Transcript:
6:20 p.m..David Eicher - Minerals of Planet Earth
everyone's afraid to talk
6:30 p.m..Astronomical League Door Prizes – Chuck Allen
awkward we're actually waiting for David hi's new science oriented Senate to take
6:35 p.m..Libby in the Stars
over sometime talk again boy oh boy we may be
waiting a while I think for that a long
6:45 p.m..Jason Guenzel - The Vast Reaches
time there's a little bit of Science and a whole lot of nonsense in in the Senate these
7:00 p.m..Dr. Caitlin Ahrens - Upcoming Planetary Missions
days that Earth is not rotating correctly I'm sure I'm not the first to notice
[Laughter]
7:10 p.m..Ten Minute Break
that yeah they got the pole kind of mixed up
7:20 p.m..Karim Jaffer - Impact on the Golden Age of Astronomy
here like my right on the [Laughter]
7:30 p.m..Navin Senthil Kumar
equator that's after the giant black hole passed through the uh and tilted the Earth didn't rip it
7:45 p.m..Jerry Hubbell - Live from the MSRO
apart it just tilted it the US just got [Laughter]
warmer either that or the internal the magma or the core shifted around or
8:00 p.m..Adrian Bradley - Nightscapes
readjusted itself somehow I thought that the inside of
Earth was empty isn't that what they wrote about in the early 19th century yeah Hollow Earth Yep exactly there's a
8:15 p.m..Nicolas Ariel Arias - Hammertime with Nico!
whole another civilization down there we don't know they were on the Z exactly yeah and giant iguanas don't forget the
giant iguanas yes welcome back Libby and the stars and uh Happy New Year Libby
it's good to see you again happy New Year 2022 and it's already the 80th
8:30 p.m..Maxi Falieres - Astrophotography to the Max!
Global star party
yeah like Olivia's got a string of planets hanging off her
8:45 p.m..Simon Lewis - Live from New Zealand
ear there just there's just ear and some like little flowers on them oh look
like I have pled earrings I can't find them
9:30 p.m..John Johnson - The Next Nebraska Star Party
this is as quiet as the fifth day when your in-laws are
9:45 p.m..End
visiting right you run out of
stuff right now I'm sharing um I'm sharing the uhu uh the beginning with
some groups um on Facebook and
uh this one will go to the Facebook astronomy
club there's quite a number of groups on on Facebook um as it pertains to space exploration
and [Music]
astronomy oh and Wendy is here and you can all say hello to Wendy
now hi W Wendy I'm
yeah she's listening thank
you I'll use an online number generator that
every then everyone can see it
Scott but you do get crushed by a singularity and that kind of ruins your whole week if you go down through the
Event Horizon of a black hole oh yes not to you know be a you know beat up on
sci-fi
but cot and I were talking about that earlier today on the uh on the other program I think we were
on the program we were talking about it we were talking about it earlier about what happens past the Event Horizon and
I think a lot of a lot of people that aren't into astronomy don't understand that there is a singularity it's not
just the Event Horizon you know people seem to think that at the Event Horizon that's the
black hole it is the black hole but it's because it's dark but it's the singularity that's the actual black hole
I think yeah the venas is just a distance nothing more
right large enough black hole you'd pass through it and not even know it for a while yeah a super massive black hole
the center as in the centers of galaxy you would not the G forces would be uh
undetectable you but then you get you know toward the singularity and you're in big trouble but a stellar black hole
would be a wild ride through the Event Horizon
yeah either way let's hope that that doesn't it's not how we end up okay for
our personal stories okay
could all have a spaghetti party right I don't think we'd look too good
if we were a string of protons 10 kilometers long each of us you know that would sort of so how does the what's the
relationship between the actual gravitational force stretching you out and the Distortion of
SpaceTime I mean would would you look normal to yourself yeah it's really just
a a question of the difference in percentage the G forces from your feet to your head and if your feet are twice
as close to the singularity as your head you know
right there a question in chat has anyone ever seen a black hole
explode no but we've seen theed the collisions of black the mergers right
yeah yeah ligo right yep and in fact it was Kip Thorne and rer vice and their
Pals who who did
it I have this picture of the black holes when they merg it's kind of like two two billiard balls circling around
each other and then they and then they just or something I don't know how the
matter bits but it seems like they wouldn't knock heads or anything they would just kind of Verge I guess I don't
know gravity's too strong for a rebound right right so it'd be cool if if they
wer if they were neutron stars I guess they could bounce off each other I don't know is that right there's a significant
amount of energy transfer back and forth as the Collision nears but once they get
close enough you lose all like you you can't see what's inside that area of the
Event Horizon so all you see then is a featureless blob like black holes have no hair that's that's kind of the the
way we talk about it is there's there's no external features to be
noticed folks they do it that way because they want to keep away from the insurance
companies they to do it on purpose but from merging merging neutron
star as you mentioned we get some of the very heavy elements though including you know gold silver Platinum
Etc that's the energy transfer the rebound from the collap yeah it's it's incredible what we are able to obtain
off of it for
[Music] signatures in 2004 NASA's Hubble Space
Telescope changed astronomy forever when astronomers revealed the first Ultra
Deep Field image created with more than two 270 hours of observation over the
course of a year it is our farthest ever visible light image of the universe this tiny window revealed
thousands of galaxies in a seemingly empty patch of Sky we can't see any farther invisible
light because the unrelenting expansion of space has stretched Galaxy's ultraviolet glow into red light more
distant galaxies are mostly detectable in infrared that's that's why in 2009
Hubble captured an infrared Ultra Deep Field image that probed even deeper into the same
spot it remains one of the most distant images ever made and a key source of
information about some of the universe's early [Music] history the Nancy Grace Roman Space
Telescope will have infrared resolution and capabilities similar to Hubble but each image will cover 200 times the area
of sky a potential Roman Ultra Deep Field could be far faster to capture yet cover
hundreds of times as much of the early Universe to further explore this
potential a team of researchers has created a simulated Ultra Deep Field
image the entire image contains about one square degree of sky or about five
full moons even a single Roman field of view contains a staggering number of distant
galaxies each one filled with billions of [Music]
stars this computer generated image represents the distribution of galaxies that researchers expect to find based on
the existing Hubble observations it will help astronomers determine how best to conduct an actual
Roman Ultra Deep Field and anticipate the measurements and conclusions they might be able to
make because light travels at a finite speed distant images are also snapshots
earlier in time ultra Deep Field images reveal a time from about 200 million to
1 billion years after the big bang Roman's image would be the largest
observation of its kind for this time period and could reveal key features in
the Adolescent Universe including rare infant galaxies that eventually evolve
into mature galaxies like our own Milky Way with Roman set to launch by
2027 this simulated Ultra Deep Field image is just one example of the
Fantastic results this upcoming Mission could bring by the end of the
[Music]
decade
[Music]
well hello everyone this is Scott Roberts from explore scientific and the explore Alliance and this is our 80th
Global St our party um we have uh as usual we have a fantastic lineup of
speakers uh and uh you know the 80th will not be a disappointment for you um
it is uh uh the theme of it is the Golden Age of astronomy I guess there
have been many Golden Ages of astronomy probably going back over several hundred years now uh but uh with the launch of J
West uh the discovery of the expansion of the universe uh just the discovery after discovery
that uh astronomers have been able to make uh now with Breakneck Pace uh we
are indeed still living in another golden age of astronomy so um uh I will
uh I'll be turning this over to David Levy uh we had a very large audience
watched our 79th Global star party so if you're new and you're just now watching
uh the 8th or you just uh watched uh from the last Global star party I want
to say welcome uh thank you for watching from wherever you are uh in the world um
we understand that uh you know we're yet in another kind of Crisis over the covid
pandemic but we brought forth Global Star Party to share the excitement the
passion and the love that and the knowledge that we have uh collectively
uh about astronomy to share with you all over the world if uh you are watching on a platform
that doesn't have a that can't uh uh you know uh you can't uh get to the chat box
you can go to explor scientific.com forlive pick one of our social media
channels a very popular one now is YouTube click on that one and uh you can see all the chats pouring in from all
the different channels simultaneously uh we will uh try to answer all the questions that we can um
and uh you know it's it's always a good time so um David Levy uh for those uh
who have not uh heard of him or have met him uh that that that would be hard to
do because he is for so many decades has uh dedicated himself to giving lectures
writing books um um making uh discoveries of comets and asteroids and
sharing that with a worldwide audience uh since uh as I think his fion starts
when he's just a teen maybe even younger than that um he loves poetry uh he love
Shakespeare and every Global Star Party he encapsulates the uh spirit and flavor
of each theme that we have and he always has the perfect uh poem to go along with it so David I'm gonna turn it over to
you man thanks well thank you very much Scott Roberts of the of the glob Global
star party and it is really a pleasure to be here today Wendy and I have uh
really been enjoying these sessions and we hope that this 80th will be not will
be up to the standards of all the others um recently we have formed a new group
it started out as the Denver Junior Astronomical Society which is The Rebirth of a group that I was a member
of when I was a teen when I was a team and
um uh We've started that and then quickly expanded to our own club in
Tucson then to the astronomical League now to the Royal Astronomical Society of
Canada which kareim probably is well familiar with and um so at the last
meeting we were looking for a different name because astronomical League or Junior astronomical League seemed to be
too much Americanized we wanted to look up something that would have more of an international flavor I came up with a
possibility just the other day that I'd like to try out on everyone to call our group
stargazers and uh there's a reason for for that of course it's just two words
or one if you put them together it it is international because the word was
originally put together in an English poem and uh so it is actually there's a
little bit of a philosophy attached to this if you go back to the English poem
which was written by William wardsworth uh or the young people in the
audience would probably not refer to him as Bill wwor anyway he was the William
wardsworth was the poet laurate from 1843 to 1850 but long before that he had some
fun writing a poem called stargazers and uh I put it into my
Master's thesis at which point when my thesis director looked at it he
commented that the poem was absolutely wretched and I went into his office and
I looked at him and I said wretched I went to of us just laughed and laughed and
laughed um he thought that it was not one of wordsworth's finer poems but the
more I think of it the more I like this F and especially the ending when he has
people looking through a telescope and being disappointed and a lot of them give up
after that it is my hope that our stargazers group will not give up after
you look through a small telescope perhaps a department store telescope and are a little disappointed by the
results so I'm going to read just the first and the last part of this you can get an idea about the disappointing
aspect of looking through a telescope with cra is this what have we here we
must not pass it by a telescope upon its frame and pointed to the sky long as it
as a Barber's Pole or masted of little boat some little pleasure skiff that do
un tamames as Waters float and then yet Shan where can lie
the cause shall I th Implement have Blame A boaster that that when he is
tried fails and is put to shame whatever be the cause to assure that they who pry
and poor seem to meet with little gain seem less happy than before one after
one they take their turns nor have I one aspi that does not slackly go away as if
dissatisfied I know we have a lot of young people here at the global star party including one who is with us on
the live Zoom aspect of it Libby is back we'll be hearing from her a little bit later and I hope that you will all join
us when we have our next meeting of stargazers over zoom on January the 30th
if you if you're interested in attending you can write to Scott and he can send
you the link when the link becomes available and on that note I shall now hand things back to our director the
Beloved Scott Roberts thank you very much thank you um
we are uh uh we're honored to have people of you know young and and older
uh I think everybody feels young though as an astronomer because there it's
exploring the universe makes you kind of Evergreen uh you are constantly witnessing something new it's always
live uh you know when you gaze back in into the cosmos with your telescope or
just with the naked eye you know uh every time I see a beautiful bowey
streak across the sky I can tell you that I I feel it's it's almost like a
rebirth of of a sort because uh it's just so exciting and you know that uh
you know you are you are uh somehow flying through space and involved in
this great and Grand Adventure that we're on um as uh as
the only animal uh on our planet that is trying to make sense of our universe as
far as I know anyhow um uh up next is the uh editor-in-chief of astronomy
magazine uh Dave AER Dave ier has spent his life uh writing about astronomy uh
he has been involved in all various aspects of uh of promoting astronomy and
studying the sky um his uh his roster of
colleagues friends uh people that he's rubbed shoulders with uh goes many light
years uh if you haven't uh uh been involved uh uh in the amateur astronomy
community and haven't heard of astronomy magazine uh I would say that U uh that
that definitely again is a rarity um astronomy magazine is one of the the you
know big uh authorities on things going on in the sky things going on in our
community uh and has been driving uh the amateur astronomy Community for many
decades now and uh so we're really proud to have David on with us um and uh he
during the last Global Star Party he recounted his trip to uh Antarctica to see the eclipse uh which is which was
awesome uh he is now back to uh talking about his incredible mineral collection
so David I'm going to turn it over to you man thank you Scott and I'll be doing a little more planetary geology
tonight again and share my screen if this we'll see if this works again and
I'll see if I put this into the slideshow and tonight I'm going to talk
a little bit about copper minerals one of the uh more common and and also more
interesting classes of minerals we're kind of working our way through some minerology here which shows
us how uh the universe likes to form planets this is a tanzanite Crystal here
of course just as an opener uh which which I've had in here but um what
what's interesting about minerology is it shows us how matter comes together
and forms uh not by Magic but by science in the universe and and these days in
certain places in our world we need a little more more science and a little less magical thinking I I think it's
fair to say at least from my point of view so Thomas Jefferson though we may uh admire him in in many ways uh wrote I
believe in a divinely ordered Universe uh even before Jefferson's time Isaac Newton one of our great Heroes wrote the
truth is ever to be found in the Simplicity not in the multiplicity and confusion of things well he was right
about that the Universe it turns out is ordered not by Supernatural design but
by the simple principles of physics and of course not understanding those principles for many many many many years
led to a lot of ideas about supernaturalism uh minerals demonstrate
the natural world and how it actually works and by that I mean physics and chemistry their atoms are assembled in
precise Ways by electrochemical attractions inherent properties of of
the atoms that make them up and and these are guide them into assembling in
in a very specific way in in what minist call a crystal lattice so the available
atoms that are there at the right pressures and temperatures and so on come together and they form minerals in
a straightforward way um simply by following the laws of physics can rename
myself uh oh someone needs to rename name thems are we
good okay we're good okay so let's talk a little bit about copper um tonight
it's a native element of course not a not a compound or combination of
elements uh the abbreviation is cu it was one of the first metals to be worked into implements and the first metal uh
on Earth to be smelted in Anatolia what's now turkey about a little more
than 9,000 years ago so people have been working copper for quite some time now
of course which led in part to among other things to the Bronze Age which was a big step forward in in creating tools
and the technology to do things in Civilization it's red in color naturally
uh but as you know as we've talked about before oxygen what does oxy oxygen like
to do oxygen really loves to interact with other elements so it oxidizes
things like copper that are very susceptible to it and turns copper green and or black in in with exposure to to
air um as evidenced by the things like you buildings roof roofs roofs of
buildings and the Statue of Liberty and all kinds of fun things like that well the term copper comes from the Greek
kyprios which means of Cyprus which was where the earliest copper mines were
discovered um and in Latin from the word cuprum it's a member surprisingly enough of the
copper Group which consists of a whole lot of minerals related to Copper uh and
it combines with numerous other elements to produce many mineral species and so I just wanted to show sort of a a a um
selection of copper minerals that I pulled out and took some pictures of and you can see the kind of range of what uh
copper contributes to uh your house is full of copper of course in all sorts of ways Electronics pipes etc etc uh but
it's really good uh for mineral collectors as well and interesting the crystal structure of copper is isometric
which is a term we talked about a couple of weeks ago which simply means cubic fancy word for cubic and here's a uh a a
schematic diagram of the crystallography of copper in a cubic crystal
lattice and I'll just show a few examples of copper minerals now this is copper with cite well again uh oxygen
likes to react with things like uh copper so this is cite is is just copper
oxide and this is a nice example of a native copper piece that has oxidized a
little bit from the Dripping Springs mountains in
Arizona hey David I just I just had on my desk I've got a I got a sample
of Co nice of native of native copper can you get that a teeny bit closer
there you go that's a great view of it yeah awesome so that came from the uh
calonia mine in onogen County Michigan I guess is where it is yes the Michigan
Peninsula more copper especially up until about a century ago um after the
ancient mining of copper more copper in the modern era until some decades ago
now came from Michigan than anywhere else on Earth Michigan the Michigan
Peninsula is extraordinarily rich in Copper so here that's a nice example and
and thanks for showing that Jerry um this is copper pseudomorphed uh
in into cite which again is is oxidized copper from Russia and it shows you the
nice little crystallization and you can although it's a cubic form of Crystal uh
you can get little uh distortions of of the cube and you can see these little uh
angled crystals here uh in this specimen here that take on uh various shapes
geometrically pieces of of Cubes here in this uh sample from
Russia here's a native piece going right back to the Michigan Peninsula the same
place where you where you have your specimen from Jerry uh that a oh about a
6 inch wide piece of native copper crystals from there and I like to I don't know if you can see why but I like
to call this piece the rabbit maybe I was up too late you know taking pictures of this I don't know but
it sort of looks you know you know running to the left there I don't know you know it's like seeing a constellation figure isn't it who knows
um so that's a native copper piece from Michigan copper can also Adams can also
o crystallize inside as inclusions in other minerals this is calite also from
the Michigan Peninsula and there's copper inside these calite crystals you
can see at the center and on the right hand side of this specimen that that
colors it coppery red color inside the calite which is a very common
mineral now we're getting to a little bit fancier things that involve uh copper this is borite which is a copper
iron sulfide uh with some silver as well there's a very famous region of copper
and silver in Mexico the zachus area down there and this is a sample of that
so you can see some sort of different looks and even after this crystallized you can see oxidation on it which gives
you this sort of rainbow iridescence on some of these metallic specimens like
that there's also a fairly simple mineral a copper mineral called
chal casite or calite that is copper sulfide these are crystals of of chaide
on quartz from Kazakhstan that's a fairly common
mineral as well and then here to show you the differences of what oxygen can
do to various minerals the next three are all chelco pyite or calop pyite
copper iron sulfide uh and this shows you one that is oxidized after it Formed
into this sort of peacock iridescent colors here um and this is the very same mineral the next three from the very
same mine uh but with sort of different appearances here based on the oxidation
of things this is the same mine and with this intense sort of Rich blue color of oxidation and then the
very same mine same mineral with this sort of brassy gold color so you can see
the differences that oxygen makes uh interacting with various minerals as
well as other things on earth azerite is one of a couple of
interl uh copper carbonate hydroxide minerals azerite and malachite together
make up a large part of the copper carbonate hydroxides and you can see the
formula there this is an old specimen that my father collected with his family
uh at kenicott Alaska around 1930 and it sort of looks like a sort of a you know
a brain and and you get this very rich blue and green colors in a lot of
minerals from the copper content in these crystals beautiful thank
you here's a more recent modern Australian
azerite specimen the the rich blue that almost looks sort of like a flower with the crystallization on a sort of a a
dull white mineral that's called kaolinite that's not very spectacular but this comes from a a copper mine in
in the northern part of Australia very nice azerite
quality and then there's a lot of azerite and malacha well it comes from lots and lots of places but a famous
place of recent vintage is the milis mine in in Sonora the Sonoran Desert of
Mexico and this shows you a sample of both azerite and the greenish malachite
together there that's as you can see if you want to from the formula here a very
subtle difference in the amount of copper as the difference between those two
minerals this is a kind of cite called chal coite uh let let me try that again
chalotra kite it's been a long day at the office um and this is very unusual
this Chinese specimen uh which is just copper oxide because it forms these
needle likee crystals you can see there or what minerology would call aular
