Way perhaps from the Southern Hemisphere and and uh anywhere
that he can get a camera a little lens on uh beautiful I will take half camera will travel that's right
yeah no problem [Music] in global Star Party
so I told you I'd wear a bowling shirt so here we are a bowling shirt storm
which is appropriate for um Maxie who was uh good friend who was showing a
storm earlier um but you won't have to see this for
long because sharing the screen is what I'm going to do so I decided to
go through some images and show you what I capture and when and how easy it
is to capture meteors or other things that fly around
in the night sky um when you're Imaging here's the
aforementioned Okie text Star Party location and
um here you see the Milky Way about as easily as you see it in my photograph it's border one
it's dark and all that images do are make them pop out make the Milky Way
pop out with even more detail um I use a camera this is one I learned
that I had a weird smear in my camera but you can still see um all the detail this is through the
cloud cover that's over here um but let's go back to this image
because oops I hit my hit the wrong button because look over here there's a streak
oh yeah and a streak gets brighter
as it goes and the reason you know you very likely caught a meteor is that your
streak follows this path and here's other paths it looks like
there were multiple meteors during this exposure which if I'm not mistaken
and I'm not looking at info was 30 seconds most of the yeah yeah
most of my images were 30 seconds that's how faint it is go ahead Scott no yeah
it looks like there's some red red Hue in the background maybe some faint Aurora as well well here in uh Oklahoma
probably not this could be chromatic I think it's called chromatic aberration or it could have been Haze I shot this
like you see this I shot it with an ha modified camera I see so a lot of that
color is probably an artifact of that camera like there's this little purple up here purple there
um so I started editing these better and so
now you have a closer closer reality and if you notice
you know you don't have meteors when you start seeing these dots that is the
Delta comet heading somewhere that is Comet United
another plane well but look above it and whoops I went to the wrong okay we go
let's go back there because we I just saw something above comment United
these little streaks are one of two things satellites
and you know satellite streaking through or they are meteors especially when they're
angled up and down sometimes you can have a plane
that is another Delta Comet here you've got the lights of a plane angled
up and down but a Furious white streak could go in any
direction and that's how you know you happen to have caught a meteor the darker your skies the more likely you
catch a meteor so if we look at this one over here you've got Comet Southwest
flying in this wasn't the best of tracking but you've got all kinds of
streaks coming through this Dash suggests that there was something else
smaller coming through probably not a meteor that's probably this yeah yeah
this could have been a meteor that you can tell
is uh the Jet Blue Comet because you see lights
but above it you see a streak and you see it grows
as it goes towards the Milky Way so even though this is an image that I usually wouldn't use because I've got Morse code
for stars I did catch a bright it's a shame because I caught a bright meteor heading
toward the core of the Milky Way so those are some of the those are some
of the ways that you know you've got some meteors um I popped up a couple of other
pictures um this picture that I took this is back in
northern northern Michigan during the perseids and I've watched this meteor
streak over here towards the Milky Way as I was gathering this exposure this
was also a 30-second exposure so even though you don't you kind of see it tailing off here
you don't see it streaking you may know that it's a meteor because
you watched it as you were um taking the exposure now the venerable Dr David Levy
I sent them this photo and he didn't think it was a meteor because of how consistent the line was but in this case
the only way I can prove it to meteor is because I saw it so that's uh that's one way to know
sometimes you have a bright object a bright streak in your image
it's actually a meteor if you saw it with your two eyes and you saw it in the
location that it ends up occupying in your final image so similar
to uh John Griggs who captures meteors you could tell each one of those are
meteors because of the growing brightness as uh as his wide field
camera catches it with a DSLR you don't necessarily see it that way but you just
you would have to know it was a meteor and your your camera captures the light
as it's streaking through the sky um see I have a couple of others
oh just quickly um let's see if this comes out yeah
things you can do with an iPhone I I'm showing this image again Scott you remember this one oh yeah um yeah
nothing to do with meteors but everything to do with dark skies and a 30 second exposure on your iPhone it's
how bright the Milky Way was beautiful so using an iPhone the same iPhone that's
my camera right now and pointed it at the sky put it on a Tracker got all of
that you know round stars and you know it's smooth it out of course and
compared to those other Milky Way shots but getting the Milky Way on your iPhone is indeed possible
so there you go um
and my last this is very recent also
