The Global Star Party 48

Transcript:

for
that's the meeting we have a choral group tonight at the
meeting yeah
joh Don how are you good how are you good sorry I was a little late I was on
another call no you weren't late it was this is the early log on no I I
appreciate it it's the early L on uh I've got I've
got several people working on Virtual tsp who are like all jazzed up man oh
that's good yeah and we're getting close to the close to the deadline so we're
trying to get everything corraled yeah we'll need a I'll need to know where to
send the videos okay hello everybody can you hear me yeah yeah here you
find okay I had to I I cleared up my problem I had to take my laptop and
throw it out the window okay I bounced across the field
times and then there was a big rattlesnake that came and ate
it but I took the rattles did he eat it in bits or in bites he ate it in
bites he loved it and I went to the rattlesnake and I said I need my laptop
back he said can I use a telescope tonight and I said of course and he he's putting it together now for me but he
gave me back the laptop and I plugged it in and here I am hello I would ask how your day is
going David but I think I know actually this this is the first
good day in about a week it's been a horrible horrible week since the eclipse
until today it's been one of the worst weeks I've had but I'm I'm on the upside
now so I'm doing better I'm doing much better that's
good I don't know what it was or is but uh I am feeling better now
well that's good to hear Davi so um thank you you CAU you caught you caught something on right after the uh party or
last week the night of the eclipse so it was a difficult eclipse for me and then
when I woke up I was feeling absolutely horrible and that just kept on until
this morning oh wow you sound good today it's good to hear that you're feel I'm
feeling covered I'm feeling much better thank you for asking that's good
[Music]
thanks hello hello hello
Jason how you doing hey
Jason do I sound okay sound fine okay
good sound
fine I'm gonna log in on two computers again what's that I'm GNA log in on two
computers again it's easier to share from desktop but I don't have a camera on it so I
see I thought Scotty as a rule that if you have fewer than two computers you're not allowed to be on the
program uhhuh un a rotary dial
phone I I have three computers running I've got uh you know that little uh Mac Mini
with a new processor I've got um the iMac you know kind of
allinone computer and then I've got a Windows machine you know because I sometimes I have to have a Windows
machine the Windows machine is by far the window at least one Windows machine
yeah it's
true
let's
see so what what is the most amazing in this
last year 2021 what's been the most amazing thing you have
observed uh in the
sky a conjunction yeah no question yeah I think it was Sunday Sunday night while
I was observing with David Roser uh I was at there Comet hunting
when suddenly I saw a whole line of stars in a straight line moving yeah
first I thought the telescope was moving on me but then I noticed it was the stars and
I moved a little bit and there were other stars turned out there were more than 30 of them it turned out that uh it
is a um a starlink lunch had taken place like yes the day before and I saw the
whole train of satellites moving across the sky never seen that I saw that I think I
saw that once before I had three five minute uh uh sub images that I was
taking that I had five in in one uh four in another and three in the last one and
they were all it was all starlink I had no idea they were going to go through the field I was shooting oh
[Laughter]
boy so but um I there was a lot of
interest uh for the conjunction I had uh even though it was uh you know still Co
Pro recall I probably had a dozen people at uh at my house outside you know we we
uh kept everybody social and um when I got them before I got him to the
eyepiece I wiped everything down and it went over very well
though so on the subject of computers in use I
put um I got I got an older Windows 10 um uh unit and um I actually just got it
set up finally yesterday with a special video uh capture board in it and um a
couple of low light video cameras pointing up at the sky um and it's all
softwar it up for um a uh research program called cams it's a meteor meteor
meteorite uh tracking uh system that NASA's funding and that uh the uh um uh
CI Institute is actually uh running it so I've got the two cameras on line
yesterday and problem is just like normal with every other new thing you do
at astronomy it's cloudy does it auto detect the the
meteors coming through the field it does it does um and and the software is all
um script driven and um it's uh it's really slick
it's a they they've been doing it for a few years now and it's uh it's really well
organized yeah I had seen that um something similar we've got that automated uh software for looking at uh
lunar impacts too that uhhuh it's pretty
neat so there was one program Don that I I remember um I can remember there was
one person and I forgot how he had it all set up but he had all this he was a
software engineer um and he had it all set up he
had a number of automatic telescopes and then um and then he would have this algorithm to detect like you say all the
U near Earth objects all the uh satellites or or all the um potential um
near Earth OB objects that are coming by and he was detecting all those and it would they had this automatic um image
recognition so it would look at all the plates and it would take many images and then come up with a report at the end of
each day um anyhow I I I'll try to find out where it is um it was it was one of
the programs from last year and it was really really impressive what they were doing sounds like similar to what you're
doing well again this is a uh this is a is a wellestablished uh research program
the whole idea is to track um uh meteorites back uh to their uh their
their actual Source you know and um and uh they've identified probably oh 30 or
35 or thereabouts new quote unquote meteor showers uh just from doing this
over the last couple of years and um one of the one of the uh uh fellows who's a
a really Advanced uh amateur uh in the Houston club that I belong to uh he's
actually the coordinator for Texas and he twisted my arm to get me involved in this and so I'm kind of I'm I'm I'm
really kind of intrigued with it I'm looking forward to getting it getting it going well that's really interesting yes
and then the way it it there algorithms that you would use for triangulating or coming from the source that's really
exactly exactly so at some at some point um uh
if I get anything even if I don't uh you know they have a website that um updates
uh pretty much daily to show the results that they got um uh from you know it's
about a couple of days uh behind but um uh if I get any results I'll share them
at some point so it it's well
done that's good you won't have any unidentified objects important observation was in the
last year that's it was a good question that Scotty asked yeah
exactly Kim how about you what was your most
important observation in the last year
um my most important observation of the last year was probably figuring out why my students
weren't getting a Transit curve when they were trying to process their data no uh
it was actually Mar's opposition it was finally getting the camera to work in my driveway and getting that short little
video of the planet with a little bit of the actual rsls visible to be able to
take that and show that to students to public to kids you name it I think it
was definitely
that hi Kim nice to meet you good see sorry I miss last last week
but that was a really good program it was good to see you again are you you're gonna be you're gonna be regular now I'm
gonna try I'm gonna try I I've been having more success with the global star parties that I have with Astro radio in
the UK because their timing is exactly when I go pick up my daughter and so
school ends their program starts and I'm in the car so picking up your daughter is far more important
yes yes well she's still healing from her broken foot so I'm not even going to
try to change or find other rides or anything it's it's me and it's only me right now no that's more important than
oh yeah yeah is she doing better now yeah she is she's hopefully putting
weight on it in about a week and so she cannot wait to try to walk oh yeah yeah
no that's that's good good recovery her arms are so sore for the crutches
yeah oh it's good to have you uh Kim awesome how are you doing Cameron doing
good doing good we have clear skies here in Seattle oh my gosh I mean uh it's uh
this is a special special evening so um I can pass you some rain and clouds I'm
happy to yeah yeah no we we had our share don't worry Kim as you know and so now
it's h it's it's time so I'm looking forward to uh continuing my deep Sky
survey did did deep answer her uh
favorite did deep answer her most important observation of the year uh it
was over of the conjuction great conjuction that was fun that was that
was such a great night yeah so unbelievable to see them both in the same eyepiece field you know did anybody
get to see Venus and Mercury this week uh I got to see Venus but Mercury
was hid by clouds I managed to make them out with my binoculars but I couldn't set up
anything to capture y I've tried to capture Mercury
a few times and I I tried this week but it just hits my Trees Too Fast y I fail
every time trying to rush to to capture it I have this one fantastic picture where I have an arrow pointing at what
could just be a bad pix and I say there's Mercury yeah trust
me what I was amazed when I was watching the conjunction last year was you could
actually visually um resolve them even though they were in the same high powerered
eyepiece view you could still visually distinguish both of them uh as close as
they were that was fascinating to me you know because there was all this this talk about oh yeah it's look like one
star but no no it was very very clearly two two separate and you can see the
movement day to day as as Saturn was falling behind compared to Jupiter so
that was that was that was neat it changed quickly yeah it changed really quickly
yeah I was showing my students a graphic of the conjunction as they come closer and closer together like the very last
day I clicked to show them that clouds will definitely show up that day so rely
on the GSP to show us yeah we we had clouds on the actual
closest approach here in Seattle but uh it was it was just enough clearing uh
the following day following night so it was like ah great so I could see the tail
end we had about a one hour break in the clouds for us uh just at the right
time yeah that's all it takes yeah that's all that matters I'm just
mesmerized by the landscape behind that's just gorgeous thank you um it's
actually from Arches naal
Park and Terry has one too I just have boring like well no I've got I've got cool
models I used to have a library but then I started joining zooms with doid then no Library compares to that
so yeah it looks nice and established
I usually have the sun behind me let me see if I can find
it there oh nice oh yeah
awesome you should change your name I like
it oh that's a nice view Orion Bernard gr
yeah what's interesting is when you look away you know looking at Orion arm away
from the center of the Galaxy there's a lot of large filaments of nebulosity in in the Orion area but when you look the
other way you see a lot more dark nebula right when you look towards the center of the gala towards the Lagoon nebula
there's obviously some very distinct ones between Lagoon uh you know the the uh Swan nebula Etc um and The
Pillars of Creation there there's some very nice ones but but there isn't that continuous lit
nebulosity or ionized if you will right it's it's it looks very concentrated and
then of course very naughty and uh lots of dark nebulosity too so it's interesting to see the different um
profile I guess you could say this one's for theid
oh look at that AR well hello everyone this is Scott
Roberts from explore scientific and this is uh the Explorer alliance's
48th Global star party so um I'm here joined by astronomers from around the
globe and um uh it's an exciting time with I am uh uh you know always happy to
do Global Star Party um because the you know the audience reactions so good uh
we are doing something I feels really important and that is reaching out to a worldwide audience and um you know
someone was asking me why I do this every week and I I just personally believe that um uh you know since it's
something that we are able to do uh especially since you know we're still in
this pandemic um that uh you know it's something that that we should do we
should uh uh gather as much of our friends together and the people that are
in our community together because uh they learn from each other you know and um uh amateur astronomers are probably
the most uh giving and revealing uh Educators that there are I think um you
know because they they want everybody to start to understand that uh that we live
in in this in this NeverEnding Cosmos that's interrelated you know and all the
aspects of uh of um uh philosophy and
and uh um you know science and everything is born out of astronomy so
it's it's really it's cool it's not like we've come to a level where where we
already know you know as as much as we're going to know I think where we're
at right now and I think that every research scientist genius that's out
there they're going to tell you that we have barely chipped the tip of the iceberg so um you know we are as Dave
eer likes to say we are in the Golden Age of astronomy and uh um you know it's
uh it's fantastic which you can read uh every day in in uh in the news uh on um
uh individual science websites and their Outreach uh information and all the rest
of it and it's just uh um sometimes I just have to just stop and rest for a
second just to kind of absorb it all because it is U it is an amazing time
that we live in so and so we have uh let me switch uh
here on my gallery view here we've got um to my right is deept gam from Nepal
uh she's been on a program many times uh she's involved with um astronomy club in
her high school and also with the uh the adult astronomy club uh there in Nepal
which is fantastic I think they've really embraced her and I know she'll go far Cameron Gillis uh in the upper right
hand corner there he is from uh um uh Seattle Washington and uh tonight he
says he's got clear skies so that's awesome uh dovid Levy David Levy my my
dear friend uh longtime pal uh and my a mentor and and and an inspiration to me
as he is to so many hundreds of thousands of other amateur astronomers and professional astronomers worldwide
so it's great to have him on he starts off every uh Global star party with some
amazing poetry Don cell is here with us Don is uh one of the major coordinators
of the Texas Star Party he's an astrophotographer um he's probably done so much more that I don't know about but
uh don cell's here and he's going to tell us more about tech tsp that's coming up this year Terry man Terry man
is uh someone I've known for years she is uh a driving force in amateur
astronomy she's a um aside from being an astronomer she is an amazing
photographer uh you know the images that she uh brings uh to some of our shows of
Aurora that she's done uh are are amazing and you know this is a Terry is
an amazing person on on many levels she's she's someone when I try to think
of uh strength resolve and bravery I think of Terry man I do uh Jason gonel uh known as the vast
reaches uh Jason had breaks down the boundaries all the time of what uh what
an astronomical image can be uh every time he comes out with a a new result
I'm just you know I just my I have to take my jaw and lift it up because it's
just amazing the detail that he can pull out of his images and he does this often
with very modest equipment you know and so it is um it's uh the skill and
ability and the perseverance that someone puts forth that can really take you to those limit or to those to those
Heights there's no limit it seems uh Kareem Jafar is um he is the Outreach
not just the coordinator your head of all Outreach for the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada the Montreal Center
and um uh there's a connection here uh between David and Kareem in that uh they
are um both involved in the RC Montreal Center and David is the U he is the
honorary president of that organization so um that's great so um David I'm going
to turn this over to you um and uh to let you do what you do so
well thank you so much Scotty and welcome to the 48th Global star party
which means that just two more star parties from now we will have our 50th
and I'm sure that Scotty is going to have a special program set up for that
that he will let us know in due course on Sunday on last Sunday David Roser and I
were going out observing from his uh uh we drove all the way out to our
local club's dark site belongs to the Tucson amateur astronomy Association and
it is called the churaa astronomy complex it is one of the darkest Skies
in the entire world you look outside and uh M31 you
don't just see it you walk in between the planets orbiting the stars that Circle that the center of that
Galaxy m81 and M82 you witness the
supernovas you don't need a telescope to discover Pluto from that from a sky that
dark nor do you need a telescope to really almost do anything but anyway that's where we were that night and I
was with this very telescope I set it up and I started to
do my Comet hunting during the night I found the most interesting thing that I
can ever find while Comet hunting short of it being a new Comet and that was a
line of seven satellites all moving together and I'm looking I'm looking uh
at this thing and first I thought the telescope was moving but then I noticed that it's these Seven Stars that were
moving and I moved along and there were more it turned out as I moved the telescope along this line it turned out
there were well over 30 objects in this road and David who was one of the
smartest people I know told me that the day before our observing
session they had launched a brand new starlink satellite thing there's a lot
of controversy about how starling's going to hurt our sky but there's no
controversy that when you see the 30 of satellites all together all in a row
before they each Go off into their own orbits it's a sight to see and it really
was something tonight my poem is going to be
my own interpretation of Sevilla Martin's thing whenever I am tempted
whenever clouds arise when songs give place to sighing when hope within me
dies I draw closer to the sky from care it sets me free my eyes is on the sky
and I Know It watches me my eye is on the sky and I Know It watches me than to
you Scotty very wonderful wonderful David wonderful poem um who knew that there
were so many uh poems uh that would be dedicated somehow uh you know to various
aspects of stargazing or astronomy um that connection that's been
tried that people have tried to express uh is um something I fumble with a lot
when I try to tell someone you know the feeling that I get uh when I'm out under
the stars and uh I I try to describe it all the time when I'm on these programs
um but um after a while there's no words you know there's no words so thanks
Scotty there's actually I have I have several hundred in this magic book of mine I try to make them different but I
have used the same one several times including tonight's there is one poem
that I had to take out of the book for personal reasons but all the others once
they're in they stay there very good well um up next is uh Terry man
Terry man is uh two-time former president of the astronomical League I
think she's held down other posts with the astronomical league as well currently she's Secretary of of the
league itself and um she is uh instrumental and putting together many
programs uh I one of the astronomical League conventions that I that I just
can't scrub out of my head because it was so amazing uh was one that she put together at Bryce Canyon and I think she
did uh an incredible job and anyone that was there uh at that time uh I'm sure
still talks about it it was incredibly Dark Skies amazing speakers the the vibe
and the energy that was there uh for that particular event was um was something that still touches my uh my my
heart and my mind and um so Terry I'm going to turn this over to you thank you
Scott and let me say I had a co-chair we there were two of us chairing at Bryce Canyon and we we had a great time as a
matter of fact we are hoping to go back to Bryce Canyon in the next two to three
years so we're taking a look at that right now I am going to share my
screen and gonna start off with probably what you might have seen last week with
Chuck because I'm going to share two different things with you if I can get my PowerPoint
going try that again there we go okay last week I think Chuck probably spoke
with you about some of the speakers at Alcon virtual that we have coming up in August and we do we've got amazing
speakers uh Joselyn Bell Bernell David ier will be there not to mention too also so David ly and uh Dr Caitlyn erens
and Dr Richard got and we have a youth speaker named uh Connell Richards and
they're all going to be amazing but what I'd really like to share with you is I'm
going to stop this screen share and I want to go to the live website um let me get back here because
there's some important things I think from the website that would be good just
to go over so you know and let's see that didn't work let me try this
again okay let's stop that
sorry okay it looks like I'm having a problem getting to where I want to go to
share the live website so what I'm going you want me to try it for you yeah if you can try it
for me do I need to stop sharing here you have you have stopped sharing okay
yeah if you can get to the Alcon virtual okay and that URL is Alcon
virtual.org
okay there we are and let me share that screen
okay um do me a favor and you can see how easy it is to register we've had
some questions here and that's one of the reasons I wanted to share this registration is right here and it is
very simple to register the only reason we are asking people to register is to
win the door prizes um yeah yeah you hit you're gonna want to do
that yes uh and that is one of the things I wanted to show you tonight um
Scott can you go back to sponsors you'll see there's a drop down there's door prizes hit the door prize all right I
would like to thank all of the clubs that have came forward and donated
prizes oh wow and all of the individuals that also have you can go here at any
time and check these door prizes you need to sign up it's very important between the speakers the door prizes uh
the different tours we'll be touring virtually the vaa um and we will also be talking about
Alcon 2022 which we really hope we will be back in Albuquerque in person for
that next year and right now I can tell you we still have five to six uh more