crystals like needles this is a rare mineral that's
quite unusual and and an old specimen and fairly valuable called lonite that's
copper aluminum arsonate hydroxide hydrate you can
follow the formula along there that is copper aluminum arsonate uh hydroxide with with a a four
water molecule stuck to it so there's a lot of stuff going on in there and to produce this sort of beautiful peacock
blue that is is H treasured by collectors and this is from a number of Old Mines that are defunct in Cornwall L
and England most of these good specimens so that one's quite an unusual one and
then I thought I would finish off with a sort of a spectrum of the blue and green of this mineral Chalco alumite which is
a copper aluminum sulfate hydroxide hydrate some of these get to be you know
formula the complex minerals as long as your arm but this is an interesting copper mineral as well and it comes from
the Grand View mine horses shw Mesa in Arizona which is actually adjacent to or
maybe even within I'd have to check it again now the Grand Canyon so this is minerology from maybe not in the
national park but from the Grand Canyon itself this mine which is interesting as
well so that's sort of a quick tour through some of the bright and and interesting kinds of forms of minerals
that you can get from copper one of our most useful elements on Earth and
shamelessly once again I will mention that Michael bakit and I a few months from now have a child's introduction to
space exploration book is the next one on the line lunch pad coming out later
this year so that one will be good and inspiring we hope to kids and I will
stop sharing my screen and uh Scott throw it back to you yeah I um uh I was
curious also David what uh what we can expect from the from the next issue of astronomy
magazine there are several special things we have coming down the pike in
in astronomy and there are a couple of of sort of uh regular issues if you will
coming up but there's a very special issue that kind of leaked out a little bit and so I figured well you know I
might as well talk about it a few issues from now we have a unique issue that's
coming out in conjunction with Aldo speedon and some others who were the officers of the art
International astronomy artists Association the IAA the art group and
we're going to have the entire issue is going to be devoted to uh what the current pulse of astronomical art will
be solar system space exploration the Milky Way galaxy and stuff in the Galaxy
galaxies in deep space and black holes beyond the whole Spectrum there'll be 50
art pieces that have never been seen before in this special package with some
special essays that talk about this art and the people who do it how they came up with it and what it's showing us and
still you know taking us to places that we can't go uh despite our great
photography you know back in the old days Steve Walter who was the founder of astronomy magazine and it you know it it
reflects the early 1970s it's not meant to be misogynistic but he used to say
that the magazine it's man's dreams of world's unseen was one of the slogans of
astronomy and this art is taking you now still even with the space telescopes and
the huge groundbased telescopes we have and and the coverage in larger parts of
the spectrum than we've ever had still the artists and we have a very famous one with us here online right don't know
if I'm to that yet but these pieces of art like Mike Carroll can tell us better
than anyone else can take us to places that we can't journey to and that's really a critical uh thing for us to be
able to embrace and imagine those worlds isn't it Mike uh well yeah that's uh it's
certainly one thing that we try to do a lot of the data we get is numbers and um
those numbers get turned into some of these beautiful images that we see coming down from Hubble and cimi and uh
all these other things but there's a lot of nonvisual data that the artist can
take and translate into something that uh folks can understand a little better
so um it's a privilege to be part of that project I think it's neat that astronomy is uh showcasing so much of
that art coming up I'm looking forward to seeing the issue David I've got a question David if you real quick uh do
you talk anything do you have article about the future of uh virtual reality
and art and space science and stuff like that absolutely we do have some you know
I don't want to reveal a whole Year's plans forgive me we do have some things
coming down the pike like that and two big special packages coming toward the
end of this year as well which I won't get into it's a little too early for those but yes we will be talking about
some of those things Jerry and and you know Jerry and and David and and Mike
have all written for the magazine and and Scott you must have too I think um
and and uh you know Mike for for many years has written the story Mike has a a
piece that he's writing right now for us that will appear a little bit later this year as well so you know just let me say
one related thing if I could for one second you know last year I had the Good Fortune for the first time ever to go to
spacefest um in on and that's that's a meeting that is really the artist
meeting and where the artists show up and they show their stuff once a year in Tucson during the summer and there's
really nothing like that Mike I don't know if you want to say any more about that as well but but you know Kelsey and
poor and Sally poor put that on in in the tradition of Kim who started it and
that's really a special meeting if people have the chance to go to spacefest and see you know 30 or 40 or
however many it was artists all showing their stuff that was really an eye openening uh uh occurrence for me to go
there and inspired this issue oh yeah it's a it's a pretty amazing uh get
to and and they also have the majority of the Moon Walkers there of great
speakers science speakers and so it's a it's a really me get
together it is you can You Can Have astronauts you know sign your your you
know books and programs and all that kind of stuff too you know I I had the amazing experience running into Charlie
Duke for the second time and two months who actually said Dave you know and usually you have to say Charlie you know
so that that was kind of neat you know um but yeah it's it's a tremendous thing if you get the chance to go to space
Fest and and I hope that they'll be holding one this year I don't know what the plans are
exactly oh great well uh I have posted up the novap space um Gallery uh web
page uh and um you know we have had uh uh uh people from novap space on our
program before and with some guest artists and uh but it is uh tonight is
the first time to have Michael Carroll uh bless our uh global star party and so he wanted to check it out and see what
it's all about so hope you're enjoying it Michael okay so um up next is uh our
segment with the astronomical league and joining us tonight is Chuck Allen uh
Chuck Allen um is um an amazing astronomer in his own right um he um uh
is definitely someone that has inspired us with his uh uh talks on uh uh
distances and scale and uh incredible uh
uh D you know the processes of things that go on in in in our universe from
the big to the to the small to the to uh just the cataclysmic it's it's really uh
his his programs are are interesting uh on point accurate and uh uh and
inspiring and so I think everyone loves uh when Chuck Allen decides to uh give
us a presentation here on global star party tonight he will uh read off
questions uh uh from the last Global star party which was our 79th um uh and
uh we are doing a special um prize because this is our 80th Global Star
Party we're going to give away explore scientific will give a $500 gift certificate
and Czech will explain more okay Scott thank you very much and good evening
everyone um i' like to add something to uh David's talk on minerals I've always
been fascinated by minerals myself and uh never missed the mineral display at the uh uh Smithsonian anytime I go to
Washington I'm sure he doesn't either uh back in 2002 I went on a mountain climb
in Colorado and came back through Moab and went to the rock shop in Moab which is quite impressive and made the mistake
of handling a piece of pitch blend which uh cost me seven TSA agents at the
airport in Salt Lake City in two hours trying to get on the plane um never
could get past the radiation alarms even though they cleaned the wand about seven times I think during that process so
beware of the pitch blend anyway uh tonight we have uh I'm going to share
screen now and we will start with something that uh is of particular
importance I think for all of the younger observers out there who are getting started in astronomy and it's
something that uh we like to emphasize because solar observing can be done
safely but you cannot make any mistakes observing the Sun and one momentary
mistake can cost you permanent eye damage and so we like to help people avoid that uh obviously you don't ever
want to observe the sun without professionally made solar filters that include energy rejection filters that go
at the front end of the telescope not over the eyepiece uh you don't want to leave a telescope or binoculars around where uh
children might attempt to use them to acquire the sun uh you don't want to use
non-certified eclipse glasses or viewing cards unless they comply with ISO standards International safety standards
and certainly never use Eclipse glass gles with an optical instrument they're meant to use with the naked eye only uh
and Scott I think experimented one time with some eclipse glasses at the
eyepiece of a telescope aimed at the Sun and they melted rather quickly as I recall yeah I saved my eyes but yes yeah
so don't make mistakes with the sun contact people at local astronomy clubs in your area because many amateur
astronomers are skilled solar observers and photographers and can tell you how to do it safe ly okay let's go to the
answers from January 4th uh the GSP first question was what is the name of
the tool used by astronauts that combines a pair of pliers and a wrench and the answer is
plch okay question two was which four-letter word beginning with n is a star showing a sudden large increase in
brightness then gradually returns to its original state over a period of weeks to years the answer to that is a
Nova and question three selenology is the scientific study of which Celestial body
the answer is of course the moon okay uh here are the correct answers from January 4th uh these names
were added to the door prize list for the month of December uh I'll let you just take a look at the names rather
than read them all here and now we'll move on to the
winners for the month of December B Becket Matteo Castro and con Connell
Richards okay I want you to remember those names uh Billy will be number one
Mato will be number two Connell will be number three and I'm going to stop sharing right
now and reshare my screen with a random number generator that's set for zero out of
three so you can see the number change and I'll go until we hit either one two or three and the number we hit is number
two Mato you have just won a $500 prize generally donated by generously donated
by Scott Roberts and Scott thank you so much for adding that tremendous prize to
uh the door prize process it's really uh wonderful of you to do that thank you
thank you it's it's an honor for us to uh do what we can to support the astronomical community so um it's
something that everybody in our in our industry should should to do as much as they can so um we
are now going to uh uh before I go away I do want to I do want to um uh oh we're
in the middle of this we still have more to go right yeah we do I've got to do the cross sorry about that bye everyone
that's right there will be no questions for GSP that's right so now we have new
questions right yes we do okay and they they go to secr your answers go to
secretary as league.org I'm posting that into chat right now and it appears at
the bottom of each slide secretary at as league.org first question tonight this
72inch telescope held the record as the largest telescope in the world for 72
years until the 100 inch at Mount pal Mount Wilson rather went into operation in
1917 in what country is this 72in telescope located
picture on the left I think that
okay this is the second largest moon in the solar system is it Earth's moon
ganam Titan or
Sharon and the third question this galaxy is a record holder what record
does it currently hold is it the furthest known Galaxy is it the largest Galaxy is it the furthest companion of
the Milky Way is it the fastest rotating Galaxy or is it host to the largest
known black hole and again send your answers to
secretary at astr league.org uh also please remember that on Friday January
21st at 7M we will have our next astronomical League live which uh again
will be hosted uh through the courtesy of Scott Roberts on the expor scientific
uh platform and we'll have more information coming soon about our speakers for that program uh Scott thank
you very much again for your time and good night thank you thank you uh if you
are not yet a member of the astronomical League you should consider joining they
are a fantastic organization as I've mentioned many times before uh but uh I
I guess I can't mention it enough the astronomical league is the world's largest Federation of astronomy clubs
they they are a collection of over 300 clubs uh and have over 20,000 members
they have an incredible lineup of observing programs award programs uh
they I think represent the community in the very best way and you'll get a lot out of it so um join the astronomical
League all you have to do is go to astr league.org and go to the join page um so
actually I have a question For You Chuck uh before you go on Scott um yeah we have members that are wanting to join
the astronomical League normally in our club we renew after June 30th of the
year can you join the League before that as as a club as a club or should we
wait until that no the the the dues are pro-rated depending on when during the
year you join okay so you're not going to end up paying full Year's dues for three months or anything like that right
okay so and it starts over in July July 1 okay so if if you if you join late in
our fiscal year then your dues will be pro-rated for that period okay yeah
thanks that's what I want to know sure great well up next is one of our
youngest presenters uh Libby who's known as liby and the Stars has given over 50
presentations to the global Star Party uh she uh lives uh locally in Arkansas
and has visited our offices at explor scientific and um uh she is uh uh
someone that is so enthusiastic so on fire about astronomy and space exploration that I think she's read
every book in her Library about the subject so um and I I don't mean just
her private Library the school library and I think maybe the public library locally as well uh Libby it's great to
have you back on um how how are things going for you things are going good I'm
wishing everybody a Happy New Year even though it's kind of late it's not
happy it is a new year but it isn't New Year's Eve but to everybody happy New
Year um I made a presentation so I'm g go ahead and share my screen so in the following that we are
doing the Golden Age of astronomy I decided I would do a presentation on
space shuttles because one thing that like has always made me like kind of
just more interested in the space shuttles is that they land like an airplane and they kind of had the same
design as an airplane and my friend one of my good friends she her dad you know
flies in an airplane one of those little wing ones and recently got to ride in one of them and since then I've just
been like researching just space just because they're so like they just
are in the same kind of family as airplanes even though they don't go the same places as airplanes
so let me go and put in a slideshow so you can see a little
better it's taking a while to load lby you've seen a space shuttle up close
right so yes I've seen Atlantis and Kennedy Space Center when I saw the
Falcon 9 launch and um I've seen I've seen a one that was for testing that
isn't really known as a space shuttle that isn't really known as a space shuttle but it was there as you know one
to do measurements for NASA so the space shuttle program
started when after the Apollo launch in 1969 NASA's like woo we just L we just
did the Space Race we just went to the moon we on rule we need to keep this
going and so NASA was thinking and their office they were like we we want to
launch more people and stuff like to how they were doing but they were thinking of being it since they were launching so
many people and they had all these pieces left over they were like well we're leaving all these pieces and it's
not really that good for the Earth so we need something that's more reusable so we're not earth and money because a lot
of this stuff was expensive and so NASA just decided that they needed something
to reuse over and over again so I can make multiple trips out to space and
stuff without having to build a full other rocket and spending a a bunch a bunch of money
so so Enterprise is the first space shuttle so I was really intrigued when
interesting like researching this one because I like in the picture you see
that it's flying like an airplane and so I was like it's flying like an airplane
which you know all space shuttles do but it wasn't in space and so this actually
reminded me back at my space camp trip they were talking about how um when I
was doing this research how this space shuttle wasn't equipped with um heat
shields which are like that kind of tile look it it's their little tiles and I've
actually seen them before because at the Museum in Space Camp um we would go
there a lot and I remember there's this huge wall of these little space tiles
and I was like space tiles what so I remember they for um they're for keeping
the space um space shuttle warm because of course you can't go you can't go for the atmosphere without being burnt
because that would not end up good because the atmosphere is so hot and so this one no this one wasn't equipped
with heat shields so it couldn't go anywhere except just fly through the air and I was thinking imagine being on a commercial flight a
long long time ago and seeing this fly for there and you're like wait that's
supposed to be in space you're like I supposed to be here that's supposed to be in space so I kind of got like I was
like kind of worried I was interesting I'm like why is it in theid a it doesn't
have heat shields nor those space engines that are really strong to get for the ads here and so
this is a test space shuttle because they used it like that so Colombia was the first one to actually get you know
at into the air and so um it was named after of course the
first um ship to navigate the um North American Pacific coast and so when I was
researching this one they said this one had a lot of more different qualities than the other space um the other space
shuttles cuz it was a lot more it was like really really heavy and so I was
wondering you know why did NASA do this and they was um it was easier to dock
with more um with the ISS so it was um
with all the space stations they could carry people to from the space stations how they wanted to which is making it
reusable with the space um shuttles sadly on its last trip it disintegrated
with astronauts inside during re-entry for the atmosphere then the next one is Challenger and the
funny thing is my um at school our team is called Challengers after the
space shuttle so all the hallway de for is after Challengers and we have all these space shuttle theme stuff so I
kind of wasn't cool like really interested in re researching this one because my school's team is named after
it so after a while success for NASA
tragedy happen happened um but sadly n um sad thing is that um 72 seconds after
launch exploded and seven um the seven crew members inside did not survive but
NASA decided to learn for the tragedy and kept on going for the space um the space shuttle um program so Discovery is
the third one and over 27 years it launched and landed 30 39 times which is
why NASA was talking about making it reusable because I needed to go so many times up and down and so this is more
than any other spacecraft due today more space flights which is
crazy so this you're telling me this thing launch
39 times launch and landed 39 times successfully so NASA was on a rule with
this one and so um this one was one of the most
successful ones of course cuz I was able to go up there a lot this um this space
shuttle has three main components a space shuttle Orbiter which is kind of like the hard shell single yeast gas
tank which they were able to switch out two reusable rocket boosters and almost
25,000 heat resistant tiles to help the Orbiter when re-entering the plasma hot
atmosphere so more of these heat resistant tiles were um were used in all of this so that was
one of the most successful ones so I've actually seen Atlantis before I went to um Kennedy Center in
Florida once to go see a launch because I was just like so excited and it just
started raining and so I remember we had to take shelter inside the building because it was just so wet walking into
the building the spa like the Atlanta space shuttle there and I'm just like oh my gosh like this is possibly the best
place where you could take shelter from the rain and I remember I was just in the space museum I was looking up at it
I was like oh my gosh it's so huge I mean truly these things are like ginormous and so this is one of the ones
that I have seen and this is another successful one Atlantis had orbited the earth a toer like a total of
4,848 times traveling nearly one um
126 million miles or more than 525 times
a distance from the Earth to the Moon which talking about the Golden Age of astronomy just a little bit ago we we
were making one trip to the moon one one big step for mankind and then maybe a
decade or so decade or two decades later we're traveling
525 times that with the space shuttle so that's Improvement and that's why I
really like researching is we're improving every day NASA is making more discoveries and their lab is always onto
something else and so that's we're in the Golden Age course is this the topic
of the um of the star party that we're doing tonight for the 80th but we are in
the Golden Age of astronomy because I mean I mean a lot of people who a lot of
a lot of people don't know it but I mean there's discoveries being made every day in different stuff and different topics
around the space and so um just thinking
like that one year we were like one big step for mankind we made it to the moon
and then the Atlanta space travel was traveling nearly 500 and 25 times one of
that so that was Atlantis and it was one of the really successful
ones so Endeavor was a final one so after loss of Challenger NASA was like
well we need a replacement one because we're doing so many space missions so NASA built Endeavor and while I was
researching this um I saw that NASA ran a competition for schools around a country to name the space
Orbiter so all the kids around the schools around the country were able to name this endeavor and it
had to be named after a research fesel and easily understood as a space name so I researched where all the
remaining space shts are on the map and I put them on the map so I've seen I
know I've seen Atlantis and I've seen there's one at space camp
um that they use for measurements that I can't exactly remember its name of course the one time I knew too but I
have seen Atlantis and it was just so huge and I remember it was so much fun to see and they had this they had a fake
one standing outside that was for show and I remember I was on the bus from my
Resort over to go um over to go to the Kennedy Space Center I'm like oh my gosh
it's a giant space shuttle it was huge and E and I was like
oh my gosh it's huge in the outside I went inside and the building is so big and I'm like it looks so tiny cramped in
here and seeing the science of how the doors open on top was so cool and I was
researching it and I was like like you could just open the doors Fresh
Hair even though you're only going to be looking out at uh the gravity
space so as you can see here they all are we have
Florida on the coast of Florida Endeavors all the way on California enterprising discoveries the remaining
ones so I'm going to stop screen [Music]
share and I've been to the Adar hazy Museum Smithsonian at Dallas airport I'm
real close to that so I get a chance to see the shuttle a lot every time I visit there that's a
special place to go see uh the discovery yeah I definitely I definitely
plan to go back to Kennedy soon because it was just so much fun seeing that and
