Global Star party 133

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[Music] good Lord if you keep watching that
you'll get hypnotized and then I'll have full control over the entire audience
so anyways um thank you for tuning in to the 133rd
Global star party uh with Uncharted Cosmos this thing came to mind to me because of
course uh it seems like every few days we hear about some major discovery about something that we did not know about
before in the universe and uh but there's also that aspect of discovering
things about for yourself you know you're in your backyard you're learning how to use your equipment whether you're
doing astrophotography or visual work and you see something uh and experience
something that you've never experienced before something you've never seen before and uh
um you know I'm not talking about aliens or anything like that but I am talking about maybe finding Steven's quintet for
the first time or even something is simple but utterly profound is seeing
Saturn's rings for the first time these things have big implications for how
they change your perspective and where you think you fit in in the universe and
so that's the topic uh the theme for this 133rd Global Star Party
um I am uh pleased to have a lot of our regular presenters on uh tonight
um but also a returnee half Griffin is coming back again for his second Global
star party which is great um so we'll get started uh with uh David
Levy for some commentary and some poetry David well thank you thank you Scott and uh I
have to tell you that you are a fabulous writer you sent me some original writing
yesterday and I thought it was just beautiful I kind of wish you'd read it for everyone to everybody after I'm done
but anyway um the theme of this star party about the
about how the universe really is different for each one of us
a hidden Universe perhaps an unseen Universe perhaps or just a personal universe
and for me that brings me back into history Way Way Back Into history
the most important probably the most important event in Roman history is probably the one
that took place on March the 15th The Ides of March 44 BC when guys Julius
Caesar was assassinated in the senate in Rome
and uh it's kind of it's kind of interesting to see that because uh
because I was I was studying that in high school just before we had a similar event that took place
in uh the United States in 1963 with the assassination of our President John
Fitzgerald Kennedy and so in a way history is a way of repeating itself
one of the things that happened back then we think was the appearance of a very bright
comet Caesar's adopted child Augustus took over
as Emperor after Caesar was assassinated and he arranged a series of Memorial
games and during the time they were held during Julius Caesar's birth month of
July 44 BC and there were observations done at that
time of a very bright comet possibly the brightest comet in historic times
uh it was it is called informally Julius Caesar's comment
and in Latin cytus ulium or
a star of Caesar or the Julius Julius Julian star
it was also known as caesaris astrum that was star of Caesar
and uh it's not a beautiful language I only know one person is still still
speaks it fluently that's Randall Roosevelt who has been here on the global star party before but is
not tonight by quotation tonight is a very short one
in 1599 William Shakespeare decided to revive the tradition
of the ancient uh events in Rome with his play Julius
Caesar he talks a lot about the assassination
even as Caesar and Latin singing at two brute as his friend Brutus is also
stabbing him and uh
so many interesting things happen but he doesn't talk directly about the comet
maybe he's experience something that we don't or maybe he chose other ways
unseen ways to to borrow from the theme of this week
of unseen unimagined ways of talking about the comic and so here comes the
quote it was actually right out of Julius Caesar and as when his wife Calpurnia is desperately trying to keep
him from going to the Senate that day she says with Beggars die there are no
comets seen the heavens themselves blazes forth the death of princesses
in those days comets were harbingers and most of us today
know that we are sort of scientists reject the astrological interpretations
but I would want to say that if it weren't for the work of the astrologers where thousands and thousands of years
prior to the invention of the telescope we wouldn't have a Hubble Space Telescope
would not have the James Webb Space Telescope I don't think we know anything about the
night sky we're not for the work of the astrologers and so on that note I hand
you back to Scott Rogers and thank you Scott thank you thank you
well I I know that some amateur astronomers
seem to get somewhat offended when they're someone asked them about their
astrology and they're just kind of getting their words mixed up a little bit between astronomy and astrology but
you're right we owe a debt of gratitude to them you know they certainly took it
quite seriously and Society took them quite seriously at the time and I guess
some still do and uh but uh if it
involves looking up at the sky it can't be all bad you know so all right
um I am uh pleased to uh welcome back David
eicher David is getting ready uh for uh a uh trip over uh to Europe
for some of the starmus planning but um uh tonight we have him and he has picked
out of all the Exotic deep Sky objects he could pick uh I see 13 1396.