um northern part of the thumb of Michigan there's Canada across the way there's
some uh light coming from a distant City over the lake and here
you have The Telltale sign of a meteor if you try to capture meteor you won't
but if you're just shooting the night sky and
you you look in your uh you look in the picture you process this you look deeply
and there's The Telltale signature you've got a meteor faint and grows in intensity as it's
streaking through the sky um I didn't didn't find it this time but
I've I've captured meteors as long as you go to a sky that's Portal
for or better and you image chances are meteors will
come raining down from just about wherever
you are I thought there was one other one I wanted to Adrian all of these shots are with the DSLR is that right
yes this is a mirrorless camera that is this yeah this is uh a fairly new
mirrorless camera that I took um ASAP Sony a7r IV and um
but I've shot with a cannon most of my shots are with the Canon 6D I shot with
the Sony A7 III which has less megapixels it's about getting a good image no
matter what camera you have in your hand but yes all DSLR class or you know
mirrorless because there's no mirror in it and um in all these images come out just fine
um this is one yeah I think I showed this one already when you modify DSLR you end up with an
image that looks like this it's all pinkish and there's a plane oh look at here
more streaks are they satellites are they meteors
so do some deep sky astrophotography or nightscape
photography and without trying you're sure to
Gather in a meteor or two or some streaking object
it I can go through images that like this image
there's another bright object and depending on yeah and look there
more streaks very likely a meteor you see this period where it's real bright
and then it dims that's that's a Telltale signal of a
real small quick meteor probably was not visible naked eye until it got to this
point and all of them
all of these streaks are are captured in the photo and of this
photo so they are everywhere there's Andromeda
there's another streak there's m33 NGC 752 double cluster heart
and soul nebulas this is another cluster I'm not sure my knowledge of cluster starts to
disappear but um a modified DSLR gives you these
looks as opposed to the picture that I closed so I'm going to end my presentation
Scott I know that you are a fan of birding yes so now I get to end my
presentation with bird photos that I've taken awesome Osprey and a common grackle having words yes
um a goose trying to stick the landing yeah he's great he's trying he's struggling
but he's trying to get it and then a couple of other birds the uh
Thunderbirds were in town oh yeah that's the difference and uh different kind of birds the Thunderbirds that's great and
that I forget how far away I took that shot but uh so and then finally
the Blue Angels oh yeah yeah so so yeah we use our cameras for
the night sky here but we don't always uh sometimes when the clouds come or the
moon's too bright then just uh do a daytime photo and oh I do have
so there's another meteor in this photo but I am going to see if I can find
um yeah that's the lake Hudson shots
um yeah here's this was recently
very recently I played around with the moon and Adrian there was a question somebody
wanted to know a few photos go ahead autonomy picture of the day you know from uh I got close I can try and dig it
up but um I was considered for so I'll show you the Pleiades here
I was considered for astronomy picture of a day for Light Pillars that I had found
um I don't think it ever made an Astronomy Picture of the Day but it got
close um shooting the Pleiades in the moon this is hard so I had to try it
and the police will be close to the moon during the lunar eclipse so I encourage
everyone to uh at least see that get some binoculars and you might see it
I am looking there's one last shot I want to show the
groups those of you that follow me on Facebook will have seen it
um these aren't them so now I have to figure out what I do oh
you know what I can find them I can just go here
this is
so last shot talking about the moon is out that's
loading the clouds are out everything is conspiring against you
and I take my camera out the Lake Huron and I say I'm just gonna see what I can get
and I get lucky I take a shot the rain
layers down here it's raining by the way where I'm standing there's the uh City there's the moon
Peaks out in the middle of the exposure so I get a little bit of the Moon
and actually Halo yeah you can and I I did not see this naked eye when I was
taking this picture yeah and I look at the image there's like a
star here or I'd have to try and you know see how far away this was and
see if this was the star planet and uh Halo so
even in the worst of conditions a good photo could be awaiting you
and uh I like tonight for instance there was a big halo
that uh oh here it is I took this picture before coming in
and again with the iPhone
your iPhone is a powerful night tool if this ever okay oh very nice yeah so the
moon of course becomes a diamond but and that's the shape of the camera that I used
um there's an inner Halo outer Halo in my neighborhood and
take any camera you have if you see if you see it your camera can see it it's
just a matter of what settings will work to get this
and this is straight out of the iPhone I was going to try and do some editing but didn't get the time so it's nice let's
go there you go that's my presentation uh meteors go to a dark site and you