door prizes ready to come on to the website at this time but if you would
Scott go back up to the top that that is how you get to the door prizes and
you'll notice door prize sponsor uh frequently asks questions a lot of the
people that were donating had questions about how this would work if you want to just read it or have any interest in
donating a door prize right there's probably all the questions that you will need answered so um everything is right
there but everything is coming together so well you can go ahead and go go off
the website and I'll go back to my presentation but I just wanted to say we have a lot going on
um and one of the things I wanted to mention Saturday night as Scott knows we're gonna have a global star party
after our keynote speaker on Saturday night which if I'm going to make a guess I would say it will be about 11 o'clock
uh eastern time on the uh uh Global star party then and so I am
anybody that is interested as Scott said I'm Secretary of the league and you'll see my email address here very soon
about um how to contact me with answers and this and just in the subject line if
you are interested in doing the door prizes or doing uh the global star party
please put GSP in the um subject line and I will contact you when it gets
closer and as I said I'll go back to this um we will be talking about the 2022 Alcon that will be held in
Albuquerque right now it will be July 28th through the 30th and you know we
will keep up on that and get things set up as it goes along that the hosts that are doing this are doing a great job
keeping up with all the health issues so we will be working on that the one thing
you didn't see on there yet because we we haven't had time to do this yet Saturday night our grand prize will be
an explore scientific first light 127 a 5 inch um maxoff cassid grain with a
Twilight One Mount and that is has been donated by explore scientific which we
greatly appreciate that again that will be our grand door prize on Saturday night after it'll be during our last
session our uh schedule go on in a little while we still we want to nail
down everything as much as we can but like most of us many of our speakers are saying okay you know we're still kind of
iffy in this area uh we might need to adjust the schedule a little bit the same people will still be talking but
we're working on fine-tuning the times so that's one thing we are looking at
before we schedule that and so I'm going to start with the questions
uh as always we start with don't look at the sun without the filter not even
without your door your cap for your finder scope anything you need to do just do not look at the sun with your
eyes without any Optical
um protection without any Optical blah it's been a long
day it happened to me too Terry you know I seen so many clouds I'm not sure what the Sun looks like
anymore just Overlook it uh here are my answers or the answers from the global
Star Party 47 on May 25th the qu first question was what is
the name of the tallest mountain on Mars and the answer is Olympus Mons or Mount
Olympus it's a volcano the size of France and over 72,000 feet
tall next question yeah that's pretty big size of France that puts it into perspective right there yeah that's one
of those things size and distance you can actually relate to something uh the
second question what is the name of the constellation sometimes known as a northern cross and that is signis the
swan third question is in 1949 the 200 inch telescope became the largest
telescope in the world a title it held for 27 years where is it well that would
be the hail telescope located at Mount polymar observatory in Southern California
and you see the little note make sure if you're in the area you call it Palomar Mountain or you will be
corrected yeah yeah and these are the people that answered all those questions
correctly that will be added to our list and I would like to announce it's going
to make it easier for us if we start giving the Winner's name at the first of
the month rather than carrying over names so starting in July we on July the
first first star party in July we will be announcing the winners and now for the questions for
tonight on what day of the week is the next total solar eclipse over the
USA what constellation will you find this object that's one of my favorite objects
I really like that and the last question is name the
three bright stars that make the summer
triangle and I would like to say we will be back on June 11th uh Friday at 7 pm
eastern time our featured speaker will be hiy wall and she will be talking
about a journey through the Exotic world of pulsars so please join us then if you
can wonderful thank you very much Scott wonderful okay okay all right so um
let's look at their schedule here we've got
um Jason gonel the vast reaches he's he's up next and uh he's got uh some new
images that he wanted to share with us yeah I'll just uh take you on a a brief tour thanks again for having me Scott oh
my goodness thank you for coming on yeah so I um well if you know a bit
about me I just like shooting um all kinds of aspects as for photography so I
do Landscapes too and I never really show those so I um went out this past weekend and I shot a few although one
I'm going to show was even older than that but I just thought I'd step through some of those and then some other things I've done this week everybody likes
space pictures right um I'm going to share my screen on
this uh this computer here
let me know when you can see it we can see it all
right yeah so I'm just this was just GNA kind of be a slideshow if anybody's got any questions um please stop and and um
you know we can we can talk about these individual individual pictures but I just thought I'd explain a little bit about what we're seeing here and um this
one maybe the most self-explanatory one this is obviously the Big Dipper um this
was taken last September um from a a location in northern Michigan um if you
don't know much about the geography between the two peninsulas of the state of Michigan there's an island called ma
Island and um it's a big tourist destination but it's got decent skies and uh you know a lot of scenery
elements and I tend to go up there and and shoot Landscapes quite a bit so this was taken um from the shoreline of the
island so the body of water you're looking out over is uh Lake hon and this is the Big Dipper um as
seen through some smoke Haze so back if you remember late last summer there a
lot of wildfires in the in the Western United States and the smoke from those fires pretty much blew over the entire
eastern half of the United States and um it actually offered some pretty
dramatic effects to um to these type of images because the the smoke Haze is
actually almost skur the distant Horizon and um the haze or the particulate matter in
the atmosphere also diffused the sky and you get the the larger glow around the Stars which which adds a nice look to
Constellation shots um so obviously well I guess the big differ is technically an asterism but um part of Eartha major but
I thought this was a pretty nice look at it um again you've got this this interesting color from the Smoke on the
horizon and then some of the glow from the nearby City off in the distance but
the the long exposures here um six minutes for the sky and the ground um
the sky was obviously tracked to keep the sky the um crisp but the I'll try to
go full screen here it's beautiful it's so it's also really great composition
you know yeah so you get the nice reflection off the water you also can see the the stones below the water
surface thought that was kind of a cool one yeah then actually this was just on
Saturday I went up there and saw um a site I've never really seen and that is
the most air glow I've ever seen in the sky and if you don't know anything about airglow um it is it can be pretty
intense and um wow that's kind of what this image shows this is obviously looking out
towards the Milky Way um from a high vantage point on the island looking out over like here on um some antennas and
distant lights out in the distance but in the sky um you know initially looking
at the camera you might think wow this is like overly saturator or something's off with
the color but that's actually um called air glow so in the high
atmosphere um some of the highest atmospheric visual effects you can get
is called airl it's where the um certain elements like oxygen and nitrogen that
are ionized during the daytime recombine at night and give off luminesence and
it's almost a um you know a glow or
a I would say phosphorescence but I don't think that's the right word but it's almost like a neon s glow Lessing
yeah and yeah thank you for that but the interesting thing about this image is
that that glow is then reflected in the lake and you can see features of the Milky Way you can see individual Stars
reflected in the lake and also the the tones of the air glow above so I went up there to shoot the Milky Way but I got
way more than I bargained for um still kind of working on this image but I thought it was cool and then um as I was
shooting this I noticed a grow a growing glow on the horizon and this was taken I
think just after midnight um this spot here continued to
get brighter and brighter and I realized that the moon was coming up over the horizon so I took uh my camera and
swapped the lens out to a long focal length lens and shot this image of the moon coming up over
the lake this is an HDR composite where I took separate exposures to get the the
sky background and the reflection in the moon and combin those all in postprocessing you get a nice look at
the Moon here coming up over the horizon actually some distorted by the refraction it's actually flattened I
don't know see the effect but almost looks like a sunrise but it
the middle of the night those rings around the Sun are really cool it's the moon right the moon yeah
yeah yeah incredible um okay and then um Switching
gears here from from the Moon to the Sun uh this past month I shot an active
region on the Sun extreme closeup of it here this this was labeled active
region 2822 which is just a Zone where the the
magnetic field of the sun becomes very tangled up and you get these lighter
regions and darker sunspots and then the the um the darker strands here are are
hydrogen filaments um that you can see with a
the chromosphere of the sun incredible detail yeah you I mean it
keeps keeps kind of going as you zoom in but right the telescope works I would
say the astronomer works I would say it's a combination thank
you but um I tend to stare at these things long
enough where I think my brain kind of goes crazy and I start seeing things in these design you know the yeah the
features um so what I did with this one and this was just a for fun thing but I took this image split it down the middle
and mirrored it and ow take you that's what you were seeing yeah psychedelic
trip here wow that is totally cool looks like a people see all sorts of things
lion butter with a butterfly on its head you know yeah see I saw right away I saw a rabbit um with the ears some people
see a dragon some people see oh yeah yeah yeah a kangaroo yeah some people
see Michael Jackson right here a bat a wizard with his outstretched
arms yeah very
interesting uh so last week I got again the solar uh the solar the planetary
scope out for the first time this year getting ready for you know the Big Planets coming around this is a shot of
Saturn through a 12inch
Newtonian beautiful shot nice and I'm often asked you know I love Imaging
these things because after you take you you take a stream of video and you can stack those images and then apply
sharpening and everything but I always get the question question like what does it actually look like when you're when you're looking through a telescope I
thought I'd show that if the video plays nicely
um this is kind of played back real time so you get a is it playing smoothly yeah okay yeah
so you get an idea of what actually we deal with here uh with the atmosphere you know the the undulations caused by
viewing through such a large air column you get the the movement of the planet
and you know the fluttering um this type of seeing is actually some of the better type for
planetary Imaging because you don't have the really high frequency flutter um which I think is technically
turned assimilation this is more of a a kind of looking at a rock through a through the
bottom of a a running stream get kind of slow undulations and you tend to be able
to pull some detail out of those images afterwards so let's just kind of a look at what a
plant looks like live through a telescope like like mine which is a 12 12inch
Newtonian and after you stack I think I took 30,000 individual
images and stacked the best 25% of those so you get what you see there on
the left for minutes this was taken through a near infrared filter and I
shoot also through red green and blue to get the the natural
color
incredible and then one more I have on here which is actually the only deep Sky image I have for
today this is the jellyfish nebula through narrow band filters
interesting thing about this image and I didn't I was looking for things to shoot
with this telescope it's a um it's called the TPL ultrawide which
is sold by opt it's a 40 millimeter aperture APO refractor telescope and
it's only 180 millimeter focal length so you get a really wide field to view so I
was poking around trying to find things to shoot with this and looking in my Planetarium Arian program I noticed that
the planet Mars was passing through the field of view and this do this orange
dot over here is actually the planet Mars um shot as this nebula was setting
I I shot it fully in narrow band which is a filter that just looks at the emission lines of oxygen and
hydrogen and then some other um some other emission lines also but I was
pleasantly surprised to see that Mars did come out orange in the final image
um and I shot this entirely within the span of one hour as it set into the tree line wow
and you can see over the course of that hour Mars traced a a small line as it
moves through the field it's kind of an oval here and I sent this image off and
it was um featured as an apod a couple weeks ago so um you that was quite an honor
and I I've noticed that you know they they seem to to key in or enjoy images
that are kind of topical of of recent events that happened so kind of
um kind of right place at right time I think with this one but um you know it's not it's not the best view of the
jellyfish nebula because it was shot just within an hour but you know I feel like I was able to pull out quite a bit
here and then to the plan of Mars was interesting
what I wanted to show here is um this here is an
individual sub exposure and I shot 19 sub exposures during the night you can see the date here the 30th
of of April and um their time stamped here over the course of 2141 to 2248 so
just over an hour of elapse time and I can play those back and you can actually
see now the planet moving Planet moving through the field of
view they coming through the audience the audience is loving your images Jason
good me too they're just they're incredible they're awesome they're really incred definitely so let me see
if I can zoom in on this I don't know I have YouTube open on my other screen here and it's not playing smoothly so
hopefully it comes through for people so never mind the hot pi pix is
dancing around but that gives you an idea how fast you know a planet moves through the field of view of one of these objects pretty
interesting excellent so that's all I had to share
any questions or anything uh no I I think that you kind
of blew them all the way all away there Jason Pekka Pekka underlines kind of how
we all feel totally mind-blowing images you know so thank you for for sharing
that with us I appreciate it I mean I just like getting out there and shoot you know doing it and I I tend to mix it up a lot you know shooting different
kinds of objects the St the planets and you know landscape stuff it it keeps it fresh and feel like I'm always learning
stuff it's um you know got a
uh got a lot to go with like the landscape stuff that's kind of fresh for me so I enjoy doing it and learning the
techniques and stuff like that it's hard for me to get access to Dark Skies with Scenic elements so I try to take a can
do that you know Jason I I have known several I mean really excellent
astrophotographers in the past a lot of them get to like this burnout stage you know where uh they
have been so intense on on uh pushing the edge uh for so long that um uh you
know have to back off and H how do you do what you do and do you try to strike
a balance in in in what you're doing with other aspects of your life or yeah
well I mean first of all I can say with perfect clarity that I've been there um you know with the burnout thing it's
yeah it just happens um it's it's a demanding Hobby and it's hard to sit
there when you've got all this equipment to to see clear sky and not
set up and then you're in it for the whole night you know and yeah not only that but once you get the images in hand
then comes the processing part of it and there's no doubt that I've I've fallen
way behind with with um putting images together images that I've captured um
you know for some of the stuff I tried to be fresh like this this shot of Mars you know I tried to process it right away because it was something that just
happened yeah with a deep Sky object it's easy to say well I need to do that right now it's not like it's going to
change you know I'll come back to it at some point but um the biggest thing I do
to defend against that burnout is just to to change it up try to shoot something else or a different style you
know that's why I enjoy going out and shooting planetary right I haven't been able to do that since well since the conjunction
um but even before that it was not since the Mars opposition so I I definitely
will try to to mix it up um that's why I do the landscape stuff that's why I'll do the sun stuff and sometimes I'll put
you know the Deep sky or um you know neb nebula and galaxies um that type of
stuff on the back burner but I'm I'm super guilty of um putting it on the F
furthest burner that I can possibly reach because uh you know I'm now tens
of images behind where I've captured all the data I just haven't gotten to process it yet yeah I think as long as
that your is um archived and uh organized you know
I think that that's that's probably the most important thing um you know and as
as as it moves you to go and and process uh one of those images to the level that
you do it um uh you know I I think that that's that's fine there there shouldn't
be any guilt there at all um you know at one point or another uh you know you
some Observatory or some Sky survey or something may want to get images from
all the astrophotographers of this certain region taken at this certain time you know and um you know in in that
way uh you know we can learn more about the U you know this the sky itself and
so I I would just say you know uh there's the joy of of collecting data
And archiving it and certainly you know the the joy of watching it develop you
know I'm an old uh you know film and and a paper um astrophotographer so uh you
know and seeing images come up um was always a blast you know so but you know
image processing digitally pulls out so much more it's so much so much more control and you're you're always working
you know you can share your file and there working effectively with a you
know an original you know at that point so um you know I think it's amazing uh
the tools technology and skills that have been learned over these years and
you know I think that um you know you're you're leading uh certainly in the
leading pack of of great astrophotographers out there today Jason well thank you but yeah I mean I
everybody's into it for their own purposes too you know that um people enjoy different aspects of the hobby
like you said some people just like going out there setting up capturing the images seeing the thing pop up on the on
the you know on the on the camera or on the computer and that's that's kind of enough um you know some people just like
the uh the processing side some people download professional data and process that never own a piece of equipment um
some people like the visual experience you know everybody's into it for their own reasons and you know I personally
strike a balance where I enjoy both you know the processing side of it and and the capturing side of it but um yeah
definitely and it's like anything you do too much of one aspect and you start to
you know you get I would't say bored with it but it's just like you know it gets to be a grind diversion you know
and that's what stimulates your you know your thought process too you know when you get away from something for a while
and you're working on something else well the brain doesn't stop doing its thing right so um you
know you can come back it's like taking a vacation away from work you know and after that vacation you go okay this
this is what we can do that will you know help us achieve um you know a better work environment or you know
certain goals that the Company's trying to achieve that you work for you know so
um what what really gets me are the dynamic targets like like the sun where
things can change in an instant and if you see an active day on the sun it's like it's it's very hard it's like a dog
who sees a squirrel you know it's very hard not to to run and try to get that sure but yeah you
know you can do that 50 times and not not get that one moment of a you know s
or something that's true so you get there's a bit of luck there too and I I
equate it to fishing a lot that you know it's like you can go out there and some people will fish for hours not catch
anything still they get skunked yeah I've been skunked many times going fishing you know but there's always
those Fisher fishing stories where you caught you know eight trout or 10 trout
or whatever this really large fish you know so I totally get it I also equate um uh
the processing side of it to music as well you know with all the the tonal
range and and all the rest of it um you know you know a great image will sing to
you it's really and you and you just feel it you know so so thanks thank you Jason yeah no
problem thank you thanks for coming back on thanks everyone all right sorry if
you want to see my work I should probably say this because not everybody knows where to see it oh absolutely yeah I um so I share it
mostly on social media and my handle on all the major ones is the vast reaches
all one word and uh you can go see it there if you want Facebook Instagram Twitter Reddit you know wherever you
want to go right Y and I just posted that up there all right thank you thank you very much Jason y by okay um we were
going to take a 10-minute break but I'm going to go ahead and move on to DT she's been uh uh patient uh patiently
waiting uh in her home in NE Nepal and um uh DT are you uh you ready to give