I love researching Rockets but I thought the space stles
are so cool because they like the doors open up
so it's just like the the technology I'm like how does everything inside not fly
away but then I'm like oh Velcro velro and everything but
um the nice thing about the discovery display at the Museum is they have all
the other space capsules next to it and you and you it really floors you when you look at the size of the capsules
even the Apollo capsule and then you look up at the Space Shuttle it's so huge compared to these tiny capsules and
you we jump we jumped from the capsule and Apollo up to that huge machine and
uh you wonder what what why can't we still do that that you know and that's what Elon Musk is doing with the
Starship yeah and um what I forgot to bring up is the way they land
too the the space shuttle comes in on this really long pack I remember in NASA
TV I was watching the segment where they were talking about really how long this this road is that the space shuttle
lands on because it's coming in like 100 times more stronger than a commercial
airplane flight and it's going to take so much longer meanwhile the capsule has the
parachutes that deploys time after time and that land in the ocean so there's so
many different ways that it lands and then also how long they have to make this
pathway for it to land so it's not running off the
pathway so there's there's so many different there's so many differences between the
capsule and then the space shuttle yeah I remember seeing the last
space shuttle launch and it was just it was incredible to see that thing leap into the sky you know even at a distance
of several miles uh to see this thing the size of a skyscraper Jump into the
Sky and fly off was just unbelievable you know
yeah when we were at space camp we learned about the space shuttles and you know little hacks like not hacks but you
know like how they were built and stuff that Nessa thought about and it was like but wait why are the why why is the back
tank red or like this kind of orangish red color and they were like this my
first year at space cam they're like it's so that they could you know no cuz
they had to um they had to release it after a while that's that was the gas tank and I needed to sell the difference
CU usually everything that NASA makes is the color white color white color white so you can see easily but they had to
make the gas tank like a different color that hold that held all the Rocket
Fuel and I was just like they could have made it they could have you know they could have chose pink they could have
chose green they could have chose yellow I'm sure was a lot of thought that went into it so and I thought the
very first Columbia launch it was painted white yes and
then and then the the uh subsequent launches it was orange and someone now
this I don't know if it's true or not but I also thought something about the cost to paint the uh the weight the
weight they were trying to save weight they didn't paint that's just the raw color of the installation yeah is it
yeah so that I knew there was a true answer and not the money spent to paint
being in the answer but I knew there was some some reason they decided not to paint it and the weight makes a lot more
sense yeah well great well thank you very much Libby um good to see you on the show
again thank you for having me it was really nice to be on here you're always welcome thank you very much Libby uh up
next is uh Jason gonel H the vast reaches you'll see him on Instagram uh
Facebook on uh uh you know various uh uh social media channels he has a huge
following um he makes some of the most incredible uh Astro photos I've seen any
amateur astronomer do and he is known for squeezing every last ounce of
performance out of the equipment that he owns um Jason thank you for coming on
tonight uh uh are you getting some uh live uh live views through your
telescope uh that was the plan um that was the plan okay it's not really working out according to plan so yeah I
mean but it's a I guess a good demonstration for people it's not all uh
it's not all roses when you get out there and and set up your equipment oftentimes Mother Nature gets the best
of you and that's what happened to me tonight so my original plan was to set up my telescope and collect some data uh
you know while we sat here and and hopefully come up with an image but I literally can't get my telescope to
track across the sky because the uh the atmosphere is so unstable but um you know I've got I
always have stuff I can show so I just just kind of wing this um so I'll share
a screen
here let me know when you can see it yes all right so um before we step off the
uh the live Imaging thing I just figured I'd show a setup it's not running right
now but this is the uh Control software I use for for Imaging and um you can see
there in the background that's an image of M1 The Crab Nebula in hydrogen Alpha
I shot that it's the only image I was able to get today but um I just walked outside and and snapped this picture and
um you can see that the sky is covered in clouds now um and it's very windy but
um so this is this is like the command Central when I when I'll uh go out an
image I I put a list of targets here in this in this main window you see here I've got a few Targets in here queed up
and then I can connect all my equipment uh this software is called sequence generator Pro if no one's if you haven't
seen it but um I connect a camera a filter wheel a focuser and a telescope
and these boxes over here and then um for the night's Imaging I'll I'll
program a sequence which is just um a number of exposures to take per
image uh what filters to use and uh how long the exposures are so you can see
that down here I've I've got a sequence um set up with seven
steps uh using seven different filters different exposure times different
um actually there's a different camera game too but that's not shown on this
screen but yeah so this allows me to to automate the process and and essentially
once I hit go on this software um as long as the conditions are decent this thing will run all night um you know
with just a a program list of targets it'll even switch targets as some become obscured or set or
other otherwise not image not imageable but that software that then is keyed
into um guiding which I use PhD to here and this is just uh shows the
tracking um and this is actually taking pictures here but you can see how this
this line should be a a flat line on the good night and it is completely Wild tonight so it's really Breezy out so
that's a function of both the clouds and the wind knocking the uh kind of blowing
the telescope off uh offing the third Factor here which I I
don't want to get too technical into it but when you're Imaging at a longer focal length which this setup is it's
shooting at about 1500 millimeters oh yeah the the atmospheric Ste seeing is a
big factor and seeing is just the stability of the atmosphere the the column of air you're looking through and
similar to how looking down a hot Road in the summertime uh you'll see see the heat
waves coming off the road those those heat plumes and waves exist in our atmosphere all over the place and as you
stare through you know our entire the entire thickness of our atmosphere these this
turbulence and disruption becomes visible in the image and seeing is
variable um both by location and just um at different times you'll get different
conditions uh the jet stream is a huge factor in creating poor seeing uh but
generally if you've got decent seeing um you get real stable images you get crisp
um point-like stars if you look at this image I have on the screen here these
stars all look a little bit soft they almost look how to focus and it's not a function of the focus it's actually the
blurring that the atmosphere is causing as you're looking through it I actually pulled this up because I wanted to see
so this is the same this is the image I shot tonight over here on the right hand side of the Crab Nebula and this is the
same image shot um on a different night actually has the date here it was
February 9th 2021 so almost a year ago but you can see here in these images the
difference in the detail and the crispness of the Stars I mean these are all these Stars here are points you can
actually see um the fil in the nebula itself which is all blurred out in the
image I took tonight so on a night like tonight I wouldn't even generally bother although I set it up just to uh try to
get some images um in the background here is or sorry
these images Behind These are the the core of the rosette nebula it's something I was shooting last night also
so I pulled those up just to just to show you what quality single images look like because the one I took tonight is
not good all right does anybody have any questions on that that Imaging side of
it I'm not going to spend too much long too much right now not yet not yet yeah
I had one other question but I think it was more of a just a that's cool to know
you have the different filters selected and the software automatically controls
your filter wheel and puts the right filter in or do you have
to I've got I've got a u and that telescope I've got a a seven position
actually an eight position filter wheel so these are this is the filter list that I have and basically I tell it go
to this filter and the motor will turn and it'll line that filter up in front
of the camera sensor so as long as you put the right filter in the right position then it'll then it just it goes
puts that filter in and and starts Imaging yeah right I mean never once I
install the filters in this filter wheel it's a motorized filter wheel I never open it again so these filters are
permanently I know the positions as as far as where they are in the filter wheel so when I tell it to go to a
filter like you know I can come down here set filter position I can change it
to Blue and I hit set and it says moving you know and when the blue filters
locked in it it turns blue so what you just did okay no that's that was neat
yeah so I can just program that sequence in and get the whole run programmed out
for the night and it'll take you know I shoot with a mono camera and that's um
that's a whole another story as to why you would want to do that but um generally um gives you a lot more
flexibility in in uh your final results and it um also improves the quality of
the single captures so that's why I shoot with a mono filter or mono camera through all these various
filters and makes sense you want to look through these filters um for various
reasons but these first three I have listed here the hao3 and S2 those are
narrow band filters so they allow you to uh pick up a little bit more detail and
contrast in your images um because you're blocking out light pollution and and um other extraneous light and you
can shoot those f even during you know bright Moonlight yeah like I was saying this
this is shot in ha last night this is hydrogen within the
rosette nebula so this is a shot at 1500 millimeters too so it's a pretty zoomed
in image yeah it looks good it it it has
the makings of looking really good when you add the other uh elements the with
the other filters in and then combine them yeah yeah I um
given you know I'm sorry I had to make a 180 here I don't have nice presentation like everybody before me but I was
planning on showing this live Imaging and and kind of editing the results as they came in but I'm pretty sure Scott's
got stuff in the comments uh with a lot of I know there are some uh astrophotographers that are in the uh
watching and and they're they're soaking this information up just like I am so
it's it's worthwhile yeah so there's a lot of software you can use to do this um I've
kind of settled into sequence generator Pro um but I'm I'm using an older version because the newer versions are
you have to pay per release and so I just kind of it work you know if it ain't broke kind of thing it just it
works so I just stuck with it and um you know it allows the automation which is
all I'm really looking for so I can set this up and I you know I generally don't
have to go outside again and I can yeah just let it
go my my automation is eos backyard and that's I have yet to reintegrate it into
a process um you know and trying to do some of the Widefield stuff that I do I
typically set up point and shoot um but there are times when I
attempted to just take one frame after another and sequence it so um I haven't
quite gotten there yet but I'm uh I think gradually over the next couple of
years I'll probably start to yeah work with that I think the automation
software if you're gonna shoot from home I mean it's one of those Game Changer yeah things you know I used to go out
there and you know Focus the telescope by hand I'd be laying on the ground trying to look through the C back of the camera yeah now you know I've got a
motorized focuser I've got the automation set up it's just uh I put it
put it out there set it up and and it's good to go for the night
yep all right so you know the uh the topic that Scott had um laid out here is
the Golden Age of astronomy and you know we've the James web telescope was
featured on the image and I think uh you know it it just reminds me a
little bit of How Far We've Come uh as amateur as astronomers with the capability and the technology and and
our ability to see way out into the cosmos so I had a few images that kind
of meant a lot to me um when I shot them uh the the show opened with the Hubble
Deep Field and um those kind of images always spark my curiosity and
Imagination and I want to show a couple of those that I've taken over the years so
um got a window here with the um with Photoshop uh to show some of
these images so what I'm going to show is a series of Galaxy cluster images
what you're looking at here is um AEL
1656 which is um part of the the coma cluster and the coma cluster is a group
of galaxies um somewhere around a of a billion light
years away so they're about 300 million light years on average away from us and
um the cluster you see on the screen I mean to me is a little bit reminiscent
of the Hubble Deep Field where yes you know these fuzzy dots aren't Stars they're all images and as you zoom in uh
you can start to see more and more of those um this was shot through the 8
inct that I pictured earlier from the
backyard so we should call this the vast reaches Deep Field Deep
Field I take I've taken a few of these and we'll see some of them but you know as you zoom in here you can realize that
these aren't Stars necessarily um most of the dots you see
here are actually galaxies and the coma cluster is known for one of the the densest clusters of galaxies out up
there I think there's over a thousand galaxies identified in the
cluster and it's one of those things the the deeper you look the more you'll see
um you know just little faint fuzzies often in the distance some of these you know the main cluster might be 300
million light years away but some of those faint dots in the background probably looking at millions of light
years away yeah I was looking to see if there if you happen to catch any gravitationally lensed galaxies in this
image well wait I got uh something you might
be interested in a couple images but all right so the next one I I have here is
this is uh AEL 426 and that's the pereus
cluster um again another um dense cluster of
galaxies um the distance to these I think is a little bit closer maybe
they're uh yeah 2 50 got a reference over here so I don't remember all this
stuff it's about 250 million light years to the average distance of this galaxy
cluster wow one of the
cool I don't know how to zoom that you sorry one of form constellations in
themselves you know yeah I mean they're yeah they're like basically stations of
galaxies some of these are interesting ellipticals this one I forget I think
it's NGC 1275 yeah percus a yeah this one's got a really dense web of hydrogen
Alpha filaments within it it's a really interesting one to look up if you ever
get a chance to see the Hubble image of that Galaxy let see if I
had and Jason that's got a very uh active super massive Central black hole
so you can actually see in your image here in NGC 1275 which is a CD Galaxy
you know it's a huge elliptical but you can see the disruption from the black hole in your image here you know look at
the the the envelope of gas that's pretty incredible to image that you know
from the backyard as it were you know yeah I wanted to show this U so this is
the Hubble shot of that which you know you put mine alongside
Hubble and you can see why we spent billions of dollars on Hubble but you know it's there and when you get
outside the Earth's atmosphere with the clarity that Hubble is able to provide
you can see just how crazy the center of this galaxy is um you know filaments of dust
um you know bright blue um regions of star birth and then you got these just
sprawling filaments of
hydrogen well not only Hubble being outside the atmosphere but then all of the time it can also
integrate from that data fact is Hubble does I mean typical Hubble images they
don't integrate for nearly as long as say I would but the reason I did so long is to beat the light pollution yeah a 90
inch mirror doesn't hurt either you know right yeah yeah I'll get there someday yeah we it take baby steps I
mean you you have the basic just like we we talked about it with the crab um the
fact that you've got very similar elements in your shot from a
backyard is the uh and even there's you've got like a faint there was that
Galaxy that was near it I think and you've got like a faint part of it it's something that's so
faint it barely shows up but like this I mean this it this is this is again just
another reason why we're in the Golden Age of astronomy you know that uh this is not only within the realm of
professional researchers uh this is something that amateurs really can do from their
backyards you know if they apply themselves like Jason has yeah I mean I you know I think back
even a decade you know I wasn't doing this a decade ago but a decade ago um is
about the time I started to get interested in it and when I started looking up you know what it would cost and the equipment that was
available in contrast to what's available today I mean the price entry is so low the the um the technology is
significantly better um so yeah I mean there's no better time to if you want to
get into this and start photographing the stuff from your backyard there's no better time to do it than now except
maybe 10 years from now when everything's that much cheaper even better yeah 90 inch mirrors cost a
little bit less than 10 years who knows yeah I'll have a space p scope I then
yeah all right so next one another galaxy cluster this is the Hercules
cluster um NGC or sorry not NGC able
2151 um and this is a cluster of about 200 galaxies further now this is about
double the distance of the U the persus cluster so we're we're looking at
smaller and smaller galaxies but there's uh you know some really cool details in these
too you know you've got less of the yellow elliptical galaxies and you're
starting to see a little bit more of Edge on spirals which are always interesting face on
spirals and there's even some interacting or
they may may or may not be interacting but they're overlaying spiral G galaxies
here and you can see you know some some galaxies with these are classic kind of
title Tales from from interacting
galaxies again you know just another one of those images is where the more you look the more you see I mean I'm zooming
in into the center but everywhere you zoom in this image you'll see little you know spiral
galaxies all right so that's the Hercules cluster okay now we're on to uh
AR caren's chain which is part of the Virgo cluster another large cluster galaxies
this one is a lot bigger in our sky this is taken with a a 400 millimeter
telescope uh so you these objects are significantly larger than apparently
larger than than the last one um and off the I guess off this
Frame is um m87 the the that's beautiful
galaxy that we had ho with
but yeah if the guy is making uh images with 100 inch and then the 200 inch
could kind of Zoom ahead to our time now and see your images made with the 8 inch
telescope I think they would be utterly FL flabbergasted you know at what amateurs are able to
produce and you in particular Jason thanks I just I put I put a lot of
time in in these images each one of this is this is each one of these is probably
you know anywhere from 15 to 24 hour 25 hours of
integration in each of these images so that's a lot of time that telescope sitting out there just collecting
photons and uh you know the reason you do that is so you can average down that light
pollution well I know um when Hubble took its time looking at that real small
area in space I remember the hearing about skepticism and those of you that
are more in the know could correct but there was skepticism that anything would
show up until they actually did it and then were surprised when they saw all of
those galaxies you know 10,000 or so in number in that one small area and I'd be
curious to know if they knew it was going to produce something but didn't know the number or if it was it was an
experiment we weren't really sure and then that sort of taught us you know
gave us more insight into just how many galaxies are out in our universe they they knew how many would
be there but not that many so the fact that the ultra Deep Field has 10,000
galaxies in that tiny piece was a little surprising and and that's how they
extrapolate that piece of sky and and come up with the 100 billion Galaxy
figure in the universe you know it's just an extra appalation of hble dat yeah
okay all right so one more one more cluster um I have here is Abel
2218 and uh this one is in
Draco and uh interesting thing about this one is u i was this is a more
distant Galaxy cluster it's um
I think the main cluster is over two billion light years away so that's the center little cluster down in here and
the reason why this one is notable is Hubble took a image of this and surrounding the large lenticular
galaxies down in here or were arcs of gravitational lensing where the the
gravity of the the the Net G gravity of the Galaxy cluster actually
the light um from behind and produced images of galaxies that are behind this
which wouldn't otherwise be visible um I wanted to see if I could capture it
from the backyard and there it is you've got the arcs I see them yeah I so
there's these arcs are incredibly faint but yes I did get one of them here you can see if you can see my mouse I think
you got the other one just up above it and to the right it's faint but I think that's another
Arc yeah it kind of Loops all the way through here but you can see
now how how zoomed in I am on my image here I've T I've taken a shot with a
1500 millimeter lens and now I'm zoomed into the pixel level here and I'm picking out
gravitational arcs that are one or two pixels wide in this image that's crazy
but I can show you here what Hubble did on that same
thing and the rotation is a little bit different so this Arc here you can see
in the humble image lines up with this Arc here I
see wow so yeah there's another little Arc here which you know you talk about P
pixel peeping to pull this out of my image I have to get down to single pix
but but I did it I mean I spectacular J I would say that's a success yeah yeah
big time I mean there's you've got data that
you pulled in from those galaxies those lensed galaxies
into your uh sensor and you have an image of it it's um not I'm not actually
sure what these with these lensed galaxies if they actually know how far they are away because the of how mangled
the gravitational lensing makes the Spectrum I don't know if they can get red shift numbers on I thought there
were calculations for it but I'll again defer to like if David if you ier or
they they can estimate the the distance of the background Galaxy and you know Jason congratulations you've again
independently proven that Einstein was right
yeah I mean I without the Hubble image I don't know that I would have I would have picked that out as a Galaxy
but or a lens Galaxy anyway yeah it's I know it's hard
sometimes to tell what's an artifact if you know an artifact versus actual data
but being able to compare to the Hubble data you know it's not just a pretty
picture I know some astrophotography especially of well-known targets becomes
an exercise and how pretty can I make the picture but I think we can see with
your images Jason just how how much more involved we can be as amateur
astrophotographers and citizen science um by getting as much detail as
we can and actually reproducing some of the Fields something I guess 10 years ago
probably not you know can't do that that's you know too much but with