will find that a lot of your images will likely have meteors streaking
through them they happen all the time even though there are there are some times of the year where they're more
persistent like the uh I think we said the leonids or come are peaking
someone can correct me if I'm wrong on that but uh yeah they are yep so the leonids so
um so look for those grab your binoculars grab a DSLR take a long
exposure and see what you can get awesome awesome really nice pictures
Adrian thank you I guess you're a meteor analogy is kind
of like a watched pot never boils a watch Sky will never produce meteors
unless you take a long exposure that's a good way to think about it you take a
sometimes you get lucky in it I have a 10 second exposure somewhere in my annals of Photography where I took a
it just like a test shot and a meteor shows up all green and streaking you
could see it get brighter it's somewhere it was um it was pretty cool to to notice that it
you never know when they're coming so any exposure you take
um could work I actually I had a story of a meteor that I missed I watched go underneath my frame I
turned the camera back to shoot the core of the Milky Way and um
and then I it's the effect I think it's actually here I'll make this quick if I can Scott
um so I'm thinking well that's just uh
that's just no fun I don't you know I miss the meteor got upset just started
just started shooting at uh the Milky Way and someone goes hey did you see that meteor
and I go what meteor I didn't see a meteor and
um you know yes then I look at my camera let's see what this is the image when I
was taking pictures to the store I I was a parking inside in the in the the the
door of a farm place and and I started to see uh that maybe the the the owner
of that farm is coming from where I was
and I was looking at the very vehicle but then I saw to the north a really
shiny meteor passing by and it was like in that frame of the
second you know thanks for that that car
yeah it it the meteors come out of nowhere so this is the end of this is
from two or three years ago I left all sorts of light in it's grainy but
this was what I saw well mostly in the back of my uh camera screen when the guy
said did you see that meteor well right here yeah and brightening brightening
and yeah there's the uh like the flash point I guess we could
call it but it starts to disintegrate so that meteor appears to be as big if not
bigger than the um meteor that I saw streak underneath my previous frame
looking at the cygnus region of the Milky Way and so that this picture became a
calendar entry couple calendar entries made a little bit of money I printed it
I gave it away as a gift um somewhere and
this this was an inspiring photograph of myself I've gone back and taken pictures
at the same spot you know if I come here I usually try around the same time of
year June um I think this was June 29th and I try and take pictures
just to improve upon the Milky Way and see if I can catch lightning in the bottle again it hasn't happened I've had
I've caught streaks going through you saw the meteors I caught just by Imaging
the Milky Way at Oklahoma but chances of getting something like this again
I'm not sure what they are but they're probably not very good no so so I hang
on to that photo I've got the original I've tried to edit it
several hundred times smooth it out um yeah I've done different things with it
and but I I keep it as a reminder that yeah sometimes you can catch lightning
in a bottle uh some of the chats Norm Hughes um yes get out there and get some Milky
Way shots the darker the better um Jeff Weiss Adrian has inspired me to
get back into photography that's wonderful I was inspired just by seeing
what I could get in the camera and then continuing to try to improve trying to
visualize what I want to see and then take the picture of it
um thank you sin Phil Adrian always blows away well there are times where I've almost
got blown away because it was windy and I hung on it was really windy during that last shot I showed her the moon and
the lake um I hung under the tripod and I ended up with a pretty good shot uh Steve yay
Dustin really needs stuff it's there was a point where astrophotography was
always you pointed at the night you pointed at a deep space object maybe you
pointed at the Moon you didn't include anything on Earth and wide field and
nightscapes were kind of considered their own thing and part of what I try to do is uh say that
you know nightscapes are a part of astrophotography it's just a different Wing but it's all related it's still you
know the night sky is what shines through and I try to make that shine through in all my photos so so there you
go right okay well so our our next speaker we're
going to go uh uh around the world again uh down to New Zealand uh where Simon
Lewis uh is uh coming to us he's an astrophotographer I believe in Greendale
is where he is he is a member of the Canterbury astronomical uh society and
um uh he recently appeared on uh our focus on astrophotography program with
Tyler Bowman um I I know he takes some amazing uh uh
astrophotographs he loves the unusual uh the uh you know and um he is uh he works
also with the Wes Melton Observatory Simon thanks for coming on to our program
thanks for the invites God appreciate it great to have you on thank you
all righty and well I'm as you can see I'm actually still at work and um the uh
the great thing about living in New Zealand is we're living in the future so we're the wrong side of the Dateline so
