Global Star Party 95

Transcript:

i was really struggling there for the last uh hour getting the audio system set up we
had wind and we had a number of problems so but uh it did all work out so
we had quite the storms up here uh the the storm that passed through this past weekend a few deaths and just so much
damage there's still a hundred thousand people without power in uh wow
it was it was it was quite the gale it was quite the quite the set of squalls and uh luckily one of my students was
out camping he was safe and got to see a couple of fireballs so no astronomy did happen
i think lately all i get to see is starlink streaks
yeah my question is how uh how likely is uh
next week's uh next monday night's meteor shower do we think do we have any
uh any predictions here well what i just found out was that the
prediction that the earth is going to travel through the center of the 1995 breakup
was independently arrived at by two meteor two uh meteor astronomers
and uh i think we might get we have a good chance of getting something whether it will be a storm a lot of meteors or
nothing i really don't know but i shall be out there excellent
i'm looking forward to seeing people's pictures uh we'll see what the forecast is here you know end of may
phase then it's a new moon phase it's going to be like almost per it's very very light waxing
crescent i think if that's nice it'll set before we get to the maximum
predicted which is i think at like 1am eastern time or 2 a.m eastern time
hours will be at 10 p.m
i'm looking forward to it wendy and i will be out there it's exciting it's you know it's it's
one of a kind we've not had this the towel or like they've not been anything
to mention or even worth like going out and trying i like the idea
these meteors are slow moving because the camera has an easier time touching
very slow
so is it traveling roughly pro-grade around the sun is that why they're so slow
we're going through the part that proceeds where the carpet will come okay
it's apparently the leftover from the disintegration from uh two visits ago
when it brightened suddenly to actually visible
and monday night we're going through the whole densest part of that
wow is this a high inclination comet
or or uh i mean meteor stream i don't know
hmm
there's uh some buzzing going on if if anyone is watching the
replay okay of this on social media that that audio just needs to be turned off
i recommend that you do watch it but um but
the little bit of an echo might might happen so my computer's been giving me some trouble so i'll switch to a headset
before my segment i have nothing else on here there is an echo yeah
is there an echo when i turn my mic off no you sound good yeah i don't care it anymore
jeff y says it's an echo duck sound [Laughter]
so who who's watching so far we've got we already have people logged in harold locke is on uh chris larson
central naga pads on martin eastburn uh a lot of the regulars chris larson um
uh who else as i mentioned uh jeff wise mike wiesner is watching
she's watching for a few minutes that's right yeah mike it's an addictive program you
know designed to hypnotize you harold says good evening presenters
kareem david scott tornadoes in the saint lawrence area and ontario it's
crazy mom thinks she remembers something like this as a kid canada does get tornadoes
absolutely it's an amazing sight to watch polar
bears go flying through the air penguins in canada
if you go far north enough for uh you know elementary school play
there you go we tried to hunt them in i mean with a
camera in um let's not call this anymore but north point barrow alaska oh yeah
you were about to get into a lot of trouble there yeah yeah uh
well i don't know the new name but anyhow you hunt for them at night
because uh you can't see they're white so you can't see them in the snow and they they hunt with their um paws over their
big black noses so you can't see them but at night out and when they're out in the um
frozen arctic ocean they they have these huge reflective eyes so you just shine a
spotlight around to try to find them wow
cool pretty cool i guess uh if you are out there with uh
with the polar bears you you are also on the menu you know oh yes well we
we traveled in uh in a a big you know van with um two guys with shotguns
just just and it turns out we didn't see polar
bears at all but we saw these amazing aurora oh nice today
not not only back and forth with sue those of them yeah
i said there was no gift card and i said but we were 99 sure it was from youtube
um they get a big hug when we see them i said i said as soon as david took it out
of the box he he loved it and the shrink wrap is still on well wendy's right here say hi to everyone hi everyone
thanks for your global star party greeting thank you
and don't forget i'm listening in all right okay we won't say anything that's too tight i rate you every night
jeff wise tells us that flying polar bears were not injured in making this stream
and then he says i hope the polar bears win sometimes jeff they do win sometimes
oh they do absolutely win yeah
okay well gentlemen i guess we will get started here so here we go
we have this beautiful sonification i love these things
[Music]
[Music] nebula like this are definitely the
origins of many things in our universe
fast radio bursts or frbs are extraordinary events that generate as
much energy in a thousandth of a second as the sun does in an entire year
astronomers using nasa's hubble space telescope have traced the locations of five brief powerful radio blasts to the
spiral arms of five distant galaxies because these radio pulses disappear in
much less than the blink of an eye researchers have had a hard time tracking down where they come from and
what causes them locating the galaxies where these blasts originate is important in determining
what astronomical events trigger such intense flashes of energy the hubble space telescope helped
researchers narrow the list of possible frb sources since their discovery astronomers have
uncovered up to 1 1000 frbs but only about 15 are associated with particular
galaxies in this new hubble study of frbs astronomers pinpointed where those
bursts occurred within their specific galaxies these images display a range of spiral
arm structures from tightly wound to more open revealing how stars are distributed along these prominent
features these clues helped researchers rule out some of the possible stellar objects
originally thought to cause these brilliant flares including the explosive deaths of the youngest most massive
stars which create gamma-ray bursts and some type of supernova
another unlikely source is the merger of neutron stars the crushed cores of stars
that end their lives in supernova explosions these mergers take billions of years to
occur and are usually far from the spiral arms of older galaxies that no longer form stars
this study suggests that frbs do not originate from the youngest most massive stars or from older stars in a galaxy's
central bulge however it is consistent with the leading model that frbs
originate from young magnetar outbursts magnetars are a type of neutron star
with powerful magnetic fields called the strongest magnets in the universe magnetars possess a magnetic
field 10 trillion times more powerful than the magnets on your refrigerator door
these magnetic fields lead to flares and magnetic processes that can emit radio light
although the hubble results are exciting researchers need more observations to better pinpoint the source of frbs so
they can develop a stronger understanding of these enigmatic flashes
this field of study may need a lot more research but thanks to observations made with the hubble space telescope we're
getting closer to understanding the mysteries of the universe
[Music]
hello everyone this is scott roberts from explore scientific and the explore alliance and you're watching the 95th
global star party and the theme tonight is cosmic origins
we have an incredible lineup of speakers let me just kind of read off
who will be joining us tonight david levy joins us of course
i saw david over the weekend at carolyn shoemaker's tribute there was
a special gathering with that we did we were lucky enough to be able to broadcast live
if you missed it i'll try to put in the link where you can go and watch it but it was an
amazing event and with so many wonderful people uh giving um uh comments about and
memories and uh you know and jokes all kinds of manner of uh remembrances for
this amazing woman so that that was on sunday
uh it was also happened to be david levy's birthday his 74th birthday so it was uh it was wonderful to be able to
share that with him and to sing a nap a birth happy birthday as well don nav from the astronomical league will be
joining us sharing the questions and answers and asking more questions
so that you can win door prizes here on global star party opts dustin gibson and also justin
gibson the astrophotographer of gibson picks will be on uh with us and uh we
hope that he's able to introduce a special guest from tag back tv
professor kareem jaffer from the rafc montreal center and john abbott college
will be on with us he's introducing lou mayo of nasa goddard
space flight center with the special program they've been he's been working on with girl scouts
that's really awesome navin cintil kumar a young astronomer will be joining us uh
as well and then we go to space artist and author michael carroll
nebraska's star parties john johnson maxi follari is from
argentina carina letelier from chile will be on
with us cesar brolo also from argentina and um
adrian bradley and we may have one or two other special guests coming on uh that i might have missed here but
anyhow i i'm i'm still a little wobbly after
some crazy uh schedule uh for this weekend but forgive me for that and
we'll get started with my dear friend and your dear friend david levy david it's all yours man
thank you so much scott it was wonderful i can't believe how wonderful and relieved i was when you showed up
in flagstaff last weekend it was great the the the tribute was interesting the
saturday night version was was the first time i'd given a public in-person lecture in over two years
and the first time most of the audience had attended one in two years but sunday was
i was uncertain when i got to lowell observatory uh and i got to the site where the
memorial would be held my heart was just filled with emotion they were letting in
and patrick carolyn's son appeared shortly and i went up to him gave him a hug and
i said pat this is a little more difficult than i thought it would be and he just burst
into tears and he said for me too anyway it was very very special to remember
carolyn shoemaker and uh
i did find out that one of the shoemaker daughters wasn't there
and i found out the reason why and that is that carolyn had told her that when she dies
she does not want a memorial service she said when i'm gone it's gone i won't
be there and uh of course with all due respect to carolyn these
services were really for the people who did come i don't know what it showed up and uh
i don't think we could have done without it for my poem today
uh this is something that i got out of a episode of sign sealed and direct and
delivered it is a program on the hallmark channel which i think is the best show on
television i just think it's wonderful and i've been to the post office here
and i've asked the peace people there some of the employees if they had seen it and they were very surprised when i said
this crazy little show about the dead ladder office in denver i think is the best show on television
we watched last i think was last night we watched the episode called
edge of forever and at the end of that the main character in the show
reads sevilla martin's poem his eyes on the sparrow it's a religious poem that she wrote in
1905 and in 2014 while we were at the adirondack
astronomy retreat i rewrote it the way i like to see it and i would like to quote it to you now
i am tempted whenever clouds arise
when songs give place to zion [Music] when hope within me dies
i draw closer to the sky from care it sets me free
my eye is on the sky and i know it watches me
my eye is on the sky and i know it watches me
thank you matthew scott thank you david thank you
i want to uh that that uh live presentation
that live uh talk that david gave at the was at the
coconino um art center uh that had a special tribute
there was space art there there was um a special a special display of uh
of the film uh films that carolyn and jean and david made at the
palomar schmidt camera that was on display but kind of arranged in a beautiful uh artistic rendition uh
you know i'd really not quite seen a a whole display devoted to
the night sky condition like it was that that night in that art center
david's talk was one of the best and i've seen many of his talks
was probably one of the best i'd ever seen and it really
for everyone there i could tell that they were shook to the core and
and we all gave david a standing ovation at the end uh because it was just uh such a tremendous delivery
and um so it was it was just nothing short of wonderful david thank you so much
thanks for saying that scott thank you okay all right so um
we are going uh now to uh the astronomical league with don knabb i do
like to to uh let everyone know that the astronomical league
is a tremendous uh supporter of the astronomical community
at large they have over 80 observing programs they have
dozens of recognition programs supporting everything from
lifetime devotion and impact in the world of astronomy to
amazing young people that do research and
make a difference in in high school that's the national young astronomers award uh but there's the jack horkheimer
award and there's just so many other awards that i could never get through them tonight and describe them and do
any justice to it but they are coming up on their next alcon event uh which we
will also broadcast some of that live as well but will be in fact happening in
albuquerque so don nav is coming on now to uh tell us
more about it okay well i'm going to do the uh the slides in a moment but you know
everyone saw this before it recognizes that we start with um
a slide that warns you about solar observing so i want to show you something first so the
may issue of astronomy in it has bob berman's article and this is
entirely about he calls it the most dangerous spectacle this is all about solar observing he
mentions especially with uh in summer time we do a lot of soil observing he mentions that he had uh
an email from a reader a few years ago who had ruined part of his eyesight because he
he got careless looking for mercury or the sun he mentions that his wife had a very
close call during the 2017 eclipse at the very end of it she started to see uh the chromosphere
and within a second or two the sun started to shine but she got her eyes away luckily but the most fun thing
he mentions in here is that on uh you know the eclipse on may 10 1994
and uh bob was on a public radio show and uh they had uh they covered eight
states and 450 000 listeners so at the end of his win he was warning everyone how to observe it do the proper filter
and they opened up the questions and one caller has sincerely asked if the eclipse is so dangerous why are
they having it
all right so let me uh let me share my screen
and i will go to slideshow coming through okay
yes sir okay so again we always start warning everyone that you have to observe the
sun with a properly filtered telescope binoculars people lose their eyesight doing this if
you do it wrong you have to use professionally made filters bob bourbon actually talks about
welder's glass and he is saying the sweet spot is what they call a grade 13.