something like that on your screen you're able to see a gravitationally lensed Galaxy
and you know I think that's uh the gravity pun intended of how that you
know how we you've proven we can do that in an amateur level that's t definitely
something to be something to be considered I've basically run out of
words so yeah that it is amazing yeah
these kind of images take your breath away absolutely uh just a here's another
example so I went on this um Adventure where I was trying to compare what I could get from the
backyard to to what hob gets so here's another look Adrian if you're curious and 8 inch backyard telescope compares
to Hubble but um this is uh little Galaxy pairing AR 147 a couple of ring
galaxies uh very distant let's see 440 million Lighty years
away but that that image on the right is obviously the one hble got of this this pair and that's on the left is mine that
is so beautiful that's amazing too I think you Gotan you got all of the
great detail and you know you're finish uh
it's just just looks like a miniature the one that Hubble and you can even see the little Gap in the bottom of that uh
ring Galaxy that's on the bottom in your image so it's a splendid
job thank you it is but that's uh that's all I really had
today probably went long but was just more of a show
tell well we thank you very much Jason for coming on to Global star party again
and uh there any questions on any of this stuff or I didn't look it what's
that look here let's look here I'll read some of the uh comments here um uh mark
hton saying Jason is someone who's as photography I strive to to be like practice practice prce this this stuff
is amazing uh Herold lock says nice composition uh Norm says he's got a
great eye for the color fantastic image of maren's change uh uh from
beatric um let's
see just you're just blowing people away I mean you know
uh many accolades here
Caesar brolo says the details from Jason are incredible uh you know and after a word
a while there there are not words uh and you know as Adrian pointed out so um
it's uh the the images speak for themselves and it's just uh incredible what you're presenting here tonight so
thank you for for doing that I think it makes uh this whole golden age of
astronomy all more poignant so thank you very much you're welcome thanks for having me
y all right if you want to find more you can find my stuff on you know I just
usually have the username the vast reaches at um any of these social platforms so you can find my stuff there
yeah I'll I'll post it in chat there and Jason we are still gonna be on I got to
call you up when we go uh we get a clear night one of these nights to head up try
and capture something um I've been meaning to yeah
send you a text I know it was cloudy the last time I tried so we'll uh lot these
days yeah it's well day of winter when it's clear it's negative 20 Celsius
so we have to kind of pick and choose what we're going to do either to bundle
up or of course you have the option of being inside you don't have to be out there too long uh me I go on location
near the lake so I gotta bundle up so okay all right well let's um our
next speaker uh is uh Caitlyn erens she is a postdoc fellow at the Gard space
flight center uh she's involved with uh uh some uh several planetary missions
that are currently underway and uh she loves Pluto she is an expert on uh on
ises in the solar system and uh she has a sparkly uh uh personality that just
makes anything she's talking about so interesting um and I love having her on
our programs she uh did a stretch called seven months of science where she brought on uh scientists from all over
the country and uh it was uh it was quite a ride and um those programs are
still out there that you can watch and I think they'll be watched for quite a few years Kaitlin how are you today I'm
doing fantastic and chaotic how are you
doing I'm with you so maybe more chaotic than Fant I don't know I'm I'm but I'm
very very happy to be here tonight uh uh celebrating our 80th Global star party
and I'm really honored that you you decided to come on with us so thank you Kaitlin I'm so excited oh my goodness so
today is particularly chaotic for us planetary scientist folks because today
uh was the paperwork the abstracts are due for our big major planetary
conference that happens every mid-march it's called the lunar and planetary science conference it's been going on
since the mid 1960s uh so this is our our biggest planetary science conference in the US
and uh so the paperwork was due today so a lot of just mountains of emails and
people trying to race for that that five o'clock deadline uh today and
everybody's now kind of in like who awesome great everyone will Panic again
in March when everybody realizes oh gee I'm gonna have to do the work that I just wrote down I would
do so that's that's two months away from now we got the paperwork in everything's
fine good so I kind of want to give a quick little call back to David aer's
talk about minerals of Earth I there was a particular mineral that he showed
where it was copper and kaolinite and I and as the quote was
kaolinite was a you know not a a very uh
it's a very common mineral uh it's a is this kind of like it's it's kind of dull it's kind of boring what's interesting
though uh is that kaolinite is actually found all over Mars and it's really
entertaining to have minerals that we would have so much common place here on
Earth but to find the similar minerals on Mars and the moon sometimes and
asteroids and so on and to have that kind of comparison so it's really
interesting to bring about something that you would learn in geology 101 uh you know what what's what's
quartz what's Basalt what's uh you this rock and that rock and so on but to put
it in the context cholite which is this oh it's just a boring white
powdery uh almost tal like mineral here on Earth yeah it's just as boring as it is
on Mars but to find it on Mars and to find it on certain parts of Mars is very
exciting because for it for it to even exist on Mars there would have had to have been some sort of water interaction
uh to make kaolinite and to create certain kind of clay minerals on Mars
now as far as a golden age of astronomy here's like the Golden Age of planetary
science too I again with the minerals now we're realizing that there's
minerals on Mars that have never been discovered before and there might even
be a third newly discovered mineral soly may soonish but but anyway so at
least within the past seven years we have discovered two new minerals on Mars
which are very exciting uh The Rovers have discovered it and uh and we are
starting to see them in meteorites as well but it only pertains to Mars and
what this tells us that there's certain temperatures and pressures on Mars that
maybe we just do not understand uh so we're still trying to figure out how do we even lab create recreate the these
kind of mineral structures for ourselves uh if I if at all but so far we haven't
been able to it's been about seven to eight years uh worth now so still
working at it but uh but that's the fun part about uh and minerals on Mars so
let's get to the Golden Age of planetary science we're going to be busy we're
gonna be absolutely busy now most of the media has been all about Mars Mars This
Mars that you know good job perseverance good job for like the Hope probe and
United Arab uh Emirates it's it's going to be fantastic
2022 this year happy New Year everybody is going to be busy because 2022 is
essentially the starting point for a lot of other missions too I so I actually
just got the final number um earlier today I was trying to figure out how many missions globally internationally
uh Partners here how many are launching just this year now usually in the news
you typically hear of you know persevering ins James web telescope Osiris Rex yeah maybe a couple per year
2022 is going to be very very busy I have counted 10 different global
missions just this year that are going to launch uh to their respective places
and that's just 2022 there are dozens more uh from 2023 all the way up until
2030 and we're constantly con consistently as well I pushing for for
more smaller missions uh NASA back in 2018 just released their uh newest
Initiative for planet three missions called the clips initiative so Clips CPS
is an acronym for commercial lunar payload services so would actually uh
provide the Lander almost like the chassis if you will and the rocket but
what they said is that they I bring about proposals whether you're at a
university Institute or some sort of um planetary Institute so on and so forth
or or a government agency to create the payloads to be put on uh the rocket or
the Lander or the Rover and so on uh so now we're getting more into
commercialized uh private space Industries or commercial space Industries to bring about those payloads
and then we can do more science which is going to be absolutely fantastic but at the same time
absolutely busy as well uh so Clips missions
are apparently became way more popular than NASA had had thought uh so we're
gonna actually be starting some of those clips missions starting this year all so
without further Ado here's the lineup for 2022 starting off with Artemis one in
launching in March 2022 so that is only a couple months away so keep in mind though Artemis one is just the dress
rehearsal for Artemis 2 and three which will be crude missions emus one will be
uncrewed it's just to make sure that we could actually get to the moon and back I next up on the list is the juice
Mission so juice is the Jupiter icy satellites Explorer uh so the European
Space Agency is now going to send their own version of the Juno space cam uh out
of you know NASA and JPL that's currently going around Jupiter if you were to Google uh Juno Jupiter images
you can have all sorts of gorgeous gorgeous images and fun uh with like the
polar regions of Jupiter it is gorgeous uh next up is Luna 25 this is out of the
RZ Cosmos uh uh Mission initiative next
up then is the Kore a Pathfinder lunar orbiter so South Korea is now on board
to go to the Moon very soon then we have psyche uh the psyche mission is to
launch in August 2022 so psyche is well behold going to the asteroid psyche but
why is because psyche is a very heavy dense metallic asteroid we really want
to know what makes it so heavy and metallic uh so that's going to be exciting for
psyche then we have the exomars rosin Franklin Rover as well so
that's Issa and Ros Cosmos collaboration there so that's supposed to be September
2022 um the hako are one out of Japan will be in October
2022 uh then we have the Emirates lunar Mission uh supposedly in later October
2022 and then we have it to um Missions at the ready one is called prime one and
the other one is called mission one out of Mast uh so those will be supposedly around December 2022 pending no delays
so 2022 is going to be a very busy year for a lot of launches uh most of these
to the Moon uh whether they are orbiters actually yeah most of these are
are orbiters or just very simple Landers um most of these are test runs if
anything else uh but those test runs can really prove useful because then we have
a little bit larger lunar missions uh uh coming up so the moon is going to get
very popular uh very soon so besides emis um so not including emis there are
actually I 21 lunar missions already scheduled all the way up until 2025 and
there's more there's more counting so I lost
after 21 and I was like nope I'm not gonna count it anymore after that so
it's gonna very busy and that's just the Moon too a couple other it sounds like
Humanity heated the call to go back to the moon and the whole globe responded absolutely absolutely because
why not why not L him to sat on this one so that's cool yeah any you wouldn't
happen to know where I could get a ticket to be on any of these Rockets do you oh goodness well h
have you tried it no I'm I'm gonna assume probably not
at least not yet I don't know do you you envision Somewhere In Our Lifetime maybe
yours more than mine I'm 50 do you imagine that moon trips might become a
thing yes I hesitate with
that because I have my pros and cons about space tourism so I think it would
be an interesting idea um but I think a lot of science a lot of uh educational
resources uh should be utilized more with those particular launches so Less
on the tourism uh you know let's take a selfie with the moon and more toward you know
how cool would it be to start sending pads from a fifth grade classroom yeah
up and around the moon and and and to do that all over the world uh to bring
about more of an educational resource side to these payloads I think would be a much better use of those resources
I would agree at a nightclub on on the moon you know so yeah might be fun but I don't
know but I'm thinking 2030 we do a lunar Star Party what do you
think that that's only 10 years from let's see 22 eight years from now Kareem
so I could possibly make that in in good health there you go I'll have to figure
out how to make an eyepiece I can get through the glass of your your helmet so I don't know and I'll be sure to bring
my little Explorer scientific Mount hey Scott you can always use your
three inch eye pieces yeah I do have a three-inch ey piece that's true I'll just I'll have to make an even bigger
one uh Caitlyn uh Michael Carroll who's uh uh behind the curtain here uh had a
question uh he says what is the Japanese Mission going to study good question so um Haka R1 is
going to just be a simple Orbiter uh so the Japanese space agency has been more focused on Venus as of late and Mercury
I so I think them going back to the moon this is going to be kind of their version of Clips uh hak R1 is going to
be uh also commercial payload as well it's not part of
Jaa okay all right thank you Caitlyn thank you so much for coming back on uh
we are going to take a 10-minute Break um uh and uh is there any last words of
wisdom from from Dr erens and Goddard space flight
center uh Pluto is a planet everybody Pluto is a planet that sounds like right wisdom to
me I it's and I know they are all called worlds no matter what they're classified
as but I also know there was plenty of evidence with geological things going on
things that planets do um so you know the all these arguments are sound in my
book absolutely and uh real quick then since we're plugging books and whatnot I
just recently I contributed some chapters to the recent Mars volcanic
book Mars a volcanic World by Springer
oh wow so it's a springer book great yeah so wonderful read for those
who want to learn all about volcanism on Mars and how weird it is cool awesome awesome excellent
presentation absolutely absolutely so uh uh now we'll take a 10-minute break
break uh you know stretch your legs get a sandwich get a hot coffee and we'll see you back in a few
minutes I got to a break I just got
here well for the rest of us it's really cold so we need some tea or coffee I just came down from a place
called uh Mount Pinos delivering something which SC kind of ran away but
um the that I was dropping off a telescope to happen to have one of
Scott's mounts that they don't use anymore which is kind of
amusing I see Jason the hell did you get to see Jason's
presentation he it was incredible I literally just got home so I didn't know
what time he was up but I can see him you'll have to you'll have to rewind a bit to watch later uh he he caught even
uh he caught some Einstein rings from his backyard it's it's amazing oh
nice I feel like I miss everything all the time
now that's the nice thing about the way it's live streamed is you can go back to it I've missed a few weeks and whenever
I go back to it I get to just sit and watch while I'm having dinner while I'm working on some prep for my classes and
it's it's nice to have that in the background yeah for sure I think that's what um uh Scott was
saying about this the star party or doing it in this format is we can actually be sitting doing whatever it is
that we're doing and feel like we're still part of something you know if that makes sense yeah I mean when I when I
hear Adrian talk about his outings or when Maxi or Cesar sharing I actually
feel like I'm out there with them I know it's it's a weird way of doing stuff that's for sure I mean to be totally
honest I kind of had the feeling that this was where everything was going to be going at some point in time where you
know we can be together but still be like hundreds of thousands of miles apart yeah I'm look forward to the day
where i'm just sitting there talking to some random person on the moon doing you know Imaging or something like that
that's what we were saying 2030 we gota we gota we got to get somebody up there to uh to connect in from the lunar
surface what would the I'm just curious what would the delay be uh well if it's good if it's good
it'll be you know just a second second and a half but uh it depends on exactly
how it depends on the on the pickup speeds between the satellites that bring it back back and forth well I mean if
it's going to be long range radio let's have a look uh radio WS propagating a vacuum at
the speed of light La so basically the delay is 2.4 well we'll say three seconds give or
take but you have the uh you have the transfer time and the transfer time is the lag right it's the actual processing
uh at every point where it's transferred from one spot to another which is why you have a lag now
as well right so right but the lag that we have is almost uh barely noticeable I
mean we're talking the the maximum it could ever be is what 300 milliseconds I wouldn't even notice
that it's enough time to catch your foot in your mouth
possibly and just like that Adrian is back hey Adrian oh yeah there he is quick be quiet everyone mute
click whatever I said I didn't mean it okay no I I decided I'd try I've been
doing black and white landscape astrophotography or nightscapes just
trying it out lately and it's an intriguing direction to go because you
don't have the pretty colors that you associate with like a Nave in the back your background with that Galaxy and
you've got some color when you don't have that color can you create a uh an
impressive image using the night sky but without the colors in the night sky and
that's something I'm I'm experiencing I'm experimenting with and this image
back here with the shades and the clouds kind of covering the Milky Way and the
landscape behind it I'm blocking most of it and probably will continue to do so
but I find it an interesting Challenge and it's something that I've when I capture my
usual uh landscape or your nightscapes I'm trying out a couple of them in black
and white just to see what happens so that's um
it's an interesting idea I don't know how far it'll go but I had a comment when I
posted in my uh Facebook page um it still presents more of an experience
that you would see with the human eyes a little more so than the you know this
this person was of the opinion that a lot of the astrophotography was overprocessed and it gets to be a bit
cartoonish as opposed to you know detailed and looking like something that
you would see with the human ey so um I find that I find it interesting and just
something I'm trying out I'm curious too I might want to see how that
goes yeah I'm we'll see we'll see I have a couple my presentation is down a
little ways but um I do have some black and other black and white images besides
this one that um I wanted to share as well as some of the first images that
I've gotten using um an Explorer scientific Mount it's doing very very well um now
how cold has it gotten out there with the es Mount because uh Mark is mentioning it's five degrees Fahrenheit
for him we've got minus 25 minus 35 with windchill up here in Celsius so uh it
worked fine at six six okay yeah that was some of the pictures I'll show from
one of my favorite places to image it was the Mount of choice and it imaged at
six uh Fahrenheit which I think I looked I forget what it is in Celsius but it's
like 17 or8 negative 18 it's doing just fine in those conditions it's uh it's
trater core connected to it or um no I
don't now of course I'm not staying out there much longer than an hour because the human body can only take so much
punishment the mount is working just as well as I am so when my fingers begin to
freeze I figure the mounts it's probably time for all of us to go back in the truck but uh I managed to get a few
images uh and carry the mount now maybe I'm a big guy maybe so but uh I can pick
up the mount with one hand the power source I use for it in the other hand and trudge off to a different location
roughly polar align it just look for the North Star and where I go the North Star is usually it's a little harder to see
but you know you can find the entire Little Dipper aim it towards the North
Star take a test image and if in 30 seconds with a 35 millimeter lens I
don't get any Star Trails I know that I'm pretty well polar align enough for
what it is I'm doing so well normous saying that uh he has trouble with the filter wheel Electronics cuz he has a
filter wheel he uses directly you don't do that right right no I'm I'm not
typically using filter wheel I'm using what would be uh basically one shot
color I have a camera on top of my Mount and I'm using a a camera lens right in
fact it's not gonna this was the the
camera connected directly uh to the Mount there was no
not through a telescope or anything it was yeah because you're doing your Widefield work which is great for this weather but uh telescope and electronics
it's definitely that's why I was wondering about the mount because uh I have trouble with the mount in this temp in this weather especially when there's
any humidity in the air at this temperature it really starts to to grind
it starts to it starts to sound like my uh 2009 Santa Fe right you you feel like
the whole thing's about to shake fall apart yeah well I see we have product specialist Jerry Hubble I tried to send
you a uh glowing review that the mount was holding up very well to my crazy uh
intentions setting the thing in the snow and going for it yeah so we do have
quite a few customers up in Canada that have used the the mounts the the exos 2
the xos 100 exos 100 mounts and very cold down to
uh I think down to 20 below actually 20 below fenhe
or which is pretty darn cold I mean I don't know how much you want to about but but uh and then long-term stability
or our reliability is something else that we've really pushed for in our design and we've got we've had the PMC
system in our Observatory here and we get temperatures down to 5 10 degrees up to 100
degrees so it they operate well at least the the P the G11 pmca box operates fine
in a wide range of temperature yeah well we'll carry on more after uh maybe during my
[Music] second [Music]
[Music]
well we're back um this is uh uh near now into the second session of the 80th
Global Star Party um we've had some great speakers so far and uh uh
finishing up with Dr Catlin erens from the Godard space flight center um our
next speaker is from John Abbot College uh and the uh Royal Astronomical Society
of Canada the Montreal Center and uh Professor Kareem Jafar will be on with
us to uh cover aspects of uh of the uh
the reason why we are now in the Golden Age of astronomy Karim thanks Scott uh
hi everyone it's great to be back uh I unfortunately missed last week's uh
Cosmic dust uh Global star party and thankfully the person who I was going to
host quatran joined and he was able to provide an amazing talk on some of the
inspiration that he had growing up and that kind of got me thinking in terms of
that that side side view of uh what we thought about about astronomy and space
science when we were growing up so I'm going to chat about the Golden Age of astronomy in a bit but I'm going to do
it from a slightly different perspective before I do I just want to do a quick touch in with a a check in with the
rasque Montreal Center and tell you a little bit about a few of the things going on uh first off tomorrow we
actually have our citizen science series episode two and the reason I wanted to share this with you right away is
because Dr erens talked about the Juno image processing and that's going to be my segment in the citizen science
presentation where I'm going to walk through a very simple way to get some of the Juno images from the uh from the
actual uh Jupiter Juno site and what's amazing is even with free software like
you can walk through and process it really nicely and get some of the details out of the Great Red Spot of the
colors of some of the clouds and some of the textures that you can see and you can even track storms over past that
Juno has made across Jupiter we also are going to have a small talk on quantum entanglement and a little bit on
Russell's first adventures in radio astronomy you can visit our website to get more information RC montreal.