your presentation yeah there she is okay
great and thank you Scott and uh today I'm going to talk about the all over the
universe and first of all I would like to start with like the universe is all
of space and time and their contents including the planet star Galaxy and all
other form of matter energy and talking about the moon talking about the
universe what's the main content is and the main content of the universe are
ordinary matter that is about 4.9% in whole and dark matter is 26.8 and dark
energy is 68.3 and talking about like the earliest
cosmological model of the universe where developed by ancient Greek and Indian
philosophers and were geocentric and placing Earth at Earth at the center
they believe that the Earth Earth is at the center and all other Heavenly Body moves around it and um here is one
theorem that is B bgv's theorem that demonstrate the classical space time and
under a single and extremely General States cannot be prolongated to past in
Infinity but must arrive at the border at some Moment In The Limited past now
either there was something on and other EDS of the Border or not and here's the
one question what is bigger than Universe
H and so
the Multiverse is bigger than Universe a Multiverse is defined as an infinite
real of being a potential being of which the universe is regarded as a part of uh
incense and talking about this evidence of expansion of the universe uh there
evidence for the expansion of the universe has been asting for some 60
years and the most important clue is the red shift and a Galaxy emit or absorb
some wavelength of light more strongly than others if the Galaxy is moving away
from us this emission of absorbtion features are sifted to longer wavelength
uh that is they become rer as the resistance velocity increase and uh we
have that H law has great significance not only because it describe the
expansion of the universe but also because it can use us to calculate the age of the cosmos and to be precise uh
the time elaps since the Big Bang is a function of the present value of w constant and its rate of change and
astronomer have determined the approximately rate of expansion but no one has it been able to measure the
second value preciously and uh I have one poem about the
universe okay welcome to this infinite place
where Mortals found a playground of Grace among the darkness lay pink Pricks
of light fighting the shadow in a galactical flight black holes gone out a
storm of star forging solar system for life to make art through the pink neula
and stard does past being await for all the question to be asked the universe
gives out and then take back creating a balance that awaits your soul to departs
dancing meteroid show you the face of what used to be the home for a different
race planetary system Collide in the beginning but stabilized with the white
sun sipping the elements are finally done now gravity offers the rule for fun
as a planet align and create a tast that form part of the Milky Way life start
from the beginning as alien from different Stars system come to watch and keep an eye on the distance little rocks
sometimes they say hello while helping life evolve really slow if you look back
in history other mind triy to tell you so look up in the dark night let the
universe fall inside your mind see beyond the boundaries of the life seek a
journey that will make you hold on tight thank you
wow wow that was great deept thank you thank you wonder
love I love it DT thank you so much for for coming on uh and waking up so early
what time is it in Nepal now 7:40 a.m. 7:40 okay yeah I would be having a
second cup of coffee about now yeah I have something to S
okay yeah uh this is the 3D solar system and uh we can just speed so we
can see the speed of the Sun that is moving around in Mercury that is 175 53
kilm per hour and Venus 126 074 kilom per hour orbit
velocity and Earth 107 by 218 kilm per
hours and similar like Mars 8 6,677 and zupiter here is
47,000 uh 2 kilm per hour and Saturn similar Saturn
3471 and Uranus and Neptune and similarly over the size what the size
and this this is this um size of the sun that's equal circumference and similar
like Mercury Venus or here
is and M 21 with 296 kilm and Jupiter
is and similar like zupiter and Saturn 36 3,655 and 882 kilm per hour and
Uranus and Neptune yeah thank you thank you thank
you well that was a nice tour through the solar system there a really wonderful poem there DT you're you're uh
you're I think that was u a great icing on the cake for This Global star party
thank you so much I look forward to the next one now um and maybe um uh we can
um uh post your poetry up on your Ambassador page um uh with on explore
Alliance it's great thank you well I I I thought that we' be going to a 10-minute
break but we are kind of moving ahead nicely so I'm going to go ahead and introduce uh Kareem Jafar Kareem is as I
mentioned before he I always forget the exact title they have they have some nice titles at at the
RSC but let's just say this he's he's a he is a professor um at uh uh I forget
which university he's at uh but uh maybe it says so right there college there we
go so aboc College uh and he is uh he's
a great lecturer he's already been on U Global Star Party a couple coup of times now and um he is uh he's just inspiring
in the way that he talks uh and um you know so I think his his students are
very lucky to have the uh uh experience of Kareem Jafar and so thank you very
much for coming back on and I think this is going to be a cool presentation so
I'll turn it over to you thanks Scott my pleasure I'm really happy to be part of the 48th Global Star Party and as uh
doid said we're looking forward to 50 coming up soon but uh for tonight I
actually I'm gonna come at this the other way you talked about how my students might be lucky to have me I'm a
little bit of a mix bag on that but I feel lucky to have my students so I want to talk about my personal connection to
astronomy the theme for tonight but when I saw your idea of uh professional dis
dis personal Discovery I realized that most most of the reason or the way I
approach the night sky is with my students in mind so what I want to do
tonight is I want to kind of tell you how I got there and then talk to you a little bit about where my students play a role in how I approach my journey in
astronomy my night Scot and I couldn't find a better picture than this one because this was a Shad camp that was
held at our campus a couple of summers ago and what you see is not just the Shad campers but an equal mix of John
Abbott students John Abbott alumni and RC amateur astronomy members all
together sharing the night sky and sharing what they enjoy in their
personal Discovery personal connection with the night sky and so I I have a
quote here from one of our Jack alumni who didn't actually take my astronomy class but was in another course with me
knew about everything that we were doing in astronomy and became so active that she was actually our rasque Montreal
Center president last year and she talks about this and when when at the earlier
part of tonight Scott talked about that moment that almost spiritual moment under the night sky she captures it I
love the way my heartbeat slows and my pupils expand as I stare up at the night sky the night sky makes me feel alive it
makes me feel human it makes me feel real now she goes out of her way to point this out she will never stud
formally study Physics she's a biologist or actually dietetics at this Point um
but her interest is in the living world and in the human body and the effects on the human body astronomy is how she
connects to Nature and what I try to do with my Approach and what my students allow me to do is to really move Beyond
just the science and the formal part of astronomy but incorporate that into what it is you're actually seeing so to get
there I wanted to tell you a little bit about kind of my origin story what brought me into a astronomy the way I
did and a lot of us talk about being really interested in astronomy as kids and I was and I mean most of us were at
some point in kids curious about space curious about the Solar System Jupiter was my favorite planet as doid and I
have talked about many many times I remember in grade four I wrote this report on Jupiter the star that never
was based on this newspaper article I read about studies of these things
called Brown dwarfs which at the time I was not really understanding but I was trying to get my head around and my
teacher was not at all able to read my paper or understand it so she went to the local College Two Towns over because
this was southern Pennsylvania this was Amish Country so she went to Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster to
find a teacher who could look and tell her whether I made stuff up that's what she told me was she wanted to see if I
faked stuff but I now as a teacher look back and I remember that afterwards
there were surprisingly more astronomy books in our section there were surprisingly more creative writing
assignments on space and on exploration so I think she was actually trying to find out how to nurture this and I think
that because a couple of years later I decided to hold the very first event I
would ever hold and it actually turned me away from astronomy in space because
it was the Challenger March and I brought the entire school together in an
auditorium to watch space exploration history with a teacher going up into
space and I still get choked up talking about this because it was traumatic it
was devastating so I stopped and I stopped my journey into astronomy but I kept my journey in
science and so years later in school I got another opportunity because I was
doing a degree in physics and Mathematics and I got to work with a
teacher who was at The Cutting Edge of gravitational waves before ligo came
around while ligo was being developed and we were working on what the gravitational waveforms would look like
and I was fascinated and I thought here's my way to get back into space to get back into astronomy this is where my
connection will come from and the tasks I was given were along the lines of the
electronic instrumentation what the shot noise would be like how strong the signal would be and it had nothing to do with
the actual physics of the gravitational waves but what the waveform detection
would be like and that didn't capture my interest or my connection the way I thought it would and so for various
reasons I moved away from there and now you have to fast forward 20 years later
where I'm teaching physics at John abot College here in Montreal and it's the
summer of 2016 we have two teachers that are retiring they are the two that teach
astronomy and astrophysics and the astrophysics professor and I I have been talking all term and I'm ready to take over
astrophysics and I realized that there's nobody there to take over the astronomy course which means that there's no more
astronomy being taught in the curriculum and I didn't feel like that would be right that that would
be fair to the students and I felt that astronomy was needed and so I talked to
my kids as I mentioned in a previous couple of uh of gsps and as a family we
decided to move forward and bring astronomy back to John Abbot which has led to this kind of blossoming
of interest on campus and in the community in really engaging the youth
and bringing them in to astronomy now none of this would have happened if I didn't have the students that I've had
I've had amazing students we've seen actually Emily and Virginia were both at our GSP 45 dur 47 during the uh
International astronomy day no 45 sorry been a long day um and with these
students and with their support we've really kind of delved into what astronomy can become and how important
the night sky can be to not just one course but to an entire campus to an
entire uh group of individuals who are open to learning and open to really
exploring and one of the students Julian who's actually in our audience today he
and Sabrina both came with me to Toronto a couple of years ago for the RC general
assembly and Julia and his group had been our first group to dive into
spectroscopy and we had gotten a Spectra filter from uh our R&D exact David
Schuman and we got it from arpec and they became so engrossed with this
project that uh Julian was even on firstname basis with the founder of our spec Tom field and they would actually
email back and forth whenever the kids would either run into an issue or find something that they wanted to talk about
so Julian gave a talk at the ga and when he started to speak about Outreach he
spoke about not hiding the science from the public because I hadn't hidden the
science from them when they went under the night sky and he felt that it enriched what he saw what he understood
how he connected to the night sky to the Stars to the planets to the moon the
idea that the science should be hand inand with the observation brought actually a St in
Ovation for Julian at that event now bringing a bunch of young introductory
level students into an amateur astronomy organization was not a smooth transition
but we were really lucky because a lot of the executive were really on board with this idea and our president at the
time Mory spoke about the fact that not only did they become integral in attending observing sessions and helping
to organize event but a lot of them actually became paid members upon graduat because they saw the need to
actually have this connection with the night sky what the RC allowed me to do when I
started teaching astronomy is to provide the students with more than just what
the college could offer because at the time the college had a couple of beat up telescopes I managed to get an
investment into a nextar 8 into a skywater dog into a nice little Coronado
and we managed to start to explore the night sky ourselves but with the RC you
had an observatory you had a group of mentors that were ready and willing to share what they found fascinating about
the night sky and also to learn from the students what the students were learning in class and you can see when we opened
up our 16-inch telescopes again there's a fair number of Youth in that
audience because the students shouldn't have to rely on coming out to these
organized events and because I was getting so much from their discovery of the night sky I wanted to give them
tools and I don't want them to have to go and buy a telescope when they're just starting out when they're just learning
so I scoured through our storage and I found some old kits for lab telescopes and so we actually built those five dobs
which were insanely heavy insanely wieldy and really they did not hold up very well but then I loed out at
stellane and I found a person who did re furbished binoculars and so he gave me
the couple that he had with him and then one of my colleagues picked up a bunch from him from Boston when he was on a
trip there so now we had binoculars that students could borrow with the impact
that this was having on the students and on what we were able to share with other people just being out in front of the
campus looking at the moon looking at Jupiter looking at Saturn and sharing that we managed to get an investment to
get a couple of smaller dos that students could take home a small refractor and a bunch more binoculars
just in time for Co to hit so once Co hit we were sitting there going what do we do now because I didn't want to give
up this connection to the night sky I wanted to keep the students looking up
and exploring and connecting in some way shape or form so the first thing I realized is that a lot of students do
have either cameras or cell phone cameras so if they had cameras they could capture Imes so of course the
minute we started doing that curfew hit here in Montreal so that was out the window as well but what was always
available to them before curfew was waxing moon phases so I set up an
activity for the students to go out to look at the Moon to identify a couple of features and to sketch what they see and
I didn't give them any parameters on the sketching I just said I want to see what your eyes are showing you you show me
the Moon that you see and here's a few examples from some of the students who I reached out to today who said yes to
sharing their work and I was just I was floored by the level of detail the
amount of effort some of these students put in and some like the one here on the bottom right took a picture with the
camera and then sketched it others sketched and they sketched it based on
the advice we had gotten from the RC members the idea of doing white on black
instead of black on white the idea of taking large shapes and then filling in
just a little bit of shading and that brought out so much comment and so much
conversation among the students so I have a quote here from one of my students Gabriel overall this activity
made me observe the sky more than ever although only two observations were required I went out many times to Simply
gaze at the Moon I would First Look for Tao and then use it as a reference to compare my observation
with the RAS guide and I gave them all access to the rasque Moon guide as well as a starfinder so they could find their
way around the night sky the other thing that I could do while they were at home and I couldn't
go out under the stars with them is use robotic telescopes so we have a robotic
telescope with the RC it's in the Sierra complex in California and so we took a
bunch of images for different groups that were doing different types of projects we had exoplanet Transit
projects and then we had a group doing astrophotography and here's their Andromeda and what was really
interesting is when they created their final poster for their project they pointed out that their goal in the
Andromeda picture was not to get those dust Lanes in the arms which is what I always go for they wanted to get as much
resolution as they could on those dwarf galaxies because they found those fascinating and that's where they wanted
to focus but I wanted to do more for the whole class so I gave them all a set of
data that I took with the robotic telescope last year and I had them all process RGB Orion Nebula images and
again I gave them basic processing techniques in and then I let them go wild and try to do whatever they
wanted with the Orion Nebula and I showed them some pictures of what the Orion Nebula looks like when
professional astrophotographers take pictures when you take a picture with your cell phone camera and I talked to
them about the makeup of the Orion Nebula and the trapezium and all of the different features and then I let them
choose what they wanted to draw out how they wanted to balance the colors what they felt was for them the important
part of the nebula that they wanted to show me and this is where my connection
to the night sky really starts to become deeper with the students input because
when I'm out there with the students on the lawn with the telescope I get to hear from them
directly immediately what they're seeing what impresses them what impacts them
and how it impacts them when they're doing an assignment or a lab activity it's a little bit different because now
all of a sudden I get to see it in real time almost as they're starting to
develop a deeper understanding of different bits so we had students talking about one specific thing that
they'd read that they wanted to see if they could find and we had students talking about how they knew where the
Orion Nebula was but they always thought it was on the Belt not on the sword underneath the belt and so that they
found really fascinating so they wanted to see just how far up it and reached and then they ran into the Running Man
nebula and the flame and the and the horse head nebula and the flame nebula and they started to realize how much
richness there is in a constellation like Orion So based on that
conversation I had asked the college and I applied for a grant and I got an EV scope and so I finally managed a clear
night with the EV scope charged up and we went out and we did a tour of the Big
Dipper and we had a bunch of our John Abit alumni join from University taking
breaks before exams and a bunch of our students joined and we explored the Big
Dipper and we looked at the owl nebula we looked at m81 M82 and we looked at the at the uh Whirlpool Galaxy and we
talked about these galaxies and this nebula and what it was made of and how far away was and what we think we're
seeing when we see different features and it was close to actually being out there with them in that same
sort of a field but it's really important to recognize that the students won't all
see these objects and immediately think of the science a lot of them are really
connected to the art side and theid and I have this conversation sometimes about the poetry and the music of astronomy
and you have a little model telescope that doid actually gifted our our library that's there in the bottom
picture we use the rasque library during non-id times to inspire Arts students
with astronomy and so what we get to do is we get to see how someone with no
connection to the science connects to the object in space
and then those with the deeper connection to science do things like this the math of the universe where they took astrophysics equations and created
a actual vision of the solar system from a telescope using that we have students
that volunteer to learn crater sketching from a professional artist batina for from the CI Institute uh program for
artists and residents and we ended up doing Outreach of crater sketching for
almost three years now and we had students who read about the evolution of
stars and created a mural and Eva who created the mural really thought this
mural belonged somewhere and I agreed with her so we pitched it to our local Planetarium and it's now in one of the
planetarium rooms the craft rooms where the elementary students do their workshops when they go to the
Planetarium so what we really are doing with the students is they are bringing a
different view a different lens on the night sky than with the amateur astronomer does and then they give back
they give this is just a sample of the amount of Outreach talks that students
have either done or been involved in coordinating just over the past three years at the RC Montreal
Center our students when they come out and we can provide them with an
understanding of what they're seeing and how the night sky moves and what objects you can look for what tools you need to
look for them they bring that back and they share it not just with their friends not just with their families but
with the general public and so I wanted to bring this all back to what I do now
as an amateur astronomer because I'm not a I don't do professional research in astronomy I do amateur exploration for
education and so when I go out under the night sky my targets my plan and what I
do is really from the perspective of what can I show my students the next day
the next week the next month or what haven't I seen that I should be able to