people use 12 13 or 14. sport is a little dark 12-volt light 13 welders
glass certified welder's glass without any defects is what he prefers to use
uh you can't leave your telescope unattended um if you use eclipse glasses they have to
be iso compliant uh never use sunglasses or expose them
anything else you have to use the right thing and if you don't know what the right thing is ask so uh
we always throw that warning so i'm gonna go to the last week's answers
an asterism known as the three leaps of the gazelle can be found in what constellation and that is ursa major
the big bear second question was the recently imaged
black hole the center of the milky way has a name what is it and it's a sagittarius a star this is
the image of the black hole the center of our galaxy from the event horizon telescope collaboration
amazing amazing things and the third question it's june 21 and
clear day at what point in at one point in the middle of the day the sun cast no shadows at all
which of the following places might you be the answer was hawaii
okay all right so these were the people with the correct answers cameron gillis
adrian bradley hayden corkill josh kovac connell richards barbara harris
john williams and me okay so those names get added to the door prize list
all right so now are these going on to nice questions uh these are the ones we all make up our own questions whoever is
doing the uh presenting makes their own questions so these are from me so you know where to send your complaints if you uh if you have any
so the leo triplet of galaxies consists of messier 66 67
and which one of the following the hamburger galaxy the hot dog galaxy
or the ham and cheese galaxy which one are those and here is a chart i made of leo
my favorite constellation and here's the leo triplet so which is the third
is not a messier object but is it the hamburger hot dog or ham and cheese galaxy
and as always send answers to secretary astor lee.org hamburger hotdog or ham and cheese
galaxy the astronaut karen nyberg became the 50th woman in space
on her first mission to the iss in 2008. while she was in space she crafted and
stitched together a toy dinosaur for her son which she made from scraps of fabric
recycled from what a discarded lens cleaning tissues from
telescopes b worn out socks from space walks
or see the lining of the russian cosmonauts food containers
which of these did she make a toy for her son lens cleaning tissues worn out socks from spacewalks
or russian cosmonaut food container liners
the last one in the news in the news lately the hubble space telescope discovered the most the most
distant known star i think this is through gravitational lensing stars called arendelle
that name comes from which fantasy writings harry potter the similarian or the wheel of time
harry potter similarion or the wheel of time so the star named aaron down
answers go to secretary at asteroid league.org uh two more quick slides
aol live comes back on friday june 17th seven o'clock with uh dr katelyn ahrens
so that is always fun to watch and i'm chair of the mideast region the astronaut knuckle league so i'll just
put one slide up about our upcoming regional events cherry springs star party is in early
june wonderful event york county star party is having two events in central pennsylvania the first
one is june 22nd to 26th and our midis region will have our annual meeting at green
bank starquest june 29th to july 2nd uh star quest i can't say too many too many wonderful
things about it it's a great event and just to be able to camp in the field inside of this world's largest fullest
durable telescope it's just an awesome experience so come and join us if you can
back to you scott okay all right um
it's it's always awesome to get the um
the creative uh questions that you guys come up with so i love that um
we are uh now going to go to dustin gibson if dustin's here with us um
dustin is um maybe not quite yet he'll be up here in a moment
i think we'll do a little bit of shuffling here if that's if that's the case dustin will be coming on
um why don't we go ahead and introduce uh kareem jafford kareem is uh
everybody's uh wished for professor of astronomy he's a john abbott college
and he is amazing at you know explaining
some pretty difficult concepts in astronomy which he has to do every day with his classes and which he does
fabulously in his outreach activities um you know i was reading uh some a quote
from einstein and i'll paraphrase basically he said if you can't explain something to a six-year-old child okay
that means you really don't even understand it yourself kareem does a fantastic job in uh bringing down to
earth some of the most uh difficult concepts in astronomy to uh to convey and um he always brings on to
some amazing guests of his own and uh so karina i'm going to turn it over to you man thank you for coming on again for
global star party thanks scott it's uh great to be here um scott's caught me a little bit off guard
today and that's okay i was not originally planning on presenting something but i did put something quick
together for a check-in but then i also have something else that popped into mine that i decided i'm going to talk
through before i introduce lou mayo to everyone so your audio is a little off oh it
still is okay hold on let me fix this
is that better a lot better okay perfect thank you no worries no worries i blame it
entirely on you calling me out to no i'm kidding my computer's been acting up lately so i
keep having to switch on and off of the headphones some days it works and some days it just gives me nothing but
problems sure so as scott mentioned today is uh the topic is cosmic origins and we're going
to have some fun talking about that in a few minutes and i'm going to call on my fellow panelists in about five minutes
so i'm giving them ample warning to uh you know turn off their videos and mute themselves and pretend they're not here
if they don't want to be part of this discussion but what i wanted to do is i wanted to do a brief check-in as many of
you know i wear a bunch of different outreach hats and i do that on purpose because there's a lot to that we gained
during the covid pandemic times for myself i count myself lucky that
i found the global star parties that my daughter was able to come in on that first the great conjunction of jupiter
and saturn back in december 2020 was my real introduction to the global star parties
and then when i pitched the idea of international astronomy day for gsp 45
scott was gung-ho he said you know just go with it go as far as you want to go and we went almost eight hours of just
non-stop content from some of our local montreal astronomers from some of my
former students from some friends of the society and that included pete williamson who brought me into a circle
of astronomy outreach people in the uk and through them i joined several
different groups in the uk and one of them was this wonderful virtual astronomy club that dave eagle had begun
during covid times his idea was because most of the clubs had kind of shuttered
all of their activities and not all of them had gone online that he would provide a forum for people
from anywhere to join in and have fun and chat astronomy and have these weekly
talks like what your society would normally do during non-coveted times
so i went to a couple of the talks i also chatted with dave a little bit during solar sphere last year
and then he had invited me to give a talk at the end of this past winter season so we worked out and he said you
know i'd like you to give a talk on our very last one of the season
and so unfortunately that actually ended up being the very last virtual astronomy club meeting period
and so i had the privilege and i guess also kind of the misfortune to
not get a chance to to really interact with this club until the very end of its
uh its meeting time but it created this wonderful group of astronomy enthusiasts from all across
the world but mostly based out of the uk and i got to share with them a little
bit of the two i'd seen for the spring season a few of the circumpolar constellations from here in the north
and a few of the indigenous stories that are able to be told at any time of the year
and it was just a wonderful environment and i was very honored to be chosen to be their last speaker for the virtual
astronomy club and that was last tuesday and so when i came to the gsp last tuesday evening i was a little bit heavy
of heart but i thought you know this is great i still have wonderful outreach avenues available to me and we were
talking about what's happening within our local club as we were starting to move into some in-person events
and then uh two days later we got the news that the other big group that i've been on
which is astro radio which is a volunteer radio station for astronomy and music in the uk
they've had to shutter their windows as well and so our reach out and touch space
panel which began twice a week and had switched over to every monday
is no longer active and that hit a lot of us at home because this was a very novel approach to
astronomy outreach and the reason it was novel was a few things first off it's because it mixed both musical interest
as well as an interest in astronomy and space and a lot of us you know when we're in school we talk about balancing
the two sides of the brain and we talk about the idea that most people have that other outlet that
other side to them and for me i was first exposed to this with astronomy through david levy when
david would come and give his talks there'd always be poetry there'd always be a little bit of music and he would
talk about listening to music while he was out doing his comet hunting and i'd encourage my students early on
in the term to give me the names of some astronomy themed songs that they wanted on our playlist so that when we would
have labs and there'd be a little bit of a lull you know when when there weren't engineering
labs happening next door that needed peace and quiet so that they could argue their project processes or when you know
there wasn't a ton of uh air blowing in the in the um air supported tracks for simple
harmonic motion experiments in the lab to the right we could just play some music while we were doing our astronomy
activities and i thought that that was a fun way to keep the students not just interested
but also have them recognize that astronomy really crosses over into pop culture and this was the group where i was able
to do that with outreach that was one reason why it was special the other reason why it was special was because it
was a different format where the entire panel together would be participating in
talks over every topic it wasn't individualized presentations it was more
just a general banter to general discussion and we brought in guests like david levy scott roberts david eicher
natalie willette we brought in guests from all over the world who had their own
area of astronomy or astronomy outreach or astronomy communication and we
learned from them what their trigger was what got them excited about astronomy what got them into outreach
and we got to hear their personal story and each panelist would ask them
questions and chat with them a little bit and lou mayo who's going to be joining me in a few minutes tonight he's
one of our more recent guests who joined us and found our group in astro radio reach out and touch space
and so since this announcement last week we've actually been working behind the scenes to try to come up with another
format another way where we can continue at least our outreach discussions and
this panel type of atmosphere and so you'll be seeing us next monday migrating onto youtube with a new name
and a new format and many of the familiar faces that you're used to
so stay tuned on my social media stay tuned on my facebook page and you will
see hopefully an advertisement for next monday 8 p.m british summer time which is for
us 3 p.m in the eastern daylight time region we will be back in some shape because we
don't want to give up this this wonderful connection that we've made during covet times for a lot of us
it's it's something that drives us every week so where is my attention now that these
two avenues have both kind of close to be well aside from the global star parties which is just such a wonderful
vehicle to be able to come out to i've been active of course in the education and public outreach committee
at the rasc the royal astronomical society of canada and i mentioned to you last week that we've launched creation
station for 2022. so we launched this space last year for the first time for ages five to twelve
and this year we've moved to ages five to seventeen and we also have a special category with a focus on the moon with
the artemis missions launching hopefully artemis one launching later this summer so we invite youth from anywhere they do
not have to be from canada for this we are opening our doors to the entire
world if you know a youth person from ages 5 to 17 a student at a school your
own family friends kids who show an interest when they come out to your outreach
let them know about creation station and invite them to share their stories their drawings their poems even a video if
they want to share a video we would love to see the way in which space captures their imagination
now talking about capturing imagination you know a lot of us do go out and do observe and today was one of our
insider's guide to the galaxy these are every other tuesday from 3 30 to 5 eastern standard or eastern daylight
time and our outreach coordinator samantha jewett who we met a few weeks ago and our other host chris vaughan
who's an outreach person in toronto the two of them together give us just amazing information about what's coming
up in the night sky that week we also have our next gen group which has their scholarships their annual
scholarships are in their last week now this is for canadian citizens and canadian permanent residents only but i
know a lot of our audience is now from canada we do have several listeners from you know north of the 49th parallel
there uh if you know of kids that have an interest in pursuing careers
with programs at university that overlap to space science or if you know kids of any ages
it's easier for high school students to do this but really for any age we can work with that if they have a project
they want to do within their community there are scholarships now available at the rasc funded by our next gen
committee and our next gen committee was founded by one of my former students emily laflesche
we're also working towards our ga which is coming up later in june our general assembly is open to everyone and you can
see the information at rask.ca i believe the general
attendance ticket is 30 uh canadian which is i think you know about the price of a coffee in the us
and you can join us for the ga and we have some wonderful talks coming up amazing sessions including a poster
session that will feature some of my students work and as always if you're interested in
astronomy think rasc we would love to have you as part of the royal astronomical society of canada and we'd
love to have you join us even just come to some of our programs our montreal center programs i always advertise here
on the global star parties but at risc.ca if you sign up to our newsletter you'll find out about all the different
center programs and a lot of us are still staying comodo even after we start going back to some in-person material
now before i introduce our guest i would love to open it up for about five to ten
minutes on our cosmic origin stories now a few months back scott had done a
theme that worked just perfectly for talking about the way in which we all came into astronomy and i talked briefly
about the fact that you know my very first outreach event was also one of the saddest outreach
events i ever could consider having happen which was the challenger launch and i was an elementary school kid at
the time and i turned and walked away from astronomy and i just didn't think i'd
ever come back and then i had the fortune of working with gravitational wave astronomer and
astrophysicist eric poisson and hosting kip thorne for a talk at the canadian undergraduate physics
conference at the university of guelph in 1996. now i just found out last week that my
alma mater the university of guelph is hosting canadian undergraduate physics conference again this coming fall
and i just i was in love with that that conference this idea of bringing a bunch of undergrads together and it's run by
students for students kind of like our cosmic generation club but across all of physics and so i've given them a few
pointers from my experience from you know many many many moons ago in 96 and yes there was a life before the
2000s there was you know science happening before the internet all of this was the case but i talked to them a
little bit about the way in which this kind of spurred me back into research side of science and an interest
in really keeping that outreach side of things going and even though i wandered away
from astrophysics i've come back to the community as an astronomy teacher
so i would love to hear from some of our panel your origin stories so um adrian
i'm gonna pass it to you for a couple of minutes tell us what your first spur was to bring you under the stars
your cosmic origin well um it certainly wasn't the new york yankees
i hear that yankee fans are also allowed in the rask i got to dig dee on that um
but um i actually go back to when i was seven and
was mesmerized by looking up at ursa major the big dipper at the time
i even remember it was high in the zenith um that memory has never left me
and the um idea of seeing the stars returned
now i don't recall exactly um the exact moment but i do remember
a year prior to joining the joining the university lowbrows which
would be back i want to say 2013 maybe 2012.