organ and the link is in our calendar so you can join us tomorrow at 8:00 pm eastern time which is 7 PM Central and
by all means guests especially our Global Star Party audience you're welcome to join us at the RC Montreal
Center I also wanted to tell you about our next public event which we are doing with gal physics and G is my alma Moder
and it's actually Dr Roberta Bond's Alma moer as well we're going to be celebrating the 30th anniversary of Dr
Bond becoming not just the first Canadian woman in space but actually the first neurologist in
space one of my former students Virginia she's a astrophysics student at the
moment at Bishops University and she's going to be giving us a little bit of an overview of Dr Bond's journey and her
work aboard the Discovery but also afterwards what she did to help study
astronauts exposure to space and she's continued work for almost three decades
now on the impact on the brain of strange environments for humans she's
also a photographer by Nature so she's one of the only astronauts to be an actual artistic photographer and take
surveys of all different areas of the earth which is incredible and then our
past president Katherine dulong is going to present some work that she's been doing with the Canadian Space Agency for
the last year on feeding future astronauts so when Scott put up his
theme for this week on the Golden Age of astronomy I immediately thought citizen science because that's kind of one of
the things that I love about the golden age but I knew that there would be some talk on citizen science with what Dr
eron said and I thought about talking a little bit about space shuttles and space exploration and Libby did an
amazing job of that but then it occurred to me that Dr Bond's anniversary gives
us a different vantage point to examine what the Golden Age of astronomy means
especially for kids growing up right now and over the past years so I want to
talk to you briefly about one of my former students at John Abbot College Katherine dulong who's going to be part
of this event on Saturday January 22nd which is going to be available live stream on our YouTube channel so
Katherine was a student at John Abbott but not in my astronomy class she was actually one of my core physics class
students but even though she wasn't in the astronomy class she was incredibly active in our space Club she was one of
the students who helped to organize our partial eclipse event where we had 5,000
people come on to the field at John Abbot College on the first day of class in 2017 to see the partial solar eclipse
she stayed active and helped out at all of our events even when she became an alumni and during this time one of the
things that I love is that she would talk to other students not about the science of astronomy or the science of
astrophysics because she didn't have an interest in that she would say I will never formally study Physics she had no
interest in it but she loved astronomy she loved the way her heartbeat changed
she loved her pupils expanding as she got used to the night sky and how that act connected with her but her passion
was in a different area it was in food Sciences it was in nutrition and she's found a way to take that passion her
career in nutrition and apply that to space sciences and work with the Canadian Space Agency for over a year
now on projects for how we will actually support astronauts not just going to the
moon but also moving past that to Mars and exploring the rest of the solar system and it started me thinking about
the way in which we started looking at space as kids so when I was growing up and I don't know about many of you but a
lot of us grew up in around the same era where you know we saw the first steps on the moon or we saw the shuttles going up
and we saw astronauts taking those steps into space exploration and so when
people would say you know you love astronomy you love the solar system you love the planets what are you going to be when you grow up a lot of us thought
our choice was astronaut or if you were really feeling like you know you really
love the science behind it you could you know there was always the joke you could be a rocket scientist or not everyone is
a rocket scientist you could sit there and work on chalkboards and you sit there and do all of your calculations and everything but if you really love
the actual objects in deep space if you love planetary science if you love
examining it then you could aim to be an astronaut like in the days of old or you could aim to be an astrophysicist and
work through the mysteries of the universe or you could aim to be both like josn B Bernell and actually work as
an active astronomer but identify what it is you're observing and discover new and amazing objects like
pulsars so when you were growing up everything you thought of was kind of hedged into these certain little Windows
of what you thought space meant what you thought astronomy meant and then last
week watching this Cosmic dust uh G GSP one of the things that stood out to me
was this slide that Dr erens presented about studying dust bunnies and she
talked about how incredibly interdisciplinary it is the idea that you don't just have astrophysics you
also have heliophysics you also have astrobiology you have climatology you have geology chemistry engineering and
you bring all of these fields together and that's really the way in which science works now and when you start
looking at some of the exploration that we're doing in the solar system you look at the Rovers and you look at all the different fields that are combined
together you recognize that if you have an interest in an area connected with
space science you have the opportunity to be part of the golden age of astronomy and move it forward and even
if you've done your education a long time ago but you have an interest in these areas citizen science is there to
help you to actually participate in the scientific work being done by The Rovers
by the probes in the solar system by the remote telescopes that we have access to and the data that comes out of them like
what Jason was saying earlier I mean we have this this data that comes to us that we can actually work with and learn
what it means and interpret it and Michael was saying that you know we can even interpret it artistically at times
when I talk to my students about a lot of this one of the things that comes up is when we build some of these different
solar probes or Earth observation satellites or Rovers we're building not
just you know the Canadian space agency everything's done in their little compound in the Southshore off of
Montreal area it's actually done at companies throughout Canada and they all
have different contributions to building this amazing satellite system that's
examining the environment of Canada 247 and so when radar stat constellation
came out the CSA put out this amazing infographic that showed all the different companies that had contributed
to the building of radar sa and when I sat on the side of the highway watching
these constellation satellites being put onto these transport trucks and driven to
Ottawa to be tested at the testing facility there and then shipped down to California to be launched it occurred to
me that we also have to recognize that that launch is done by SpaceX with the Falcon 9 Rockets which are these
reusable rockets that came from this Vision that that allowed us to start to
explore space in a more reusable more sustainable fashion and one of the
things I try to get across to my students is this means that no matter
what area you go into for your career no matter where your your attitudes your
skills your passion lies if you're interested in space you can remain
connected to space so I take them to the Canadian space agency website and I talked to them a little bit about the
different careers that are focused at the CSA and you know they talk about engineers they talk about technicians
they talk about health science experts which now is a burgeoning field for
really helping with space exploration and the idea of man space flight the
astronauts themselves is a very small Avenue but it's still something that I want my students who are interested who
are passionate to feel that they can aim towards and then there's the scientists the astronomers the as as physicist and
they have an amazing role in really setting up where our exploration will go
and what our exploration means but that's not where it ends because we also have the consultancy in
general Services we have financial services without which none of these programs none of these companies none of
these institutions can hold you have it services and intellectual property management and then you have publishing
and graphic arts and Publishing and graphic arts meant the world to us as kids because we didn't have pictures of
Jupiter we had artist rendering of what Jupiter would look like we didn't have pictures of what the sun's surface
looked like we had artist rendering based on the data that we had taken and what we understood from those grainy
pictures that we took back in the 60s 70s and 80s you have multimedia products and services you have marketing you have
communications you have all of these different areas that are still integral
to the Golden Age of astronomy and then above and beyond all of that
you have how we interpret and teach this to the next level which is journalism
like with astronomy magazine Sky News Magazine sky and Telescope Etc you have education all the schools and all the
programs out there not just the actual programs within schools but also
educational Outreach such as what we're doing here at the gsps and then you have Visual Arts a way to actually connect to
the information that you're learning in astronomy and in this golden age that we have so what I wanted to bring to the
table today was this idea that the Golden Age of astronomy doesn't just mean that there's a lot more astronomy
there and a lot more tools that we can use to study the space and the universe around us it also means there's a lot
more avenues for us to be part of that journey to be part of that search and part of that Golden Age so with that on
behalf of the RFC Montreal Center thanks for your attention and again you're welcome to join join us tomorrow at our
citizen science talk or next week at our Dr Bond's 30th anniversary
celebration that's great thank you so much um kareim uh again I if I ever had
a uh a teacher in astronomy a professor of astronomy I would want it to be you I
mean you are so uh engaging and so inspiring um I think and I think it's
infectious I think everybody gets that so and we so much Scott we all we all
want to be in your class Kim this is this is my other classroom I've told my students I said Tuesday
night no office hours I'm on the GSP amazing excellent thank you so much yeah
see I have to I finally made the my first Sarnia um rasque meeting and it
was fantastic and uh now I have to try and sneak into the Montreal meeting
anytime and don't forget you and I have to write an article for low brows at some point yeah we'll get together and
do that okay all right so up next is Young
Navin uh who has been on now I think na is it three Global star parties at this
point yep it's three okay all right so what is your big passion what what
really intrigues you about space exploration and
astronomy um I feel like I just want to learn more about space and I I got
interest in space at a young age and ever since I've wanted to work at Nasa
when I grew up and I still have that dream well I I think that you're gonna
achieve that dream no problem um I uh uh
I'm always impressed when someone uh that comes on to Global Star Party who's young because uh you know you're uh it
shows that you have the interest and confidence uh to come on to our program
and uh you know I I think it's uh I think it's wonderful that you're here with some great uh astronomers as they
are but uh they love it too they love to see uh young people coming in and giving
it their all so Navin I'm going to turn it over to you what is your what's going to be your presentation tonight today
I'm going to talk about microwave radiation um just give me a second I'm
going share my screen [Music]
okay nice Background by the way do you see it yeah we don't see your
presentation but we see your background we see your background
one second you don't see it don't see
it y there it is there it
is there we go all
right yeah I think it's interesting behind every child that is interested in
space you see the father there helping out I think that's very very important
or the mother yeah or the mother yeah parents are so key in uh fostering space
the love of space and space exploration yes otherwise you become a late bloomer like
me carry on na all right so today I'm gonna be talking about micro wave
radiation so what's microwave radiation it's basically the cosmic mic
it's it's like um it's also known as The Cosmic microwave background it's it's
basically thought to be leftover radiation from the first Tower Universe originated from The Big Bang it's
basically heat left over from it and it's also it's also the oldest type of
electromagnetic radiation so when the when the universe was young before the
formation of stars and planets it was much denser hotter and filled with a
thick fog and hydrogen of hydrogen plasma and as it goes and when the
universe was born it also went went through rap a rapid inflation and it got
bigger and still is today and as it still as it expanded the
plasma the hydrogen plasma grew cooler and the radiation filling it expanded
into longer
wavelengths and you can see as the in this image like the size of the
wavelengths were about the size of a ba baseball and then now let's talk about
the origins it started 13 billion point8 billion years
ago the C the CMB talk dates back about 400,000 years
after the big bang the temperature was extreme it was 273 million degrees above
absolute zero so when the temperature had dropped enough the protons and electrons they combined to form a
neutral hydrogen atoms now the con now the newly conceived atoms they couldn't scatter
their thermal radiation by Thompson scattering so and so the universe then
became transparent and then in American cosmologist Ralph AER I think that's how
you pronounce it first predicted the CMB in 1948 and then in 1965 by American
astronomers arnno penas and Robert Wilson then they also figured it out in
1965 and later on in 1978 they'd get a Nobel priest prize for
physics this these this image shows like the genetics when the big bang when the
universe was first formed and this is kind of like this image here was kind of like a Sim simulation of the Big
Bang now the importance let's talk about the importance of the precise
movement precise movements of the CMB are critical to the field scientific
field of cosmology since of any proposed model of the of the universe has to explain
radiation the CMB has a thermal black body Spectrum at a
temperature of 2.72 f um I don't 48
0.0057 Kelvin um and in part and in particular
the spectral Radiance um at different angles at observation the sky also
contains small anot trophies or irregularities which vary of the size of
the region examined they have also been measured in detail and match what would
be expected of small thermal variation generated by Quantum fluctuations of
matter in a very tiny space compare expanded to the size of
the observable universe we see today this is this image right here is the
model of the quantum fluctuations Theory and this is also the same thing
but like in a different form and then now let's go into detail
scientists have also followed up those results by like by studying the very
early inflation and spanding stages of the universe in a trillion second after
formation so by giving more precise parameters and atom
density the universe they can measure the universe's lumpiness and the
properties of the universe shortly after it was formed so they also saw a strin
of symmetry and the average temperatures both in the Hem Hemisphere and a cold spot that was bigger than expected and
now there are rumors that this cold spot could lead to a parallel Galaxy this was
this you can see this is the on the model on the image on the left this is the universe and on you see this tiny
blue spot right here one my cursor pointing that's where scientists spotted the blue like the cold spot and this is
a replica of how it might look like we don't exactly know cuz our none of our
visual can go can image something like
this now we're going to let's talk about the relationship to the Big Bang now the
microwave background radiation and cosmical red shift distance relation are
together regarded the best available evidence for the Big Bang Theory so now
measurements of the CNB have made the inflamatory Big Bang Theory a standard
called cosmological model now the discovery of this in the mid 1960s made
curtailed made certain interest in alternative such as the steady state
Theory and this is an IM another image of the Big Bang same for this
one now satellite let's talk about some satellites that help find microwave radiation the first
successful space based skymac came from the cosmic background Explorer um
it's this one it's this one right here the it launched in 1989 and C
scientific operations in 1993 the it created the baby picture of
the universe as naasa calls it a more detailed map came in 2003 courtesy of
the Wilkinson microwave inop trophy probe W
map it was launched in Janu in June 2001 and stopped collecting science data in
2010 and the first picture pegged the universe's age at 13.7 billion years old now in 2013 data
from the esa's plank Space Telescope which is right here was released showing
that the highest precision and accurate picture of the CNB yet now scientists
uncovered another M three with this formation now fluctuations in the CNB at
large angler skilles did not match predictions now plank has
confirmed what wmap saw in terms of the UN Symmetry and the cold
spot so now plank was more accurate than all the others and this is the double the
Wilkinson microwave it's the WAP
satellite all right other research efforts so so one is determining types
of polarization they're all based in Antarctica it's discovered by the
Antarctica brace degree angular scale interferometer in 220 2002 and in B
modes B modes can be produced from gravitational lensing of an e- mode this lensing was first seen by the South Pole
telescope in 2013 gravitational waves which were first observed using the advanced l
interferometer gravitational wave Observatory or legal for short and in
2014 the Antarctic based bicep 2 instrument was said to have found
gravitational wave B modes all right so
um the first one this is the South Pole
telescope and then this is um um I think this is Lego and then this is the
advanced laser inter therometer um now
let's now conclusion the microwave radiation still continues and scientists
around the world are still fine about our growing universe and we still have observatories and and the satellites at
this moment and at this second are still researching in space about microwave
radiation all right thank you that's all wow that was a complex uh but very
interesting uh presentation naan and uh I am uh I'm impressed that you uh you
picked the subject so uh it's nice because of all the interconnected uh
support of uh of uh you know features seen in the cosmic uh back uh you know
cosmic background and uh the you know kind of the confirmation of things like
uh the universe's age this cold spot in particular I think is really tantalizing
and uh you know so uh we'll only learn more more in the decades to come but uh
you know I'd like to know what what is discovered by the time you reach my age you know so I I think uh I think if you
stay the course and keep on studying uh these aspects of cosmology and uh
observation uh I think you're going to go very very far so I was also extremely fascinated and and um Amazed by
everything I also researched I never knew some stuff that I researched right
yeah that's really that's incredible tell us a little bit more uh you're you uh you are 12 years old at this at this
time is that right 12 um I live in Washington DC in
Virginia suburb and then I love astronomy and I'm an
astrophotographer and I and I'm a member at the northern Virginia astronomy club
oh so that's that's near me uh maybe we can meet uh
someday maybe hopefully that'd be good well
great great all right so uh thanks again Avan and uh we welcome you to the next
Global star party or anytime that you can come on you're always welcome thanks for having me and I'd love to come on
next time okay all right you can count on it all right so up next is H Jerry
Hubble Jerry is vice president of engineering for explor scientific uh he
uh is a fascinating uh guy to talk to I
he Jerry and I always get involved in these deep conversations uh on a wide variety of topics but
including technology and astronomy um he is uh one of the people
that has uh put together msro science uh and uh uh Works uh almost every day with
the Marx l remote Observatory so uh we're going to turn it over to you Jerry I did it Cloud over at this time the sky
is not good like Jason said it's it's terrible actually it's really one of the worst uh you can't focus on anything and
and I've got the transparency is poor here so it looks the sky is real bright with the Moon the Moon is uh uh
basically uh 10 days old now I think it is 60% uh waxing so it's just a
bright Sky that's hard to focus so you can't really see anything I
took I took a lot of images trying to look at different positions in the sky
uh because we don't have have a full sky at the msro we just have a three4 or not
even three4 probably about twoth thirds of the view of the the full sky and it's
it doesn't look good so I wasn't going to share that what I am going to share I think is some
examples and I wanted to talk a little about about first uh I think the key to
the Golden Age of astronomy Now is really to me it's
technology without the technology that we have that's been built over the last you know 20 years especially for
amateurs but actually since the uh Apollo program really spurred on
technology development and Engineering uh and accelerated our our
uh use of technology in the consumer space I think that's just that's been a
a primary key for me to to this now we the other thing is that the Technologies
developed you know hundreds of millions of dollars or or even more billions of dollars were the technology that was
developed back in the 50s and 60s and 70s in terms of computers and and
instruments and everything all that technology has been pushed down to our level now so we've got we've actually
got better tools than even in the 1970s and 80s that people had that spent
millions of dollars on stuff you know the mark slate remote Observatory is a
as a good example I think uh so to give you an example the markade
remote Observatory if you were to build it today it' probably cost about
$30,000 worth of uh equipment and Technology plus plus some time and
effort you know to build it and to understand it um but that $30,000 today
is equivalent to what well over a million or10 million dollars would have been in the 1970s I think in terms of
capability ility so that tells you that you know and that's a great enabler uh for
amateur astronomers the other key to this is also uh when you have technology
available to amateurs they're very inventive you know we've talked about it several times before Scott where a lot
of new techniques and procedures and other uses for technology were from amateurs theide that had to deal with
inexpensive equipment right right so you want to do the stuff that the big boys do with inexpensive equipment what you
have to come up with ways to do it right that's right you have to get creative and you have to get creative and
inventive and master your craft so right exactly you gotta really study and
become knowledgeable about the tools and equipment that you have and understand the limitations and the capabilities
that you have with what you and I would I would uh impress upon any amateur
astronomer or anybody thinking about getting into astronomy and and on the technology side to learn everything you
can about the equip and to you invest the time and effort in yourself not just
in in in the equipment to learn it and and you know once you learn it and
understand it fully then you can really push the performance of this equipment and you see talented individuals like
Adrien and uh Jason that just push the limits it's amazing how far they've
taken the technology it's amazing it is you know so you know and Chuck you know
Chuck um Abu yeah he's he's another one that's
really pushed the technology yeah and you know a lot of these a lot of these people live in very light polluted Skies
uh Chuck is something like six or seven blocks away from downtown Detroit um uh
Doug struble is another one amazing uh uh planetary nebula Imaging and um uh
you know again very light polluted environment uh you know so these people
have taken lemons and really made lemonade in in the you know in an
amazing way and right Maxi FIS and Nicholas Aras too yeah again they push
the limits they push the limits they people would scare ly believe uh
the kinds of uh images that they make you know with uh you know both Maxi and
Nico uh and Caesar another one is uh is showing us what small modest telescopes
can do telescopes that don't even have drives telescopes that you know they
don't even have Astro cameras they're using smartphones they it's just unbelievable basically that's the so the
technology coupled with the inventiveness of amateur astronomers that have a passion for for the sky and
and I experienced this myself when I got back into astronomy 12 13 years ago I
wanted to see where the technology was at at that time and I just was blown
away even 13 years ago and jumped with both feet into the technology and into
learning and getting the best results I could ever get you know and it just drives you when you see what's possible
and then all of a sudden you said I can see myself getting better and better and the key to that is to invest in your own
skills and knowledge not just the equipment but it's a coupling between the inventiveness of amateur astronomers
and this and the stick tutiven I should say you know along with the technology
that's available I think that's a key that's that's why this is a golden age of astronomy I think um right couldn't
agree more couldn't agree more you know um I often think back I mean for as as I
was reminiscing missing over the last few years of some amazing things that I've seen in amateur astronomy one of
them I have to point out is uh when Jerry had read an article about using uh
a um uh you know a special uh filter actually it's not a filter it's it's a
special uh U lens or multiple lenses that uh uh make a diffuse uh Starlight
and they were using this on meter I don't know four meter to four to eight
meter telescope right they had that they had it mounted on the poar 200 inch they tested it with that yep and a one meter
psylvia glass with a bunch of what look like tiny tin it looks like frosted glass but it's a bunch of tiny lenses
and what happens is Starlight comes through there gets the image reforms on all these little tiny lenses onto your
sensor and now you're able to sample uh down to thousands of a magnitude okay
and you get a Precision that's unreal so Jerry wanted to learn if uh if in fact
he could do uh What uh profession the pros were doing with the 200 inch with
his 6-inch refractor and in fact uh on on our pretty much our first try on on
measuring an exoplanet he was able to capture the light curve of uh was hat
p16 is that right p16 right hat right
and uh he live we did this live we should have recorded it but in
case it failed but it didn't fail right we actually did it live and presented uh
uh the data which um later Jerry did reduce uh a little bit more uh but the
predicted light curve and the real light curve uh that he captured were so almost
identical and uh so it was it was really impressive right so find an exoplanet
with confirm an exoplanet with a 6inch telescope like so the key is not just the detection there's there's there's a
technology level that you need to just detect exoplanets which is is uh pretty
much standard uh technology with skills and knowledge at that level to do photometry
but the the new thing gives you a way to model the the planetary system or that
planet's information and that's what's really cool about is it gets you to the next level in terms of measurement uh
for this so I wanted to share that was the
main message I wanted to bring about the Golden Age of technology is that it's it's really driven by individuals also
not just not just big science but in even in big science you have individuals
that drive drive it you know and the fact that we have so many professionals
uh on this program shows you that they they share the uh the idea that amateurs
are important to this to this hobby not just just to the profession and the
Hobby and the field right so and we work together as a team and that's another
thing about the Golden Age of of astronomy is that I think we're getting we're driving closer and closer together
in terms of amateur and professional right uh collaboration I think I think we're going to have and Tess was a big