relate to them what I'm seeing so that then they can tell me what they see so
my personal connection my personal discoveries in astronomy are really from
that perspective what do my students see when they see these objects and that's
what I wanted to share with you very nice very nice that's great I understand
the uh the charge that you must get uh when you work with your students like
that you know I do um you know one of the I've said this many times one of the
biggest charges I get uh is um educational Outreach on a street corner
with uh my telescope and um just aimed at a couple of different objects you
know and people are just their minds just are blown sometimes equally as
dumbfounding to me is people who look in the eyepiece and see a wonderful image of Saturn and they're like is that it
you know is that all there is it's when that's when I want to get my little plastic hammer out and init
them in the back of the head and say buddy you're looking at something that's almost a billion miles away okay well
that's exactly it is that that perspective that context of what it is you're seeing is one of the things that
you get when you go on the ground with them we have we have a member con who's been here for decades doid knows him
really well he knows the history of the center and he knows the night sky like
the back of his hand there are nights when we go out the students come we
share the night sky I start packing up my equipment Constantine comes and starts chatting with them and I get a
message from them three hours later that they're finally home because he just they they were just enjoying learning
how to actually read night sky and where these stars are and where these objects
are how far away they are that that sense of immensity is lost on a lot of people
until they start to actually comprehend the size of the things and the brightness of the things that we're
looking at right that's right yeah it's uh you just
have you need dwell a little bit of dwell time you know with not only at the
eyepiece uh but you need someone that is um kind of your guide okay that can be
with you and that's that is why uh people Outreach enthusiasts are so
critical okay to helping people get past that Tipping Point okay and once they do
they then they can see those people have changed yes sometimes it's a little bit
sometimes it's a lot okay um but uh you know the the lights have turned on and
then they'll start to ask you know they start to ask all those questions you know they'll start the first question
always comes out can I ask a stupid question you know that's probably the most important question there is of the
night exactly this is where I say I'm really lucky with my students because
they brought they brought me the courage or the motivation to really learn the
techniques that I'd never learned as a kid as a young adult as an adult and now
I get to have those experiences Under the Stars just staring at M13 in a dark
sky through a telescope and counting thousands and thousands of stars and just having that mystical moment of
Oneness with like the entire universe that moment what deepy was with her poem
like what it spoke to for me is just this immensity and that you're there and
you can actually see some of it and that you're observing some of it and you're you're able to say that's there because
I see it it's there that's right it goes into the
aspects of The observed and the Observer you know and that that relationship that
makes the universe what it is so good amount of it that's philosophy yes right
and poetry of course and poetry is beautiful she put in a poem uh here's some uh comments of course the theme of
our uh Global Star Party uh today is personal discoveries um and um so I
asked the audience uh you know what what are some of the most important you know
personal discoveries that they've made through astronomy um and uh let me read a couple
of these um Chris Larson is agreeing with Pekka Pekka said that one of the
most important points of astronomy to him was star hopping to find the target
you know it's just an act of doing that but uh Chris kind of U uh elaborates
here uh he says I would agree with peka learning to Star Hop to a destination
intended or otherwise has brought a lot of joy to my observing and uh many side
trips um that was the whole goal of the Big Dipper night was to be able to
realize that once you have a telescope or you have you know a nice small device you can really focus it on the Big
Dipper and go from a couple of the stars that you can clearly see to some really interesting objects
M right book Davy says probably my most important Discovery so far is the gold
mine of fun and learning from that my telescope brought
um Martin eastburn sharing Optical sites with my father he and I then shared with his
good friend and daughter Saturn is been in our speech for 50 years the daughter
is now a now has a dome and a telescope with her uh with her
family Andrew corkill he says Scott my own most important personal Discovery is
happening every time I do something new just last night I saw Stars Beyond
fourth magnitude in my backyard very difficult from Riverside
California he further said says I was blown away that I could use my glasses and averted Vision with dark adaptation
to see fainer stars than I've ever seen before then draw the stars on the
constellation on paper that's fantastic yeah yeah putting
pen to paper really starts to solidify what you're seeing that's right that's
right okay I think that we will go to a 10-minute break after our after our
break we will have Caesar brolo from uh Buenos Aries Argentina and he's got a
short presentation to share with us so thanks for uh being uh tuned in to the
48th uh Global Star
Party
e
[Music]
for
all
for
Co [Music]
for
for
for
we're all back now um I hope you had a good break uh got something to snack on
or a hot drink to kind of settle you into the night um uh our next speaker
here is uh Cesar brolo Cesar is from Optica srao he's an optician um he is
also a mentor to many people that are learning astronomy uh in Argentina and
beyond that um he's inspired a lot of us to uh realize that you can do a lot of
great work with very modest equipment uh one of the things he does quite often is
he'll set up small telescopes in uh with a uh a modest camera on his balcony and
shoot from you know downtown bu Buenos Aries and and show us objects of
nebulosity you know many Fantastic uh southern hemisphere uh deep Sky
Treasures that he's been able to um uh share with us live on this on this very
program he then took us to uh Patagonia to to witness the total eclipse of the
sun uh in incredible uh driving wind and
but you know when when none of us could get down there Cesar was sharing at the
whole world uh this this eclipse and we got to see it um it was so windy uh
during that Eclipse that uh they could not image through a telescope because it was it was shaking the telescopes too
much but uh he pulled out his U smartphone and uh we we were were able
to observe the total eclipse of the Sun and uh and hear the excitement of the
people that were there so that was amazing and now he's involved with uh uh
refurbishing this um iconic uh and historical um uh Observatory complex in
in uh not in Buenas it's near near buide is at only maybe 20
kilomet the yes it's in the metropolitan area yes it's a polluted area too maybe
B uh maybe seven or eight but uh it's
like like it's an solar Observatory uh is uh uh fully if we
restore uh the total of their their functions is is
fully uh us as uh is is really en enjoyable uh because uh
we are working actually on the the government of this area of San Miguel is
working yesterday yesterday uh we have a news from the major um they open the all
permissions for for uh make a new
buildings re re refering congratulations yes great really really yeah we will
will have having a lot a lot of work on uh in in the facilities because uh we
have had really really a a a a huge a huge work and
well you you see the pictures and and you know that uh we have many many
instruments and and Doms that they need a total rearings restor
Restorations well it's something that uh just I was talking with my my mate of of
my college of uh of uh B that is the the
the gr that is working in the observatory um well today um like my
personal discovering is not really but my Works in in
saris H science maybe 25 years but I focusing H first and I if you agree I
share my screen I I agree show you I agree okay thank you thank
you let me see if I can I can see
here for me I I using the the um the presentation of Google first time and I
don't know if uh let me let me see
if you you watching the presentation yes ah okay okay well I I
starting from from the old presentation that I prepare many one year ago or more
H that you remember from from the from the for for the shows in the evening the
first time that we talk and I I to present to the people that uh I I
don't uh the people that the people that don't know me um um I'll I'll pass this
slides quickly and going to the to the the S party in baj Grand party in
Mendoza but first I'll show you um a little of my work for the
people that that don't don't see uh before this presentation or don't know
with my my work I am uh all day working ER selling
repairing uh telescopes you you told that I'm optician optician and technique
and my information is is Technical and um I I made hes that actually is are
working a lot of telescope selling telescope all day with telescope and uh
glasses all day it's it's my passion it's I'm happy working working in in
this uh some pictures of different saries that that uh uh we we be a part
we organize we work inside the star Paris with not only a sponsor if not
working inside the star Paris and all that is organization sometimes about the foods
about the you know um the accommodations
all that that the people need well is is my another speciality the star
parties s something that I can show you here sorry uh well this is the the the
clips uh in in 20
2019 with a lot of explor scientific telescope uh for the corner to
Observation uh the clips from the people using the the smartphone this was in the in San Juan
was was a a sucessful uh obser in a great place with more that is was
around I don't know maybe around 4,000 people only in this in this uh space of
observation was a huge this is the the cord losandes and this is the the the
sun wasn't an amazing landscape and this is the the last
eclipse the windy eclipse the wind Eclipse yes yes
Unforgettable Eclipse uh we were we were
uh in this area of valeta
here this is the the the one of the pictures in my shaking telescope by the
wind but here I need I I I I need to say that really uh the mount and a small
Mount work properly and despite despite the the wind work
very very good here the people in the in the last eclipse of 20
[Music] 2019 more in the desert in the Patagonia here you can see the dust the
the of the wind the people going to to
protect their s because the wind was maybe around eight 80 kilometers per
hour the the sometimes I don't know the name of uh wind shield or wind well the
name of I I for I miss the the name for the wind when when it's is the maximum
of wind and well uh um today I present very
quickly the the St party is our main St party is this is the the the T-shirt of
the of the Institute Institute of copernico and it's is uh really is it
the the the star party t-shirt maybe I can show you my back party Grand yeah
yeah yes I put the the shirt because I'm proud and yes I can send you one and okay yeah
and um and this is uh the The Sur party we we made the Sur party from the
1994 and we are going to the 30 years of s Paris wow and and um now um we started
to go to to this Star Party in 2004 this was our first visit in in in
this star party this is the the time of of the first time of of the reflex camera and
this is really in a very dark very dark dark situations um sorry that the the
the pictures are very noises are not pictures that the pictures that we see today because all are of the single
exposure in different parts of the star parties of this star party and I have
yes is they're very noises but you can say you you can uh see sorry that do
have really low uh illumination and do do you have
a the Milky Way in in the sky all time this is the old place more inside in the
canyon and actually we found a new hostel a big one that is okay for
everyone that is all every year we are more than uh one 100 people it's less
comparing with the S parties in United States but for Argentina we have
normally 100 200 no more than 300 people
normally in a star party and and we we use um normally uh we we take an entire
hotel in a place where normally of course that we turn out the the lights
it's me younger than now with the brown uh hair brown hair not not white like
now um in the in the stars and this is
all from uh 2007 I think this is the one of of my first uh
pictures single pictures of the sky in San Rafael in our Paris this maybe a an
exposure of 30 seconds this is another another yes yes
is is is is great in in this area we have the the the walls of the canyon
this mountains are um in in is are in
the west and the and the east no sorry
in the North and the and the southeast but uh um in the past we we was awaiting
the the stars or the constellation going up uh because when you have some Mountain maybe you you have a close the
part where you have maybe 30° H but now the the new place is in
the entrance in the place in the in the same place uh where the the canyon start
is not so so uh High Canyon if not but the problem
is that it's small and you see the walls um and you have maybe you lost thir 30
degrees for uh and you need to to um to
avoit aoit the the the constellation that you need see objects you know but
now actually we are we are in a in a place the coffee break of course that is
a is our of the of the favorite moments we have we have a sports um uh
this is paddle that normally in the old hotel we have the the the the the place
to play actually we don't have this we we make less sports that in the
past this is the the old place where our conference ER area um where we invite uh
physics astronomers a lot of different
people and H where in any any place of the sky where you point uh to the sky
uh uh and take a picture you have the Milky
Way this is my my mate my partner in in this and this is the real creator of
this star party and is the the the the the chief of all is is haime
Garcia Dr Garcia is an doctor in mathematics
and I'm I need to convince him to to to
be invited to the global Star Party to talk because he was uh in
in around uh 2010 was an honor president
of the astronomical Association varable start observers I I okay once times I
told you that in in 2010 we made together with the people of the a
so um we make together and the people from the as so are well I don't remember
the the names now but we make an ass party together and was amazing because
was an uh an S part in English and Spanish um we received the the
the the visit of many many astronomers from many parts from United States in
other parts of the world was amazing really uh yes this this part is is easy
something because you don't need go outside of uh of the hotel to get an
really dark sky and you can return to to your room maybe working a little and
maybe if you like to to uh to keep your your telescope uh
assembled you don't have problem because it's it's it's very very near to your
place where you where where do you uh do
you sleep it's it's very very uh afford affordable um you know is
is is for for um um for enjoy for enjoying and this is
we are watching uh a a show of course that the the quantity of light here is
nothing if you compare the Milky Way is something surreal it's something out
outside of out of this world because you can see the Milky Way the people
watching uh um play guitarist um gter
player to to uh play music um yes and this this is amazing
it's I remember that I can't believe the the quantity of Life of this was only a
light for the people that that play in music see their their uh their music
yeah yes only well the people looks like like come
on it looks like a hugin white yes yes and when you see the
Milky Way say okay no like quantity of life was it was really really low of
course that when the the the musicians stop to play of course that that we turn
off completely the lights and this is a before H turn turn out the lights in the
in h before after the dinner so uh we are uh you know the time where when you
have time uh to to make the last uh
adjustment for your telescope and when we say turn out the lights um this light
because it's normally we use um sport place where do you have a a floor uh
hard floor or many people can choose the the grass no problem but when we turn
out the the lights uh the the the the magic is is on
it's amazing yeah and of course that uh most of our
parts in Argentina about saris is eat the foods because Norm barbecues or well
a lot of different things and is the social moment that all we love and we
miss because actually we don't have this star parties this one was maybe from the
to 200 4 or seven I don't
remember and this is more of of the night our Sur
parties more and more we we maybe I have
1,000 pictures but I choose only um a few quantity to show but uh
this is incredible because here you can see the large man
man genic Cloud here like something okay
it's only maybe 15 seconds is in the sky and of course that you can see a n Naked
Eyes no it's it's it's amazing well it's me worrying
worrying talking about something about telescopes one of the pictures maybe in
the last or I don't know it was is if this was uh 18 or 19
uh uh some presentation of in this in this
presentation is Gabriela is is a physics talking about you know something about
physics we we are proud of of have visit
uh from many many um uh many uh
professionals uh professional astronomers like Eric Gonzalez that was
invited uh to the global party Pedro Saar K Garcia actually is is
professional too and we uh received we received a lot of another one another uh
professional astronomers H and really we we are uh uh happy to rece to receive uh
these people that is is great people with ph that they voluntary
they came to ask about the about a lot of different uh investigation different
things about uh astronomy professional astronomy especially and uh is is
something that really we we enjoy this is the a moment of of the
show the musical show uh Lucas is one of of the the musicians
that every year they bring uh his
band and play music amazing music every
years is different different type of different kind of music um this is our our
roof the hotel where we have uh a teras maybe is is a is a place where we use uh
to to take pictures to make different different actions where in different
tables we have uh um different Works about uh AST
astrometry um astrometry uh
asteroids er astrophotography um and visual
observations um we are rotating all times uh we have some what two or three
nights normally and for all people is is fun because they have to make the all
different uh Works in in Amat astronomy and this is really great because the
people enjoy this this is the gr
of not astrometry this is uh for Astro uh I don't remember in in in
English or in Spain to um astrophotography h no no the Spectrum
spectrometry spectrom spect spectr spectroscopy spectoscopy you know what
I'm just gonna go back on mute Cesar yes I yes thank you because yes I I yes
Astro Astro astrometry spectrometry H astrophotography visual
observation and asteroids this is our normally five five action in different places in in the in the roof of of the
and you can see that that you have of course old sky in this new area really
you have maybe five degrees uh free to to use the entire Skies maybe one tree
but is the canyon is in this size in this area sorry for the west
and this is going to the east here you can see the the the
Scorpion [Music] and well this is a a picture of of the
that that resume this is me and ha me Garcia
normally in the show in the last uh um in the in the last presentation that we
made to the public to say bye-bye we see you next year and all people that came
to the star parties in different times and uh well I'm Chang for next year I I
need my my t-shirt of SPL scientific I this is the brand that that uh I changed
the the I and and I'm I make
a I make a a a change in the my the shirt I send you Scott at the shirt of
of uh our parties and you sent me um an
explore scientific explore scientific shirt it's
okay maybe don't don't listen I think Scott froze yeah yes it's
froze the next week I will be there maybe yeah
yeah
well yes well I came in on the tail in the presentation I was just enjoying
seeing those Southern Skies um the Milky Way photo behind me
basically everything that's covered by the Earth is what you get to see
so we get to we get to go further north this way but um it's always interesting
to see what's hidden behind the trees in my picture um but uh yeah it was um looked
like a wonderful uh time out there yeah yes it it's it's amazing and
part of of I I can say that part of my personal Discovery is in making or be a
part of star Paris um is
the how many do you enjoy with the people and uh like now that I consider
that with Adrian Cameron uh what with Scot Maxi I know to Maxi in in his St
parties personally but it's it's amazing but
um I I think that astronomy enjoy make a a union for the with the
people in s Paris that is amazing because
you you discover that that uh you can share with the people H so so
amazing oh maybe it's it's it's really great
yes yeah I I need when you when you Adrian came to Argentina of course that
that I can carry from the airport to buen ises and we can go to to
uh yes yes I'm holding you all to that make it there I will be walking
around with a tripod a camera you're going to have hundreds hundreds thousands of amateurs coming down and
you'll you'll be making many many trips to the airport yeah that's right we we are we we will need you both to help us
yes I I have a looked of this is yeah absolutely and this is
uh I remember that I received to pra said
um and uh and actually I was in the last
uh Eclipse uh we we talk a lot with Scot with the Scot that preparing a lot of
things um of course that we can we C we couldn't make nothing of course but H
it's so so the the idea in
in we are having fun only imagine if you say
okay I can go to Buenos ises the we can you and me and Maxi well or anybody that
came to to the place we are starting to imagine how we can make first we can go
to Maxi F's house and eat barbecue and yes of course that sounds like a perfect
first stop Yes Yes Caesar's house for some pizza am taking notes on the phone
for it all something yes I I have in in in my my
welding absolutely in my buing I have a facilities that we can we uh we have
aume with a big barbecue yeah to to to get uh to to
invite 50% 50 s% 50 people
and nice size party if you feed them they will come
yeah you invited too no problem yes
and but but really when I I I I felt the