uh it's actually uh middle well late afternoon here so uh I hope you guys are
all enjoying that dark sky and don't forget to send it round to us in a few hours so
um yeah so as Scott said you know I I live in a um a little bit about me as I
live in a uh a small uh literally a small village uh only a few hundred
houses on the south island here I'm about about 45 minutes away from the
city of Christchurch which is on the uh on the east coast of the south island and
um New Zealand is an interesting place for uh astronomy because you know everybody thinks of wonderful dark skies
and um you know beautiful nights in the South here um the the the the Maori name for or uh
for New Zealand is iot which that stands for the land of the long white cloud and
um I I sometimes think that that should mean land of the never-ending Cloud because we live in an oceanic climate
here um it's two and a half thousand kilometers uh to Australia and about a
four you know four and a half hour flight into Sydney from from Christchurch here
um nice for um nice for a week's holiday uh to jump over over the ditch but uh if
we go to the east it's a very very long flight it's about 10 hours to Hawaii in
about 12 or 13 hours into Los Angeles so we are a small pebble in the middle of
the Southern Ocean and it's an interesting place um we are a few hours away from uh from
the ice and um we here in Christchurch we host
um our American colleagues from the USA Air Force for operation deep freeze
which is the Scott base appropriately named Scott base down in the ice where
they do all of the Antarctic surveys and deep freeze run the um the big big c17s
out of here and the c-130s with the skis and flying down taking supplies and
scientists down from from Christchurch so we we host actually um it's very interesting we have a very
very strong affiliation with Sophia so for those of you know Sophia is the um
the big uh Boeing 747 that carries the infrared astronomical telescope and the
tail and we host those guys every year when they come here at the observatory
um they they love our barbecues we always have a um a mid-winter barbecue
and invite those guys along so it's really nice to have that relationship and we sure missing them at the moment
because uh of course with covid they've not been not been traveling down here so
I actually live about 45 minutes out of the city I have my own Observatory at
home as Scott said I'm an active Astro photographer but a large portion of what I do in my
spare time when I get it is I'm the vice president of the Canterbury Astronomical Society we're one of the largest
Societies in New Zealand uh not the largest because um the big cities like Auckland and
Wellington have uh much larger catchment areas for uh for memberships we have a
membership of around 270 so we still do pretty well here on the South Island
uh we have a very nice uh Observatory out at West Melton so we have a number
of fixed telescopes out there we have a 16 inch uh mid rcx 400 on a on a fork uh
in a shed we have a 14 inch RC as well uh we have some smaller uh Schmidt Casa
grains and some refractors in in domes as well we have a hugely active program
in terms of um adult education and stem programs as
well and ah some influences uh has been been to the society as well that's the
observatory I'm very very pleased to know that you've been out here John and uh Adrian if you're ever in the ever in
need of a trip to somewhere unusual then um please you know jump on a plane
message me and come and see us here in in New Zealand we'd love to see you
absolutely I absolutely will I gotta figure out how to get there from Argentina because I promised my good
friend Maxie I would call Argentina well I think you can fly from Auckland to Argentina these days so we're pretty
well pretty well connected by air travel but uh so I'm gonna start planning it
out and we we host people from all over the world so one of the things that we do is we do regular open nights during
our winter season every week we host about 90 to 100 people at the observatory uh and when people were
traveling these people were coming from uh from all over the world which is absolutely fabulous now visitors book uh
looks like a a tourist guide with um with the different locations that people have come in from and we get some people
that come here and actually uh stay here and and work uh you know
um as temporary workers and we've had quite a few people join the society uh
over the years and um yeah so we do a huge amount in terms
of uh of education for for the children so we have a Juniors program it's
um aptly named the Castro notes and uh the Juniors they get their own training
guides and training materials and we've got um kids as young as eight years old who
were quite happily jump on our 16-inch telescope and drag it around the sky looking at different objects uh we've
got observation programs going on for the juniors too and as well as you know
adult education because quite often when the kids come along they drag mom and pop along as well and the bug gets going
and then the brothers and sisters come and then they're dragging the friends along and seeing we've got half a school
uh turning up in a school bus here which is which is absolutely awesome and nothing uh nothing better than having a
100 people in The Observatory and the kids walking up to a scope and looking
at Saturn or Jupiter first time and there's just wow Is that real yeah it's
like amazing they love it and um you know it's really interesting to watch