um so i rediscovered astronomy late in life i went out on a quest to view the milky
way naked eye and of course with skies not being as dark
i still completed my quest and went to a place where it looked like
it was a rural area it looks like oh this looks like a pretty dark place and squinted and squinted until i
found the teapot asterism and then noticed a little steam coming from the teapot
um i hadn't stopped since i eventually joined the universally low browse
um went to an open house and joined on the spot and just it snowballed from there the things
opened up and um the imaging part
um was inspired by my dear friend david that chapter took off after a talk at
the university of michigan and an image that i still carry to this day
on my phone as a as like a background screen a simple image
that uh dr levy took of crux
the uh southern cross um while i think you were i think you said you
were at a hotel or somewhere you just took the shot it's a crude shot
but there's the four stars of trucks and something about that shot let me know that i'm able to
you can catch your starlight with a camera parking lot light at the hotel yeah
i still i still even remember the fan that was in your picture and the stars that were or the
the part of the hotel um steam or something that was blurred out
because they're you know that and then you had the stars as it turns out a recent image that i
tried to take while in vegas of the lunar eclipse had a similar
thing to your picture because there was steam coming out but i focused in on the moon
um as it was being eclipsed so so now i know how you got that picture but i haven't stopped um imaging and
observing the night sky ever since so you know when you when you talk about like seeing it as a kid but then
actually discovering the hobby through you know an open house for the low brows and then discovering astrophotography
through something david shared when we share our pictures and our stories online that and when we do our
in-person events it's that opportunity for people to come back to their their their
origin story their that moment that they remember and one of my students actually came in to class a few weeks ago and
said you know sir this has been on the back of my mind all term but i remember as a kid
seeing this cool arrangement of a couple of dots near the horizon when i was camping
and such and such a year and such and such date what would i have seen i don't know what i saw but and so i took him to
stellarium and we went to the location where he was at and we went back in time to the weekend that he went camping and
he looks and there's jupiter and saturn right near the horizon and he's like oh my god i saw and
this this is where you start to connect to the outreach that we do to other people's origin stories and the things
that can get them going so david got me started on the connection with music he got you started on the connection with
astrophotography scott your origin story let's go nobody ever lets you talk how about we hear
from you my origin story well you know i think that it i i have
it came in phases okay i have an origin story i think my earliest one is when i'm maybe three
years old uh looking through the front my my mother's
kitchen screen okay and i'm i'm seeing a i'm seeing a bright light that's uh got
diffraction spikes on it from the screen itself and i just it's brilliant it's just captivating for me you know i'm
playing with my toys in the kitchen floor and i see this and uh you know i i
i asked my mom what this is and she tells me it's a star you know and uh so
that's still burnt in my brain okay there are three years old where things get burnt in baked in you know and i can
still remember it and just kind of that beautiful you know deep azure blue and
this sparkling you know spectacle through that screen door and not knowing why or what you
know but really being captivated and then of course uh you know i i was
uh uh you know a jet age space age kid you know of the
60s watching the apollo astronauts get ready and then you know as they were
broadcasting uh that they were actually going to go to the moon you know and just going
and thinking to myself this is just this is like science fiction come real you know for for sure and uh um and to watch
that all happen and unfold i was absolutely riveted um so i you know me with uh you know
probably millions of other kids were uh you know transformed and into
uh thinking about our place in space uh and then and then there's a break uh of
of several years i get my first telescope i observe the moon with it and then there's a break of about oh maybe
10 years but still there's these seeds have been planted okay and um
and then i start getting involved into the uh community the lifestyle of
amateur astronomy about 1980 and
involved with selling telescopes getting other people you know like outfitted to go on their exploration of the universe
and watching that happen uh was um uh you know
really uh amazing to me and made that made me want
to get more and more involved in astronomy outreach so i started doing sidewalk astronomy before i knew it was
the thing and uh and we had just so much incredible
support from uh you know we're in oceanside california southern california so we have people
from palomar coming down and from the jet propulsion laboratory coming down and this kind of thing because we were
one of the few uh telescope shops in the area and uh so that was that was super
and so that that happened to me and then it was just wave after wave of inspiration from all kinds of people
including people like yourself kareem and other people that present on global star party
in fact to do this every week has really been you know for me it's
just been a special privilege you know i feel like you know i pinch myself sometimes just
thinking gosh you know i got to hang out with these people and and we had this amazing audience that watches us from
around the world so it's uh it's very special and it's
it's you know i i never get i never get to a point where i think okay well i've i've
had enough experiences or i've had enough you know that doesn't happen it's like a breath of fresh air every
time so i love it that's that's amazing and speaking of our audience i will encourage our audience to put their
origin stories in the comments on youtube or facebook and we'd love to see them and i will as soon as we're done
and offline or when i have to go and start uh answering students questions again i'll go on and i'll read
everyone's comments and i'd love to see that and i may even talk about this a little bit next week as well now i see
michael lewis then her lou and maxie and david are all here but i think i'm gonna
move on to introducing lou for his segment because i'm really happy to have lou here with us tonight lou
is formerly with the goddard space center he was a planetary scientist there for i believe almost 40 years and
he's now an astronomy prof at uh marymount university and so i met lou
through the astro radio reach out touch space panel and then we realized you know we're both astronomy instructors
and so our plan is once we get all of our marks in we're going to kind of share a few activities and see if we can
both benefit a little bit from what each other has been dabbling with with our students and then i started to find out
about all these other amazing projects that lou's been involved in so i've already kind of connected some of the
material he worked on with nasa goddard with our student club support group here at the
rasc education public outreach committee the ones that have been working with chuck allen and carol org on
kind of carrying some of the work done by the astronomical league and by the rasc and starting to bring it together
so we're not all trying to reinvent the same wheel well turns out nasa's also been working on the same wheel so we can
kind of share a lot of these resources together so when i talked to lou about the gsp it was like i know some of these
people this sounds great let's let's come on so i thought it's a great time for the 95th gsp
to bring lou mayo on and he's going to talk to us a little bit about the search for life in the solar system and some of
the projects that he's working on so lou i'll turn it over to you well thanks kareem
the the thing that is really um hitting me right now is how much i enjoy spending time with my peeps
people who are into astronomy into astronomy education just have it as a
passion in their hearts like i do so um it's great it's great to
see all of you with old friends new friends uh it's nice to be here
uh so i'm gonna talk a little bit about um uh the search for life in the universe both
what we've discovered and what we uh plan to discover with the future holes and then i've got a really
special uh shout out to a group of very special people that i'm working with
so um may i uh share my screen of course
all right i should say can i share my screen i don't know
okay now let's see here
okay see a big gray and red thing there yes okay all right
so i'm going to um limit my talk today to just search for life in
our solar system certainly the search for life um
is the uh perhaps the most profound unanswered question in astronomy or in
in science are we alone and the answer to that question is
whether it's yes or or no is um has enormous
impli implications for who we are as a species
so we reach out and we explore that's who we are that's in our dna we're explorers
and this picture that i'm showing you here is one of those explorations this is mercury the planet mercury a
place where you would think well i let's not waste our time looking for life there
but it turns out that um because it's uh orbital inclination it's uh its rotation
axis is not very tilted it has polar craters
that never see the light of day and in these polar craters that are very cold because it's nighttime all the time
and mercury has essentially no atmosphere to spread the heat
we find evidence both from reflective radar and from a
neutron spec spectroscopy from the messenger mission we find evidence of water ice
so when we look for life out in the solar system when we look for life in the universe
one of the things we follow is water because on earth everywhere we find liquid water that is
everywhere we find life so strangely mercury has these um deposits of um
of frozen water there's an interesting uh set of reports
for a while we're moving out now to venus um that venus might have uh phosphine in
its atmosphere and while the surface of venus i tell this joke to my
uh uh astronomy students every uh every semester which is so great i get a new
group of people who don't know my jokes and um and so uh the joke ends with uh two
venusians who are saying i can't take this heat and one says yeah but it's dry heat
okay i liked that one kind of a joke about venus because it's dry so so venus it turns out that
even though venus atmosphere is very dry in terms of water it has about as much water as the earth's atmosphere it's
just a whole lot more dense and so the possibility uh for life in
not in the surface where it's 900 degrees fahrenheit but um higher up in the atmosphere where
it's a little a little more balmy might exist so the discovery of phosphine which is a
biomarker really caught the attention of the astronomical community however
however as good science as good scientists we uh love new information and we uh go go
about trying to replicate it and it turns out that it's probably not phosphine in the atmosphere of venus so
i'll i'm going to show you a little bit about what we're doing uh in the future to explore venus but for right now um
[Music] interesting possibility because the middle atmosphere is not very not very
hot but no phosphine so we'll skip earth for obvious reasons okay
and move out to mars mars is really tantalizing when you talk about
tantalizing evidence for the possibility of life mars just jumps out and this is a graph of
methane of surface methane on mars this was first uh identified i think by mike
muma from ground-based observations of mauna kea mike is out at goddard space flight
center uh and then verified by curiosity rover on actually on the surface and the idea
here is that um we see methane on the surface and we see not as much methane
in the colder months and we see more methane in the
warmer months this is not proof that there's life under the surface but as methane is a biomarker it would
be consistent with the existence of microbial life under the surface which would tend to
multiply more in the summer months and less in the winter months so it's just some
tantalizing pieces of of data here this is also a
picture of the surface of mars and this line here is gypsum and on earth gypsum forms only in
the presence of water so there is a whole
database of independent evidence that mars was once covered
by water and that its atmosphere was thicker and that its surface temperature was warmer
so that liquid water could exist especially in the northern hemisphere
and so what would be then be the possibilities that mars perhaps at one point
held life and here's perhaps what it might have looked like on the left we see mars as we
see it all the time as we see from hubble space telescope and from ground-based telescopes
and it's a fairly dry arid planet
but perhaps almost certainly uh a few billion years ago mars had liquid
water on its surface and much warmer temperatures we understand now why it changed uh it
appears that it lost its dynamo its ability to generate a magnetic field which allowed the
solar wind to come in and kind of knock off the atmosphere we know this from the maven spacecraft
but at one point maybe mars harboured life
and here's the mavens just a picture of the maven spacecraft that was able to identify the rate at which the martian
atmosphere is eroding so we're going to go further out in the
solar system now and and now we're not talking quite as much about planets but about moons about icy moons
and i this picture should be familiar to a lot of us and this is europa
and when the voyager spacecraft and later confirmed by galileo
went by europa the magnetometer on the spacecraft tweaked a little
and what we think happened there is that um underneath the surface of europa
is a huge ocean of saline water saline water conducts electricity moving
electricity as we know from michael faraday in the 1800s generates a magnetic field
and so the possibility exists that there is perhaps not life on the surface of
europa but down below the icy crust and
there's a heat source which is the tidal friction that you get when you are orbiting jupiter
and there's liquid water and perhaps even a method of fueling nutrients through subsurface uh
volcanic activity so europa is also a very tantalizing possibility for the
existence of life in the solar system outside the earth
this is an actual image this is an image that the cassini imager took
of enceladus a moon of saturn these are ice geysers
seen in real time by the cassini spacecraft and cassini was able to fly through
these ice geysers and measure the composition of these plumes
with its mass spectrometer and it turns out that they are filled with water ice
and organics organic molecules
not proof of life but more tantalizing evidence that
really makes us reach into our pockets or our pocketbooks and say hey here's another
billion go find life on enceladus
still around saturn this is my favorite object in the whole solar system i spent a good part of my career at goddard uh
researching and looking at this moon of saturn this is titan and this is titan
as seen by the vims instrument on cassini
voyager went by titan and could not see the surface because it's shrouded in visible wavelengths but in the infrared
between one and two microns between methane absorption features you can see down to the surface
titan is a very interesting possibility for life because its atmosphere has so many
organics in it hydrocarbons and nitriles this is a spectrum taken by the voyager
spacecraft of the atmosphere of titan then you see acetylene and ethane and diacetylene and
cyano acetylene propylene and propane and oh my goodness ethane methane
all of these things that are created by breaking up methane and nitrogen in the upper atmosphere and so these are
potential building blocks for life now the surface of titan is
95 kelvin so pretty darn cold but it has
lakes and rivers it has seasons it has clouds it has rain it just does it all at 95 kelvin so
perhaps under the surface we know that titan has a mean density of about 2 grams per cubic centimeter
which has means it's got a lot of water so maybe under the surface with all these organics in the atmosphere perhaps
there could be life well i want to talk these are just tantalizing pieces of
evidence that really beckon us to explore more and we we are exploring more in everything from here
on out that i'm going to talk about is future exploration this we have two spacecraft that we have
just uh funded to go to venus this is the da vinci a spacecraft and
lander that will um look at the chemistry of the atmosphere do a lot of imaging of
the surface and this is the veritas uh orbiter venus orbiter which is going to look uh
remotely at venus with remote spectroscopy and topography
so um these have just recently been approved by nasa and we're going to find
out a lot more about venus there's been a real dearth of missions frankly uh to venus
at least from nasa uh over the last uh 20 years or so so it's nice to see us going back
this is dragonfly an amazing concept recently approved
also that is going to fly to titan and land an aero rover land a helicopter on
titan and this helicopter is going to fly around titan's atmosphere at the surface
is about 50 percent thicker than the earth's and so it has no problem
flying around not much sunlight thick atmosphere far from the sun so it's got a nuclear power source but it is going
to be able to inspect the surface and the atmosphere of titan a really
exciting mission this is a
picture of what the europa clipper will look like this was rated very highly in recent
planetary science decadal survey as a top priority mission that will go
orbit uh orbit europa and do remote sensing of the surface and
see if it can detect volatiles and uh learn more about this
really tantalizing uh solar system object that may in fact contain life perhaps below the surface in fact i have
a friend who uh at goddard who thinks we ought to be looking for whale bones on europa as
impactors crash through this through the icy sheath and water sprays up perhaps
perhaps a whale will spray up and we'll see the whale bones on your robot we'll see
uh another um mission that has not been funded i don't think yet but has
was proposed very high priority in the decadal survey was a an enceladus orbiter
and so we talked about enceladus and its ice plumes with organics and so that is in our future
and i don't want to forget james webb james webb is a marvelous instrument for
looking at distant galaxies and for identifying and characterizing exoplanets but it also has some really
strong really powerful solar system objectives and not the least of which would be