same sensation when I went to a Sur party that I visit United
States was Beach State starg in the 1999 and they they were
so they had so Hospitality with me that was I I I was no don't worry I say
anytime I say okay we have a cabin for you and your family um you know all
would say come on I'm from Argentina I can I don't have problems they say no no
they received me like like a king for me was a lot incredible and the sensation
when when we received uh to the people uh in in the 2010
the people of of the American Association by observers uh they was
great and when you ER when you meet people that love astronomy it's like you
only speaking another language but come on that's right yes the fraternity the
fraternity of astronomers doesn't have any borders to it you know so yeah and
the I think part of that is that we have this we have this uh um view of of the
universe that most people don't have you know you have to spend
time uh you know deepening your understanding of of the processes of of
our sun our solar system uh our place in the Galaxy our Galaxy's place in the
local uh group uh the local groups uh uh place in the super cluster and and then
all of that you know uh we we we're you know we're not even specks of dust on
top a specs of dust we are very very tiny but our minds our minds can be as vast as the
universe as we perceive so it's um that is the uh that's the point and when
we're together with other people that have that view um that understand you
know that that our our world isn't just our our little problems and uh the things that go on
but we are you know we're flying at Fantastic speeds through space and we're
connected to everything uh you know and inside inside of our bodies are is uh
carbon and and and nitrogen and all these things form from Supernova you
know so yes it's uh you know it's really cliche to say yeah we're made of
Stardust or something like that is but but it's real but it's real but it's
real so anyhow Cesar thank you very much for that pres thank you very much and is
a pleasure Scot thank you yeah thank you all right so our next speaker is Don
cell and um I'm pronouncing that correctly but that's actually s but s
okay non s sorry about that um don't worry
uh I I have uh at times had to correct people I have two first names I I've
been told Scott and Roberts but they always leave the S off so they'll call me Robert or they'll call me Mr Scott or
yeah you know so that's the way it is anyways um it's I'm glad you decided to
come on to the show today because I I wanted you to um talk about the um Texas
Star Party and and uh all of that but uh and anything else that you'd like to talk about so well I I appreciate the
invite uh Scott and um I am going to talk about something a little bit uh
different before I get to the Texas Star Party but it's in line with what uh uh
with what Kim kareim was uh uh discussing and kind of the theme of
tonight and um uh I uh am a member of the Houston
Astronomical Society in fact I'm past president of h and a couple of over the
last couple of years we've seen this big growth of uh new um uh people in a in in
amateur astronomy uh tending to be a little bit younger and so on um so I I
write a column for our newsletter uh called field of view and this past this
past February I uh I I I wrote a column titled observe okay and I'm not going to
read the whole thing but I'll I'll kind of paraphrase it for you all okay um but uh my my point was trying to kind of
give a a feeling for the newer uh astronomers what what it what astronomyy
is really about and what makes it special and then start out it seems like
so many astronomers use the word observe and observation okay so if if you're if
you're new you probably are kind of realizing that uh that that you hear
that word more uh at the astronomy club than you do any place else so what does it really mean
to observe and if you go to the dictionary it's uh you know to watch perceive or
notice uh to regard with attention especially to learn something to watch view or note for a
scientific official or other special purpose and then I kindy to explain to them um okay for visual observers
observing for visual astronomers observing is the name of the game but
you just don't get there over just by uh uh uh overnight there you have to work
at it you have to develop your Technique but more importantly you have to learn the capabilities of your equipment you
have to understand the night sky how it how it moves uh What uh when you're
looking for a particular object is it so faint that you uh you you may be able to
see it with your telescope uh only in the darkest Skies you need to know that
uh so that you don't waste your time uh trying to find things that uh that that that that you can't find in the city and
and I and I'll tell a little story on myself uh uh in a minute about that so
once you start to get into the technique you also realize that there's
more to it than just the technique of observing you start to become very interested in what you're observing and
you realize that um you you can find the information about the the different
objects you're you're going to observe you start it draws you in what is a
Galaxy how is it formed right uh uh what's what's this reflection nebula
next thing you know you're starting to uh to get more and more involved in in learning astronomy as you go go along
and when you do your observations become more special because not you're not just
seeing an object you're also understanding what that object is and what it means and as you move forward
with that next thing you know you're starting to put yourself in the position of where we are where you are in the
universe and you understand how uh how the universe works a little bit more and
I I I ended it up with a with a paragraph uh that to try and sum it sum
it all up to become an astronomical Observer is to learn to see the world in a totally different way when we start
looking up at the night sky to learn the constellations we're taking the same first steps on a path that has been
created by countless other astronomers since Antiquity who started the same way
we have by their Collective observations over the centuries they added to the
collected body of human knowledge and by doing so they changed our view of
ourselves and the cosmos that's right so I I I just I very well written Don
that's great I I I I really felt when I listen to Kareem I said you know I I
just wanted to share that with you because really ties ties together so um
I'm going to uh share my screen at this point if you don't mind uh and uh I got
to get the presentation uh where I need it okay and I and while I'm doing this
I'm going to um also tell that story on myself and it really boils down to the
fact that when I started an amateur astronomy um I um I first thing I did
was I went out and bought a little 90 millimeter uh mcast telescope with a uh
with a clock drive in it and I figured I was going to conquer the world with that telescope scope and the thing I wanted
to see most was the whirlpool Galaxy M51 uhuh and uh I lived in a suburban area
at the time and uh I finally got to the point where I figured out how to do a little bit of a star hopping and started
getting successful with that and I kept trying to see the whirpool Galaxy I next
I got an 8inch telescope and I started with with that I actually went to the
dark sky uh Sky uh for the Houston Astronomical Society and I knew I was on
the field I could see the stars and I could tell that there were there was a
uh the core of both galaxies I could see it I knew I was observing M51 but I
didn't really see it until I went to the uh the first time to the Texas Star
Party which is in a very dark sky area and um and of course the first thing I
wanted to see was uh was M51 which was well placed for observing I got my uh uh
10x 50 binoculars out uh to kind of rehearse what the star hop and Bam there
it was I mean it was so obvious in those 10 by 50 uh uh
binoculars uh I could see I could see a bit of the the the the uh the structure
in it the the swirling structure and I found it really easily in the in the finder scope
and then it was I was just amazed at what it looked like in an 8 inch telescope well um I've also had the
opportunity uh uh being there at the at tsp to uh look at that same object
through a 25 inch uh dob and you know it just it it just it just blows me away
every time I I see that and and that was very very wonderful so that's kind of a
leadup to why do you why would you want to go to a star party okay there's a lot
there's a lot of reasons to do that um and I think uh Cesar gave a a a good a a
good lot of those reasons I mean you know was the dark skies and the and the uh uh fellowship with your other
astronomers and uh certainly um the interaction you you can't help but learn
things and uh be stimulated by it so so with that I'm going to get into a little
bit more uh to a brief introduction to the Texas Star Party I'm on the uh
operations Committee of the of tsp and uh I've been
volunteering uh in various capacities there for the last uh uh decade um
unfortunately 2019 is the last time we've actually held the star party in
person uh 2020 obviously was cancelled because of uh
covid we also ended up cancelling 2021 face to face uh because uh even though
it looked like we were getting on top of covid uh we had a a very big uh spike in
the the early spring and we decided that we just couldn't managed a face-to-face
star party so I'm going to tell you you need to put it on your light bucket list
to come to the Texas Star Party in uh 2022 or whenever you have the
opportunity it's astronomy on the ranch so where is uh tsp located it's in
Fort Davis Texas it's it's a real convenient location um if you uh live in Marfa or
Alpine uh Texas but really uh okay it's
not really very convenient to get there it takes a long time that's the point isn't it that it's not very convenient
it's it's uh it's out there it's dark it's it is it is and um and uh um it and
and there's a snip of the uh dark sky map uh we're actually kind of like on
the edge of Fort Davis so it's either in the in bort one bort two uh kind of
Skies uh this is a Midland Odessa I'm sorry this is a Midland Odessa area up
here uh in and um Big Ben National Park is down below uh it's a about an hour
plus uh drive from Fort Davis and definitely well worth the side trip it's
a it's a it's a beautiful Park um and McDonald Observatory is only about eight
or nine miles up the road from uh uh from the prud ranch where the Texas Star
Party is held so um it's as I said it's been this star
party has been held on uh the historic prud Ranch since uh 1982 the ranch
itself has been there since the um since the 1840s uh and um but anyway it's a uh old
west style if you if you like uh western western movies cowboy movies uh it's
kind of like walking into the set of a cowy boy movie uh it's they have a a
very nice facility dining hall uh everything's in walking distance when you're on the ranch um you can go
horseback riding there um there's tours to the McDonald Observatory at uh that
uh are are every year uh and it's a a very comprehensive behind the scenes
tour of the observatory as well um just a quick idea the layout of
the L uh the ranch itself there's actually three observing Fields um the
accommodations there there's uh Motel style rooms there's bunk houses uh RV
spaces uh with hookups and tent camping um and as I mentioned there uh
here's a a a a aerial view of uh the ranch when it's set up with the uh uh
the Star Party this is the um the main upper observing
field uh there's a a second Middle Field and then the lower field is down here
and I'll uh uh show you uh show you uh some pictures of those so as
well um this is a panorama view of the main observing field the upper field and
uh uh typically we end up with a F about 500 uh attendees at the uh at uh
tsp um this is the the Middlefield this is where all of the uh Folks at the tent
camp or uh the a lot of folks will use their equipment trailers and uh and and
sleep in their equipment trailers as well on on this field and then the lower field is uh
down right near the RV spots and the Astro photographers tend to uh
congregate down in this field so is it congregate or get relegated by all the visual
observers I heard astrophotographers are generally told where to go they don't we
don't typically choose well let's put it this way uh they haven't told us that we
have to be there okay in fact the we we we kind of tested that out a couple of
years ago where where we had uh about a half a dozen of us that went up on the main field and we we we've we've made
the point that we can get along with the uh The Observers but uh the visual observers but um um yes you can go two
kilometers yeah yeah exactly and you and your screen of your
computer go out yeah well but having said that most everybody's pretty uh uh
pretty uh conscious of that and U but the light rules are a little
less stringent uh down on the lower field uh we kind of police our own so
that's a that it's a good compromise I assume it's uh it's pretty well
maintained and there's so much space that it looks like there's a lot of space and not much need to be on top of
one another because it's a huge Ranch it looks like it it it is it's a
if I yes go ahead sorry um what about the the wild life of the the oh where
you at the at the on the ranch itself um there's only one white light left on all
night and that's uh at the front gate so people can see the front gate the main
house uh where the where the family that owns it uh lives that that there are
lights on in the house but they Co You Know cover the windows everything else we have volunteers that go
through uh the day before the the the star party opens and we replace uh the
lights with red lights um we we we cover uh things with um uh with uh you know
red plastic or red tape so that it's very uh uh astronomer friendly yes but
but I sorry if I I meaning right the the
animals of the place H the wildlife that's what I mean the I don't
know if that that are snakes theas okay I'm sorry the the wild
animals exactly the wild animals okay I'm sorry misunderstood um this isn't an this is
an area in um it's a it's it's desert so
number one you don't uh have uh many large uh uh uh animals uh there are
coyotes they're very shy of people the one uh wild animal that we see almost
every year and I'm sure it's not the same one uh down on the lower field
there's actually a a Dry Creek bed and every night around midnight Oscar the
skunk uh goes down he's got a name yeah he's got a
name everybody knows who Oscar is and uh
and oh boy if you've been if you if you've been there on the lower field um
you know who Oscar is and and again in my I've been going to tsp almost every
year since 2003 and I've never known anybody to
have a uh a an aggressive encounter with encounter with Oscar animal I
wouldn't I I've been to many Star parties uh you know all over the United
States and sometimes in a few other countries and and uh I have never even one time heard of somebody having a
confrontational experience with the wild animal you know uh it is observing in
groups uh as we do do I think that um you the animals just don't want any part
of it you know so they just stay away yeah yeah and sometimes it's something
that is part of the show last in the last star parties in san ra in
bash we found in the in uh one of us say
oh look this spiders is really huge come on it's really huge and and other people
say come on you are like me from the city you are talking stupidities because maybe when you say what an spider like
this tarantula I we say really huge tarantula but come on
maybe half kilo of weight I don't know say come on but in the day was not in
the middle of the night but say come on is and totally we we post more videos um
pictures of this spider of pictures of the sky and this star party because for
us we live we love yes this is wor part of the show
really we we was happy to to watch this sure well when I get there you know and
you know what this beautiful picture that I see is exactly the type of picture I hope to take um who I I will I
will request the spiders be located to the uh as far away as possible from me
but uh everything else I'm looking forward to um yeah that this is a
beautiful shot here Adrian I don't think you need to worry too much about about spiders um um ants may be another story
but that but they that that they tend to leave you alone too so that's good uh this is actually on the upper
field um and um the the the nice thing about um Texas Star Party is the time of
year that it's uh held at um because you we do get the uh uh the summer Milky Way
uh high in high in the sky early in the morning but uh but it's there uh we also
get um uh galaxies and um and uh globular clusters it's a it those are
all prominent in the early evening you know before midnight the Milky Way T
typically rises in the neighborhood of if it's in early May around uh 1 1:00
a.m. thereabouts and um I can tell you uh from personal experience that the first
time I saw it rise I thought we were going to get a rain shower because it looked like clouds coming over the over
the hills in the distance and it and and I was I was amazed at the at how that
looked um and I've actually when it's really bright and the seeing is uh the
air is still if you have a a a light colored uh uh cloth or whatever that
that you can actually uh see uh and you're well dark adapted you can actually see your Shadow it's not very
not very obvious but if you if you really look for it you can see it oh yeah yeah yeah I've I've only gotten you
know the skies I've seen I've gotten to where I could see structure and color in
the Milky Way but I haven't seen it as bright as you're describing it yeah so that would be something to look forward
to also I understands we had somebody who was um who went down into that area
he came back with a picture of a fairly special globular cluster AKA dwarf
Galaxy that's visible at the Texas Star party but maybe not so much further
north exactly that's uh that that's called Omega santori I think is what
you're talking about yes yeah and and and yes you can see it you can actually
see it from uh from Houston as well um it it but it's a it's about 12 13
degrees above the Horizon in uh uh when it culminates um and uh that's usually
around 11:00 11:00 p.m. local time at at
Texas Star Party and uh and when you're on the lower field you're closer to the
uh Hills on the south and fortunately it it manages to get up above those as well
um one of the uh uh that that's part of this slide I think I don't know if I I I
may have showed this the last time I was on I I actually uh took this uh picture
this is the uh front gate of the uh prud Ranch uh the road coming into it here
and um I realized uh that the one uh
white light that stays on is at the gate which is uh not not in the picture but
it illuminated the uh uh this um shed with
the Texas flag painted on it uh I got to get that picture I have got to get that
picture because that to you know said Texas Star Party to me so but anyway
so wonderful um there's a lot lot of
activities uh you know again uh like Cesar mentioned you know there lot lots of things to do um with with and and
lots of people to meet um we typically have uh uh Thursday Friday and Saturday
nights um uh main main speakers before it gets dark um and we've had some
really excellent speakers in the past uh professional astronomers uh very
Advanced Astron uh uh uh amateur astronomers David Levy for example's
been a a a speaker at tsp a number of times uh just an
example um we have uh astrophoto and Astro art contest uh we we've been
running uh astrophotography workshops now for the last four or five years and
there's observing programs every year uh we we um have a new observing program
and it's all the way from uh uh if you've if you've never really spent time out under the under the sky the novice
programs available my wife went with me the first time in
2019 and she she she actually was able to complete that on her own and and then
binocular and a regular telescope program and then um Larry Mitchell who
uh will uh uh is well known at Texas Star Party uh he does an advanced
observing list um the polite name for it is Larry's list uh there's usually
there's there's usually some name there's it depends some it's it's more
it's worse than others but that you know it goes by other you know pejorative
names let me say you know that GD list you know that Larry does right yeah
yeah great yeah the 20 magnet the 20th magnitude objects well yeah I can
imagine he uh Larry's got a 36 inch dob and you know and uh which he he
shares he's quite uh generous at sharing uh everybody with big Scopes there is
very generous at sharing the eyepiece and uh uh but it it's really meant for
you know uh uh at least a 16inch uh scope to be able to see everything
um then t-shirts you know you've heard the phrase been there done that got the
T-shirt I have a drawer full of tsp t-shirts okay so right um we generally
have vendors and uh McDonald Observatory tours which I think I mentioned before
so and so picture yourself now at
tsp okay U this is something we do every year as well group picture so how do you
attend well as I mentioned um the attendance is limited to about 500
people we generally uh get a few not not a large number more than 500 uh who
register to attend but um uh uh but uh
typically uh there are a few people who end up on the waiting list uh you
register by mid uh January there's a uh
a housing for draw for uh drawing assignments you know you you you put
down there what uh kind of accommodations you're going to use how long you're going to be there and then
um the drawing's done and you're matched up and um it's it's done randomly and if
if um somebody cancels there's a a a waiting list as
well so once you uh get your confirmation that you're going to be uh
able to go and have uh accommodations you load up the car okay this is what it looks like
empty and this is what it looks like uh full and and off you go on it it it's
even a long drive for um people in Texas uh from uh Houston it's seven to eight
hours to get there uh Dallas about the same so if you're coming in from uh the
Midwest uh you know Chicago area or the Northeast it uh it can it takes a couple
of days to get there so um since we had to cancel uh
2021 uh for iners uh we're actually going to be uh
holding a virtual Texas Star Party uh it'll start a week from Thursday night
uh June 10th uh we're going to have um uh L uh Larry Mitchell will uh do his
presentation of the best of the the advanced observing list for tsp and um
weather permitting I mean it it's going to be about a 50 50% uh
likelihood um we have the Fort Bend astronomy club uh which is uh uh uh in
the Houston area uh they do a lot of Outreach at uh the museum of natural
Houston Museum of Natural History uh George Observatory uh which is uh South
uh west of the city and they're going to be doing a uh virtual uh uh Star Party
uh we'll have about uh four uh telescopes set up with cameras and uh