them as they head down the driveway out of the observatory after their visit and you can just hear the talk that's going
on and um we get people visiting four or five times a season and then um quite
often you'll find that Mum and Dad are signing them up for a family membership
so that's that's great so um we we pride ourselves in in
bringing those people on we have a strong relationship with the university Canterbury here in in Christchurch
um the university Canterbury is well known for breeding uh uh Global uh Astro
uh astrophotographers and uh scientists you know astrophysicists and
um you know uh the New Zealand has some strong affiliations to physics and
astronomy uh we house uh down at takapo just to the south of us by about three
hours or four hours we've got uh uh Mount John which is a world famous uh
Observatory down there and actually was one of the locations of uh the America's
first uh satellite tracking stations uh so um at the heart of the Cold War
um there was an installation down there that was used for tracking tracking Russian satellites of course New Zealand
being close to the polls it was one of the areas where they could see these a
lot earlier and we do see a lot of unusual objects down here that um you
guys in the north don't get to see but uh always makes me laughing and people get a little bit jealous about southern
Skies but then I'm going there's a whole host of objects in the north yeah you
guys have got all the good stuff too so we we should um we should work on some
Airbnb for um you know for uh astrophotographers and timeshare Rivers
uh astronomical objects you know well yeah we've got the dippers and the Cat's
Eye Nebula yeah no there's some great they do some great
stuff I'm I'm currently Imaging at the moment I'm um so Tyler who hosted uh
last week's program um with Scott and I um I share his telescope which is very
very nice of him so I do get some uh some time on some Northern telescopes
and I also get um I also get access to some time on the scope in in Chile as
well well so I'm quite fortunate I have some some very very
um good friends who who like to share their toys and um I also uh I also got some pictures
that if you guys would like to see some of the stuff that we've been doing down here it was something the last program
that you were on yeah so um so this is my uh this is my
little twins uh so this is my roll-off roof Observatory at uh at home so
um one of the things that I've been doing over the years is always carrying tripods outside and uh getting really
annoyed at having um you know not being able to exploit short weather Windows because one of the things that uh
um they say about New Zealand is um if you don't like the weather just wait 30 minutes and it will change and um you
know there is a very very famous uh QE band who sang about four seasons in one
day and they were actually singing about the New Zealand weather so we got two
Scopes here on cem 60 mounts and on the the far the far back side there I've got
a a very nice explore scientific 127 one of the finest telescopes I've owned it's
an absolute Workhorse and um it's an it's an absolute Beauty and
I'll show you some pictures of what I took with that in a second and the telescope that is closer to us here is
uh uh and a spree 120 and they're both used every every time we get a clear
night they're um those guys are those guys are busy and see if I can
change this over so uh this is um one of the images I've
taken and this is uh Scott this is this is one of your telescopes this is
uh the explore one the the 127 and this is NGC 6188 it's uh the uh the
very famous fighting dragons of ARA and this was taken over a few nights here as
a narrowband image um so this is imaged in them in hydrogen Alpha and sulfur 2 oxygen three and then
uh basically I create a false colored image um and you can see this is just
absolutely beautiful some of the best data I've ever taken and um we got some really good nights and um this image all
I've done is um I've run some process post-processing to remove the stars
because the the detail of the nebula in this area is just uh it's just
spectacular so um Tyler is helping me with this as
well he's um he's really encouraging uh when uh you know he's wanting images of
these telescopes so uh he um he's um he's one of the guys that helps me out
but uh yeah so this is a real nice um a nice object it's actually a really big
object actually and this is quite zoomed in if I was to use a wider field of view with a shorter focal length this thing
is like you know nine times the size of of what you can see here but this
Central core is um is is the interesting area so that's the the fighting dragons very
um for I really like that image um just actually just below this image from where my signature is there's
actually a very interesting planetary nebula and that actually has a double shell it looks like a uh a flower and
um it's actually got two shells uh where obviously over um you know some you know hundreds of
thousands of years there's been a couple of uh you know blast offs from that star
and it's created this beautiful double shell okay so this is a very famous uh
probably the most famous uh Southern object here uh this is the Karina nebula
and probably every uh certainly every Northern uh Astro photographer is uh
would be desperate to uh to image this um it's an absolutely uh massive uh
nebula and very very bright it's actually uh quite difficult to