and um uh David what how do you arrive what you know you've got so much to
choose from how do you how do you pick one is it I'm sure you don't just pick it out of a hat
well to be honest I had nothing to do last year I found myself running out of
things to do entirely really yeah and so I got out some really detailed star
atlases and I thought well why don't I do a project so I went exhaustively through some very large format very detailed
star atlases and I made a list of really interesting weird strange objects
and it's possible that a lot of them will show up in a special issue of astronomy magazine soon that may have
something to do with it but that's beside the point so I made a list of uh
all the really weird interesting objects I could find I'm just going from the
north to the South through all these atlases and thought about these objects and came up with a list of 424 objects
that were really odd unusual stand out weird uh puzzling strange objects and
and so I'm working my way through list and if I weren't sure that you were
going to be tired of me way before that this point we would have eight years
worth of stuff on the global Star Party to talk about on this list more material okay so yeah so so there's a little bit
of a backlog as as you'll tell with ic1396 it's in Northern cepheus we have
a long way to go with this I think we're you know 16 or 18 objects into 424 so
far so you can tell me Dave I've had enough okay one of these times okay but
but we're working our way Southward and this is really an interesting object I've been talking about some really
obscure things that there isn't always a lot to say about but they lie sort of at
the perimeter of what amateurs can either visually observe or even image in
some cases this one is a weird strange complex object but it's really my much
more known uh in terms of being studied and and so this one is not going to be
quite so uh oh what did I do now cancel that this this one's not going to be
quite so unusual tonight it's a little bit better studied um and I will show you some enthusiastic
ideas about ic1396 if I can get to it and start a
slideshow and can you see some Taurus a yes okay forget about that it has
nothing to do with anything but but this is a look perhaps toward you know what our galaxy will look like once it's
merged with the Andromeda galaxy 6 billion years from now and we're long
long long gone on planet Earth for 5 billion years or so at the minimum by
then but anyway let's go on to things that are more Salient and we'll talk about
ic1396 which is a somewhat large and reasonably bright uh emission nebula in
the far northern sky it contains a lot of complex objects within this region
and within the nebula itself and it's associated with one of the brightest uh
intrinsically brightest stars we know of in the entire Milky Way musafii it's a red super giant there are
also some interesting double stars in the field as well struvet 2816 and and
2819 a huge number of complex dark nebulae are involved with ic1396 the the
choicest one is Vandenberg 142 it's called the elephant trunk it's very well known it's been imaged with Hubble and
with all sorts of other professional Observatory telescopes as well other dark nebulae b161 and 160 and
162 and others um and and so of course what do emission
nebulae do but but eventually you know are governed by gravity and and
compressed down into making new open star clusters and in this case it's
making the cluster uh trempler 37 which is actually a fairly young cluster it's about 4 million years old
so this is an object that is really noteworthy because it's a really interesting object in the far northern
sky we think of the far and northern sky is kind of bankrupt a really interesting bright deep Sky objects but this is one
of them it's actually faintly visible to the naked eye this nebula from a really dark
sight um you've seen it from the Texas Star Party and other places like that that are pretty
um nicely dark sights uh it's a degree across so it's large
um and of course it's it's a stellar Nursery as essentially all a mission nebulae are the bright star musafii is
really a standout it's a fourth magnitude star it's a little bit variable but it's mostly famous because
it was known as herschel's Garnet star it's a really deep reddish star and it
was a favorite object of William herschel's among Stellar objects it's one of the largest known Stars it's it's
about a thousand times the diameter of the sun and a hundred thousand times more luminous than the Sun so you know
Although our sun is a middle mass and middle Luminosity star we're nowhere
near the top of the spectrum if you will on in both of those yeah ways and and
it's it and also the nebula are approximately 3 000 light years away
remember with deep Sky objects when people will often quote you know aside
from Gaia distances of really close objects which are pretty well known when people say that this galaxy is 61.5
million light years away you know we don't know distances to distant objects
in the universe anywhere near that accurately so we're still working on that as time rolls on