hopefully the sky will uh cooperate and we'll um show a few objects uh on
Thursday night and then we have uh two speakers on each of uh each night of uh
Friday and Saturday night we're try trying to time it so that as typical at
Texas Star Party you do the speakers you do the uh uh uh door prize drawings Etc
before it gets dark and then everybody let's let's get out there and observe so
um that that that we're going to try and maintain that uh sort of approach and
then um did I mention t-shirts that we
actually we we actually are um uh uh selling T-shirts for this uh virtual
Star Party um and um there they're going to be a pre pre-order so these will be
collector's items right here for sure I I think so keep one for for Scott I I
when when Scott was frozen in a moment I say okay I send you a t shirt free and
you send me a yeah yeah we'll do that for sure yeah
yeah too yeah I think I've got one on order for for Scott you know already
yeah yes I'll wear it I'll wear it proudly on the air for sure okay well um for me do
you have one year yeah yeah I'll be happy to wear one
too all right well um uh uh I I I I failed to mention you can get all the
details at the uh Texas starb party.org the uh all the T-shirt order
form is there it's uh like I said it's pre-order and uh we'll uh ship them out
uh uh probably in early or in early August uh by the time we get that get
them uh printed up and then um I just want to uh thank you for your
attention and um you know consider the Texas Star Party in 2022 it's uh April
24th to May 1st yeah don't consider it do it do it
be there that's right and uh and and tune in uh for the virtual Texas Star
Party in in a little over a week yeah that's awesome thank you Don thank
you so much no problem now I gotta stop Don I know that you're an astrophotographer um right uh so yeah
I'd like to have you come on the show sometime to to show some of your work so okay yeah that would be great I i' I'd
be happy to do it I I'm more accomplished at the uh nightscape images
uh in in in many ways on I am on the actual regular
astrophotography uh I'm still I'm still learning and growing there yeah you're
not alone you're not alone in that Don that's I'm finding uh the
nightscapes um I tend to enjoy taking those as well as just being in the
nightscape itself exactly whether I get a good or bad shot my camera's going I'm just looking around and exactly and
enjoying it so I understand exactly what you're what you mean well and and and I
I just um uh uh I had a good friend uh and and work colleague who um was really
quite accomplished at it I didn't realize it at that uh one uh you know he's my work colleague and I happen to
walk in his office one day and looked up and there and he had a really nice nightscape up on the top of his
bookshelf I said TJ how do you you took that picture yeah how'd you do it he
said I just pointed the camera up and and shot I said I know better than that my friend I've been I've been
trying anyway he taught me a lot and uh and and and and it helps so um I'm I'm
trying to pass that uh that along to other folks as well so yeah that's great
that's great appreciate wonderful okay well uh next up is is a uh gentleman who
started astronomy was when he was only 14 years old and uh he's uh he has taken
uh uh many different Journeys in amateur astronomy go getting aperture fever uh
getting a massive telescope and then coming back full circle to um uh you
know smaller more P portable telescopes but uh I think
importantly uh this individual has um you know made it a strong effort to do
educational Outreach and and that's what Cameron Gillis is doing tonight with his
uh his presentation uh here on global star party and also on a regular series
of shows that he calls cam Camron omy so Cameron you've got the uh you got the
stage here thanks a lot Scott so uh can you hear me okay yep okay great I really
enjoyed Don's uh presentation as well and and one of the things that caught my ear was
um his definition of obser observing right making observations and uh and uh
that's really what what I'm doing I'm finding lots of different ways to record and study uh you know visually the
objects uh understand them uh and then glean out details uh through different
uh you know techniques including now with smartphones and and uh and all the
digital photography that's out there you get that uh good feedback to be able to study the image and even if it's not
perfect and you haven't you know uh done all the post-processing and everything
you uh you you start to see did uh a lot of detail that you wouldn't see normally
with direct uh Vision uh in the night sky so so I wanted to share with you uh
the latest developments um in my journey so I let me just share my screen
here okay put in presentation mode there you go okay so here's the
equipment uh I recently acquired I've been uh having a um the uh smartphone
adapted with my uh my IPS here and a smartphone adapter and I've changed to a
Samsung S8 um and I you know in my cam astronomy
program I I'll I'll show how I automate all that but I have some a couple pictures there but recently I've
actually acquired uh an astro image the dedicated astronomy camera connected
through ASI air and it just arrived and I actually didn't get cloudy skies so I
broke the the curse so uh so I was especially here in Seattle you know the typical thing as soon as you get new
equipment you just don't get a chance and I've had a very lucky uh you know even even though it was high thin
clouds uh in in in I still was able to uh uh to get even even with um to to get
kind of figure out how to connect everything up and and do some testing so the pictures I'm going to show you are
very primitive very uh my very first pictures with this system um but I am
extremely pleased uh because of the incremental improvements and what and
the reach uh in in my observations and my recording uh it gives me um I haven't done any
post processing there's a lot of issues which image scale it's actually even a little bit out of focus um you know
you'll notice that this T adapter gives me 55 millimeter I need to actually uh
uh go further I I the the image circle on the it gives me vignetting there's
because I don't have all the equipment uh for my image train to give it enough length between the back of the scope to
the the Imager but I decided to do it anyhow just to get the mechanics and the flow and figure out you know how to how
to work it and all that so so what I'm going to show you is um my my very first
set of pictures with this and uh very crude and uh let's let's go in so uh
here is a series of the first Target I actually aimed it at was marcaron chain
uh in Virgo and coma berius and and basically it goes uh I have three sets
of images here um and and I'll actually go through each one and you can see I
didn't you know in the future I'll obviously do a better J job at mosaicing and tiling these together so they're
stitched but the reason why it got off is because like I say the image scale in
the image Circle was was not quite right so the the the aperture or the the field
of view um it should I I used the f6.3 focal reducer I didn't put that in my
equipment list I use that f6.3 which gives me a focal length of
1280 um but but when I because of the
because I'm closer to the um focus I'm I I have this uh smaller image Circle so
in effect it's like a zoom right I I I actually moved in and reduced my field of view there's some vetting of course
because of that but the net effect is the focal length is around 1,400 1500 so
it's not quite Optimum yet but at least I can get it into focus and get some
images so let's look at the first image so here we go uh this is the main part
of uh of that lots of noise uh you know lots of lots of noise Lots but but you
know this is nice because this is a smartphone it doesn't matter not a smartphone yeah that does matter yeah so
so you can see you could see you can see the uh you know the
you can see structure you can see the spiral arm stretching out here and you know it's it's this be this makes me
super thrilled because I mean you know again being a visual Observer for a lot and having an 18inch dob in the past I
mean to be able to see this this is this is better than you'd see uh you know and
this and I have bort six to bordal eight uh Skies depending on which angle I'm at
and you can see there's big netting in that but I'm really happy to be able to now some of these galaxies like 13th
14th magnitude oh yeah there's a little bar spiral over there on the left and
yeah yeah exactly right here yeah lots of yeah just love it and then here's
here's the the dies going a little bit north of of the chain and uh you can see this one here stretches out a little bit
more um and there's another fainter Galaxy right here and continuing around
you can see now on the top in com bicus the top of the chain you have a couple more galaxies
then I continued and I I went into the black eye Galaxy and uh you know I love
the black eye Galaxy because you can see that dark uh dust Lane in the
center so that that was I was very happy with that and you can see with
thei yeah you can see exactly I mean and you know you you'll see the stars are
stretched here I mean I I have an alasm Mount and you know it's going to have
issues but at least I can uh you know I get I got the basics down and eventually
I will have an equatorial Mount uh that I can mount my uh C8 and my my ed80 to
and and take different fields of view and much more sharper images and stack them and all that kind of stuff but for
now again this is just baby steps um and and then look at this so I wanted to
compare uh you know this is uh you know 46 the needle Galaxy 4565 in coma bernus and uh what you'll
notice on the right here is my image with the S8 uh smartphone adapted uh
same same aperture everything and you'll you know just by looking at the uh the
Stars you can see the same Stars here but all you'll notice is that um you can still see the dust Lane very grainy of
course but uh but uh with the with the ASI uh sorry the 294 CW 294 uh imager
you can actually see this fainter Galaxy down down here and if I look if I look at my um if I go to my
uh let's go over there sorry I'm just in Sky Safari and I'll
just let's identify that that Galaxy where is it sorry that's Leo
let's go up here there we go okay so if you zoom into this gu
here's my image scale and if you click on that guy that's a 144 that's a magnitude 144
Galaxy right that's beyond the visual range of uh of the 8 inch and uh and you
can actually see it just at the edge of the field here um so you know obviously with a little more processing you can
eek out some more so this is this is very exciting for me actually there's another galaxy even here uh see if
that's actually shows up there is a yeah
that's a magnitude 15 Galaxy um right over right off the edge right here see
so that that guy right there is a magnitude 15 Galaxy so now we're getting into the again the threshold of an
18inch visually and uh so this gives me the the kind of range that I want to be
able to because ultimately as Don was talking about one of one of the things I one of my goals is to create lists of
objects that are accessible in different levels of different apertures and also different uh qualities of sky so you
know you don't want to have a hopeless search uh for Galaxies that sure they're
pen magnitude but they're so diffused they have such low surface brightness you don't have a chance of viewing them
uh so this is this will allow me to match my visual observations with the with the photometry if you will the
photographic use and then look at the actual absolute magnitude compared to the dark the sky uh brightness and I'll
be able to do use you know different techniques to be able to eek out uh different visual
representations uh using my images so uh continuing whoops sorry uh here's the Box galaxies um uh I
I think Richard uh uh Richard Grace took a picture uh you know with his he did a
much better job of course but I was very pleased to be able to PE pick out these guys um and and they're really neat
because they all have different orientations and they're quite faint if I if I go g to Sky
Safari box galaxies are just to the just to the right here there they
are just to the other side of the cluster and if you look at these
guys you know they're they're 14th magnitude yeah 14.3
13.6 uh 12.2 um interesting again to note that
13.6 magnitude is brighter than these 142 but again if you look at the if you
look at the image you can see that one's actually fainter because of it has lower surface brightness so even though its
magnitude is higher these smaller galaxies are more concentrated so
they're much more easily to observe um so anyhow so that that's the Box
galaxies and this one I really love this one I was able to frame uh these guys
really bad quality but hey I'm I'm thrilled I mean the here's the whale Galaxy you can see a lot of beautiful
structure including its companion Galaxy yeah the hockey stick Galaxy you can see
the the companion off the edge and you gain a lot of detail in the core so
really really happy with this uh with this image this this made me happy um
and then uh here's the uh Silver Needle Galaxy very very
thin uh long structure that's a really nice one um and I oh my gosh I love
these you know the Leo triplet we already know when you look through a telescope very beautiful it's a nice pleasing kind of starter object to be
able to look at uh these galaxies are very bright magnitude eight and stuff but look at how huge and and how much
detail you get on these guys I mean I love this this bar structure on M65 or
actually this is m66 and then M65 uh over over here with you can see the T line almost like a little
Andromeda galaxy um you can get see so it's a very nice
pairing and then the Cocoon Galaxy this is a nice one too it's it's a kind of
difficult you know if you don't have good uh Skies but but uh it's a
beautiful object to observe with this nice spiral structure with a little a little chunk Galaxy up to the
side I love m106 I always come to this one with its beautiful spiral arms and
the um the dust Lan but what's interesting about this picture uh What compared to ones I've done in the past
is now you can start to pick out these guys and again uh you know look at these galaxies over here if I go back
to Sky Safari and go over there let's
go I invite you for all of those galaxies ceron what said I invite you for all
those galaxies thank you yeah it's a it's amazing Cameron
because it's so so educa take yeah know I'm really what
makes me happy is really I enjoy your your quantity of image and you make
something like a catalog a new catalog cell phone catalog galaxies it's
new maybe it's like a like a new catalog about uh about the possibilities to to
make camon catalog absolutely yes yes because
it's and when you say when you say about magnitude uh and thing that is not a
point magnitude like a star is a integrated magnitude maybe you say 14
but 14 in an area the entire area have 14 of magnitude it's really really faint
it's really dark yes it's all all uh this such a a a
really a a first price in IM much because it's it's the extreme of of the
possibilities is really you know that's that's a good point and actually I think Barnard's Loop is
magnitude 4 something like I forgot what the magnitude is but but it's because of the the if you take the it's calculus
right you take the bins and you add the the sum of all those bins their magnitudes uh then then you end up with
an aggregate of what is the magnitude brightness but because it's spread over such a large
area it's like impossible unless of course if you have dark I don't know how
many people has any anyone seen the bar Arts loop with with a naked eye I think it's possible Right but time
is not likely people go in the winter of course if you go to Texas St party you
can you can watch this maybe yeah maybe you know it might
just seem it's so large it's so large that probably uh to confirm that you're
seeing it you know you would just you would just see like a slight departure from the you know a jet black Sky to
something that looks you know something still black but you know like a little
bit less black would probably yeah so so so no I I
appreciate so now again looking at this one um you know if you look again at the
uh m106 you can see this part of the Galaxy uh you know the spiral arm is
about as bright as this that kind of so if you take that chunk and integrate it that would be equivalent and let's see
how what the magnitude of that Galaxy is that Galaxy is magnitude 13.2 so you can
say you can say this spiral part of this arm is magnitude 13 so you you know and
this this is a good example of what you can see with bigger telescopes for example a small telescope will be able
to easily see m106 because uh the core at magnitude 8.3 but the core you can
see the density of is quite you'll see the center part fairly easily um but
when it comes to the spiral arm that those are like magnitude 13 in that surface area uh by spiral arm chunk so
you you didn't need to have a good scope so I can see it visually with an 8 inch because it can go down to magnitude 14
so I can pick out subal structure of this arm but this arm here is even fainter so this is probably a magnitude
14 portion if you will so that goes below below the the the view of my my 8
inch but if you have a larger scope like an 18 inch or or or larger uh then you
can easily see both arms um because you're now have get down to 16th magnitude capability so now these two
galaxies down here uh let's take a look at those those are respectively magnitude 14 and a half
and 14.6 so so those guys are um quite faint but you know when I do better with
the image processing I'll be able to eat those guys out and again the main yeah that would be so that that
makes me very happy so my survey is still going to be focused on you know the main objects that are brighter than
magnitude 13 but of course I'm going to pick off some of these fainter objects which are fun as well as part of the uh
the plates plate solving and uh that will be another level of of of
cataloging but I'm going to do it in chunks so these are bonus B bonom items
so so continuing along and then this picture this picture I you know it's you
know I've seen we've everyone has seen this picture many times and they've seen it and it was so nice to be able to do
this myself and this is what I this is a good milestone for anyone even though this is not a good picture it's not
processed or anything and there's Stars speaking and petting and every problem but you can still see the detail the
spiral structure and it's it's there it's kind of like um when I see this image and I see that I was able to CT
capture this myself um I'm like wow I mean it's just like nature the stuff is
out there right I mean these galaxies haven't changed in our lifetime they're out there if you can take a picture of
it is there it's like a it's like a a scenery right it's like taking um I don't know the Arches or or or or even
the moon or any anything that we see commonly but you just don't be before
you get into astronomy you don't appreciate that this is part of nature this is the out there all the time and
to be able to take this and get the same type of details and see the spiral structure it's like wow it's real it's
it's really an interesting experience to go through to record this uh yourself
and and and be able to see like this little kink in the spiral alarm for example and and and and and all the
details on the dust Lane and how this this bridge between the companion Galaxy and then this little
piece of dark um nebulosity that are that's blocking the half of this
companion Galaxy all those things and of course of superimposed stars um just
that type of detail it's just a wonderful um thing so I I really want to share that with everyone and um yeah so um then this one
here I I just threw this one in here because um uh I I decided to look at a dense
area of Hercules um in the Hercules Galaxy cluster area and kind of my cheap
version of the Deep Field uh picture and if you look carefully you'll see tons of
galaxies here all these guys all these guys there's some more galaxies down
here there's just tons and these are all I checked them out they're all magnitude you know between 13 and 15 16th
magnitude uh some of them but you know with a little more work I I I'll be able
to actually pick them all out and and actually be able to Plate solve and and do that but this is what's in this is
what's in the reach of you know relatively modest gear that anyone can
can gradually gradually get into and and that's what's really nice is to be able to make everything accessible so that
people more and more uh astronomers can can can all access and and and get into
deeper and deeper into the into the universe and so anyway I really like
uh those those galaxies M3 I I had to take a picture
of cluster there was so many galaxies in that prior shot I mean it looks like a
oh yeah it's like a Hubble de field or something you know they're calling it The Cameron Deep Field Cameron Deep
Field yeah that's the Deep Field that's right thanks yeah I'm GNA I'm going to
have more fun with this in in the future but uh but yeah this is just kind of again testing it out and
um yes go for it yes it's um all with a
8 in telescope or or small8 in yeah this with with the evolution with the
evolution with the evolution8 um and explore scientific IPS and cell
adapter actually this no this is with a ZW this is with the ASI um the 294 294 camera
this is not this is not cell phone you got the right camera for for
the job no yes because it's so so yeah yes with a 63 6.3 reductor or an
F10 yeah this is not uh this is with the f6.3 focal reducer that's correct yeah
yeah yeah yeah exactly and and uh what I want to do is these are only these are
these are only 30 second exposures no no stacking uh just just a preview picture
and what I did to to to pop them into this you know I didn't I know the
original the original files are like 24 megabyte Tiff files um but it's like uh
so what I did is I I use my tablet and I I do the preview and I take a screen
screenshot and I I email myself the screenshot of of that uh of that preview
picture and then I what I do is I compress it to 30% and then I pop it in this
spreadsheets sorry into this PowerPoint so this PowerPoint is only uh let's tell
you how big this is so this PowerPoint is only 7.3 me 7.1 megabyte okay 7.1
megabyte and I have all these images in here so so so basically uh I'm all about
practicality and efficiency like I you you need to have the detail for image processing and but ultimately the end
goil is once once you've done your processing and once you got it into looking good enough which which is
another step I'll get into but um once you get there you can just take a screenshot and it's it will be you've
captured the the quality right there's going to be more detail of course in your original data that you can always
work on manipulating and analyzing but uh but when it comes to presenting and then also just for your own