titan so lots to say there as james webb becomes fully operational
so i want to do a shout out now this is my this is what i i love
uh i've we've had a contract with the seti institute for the
last five years and through this contract every year we
would bring 10 girl scout teams out to goddard space flight center 10 councils and each team
would bring with them an amateur astronomer and we'd give them a week of astronomy talks and activities and star
parties and tours and just everything they need to
go back to their councils and start their own girl scout astronomy clubs and
so we now have about 45 girl scout astronomy clubs around the country
that are pulling in other girls and um teaching them about the
excitement of space and and careers in space and so this is kind of a slide of
of what we've been doing at goddard i've actually been working with the girl scouts for
gosh 30 years we used to do the trainings up at the macy conference center
for girl scout leaders but more recently we've been doing it at goddard so we have all kinds of activities
special speakers like john mather uh who would come and talk to these young young women young
future astronomers perhaps and so this was just a really exciting
part of my job and even though the grant has ended i'm still meeting with the girl scouts every month
and we talk about what's happening in space nasa missions and how their clubs are
running so that's kind of my my passion
i'll stop there that was fantastic and especially after
seeing the decadal survey last week with caitlyn uh walking through the actual
evidence for life is is just oh it you know scott talks about being alive
during the apollo missions but right now even before the artemis goes up we've got so many incredible discoveries one
after the other coming through it's it's literally a full-time job just to kind of keep an eye on the news and
see what nasa's publishing jim greene who just recently retired in january as the chief scientist for nasa
uh has spoken many times that his belief was that uh within the next five years
or so we will have evidence of of life outside the earth so wow really exciting wow
amazing amazing i uh i personally myself can't wait uh to
hear that news because i think most of us believe that there's life all over the universe you know
hard to find it but uh it seems like everything that was hard to find
when we looked close enough and tried hard enough and devised instruments that were sensitive
enough we were able to do things like hear the echoes of black holes swallowing each other up and
and actually able to image black holes you know which were like straight up science fiction in the 1960s so
it seemed anyways anyways it is uh uh you you touched on something earlier uh
lou about uh it's the human condition to explore and uh
and i think that that is uh hardwired into our dna and into our hearts and minds and um you know we will continue
to make new discoveries and reveal more about who we are in our place of the
universe so very cool okay well thank you very much thanks it's
great to hear you again lou and karim thanks for bringing him on up next is dustin gibson dustin i
i first met when he came on to be one of the owners
of oceanside photo and telescope a place where is also one of my origins
where i really got involved in astronomy outreach and was able to
see uh you know a broad range of people interested in astronomy and to learn
more and more about the astronomical astronomical community itself
from people who were just learning you know stargazing from their backyard to
people that were building new instrumentation for the palomar 200 inch telescope which was
just you know an hour to drive from uh oceanside
and uh you know again i'll i'll say that the adventures have have been non-stop
since then so um but dustin is uh
an incredible astrophotographer in his own right uh he loves
the aspect of exploring the universe when i hear him talk he's very inspiring
he has had his own podcast called space junk he's given so much back to the
astronomical community that he is definitely
a special person in uh in what i would call the uh amateur astronomical industry so
dustin you want to come on yeah absolutely um i'm not sure if you
can hear me okay here are you just fine it's perfect perfect perfect thanks man that's quite an introduction i'm not
sure i'm deserving of all that but thank you you know i didn't even i didn't even really touch on it very much yeah yeah
yeah you know we've had uh so many of these conversations and i love what you're doing i love this this group too
by the way like the world needs more of this this conversation everywhere it'd be a much better place for me i'd fit in
a lot better everywhere i went you know because this is all we obsess over constantly you know especially at opt
but then scott and i personally you know scott you were just here in alabama i convinced you to come to alabama right
and um you did yeah a great idea about uh uh putting up this observatory where
people in your community can be exposed to the night sky um and seeing you uh interact with uh
the mayor of that town and you know the they were just these people are just on
fire about it and it's because of you well i think that access has to be created and i know that i know that you
share the passion through our many discussions about it but the access to the universe i mean once once you look
through a telescope once you have the opportunity to and i didn't until i was 28 years old you know i went through all
the way through college without ever looking through a telescope and you know i studied philosophy for four years and
then a few other sciences biology and chemistry and a few things and afterward you know i looked through a
telescope and i was like i really spent four years buying the books and i could have gotten
all this information in 10 seconds with a telescope right you learned so much about yourself and your
place in the universe just taking a look for the first time you know and experiencing witnessing um where it is
your place among this extremely like unimaginably vast universe and that's
something that i think that everybody at least needs to witness you know once in their life if not you know the way we do
which is basically every time the sky is clear but um you know i think that's the goal that
has to be the vision is how do we create and share access to the universe and basically everything in our mission has
been about that but you know this new project is no exception to that we're just trying to work with
this a small a very small town in um in alabama to build what will eventually
be a telescope park and it's looking like it's happening pretty fast but the idea being that you know a town could
have access to very large i mean in this case it'll be a one meter telescope plus a couple of 24-inch telescopes
and several imaging telescopes um that you know they can come out to use and
then also set up their own so that there could be a community developed around it and that's the idea is getting people to
share the experience um and so i'm really looking forward to it pushing very hard to make it all happen quickly
um but you know these things i feel like the more people understand
the perspective you know once it gets in your blood you can't get it out and so you just have to to open the door
for people and if we create that we solve the inertia problem we really um you know you give somebody that
perspective and it's something that's cherished from then on so that's the goal that's the vision and we'll see
we'll see where it goes but i'm super excited about it that's awesome well and
i know that you have a lot of other things on the horizon every time we talk you're talking about
a new community interaction uh and i hope that uh i can convince you know you
and i i think that actually you're the one that brought it up that you could come here to arkansas and basically
uh you know get something going here as well so um our little uh corner of northwest
arkansas has a lot of uh amateur astronomers here that are very very interested but they don't have anything
going like on the magnitude of what you're doing dustin so um
i think that's fantastic the amazing contributions that you're making
you've mentioned it about me but really to be very honest i've never seen anyone
that was in the amateur telescope you know retail
industry doing what you're doing it's really innovative yeah well thank you you know it um it
certainly feels important it feels like a life mission and it has since
you know i looked through that telescope i mean it literally changed my entire career path went to school for 11 years
to change directions overnight so it can be can be a pretty moving
experience um and i i can't tell you how many conversations i've had you know a good friend of mine cat machine uh she's
one of the the world's leading space artists and paints for people like like elon musk and things and um you know
listening to her it's the same story over and over and you know i could give you countless friends that have all told
the same story but the truth is it's just that this really is that spectacular you know the the hobby is
more than a hobby and it truly gives you a perspective that i feel like is valuable on whichever level you need it
to be it it really does transcend so many barriers that other things just
simply can't anywhere you go in the world anywhere you find that very few
things can do it every culture that's ever existed has their music their humor and their love for space
and their stories around it right and it's like that's the one that we connect with most and that's the
thing that still somehow today is young is still somehow today the oldest
science ever and the least explored and so i just think you know because we're
in a position the first generations ever in human history to have the opportunity with the technology that exists today is
to share these things from our backyards in high resolution it's time there are
no reasons for us not to now we can make every person on the planet a modern explorer and we should right at least
present the opportunity yeah and i've watched many of your programs dustin and you've had amazing speakers on but the
ones that really touched my heart the most i think were the really young ones that that have come on and made
really mind-blowing astro photographs on all on their own you know so how do you
feel about that it's my favorite thing about it honestly um i feel like there are two
kind of schools of thought in astronomy there's um this one which is
you know my perspective is that you know we we won't we will not have achieved our
goal until the children are taking better photos than we are until they're teaching us you know we really we should
pass the baton not to prove how heavy it's been but instead to you know usher forth the
new generations take it further than we ever could that should be the mission and that's our responsibility is to make
sure that that's accomplished and then the other one is of course the you can't use go to because i didn't
and you got to do it the hard way you know oh yeah right well i mean i understand like we've
everybody here has probably wasted a lot of time making mistakes in astronomy very painful and expensive ones but
that's not the goal the goal isn't to pass forward the pain it's to pass forward the lessons and i
think you know i'm seeing more and more of that happen i've got it the best image on my entire instagram was taken
by a 12 year old it wasn't even my image you know and that that's like that's very rewarding because it's
it's just confirmation that what we're doing is working right right that's fantastic
well that's great dustin uh you uh are bringing on uh sean
from uh who has his own uh program on it has tons of followers but
uh tell us a little bit about sean before we uh oh i'd love i'd love to do his introduction i'd love to pass sean's one
of my best friends in the world uh actually just moved across the country to be closer we're working on another project together that he may or may not
dig into but sean is tag back tv on youtube um gigantic following over a million daily
followers on youtube um and sean will probably mad at me about this
but he baits and switches his followers a little bit with video games he's like hey come come join my channel to watch
these video games and then sneaks in astronomy you know and just throws astronomy at
everybody it's my favorite thing it really is it's my favorite thing i love watching it so um sean is ultra
inspiring and somebody i truly admire but somebody that's doing huge things in astronomy and one of the first people i
always call on anything with my mission because he's he's always saying yes before anything else if it comes to you
know bringing this stuff to children or you know just making it accessible so very happy to do sean's intro but here's
sean i'll turn it over to you thanks dustin and uh no that's that's the same way i would word it too just
kind of sneaking in astronomy it was uh as funny as i mean i probably been doing this um
i mean i guess we're going on two years now so it's not really been a long time but uh once you fall in love with something it's it's hard to stop and i i
fell in love with astronomy heart it was always something i was fascinated about uh since i was a kid i've always loved
space and i never thought it was anything that was ever accessible to me
um especially kind of growing up and in rough situations and things like that and then lo and behold i'm laying in bed
one night looking at space videos and i come across stuff on astrophotography and i was blown away
that you could actually look at these things that are essentially ghosts uh in some respect you're looking at things
you know hundreds tens or tens of millions hundreds of millions of light years away and you're looking at them you know all
the way back into the past and it's just it just fascinated me and once i realized that i could participate in
this from my backyard and introduce uh my community that was growing pretty
substantially at that time to uh something incredibly nerdy which i always loved kind of introducing my
community to weird kind of offshoots of of gaming i traditionally just kind of played um
you know just just video games and live stream doing that and one day i showed actually it was uh one of trevor jones videos during uh during a
live stream uh with about ten thousand people watching and they said uh if i didn't stream it they would not come to
my streams anymore so that day i purchased my first telescope and a couple weeks later we set it up
and i got to learn the hard way basically drink information from a fire hose on trying
to you know set this telescope up in front of people and uh start giving tours of the sky and learning how
astrophotography is and the one thing i've learned more than anything is that if you tried to make something more
difficult you probably couldn't do it if you tried on purpose but it's it was an incredibly rewarding
experience because i i really loved that uh anything that i can i love learning and astrophotography and astronomy in
general is just one of those things where there's there's always something new to learn like uh the science is
always evolving we're always finding new things and it's just one of these fascinating areas that is now more than
ever accessible to the average individual to be able to participate in a significant way never
before in human history and i've just absolutely loved getting to share this with uh
with the community so yeah we would play games like animal crossing and then while playing animal crossing the sun would set i'd turn it to a telescope and
i just pointed at the sky and let people in the stream figure out what they wanted to pick i'd give them like a poll and then we'd give them a tour of the
universe we'd photograph something together and then i would give them all the raw data so they could mess with it themselves and
like practice putting it together and making their own images and really getting to interact with something that
they didn't even know was possible either and it's always just fascinating when i when i'm streaming this at night and
they're expecting to see a video game like eldon ring or red dead redemption 2 and then they get introduced to science
and astrophotography and fall in love with it so it's a little bit of a bait and switch but it's
it's a lot of fun seeing people fall in love with it i i uh if john dobson was alive today i think this would be
something that would make him very happy to hear about he always preached you know go where you
know go where the people are you know and uh you know a lot of astronomers think well you know i need to set up
wouldn't it be wonderful if we set up in a remote area totally dark you know way far away from city lights and everything
but by the way when you go out there there's no one else out there there's a reason why it's super dark
sometimes you might see the little head lamps off in the distance yourself and for the converted okay
absolutely go and drink in those dark skies it's wonderful it's amazing but uh
what you're doing uh is brilliant sean and uh you know so you deserve
special recognition for that that's wonderful i can only imagine because i i was looking at the audience size in your
in your stream and i was really really impressed and i thought wow this guy's doing it right so
thank you i appreciate that it's a it's it's been a hell of a journey and um and then getting to meet dustin and
the team that we've put together on a project called our sky which really we want to democratize space and make it
more accessible to everyone than ever before like i said before it's it's it's
it's an incredibly rewarding hobby but also for those that don't have a lot of time it's it's an incredibly difficult hobby as well to kind of get into the
learning curve is high you have to learn a lot of things and um you know i want to be able to get
this this hobby or whatever you want to call it passion um to be more accessible to
people and we're creating you know software and hardware and things like that that'll allow you to be able to
hook up telescopes and have more of like because we have you know these cameras that dslrs have gone from you know
basically waiting 10 minutes for a photo on a dslr to slowly getting all these more automatic functions and being able
to get everybody into photography and we're trying to basically create the same thing with this where
if you want to get really involved and have all that manual functionality and being able to really you know have full
control over your system you can but then at the at the same time allow anybody just to put a couple of pieces of equipment together you know your
telescope camera mount and a controller on the top of it and allow you to have this full autonomous functionality to
where they can get an image their first night rather than you know the typical situation where you get your equipment
and then you're like oh i need azcom drivers now and i need i need all these other drivers and none of this stuff