image in a really really again this is taken in narrowband I I I do a lot of narrowband Imaging and you can see right
in the core in the center here that there is this big bubble um of gas around this is so at a Carina
itself and which is the the big star that is causing all this magnetic um looping and Bubbles in this gas cloud
and this is called the homunculus
is behind the brightest star because when you see through the telescope you
can see that bubble like they start have ears you know yeah
and what yeah so um this um this image you can um
there's lots and lots of stuff that you can image in this uh in this nebula um so up on the top uh top left here I
mean I've I've also done some areas around this as well so it's one of these
uh it's one of these images that just keeps on giving there is so many different areas of this nebula and if
you move away from this uh from this object there is a whole ton of other
nebulas around this area that you can focus on but it's um I I would say it's
probably one of the most photographed areas of the Southern sky and
um it's it's very beautiful when you actually look at this visually um through uh through a telescope you
can actually see this sort of dark dust lanes and you can look at these
beautiful Bubbles and waves and um we we use this as one of the objects
in our night sky as well for our tours so really nice so I like I like this area
this is another famous part of our Sky down here so this is um
yeah so the Toronto well there's a ton of stuff in there tarantula is the big blue big blue area you can see uh the
the sort of center of the image uh this is a corner of the large magellanic cloud and it's uh it's a massive area as
well and there's a ton of other objects in here um all these little Bubbles and uh blue
and red um so this was a um a dual color image so this is hydrogen and uh oxygen and
um you can you can focus on a lot of these areas as well this is never ending
these areas of the sky and they vary a lot depending on focal length and
um you know I really yeah you can come back to this time and time again and it's uh it never stops giving
so I think this was done actually on a fairly short focal length I think this
was about 240 millimeters but um this thing is so bright you could um you know
in in an evening or two you can crack in a really good image on this area of the sky
closer in on that then that's uh a closer in on the spider
and um that it's it's actually a really challenging area to process really well
um because um there is a lot of sort of uh wispy nebulosity around the edges but there is
some really really the core of the tarantula is just extremely bright and
um when again when you look at this visually you can actually see this sort of spider shape through the eyepiece and
the kids love that as well they always want to look at the spider you know I I had a spider picture in the
pictures I took at Okie Tech and I forgot to share but it was a real tarantula it wasn't actually the nebula
I think your nebula is cooler and less creepy if I see a real tarantula in my IP so I'm going to be worried because we
don't have spot we don't have any big spiders like that here in New Zealand another selling point we're um we're
we're a fairly benign we were wiped clean in the ice ages so uh in terms of
uh in terms of dangerous wildlife um probably the locals on the roads are
the uh the most dangerous thing that's very good to know we can always
avoid them yeah you're not you can be out in the uh out in the Wilds here in the bush and um you can be sure that
there you're not going to step on this snake or get eaten by a spider or you know
taken by a tiger or a bear or anything like that I don't have to carry a gun if
I'm going out into the Wilds Imaging so oh sorry uh Maxie but I think I found my
new retirement location but I will visit Argentina I'll take the
flight to Argentina we do Asado here I don't think in New Zealand yeah
yeah okay well look um so uh yeah this uh this image is uh is
the Dark Wolf nebula is another um there's a very not a very nice area of the Southern sky here the what what
are these um these uh objects are really great is that they are very close to the
celestial Southern pole which means that most of the time they are high enough
above the Horizon to image all year round um we really struggle in the summer
because we uh yeah we are dark uh at like 10 30 11 o'clock at night and then
it's it's uh three in the morning it's getting light again so um but in the winter it's completely the opposite uh I
used to live in Scotland and that was great because in the winter it would be dark at four in the afternoon and
um you know it would be still uh still dark at seven in the morning but uh in the summer here yeah we struggle a
little bit with uh with daylight in the summer so we um
our targets are very interesting though our night sky in summer Skies they're probably like how far south are you maxi
sorry Simon how far to the South are you in Argentina uh I mean 34 latitude
yeah yeah so you're pretty much this you know they you're a little uh a little
way from us we're 43 South so um you know we uh we we struggle uh a
little with the light in the in the summer nights but um in the winter it's great
um yeah so uh these objects are more uh second polar which means that you know we
really um they don't tend to set for us so this is um a color a color image I do
do some color Imaging it's not all uh all um narrowband Imaging and uh you can