example the transiting exoplanet survey satellite that had within the charter of
the mission was to provide grounds uh to have groundbased observations a big part
of the mission and to en elicit the help of not just professional groundbased systems but uh amateur systems
also yeah if only your the dogs in the background agreed with uh how important
that is they are they are agreeing they're howling they're howling in the light okay that good point that's right
that's right they're uh making a bunch of noise for me yeah but that's um I know with as you
mentioned advances in techn techology and then our ability to use it and kind of figure out how to how to use it it
you know becoming more of a reality but also point out that with like with your
expertise those instruction manuals leading the way it does help us to get
the most out of our equipment um without without well written instructions
if have a brick for the uh thing it won't move anywhere
then I just end up using it as a fancy tripod so right it it is a
collaboration so it's important that you mentioned documentation and things that uh training and skills and knowledge and
how you get there how do you learn about the system and that it's not just enough to get something that you turn on and it
does what you want you have to really get in your mind that you have to learn about it to make it to get the most out
of it and to push the limits of your equipment to me you don't know if you need to buy new equipment until you
reached the limits of your existing equipment if you want to be prud uh you know if you want to be uh Frugal about
your expenditures you really need to push the limits and say well I definitely need another telescope now because this is
all I could get uh and you know your skills are are
not the limit right so you need to make sure your skills and knowledge are not the limit and your performance of your
equipment is a limit yeah when when you see Jason gonel getting uh AR of
galaxies and you know extremely faint stuff out to like two billion light
years uh you know and just features on on these objects that just just it's
mind-blowing you know and uh um you know I applaud I applaud all of his efforts
and all those uh hard hours of uh that he puts into acquiring those images but
also processing them yeah that's that's I think I'm impressed the most with people that dedication they they provide
for getting for pushing this technology and pushing their skills of knowledge is just the dedication and the passion they
have to spend hundreds of thousands of even thousands of hours uh to do this
and um I have I have I've experienced that myself also especially when I first
jumped into this 13 12 10 11 years ago I I got so hardcore into it that I after
four years I had absorbed enough information I decided I could I could write a book so I'm not sure how many
people would want to do that but I was lucky enough and had the opportunity to be able to do that so that's really what
started me on this career in the industry you know that's when I met Scott the first time in 2010 and then
you know I figured well this you know and I moved into this as a career now so it's kind of cool yeah that's right
that's right so if the if the measure is you make some money uh somehow uh doing
astronomy maybe that's also a sort of professional astronomer so or at least a
pro in the astronomy field right so well great thanks thank you Jerry for coming
on and sharing that sure thank you y up next is Adrien Bradley Adrien has been
consistently on the global Star Party sharing incredible nightscapes uh Landscapes
nightscapes uh and the occasional bird photograph uh uh Adrien loves nature um but uh I think
he's INE especially in love with h uh the dramatic uh views that he can get of
the Milky Way so Adrian I'm gonna turn it over to you man thank you for coming on thank you Scott for having me on uh
first a shout to Jerry Hubble the iox uh
100 uh PCM 8 Mount that I'm using now is
um it has been taken for some runs and I am impressed with the way that it's uh
working I'm getting used to it and I've taken it to a couple of sites to see
what kind of Imaging I can do I will go ahead and share my screen um we talk golden age of
astronomy which has been the theme and um somewhere in here I have the pi
picture of the mount that I've purchased and um I've looked at the
instructions successfully uploaded the firmware and so now when I power up the
mount it automatically starts tracking yeah I'm glad you've got the got the benefit of that uh that feature that we
added recently in the last uh few months so that's that's a cool thing to be able to traditional Mount yes and it was very
easy just follow along the instructions the firmware went straight from the computer into the machine it rebooted
reminded me a lot like uh updating a server with some new code and um and it
it came up just fine so so we took it for a test run and I
will share couple of images that were taken using this Mount um this one if the mount if I
didn't quite set set it up to track it made a pretty good tripod but I did use
it to track as well and so here we're at one of my favorite spots poo bark
Lighthouse Park the lighthouse is behind me in this shot and um I'm aiming out at
the copia region of the Milky Way that you can see some of it coming
through here but there was a lot of light to my left
and I've shot this scene a number of times before um I would have to dig up Aurora whenever there's a fairly large
uh fairly large storm and Aurora is present this is the site through which
you can see it from this uh Park in the thumb so let see this is
um I set up the mount and imaged uh tracking this time and I
imaged through a little bit of haze you've got winter Milky Way and
Orion I swear this is part of the wit composition I love that yep looking
right up at this Tower and this little streak right here while I was watching the um while the Imaging was
starting um meteor came shooting down and the tail
end of it ended up in my image um are finding you aan they follow you they
find me and they start there yes this is what I liked about the shot there's m44
and there's detail in m44 this is a 14 millimeter lens yeah and some of the
detail in m44 shows up now there are thousands more stars
but the main stars of the cluster show up is the tracking perfect probably not
so perfect you can see it's beginning to Trail especially on the edges
but for an overall image I was very happy with it and this is just me
picking it up aiming it North and doing a 30 minute I think this was 25 actually
this was 25 seconds not 30 minutes it um this was a 25 second exposure so with
the um with a 14 millimeter lens you know you you don't get much
trailing um if you just let it shoot you get about 20 seconds before it starts to
Trail so this tracked well enough and then processing to get some of the uh H
Alpha regions that are in here it's nice to see these images because it gives you
a sense of scale when you zoom up on the cluster comparing back out then you get
a real appreciation for how big these things really are in the sky in relation
to each other that's what I like about it yeah that's part of the part of what I saw in kind of marrying Earth objects
this this is a pretty substantial size Tower here we are looking around it I
think this was just one of those where it's like okay I wanted to take everybody to what it looks like to be
standing around this Tower there's water over here here this curves around I'll show you the uh wide angle so that's
where I was standing and behind the tower is where I was standing looking
through those trees in that last shot here's my shadow this is a wider View
and I'm standing so as to block some of this bright light that's created this
Arc here but there's some Haze in the sky at the time some dust Lane showed up
this was a if I'm not mistaken somewhere between 25 and 30 seconds and you have
the cassieopia region and there's cassieopia herself right here right next to this
Lighthouse um part of what I've experimented with
is taking shots like that and desaturating them this was a little
earlier and I have the other Mount that I have is um a uh star tracking um
it's a it's a uh skywatcher model and this is earlier on you notice signus is
here setting and I think this was around the same time of night that I took the
past image so you can see how the sky moves and the the Milky Way
rotates to where now it's going towards the lighthouse and a similar shot with
the haze that was in the sky it made it to where I wasn't able to pick it up as
well but it's still there um and this is
this is the postcard you zoom in and crop you get
this postcard sh I thought this was a nice winry this is more this goes into more of the art side of night sky you
still got nice round stars but you've got a little more of an
artsy look you always tow that line when you do photography so try it again and um this
was 30 seconds and this was just as simple
we're firing at Sirius but once again the visibility of the Clusters
here m41 now with some processing we may have lost a few stars but
m41 m46 and m47 I believe
right there I'm not sure which one of this little dot or this dot I believe was
M48 um for those that have uh plate solving in their minds they can tell me
um but then you know we've got this what amazes me sometimes when I do these
nightscapes is um picking up
these you know bright messier objects Little Star clusters and um you know
seeing them in the photo as if they you know
well they do belong but it's you see them in the photo when you come from an astronomy background you notice those
things you're not just using the night sky to try to frame you know a you know
a shoreline on Lake h on there's things in the night sky that are actually there
and you're you're making your image as accurate as possible and that was a 30
second shot though that was a panel here's a similar scene in black and
white and this time I attached um another panel that contained Orion and this is where I'm going as a
part of my um night skate landscape photos is not only
shoot you know these scenes using light of the entire scene including the
light of the Stars to try and see if desaturating or black and white will
carry so much um astrophotography a lot of it depends on
those colors that we pull in whether you combine from Filter wheels or you're using one shot color you know we're used
to seeing colorful images but images like this
where you know this um this was a handheld shot and I got to the point where the moon I got the shape of the
moon but I didn't I didn't put the uh detail in this is just a handheld shot
um just more like a night shot but this here's a desaturated this is something
that I previously had and I desaturated it to see what effect it would have it's
an older photo with an older camera but um I find desaturated
an interesting thing because then you've got if you are focus more on your
subject in which case this tree obviously is a main subject but you've
got the Starlight you know and then the clouds around it this would likely qualify more
as just a you know a beautiful picture of a starry night but if you take an
image you know like this and you go you desaturate it there are things in the
night sky that you can see whose light carries and I believe I
the image that's in the back that I'm uh or in my uh my virtual
image um is one of those that took me a bit by surprise at how it
looked so using uh most of these starting to
use the uh explore iOS Mount um I always in include an image for Scott a
blackbird against a while ago we had a lot of smoke in the air if you remember here let's we can use this image to talk
about creativity um there's a lot of smoke in the air so you could you know we always
say don't look at the sun use proper filtering when looking at the sun the
smoke provided such a thick Haze that
it was tempting to look at the sun because it wasn't burning the eyes like it normally does it the sun
appeared um you it was just a disc hanging out in the sky and you wouldn't
burn your eyes looking at it and so being careful I decided I might be able
to use the fact that it's so Smoky to compose an image with it so here we have
the sun in the background because I focused on the Blackbird the sun you know ended up being a little out of
focus but I ended up with this image just by noticing the conditions and
taking advantage of them um so much especially in nightscape photography so
much Imaging is seeing your surroundings and using the type of creativity that um
astrophotographers are known for in you know producing images and pulling out
details of images that same creativity can go into marrying Wildlife photography with a Chance uh happen
stance of well there's a lot of smoke in the sky so what do we do we take pictures like this so I think you bring
up an important aspect of taking advantage not just of the opportunities
but of every opportunity and and just and work with what you have deal you know with the hand you're given and make
the best of it that's right and you can do you can do excellent work and and you can have little Oddball opportunities
come along that are once in a lifetime type of opportunities that you don't realize until you go out and try so I
would I would encourage everybody to not just wait for the perfect night or the
perfect time to do whatever because you'll be waiting forever and you will not practice your craft you'll you'll
you'll be disappointed and absolutely yeah this is the Aurora now
you notice the lighthouse looks familiar cuz I've just been showing pictures from a couple nights ago but in March of 2021
I came to do Milky Way Photography and saw this so you're seeing a lot of the same
angles that I took pictures of there's that angle I was telling you about and
there's the Aurora that I saw it's beautiful so you just have if you have
your Technique down um and you know how you'll take the
pictures you can take advantage of seeing something in the night sky and and
rather than the moment be too big for you you'll know exactly what you'll do
to try and get those moments and um that you know Jerry what you're talking about
it it really helps you know even Haze creates a picture like this where
the Stars blo a little bit there's some artistic interpretation with that as
well there all sorts of different things that you can get um I know as amateur
astronomers we we tend to look at things and go you know well it's too cloudy um
you know I can't I don't want to take any photos it's too cloudy well look at this composition here that's beautiful
it is it's cloudy but if there's Starlight coming through and you know that Starlight
breaks through cloudy nights don't have to especially in nightscape photography
cloudy nights don't have to stop you from taking a few pictures that's what the added ability
of being able to track the sky for a long periods will help too yes you Starlight will come through almost
anything it's it's amazing sometimes yes it will and then seeing phenomena like
this the uh Light Pillars which some more um others have posted their images
of Light Pillars here but um we took this photo gave it to the county where I
was standing just freely offered it to him and said you all should use this for your uh materials and they did so in
Alona County's Parks uh materials this
photo is a part of there showing what there you know this Campground is a pond
that's out at their Campground this is what it looks like and I was standing on this frozen pond either last year or the
year before when I took this photo and the ice didn't break through because I'm here today to tell you about it so
that's true that's true so and not every yep copper we were talking about copper
being in Michigan I just happened to upon this image that's copper coming through these Falls so there's your kind
of an example of just how much copper you know is in Michigan it it's running
off it's being washed into the damin and river and ending up in the
Falls you know not every not every nights this is how hazy and night
there's a star right there this is how hazy and night can be this is a dark
area but it was too cloudy but you make the most of it by just Imaging what you
got you can still have a beautiful picture still beautiful you just have yep you wait wait till the next
opportunity and see what you can get and then one last image this one yeah it's
Pitch Black it's dark I open up the shutter for about I think a minute or so
and still get this
um the sensor is very it's very sensitive even when we can't see a thing it's that dark
the camera sensor at a long exposure can pick up all of this data we call it data
but it's it's what's out there and can visualize it and knowing that helps when
you're doing when you're trying to compose and do night sky photography of any kind all it takes is enough time if
there's any light at all reflecting off of anything it will show up in your
sensor the longer you expose for the more of that data you get and it's
why a lot of astrophotographers call it data because it's it's what you're
pulling in the more you have the uh more likely you'll get
something of an image when you're done so thank you Scott for letting me ramble
on and uh hopefully everyone enjoyed the images Scott I'm sure you enjoyed the
black bird image we all we all do thank you much thank you up next is uh Simon Lewis
from New Zealand uh we're changing out the schedule a little bit as Simon's trying to work in uh some Global star
party with his work day here uh which is which is absolutely that's great and that we have
that with you Simon it looks dark out there right now but I know it's it's daytime it's not
it's daytime it's daytime that's right and uh yeah sorry it's been uh it's been
a challenge today we're just back from vacation so uh everybody wants
everything immediately so uh yeah always um look the um the theme of this uh this
program is about the the the Golden Age of astronomy and you know um I'm the
vice president of the Canterbury Astronomical Society here in New Zealand and we've been in a society since 1891
so you know if anybody's having their the golden the Golden Age uh it's it's
us but I I'm not I'm not sure I would want to call now our golden age because
I I I I I don't think we are seeing the you know the the growth yet but it we're
starting to see it and certainly over the last few years um you know we've seen a tremendous uh uplift in interest
in astronomy here in in New Zealand and particularly you know when we're talking
to the new comers into our society you know what are you what what are you joining for what's interesting I would
say that 75 80% of them are wanting to do astrophotography which is um you know
they want to take pictures like this in the magazines or on you know on the internet and um you know the the images
that our um amateur uh astrophotographers are creating these
days are really inspiring these people to get involved in the hobby but I I just had a little presentation just to
just to run through here I'll just share this with you so um yeah so I really
think you know right now um that we are creating you know can you see my screen
okay Scott is it yes yeah so you know we are really creating the next generation of astronomers here in in in New Zealand
and you know what we've been doing over the last few years particularly around the Canterbury Astronomical Society is
really aimed at at growing the hobby um so
trying to move my screen here what oh doesn't want to move um so this
is uh this is our Observatory at uh at West Milton so we have uh a few uh nice
Scopes and domes here and um this land is all owned by us we're the only
Society in New Zealand that actually owns our land um most of the time they
rent from the city or um councils but uh what we found is that the land is
extremely um desirable so uh they bent they find a lot of the societies are
losing their locations which is a real shame because they're basically cities are redeveloping them so we've got a few
domes here and some rolloff sheds and our own uh own Lodge and uh yeah we're
out in a dark sky we work with the local Council and they provide us a lighting
Covenants as well in the local area and where we've even got a a dark sky uh
rule around uh around the observatory for about five miles so that's really
good so yeah as a society we were formed in 1891 one of the oldest Societies in
New Zealand and we used to used to man when we started we used to man the town's end telescope and I've got some
pictures of this this is a large telescope it's on the the art center here in at Christ Church uh before we
moved out to our current site and um we were kind of dormant for around sort of
40 50 years at the start of the 1900s they they formed up in the 1890s um the money that the society
created was passed to the art center to run the towns and telescope and then in 1948 we restarted and reactivated as a
society on our current you know had current format which is a not for profit
and we got our original site here in the 1970s um which we've which we've grown
there's about 250 members locally they mostly from New Zealand we do have some Global memberships as well but we've had
a huge growth in membership over the last 18 months and and that's been in part to some of the activities that um
I've created uh for the society in terms of Juniors programs and training and um
uh Outreach but also because we've been getting more involved with things like
social media uh which has really driven our interests so our Observatory we've got a few
telescopes we're about 45 minutes out of the city in the dark sky uh location
we've got a a 16inch me uh rcx 400 and a rolloff shed a
14inch um some smaller 11in Celestron one in a dome and one in a rolloff roof
we've got a very nice 120 mm Sky Watcher um refractor and um we've also got a ton
of portable gear as well for the kids and um It's Not Unusual on an open night to see an 8-year-old dragging a dob out
and uh dragging that into the observing Paddock and a few of them uh gathering around that and driving it themselves
for the evening as well and we got a real nice Lodge as well which is great for overnight stays so there's quite a
lot of people that will um come up and spend time there we've got a huge number of uh active programs running and this
has been partly the interest as well you know we've got public open nights every week on a Friday we've got private
groups weekly you know we get around 80 to 100 visitors a week on our open nights on a Friday around 50 on a
Wednesday and then we do in July we do kidsfest which is a uh schools and
activities group for juniors um right across the region we get about 90
visitors there it's 15 nights of that um so there's a lot of you know we sell somewhere in the region of five to 6,000
tickets every year to the observatory which is which is pretty impressive and we got a ton of training and education
programs for the kids and Society magazines and websites Etc so and it's only been over the last few years where
we've really gotten traction online which has driven uh our activities uh to
an extent where we're growing our membership so much so we talked about the towns and
Telescope this is the old towns and Telescope 6 inch reflector this is up on that was was up on the top of the Arts
Center which is this big building here uh that you can see with the Dome on the roof and the guys used to go up there
every uh every week and uh uh volunteer and run uh observations for the general
public and until uh yeah this happened we had a number of major earthquakes in
uh in canterberry and the Dome and the building was destroyed and uh so was the
telescope the telescope and these are the parts that the uh civil defense and
Council pulled out of the building this what was all that was left of it and
fortunately for us the lens cell and the lens which is an incredibly large piece
of glass survived um through all of this having this whole building collapse on the top of it um the lens cell itself
survived perfectly and so uh we took the parts away and actually rebuilt it and
um this is the tower just a a year or so ago they're rebuilding the tower but
they rebuilding it in reinforced concrete uh with a stone outside Stone
facade to it they've actually bought in um some people from overseas to do this it's taken a couple of years to rebuild
it and here's the telescope the gray tube here completely rebuilt renovated
and ready to go back on and that will be going on uh this summer so yeah we'll be
we'll be re involved with that as well again um how to get Juniors involved
well one of the things if you're going to grow the next generation of of astronomy you need to provide them stuff
that's interesting to them so we got Juniors programs we do uh little uh kids
group uh before our main meetings at the um at the University each month solely
dedicated they get handouts they've got an observing log and we get little programs and competitions for them and
yeah they're called the castron auts and they really love that and um more importantly it brings the parents along
as well and then the parents get involved so um you know once Mom and Dad get involved then their interest grows
as well and I was saying to you they Scot they actually teach astronomy in the schools here it's part of the
phys so the science program here includes astronomy they learn about planets they learn about the moon Le
solar cycles and everything of of course they want to know more so they come along to the uh to the
observatory so we do a huge amount in terms of our events you as I say kidsfest uh we got involved in Apollo 50
and had an open night there H General weekday ones and we do specialize
private groups as well so there's a thing in the top here which was a private night for um Aerospace Christ
Church which is a um an aerospace group that are involved with with um astronomy
here that they had a private um private group as well uh we do other things as well like
this is star dat so this is a uh star party that runs every February for three
days and uh we get out for three days doing uh lectures practical astronomy
solar viewing we have a big picnic and camp out for three days and um if you
notice there's um there's a guy I'm I'm sitting on the sort of second row in on the right of this guy with red shirt on
but there's a guy here at the end I don't know if you could see this guy in the T-shirt all the white t-shirt at the
end second in from the lady with the green t-shirt yeah anybody knows that guy that is Sam W from zwo astronomy and
um Sam came over here and I hosted him and uh actually this uh this in 2019
this is where we came up with the uh the format for the ASI a pro so we sat down
for a couple of days with a notepad and um and made some uh some design ideas
and then Sam went back to China and actually built it so that's something
else we get involved in there ton of ton of kids come along to this as well we do
all sorts of games and they do baking and you know creating um cookies with
stars and all sorts of stuff on the kids love it um our local council is really really
important for our um growth of our society um mat Riki here you'll probably known
as as PES M45 um matariki here is very um
important in the mai calendar here in New Zealand and so when it rises above
the Horizon in July for the first time I think it's June the 24th this coming year and uh that's a a start of the
marry New Year so um the local uh Council they got very involved we
created um a whole group we did a photographic exhibition for them we did
some talks public lectures Etc and and got the kids involved and they created
this beautiful little sky guide and stargazing and an online video around it as
well and this culminated last year in uh in Our Winning the uh silver award uh at
the tourism awards for selwin district which is where we live uh so for outstanding excellence and
contribution to visitor experiences in the district uh so we uh we took out the
silver award which is not bad considering the the guys that took the Gold Award are a major um commercial
organization and uh we stepped in a front of some other big commercial uh operators to take this out so I um I I
actually ran this award so I'm I'm really pleased and proud that we actually won this so
um we do get involved with the city council as well so we did an international space party a kids event
at the library for them with rocket workshops and Space and Rocket exhibitions build a space shuttle and
then we did a world space week uh exhibition as well and you can see myself here and a couple of the other
guys we did an exhibition with some telescopes Etc and um some media and uh
took those along got ton of kids building space shuttle and printing out stickers and all sorts
of things it's great and then we do an awful lot in the week uh you know we do
uh lectures of All Sorts you Chris lintot who is a very famous astronomer
we have guest lectures from all over the world we did an international women and girls day in
astronomy um so uh bbec who's a very
famous um uh world at night yeah world at night he came over and did us a
lecture as well on his tour and of course sfia who's uh you know the um big
NASA 747 the infrared astronomy uh telescope that flies in the back of the
the the Boeing um they base themselves out here we have a very strong relationship with those guys they come