this is a really rich area of Milky Way uh in cepheus as well and and it's a
really nice air which is not atypical of the far Northern Milky Way uh and it's a
really nice area just to look at with binoculars or a wide field telescope as well even if you're just exploring
what's there there are lots of clusters and and Rich star fields that are worth attention so here's the uh Atlas page as
I've been showing from Ron stoyan's Atlas that's a pretty Compact and and
moderately pretty detailed Atlas as well and you can see there are a lot of deep
Sky objects in this tiny little piece of cepheus Milky Way here there's
ic1396 smack in the middle here and you can see the nebulosity actually extends
out to the garnet star just north of uh the nebula there and you can see how
many dark nebulae and and other objects are involved with this object and and that there are lots of other deep Sky
objects just a degree or a few degrees away as well so it's a really good area to explore
here with North over to the right more or less is ic1396 and you've probably
seen it many times because it's a bit of a you know pet object for Hubble and other instruments at least parts of it
it's a large object and the bright star at upper right here is is musephi is the
garnet star so that's one of the largest most luminous stars that we know of in
our uh on our side of the Milky Way um and you can see the dark nebula that
is on the lower Central part of the this image of the object is the famous one is
the so-called elephant trunk nebula that's from Sydney vandenberg's list of
nebulae that he made many years ago Tony Halas this is not in the professional
Observatory image this is Tony Halos at the upper end of amateur Imaging here
and you can see what a spectacular amount of detail we can see in this dark nebula and Bart Bak our old friend David
would be proud of this because there's a lot of uh gravitational collapse going
on here down into what will become Bach globules and little infant stars going
on here as well and you can see it's just a really tiny piece of the nebula
and you can see how many uh interesting and colorful stars are in this area
this is not the Hubble either I I left that one out it's a very well known shot but this is a little bit more detailed
higher resolution shot that was taken with the almost one meter wind telescope
on kit Peak by Travis Rector and again you can see just incredible detail in in the elephant trunk here one of the nicer
examples of a dark nebula and you can with a large backyard telescope see this from a dark sky site reasonably well
visually as well um in this Rich star field so it's an interesting object to go after that's
all I have on ic1396 and again we're late very late now in
our 50th anniversary year of the magazine we've got as I mentioned some surprises coming up the turn of the
calendar year before we get to the big solar eclipse of next April
um and uh Michael and I have written this book as I've mentioned on child's introduction to space exploration to get
kids excited about the new era of space and I will be uh in Slovakia next week
getting ready for next spring starmus we've produced a film actually about
starmus that we're going to be introducing next week and we will have a lots of things to announce next week
about next spring starmus the seventh starmus festival with lots of Nobel
Prize laureates speaking and uh important scientists from other Allied
Fields biology and chemistry and other areas astronaut explorers and of course
some rock and roll with Brian May and others there as well and so we'll have a lot of fun next spring we were going to
be this week in Armenia and unfortunately we can't all be doing constructive things and getting along uh
because there's another uptick in the struggle now between Azerbaijan in Armenia and uh Yerevan is
being flooded with refugees now so we had to cancel this week next week they'll all be absent Scott from you in
Slovakia but I'll be back the week after right right one thing
I would like to add if I could David yes I am thrilled that you chose ic1596
today it is one of my favorite things to look at in the night sky is that right I didn't remember that David well if you
probably haven't discussed it before David okay I just love it and it was
introduced to me by my childhood friend may he now rest in peace Carl Jorgensen
yes and uh he he introduced me to the two multiple
Stars it turns out that Sigma 2816 is a triple
28 19 as a double yeah both extremely easy to separate but I strongly
recommend it for for you to look at it's easy to find and it's one of the nicest things in the
entire Sky to look at and thanks for talking about it excellent well I'm so happy to hear that David and thanks for
adding that and and we'll have another reason to go out and look at it now
excellent thank you David great and thanks thanks guys uh thanks
Scott as always um uh you know I am a I'm a big supporter of the astronomy magazine and
and uh you know highly recommend that you get uh you know uh subscription get