see the wolf here here's the wolf is his nose and his head and his eyes and then he's his body running down here and he's
chasing the ball no right
well looks look more like a cartoon Pluto actually I think yeah but um this was uh this was taken over a
couple of nights I think there's about uh maybe about 16 to 20 hours in in this image it's um it's a fairly faint object
but um really um really nice image to process it's a nice area of the sky some
areas around the LMC can be very very noisy the tarantula in particular it's a
very noisy area part of the sky so it's hard to get really sort of crisp clean images just because of the amount of
noise that's radiating from these areas foreign
Southern object and the Valen nebulances the Supernova Remnant and
um this is just a small area of of the sky down here because this is another
one that has a huge coverage you know you can you can image this thing with uh
you know where Ben a 135 millimeter camera lens and still struggle to fit it
in it's just a massive area but there are some a bit like the veil nebula in the north there are some nice areas that
people like to focus in on and um this is again a couple of nights
worth of work uh using bi-color images so the red is the hydrogen the blue is there oxygen
and they get that false color but um I really love this thing because when you
zoom out it is just an incredibly big area to image and there's always little bits that um just off to the left is
some really really nice areas to image as well but um yeah it's uh also also a
personal favorite and uh yeah this is a Statue of Liberty
uh nebula and uh another famous Southern Target here and
um you can see uh lady uh Lady Liberty in the middle there holding the torch and
um yeah it's another another one area that it's it's it can get quite noisy around here but um if you were prepared
to put the time in on this um some people do some really beautiful images of this area I need to go back and
re-revisit this uh particular Target and um this is uh again a sort of bi-color
image that I've done with some slightly different color patterns the great thing about narrowband Imaging is that you can
actually play around with the pallets and change uh different colors for different uh for different combinations
so the uh one I did earlier with the Karina nebula was actually a um a color
palette that comes from the Hawaii one of the Hawaii telescopes so
and finally that's uh another famous object here is the lobster nebula
another really relatively big object and um
again in narrowband I think that was also shot on the 127 and uh I am these
um these areas again you can see there's a massive amounts of energy going on around some of these stars that yeah but
the distances involved and when you look at these things are incredible um the expanse of the night sky that
they cover is just yeah unbelievable but um that there's a there's a there's a
ton of interesting objects in the uh in the South um so you know and you guys want to come
down and say hello and uh you're more than welcome to So This was um last week actually so this was literally outside
the back door of my house I literally uh I saw the uh I saw the alerts to say
that there was an aurora and so I uh I stepped outside and I went oh wow I can
see uh I can see all of these um beautiful spiers and lines and the
scales don't know it's only just dark so I quickly grabbed a camera and popped
outside so you can see my Observatory here and this is down to the South down towards the uh South Pole and um
beautiful night um it get really intense at some points yeah
that's it I don't care about all this I don't know what you got going in the front but I've got large magellanic
Cloud yeah part of Milky Way yeah Aurora Australis yeah trees I'd probably
crop the whole thing right there and try and sell it [Laughter]
comments back cameras Adrian because I actually this was taken on a really old D5300 an old Nikon it's fine and I'm
just in the market for a full frame so yeah the older cameras with the with
less megapixels tend to do a bit better with darker skies at this point it's just about
getting the stars in Focus which yeah yeah you if you tighten up the stars then you know then you get a little more
but all the colors of the nebula and they're beautiful so yeah so and you
there's stuff that's got the modified like Canon has something an RA for
mirrorless mirrorless cameras do just fine if you you know jump into that
um or but the the tried and true uh like the d850 I think I've heard of that I
think that's a full frame I don't know if it is for Nikon um works just fine Canon 6D the original
6D a lot of astrophotographers start by using that camera for wide angle and
nightscape shots and then It ultimately just about any camera will do if you use
an astro color camera and modify it with a lens you probably get the best of you
know best results because you you get a cooled camera so you don't get the extra thermal noise yeah so so all of that all
that blabbing to say that's a fine picture and almost any camera will do as long as it's in Focus
ah very good okay well uh I saw some uh I did see some um
I did see some comments there so let's try and close this uh
well that was great Simon I know it was a big effort for you to come on tonight no I really I really appreciate it I'm
just looking at there was some a couple of uh questions here John says uh how's the restoration of physics telescope so
what he's referring to is the large six inch refractor that was on the top of the uh the Arts building in the city uh