into our barbecue every uh every winter they Supply the s'mores and we Supply
the uh we Supply the ice cold which they which they actually love so they come
across as well we do a ton of stuff with those we do lectures and also visitors
um groups Etc with those guys so all of these things these are all things that
keep people interested they get them joining get them signed up get them uh you know active in astronomy not just
looking in front of a telescope but you know learning and developing themselves and they actually love that and then
this year we've done a calendar as well so just with all of our um uh uh Astro
images uh that we've taken from some of our members we created a calendar we've
sold a couple hundred of those over Christmas and New Year so um probably not huge numbers but um we've got some
great feedback on those and um some nice nice pictures Adrian and all like that
good good nice picture of some some Aurora oh yeah
so yeah so for for for you know my um my take on is is that you know we talk
about the Golden Age of uh golden age of astronomy I'm I'm not I'm not sure yet
as a societ not sure if we're there yet huh don't think we've seen our golden age yet I think there's there's a ton
more to do and there's always gonna be more I think I think there's always gonna be more but uh you know the kind
of work that you do uh Simon also uh you are one of the leaders and uh showing
what can be done in amateur astronomy so um uh you know it's a great time to be
alive to see things like uh uh you know J James Webb Space Telescope go up to uh
ligo you know us detecting uh uh the U faint echo of U you know black holes and
um and also uh you know as as uh nean
pointed out earlier about the Wilkinson microscopy uh probe uh that to measure
the background radiation you know microwave radiation it's just uh I know that we there there
are so many things that have gone unanswered um but uh we are learning
more and more about the universe and about ourselves so which I think ultimately is what this is all about so
yeah yeah we um you know we this takes up a huge amount of time as Cesar is
saying here is that's it's a huge challenge there's a lot of effort a lot of time and um you know we've got a very
good uh committee um but it does take a a committed group to to get this kind of
level of Engagement ABS to be honest if I can get a clear night I can put a 100
people into our Observatory and I can guarantee out of those 100 people there will be four or five that will join out
of those nights so and um we can um you know if we get a good run of weather we
can we can have a fantastic year but uh yeah we it's been dented a little with
Co but um you know when you uh when you get the run it's great and people really
really want to be you know we had a film I was telling you last last week Scott we had a uh a film crew you know that
from a national TV turned up and they wanted to do some uh some video and they
gave us a three minute slot on National prime time TV and we we sold we sold all
no we sold a whole season's tickets within an evening um it just went mad so
wonderful that's wonderful my advice if anybody wants to get involved in this is you know get yourself get get the
support get the media use Facebook and um you can really grow uh grow your
Society get the engagement so thanks for letting me come on early Scott I
appreciate it and I have to cut Simon accommodating that that's great uh
and by the way uh you know for any any of the uh Club presidents or what out
there you know whoever is watching this out there uh the speakers that come on to Global star party or world class and
uh you know uh you know you can probably just uh give them a friendly uh uh email
and uh to get them to to uh speak on you know about their club or their uh
projects that they have going on but uh uh you know amateur astronomers love to
share so absolutely anybody's interested I'm more than happy to talk about it so that's cool cool have a nice guide guys
thanks all right that's great so let's see let's bring Nico on Nico thank you
for hanging in there with us and uh um uh you know we have uh Jerry and I were
I know you guys were you and Maxi and Caesar were there in the background and
and we're all talking about you guys as if you know that you know whatever but uh we are all impressed and in awe of uh
what you guys do and with your telescopes and with your gear and uh so
I look forward to your presentation Nico okay thank you Scott hi everyone hope
you are having a great night uh so let me share my
screen here we go can you see it yes okay H tonight topic is about the golden
of astronomy and as we always talk about that I saw the this golden age as Sherry
says with the technology and uh the possibilities for
the amate astronomy now we have all the tools and the
softwares and the internet to to learn
and and to and to get H involved in in a lot of things in about the astronomy and
especially with low budgets you can do a lot of things in your home in
a contaminated Skyes and okay I
I I was thinking about what kind of things I I think this is the big
important the technology bring us the the am astronomers and I thought about
the Astro photography planetary imine and a science contribution that you can
do when where with any telescope you got and with a small cameras and let me show
you uh I I will start talking about the the real science contribution that you
can do even with a webcam not even talking about small cameras for
telescopes just a webcam that you can simply remove the L put in a small
telescope here this was an an old 70 mm
refractors I had with the webcam and and here is the same webcam with my
my 10in dog and ER I used to do double
Stars measuring and Publishing the papers all with a webcam and I think
this is a is great to to encourage the the new astronomers and amateur around
the world that is beginning and they have the the first Tel cope and they want to do something uh something more
something uh to to to make a a small contribution in science and you can do
it perfectly with a simple webcam and we have also the softwares
that are this software is R is especially for double stars but you have
software for variable stars for photometric for astrometric and there are free softwares and there are some
softwares that you need to pay but there with with a small budget you
can you can get it this is some publishes with papers
about double stars that I made this is the the first double star I
Discovery from my home and and you can do this with a webcam or a small guiding
camera you can do a lot of things talking about planetary machine
as you know I love to you to do that with M Dobson as you can see this is a a
real real video from a capture of Saturn that I made with my dos and you can see
the the planet driving in the in the screen and there is my correction my my
hand Motors because this drops Onan has no
drives and H again you have a lot of sofwares that
simplifies you need to learn to use that but this simplifies the the work and it
helps you to get amazing results this was with a
hyi camera monochromatic is a guiding camera and I use this H to do planetary
Imaging you you can see the the results and this is with a telescope that you
don't even need an equal Mount so with a small buet and the
telescope just you got you can do a lot of things and uh well to to finish I like
to talk about Arro photography ER I sometimes I do some
photographs ER sometimes with my Doon but I have here a few examples that you
can do with a six inch Newton in an in an equatorial mount with the same
camera with the guiding camera and here has the the horse head
nebula from a BAL night skies so when I talk this PCT these pictures I
cannot see anything in my screen so then when I when when they stack the images again
with all the softwares and all the information that you can get today in the internet you get this kind of images
and it's amazing because with a little
camera you you can do even as photography this is another example this
is my my last as photography of the HC 1355 Galaxy this is in Forex
constellation with the same camera and this time I use a RGB filters and common
RGB filters just do four captures and then stack and showing that and you can
get this even galaxies from the city
sky and this is my well we are starting here with the
Orion times and I was I I do my my first try with
Orion with with m42 with this camera and I was shocking
when I was when I start capturing because I cannot do a longer exposure
than 10 seconds because this happens the centers go all wide so this was my my my
first try H you can see here the the four channels the the L channel is
without filter and in the others I use the LG and B filter and this is the the
result and it's mindblowing that you can do this from from your
backyard with a small guiding camera and there is no excuses we are
really in the golden age uh it's obvious the this wh still keep going and in a
few years I I I cannot imagine what we we we can we be able to to to do to do
but today with a small camera and a small telescope you can do this
marvelous image so well this was my my my short
presentation about this amazing topic that we we always like to to talk about
hey I cannot hear you Scott I can see you yes Nico yes because
we are in Argentina we are close no don't fun don't
function in that
way okay oh I cannot hear hear you Scot
but can you hear me yes I can hear you Scott ah okay I
can listen to
Scott okay well when we wait Scot fixing
their their mic no no you can we can kill you
nope hold on how about now we okay now okay all right so I I
just wanted to say that the that the shot your Orion Nebula shot reminded me
of the first image that I saw of uh well not the first image I saw but the first
image actually made with the with the Mount Wilson 60-in telescope was done by
uh George Richie with the uh you know with a a 4-Hour exposure uh you know and
your image with your uh your your small telescope has more detail is richer uh
uh is is far superior to that image that was done with the 60-in telescope and
back at that time now of course that's back at the early part of the 1900s but
uh and a lot of technology has caught up to us by that time but it it is amazing where it's come so far and we can only
imagine what's coming what's going to be coming next yeah yes that's that's the amazing that you talk about in a 20 or
30 years the the the big champ that we can we are able to to buy a small
cameras or something in with in our homes this m42 pictur was maybe 30
minutes at most of Integrations uh is is really
mind-blowing okay so let's have uh uh let's uh stay down in Argentina and move
over to Maxi Maxi was getting his uh his uh dinner I think yeah I had to get
dinner but I'm I'm here right now so how are you guys yeah it's great to have you back
on hello yeah yes so hi John
hi well uh yeah do you do you hear me yes we hear you just fine we just hear
you just fine uh Maxi for those of you who have not are not familiar with maxi
he's been on many Global star parties so far and um uh he is um also someone that
showed us some amazing remarkable images that he made with uh a modified
smartphone uh but since that time Maxi has shown ush what he can do with uh
Astro cameras and he's a very dedicated astronomer also dedicated to educational
Outreach uh uh to the public out there so it's it's wonderful to have you on yet again Maxi well thank you Scott and
well hi everyone good night and well tonight what I'm going to
talk is about ER what I be doing this ER
weeks that that we passed H last weekend I went again to Alberti that I well I
called you Scott in a moment in the middle of the of the night and and we
spoke a little about well I was taking pictures of the comment that I in in my
back H this is practically almost a 10
minutes H because it was really really low and also the Moon it was
ER getting shiny but then I I start to
to do some Outreach and and get more uh
pictures I want I try to do and work ER in two different points I want to do
obviously with my telescope ER the Astro camera and and
also with my dclr camera with the with
a another Mount to take a a a good field of view ER from the sou sky so uh let me
showare you my screen
uh okay do you see it yes well I I think I want to to show you
also more later h a resume that I did a little video
with a music but I don't know if Facebook is going to allow
because from copyrights thing and all that stuff but ER well let's begin uh
I ER started well I I went to this is the the national route five
this is the the road to went to alberty this is a a really
trans it has a huge transparent no but a huge Transit of
trucks and and cars but this Saturday it was almost nobody you
know yeah and well I been there you know the this is the
the sun this is a a m Factory but I was almost in a half hour
almost and this is me the really really happy because well the sun is was
getting down I started to to have H some
smoke ER in the place but then goes off
so let me see if you if we can see the the video
uh let's open this but
stop and let's stop sharing and I want to share that screen let me if I can get
allow er do you see it yeah you see we we can okay let's see
if the sound go on
[Music]
yes
[Music]
e
well do you like it amazing video Maxi it was
a Edition that I did today well I I started yesterday from processing the
that images and and well uh you know ER
the that night was amazing because H the night was so clear and I I remember I
was taking picture with a telescope and another place with dclr and then I put
the cell phone to to get um pictures
with long exposure of all the place in the night illuminated by the by the the the light
Moon the Moonlight and you know uh then H when the the moon goes out I
start to see a really huge um Fireballs Downing you know but really
long Fireballs H Crossing almost to the
to the well I I don't know if I have a picture
uh let's close this and in the cell picture I don't
know it was it started to [Music]
go uh ah here this almost there you know
this line is nothing what this is I think this is when it
started this is a a fireball that starts to to shining but I couldn't take it in
that F of view but it was really
long and really golden light has and
also was really shiny and and you can see also the um that smoke that lives
It's amazing And then I also saw um
ER another brightening like a very very white and then a a few
shortly so the pictures that I took of course were one I started with the with
the comet Leonard I think this is my last picture because now it's getting
more down and it's impossible to me to take a picture from here and but I love
to to to take this kind of um well I think this the
sodium tail because it's more Whiting than the
rest and of course all the the shapes that has and I love you know you can see
here is a little a little Galaxy and another here I think is
another one I think this is my best
so then of course with the dclr I take
well this is a stucking image of the Southern skies and more uh down here is
the Southern Cross but here we have the Karina
nebula the southern playes the running the running chicken
nebula I don't know what it calls like that and this a Glo I think they're a open
cluster but there are too many H stars in there and maybe the next time I will
take pictures from this place because it's you have
um um a lot of sunand in your hands or shining diamonds you know it's amazing
and also watching through scope is lovely and also we have the the great
magia Cloud here is the T neula and here
we have the small magenic cloud with a47 to
[Music] and I was taking picture of course of
the tandola nebula in this case is with the telescope and the
CW oh Astro camera and also you have a lot of
global cluster in this galaxy but you can see all the
dust in it's around this place and all the colors that has
it uh it's amazing place to if you go here to the South to watch it and
also to take pictures uh and and then
I I was thinking of what place to check but I decided to go to the Kina neula
because I was taking that this picture
and this is a I edited this yesterday I think now
here's the khole and behind this star is the Ulus but
is really really shiny and if you taking pictures in long exposure
it's impossible to take it uh and you can see that there's a lot of clouds and
nebulosity floting like if this was a a
lava lamp yeah it's beautiful and look at all that that's
all St bar forming uh region you know really
condens it yeah here here's a more down here you know you can see this is
floating is amazing back
yeah H it reminds me a little ER the lagon neula for the colors and the trif
neula but h there's a lot of shapes and
well this is of course the the visible spectrum if you have an H Alpha
filter this will be really really red and there's a lot
of things that we can see right now but anyway I try
to um it it looks like a little blur this
picture but I think it's more more because the the dust do has in in this
place uh but because if you go here you can see also the dust but then
you can start to see the the dark the darkness of the space and I I think it's
because of that and I really love love this contrast is
amazing well I I did this pictures and
also I try to to take pictures of the dolphin H
neula but I couldn't I think uh it was this one no it was no I I didn't save
that but uh is I think it's this
yeah in this picture you can see there a lot of stars but here up is the head of
the dolphin nebula and this is the the mouth and you can see the the the down
the the part of the down it's almost visable because I don't have a um oxy
oxygen filter and then I try to to to do pictures of
the the three the the three Galaxy of Leo and because I want to see how the
field of view was and this is a a single
frame in two minutes you can see it's a lot of
information in only two minutes and I hope in a couple coule maybe weeks I I
could get here again and see what what I can get so well this is my my little
presentation I hope that you like it and thank you again for inviting me thank
you very much Maxi that's great um uh we
uh we're gonna stay down in Argentina and U bring on Cesar brolo um it's uh
it's always great to have the uh the astronomy astronomer contingent from
Argentina you guys make a a great program every time and U we're really
honored to have you on so and it's a honor for us be here in the global sub party and
really we appreciate we appreciate that H we are uh Maxi Nico and me from the
same country country and show to the people uh what are
we uh having and making from our skies um of course that Maxi and Nico
make the masic uh for me I am only a telescope dealer and some technician you
know but take too and yes I am the GU the
guilty like the T telescope
dealers that but for me it's a pleasure how
um how many amateurs uh make magic uh
with their telescopes um well tonight um
I have a a little presentation of a little of my history um about how I can I can watched
in many years uh the change some changes uh of
of technology in telescopes um you know that uh Scot that I am started in to to
sell telescopes in Argentina I was the first one uh in a time where the people
don't know uh about the cine telescope I remember
I start to show theid casan telescope the people say the people think okay
where is the another part of the telescope Too Short something's missing here yes the first thing that changed a
lot for the people uh we we told we talked last week about the don't look up
the the movie Netflix is that the people understand more about astronomy in that
movie the things about how to the how astronomers find comets are really near
to the reality uh if you see a picture
uh from 20 from the 80s or 90s was more science fiction and today the facts are
more real the the first connection of the of the golden age of age of
astronomy is of course despite a lot of very very
um ignorant people that don't don't like to know about nothing you know it's not
only astronomy science but a lot of the first thing that I can see in the last
30 years is really more people are
interested uh to know astronomy and the facts that they know are more near to
the reality of course that you ever ever
you uh can uh found people that love IM magic uh thinking you know but more
people every time it's more concerned is concerned about the the real ideas of
how planets or you know telescope Works um it it's really if uh today uh when
many people came from the from our store have more have more information maybe by
internet or they read something more you know but they don't ask me anymore about
the where is the another part of the telescope with theid C telescope if they
if they I remember that I uh when I started
uh um so you had a big responsibility in your country to educate people about
amateure telescopes that's really remarkable you know yeah yes was was
really remarkable uh you know uh of course
everyone that is in our industry that sells telescopes we are yes of course
about this stuff but sure today today I am not a anymore the only one here in
Argentina when you have a successful business everyone goes to copy
you everywhere yes and today I I don't know how many how many dealers telescope
dealers exist but for me I proud to make to to be the first to today I am more
concerned to to enjoy the life you know um right and uh but but we are growing
again uh despite the crisis um we are we are uh working in a new in a new aspects
of of the business um the the idea I I'll share my screen to
to to share this presentation um with a little of humor
of course uh um I I say that this golden age of
amateur astronomy too because it's the Golden Age of amateur astronomy but of course the professional professional
astronomy is going to to be an amazing results with the web telescopes
uh we had two or three decades amazing with the H telescope and with a lot of
different uh discovering discovers in astronomy but from my my view my view
how the things changed in in this time uh in my 30 years of career selling
telescope prepairing you know and a lot of things more maybe being a lecturer
for the kids or to to to to explain things um well first I I found my first
uh uh my first uh picture of oron with
film in 1994 I used a a m that I made oh I made
a m with a motor electric motor um and
my first Oreo nebula with a film I remember that I I uh used uh one
completed film and the best pictures that I could ER
H take was this with a small telescope
only um 500 millimeters focus a mix
between a Crain I remember that was a conus brand telescope maybe from Japan
you know maybe a TOA or Kaa manufacturer from Japan maybe you do you remember in
the in the end of the 80s and first time of the of the 90s
um comparing uh with with uh this picture the last picture maybe few
months ago that I took only you know only to try in my city sky
and comparing this and this is incredible this is talk uh the pictures
talk about in 25 years how astronomy
changes of course that I I I could take a lot of
pictures more of galaxies like uh Pavo Galaxy or tar
Galaxy um the moon of course people can take a
lot of different people from from the Moon very easily and um first of all we
need uh really good quality and aage clean Optics please don't use your
telescope as fish tank as a fish tank and this is why this is my my remembers
from from my uh uh technical repair
Optics and this is uh a part of my
history where the optic change the the the things about this is the the a mark
of the level of the water oh my goodness reverse yes I I think that this
was yeah yes yes I repaired a lot of different things in my in myb our
laboratory I think that this was was in
2000 2000 five or seven I I I think that was
11 Ines this was was yes of course that the
telescope was in a reverse position and was totally filled at this line of water
wow and and the owner don't had an idea of course with a with a huge huge rain
that with the wind that open the open a little the the Dome and with the wind
and the water H uh you know when you have exactly the the wrong point where
the the the the drops not the drops a fall maybe a Cascade going to into the
tube uh well I for example this was it fil it filled the tube up with water
absolutely yeah oh my goodness yeah yes this is real that's
unbelievable yes if you are interested in botanics a telescope can be a wrong place from the same telescope I think
here you have a lot of mushroom yesung Fung fungus fungus yes yes my
another speciality biology and this is was the the
telescope was ready actually is working um this is something that is
great for me that all telescope that I received to to repair are working
actually this one is another one that was completely in a in a flu completely
in a in a flu in a FL long for for yes for for maybe 15 days
underwater good Lord and you cleaned it up you cleaned it up and fixed it up form then absolutely yes Yes actually
actually is the owner is is making pictures with with this telescope I can
show you later some pictures of this guy for Fernando
ricardin yes we voke the telescope to our Customer because I my customer say
okay well okay I give you another another five inch tuo that we repair and
I can change and my customer say tell me really you can you can accept that that
was underwater yes um I I'm cleaned I am we we painted
of course the the mechanics we repaired the all the focus mechanic completely and actually well this is
part of of the disassembly that we made this in maybe
2010 this is completely disassembled um um plate Schmid plate H the telescope
this one was assembly again and this was the the secondary mirror um well this is another stuff
that we made for our customers I I made a yes all time I made
the ridiculous things tracker tracker yes for an old nextar
sa month that is incredible that the go-to months are from 200000 um in
Celestron from for Celestron where was the in the end of the 80s they H started
to work the comp with the compus start uh yeah the goto very very first
time goto telescope and the lx2 200 in the time of Scott Robert in mid uh where
they they made an a a a wonderful go-to system um before that uh
they used a a meal megalan system that you you needed maybe you John remember
when we we need to move the telescope and see the numbers to to go into zero
when you get the point the start um was uh the population of of this is another
another telescope with with rain with a broken broken roof and all
rain water over the yes over the all over theor plate yes I remember that yes
absolutely and I remember that I needed a change a lot of part electronic parks
that was full of water yeah yeah can I okay that's let me
ask either of you Scott or has anybody ever tried to what do you do about a
correct corrector plate I got someone in our club that dropped theirs and it's
cracked yes go ahead go ahead Cesar yeah yes it's it's something that if you if
you broke the the plate you you lost yes yes that's why I told them but
yes in the because you have the shape of of the the Schmid plate is so complicated because you have um well
talking for the people sorry that I don't have and scem of of that now but
have an special deformation shape to to work ER in the
opposite in the opposite um spherical
aberation one day we can talk about Optics that is very interesting to talk
about the different things of Optics um here you know here do you have a meid I
repair meid to this is the second generation of me much better than the LX
200 uh I think that this was was rich crer or you know a plantic Optics um
with gray go to Optics too look something that the the the old
my old uh um
Motorola smartphone is it's incredible in 10 years you think that the the technical
of telescope is so different and the smartphone too is something that
that that ER was going in the different
uh in a different way but the technology is is incredibly um fast actually well this is
the the explor scientific that I cleaned a little of of course I I with the AOC
apoc chromic refractors I have a better life now it's only to clean a little you
know a little of air no more complication with water no yet no yet not yet no yet not
yet give them a chance give them a chance yes sure somebody leave them out
yeah yeah yeah something that we we make
that we love to make and we don't make actually especially look the size of the
Rings to support guer telescope another thing that in the in the only 10 years
ago we needed huge uh T telescope guer
because the sensibility of the of the guer cameras with maxi was a kid
uh we needed a huge telescope today all this you know 30 mm and small guid there
um I remember that we um started to manufacturing the the the Rings for uh
guer telescopes this is a this was a finish the finish product made in
Argentina very nice yes and we used look the size of the guide telescope is not
more necessary use this this size of telescope
Celestron Astro Master 70 how about that yes I I made um box aluminium boxes uh
two made in Argentina yes great you can make it all
see from dos to cases to all these accessories it's
great repl Optics amazing
amazing yes the tool shop yes it's a nice place where I have fun with my
father actually I I told that my father have actually
85 years old um really he he love when I
say I have some project say papa we can make uh new you know some adapters or or
customer need something like you know something to to to to put a telescope