even works out of the box and then you're spending months trying to find adapters and things like that and um right so we're doing a a lot of work
on using ai uh iot devices so things that you can plug your equipment
into and software to bring this pretty significantly to to
a much easier entry level uh while also boosting up everything with automatic processing and and things like that uh
so processing you're going to be able to get to the point to where in the morning you can wake up and take your image into photoshop rather than having to use like
pix insight and process your data uh and take hours i know we always joke because uh we have a couple people that
process data on macs and they're like it's been four hours and it crashed and now i have to process all that data
again and uh and it's just kind of funny what uh what
happens with especially now that we're getting getting into like speckle interferometry and lucky imaging where you're having these massive uh data
packets you know you're imaging at sub second uh for like lucky imaging and interferometry and with cameras nowadays
going past you know 60 100 megapixels you're talking you know you know tens if not hundreds of gigabytes for some of
these projects with that and it's almost impossible to process through that data but we can do it live now uh which is
pretty amazing so process through all that data live using uh gpu processing and things like that
so it's pretty exciting program once once it's fully off the ground and you know i
know that uh i know that you and dustin will pull it off so i'm excited about it
yeah it'll be a good hopefully be able to start sharing a lot more information very soon we have like a beta coming uh late june or early july
which will be fun so get people actually using this the software to upload their stuff to the cloud and have it process
automatically and lots of exciting things like just technology and the field is growing pretty substantially
and it's got a lot of new eyes on it that are trying to make it better for everybody so hopefully we can get a lot more people
in love with it wonderful wonderful anything we can look forward to any special dates or any uh
moments um people can um we do have a couple dates but probably
nothing i should share at the moment okay uh but very soon we'll have an alpha and i'll send it i'll send it to
you right off the bat and we'll share some information once we once we can um but we're we're nearing some some really
fun things that we'll be able to invite you guys to and how do people find you tag back tv
oh uh yeah tag back tv is all my socials instagram twitter uh youtube
um so pretty easy to find um tag back tv yeah
unfortunately i don't post a lot of my photos for some reason i just hoard them to myself
i post them on discord but i've been trying to update uh twitter and things like that but uh
yeah it's um it's good if i ever get clear skies again i had like i started in 2021 with astrophotography
and then had seven months of clouds straight
the more equipment the more special the more excited you are about it the more clouds you're going to get so
i know that we've been employable probably in droughts in many places in the world just by trying to set up an observatory with some brand new
astronomy gear you know and it will rain it'd be a fun test you know so
wonderful well thank you so much uh uh sean and uh uh you know looking forward
to learning more about tag back tv and uh as you guys get your
our sky program uh launched uh definitely um you know expose our audience to it so
i'm i'm i'm very excited about the whole deal man i'll definitely keep you posted
thanks thanks so much man okay all right so uh right now we will go to
young navin centil kumar uh he's given several
really wonderful presentations on the global star party he's one of our youngest presenters and uh
uh he is one smart kid and uh so he always has a great program a great
presentation sometimes he brings on a friend i think tonight he might be going solo but uh yavin you want to come on to
the little star party okay so hello everyone so uh today i'm gonna present about my clubs like
outreach um so i so i'm gonna so we had like an astronomy
day like um event um last some saturday
so i thought i could like share some like images and like describe how it went okay
sounds good so if you see right
here we this is our club called northern virginia astronomy club as you see and then this is like our
main outreach tent and then and then right here he's
he's this guy's our club president his name is paul severance
wonderful and then
by the way many people are saying hello to you yeah okay so then we the
the vice president his name is alan goldberg and then this is one of our club members keith
they did they didn't like in a beginner telescope presentation about the types of telescopes
and um and they gave like an overview of everything so this this dot this is a job right here
it was like custom made and then you can see right here it's this is like one of those like this is an explorer
scientific mount and then
after that we have we have some two brent and um latest telescopes
which is the unistellar ev scope and then the stelina oh yeah right there kind of a new
generation new type of electronic telescope yeah
and then we have um a refractor right here and then you could
you could see like a pair of binoculars down here with like um
like a like a binocular stand and then you could see pete like some club
members talking to like the public and and like explaining what's going on
and then you see right here this is like a celestron next to our a
to c and then we have a basic we have like an equatorial mount and then we have like a
roof wrap basically refractor there and then this is my little brother right
here oh yeah then this is our setup so the whole family came along and then
this is our so this so these are some things
and then this is like a cell phone picture like any other how many other family you
know like whole families do you see showing up at star parties
how many family things i've been doing no no no how many family groups have you seen show up at star parties i mean your
whole family's going out you know is it it's my experience that mostly it's one
or two people showing up to go to a star party not the whole family i think that your situation is uh pretty
special uh-huh like um most people come like one or two people
but most peop like some people also come with families so it's a good amount of people
that's wonderful so then this was one of the best parts we this is like us like during the night time when we were doing
like some like um visual with like something like someone like was like sure someone was strong like the 20 like a
20-inch dog um from new moon telescopes okay
it was pretty so we um we looked at some pretty cool things in that
it's a cool photo and then if i go back oh so and then we this was like a
trifold that they had at the table and then some sky and telescope magazines and stuff
like that and then this was the telescope this was
like the telescope overview but through the audience perspectives you can see me and then we brought some
other friends with us from our boy scout troop right
and then this is another image of the audience you can see some novak members and also
just looking just listening and then some other mostly the public
and then you can see like the evolution right here the asc and then you could see
um an altas meet mount right there and then this is through the telescope
this is through the presenters perspectives you could see you could see the audience over here and then you can see the
telescopes and then right here is an explorer scientific um e80 carbon fiber and then the lost mandy
now nice and then this is like the same presenter's view
um again and then this is like the a this is like like um a cl
a close-up of the presenters you um you could you could see like the
other telescopes in the back like in the field and then you could see some um other people in the audience just
listening and then you see back behind the prospectors the um presenter's
perspective you can see um the dog right here and then you can see
certain telescopes they have in display well when you can see them describing it
and then this is also this this is also the similar thing
and then you can see you can see some cars here and then
um cars there and then you can see like some um like some farming stuff over there
and then you could see like a more clear view of the whole of the explore scientific telescope
with the lost mandy mount very nice
how did it feel to be out there navin with all these other amateur astronomers
um i didn't feel alone it felt i felt inclusive and
i felt like there were there were a lot of other people than me
so if you see right here this is our setup but no close-up wow nice setup
so we actually um we actually got like the explore scientific um
i forgot which mountain it was but we had 600 oh yeah so sorry we got the ax as a hundred
oh and then um [Music] you could see my dad um and one of
in the one of those troop leaders like um like looking at the telescope
right and then you see some people like
like you see these on the unistellar and then the stelina right there
and then this is like the same kind of like you know this is like the same image
and then you could see the um lost manu mount right there and then alan goldberg
yeah and then i'm done
wonderful great so how many star parties have you been
to like that nevin um i've been to a couple the club usually hosts star parties at um usually
like once like usually like an astronomy or like visual event
i usually like once like first week of like every month in the year
and then um no we actually have a current uh an event coming up
on saturday it's okay called the uh it was like a town
carnival for the town of vienna oh wow which i live in um
so it's like a solar observing event
right now nevin is this something you recommend people go and experience i mean do you need to
do you need to be into astronomy or or you just think that this is something that almost anybody could
check into usually the problem is this most of these events are just for the public for
like the pub like the public to know about our club and how and actually take a view through a telescope
wonderful and have you done some of this uh outreach work yourself i mean showing people the stars or maybe the sun
through the telescope i've done some mm-hmm
but um i i actually um i have in these events i actually do show people views of like things through my
telescope also you enjoy that yeah i enjoy doing it you enjoy that yeah that's great that's
great well wonderful i'm sure they're really impressed uh to uh learn about the universe from you neven and
um what do you find what do you find to be the most satisfying aspect of doing
outreach like this um how um excited people are when they look at something they've never sung
before through a telescope for the first time and how impressed they are
right that's awesome well thank you very much for sharing uh
now and uh we look forward to your next presentation on global star party okay thank you for having me yeah take care
okay yep so we're giving you a virtual applause right now
and uh anyways uh we're gonna take a ten minute break so it's time to stretch your legs
get that cup of coffee maybe grab a sandwich uh uh we'll be gone for only ten and um
thanks for tuning in to the you're watching the 95th global star party
harold wins this time
intrigue who did you have money down on were you were you going for harold or sorry
i am uh let's see glenn is with us so
yeah uh harold ended up winning
i forget there are a couple others that um tend to jump in really quick and chris are on fast normally with eric and
harold it's one of those four typically beatrice has come in a couple of times
navin that was great i wanted to ask that there's nikoina uh naveen did you get a chance to look through the eevee
scope or the other one uh did you like them yeah i got to take a look through them i
actually um it's pretty cool how what they can do
hey naveen how are you man i'm good you uh i i'm good too uh do you took pictures
or you only did a visual i did visual
um uh um but we did take some cell phone pictures there oh
great great and what the board did you have in that
star party um [Music] it's not the darkest place but there is
some light pollution there but so i think it's about a three or four oh nice nice nice to
to get a chance oh hi batteries hi everyone
it's nice to see all the regulars come on it you know it gives us a little bit of a i don't know it's like it's my tuesday
night crowd i feel like you know i've gone into the restaurant and seeing all my friends chatting with them
our little space to be here global thing exactly
so how are you kareem what's up in canada canada is uh stormy the last few days
but uh personally going doing really well actually uh my wife and i have our 20th anniversary tomorrow so we got to
celebrate a little bit last weekend congratulations thank you thank you my
son just had his final exam today and now he goes off to university
in a few months and so oh that's great tumultuous time
lots lots of lots of handwriting as the kids start to grow up far too quickly
and the thing goes by yes duvet is going to be shocked next time
he comes to montreal my daughter is now taller than my wife and almost as tall as me
and last time he had come she came to get his book autographed from him and uh
you know he he was looking down to her and talking to her and giving her wisdom and now it's gonna have to be looking up to her
to talk
we might be able to see you this summer if you come to the retreat i'm still i've still got it on my
schedule as a tentative i'm hoping to find a way to get there but uh otherwise we will hopefully see you in the fall
will you be coming up this way probably not okay but uh see what you can do
and if you look at the email that i sent you i did see just away yes you did so
uh you did but we'd be really honored to do but let's see what happens i showed it i showed it to karima to my wife and
she immediately said wait i'm coming down too if you're going so
i'll be a state over um i'm returning to oaky text to finish
a few uh types of images that i started when i was there um
i still have the quest to come visit you and uh if you do come our way i
definitely want to know because i will cancel baseball
i'll cancel my own plans to image and uh make sure
that i uh if i have to make it across the border i will do that
i keep forgetting to get my passport in order and now's the time um
so i'll be taking care of that soon
you do realize when adrian says he's going to cancel baseball it's like that scene from a major league where they're
going to go and they're going to turn the sprinklers on to to basically flood the field
yeah the baseball field will not uh there won't be a game that day and i
won't know who turned on the sprinklers but uh i'm not gonna tell
conveniently the video cameras will all be turned off right adrian yep yep conveniently
uh scott says uh thank you for the uh ability to watch the maryland shoemaker memorial i
agree with him thank you so much guys that was uh you know i mean to me it was so special
to be invited to do something like that uh you know carolyn shoemaker
uh looms large and my heart my mind about someone that
you know just her story is just amazing and she was not trained as a professional researcher
or as an astronomer you know and she goes on to discover lots of comets you
know hundreds of minor planets when i did get a chance to meet her for
the very first time i was meeting david and carolyn at the 18-inch camera
where they made many of those discoveries including comet shoemaker levy9 and i asked her
i said what is it like to discover a comet and she said well you remember
you remember what it was like when you first saw saturn through a telescope i said yeah i almost peed my pants and she
said that's what it's like to discover a comet
so you know the discovery is something that's very personal for everybody and
whether you're the millionth person or 10 millionth or 100 millionth person
to see something when it's your first time that is discovery and that's that is
that's the gist of it right there and so sure so it's just uh
and there's always something new to see and uh many of us get to witness uh
beautiful uh stunning transient events like eclipses or
you know a supernova that might have occurred if you're diligent enough and you do
search enough for long enough you will find something new david uh
continues to search for comments all the time and he'll be the first to tell you that he loves the search
i do enjoy it i've had a little bit of success that keeps me going i don't recommend it for beginners it's
um might have been okay in 1965 when i started but uh
there are too many professional um surveys right now that block it but i'm
still enjoying it yes i'm sure it helps that you've got the uh
type of skies that allow you to uh be able to continue pursuing it
[Music]
earth's magnetic field protects us from harmful particles in the solar wind it extends deep into space but is
generated deep within our planet [Music]
by using satellites to measure fluctuations in the magnetic field scientists are gaining new insights into
earth's interior unlike fixed observatories on earth's
surface satellites can measure the magnetic fields both globally and in great detail
the magnetic field is generated by swirling liquid iron in the outer core which acts like a giant dynamo
measurements from es's swarm satellites have revealed a new type of wave motion mapped at the core mantle boundary
the wave oscillates around every seven years propagating westward at a thousand five hundred kilometers a year
combining these observations with a computer model of the geodynamo explains the source of magnetic field variations
initially detected on the ground
[Music]
future measurements from space could help us understand more about the electrical properties of the lower mantle and about the magnetic field from
deep in the fluid core this research has important implications
for our understanding of the geodynamo the structure of the outer core and the thermal history of earth
[Music]
well we're back i hope you enjoyed that little featurette there um you're watching the 95th global star party and
up next is space artist and science fiction author michael carroll
michael has devoted his life to interpreting space from unique perspectives through his storytelling
and through his incredible knowledge of of all things in our universe so michael
i'm glad to have you on again and we've got a couple of your books uh that we are going to
give away um you had sent a few books over one of them we were talking about
you know lou was talking about um life in on other worlds and stuff and
this drifting on alien winds might uh uh be a great book for that these books and the other book here is
uh that's a part of the springer uh series is lords of the ice moons again
near and dear to uh uh you know planetary researchers and uh i think you
had some sort of uh um you were in tune with the uh decadal