their 50th Anniversary Special Edition you know in fact get all the special editions because they're amazing and
they put a ton of work into them so um and you don't want to miss out
so David Levy asked me to read my poem or it's not really a poem but it's just
some writing that I did I'm trying to exercise some some writing and maybe
um and I've worked really hard in the last couple of years and trying to um Express My Views and feelings about
uh astronomy and uh so I'll give it a whirl here okay and this is this is titled
Uncharted Cosmos and I'm going to try to write something I don't know if I can do it every time but I'll try to write
something for each Global star party so it goes like this
uh aim a telescope to the night sky and take a road you have never traveled
you'll explore and discover for yourself as Mysteries unravel
stargazing in the vastness our egos dissolve We're Stars galaxies black
holes and what we don't understand evolve the Mind reflects Upon Our Cosmic mirror
and loosens our grasp to be free to roam creating fertile ground to lose our fear
of the unknown the entire universe including all of us are evolving and changing in natural
ways you can find peace as you wander and Ponder for the rest of your days
that's it okay wonderful smashing Squad thank you
for reading that thanks for sure thank you I'm turning red here anyways
so um I really appreciate that you guys should inspire me to do that kind of
stuff so that's it's really great and for any of you that are out there watching the audience and you have
something to say something to present something like that uh look uh I'm
really happy to have you join us and um and to experience what the global star party is all about uh because we you
know we want to hear from you too so thank you David thank you Scott you know you have a knack for that you know and
and with poetry you're a half step away from writing songs just saying you're a
musician so I we were talking about that earlier uh uh back not backstage
I expect I expect to hear some songs from you so okay excellent thanks Scott
thanks so much David all right okay so our next speaker um is uh Carol orange now Carol uh joins
us regularly he is the president of the astronomical League we try to have a
presence from the astronomical League here uh every time and um
uh Carol uh thank you for coming on and your talk is going to be about solar
eclipses myths fun facts and trivia so here we go yes and I've got a tough act
to follow I heard all these unknown talents I was in the world before so
well done it's gone today let's talk about eclipses tonight and
let me share my screen here
let's just miss fun facts and trivia
and in some ways I'm preaching to the choir we all know that in ancient times we had
some uh weird things from our point of view that people believed in back there as far as uh the astronomical phenomena
very phenomenal for example the early Chinese Babylonians Greeks and Hindu
they were able to predict eclipses but they didn't understand what was behind that what the science was behind it
so instead they needed to attribute these events to Supernatural causes and
that allowed them to somehow uh be okay with all that
one fact I was I'd go to the first one I was going to talk
about the second but let's go to the first one it's reassuring that in 600 million
years uh we will no longer have solar eclipses because of the uh slowing down
of the Earth's rotation and also the tide system on Earth so we've got plenty
of time to observe some more but just in case we need to make sure we try to observe the two coming up this year
one thing I found fascinating that I was in the world before was that the helium was discovered in 1868 during a total
solar eclipse in India and I thought that was very interesting they observed the spectrum of the Sun during that
eclipse and that's where we found out about that
some other anti-responses to Eclipse myths natives of Columbia for example
shouted the heavens promising to mend their ways and walk on the straight and
narrow way the Nordic Norse culture uh the gods put
an evil enchanter on lokai and got Revenge by creating wolf-like Giants
some of which would swallow the sun thereby causing an eclipse
for many people of course as we were alluded to earlier there was a lot of fear involved and if Eclipse occurred
during some phenomena a certain time of the year uh they would attribute that to
the Gods uh being out of favor with them often they there was a beast of some
kind involved maybe set up to destroy the sun with some kind of fate or a
angry guard as the whole Spectrum involved in that
in India many believed that the dragon was uh
devouring the the Moon and Sun and people uh really had to defend them
against that dragon the Japanese thought and ancient times that the poison was being dropped in the
sky and they had to cover their uh streams
Alaskan natives believe that the moisture and Dew would cause sickness so they turned their dishes upside down
what a wonderful thing to think about and even today uh and we what we think
are very modern type times and we think we're quite sophisticated but even back