over another month or you know everything can be make and here well
sometimes I put a a mirror and green the mirror or polish is my my old uh graer
machine from my 16 years old that made my father for me in my in my uh te uh
wow what was teenager a real sign of the creation of astronomy technology um is
uh about more and more people uh go to to have a telescope yes yeah this is
real this was real from from the early 80s sorry from the read 2000s when we I
remember that we put we cross the limits to to receive one track of telescopes by
each and we are the problem is that um unfortunately here is our showroom where
suppose that it's only for telescope and we receive a lot of boxes and we had a
lot of uh boxes H you know in in in the showroom because the warehouse was
totally full actually we are changing the warehouse uh um we put in the
similar wave the explor scientific telescope because we import a
lot of naturo uh one uh four
450 uh inches and we have the same problem today that is we are happy
return to to don't have place to put the boxes here is another another thing of
how the technology changed in 2007
Celestron developed a a Unity for the Sky Scout and now you have all of this
in your cell phone but it was very interesting for for the people to have something to appoint to to astronomy
it's incredible when you think that really I I sold this two
years from it's incredible it's incredible
ah one day I remember when started the rebellion of the machine like like a Terminator like Terminator Okay yeah oh
my goodness yes when when from I think that from 1997 we start not a little
less a little later sorry from 2000 we in our manufacturer no in our repairing
facilities we started to to work with goto mounts and repair at um was a a
namare at today um this is the the revoltion of the machines here here you know for example
I remember broken for example things like uh broken um encoders er wheels or
uh well a lot of different stuff where they say
okay you know uh mother Wars and more mother Wars to
change or will or you know cross cables yes yes many many
customers say okay I disassembly this I don't remember where is yes this is I I
I think that this was fromat mon um I don't remember what but
you know a lot of electronics and things uh the Sero Motors today we are working
more with the step Motors uh another another um nextar mon
next star yeah yes huge history well I got into one there just a few
months ago uh at not that level but I got it working and then but the thing was it was a little uh the little 4 inch
maxutov yeah and the the uh he left it in a really hot location
and the entire little secondary uh thing or the little shield around the
secondary mirror spot had fallen off down onto the main mirror and so I
actually I had that experience had that happen too absolutely the the Schmid C
that we B for us for the staff the the the underwater Crain We call we call it
water diver of the FL in a in a trip when you
put a telescope without you know um with the vibrations of the cars very long
trip yes the completely secondary was B secondary Shi yeah fortunately I don't
know why uh was uh not broken only knock
the the tube and the people ER I had I
was in a show on a a astronomy conference and I repair the telescope
and remember the astronomers uh watch me really scared
how I put the telescope and I cimate and maybe you know 15 no less maybe five
minutes and when I put the telescope with the camera and project with the with the projector in
the screen the people say how can you make this and we are watching hiter and
hiter Jupiter is really great is well it's the experience it's a craziness
absolutely and well something unexpected for me that is part of the the the Golden Age of astronomy or amateur
astronomy is the connection with the technology with the kids it's something like green Lasser red Lasser um here the
laser was for another thing that especially astronomy was for talking
about optics for example I uh we went um some part of our our work in in our
company is to be a sponsor for Star parties um I I don't need that for for
for ER because you can be an sponsor and say okay you can show something or or S
you know High pieces in a in a in in in pop app but no I I like more go to the
people and explain to the to the especially when when we make S parties
with kids or college um uh in this case
uh something of Technology uh is around astronomy I I could uh talk about Optics
with the kids and explain many many things um this was very things I'm very
easy with the how technology is every time cheaper and you can make things
done 30 years ago ago was impossible for example here I can explain Optics to the
kids a give them um prison and mirrors
and they can resolve uh something like Lain er um with putting the mirrors
using the idea of reflecting limit in a in a prison prism sorry my pronation
about prison prison pris yeah here you can see better and I we I prepare uh
um um sheet uh sheet of uh when when the
path of the light or the path of the light um and they can resolve with
different mirrors and and prison uh the the path and was amazing for the was
amazing for the kids and for their teachers and I remember that the the teachers was totally amazing and with
that and of course that we we GI a lot of this equipments of prison um and
paper sheets and you know uh for for the college because because they they the schools because they was totally um
amazing with with this especially in a country where you don't have here we don't have all the the things for for
the schools because you know if you read something about
Argentina this days say come on how is possible about our
economy and here in the same in the same uh event talking about technology well
the the age of computer camera solar telescope really affordable this is
something that is Magic you can make a lot of things for for explain to show to
enjoy um it's it's something that really we love here
here it's the telescope was one time um
here it's a the telescope that H we the
diver telescope repair
it here one one more time the diver telescope the diver telescope diver
Telescope yes actually actually yes a customer B um his name is Fernando
ricardin and he took amazing pictures with the this diver telescope I'm really
H happy to to to repair um that the telescope still
working it's great yes here the kids in the in the in the area of very near to
the to the eclipse area in Las grutas yes where Maxi was
too some pictures that well photograph and this kind of pictures like Maxi show
in his presentation is something amazing I remember that I have a picture from
the 90s from the Galaxy and I needed 20
minutes with 800 is Asa to make
something less than this with a film yes it's so different
now and well this is when we changed a lot we started to make the show using
the telescope and projecting ER in a screen here is a live
PCT live image of quar city duana and the kids say wow I'm the Prof the their
teachers too say how this is real it's not a SL no it's real we started uh to
show this and make this in a live in [Music]
2000 um when we used a a
CCD with three different colors and started to make this in in in in live
with public and and this was we was uh really the first to make this in with the
public and this is really a real technology and this is in the end of
this seven in the 2007 I think we we say why not we can take a picture of the
organizators with a SC we keep this the screen and put the projector for to a
wall of salt salt because it was in in a salt field salt like you
know Salt Field I think there is a Salt Field Salina in in English I don't know
uh in a place in Las grutas where do you have qu an stars are the organizator of
the of the event in the same picture with the same time and this is incredible in it's something that that
you can you can talk about how how the Golden Age of astronomy is because this
is this is a live image this is the the sky and here you have the people it's
not three different pictures it's the same picture and this is really great and this here this wall of salt have
maybe 9 M tall it's I think it's saline
saline maybe I don't know I I don't know in English how is how how is the the name where you can
what do you think Scott what's that here is is a mountain
of Sal salt like sodium chloride or I mean yeah okay exactly is like rock rock
salt basically rock salt yes yes they they put the the they a big amount of
salt and it's like a rock yes it's very white and we use this to project the 47
to in the in the salt W it's amazing Sal wall I'll be done white Sal yes yes it's
something that is Magic and some of my setup in hum that we know
that that I show many times in the global s parties and this is talk about holded
setups for for cameras mods it's are incredible and you know you have a many
many different things with a smaller equipment with more smarter ER
connections and really we love this age I I love this this age of astronomy
really this is in my top roof of my software here from from the window Al
the the astronomy turn so easy to to to take pictures to
enjoy here it's was more a very very C A
humid night in weno ciris I put the computer outside the M the telescope in
my balcony I I'm working with the with
my h no it's not iPad it's Android tablet H to work with the mon and here
with the phone to work with the the computer computer I don't need it yes
like a like a to make pictures without the cold weather and this is something
that it's amazing and this is the end the end of of my presentation thank you
very much maybe Scot don't yeah thank you you do need one for you yes I need one for to
work on that I I W I want one two one two yeah
yes well this is wonderful thank you thank you I always
enjoy you too yeah yes absolutely absolutely right okay so um what do you
think Scot kind of do we have quite a few people online we have time John and
you're on so I didn't know how much you wanted me to present I I finally got around to uh brushing off an old
PowerPoint I had uh of presentation of what the real the star party really is
all about I don't know if you want me to run through that or You' like may take 15 20 minutes I can go through it pretty
fast I got neat pictures um so what do you think should I I I think you should
let it rip let it rip okay let's see if I can okay I'm going to have to share and
then switch into the PowerPoint right let's see if it'll work
here okay how's
that um no I hang on let's see
okay we're getting there let's from the beginning excellent excellent now how's that it looks
good okay now let's see with that I can't really tell um if uh I can see it
obviously but I can't see any view so I guess that's the way it works that's the way it works okay well anyway I I
grabbed your picture I I I hadn't looked at it till later this evening and I saw oh well we'll start with
that so um little bit we're a uh the r star
parties fully registered 501c3 we call them in the United States uh nonprofit
organization uh Charter to promote encourage both public and private astronomic OBS observing activities
through dissemination of educational information pertaining to astronomy and related Sciences encourage dark sky
friendly outdoor lighting practice the state of Nebraska sponsor an annual star party at Meritt Reservoir it's about 30
miles Southwest of Valentine Nebraska there's where we there's yeah
there's a typical Star Party well not um John H we don't see the
presentation we see the the the software just first slide yeah yes maybe you can
you can change H you can see hey move please move window away from shared app
what's that mean you you can stop sharing not it's okay this yeah okay
okay but that's not yeah let's see when I hit to go through the slides it goes to full screen doesn't it
or you you should put it in presentation mode if you want that's what I thought let's see
here maybe yes maybe slide at at the bottom right hand
corner if you move your mouse towards the bottom you're going to see a little looks like a a
screen right next where it says 47% down here yeah all the way at the bottom to
the left there to the left of that no no to the left of of it says
47% there's an icon that looks like a little green that one that takes it to
it should take you to present but I think the software is H not allowing to
to to to show the presentation because he presentation the the the PowerPoint
only without the slide uh maybe yes or
maybe do you have another screen to to because you can you can uh choose which
um which screen ER share and we can stop
and start again and you have this uh window and you have another window with
I only have the one screen on yes I think I think well okay
can you see it this for us it's okay but it's okay you can see that it's okay
yes you can to except all the little fancy uh that's all right that's all right well I went through that one let's
see if I can uh the the very important for the people is go to neas
party is all right absolutely John yeah well I I know but uh okay let's just
uh that's what we're all about that's actually one of my
telesc yeah well we've modernized it a little more than that yeah yes well from
the golden age for astronomy to
the in that time you you that was kind of a golden age back then too you know
with the start of amateurs actually having telescopes yeah uh gather with
people from all walks of life that share a common interest and seen the night sky as the Native Americans and early Pioneers sett s Sand Hills are an area
around the Meritt Reservoir in North Nebraska provides a location yet today
that is a premier dark sky site there's where we are are in the state of Nebraska I live down here in Omaha it's
about a six-hour drive up to there and right there in the next slide you'll see is where we hold this
event and it's in extremely Dark Skies so where are we have you ever noticed
the in a weather satellite image of the earth taken at night everyone usually goes oh isn't that pretty just look at
all those tiny points of light shining out into space and that's what you see
now however let's look at what all that light is really doing to our ability to
see space from the ground and this is something that is fantastic when you see the things over
the horizon and you start to see the sky Over the Horizon sometimes the Milky Way
yeah when you see over over the horizon you say It's Magic because you have
another perception of the well and Scot to contested up there yeah the the the
Stars you can see stars right down the Horizon well there's of course the whole United States and you see any thing east
of this line that just cuts through western Nebraska Kansas Oklahoma Eastern
Texas is almost totally obliterated with light zooming in here's this little dark
hole up here in nor central Nebraska zoom in a little more and the x
marks the spot where we hold the annual star party
that's in the black in the black yes like alberty Maxi that's uh basically
bort yeah bort sick yep okay why do stargazers go there um
travel thousands of miles to this remote area in Nebraska let's take a look now this probably yeah I had a video
embedded and that's probably not going to work but uh we'll move on I got other
pictures why are we constantly consistantly rated one of the top best Star parties in the nation we got
unbelievable Dark Star Star nights spectacular scenery of the Sand Hills
yeah we don't have mountains and big tall trees but we have some spectacular scenery up there we're very family
friendly event oriented toward the beginner a chance to look through some unbelievable telescopes of all sizes and
designs and we advertise no telescope required for anyone that wants to attend activities other than stargazing
you can go fishing boating hiking swimming at the Meritt Reservoir canoeing tubing on the N bar river go to
the Valentine National Wild Life refuge and see a native uh North American Bison
roaming freely uh it's close enough for a day trip up to the the Black Hills area in
South Dakota in the Badlands National Park uh we're we EMP emphasize on
education we have an astronomers or astronomy beginners class three toour sessions during the week learn how to
locate the constellations binocular telescope fundamentals get the most out of the equipment you have learn how to
find interesting objects in the night sky contined on Wednesday we have a a
full series of lectures at the Valentine High School in town of Valentine
knowledgeable speakers from around the country uh on relevant astronomical topics we also have a children's program
of K through seventh grade to Peak Interest in The Sciences safe viewing of the sun learn the major constellations
promote inquisitive thinking and Discovery beauty of the night sky from up there is really unbelievable pictures
do not do it justice but here are a
few wow yeah there's the yeah dark spot in
the sou Milky Way I remember seeing this
my shadow oh yeah the Milky Way on the easily there's a wide angle there
there's the only little tiny Luma glow of course this is the time exposure you can see the RV recreational vehicles
parked and the red lights around them but you get a little tiny glow now this stuff is the you know the greenish air
glow in the sky you know I guess you call that pollution but that's natural pollu natural not artificial
pollution but there's the Andromeda galaxy and that's probably the the the
double cluster between copia and Pere is coming up there there so beautiful see the the
Andromeda galaxy yeah well I have the same for me that I remember yes yes and
of course I have the same feeling when I see you show the lelic
clouds absolutely absolutely absolutely John it's the same the same kind of of
sensation yes but there are some beautiful shots up there and we even get
an occasional Aurora several years that's pretty good yeah really looking North
yeah it's not so to the north but you yeah it got so it got so bad that we
were complaining because we couldn't see a deep Sky object we had yes because neas is more in the in the middle but
it's incredible that like you have a really dark horizont you can see oh yeah
The Horizon other Horizon sorry Horizon over there
yeah dark leads to some incredible
sunsets and it's the whole area is is it's we call it the Sand Hills but it has native grasses growing on all of it
um there's some of the big dobsonians that they're set up there's an area in the this is in a a
state park and there's an area about half the size of a football field you know us football field that is been
covered with asphalt so it makes it very nice to set up the big Scopes and sit around and look
there something that I I wow sorry John no no sorry sorry that's right this is
another thing you the people that you get out there that live entirely in the light polluted cities they they see
these awesome thunderheads buil up and it's just like oh my goodness it almost looks like a a huge
nuclear explosion but it was abely big storm fortunately that one was about 100
miles to the east of us so it didn't uh didn't bother us that night but it occasionally they they they can cause
some problems up there but okay here's here's a I always like
to throw this one in that's cool yeah yeah he uh we don't do that that much
because there's less and less people that bring you know homemade sort of speak other than the big dos and some of
them but sure uh but we he got uh first place in this division when but isn't
that kind of unique I mean it's just a little millimeter refractor but they they've turned it into a very nice
stable platform it was yeah absolutely if all 60 mm refractors were sold on
yes like the original of course it' be more money but
it's a typical um you know he's used the you know job Dobson John Dobson ideas
with you know the PBC and The v- Notches now this was kind of unique uh the
between the two pieces of of uh plywood there for his uh asouth Mount he put an
old 33 and a third RPM record or a couple of them to act as table wow
turntable yeah yeah yeah I love this that's great I hope it wasn't an old uh
original Beatles album but you yeah maybe pressing of The White
Album yeah one of those other classic ones and I I said you know we get young
ladies middle just a whole gamut of people this
is kind of a unique shot I remember uh the last time I was
at the Nebraska Star Party were whole families that turned out because you guys do a
fullon uh uh night of educational Outreach the entire Community pours out
for that and uh which is really cool but a lot of people came with their kids and set up their small refractors and um you
know there were people out there with binoculars uh uh there were people just standing around looking at and amazed at
seeing the Milky Way like that oh yeah that's the thing is just to said you know people yeah that's why we always
it's it's a great beginners first timers uh and and we hook a lot of them because they start coming back then of course we
get the high-end stuff too yes and and the yeah yeah I was a Tashi there yeahi
yeah beautiful all set up for some Imaging there's here's another shot of
the the asphal area that we can set up on with the big Sony and
and they get bigger yeah and
bigger whoa uh I I don't remember the I think it was an 18 or 20 inch but it's what
was that design anybody that it was like an off axis design thing yeah yeah it's
and of course this one this these guys from Rochester Minnesota they bring that thing down I think it's
36 36 yes it's near to one one meter yes
yeah one meter one met class uh apertures you know so yeah that's true I
remember I visit I visited the pitch State the star gaze in the
1999 ER in Georgia and I remember that
somebody made not so huge telescope but maybe 70 CM uh so 20 I think that was a
25 those are big yes big big um we we watched
the uh the things was totally amazing um in in Georgia it's not so dark like like
Nebraska of course well you get um you start seeing uh colors well of course
Orion unless you stay up really late or get you know but I've seen pinks and
Orion with and and I've seen pink colors in it yeah yeah absolutely yes is
incredible this is something that and also fabulous food and fun we we have a
family that comes and caters evening meals delicious food
yeah and if you still got enough if you got enough energy during the day you can go do the the tubing down the the scenic
NRA River you go buy some beautiful little water Falls beautiful some of them not even
here's Here's the the the biggest waterfall in Nebraska so it's decent part of our education
program is the field School uh starting with real Basics we push a lot at the
the people but uh we've never had any complaints they really enjoy that and then here's another shot from the
auditorium at the high school intermediate level School in in Valentine with people listening to
lectures um it's a beautiful air conditioning pH yes you have a a
beautiful a beautiful um facilities really for yeah other than I wish this
was out so people didn't have to drive but hey you just have to get in your car and drive drive to town and then we have
like during that day when there uh swap mate vendors uh we cater a pizza in for lunch
I love that start part I need to go to Nebraska someday yeah come on up someday
absolutely yeah Scott remember this guy I do sure je Norwood yeah he doesn't
come out anymore it's just gotten too much of a you know TOs and whatever but that was him and Greta there they
they're some of the from a few years many years they they traveled uh the United States going to Star party after
star party uh you know and and and you know providing all kinds of accessory you can
see all the different yeah parts and odds and ends and stuff like that that people might have forgotten or we're
looking to get a deal on oh he he was yeah he we really missed him uh he'd
usually go to ours either and then go on out one of them in uh Washington State
or Oregon uh you know spend half time with one and half time with us so we
really enjoyed him I mentioned solar yeah the kids get a chance to see some solar images and
and psts and safe solar telescopes okay what else we got here
we've been working with the international dark sky Association now for couple years um in collaboration
with Nebraska Dem Parks Commission we have submitted a proposal to the international dark sky Association Ida
to designate Merit Reservoir S as a dark sky Sanctuary we've bumped it up to a
sanctuary level uh we are hoping to have uh an answer from them by the time of
the star party this next year now this summer so um specifics for this year J dates
July 24th to 29th uh cost $50 adult 15 children we
one of the least expensive ones to go to um we kept at that we made some
adjustments we've had to raise our meal costs and our t-shirt prices uh but I
still think we have a probably the best bank one night having cocktails will you
know you a couple hours you can blow through that kind of money no problem yeah so that's the rundown for this year
uh here's our website uh uh and we also are on Facebook yeah I see I misspelled
early right we know what you mean there you
go John and yes I birth in the 25th of the of July I
can pass free I'm sorry I I my birthday is the
25th of July your's the 25th of July really yeah I can go free there you
go mine's the 21st so I'm I'm too early yeah Maxi you are like a kid you need
gift so anyway we hope to have registration open around the first uh yes online
registration and may a t-shirt mail
in and so I always try to finish with little yeah here's here's one of my favorite little
thing who invented the clouds in fact that the picture is is hanging up here
on my wall with all my other memorabilia so that's it and I always
like this little uh poem too the old astronomer which is you you
see me that's where I'm getting to be I guess I've been through the Golden Age all right right well you know I think
that uh you know you've John you've been a steadfast uh uh person involved in
supporting not only the Nebraska star party but just astronomy in general um
you know and uh you know I I definitely uh would uh you
know raise a glass and uh give you a special toast you know for all the
incredible work you've done um and uh you're always an inspiration you're always constantly uh making people aware
of um of the importance of dark skies and um uh you know it is uh it's a
wonderful thing to go out there and hang out with you uh and experience what astronomy is like with John Johnson so
well thank you so much and and like I said if if we get our uh I've been working on the the dark sky designation
now for for probably eight 10 years at least thinking about it and trying to figure out how we could do it we finally
got the the the Stars to line so to speak and I think we're we are on the
final uh you know track to get this done and I think that's going to be a a big
uh in point not only for um the Nebraska star party but for what they call uh uh
astrotourism in the state of Nebraska it's bragging rights for you
know the tourism both the tourism commission and the Nebraska gameing
Parks people are are really uh pumped to get this done and and they can advertise
it too great yeah that's great well that's Wonder all right well John thank
you for wrapping up the 80th Global star party uh Maxi and Caesar thank you so
much for bringing bringing on uh you know all your wonderful uh uh stories
and images and uh you know the feeling of well you know it it's if it's one for
you Scott I mean I it here I I've got two worldwide friends I know I got others all around the world but I now
because of Scott I'm a good friend of and Maxi if I ever get a chance to come to
Argentina I'm going to look you guys up oh yeah wow it will a pleasure John
really and you're welcome to to come here yes well thank you you you can call
me and I go to the airport to to Ring to this and we can go to the to the Maxi
chilco city um we go to Star yeah no
problem yes anytime we are for anybody that like to came here to Argentina yes
yeah I think once we're all able to travel again yeah yeah you're gonna
start to see people coming to Argentina to do some serious astronomy I've been
to Hawaii a couple times but other than that there's only been one time in my life that I've gone south of the Equator
so yeah I would love to get back did you get to see good Skies when you did that John yeah I was when I was in the US
Navy out saem the otions and I mean that was Dark Skies it's dark out there it
was a little little hard to have anything big enough to other than a 750 binocular because you know the ship's
always moving but um sure but yeah I was all the way down to the Fiji islands so I've seen
wow the southern Skies once wonderful well guys thank you so
much and I want to thank our audience that uh uh participated with us um you
know it Norm Hughes says thanks for a fun night of fellowship with our friends in astronomy and you know uh you guys
are our friends too and we love it and any of you that are in the audience that you want to make a presentation on
global Star Party get in touch with me uh uh or any of us that explore
scientific and we'll make that Arrangement happen so we'd love to have you so we will be back on next Tuesday
for the 81st Global star party and um don't have a theme quite figured out yet
but it's starting to jel anyhow thank you so much Caesar Maxi
John thanks a lot thank you guys good night everybody take care we'll see you by
by
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