survey people on this last go around here with these books and i know that these were
written a while ago but they're no means old and
look at these these are beautifully signed so
hopefully you're the lucky winner of one of these books here but michael thanks for coming on to a global star party it's awesome to have
you on again well thanks for having me it's great to be back this is only my
third one but i i love these global star parties i love the
all the accumulated wisdom that we get from all the the guests
and all the creative ways people are are using to communicate astronomy and and the things
that are near and dear to us um in honor of tonight i have my astronomy magazine
uh globe of titan behind me we're talking about
origins and so let me share my screen here
okay all right can you all see that
that beautiful yes saturn over the moon good all right so um
titan is an interesting place in that it gives us some insights into the origin
of life and uh that is one of the great great mysteries
existential mysteries that face us how did life get started and is it only here on earth um
titan may give us some insights into that it was in about 1909 that percival
lowell wrote his uh magnum opus mars the as the abode of
life but i think if he was alive today he might be looking in a little different direction for that that theme
titans certainly has some things to offer as well see
it's a big place it's the the size of the planet mercury it has more atmosphere
than a fancy italian restaurant there's all kinds of complex chemistry
going on in the air and we would like to know how that relates to the earth not necessarily now but in the
past when life was just getting started here the earth was a very different place
back then uh there was no free oxygen in the atmosphere uh but there was methane
there was nitrogen there was ammonia that may sound familiar to those of you
who are titan fans because all that stuff is out there uh at this strange
great moon of saturn and so here on earth we had lightning and radiation that interacted with some of
those gases to generate carbon based molecules complex carbon stuff
the building blocks of life essentially we'd like to know what's going on
beneath that orange fog at titan because it seems that it's a
factory that manufactures those kinds of things too and so um
while we're talking about origins i just have to mention the miller urey experiment stanley miller
put together this crazy apparatus filled it with some
gases that at the time were thought to be similar to ancient earth atmosphere
and then they ran a bunch of lightning through it a bunch of electricity and
what came out was this gunk this brown gunk now called pholins
complex organic hydrocarbons the kinds of things that you can use to
make stuff like amino acids bio uh chemistry
so in fact if you look toward the outer
solar system just about every place that you see orange stuff is probably related
to hydrocarbons to these complex life-related
chemicals so we had to go see we sent cassini and the brilliant european probe
huygens which sent us all this great information and images from titan
this is a surface image it was taken multiple times
and i stack those images together to to average out the detail by the way for
scale uh this rock there which is made of pure water ice is about the size of your fist
okay so that gives you some idea uh the ground on titan is made of water
ice the consistency of granite the rain is methane
something that we use to heat our homes with so very very alien place and yet in some
ways very earth-like on earth we have the water cycle on titan we have a very
similar thing going on but with methane and ethane where it evaporates condenses
into clouds rains back down and makes rivers and seas
these methane storms are interacting with the uh
solar energy and the radiation from saturn to create to generate those
complex hydrocarbons and that is what excites
astrobiologists all that stuff ends up in these pools of liquid methane and
science to create all the cool chemistry that has something to do
with what we think is a prebiotic operations but there's more raining from
the sky than just methane uh there is essentially hydrocarbon soot
that that kind of snows down very gradually but constantly and creates
vast oceans of sand dunes these sand dunes are nothing like what
we see on earth in fact it's a good thing there's no oxygen on titan because if you took a spoonful
of this sand from these dunes it would be flammable in the presence of
oxygen so keep it out where it's nice and cool and tighten
here is titan compared to the earth very very big body uh as i said a planet-sized moon
but very very different from the earth and in fact uh when you're looking at biochemistry
titan has a big problem and i call that problem the tea
problem this is what it is if you have
a cup of hot tea and you have a spoonful of sugar and you stir it in it's going to go away right
away it melts very easily but take that same spoonful of sugar and put it in iced tea and it takes a lot of
work to melt it the same problem is going on a titan that's very very cold
and that slows down any chemistry that is related to uh biological
operations so you've got to get around that are there ways around that does
titan present us with uh places that are possibilities for life well it turns out
it does have hot spots for example there are cryo volcanoes places that erupt um
water that's been warmed enough to be liquid it's still very cold uh but
you've got uh mixes of ammonia in the water that lowers the boiling point and so these places uh it
may be sites where you could generate uh biochemistry and in fact some theories
say that life on earth began in hydrothermal vents in uh places like the
black smokers at the the bottom of the ocean so that's one place where
there might be some possibility for the beginning of uh active life on type
another spot is any of these um craters that have been created by impacts from
meteors uh these will make a lake of water as it melts the the ground which
is made of pure water rice you could have a lake upon there for uh
on the order of centuries uh some some estimates say and so
here you have a puddle of water and all those organics coming down from the sky
it may well be that these are places that could have generated at least the precursors of biology
but how do you make a cell well it turns out that there is uh a
newly discovered thing floating around titan's atmosphere here's your big word for the uh for the
week vinyl cyanide vinyl cyanide actually turns
into little bubbles it makes bubbles and bubbles biologists will tell us are
mimickers of cell walls cell membranes and so
many cosmologists believe that this is a critical step in
the evolution of life as we know it so the question of course is
did life get started and if so is it still hanging around is it
bathing in a liquid bath of methane or or perhaps migrated down to the oceans
100 kilometers below the surface ice of titan where there's a
deep ocean of liquid water
going to have to can you hear me by the way yes good it says i was muted but well
so um we want to go look with several probes we have lots of
designs uh submarines to look in those oceans like kraken mayor
uh buoyance stations and then of course lou mentioned the dragonfly mission
which will launch in 2026 to go to titan with this uh huge
drone that will be able to fly around 1 8 of a g so it's very light
but the atmosphere is very dense so great place to look at the chemistry see what's going
on um we will probably have to go out there and spend a lot of time maybe even in
person to discover uh what is uh just what is going on chemically and
what it tells us about the origin of life on earth uh
our friend titan may have a lot to say about that and if you want to
read a little bit more about the subject at the back of my
novel on titan there is a science behind the story
and it talks about some of the biochemistry that may be going on
on saturn so all right thank you very much back to
you scott very much okay that's great
um i did share a link to one of your books on amazon.com about pluto
and michael thanks very much you always give a great presentation sure
you are welcome take care of that for you here we go okay [Laughter]
so um michael uh what do you i mean how do you
start to wrap your head around what uh
you know i mean that view of the astronaut standing on the beach you know the waves crashing and stuff like that
it kind of makes it draws me back to you know times when i've been at the beach surfing whatever
and uh i mean you just try to get your mind into the head of the person that you're
painting or the scene that you're painting what's the create what's your creative process
well you know um astronomical art uh is is really the handmaiden of
comparative planetology we have finally
learned enough to see all these little points of light out there as real
worlds where people will work and live and explore and
so to me it's the it's the next frontier it's the high frontier and uh i i love
to to share it in that way with people um you talk about uh seeing saturn through
the telescope it's so true the first time i saw saturn i swallowed my gum
and uh you know there's nothing like experiencing yeah
right right yeah there you develop this amazing connection when you look through a telescope but um astronomical art
attempts to uh generate that same kind of connection there's a thing biologists talk about
called the edge effect and it happens when you have two very different biomes that come up against
each other for example the the desert at the gulf of aqaba and the ocean
um all right okay so yeah so in the desert and the ocean you have some some active biology
but where the two of those very different things meet you get the richest life
and astronomical art is a lot like that it's art and science married
and so um exciting things happen in that interface
i think right yeah it makes the neurons fire you know yeah right yeah that's right
well wonderful well thank you very much uh michael for coming again and we look forward to uh
you know presenting those books to the lucky winner and um
anyways we'll see you next time thank you all right thanks again you bet thank you
okay all right so up next we have uh you know we have star parties are starting to
happen across the country now uh so people are emerging from the pandemic they're
going to local star parties like the one navin uh showed us with
his group back east but there's some big star parties coming and one of the biggest and one of the darkest uh
is the nebraska star party and every year we try to bring on uh john johnson
to talk about that experience and how you two can get involved uh i think there still might be a couple of spaces
left on for the nebraska star party but you better hurry if you want to go
right am i on you're on john
okay all right well we have that's one thing we are we have an abundance of space so you do the
limiting factor usually is uh how many people we can feed at our
evening meals comfortably so uh last year we pushed uh
close to 400 maybe 375 380. um all i say is this year our
registrations pre-registrations early registrations are running ahead of last
year so uh i i anticipate a great year
scott i don't know if you wanted me i i can sit here and talk or we could do it uh some questions uh you're good at uh
asking questions but uh i think i can ask a few questions um you know about the
obvious i don't think i've mentioned much about our speakers you know we we have we usually bring in three or four
guest speakers uh every a year and uh we uh we all uh leave the observing
field out by the merit reservoir which is about 30 miles southwest of valentine
nebraska a small cow community i guess to say and way up close to the border uh in
central nebraska close to the south dakota border uh so
we always uh try to take the middle day of the week wednesday this this okay i should back
up this is running from july 24th through the 29th the last full week of
july of course it's like most major star parties we try to
try to schedule them when the moon is going to be new because because of the
absolutely unbelievable dark skies up there we want everyone to enjoy them to the maximum extent so uh but we do bring
speak back to speakers uh this year we got i think three really uh exciting speakers
we have the young lady who if you've been a regular on global star party you've all
seen her she's a marvelous speaker libby and the stars or libby white and
her mom are going to attend this year and she's just just beside herself she's so excited
about being inviting and coming up uh our other uh
the other two we were fortunate enough to get on
diana hannah keenan's schedule who is the observing editor for sky telescope magazine i'm sure some of you have met
her she's a quite a lady um you know she's done she's got her phd
she's done research and with radio telescopes and uh we kind of leave it open to her what she
wants to talk about but she will more than likely be considered our keynote speaker
i've visited with her several times she's she is an amazing lady and then uh our third speaker will be
kind of a homegrown uh gentleman he uh was raised around omaha nebraska
here attended our local astronomy society which is called the omaha economical society
when often got his undergraduate i think from kearney the
university of nebraska at kearney a part of the university of nebraska system when i got his master's in phd at i
think colorado state uh let me uh let me pull his bio up there a little bit
yeah no he actually it was from the university of nebraska here in omaha got his
bachelor's and then went on got his masters of science and phd in astrophysics and planetary sciences
uh his name is adam jensen so we're looking forward to those three speakers
so i think that'll uh be a full gamut of
interest to uh everybody that attends we we try to pride ourselves as a very
family oriented family friendly beginner star party
so i think a lot of our families or young attendees will will be amazed at uh libby and uh and
then to know that here's here's a a young man he's still in my
in my perspective a young man
nebraska went on and got some great degrees and and now yeah i guess yeah he got his
undergrad he is actually teaching now at the university of nebraska kearney which is part of the university system uh so he's
gonna be our third speaker so uh i'm excited about him uh i think that'll be
a great draw uh of course as i've said many times the the real draw is
the ultimate and dark skies up there um
we are bartle one for those of you that understand the the bortle light scale um
um as i always brag about too and scott
is that you can actually see the milky way the milky way will actually cast a shadow uh it's faint but
you can it you can prove that the milky way is the milky way i mean the milky way galaxy yes right
i mean it's it's amazing to see that effect so and i've seen it myself
and for some of you the um that you've heard some of this spiel before but i'm sure there's others on
we you know the whole community up there turns out for for the attendees uh
and there's a lot of daytime attractions to take in
you can see some real live american bison at one of the wildlife
parks up there and some gophers if you want to see gophers
and you can canoe or tube go tubing down the beautiful picturesque nibra river
that's always a big attraction and then the merritt reservoir itself is a
great fishing lake it draws from all all parts of the mid the great plains
and midwest area yeah great fishing lake and big enough to do water skiing and just
general boating too so there's a lot of recreational activities uh during the daytime that is if you
save enough energy for the rest of those that spend all our nights awake up there yeah usually we're
trying to sleep during the day but it is an absolutely uh a wonderful place
to bring a family or if you're just really into imaging we we
do have a section and that we kind of it's you know not really rope off but we
designate that the astra imagers can set up their equipment
and do their thing too and and and we do have a uh a uh as part of the activities in
wednesday we put on a astrophotography contest and i'm just
astounded at the quality of images that are uh you know getting better and better
every year with the equipment everybody has we we have various categories you know like a planetary category deep sky
just you know nightscape scenes um and even you know it doesn't necessarily
mean it has to be taken at nsp but it's because we have a separate category we call you know
taking it in a speed category so anyway that's a quick nutshell of what
we are all about so scott is there any particular questions or does anybody else
raise one i put i did put up the link for um
uh you know registering for the nebraska star party uh if you're flying in where is the best
place to fly in uh the best place to fly is to fly into omaha nebraska now
the reason we're such a dark skies is it's very remote uh
i suppose if you're coming from the west you would could fly into denver international and rent a vehicle or come
up there it's it's about the same distance um it's about a five and a half hour drive
from either omaha or denver to get up to there in north central nebraska goodness
okay so it's it's remote um of course but that's what makes it so that's what makes the yeah and our
facilities are our spartan i guess is a good phrase uh
there are nice hotels in valentine uh which is about a 45 minute drive
from the observing area which is on the south side of merritt reservoir
so there's there's plenty of usually plenty of hotels motels in the town of valentine
uh it's just that you know i always recommend that if you're going to be driving it at two or three o'clock
in the morning after observing uh carpool or or have a bike so you can
keep each other awake or one of you can watch for the uh the the occasional deer that may jump out in
front of you too uh there's there's obviously uh a resort
with cabins but they're they're gone immediately i mean people
re-register for the following year as soon as the this you know the star party's over with
so a very rare chance to get into one of those unless
unless somebody has to cancel for some reason there's plenty of camping um
there again there's there's a a number of them that are reserved spots and they do have
electrical hookup sites um they the game and parks nebraska game parks
is the organization that runs the park um they uh there's a
you know there's a lot of them and they put in more in recent years uh they do leave a lot of them you know
what they call walk ups or first come first serve uh about half of them are that and the
other half are um what we call you know they can reserve and and you can do that online uh
but there again i have a feeling most of the reserve spots have already taken it's not just because of the star party
it's because it's it's a fabulous place to go take a family boating and fishing and
what have you but yeah sure sure well i know it's going to be a a
wonderful star party and being that you already have two or three hundred already signed up