15 years ago for example in 1991 in Baja California when there was a solar
eclipse uh astronomers were surprised by the Weeping and wailing of a individual
Hotel stuff because they were terrified of Darkness uh beginning
wow a few years later in 1995 an example was given in Cambodia instead of
screaming and banging during the solar eclipse soldiers uh shot into the air to
scare the Mystic dragons away and actually the Casual is happened from
Bullis being in the wrong direction so that sort of backfired I was guessing you're saying as recently as of 2010
near the uh during a near annular out of fear people stayed home and of
course we've heard that Terror stories over the years of people afraid as schools afraid to let their students go
out to see the solar eclipse even though there was proper shielding available
and just recently we were honored to have a dinosaur join us in 2017 in
Casper Wyoming for our event there in conjunction with Eclipse we just staced
the dinosaur coming along and thought that was be very appropriate actually I cannot lie I've got to disclose that
that was the exhibit in front of the science museum but it made for a good backdrop there
I'd like to put in a plug for Alcon 2024 which will be held on July 17th through
20th in Kansas City we just pinpointed the date not the date
but the location it will be held at the DoubleTree Hotel in Overland Park which
is a nearby suburb of Kansas City and we would urge you to put that date on your
calendar now it will be also available online for viewing and so we hope you
will join us either in person or online for that event and more more information will be
forthcoming and there's my credits and Scott back to you and hopefully
we'll have some more of those wonderful verses uh from you in the future that was good thank you
thank you well that's great uh Carol um
tell us a little bit more about how people can join the astronomical League there's I mean there's still lots of
people who don't know how to get involved in our community yes there are a couple of different ways the major one
is to locate a local League astronomy club in your area and we can get
assistance on that on our website at astrolig.org uh and that's probably the easiest way
however there are other options such as becoming a member at large and that
gives you all the benefits or many of the benefits of being a member of a regular club for example many of our
members uh join the League for uh primarily being able to go out observe
objects with uh manuals we uh provide or have available uh uh or else uh have
other ways of doing it however uh a member at large has the same right to go
out as part of the membership and observe their objects and get awards for
all those and it's a major motivator because once one gets one award it's a
very motivating to say well I did the messier objects uh Group which has 110
on it so maybe I could gravitate to the next uh maybe uh I live in the city I
could do an urban award so there's all kinds of of warsawville we are up to I
think it's 85 right now there's something for everyone uh we have the Scott puppies for uh kids to get them
started in astronomy and something that's not too heavy duty and we just have something for everyone and so I'd
encourage you to really Avail yourself of the opportunities our website has lots of uh observing AIDS uh several of
which can be downloaded for use in your own club or personally and we would recommend that you do that because
there's uh always uh it's good to have some help going through the process of observing the night sky and uh so I
thank you for your time thank you so much thank you
oh and uh I I asked the audience this question and I I don't know this about
you I know you love astronomy and practically giving your life over to promoting astronomy in this community I
know you do a lot of other things we have a great profile page on you but uh what was the what was the turning point
for you what was the first time you were like utterly awestruck or surprised about the experience of astronomy yeah
well you know ironically when I grew up as a kid in the Ozarks uh
I had these wonderful Dark Skies at that point I didn't appreciate them as far as
anything related to astronomy uh but I love the Beautiful Dark Skies however as
an adult uh my one of my first jobs uh in Kansas City one of my colleagues says
you know you really ought to get out and join our club and see what's out there
and I thought well I've seen Dark Skies before it's nothing to it but I got
hooked and that was a during the holidays uh how he's comment and I had
the comet catcher the whole nine yards of course I got Afflicted with aperture fever and went on up and I have I'll
have to admit that there's 11 inch right now that doesn't get nearly enough work but I need to work on that but that's my
introduction and it's just such a it's one of the most relaxing things I can do in my life is get out under the knife
skies and really uh appreciate the vastness of this universe we're all part
of and that's what it is for me it's just really uh realizing that we're a