enjoyment um to be able to put it into uh an efficient catalog here that it's
it's it doesn't get so huge uh it it makes it uh very very nice so what you're seeing here is only about 200k
worth of of data uh on a slide um so
that's after of course so what's going to happen you you you can see where this is going right uh and I think Jason
gonel knows this and you know all the IM image Masters know this more and more processing will be done uh by the camera
and by the pre-processing software by processors so it's going to start to do the stretching the stacking and all that
heavy computation to get all that that heavy lifting done as you take the
images uh so then you're going to get closer and closer to uh a more a more
refined image uh as as compute Pro uh Pro Power and that uh improves but for now we still
have to do the intermediate steps of course of downloading the big file and doing all the scaling and stretching and
all kind of stuff but but I can see in the future this might take a while it might take a while but it but but it's
already getting better like already for example with the ASI Air Pro you can do
uh you can do um like automatic stretching and you can do stacking live
stacking and stuff with and it can combine your darks and flats and and
bias frames together and then you can just take that that picture um so I'm
I'm really I'm I'm really being in a a visual Observer I'm really all about
trying to spend more of my time uh like
looking at the image studying it enjoying it I like the processing part a
certain amount but that I want to kind of optimize that because I'm going to be doing aot in the Fring of the
astrophotography and the obser observations I think yes that's right
Maxi yes yes yes exactly I I have a friend who Liv in bfield he has he have
a very good eye and he can see in pollution he's in Grand buenosaires in
the south of buenosaires and that's a lot of light pollution he can see
galaxies clusters and a very planetary
nebulas with his eyes so you're talking
about NCO the hammer yes exactly NCO Nik NCO is is have have a a really
a um Sonny sensor in in his his
yes yes where where can I get that
done he also draws what he's seeing without ER following Mount he's
only and two five
250 in millimeters sorry Newtonian but he is also
doing astrophotography without
[Music] um yes yes without tracking he he sh in
a few seconds great and then you st the bazilian of them a machine gun to to
shut the Stars yeah incredible something something that is real like say Cameron
is that when you have the the the single light and for for many people when when
I told last year uh in maybe an hour of of the last of the first Global saris
that uh in some cities uh when especially in Argentina when uh many
many times I uh make I talk with my
customers sometimes people that have a reflex camera with a medium focal object
maybe 100 mm or maybe more um for for these people
I I saying I that by if if they are
searching the idea of a matter astronomy and have a camera first by a tracking
mold um like exos 100 or or another one
uh because they they can start and choose the the the optical tip assembly
uh later with much better idea about Optics um uh because uh they can start
uh only with the camera a supporter and an adapter with a with an equatorial
mount a single equatorial M sometimes I say yes 100 but sometimes it's only a
aq3 I3 mod with a single motor um they
start to discover to discover from the city from the from the metropolitan
areas that they can do it h astronomical pictures of open areas of the sky and
start to know before uh to take an optical tube
telescope and uh start to know how they can do it astronomical image and learn
more about the the skies uh this uh Galaxy clusters like like
this um after before to make a great picture the idea is see the galaxies and
start to understand how how is the universe and this is amazing because uh
today a camera or a a reference camera
or or a CCD camera is another for people that we live in Metropolitan Aras or
middle of a city like me is another eyepiece it's an electronic ipce because
really we need this help and because if not it's impossible
make astronomy without this um when you when you use the picture only with your
camera and go to use and choose the the first Optical TP assembly and putting in
your in your um equatorial M the magic
is great because the people understand how many times the diameter make another
part of the magic because here do you have something that you have the the
really huge uh um uh sensibility of the
sensor but do you have something that you have Optics you have eight inches
and this is why why um um and it's not maybe because
it's only [Music] only uh eight inches because you can you
can have an eight eight eight millim 80 sorry 80 millim ocomic or chromatic or
90 millim and you have a a great a great step from an photographic uh objective
it's really a huge quantity of light energy that you can uh you can uh get
from the sky is is it's some something amazing Optics and electronic or Optic
Electronics today we are living in a golden age of am matur astronomy that's
right yeah I mean like for example just on your last Point um where is are like
you know what I show here is two different image scales right the the inner one is my 8 in
f6.3 uh with the image camera and then the larger one is an ed80 which I will
be getting uh and when I when I do that I'm going to couple the same camera and you
can see you can see the whole mccaran chain uh in one shot so so you might you
have to take a little longer exposure that's understood but uh no problem I mean uh with a
better mount with an equatorial Mount I I can increase from 30 seconds to you
know let's say four times that right so I'm at minute exposure and then and then
I'll get the same type of uh uh depth of field as as as my 8 inch uh you know and
and uh and and you'll get more objects so from a catalog perspective you you can you can do really well with a with a
smaller aperture you just have to have a good Mount um you know yes
Evolution yes I know Evolution Mount is resolve something for for up and down
left and and right and but have a a a a a have a um a great not not perfect but
have a great tracking for for for yes 15 20 seconds maybe in 6.3 and
ER but I know that that many times uh it's
best um have the image the inside the possibilities that that this this night
do have because when when you when you take the picture like an image like of
of observation first for really have not only to make a great picture because
this is is is for after the night but when you say okay I have galaxies in the
screen and this is amazing and because is when you don't have the possibilities
to to take this galaxies in your retina about the problem of light
pollution you have this this tool that is amazing
and really is is is great because you can have um
details um it's the same like people say okay I can say I can in my cell phone I
can say the color of the nebulas with my eyes I can I can see the color yes but a
cell phone for a kid in in their telescope making a a short exposure for
oron M8 nebula or another right nebula is
something magic I say have like like the same done in the
books yeah exactly and and you know to me I look at it as a very much a
compliment to a visual because what I'm going to do for example tonight um I'm going to uh finish my I'm
well not finish I'm going to continue in Ursa Major uh with my visual um visual
Sky survey um because Ursa Major is in a good angle right now it's going to start
to set uh but I can start to comb through all those guys and and then what
you do is you can go back and take images and then and work your way back and then study it again right so you
have a record you take your notes and then you you have a log of your observation from notes and then you go
back and then you see oh look at this with the with this picor picture I can see other galaxies that are 14th 15th
magnitude is makes it more pleasing you know so you have the visual plate solve you see the numbers it just makes the
exploration just wonderful they really complement each other uh very very nicely yeah and so what I'm just showing
what I'm showing here is uh you know I just rotate the uh my my camera and then
look at this I can get a really beautifully framed uh just rotate at 90 degrees and then I can get the entire
markarian chain with an ed80 right yeah and so so this is an example and so
there's lots of fun and and you know I I do have to pace myself because uh you
know you you have to spend some time learning the equipment you know going
through the whole learning curve of adding New Gear like when you go that jump going from you know visual
observing to smartphone and then smartphone to uh Astro imager there's a
lot of things and a lot of uh and if you're not careful you can really get frustrated and and spend a lot of time
with quality you know I have very limited qual Dark Skies in in in in Seattle clear skies is it clear night
maybe Works yes I understand yes don't don't so say this is way col yes a a EAA
or electronic asstive astronomy yes yes D yeah right and that's one of the and
that's one of the actually the real drivers for me to get into um uh to Imaging as well because ultimately what
I'm going to do is um I'm going to get an i exos 2 um with pmca uh put it ed80
and then I'm going to set up uh Imaging uh sequences right uh overnight uh you
know get it get it all set up and start start doing a survey more automated so that way um in the morning I'll have you
know all the objects CLE I'm still going to do some observing visual observing um
part of that but just to maximize is that full full night especially in the summer nights are very short I'm I'm at
47th parallel so when you're 47 degrees north you you get the the sun uh you
know very little in the summertime very little uh dark sky so you have a really short night short night yes you really
want to maximize that that window so so this is where again it's a nice compliment and then I want to be able to
still relax and enjoy you know visually observing a couple of things maybe studying a couple objects you you know
that type of thing so I think um uh anyhow so let let me um let me go back
to this is really NE um let me go to the my presentation again okay so um M3 uh
glob cluster so not bad you know this this is what you'd see in a in a large dobsonian right yeah uh with with so
this is a and what's also interesting about this is the color and this is what Cesar was talking about you could even
in uh the glob cluster you can see different uh depths of stars you can see
the bright yellow and then some you know fainter of course that's just because of the depth of field but it gives you more
3d effect um and then there's the dumbbell nebula
M27 and the color again you can see nice structure you can even see a little bit
of if I took a longer exposure you can see the extra uh lobes sticking out here
and of course they're very pronounced and I love this red green and the blend here it's really nice to see the shell
and I wanted to show you this picture um of the Ring Nebula because I I kind of
did a couple of things here first of all on the left is the latest picture I took with my dedicated Astro camera where you
have the nice red outer ring going to yellow and green and you can see the
Central Star the one on the right is my smartphone exactly same uh smartphone picture you see some color and I zoomed
in into this area here and you can you can see the color it's it's grainier of course but I you know I wanted to show
this because on the top right you have the Hubble image and what's neat is even
with a smartphone again comp you you're enhancing you're just having so much
enjoyment very as a nice visual enhancement you can already see some more structure you can you can see the
brighter sides the structure that you see in the Hubble a lot of that the shape the characteristic shape and then
this this slightly elongated part here and the shorter part here and then the denser Parts you can see all of that
even in the zoom dim smartphone picture so again this is training your eyes to to appreciate the subtleties that you
can see even with the naked eye or with a smartphone you don't have you know everyone loves the the processed images
those are definitely there and I I feel the bug I I you know as I take these initial pictures I want to get better
and better but uh from a visual perspective to be able to appreciate and
say relate these these very simple images with the Hubble it's it's it's
neat you're seeing the same object and you're seeing the same type of big structure and so this is this is part of
the fun yeah and it's natural yeah and it's and this is it's really nice to be able to um to be able to relate and
recognize features uh that you can see in the in the in the more detailed pictures so I just wanted to share that
um on the evolution and then that was the last yeah that was my last picture so so yeah so um you know to be
continued uh I I just wanted to share the latest in my journey and um I hope
everyone enjoyed it and uh and uh yeah I amazing I U look forward to continuing
to to to collaborate with all my my colleagues here it's it's really fun
great Cameron thank you so much um I uh uh soon you will see an ambassador page
for Cameron Gillis coming up on uh the explore Alliance um so it's it's really
great to see someone that is uh uh really pursued Outreach as as much as
Cameron has in fact all of you that are on the show uh have so um but I
definitely deserves a SWOT there um we have a couple of people here uh Adrian
you are are you still are you still on with us I think Adrian oh he's G did okay all
right well fine um Maxi then you're up next Let's
uh you have anything You' like to share for tonight everyone yes basically last uh the last
week we talk about the some deep Sky objects before the the the lunar eclipse
and I took a pictures from the SoMo Galaxy with my reflex and the
telescope and I couldn't process but
this ER last Friday I think I finished it so let me show you the
screen uh here share it okay you can see
the the yes basically what I did was ER
stack maybe I think that are two hours of
pictures for five minutes with then darks flat and everything so I took
this wow now this is the
the the the the crude but when I Street
it you can see the info
ah okay nice nice yes and also the tiny
Galaxy here yeah and well the the arm of the SoMo
Galaxy see texture the dust it's very cool this C it does
matter
[Music] go
is Maxi still there he's still there hello okay there there yeah yes I I come
back I have some issues with my connection sorry uh so
what
and this it it don't even see the the SoMo Galaxy so when I edit and
everything I I have this oh
wow right I this little CL of
stars I
the spikes so he did that by with a flat or
by subtracting dark and the colors and everything
H and and this last
weekend [Music]
sorry Maxi have some issues of issues of connections um hello yes we we can hear
you but it's fro H okay I I didn't understand you Scott
sorry no I wasn't talking but um um wait I'm going to change my connection sorry
I no I I asked a question uh was that final image of
Sombrero uh achieved through a flat field subtraction or a um or flat
Fielding or a a dark frame or
both
I sometimes sometimes the internet is not
so I did some 30 pictur okay so you just got more signal
okay oh and we lost him oh Maxi if you're still watching log
back in and and we can we can pick your brain
somewhere yeah it's a great picture because I we we put in the in the portal
of our group s ofos astronomia m um I I told today with
to Maxi to say okay we need to to put this picture in the in the portal and if
you can talk talk about about your work because it's amazing SoMo Galaxy picture
right but we need that Maxi return we need yeah we can feel
something talking that's right well sometimes the internet's um
no yes is a Fickle thing you know because we can't really control our connection I have I have a fast
connection here I think it's fast uh we have about 200 megabits up and 200 megabits down you
know but um I you know I've seen when I was in other other countries
or other places uh um I've seen both faster internet than you know like if
you go to France uh France has yes really fast internet you know it's
pretty normal um when I I used to work in Taiwan and
the internet back at that time was just only a little bit they I would have to
dial long distance to get to my internet service provider in the United States
and then hook up with uh with everything we got Maxi back I'm back I'm back good
okay now I have issues with the connection of the the and I put
my Mo and my phone thata okay okay let me show the
screen again I think this is now you steal the entire band for for T TCO town
no I I have I have F he makes something Town goes dark
yeah yeah okay so well here's the SoMo
Galaxy and what I what I was saying Scott this with the flat and dark H
pictures to to calibrate the image and then with the old
processing ER two hours of processing wow okay great work but a great
result yes I and I have like I said last
week I have some issues with the cating in in the scope and I can figure
it out so the stars goes very
pun very surround so the last week weekend sorry
ER I have some clear skies so I want and
sorry the last Thursday I it I
received an lrgb filters H so I can do planetary
pictures H with my monochrome ER camera
MH but I also because Jupiter and Saturn goes
maybe 4 a. or 5 a.m I practice some deep Sky objects
with that camera and doing ER with the those
fig so basically where I practice with 3
nebula I send more early to Cesar the
picture and this is what I get with the monochrome
picture wow very nice very
nice yes this is what a qhy
beauti yes and it's so different to the to the buyer Matrix uh really I love I love uh
the the the RGB filters from a monochrome in the 90s I tell you Maxi
that we had only the this possibility but the sensor was maybe uh so with so
low solution that we lost the the great work but today is is is the best
way to to make astronomy with
monochrome the wheel filter It's amazing And also um with light pollution
Skies this was it goes out all that pollution with
those filters because you got the the entire um
colors and the true colors in in
gisha of the of the object and this was
maybe 40 image images of um 14 seconds
in all those um channels of uh
lights maybe 10 minutes about it so the next day
the the weather was pronouncing very cloudy but this the
the beginning was with clear sky so I tried to do some Galaxy pictures and I
practice with [Music] M83 the pinwell southern
Galaxy so basically when I stacked only RGB without the lb because I have some
issues with the the Stag and and I couldn't figure it out I could have this
wow wow yeah stacking is very important look at that oh man look at that bar yes you
can see this this this is basically only the stackle images I I didn't edit it
this was a a little dust in the camera
right but don't worry I clean it out so
maybe this weekend I will try again with more time
with with yes I I think that the the next weekend we are going to to take a a
gray a clear skies yes maybe the the Thursday is going to we have now bad
weather no yes now it's near to to to rain maybe not now but today was raining
say ER and this is a great picture sorry this I did in this case almost 20
minutes of every channel and also I do with the U and intra and infrared filter
to stack with the um the light filter and let me show what I stack
[Music] basically this is the stack you can see
all in monochrome okay but when I stretch it yeah all that
information is right there yeah but I couldn't St it in the other one because
because I have some issues with the format and I forgot and I will try again this
weekend so let's see what we get and this is all the The View with the with
that monochrome camera and the 2,000 mimet H telescope F4 eight8
Ines 8 in yes in and F four four four exactly yes
the yes the The Rao is ratio is is four okay exactly
and the camera was qy five the a simple monochrome
camera H and without guiding so I was wondering if I guide with
another camera and take pictures for more
seconds okay for for having more information yes EXA yes over one minute
maybe maybe in 30 minutes of every channel
doing that I think it's going to be better and yeah the structure I I always want to see those
clouds uh let me see if I can give more structure
with the convolution uh I have some processes
first uh a little
faster rice and you can see a little a little
work of pix inside [Music]
okay e i it's great that Optics we are making
a a perfect Optics and the people use the
convolution exactly I mean you know I can really see I me too yeah
and then with with the monochrome you have you have all the control I mean it's really whatever level of detail
that you want to pull out you're really nice really nice yeah yes it's great
it's a a great tool okay let's
see and here it [Music] goes a little more
details and structure you can see this is a normal
and this is with the convolution see the difference in the
Stars yeah and the structure let me do it
again maybe broke yes how work this
mathematics no goes now right there wow oh my gosh
beautiful yeah you can see the cor very
bored and then a little with more detail
exactly this PR is amazing we are waiting we are waiting uh
the the Finish process without the the Dust
no yes yes yes um we I am I am for for next uh Global Sur part I'm working in
understand more and practi side with a program that is free the name is Cal s i
r i l and it's very interesting because
I have many things of uh pigs Insight um it's free it's not to 200 Eros
price that is great and yes and this is because many times pix and S I love
really and sight but the problem is that for for many people say come on it's the price of of H telescopes and uh and er
uh all times I'm searching uh people that recommend me uh okay try with this
program and we are working in now in this program serial sirene I
don't know how to say in English um but um I I write if you
see see real I don't know um s sirious sirious sirious there you go
well s i r s i yes i u s serus
no no is Cil s i r i l yeah because they use the
meure okay I would say any way that you want to pronounce it would be okay yeah yes
yeah and I I put to to my son Austin and
say TR this because he he used all time P Say say Okay I need uh to that use
studed this to to to you Maxi know to
and uh and I I working in all my pictures now in in seral to understand
more and and and learn more and to to
explain to the people how to use um and recommend of course because many people
start to use only himself only reading the the the manual or the
tutorials and it's very interesting because any times that that I found some
program free especially like sequator for stacking or cereal or for stacking
and process is great because when you found uh for the people something where
for example in s you atin write a cre
changes things for stacking without uh Flats because many people don't use