for this uh event uh is telling um that uh probably a lot of
them are repeat um uh attendees that just know how amazing oh yeah
well and as others have said uh you're
you're one big family i mean you guys they're on here and you just you all know that if you've been to
anything like this it's just becomes a family reunion every year because you
look forward to seeing friends you've made over the years that you know repeat people that come out and
to share your uh your thoughts and feelings about the the natural wonders we have out there
and uh yeah so that's you know that becomes part of the the draw to get
people there too it's just that they know they're going to be among some very friendly like-minded
people that right just really enjoy looking at the stars
i remember experiencing that for the very first time myself my very first star party big star party
was uh the texas star party uh 1983
and then and then i started going to the riverside telescope makers conference out in california um and
uh you know i've been to nebraska's star party a couple of times it's wonderful
star party uh and explore scientific will be there so yeah uh we're we're excited about that so yes i'm i'm i'm
really excited scott yeah you have to your uh to your sidekicks there that
are yeah yeah plan on coming up and and we'll uh we'll roll out the red carpet for them
for sure i know you will you always do so thank you very much john thanks for coming on
my pleasure and uh if you have any questions i mean i think you know scott said you he put the link to the
nebraska star party we're also on facebook yeah we're on facebook too yeah uh we'll be putting
out some more announcements and everything on facebook um if you have a a question there's a place
on the website or on facebook and i'm the one that usually gets those and i try to answer them as
promptly as i can if there's any particular questions people have yeah if you want to go to one of the
best star parties in the whole world you'll definitely put this on your list so
john thanks so much man thank you thank you sir all right okay
so we're going to go from nebraska down to brazil uh to talk to marcelo souza
he's got a number of things going on right now marcelo thanks for coming on to the 95th
global star party hi thank you very much for the invitations but ever it's a great
pleasure to be here today we here you know that you have here the
first dark sky park in latin america and today we realized
we were talking about the how that will measure
if a place is a woody place if you look to the sky
i wish i hear once i was talking to the referral group
i had a we had a talk today with the chapter in brazil of the international
association i participated as a advocate of the
the international dark sky association here in brazil
and we had here near ohio in latin america
you see that you have a few people involved with the protection of the dark skies
i am one of them and what you are talking today
is the ways that you have to measure delight pollution sorry that is in portuguese
because i i it was the presentation that i made one one hour ago
we are discussing about this yes i think that's something important for us well
this is a global star party so i think it is perfectly fine thank you very much
thank you satellites uh spectroscopic
observations yeah make it out so how that how that we make to re-measure the light
pollution and then i will talk with you about the first one that is the skm that is this high
quality meter that we have we have one of these here and
they use these high quality meter to make measurements inside
the the synchronous state park and the
you have also this article that it's a important paper about this that
it was published in 2017 well that
they analyzed the results obtained with the sky quality meter and they also talked about
the physical structure the components of these equipment
and here is one measure that was made by uh this is possible for the
disingenuous states park he shows here here they are in the heavy part
of the park we now delights are not like you see
here they changed out lights visualizing the process of the recognition as a dark
sky park and he will show here the this was the
audi lights that they used and i will show at the end the lights
that they have now and they you are looking for a place without
light to make the measurements here
i go here here is another part here the lights here
come from the car and here is the equipment here
and here you show the imagine that you make with the lights of the car oh
he's looking for a dark place here
and this is measurement with the lights but it's not inside the park this is the
headquarter that is located 20 kilometers far from the entrance of the
park this is the results there it's still not bad
restaurants it's not so dark because you have lights there but it is
nazi inside the park and i showed you measurements that they made inside the
parking lot here is the bottom
scale well that's the difference for us then the best option is a class one
and here is the best dark sky that you can have
and the measurements that they made inside the park it's between class 2 and clash one well
that's they found that and you have a naked the eye limb magnitude limiting
near 7 something like this not near this
and here other versions that you can find the internet as i'm showing
other version of these bottle scale reason this is is
after before and after we changed the delights in
near uh house here this is the image that is the international black spy
association page and these are the measurements that was made
inside the dark sky bar this is the equipment that you use
that's it some issues individual and here are the measurements individual
center is what you you saw you have a near 20.7.6
these are the measurements me here that is located 20 kilometers far from the entrance of the park inside the
park we have these results that's it you have places that he is
like 21 but 9 96
that's almost 22 that is the better results that you can have
and this is the place where they uh are making available for the people to
make a sky observation side the park they have another region here is results
that they find in this region inside the park you see that it is a very dark
place very dark yeah there is a nice place to make
observation and this is the best period that you have because now
next month you have the beginning of the winter and is the best moment to it's a
dry moment here then is the best moment to make observation of the sky
during the summer you have a lot of rains and this is an example how that you can
also make the measurements from the space these are images taken by the international space station by
astronauts this was a city in italy
in 2012 near and now they changed the lights by lads
i don't know if you say light in english it is lead that you say the lights they change the light
for a modern way you you you can see the change of the lights in dc's oh yeah
here is a dark sky park i'm sure here again because it is
location of the dark sky park is here inside the park that they made the
measurements and here is the ceremony for the inauguration of the dark sky park and
you'll see here the new light the new lights here they changed all the lights
in the headquarters of the park now heavy lights like this
it is very dark also inside the park this is what's here
we have now here in brazil that we are yet celebrating and
andy we are talking about how to teach these students about the the protection of the
dark skies and i showed i think that one time here but i'll show
you again because he we are now organizing a new
a global science show opera here in brazil and this was produced the
inside i don't know if you can hear
the music yes yeah we can hear good
[Music]
so [Applause] is
[Applause]
[Music]
if [Music] [Applause]
[Music]
[Applause] is
[Music] [Applause] [Music]
is [Applause] [Music]
[Applause] [Music]
is [Music]
[Music]
is [Music]
is [Music]
and this was our experience that in this city everybody is talking about the light pollution
and now we are planning to send it an experimental space and that's it
i will show here what's happening last time we send the first experiment to space
you are participating in space i shall hear my screen to show
here this was required by a tv channel here
in brazil his experimental answered by the project
in space
you
yes
all right
you know i think that these uh these programs have i mean you got students really sending
something in into space and uh
science it's fantastic
she is a teacher involved you have students all the students from public schools here in brazil
and this year we are trying to send again an experiment
and we have ice lots that you can use to make the
to send the experiment with seeds of passion fruit this year and another
fruit from our occasion that you are planning to send to space
then we celebrate a lot of the experiments
and now
and now we are looking for support to send the experimental space because they were
actually replenished because we make this division there a lot
in this project who was in space but we have to make a donation for our
security in these lots to make the dilemma for the experimental space
we had supported local here but some uh they had problems to help you guys in
this moment but you students have the experiment and you have feel time to
to find a solution to send the experiments marcelo
how much does it cost to send a cubesat into space they they
decide to choose that 3 consent by 500. 500. yeah but uh
we ha we had a promise here local man but something happened that it didn't
work that's it okay yeah but today i promise you for next month but see
next month is experiment needs to be in the united states yeah well no problem we
love you marcelo i have posted on to the chat uh
thank you post you can make a small donation by paypal
and uh you are you know directly supporting uh a scientific interest in um
with young students in brazil marcelo works tirelessly to make these
programs possible and you know you just never know
you just never know where the next uh you know inspired
genius is going to come from you know and by participating in programs like this one
uh you know it really does help and so um
i i will be making a donation and i hope you join me so
so thanks thank you thanks for sharing part of the nation i i hope that she
will receive here from brazil i hope but i i didn't happen to today
but i hope that patrick and corbin next week
people in our audience will make a small donation to make it possible so
thank you marcelo thank you very much again for the invitation it's a great
pleasure to be here thank you that's great it's great marcelo is also the editor of sky's up magazine so if you go
to explore scientific dot com forward slash up
you will can download a free copy of the global astronomy magazine
our next uh issue is about space telescopes uh so we're that's being put together right now all right that's
great marcelo thanks again guys thank you very much my pleasure
thank you okay all right so up next um now we're going a little bit further
south we're going to argentina uh to visit with maxi falaris uh maxi
uh is always blowing our minds with his amazing astrophotography and
as he explores the southern hemisphere galaxies and uh
and to reveal amazing stuff down there i wish i could spend every night under
southern hemisphere milky way skies it's just utterly uh mind blowing maxie you want to come on
hey scott how are you hi everyone do you hear me yeah yeah excellent all
right we hear you and we see we see your big smile so it's nice
they say that people in argentina are very friendly is it actually true
yes we we are very we are we are
if even we didn't uh know each other
but we handshake and give kisses when we say hello to you know
if we are social meeting or something and yeah but a friendly or with friends
we are where the most of telling jokes
or maybe i don't know they passing a good time with friends
and we try to to to train to do that so well today i'm going to present maybe
a is going to be shortly because i'm and i was cooking right now but okay
now let me share my screen sure
okay the last gsp i couldn't be here but
i remember well when you're you were doing the the the online events of the
total lunar eclipse i i i was participating but then i had to
run away because that my connection was too bad so
i want to show you maybe some pictures that i took that night hey i was struggling with the clouds uh
you know this is the the full moon that i that i was
having that time and sometimes you can see the clouds passing by let me
reset this the instagram this is a nice view of
when the the penumbra is coming up
and let me this is because the clouds
is put in in front and [Music]
in this case the shadow is starting coming up so i reset this
you can see the penumbra but the shadow is right there so this is a nice one picture
and you know i took every time that i got the chance
when the clouds coming up they becoming clear
but more later when they
the shallow cover up the the moon it was
very very cloudy
so i had two not too much
windows of clouds and this is one of the finest
moments you can see oh yes almost covered and
so i in this case i was taking pictures a a
like blocks of 10 pictures so i one decided another one but then i have to
do a single shots and get practicing
not sorry this is one
here this is when it starts to to get covered and doing single shots
you know in this case you can see almost nothing but when i out of stretch it is turned
pink and then i was trying to do five second pictures
even the clouds coming up but you know i could take
pictures like this this is uh five seconds and you can see here
sorry there's some stars in the background oh yeah
and then when i put the auto stretch you the the stars coming up
it looks like it's fully illuminated you know yeah right with stars that's an unusual view
so i have a really good one and i think was
in third 30 seconds [Music]
now i think this is the most one that i really love you know when i reset
it's apparently practically orange this is burn for the exposure but
here out the stretching is going like that but well i tried to do some
processing images so basically i
i was practicing a lot trying to you know
doing some hdrr and get a
i'm working with the background and you can see the the
stars with colors in the background and well trying to get more detail on the moon on
the full moon cover
so oh this is one that i most like because i could
uh clear the the background but the moon is like a three
three dimensional yeah beautiful beautiful photo and it
carries that characteristic we all saw who got a chance to see it
that the uh the brighter there was a brighter limb
um i mean at this time i guess part of the moon that didn't quite get deep into
the shadow um was a little more lit than that northern
which we usually call northern i'm thinking where you are maxie wouldn't the moon appear upside
down yes uh you can see the shadow is more like i think this is
uh let me try to figure out yeah because tycho is at the bottom and
the all of these seas um in your sky i believe it's reversed from
what you're presenting it the way that we see it in the northern hemisphere yeah which i appreciate but
i think uh maybe maxi is because the the telescope yeah yeah the mirror is put in
the it's just ripping your view yeah it's flipping your view to the right
in the northern hemisphere yeah i i was looking at it and go wait a minute you're from the southern
hemisphere maxi this is the moon yeah there's the moon the way you see it this is the moon the way we see it
yeah this was our view so so to us the brighter spot was on the
lower right hand limb the um lower southern limb and you've imaged
that very well um that was a there was a characteristic
of this particular lunar eclipse let me find it
how it was the shape in that date
i think this in i think this is how i i watch
almost how i watch the sorry no it's like they're like that
like that like that this is the hemisphere this part is more right here
and the taiko is more here you know but the position of the camera
change also the the perspective
so well this is one of the pictures and
uh i did another one that i
no this is one i i don't i can find it
it was more i think it's no it doesn't well it's
with those pictures i could work that night so anyway the the day is passing by
we had some cloudy nights and i tried to do because i we i saw
the weather and say that a very early in the morning maybe five a.m
the scene and and the chat stream is going to be really good so i tried to do some planetary images i put my my gear
at that time outside prepare and point it to the moon
so i did some videos of that night for example this is one
you can see that the scene is really really good it's sometimes it's getting
a little blur but i i use a a filter ir
685 nanometers and this really
helped in in this case i put also a barlow lens
so i can go more deep of the lunar
surface so this is a one of that
this is the southern part of the of the moon
you can see here there are some craters
um [Music] this is another one but
in this case i was struggling with the cloud because i when i want to
go to saturn the clouds that i didn't realize is
getting coming from where i am so it was
i say okay let's get some more pictures to the moon and see the rest and now but
i had to put my gear in inside the game because it was really
really bad and what i what i could do it was stuck
these images and this is some of the
these are some of the results that i get this is a without the the parallel lens
uh this is the sharp yes uh i really love the
the well i have some i don't know maybe the the coma of the
of the telescope is putting me more uh on focus in this place
but anyway what i do the with the purple lens
i could give this it's more a detail
and if you edge distortion i think of the optic but uh
towards the center it looks very amazingly sharp looks good
if you put the put it in this perspective you can see more the this or the
the circular place and what is the this the sun
producing this the shadows and
you know i really love to to take pictures like this in this kind of phase of the moon
and also in this place i that i i could took you know you can see
here there are some pikes in this craters and i love these
shapes of the craters that give the the
the what the ground how it sees so well
that's i think that's all for tonight i hope
that you enjoyed i i hope to start to do some planetary images again let's see how it works
uh well thank you for inviting me again thank you maxie thank you okay um we
were expecting um karina and lutelier uh she looks like she's running a bit late
here so what we're going to do is shuffle a little bit and go to our next speaker
which will be um
and caesar does not appear to be here either so we'll we'll shift to adrian bradley um
yep he's been very patiently waiting in the background so thank you very much adrian
all right well let's uh i'll start by sharing my screen um
as i always do and you're gonna go right to an image i took
last night um i always do try and get out and um image