which was basically destroyed in the earthquake I'm pleased to say John the the tower that the telescope was mounted
on has been rebuilt and reinforced so um for the last two years they've
brought in a team of stone masons from the United Kingdom and they built a
concrete Tower and then uh which was reinforced to withstand
um you know very large earthquakes and then they rebuilt all of the facade of uh of the tower around it and um
actually our editor Dale uh she uh husband was involved in the restoration
before he passed sadly and that restoration has been continued on and it
is now ready to go back up so uh hopefully in the spring it should be uh it should be back on
so yeah so what they say yeah that Tarik says is like the spaghetti and the the
Medusa nebula lots of bubbles yeah like Duo band targets eight chain oh
well yep I like I like those two and uh yeah no that's fine
um great okay that's pretty much me Scott and thank you for the invite and I feel like the Newbie on the on the Block
yes so I appreciate you inviting me and uh you are you are on the global star
party uh mailing list at this point yeah anytime that you are you you feel the uh
the inclination you know you're certainly welcome to come on uh I want to thank everybody for
presenting tonight we had a truly Global Star Party um really really Global really Global
yeah yeah it's Scott before I wanted to just really quickly uh
well so here's a light pillar picture yeah nice fake Aurora use the Sony uh
a6000 a little crop sensor camera with a fast uh 16 millimeter lens effectively
35 millimeter took this shot so your camera can be all your camera has to do
is be able to gather the light and then as for real Aurora this was done with the Canon 6D nice and um there's it's
very similar to what you had uh you know just you know stars are a little smaller here you know it you get
more detail with more focus and that's all that really matters so your shot was
just fine um it's like grab the camera quick yeah
usually yeah grab the camera and just fire you know what's amazing Adrian that Aurora was so bright that when I stood
outside my back wall it was actually casting a shadow onto the wall wow yeah
and that's how bright it was on there and we we see yeah we've seen some brighter rulers over the years but I
mean we're heading into um you know heading heading up the right side of the solar slope so yeah
hopefully you see a lot more of it yeah yeah that was March and that's all the way
um about where am I 40 I'm about 41st parallel on
the Northern side and was able to see all of that and I wasn't even into the upper you know we I can drive all the
way up to 40 well I'm near 42 and I can drive all the way up to 43 or so before
I run out of state and that was down you know closer to 42 and I saw all that so
yeah it was it's getting it's starting to rev up sure is I'm looking forward to more of
those yeah all right we better let's go let's sign us out he's got to go we're
still sitting here showing pictures normally we have a we have an after party um and we often continue late into the
night but early tomorrow I have to be ready uh to go on to a home uh a
Shopping Network QVC uh to sell some small telescopes so awesome so I got
excellent some prep to do no wait there's more
payments have only yeah you why this this one yes there's there's uh you know
I have to I have to do some work to uh to be able to support some of this stuff you know so it's really cool I like this
telescope and you get free clouds that's right
before before we go I uh that was those were some cool pictures of Orion's Belt
uh does anyone actually say that Orion's Belt is a waste of space Oh oh never oh
yeah none of that stuff's a waste of space
you've been you've been listening to Tyler Bowman's jokes again don't don't listen to his jokes yeah so the visual
astronom astronomers hate the uh sodorical life because it's too bright Venus ruins their night vision yeah so
it almost lots of things in the night sky are hated depending on what you prefer to do with the night sky but
really that one thing this Global Star Party does um and you're welcome Scott it's uh
signing you off the global star party shows how every type of
um astronomy from nightscapes all the way up to visual astronomy and drawings
all do the same thing it shows our appreciation of the night sky and we're
you know however we express it it's it all comes from the same place and that's
our universe so there is it none of that is ever a waste Bears answered that joke to Beetlejuice
you might get the cold shoulder oh yeah that joke was only three stars wasn't it
not even that yeah it was one giant star
well that's great I loved it guys and I loved also the I
mean the age span we ever people from seven years old to
maybe 70. I don't know but uh no I don't have a 70. yeah that's
right I just made 50 so I'm I'm working my way on the wrong side of the uh I'm
23 uh YouTube yeah me too oh they're celebrating y'all are
celebrating anniversaries of your 23rd I I need to start doing that now
right thank you someone again thanks everyone and uh thanks to the audience
who watched from all over the world and uh it was a great uh a great star party
and um we'll be back uh next Tuesday with more Global star party so take care
and good night great to see you see you again
always been a little skeptical with goodbyes because they're a little hand wavy aren't they
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