Flats when take pictures with their single camera um and work work properly
and we we we found that it's you know when you
have an script and it's something automatic and you can give a tool for the people that make the things with
better results and uh they feel happy sure to can make a picture
um you're helping them achieve their dream of absolutely absolutely great
image you know so yes yes I and that's the beginning of
astrophotography yeah that's right yes yes is I am I all time all time that the
people that came to to the store when the people say okay I don't have telescope I I am I don't know where I
can and many many times the people can afford a a usive and preown reflex
camera yeah because in Argentina despite the crisis the The Reflex cameras that you can
found the preet cameras um you can find
really uh affordable price and this is this
is everywhere but in Argentina maybe it's more narrow the the possibilities
to to afford uh equipment um some reference C right something that that
you can you can uh you can buy in internet in sites
like here the name is Mercato Li but it's like Amazon or or the and they say
okay take a a mount a camera start you are thinking and choose and and choose
what type of telescope you are needing but they are starting
learning about the sky the colors of the sky the the little details uh with their own cameras um
this is another way because you know that you have for a kid you you have we
have telescopes that are symbols for starting is but this is
another another way is is when you have a um a teenager or an adult people that
have an age that are interested in another way uh and when they can they
they start to use a camera uh over a
month they they they um learn fast about the the
sky and start to know how a telescope
can have the Optics of can help can help them is
great the maty is changing again I think because it's yes it is it is I I'm glad
I'm glad that we've been lucky to have um uh several the people are making that
big change in amateur astronomy actually right here on these shows you know um so
it's been wonderful uh you know I mean if you had told
me five years ago that people would be doing using a smartphone to get such
pictures I wouldn't I I would have just gone that's that's impossible you know you can't yeah right yeah abely Maxi
Maxi in Argentina was the first that start to the to to re re to take to to
to make the revolution maybe three years ago he and he say okay I have a I can do
it and many people say no I'm how do you say I remember this
that is say people people of this was real and people say no um isn't possible
with a smartphone H yeah oh he was faking it somehow right yes it's a serious
business it's a serious business remember in in a forum ER
when er some guy post H some planetary
pictures with brightness Jupiter and the moons and someone says
the the cell phone and the smartphones doesn't work to do astrophotography and
even is not astrophotography so what are you taking it it's an
asro yeah when
but but the the exper that the Scot Roberts with explor scientific um I I
remember when Scott ER when we start uh
writing by email about business okay we are interested in your R blah blah blah
Scott called me to the store uh to the the old one in BL Martin and we start to
talk about astronomy and I remember Scott that you started H with a a very
Gadget small Gadget that was the hi Pekka how are you the I'm fine
I was wondering when you were going to remember I have
to I'm fine thank you what was this small Gadget though Caesar yeah sorry
the the the this one of the first uh smartphone adapters of the market was
the the explor scientific oh yeah remember with the VAC with the vacum and
used to it I was amazing come on because was the first brand to to think that the
smartphone and the telescope come be uh go together and work together and now
it's it's one of of the best h i remember in the the F in the the first
eclipse in San Juan that when we use and we put the the the old adapters in the
in the 9 MERS refractors for the kids was actually was not actually was a um
sorry um a great success because the kids
understand in in the first time yeah the first time that they say okay I can take
the picture of the sun yes is this for okay and they put and they understand to
get the vacuum how do you say the name in English section cups and
everything yes they move a lot of no instruction manual necessary no no and especially
the kids have the brain especially for this and say okay this work is amazing
yes take the picture and the and see the kid with the with the the the the yellow
circle of the sun because was this was before the clipse yeah and I said
with the mom I have the picture of the sun my cell phone and this is this is
great this is yes I have near to 30 years selling
telescope and access and amateur equipment well and and I am amazed how
how changed the this activity oh yes in the in 30 years I feel old yes but you
feel old now two the morning you are not old no
no that's right no but she but SE are one one thing that a lot of things have stayed the same too like the Optics
right the quality now we're just using that tool in new ways because of computer technology that that the Optics
is still the same good old stuff so if you have a beautiful you know
refractor from from those days it's still a beautiful instrument absolutely
pal palar Observatory is is now surrounded by communities and cities
that have created a lot of light pollution problems for them uh Mount
Wilson is a prime example of of totally light polluted um Skies but you know
they have they've just switched to the bandpass the wavelength of life that
they want to look look at so uh even today M Wilson has one of the darkest
infrared skies in the world you know so um so you know let's work in the
infrared uh um you know and palar Observatory uh they have tried to work
with the communities to use low sodium vapor lights and that kind of thing which made it pretty easy for them to
block it out but they have as as they add new instrument packages onto that
200 in telescope they are transforming that instrument you know and so they
keep that telescope still on a very high performance um and highly productive um
uh you know instrument as it's had been since I think it was
19 I might have this date wrong but I think it's like 1948 or something like
that when it was sof first light you know for a very long time almost 30 years it was the world's largest
telescope so yes it's incredible mhm AB that's really
interesting yes Pekka uh do you have you had U uh something to share with us
today I think yeah I can share some pictures first of
my it looks like you're at Mission Control again yeah okay this is my Observatory oh
that's a nice photo that's that's now blue skies yeah
it's it's a day it's 7 a.m. 7
A.M 2 am that's U from east west
side beautiful wow I I watched some pictures
of the sun Pekka that you took the very very nice very well ah
um I I just have an B Continuum filter an
e u block filter so I don't have any any solar telescope
yet let's see uh I have to chare
this view of my
scope can take live view there
oh okay I don't know why it's a terrible
picture I can't focus it right oh there
it is yeah I love this yes it is now it's right now yes I love this it's out
of focus but it's daytime so it's very hard to focus yeah you know what the good part
is Becca the Moon is below the Horizon where I'm at yeah it's it's it's setting
for you yeah but you have it nice and oh that's really is that a tree a tree no
yes a tree yes a tree yeah yeah and this is the weave from my finder scope and
guiding scope oh great it's an 80 mm and
342 348 millimet focal length I love I love the this your setup because it's so
anytime is work much better and you have uh
more tools that work properly and the I
think that the the image of of The Guiding of the guider is so good like
the the main telescope yeah it's pretty good yeah yes yeah but I I need longer
longer focal length because the telescope is 200 2,000 32 so I need at least 900 mm guiding
scope yes or 700 sure and the relationship between the size of the
pixel of of the yeah yeah of of the main telescope and the guer is yes the idea
is I'm pretty pleased so this is my setup and uh I can show
you the wave from from Northern Skies this from my window
outside and that building you can see that it's the she's the science Tower
yeah and there is no science down there there nothing nothing going on there no
it's it's only the name just the name yeah because she is a a science center for whole
Sweden it's called The Swedish Silicon Valley so Ericson Nokia
and HP and IBM and all these uh big
companies is located here like adob and and so on so every those oh do you have
you can see it from your house no the companies not they are on the industry
area ah okay oh okay okay yeah so that's
everything I have so I had a very hard times to find the uh Moon behind the
trees yeah so it's it's a lot of trees I can show you from the small Scope when
I take it little bit down so you can see already yes yes it's the same one yeah
free if I take little B
there oh I I love the I love the control work really is is nice is is
yeah yeah it's I also use this one when I am ah yes I love this I I like to use
are you kidding me now no yes is great I next week I start to use this for my
exos 100 there is my can show my my this really easy my I love to use
mini computer this is my uh control board okay I build it for it's a Mini PC
and two hops and two terabytes hard disk and large
watch yeah and 10 in LCD screen that's only for to align the
finder scope with the main scope so I
see on the finder scope and The Guiding scope it's the same picture then I have
the main scope because the Val of field of wheel weo field is so narrow in
Celestron so a lot of focal length that's true yeah and so I so I use def
find the scope my yes I
consider I guil about this because yes I was Technic
technical for celestone for many many years and the and the focusing of system
of all SMI C is a nightmare it's a nightmare it's celest in both Brands
both in both Brands yes Scott say okay I
down come on we actually actually is much better that in the past because you
have the HD series and it's the same like in the the the newest me but come
out the the system move the when you start to to make the focus the promise
that you move the entire mirror yeah we're just pushing
you out of directly so you have to when you're focusing you have to move to to scope at
similarly yes you have to be prepared and ATP you know ATP cannot
make an autofocusing aid yeah with celestone
Focus motor I tried today and it's totally out of Focus it's like colation
Rings you get when you are using atps autofocusing aid but the
set it's spot on yes the the the the best way is use
an a low profile focuser only for few millimeters but
is completely in the in the the back focus
of the telescope no a motor if if they they have the idea to still using the
motor over the the focusing is is the same problem because
when you go to to add to reverse or right it pulls on the mirror or pulls
you you yes it's the same this is the this is why in exor scientific you can
use you know they don't sell C any you know what this
is yeah yeah yes and if you if you take off this uh this
string and put this in in Celestron focus a knop in8 inch okay it fits
exactly and you can then you can oh then you got you got like a little handle
yeah and you can focus with this we used to take we used to take a pipe uh cover made out of
plastic and put a chopstick a chopstick like you with the rice through it and
then you would have a handle like that very precise you know this was I tasted
not in in my scope because I have autofocus but I took the old knop and it's it's exactly fits yes yes when I
start and you have a handle here for your fing yeah it's nice it's nice
yeah I thought that just don't stab yourself yeah was doing in Argentina
only but in Sweden I didn't know that no yes in Argentina we have all we we it's
impossible to translate but we say something like we resolve all with with
wire with yeah you know there's bicycle bailing wire we we call it bailing wire
in the United States yes yeah maybe duct tape and bailing wire that's how you can fix yes or duct
tape SP cycle you take the handle off and it's exactly for 8 inch telescope
for a handle you know okay right yeah yes this it's a great a great tutorial
because you you you can you have a larger uh area so you can fine focus
much better yes that's true too I need confess that I will make a
patent of this and yeah yes absolutely let me call my
lawyer here yeah explore scientific
helping that's right 10 use for no other company can sell flossing sticks Focus
except for explore science yes and you can clean your tooth buy buy an explore
scientific 127 and you get 10 10 pits with
it yes absolutely but no I I I felt when
I receive my my 80 mimers that was for me the first time I don't know why I
sold it I have a friend of me Scott knows that anytime they say
okay I I I can S I can sell you because I receive another one because and when I
remember that uh when I rece I received my my 80
mm that now I don't have a hoc chromatic refractor from explor scientific I felt
like a king focusing because my
my my in my entire life of was a
nightmare I I felt I I remember that I felt like a a man going to civilization
you know yeah can I just share you feeling of a focus yes
because I I know what you're what you mean though I will show you how how
convenient this is when you work working from
uh this is awesome yeah I love this one yeah that's
the way to go right now I have to be behind the the mount with the
control I I like to know how things the N the The
Neighbors about this me too sometimes I use the
telescope in the balcony and say moving this and for another whe and say my
neighbor yeah toilet toilet room exactly on the on the side and he
has put in a Gardens you know uh what do you say it uh for the window so the
light pollution is not coming in when he's in the toilet in the evening so
everybody is now watching the lights yes you can say you can say if
you don't turn off your lights I can shoot you with the ler of my telescope
yeah I have a green it's forbidden in Sweden you know the law says that if I use the green
laser for pointing on the Stars I have to U um inform to air
security and so on yes and yeah and they have to handle it and so
on and it takes couple of days and I have to really and I have to say United
States it's forbidden too forbidden to you can use you can use H green laser
especially in near to airports because I have an airport exactly five kilometers
from from me yeah yeah the same and really I I remember when they
the Green Lasers started to to use in the people in start party say okay great
okay actually we say please don't use any more green lers only the teacher
that that that because then you had all these only one fighting with Green
Lasers and yes and you for you're taking pictures and you see the they started
shooting another oh yes with the green light yes and new yes you lost a lot of
of Lights say okay it's for the people are so worried about starlink how about
Green Lasers by amateur astronomers you know so yeah yeah but you're right it's a great
teaching tool it is absolutely AB somebody want to is doing this Outreach and they're showing people how to find
the constellations yeah a green laser is fantastic for this in our start parties
maybe we have 100 people it's okay is is uh something that we can drive with the
people say okay don't use any any people but if you go to Texas parties with 500
something that today we don't we don't talk with don't is about so hard is um
organiz side with the to the people um it's a it's a great work is something
that that work and organizate and start party is is really a a um a big uh
effort um it's a lot of work really a huge
work a lot of things to to take yeah with massive
people and um the another one the biggest surar
in United States is I have the the shirt is AMA um Riverside
Riv Rivers used to be used to the Riverside's no more finished really yes
I can't believe I have around 4,000
people maybe in the past maybe they they did have a huge number that's true a
huge number in fact it was so many that um uh the observing Fields would be completely
overrun uh you had to be really careful not to B bump into somebody's telescope gear you
know yes why why this finish the the place
is the the managing team the core managing team had done it so many years
for decades you know um and uh
they there was there was a combination of thing of things happened one was that
fuel prices went up really fast at at one point and so people were not
driving uh you know on long trips very much okay um uh there was
um situations where um the marketing of rtmc was going to
the same people all the time you know and uh you know so they there was um uh
can there could have been more broad Outreach into areas uh where you're
trying to get a new audience you know and uh so that that that was a that was
an issue um uh you know and it it's hard work you
know to go out and and get new I mean is any anybody Works in retail knows or is
trying to sell something knows getting a new customer is really tough to do you
know so because there's so many things that they could go off and and do anymore um I understand you because it's
a lot of Works many times in bash Grande normally I put an store but it's only
put the store for sarrao is so uh hard work um that
sometimes they say no no this year because I don't need because the people people come by in buenosaires or and the
people say why this year you can't you can't uh you not put the the store the
tent because it's a lot of work more and and yeah is any any point of
the organization is a lot of work um with K Garcia is we have a show K Garcia
is my partner in this s party and we say this is the last year we every year we
say it's the last year we're not doing this anymore yeah yeah I say no we know
that next year we are going because we we uh finish so tired but so happy
because the people the people take the thank say thank you to
us and and you know you receive the the the love from the people say come on
well okay here again yeah but it's an amount of stress they say why I can make
again this yes yeah I have to I have to guys
if if it's allowed to show you something it's not totally not an astronomy
because one of my hobbies is also plane spotting and we have an we have an air
Highway CH outside my balcony all all Landing all Landing
plane spotting okay yeah right today I catched this
one and um if you look if you look nicely you
can see you can see the co-pilot what
yeah very well P very shaking his fist at you yeah yes I think stop invading my
privacy peka yeah yeah great great
show that's great yeah yeah well gentlemen uh it is um we're
now at about 12:20 in the morning here Becca what time it's already you stayed up all night right
721 yes right what time is it in Argentina 220 yes 22 220 yes same Coy or
yes the same yes and it's it's a
021 for you Scot 12 yes
yes yeah yes this is a Late Late Late Late Show that's true is the Late Show
that's right the last one right last one night somebody should send me their B
level movies and I can I can show some movies and we can comment on them yeah some scci science fiction bad
science fiction movies um there is actually a program going on right now in
in Sweden that U are about the old science fiction movies oh okay and from
50s 40 50s 60s per you you could see those gas
and all those aliens yeah yeah really cheesy I love it yes there was one movie
the production cost was $20,000 but the income was $1 million
wow yeah incredible sometimes such movies can do that that's true
yeah well the next our next Global star party will be on not on Tuesday it'll be
on Wednesday because next Tuesday is my birthday okay so it's a solar eclipse in here in
Sweden yeah when is the eclipse 10th it's the 10th okay yeah and we have a
maximum what what time what time on the 10th uh we have a maximum at
1253 I think so I will take a movie on that so I can if if it's clear so I can uh
share it next time 12:53 what time would it be here Pekka it's um it's 6 am no
it's 5 AM 5 AM yeah and you don't see it
at all I but you will I will we have a tra uh
38% it's a partic in Sweden
okay yeah it's from if you think a circle it's from 2 a.m. to 11 a. 2: P.M
to 11 am so it's swiping
over well at the very least um it'd be great to have you on one of the
afternoon shows and you can show your the results of the eclipse that'd be great absolutely absolutely I will set
up three different mounts my uh I will take it with my uh
ed80 and uh AC 178 and then I will have my skywatcher star Adventure on time
lapse and my and then my uh Canon with 300
mm such just steel photos great yeah wonderful wonderful so
there will be some nice shoots I hope so I will will be prepared right right
today already because it will be uh clear so I take a test shots so
everything is practiced because this is my first
Eclipse since 1999 we were then on Cyprus and that was
a total eclipse and this is the first one if
there is clear sky but right today what I saw it will be
cloudy oh but it can change it can change wait wait to the two days before
or one day if if it's cloudy in Stockholm I will see if there is a I can
drive about 300 kilometers 3 hours away I will drive for that I will take my
skyw aventer and small things with me yes so an annular this will be an
annular Eclipse yeah so you you're definitely going to have have to have the filters on the the entire time yeah
it's it will be Continuum filter and uh F filter white filter in the
front right so it will be secure
thing awesome yeah we hope the best we hope the best that's
right yeah yeah well gentlemen thank you so much for participating on on our program our
Global star party uh it's it's you guys make the star Party happen so uh it's a
lot of fun and um I I always learn something new every time and it's great
to hang out with uh my friends you know and buy some too tooth Peach what do you
call them that's right a bunch of them yeah dental floss focusing tool yes yes yeah
I never would have I would have never come up with the idea myself yeah it fits it fits perfectly in
Celestron eight yeah that's great that's great
uh okay well thank you thank you very much I want to say thank you to the audience that uh again we'll be back on
tomorrow um actually that's today uh right now um uh with um first
like Chronicles with Kent Marts and um Cameron will be on with us as well so uh
for cam Camron and um um and until then uh you guys keep
looking up the next party will be the next Wednesday right it be Wednesday
June 9th Wednesday yes June 9th an honor again that's
right absolutely thank you it's honor toone bye bye thanks a lot thanks
everyone have a good one bye Night by bye bye good night
John by S by bye bye
CER as we're wrapping up here I'm looking at the black ey Galaxy uh
m64
visually well this is a nice
animation
yeah