and learn a few things about the equipment that i have
and what i try to do um i'm looking to try and see the
um this is i think this was a 14 millimeter
lens and these are typical um settings that i use
so one of the goals is always to see what kind of detail i can capture in all
conditions of the galactic core other parts of the milky way as well
if i notice satellites or meteors i try to note what
they are so that i can say something about them but in this case
um this just sort of appeared for these shots i decided to step down
to the coast so this is essentially um the tripod is standing right where
the water and the rocks here on this uh shore shoreline me
um this was probably one of the better images because the cloud and the haze cover
was pretty thick this is a prior shoot where i was able
to capture the cygnus region and this is north further north
in the state of michigan so you have the cygnus region here and
what i believe to be yet another satellite um or it could have been a plane no i
tend to be in areas where planes fly and then when i tried to shoot that area
over the lake that's what i got so sometimes high clouds
can drift into your shot and it'll obscure because they're high enough they'll obscure
different parts of your milky way photography i'm still working on getting this clear
and cleaner but um it does make for a lot of neat colors
which sometimes i'll leave the colors in uh when posting online
now while imaging i found something interesting um
and that is the difference in what i could see with um
when imaging the core in the northern part of the hemisphere or northern hemisphere
so taking this shot that i took um i'm estimating at this point that
this is about portal three and zooming in
we zoom in here and i'm gonna point out these four stars and this area right here
um doesn't look like much but
if i go that's a 30 second image if i go to an a
similar image taken in a minute
and i go to that same area still not much there go those four stars
there's this region over here some of you that know what this area is may realize that
this is an h.a region the lobster claws here and the cat's paw is here
so something that i've decided to take up is well can i image those
and get a good shot of them i basically have this month and next month to catch the milky way as it rises
and try and shoot where there's where the light pollution isn't so
terrible or the fog isn't so terrible that the whole thing gets blocked out there's
there's a this star cluster which i believe is maybe the butterfly i'll have to check
the stinger from the scorpion but this is so thick there's just no chance
to see there's those four stars that are in the middle of the lobster but there's
absolutely no chance and this was a reasonably sharp shot you can see m8 here and 20
and you can kind of see the shape of m17 the omega
but nothing here and this is this was the uh this was
actually a composite photo to make this stand out a little more so working on composite photos so what happens when
you go to the skies that uh um john johnson and the portal ones guys
here's a 30 second shot and there you go you got a little bit of
detail here without me trying this detail showed up
and so what about okay what about wide angle at a portal one site
and there it goes there's more detail here
um just going to show you that when you're
at a portal one site all of the data from the stars just comes out
this is 30 seconds and i got more down here now of course it helps that there's
no light pollution here so all of the light can come directly to me from
this part of the milky way and whereas over here
we've got something glowing here maybe it's sky glow
and it may be part of the effect i think the other part is just
not imaging long enough to get any detail here so i found that in it interesting and
left it as a challenge for myself now i use a modified camera that allows nha light this is a stock camera as
we'll call it so it's the way your eye sees it and
i noticed that the lobster claw didn't really pop out the cat's eye is near
behind the mesa when i took this shot so this is definitely something
where hydrogen alpha light some of these nebulae emit a lot of
hydrogen alpha light and it's harder to get it unless you're using a modified camera so
even though this is nice and sharp there would it would take a lot more
data and especially with all the satellites
um i forget if there's planes satellites or if these are other artifacts here but
so just showing the difference in where you image and what kind of
um what kind of artifacts you can get and all that means is for something like
this we have milky way images with beautiful foregrounds this isn't the most
beautiful or foregrounds but there is some imagery here and when you zoom in even at this site
which is probably portal 3 or portal 4 the goal is always to be able to
[Music] look at things like say there's m4 it just
appeared you can see it rather plainly here um
any of these sometimes i've imaged this where you can see the dust lane a lot better in m8
but light from all of these nebulae that are within the
galactic plane i like seeing it visible and
basically being something that you could look up now as far as the quality of the picture
there are things we can do about this that i will that i continue to strive
towards but um yeah i like that i like the detail to be
here even if i do a little noise reduction you get the sense that there's millions
and millions of stars in this shot and i'm also looking at
shooting at narrower narrower uh focal lengths for my lenses
because of the effects that it produces now this is cool when i go by day here's
this beach it's what it looks like took the shot from here and by night the same area basically the
same area looks vastly different when you use an amazing picture adrian i
i really love how you take the pictures with the clouds and the
the tiny life of the office yes
yes i include all of that because it's uh
it's something that i so a lot of times when i shoot i like to
shoot something that says this is what i see and this is what i want you to see it
you know you can you can do things to cut out clouds bring in
you know you can you can do anything with an image once you've captured it but i like the image to reflect what i'm
really seeing at that time and then maybe boost up the uh
details in this one i didn't bother boosting up the details you can still see some of it oh yeah
but they are you can see the nebulae peeking through but
this is um this is faint the light is also coming across the water right close to the
shore yes reflects off from canada yeah yep
this is like here this is lake huron and i love shooting off of lake huron yeah
in various areas this is a this is a different this i think this is a view that a similar view
you can see the clouds blocking you know the lower level clouds
cutting off your you know your telltale milky way
and this one this one um i'd treat it to
some noise reduction so the images are a little cleaner
and it's it's one of those that are meant to be viewed just looking at it from this vantage
point and um it's almost like i have a timer
um somewhere in here sagittarius does show up
but i think the clouds block some of the main stars of sagittarius but in the final shot that i'll share
and it's one that i told my mom i'd print for her sagittarius is front and center
sage a star of course would be right in here and this is this is a more
subtle it's a panorama taking three pictures
that i took with my 50 millimeter lens which is which is why some of the stars
have this there will be some experimentation to see if i can get rid of that
stopping the lens down is something that i've been that's been suggested and i will be giving that a try
um but here you have the milky way being
encroached on by the high-level clouds so it isn't just about
this great big you know ribbon in the sky our galactic
center presenting it in different ways to [Music]
you know show and maybe more subtle instead of bringing this out and making it the prominent feature
it folds in it's it's simply a part of the entire scene and here you have the lake and i muted
some of the light coming from across the lake here but there are some there are some other possibilities for
expanding this out expanding this to see more of the tree um but you do you are limited on time
because a minute is all it takes for the um
for the milky way to change positions enough that it shifts and then everything has moved
um as far as you know perspective a lot of landscape astrophotographers will shoot
the sky scene and then shoot a land scene when the sky
has basically gotten to the point where they want it to match the land and then they'll put the image together
and um my patience isn't quite that thick so i tend to try and shoot
everything in the scene and just use settings so that everything i want to see shows up
all the stars i got a lot of color i could i may have backed the color off of this a little bit
but um but i like the way it looks and um
this may this may one day become a printout and um
make it a poster so so that's it for my
presentation it's uh it's always therapeutic to get out and
shoot at the stars here in michigan we uh our weather can be so
unpredictable that the moment you get a chance to get out and observe you you almost have to take
it and um you know i'm pleased to announce that one of my
astronomy clubs was able to get out that same night and do some observation
um it actually stayed clear where they were so
so yeah my my message is always is get out wherever you can
look at the night sky and um you know things that are going on
covet surges or you know other other troubles that are going on
a lot of times they melt away even if for the precious few hours that you're looking at the night
sky that's right that's right yeah that's the power of starting
every night is different yeah you you never watch the same even the clouds uh
have that magical touch yes that's right adrian thank you so much
again for taking us through this yeah absolutely welcome thank you all for the chat
um and uh admirers out there yeah adrian thank you
man thank you oh you're welcome it's what drives me to continue looking for another looking for another way to share
with people what i see and uh hopefully it'll continue for quite some
time right thanks i'm sure well thanks okay um
uh up next is nico the hammer nico's been away for a little while but we're
so happy to have him back and uh so uh what's been occupying your uh your
your night sky explorations there nico hey hi scott hi everyone how are you
really happy to be back a few few weeks off
and i am really happy to to be here to share with you yes
okay let me share my screen
okay can you see it yes okay i i would like to start uh
with the with some moon eclipse pictures
that we we tried to to make a live view but here we had a
really bad weather a lot of clouds so we was just looking up and waiting the
clear spots in the in the house to take some pictures and
i was able to to take some some pictures where this is the
full moon before the eclipse this is when this was
starting and obviously this is
almost in the in the eclipse and uh
i i be able to to do one picture that i was expecting a long
time to do that was the the full moon the full eclipse with the
stars in the back and this is a single shot
i was using my six inch reflector with a
a reflect a camera a canon t3 that is it's a my friend's camera that
i i took the camera for for this event
and i i made this this collection with the with some of the the pictures that i
could take that night with a a really nice event uh
but the clouds i love that yes i i i could take a few pictures i we are
literally watching up the clouds and here here there is some clear spot and they start
taking pictures awesome and i think that
what a beautiful night because we are we were here with friends we er
we we can we could also show some live
images for for a minute so it was really nice
and so uh the the past weeks i i was doing different things
and i was taking some pictures of the sun that uh
this these are with with my six inch reflector that i have motorized
with a hye camera and i want to show you
uh my how how i process the the stack of image
in the register because i i stuck it and i get this image
but when you when you start playing with the the wavelets of flashy tags
you can see how the the details start to
to pop up and it's amazing how how many details you can get with a
with a small telescope uh this is a really
really nice picture of the entire song but i really love this one this one was uh
using the the same camera and the same telescope but uh using uh a roy a expensive
area of the sun with um this really giant
spot and i was surprised that here i use my
my solar um filter and an ir filter an iron
80 850 filter and it's amazing how many details
of the the like comes around the the sunspots and
it's it's really it's really nice to to play the the day with the town because every
day has a different view yeah and i really enjoy to take this picture
and i was also
uh making a another saturn for this yearly
season of planetary because saturn is really far now
but uh i could get this this beautiful image this is taking with my
my option with my with hand tracking uh thousand and making the lrgb composition
and as always uh i really love to to overexpose the the background to
to to see the the moons that we can observe of saturn and
i really love saturn this this is gonna be a very nice
years for a really nice year for italy machine yes
and also i was doing a lot of observation because
i do a lot of observations with my dog here in my house that i have a board night sky
but [Music] i have a really nice night
and this is a sketch that i inverted in in photoshop of the
hcc3242 the ghost of jupiter this planetary nebula is is amazing but
because you can watch with these details even in the in a city sky
yeah it's one of my favorite planetary bullets and this is
a sketch of how i was observing that night
and a few days ago i i
get a oxygen tree a filter that
is amazing filter and i pointed to hgc 3132 the
eight bulls nebula and if you see it with the with the eyepiece
and no filter maybe you can uh you see that there is something but you
cannot see the the nebula here from a contaminated site and when
you put the oxygen three filters magically appears the the ring of the
nebula was an amazing observation this is another sketch from that night
and [Music] this nebula is really really beautiful and i didn't
expect to see with these details from the urban skies
and i compare this observation and sketch
with a picture that i take with the tops on uh i really like to play with the option to
to make really short exposure captures and this is a little tv composition of
the nebula a few nights ago and it's amazing it's nice it's amazing it's
amazing when i tell my friends that you do this kind of stuff with the dobsonian they are they're stunned they just can't
believe it you know and no tracker is necessary it's it's really it's really nice to to
be there moving the dog and calculating the time and saying i need to be quicker
the the field rotation is it starts to to make you yes and then finally
it's hard to to assemble the the channels and you need to grow up a lot and
but it's it's really nice and i really enjoy to to take pictures
yeah even once in a while with a with this option
uh so what this this was my representation about the the pictures
and the observations that i was doing this few weeks
great that's wonderful that's wonderful thank you well i want to thank um i
think that kind of wraps up our night tonight we were expecting uh a couple of other people to join in uh i know that
carina [Music] latalia sends her regards to everyone
she did have some bad internet problems down there in chile where she is she says it's raining
really hard it's raining here too in arkansas so there's some sort of rain conspiracy
going on but but anyhow it was a another wonderful global star
party we are only a few global star parties away from our 100th
event and when we do that we will do some special things we'll have some uh
we're thinking the 100 degree eyepieces like as a door prize 100 gift certificates that kind of thing uh for
to help celebrate our 100th event um but uh it's all coming up here all too
soon and so uh i really love doing these things with you and and sharing uh um you know your
your passion and your expertise with our global audience we have an amazing
audience as well and we want to thank you
tonight you were able to see david levy don knabb dustin gibson coming on with
uh you know our sean at tag back tv was on uh it's
interesting the way that he uses uh a gaming uh stream which attracts tons of
people and then switches over to it showing you know
you know his huge audience uh views through his telescope which is
just awesome uh you know you never know how many people you'll turn on by doing that um but i think it's it's incredible
karine jaffer from the royal astronomical society of canada montreal center was on to introduce lou mayo
lou is someone that i've seen give a couple of talks before he is an amazing outreach educator and uh it was
wonderful to hear him talk tonight uh young nevin sentel kumar was on with
us showing uh what it's like with his astronomy club uh you know a typical uh
weekend night out under the stars um really great to see people come together
uh to celebrate and and bask in the starlight so to speak with their
telescopes space artist and science fiction author michael carroll is on tonight as you can
see him here with us in our hollywood squares uh view um uh it's always great to have michael
on he is uh you know a wonderful person uh to uh
join us here on the global star party uh i hope to meet him in person at some
point um because uh he's just he's just that kind of personality i think is really great
to to talk to and uh so michael thanks again for coming on and
thanks for donating those books i know some lucky person will win those um
karina was supposed to be on tonight could not make it as i mentioned because of uh internet problems uh we had adrian
bradley on uh sharing his nightscapes once again uh you know and explaining how he creates the magic
of of those wonderful uh views from
the peninsula where he takes many many of his nightscape images
and cesar brolo was on not on unfortunately but i know that he was
watching earlier he might have run into the same problem that karina did um
but uh anyhow uh we will be back next tuesday with yet another global star party and
um until that time uh keep looking up
thank you scott what's happening good night everyone good night everyone
good night thank you ladies from brazil good night
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and what else can i say for tonight um we have uh
it was really nice yeah i'm really happy to be back i i think uh
maxi is eating now he's eating now oh yeah that's right he said he had to make some food to cook so that was yes
okay thank you thanks again man take care bye
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