part of this whole scheme not the only part of it but an important part of it that's right
okay thanks so much sure thanks for sharing that uh
um John Ray I asked the audience John Ray had uh mentioned that his first he's
watched on Facebook his first enlightening experience was at a very young it was as a very young child
sitting by myself by himself at the family's yard at Sunset I looked up and
saw the moon I was awestruck Moonstruck and it caused me to Forever turn to
astronomy for everything wonderful in my life I was seven years old yeah so
that's really cool and then um Andrew corkill uh reported back he said he
became interested in astronomy at age 13 and the first big surprise was to learn
that there was a public Observatory less than three miles away from his house it
took him two years to hear about it it's not amazing how that goes though
often we find that phenomena uh people in our in our areas don't understand
that we have these facilities here at all they it's like I've never heard of anything like that well it seems like
and up until the time they kind of get turned on to it somehow you know so
um you know a lot of people have these experiences like these guys where it was
kind of uh something they were doing by themselves but uh for all of you that do
astronomy Outreach sidewalk astronomy and sharing the experiences in schools and with your friends and stuff like
that you are really changing Minds you're shaping uh the way that they see
um the universe and giving giving them an important New Perspective so it's uh it's uh I always love to hear
about these things so thanks so much and thanks for sharing your story
okay so up next is um Cesar brolo Cesar normally comes on
really late at night yes Argentina he's a two hours ahead of us he's yeah
he's just uh back from a the Kata am I going to pronounce this correctly
Catamarca katamarica but you know yes yes it's it's a
original people we call it the original people or Aboriginal people indigenous
name yes and all all the the cities around like
[Music] um and many many many cities in Katamari
and other provinces are like Arkansas because Arkansas is a
it's something that is is a not English or a Spanish name and this is the same
for katamarica or uh
many many bookables of cities in Catamarca on in or in a many many
another Province have a the original names
and you know that especially uh in the North East Northwest uh sorry Northeast
of Argentina we have a mix of cultures between
Incas and different original people
um it's very interesting because they have a very quantity of archaeological Treasures
places where they they are continuing make archaeological excavations it's one
of the things that is very interesting in katamarga because America is a huge
Province inside Argentina starting in let me show you a map sorry
it's more interesting that I speak but I speak with the map for the audience it
will be more more interesting
foreign
yes I can hear you this is more far far away that were live Maxi
Maxi really is in my area is here he is what I said he let me yeah
yes I show you here
can you can you see the map yes okay and well here we are
as as a maxi appear Tolkien Maxi is
here okay and we are going
to the North West Northeast sorry
Northwest not West yes Northwest sorry sorry
I'm sorry Northwest and this is
here it's around I don't know in this one in miles is is
two thousand uh 200 kilometers I think that is maybe 8 800 miles I think
if somebody can make the the calculation
and here is the city of San Fernando de cartavarka
uh we are going to to this let me show you
[Music] here it's very near today
to the city of San Fernando but they change from Mortal maybe a
in the in the city of San Francisco
is around three no more this year we choose a more near
place in that America because last year we
we went to the courtesya area really more more
far far away maybe it is
a scenario where you can see anything it's 60
let me check what
it's more by this area and something that we call
it La Ruta De Los Angeles and but this year
this year we are in this area especially in this area if we
if we go to a live pollution map let me show you
it's not the perfect place
but it's going to be cold
maybe a little in the night but it's not like last year in in the Kurdish era
I'll show you the screen
okay here
is in this area we are we are going to to be in this
area yes here do you have
uh World Trace and it's it's it's slow comparing
with the altitude of the last year we was at three
thousand four hundred meters um uh 700 meters 300 300 3700 meters
last year they they all tell and now we are at
only uh 1000 and the the place where we
we have the the is a little more but it's around you know it's around 1 500
no more model 3 very dry very dry weather as say Maxi of course that is
not a it's not uh you know it's not uh a
warmer night in this time of the year but in the in the in the day you have
maybe 25 Centigrade degrees
um in the night maybe you have 10.
but last year we we have in the near to the Los Angeles we have zero
we don't need we don't need it turn on the refrigeration of our ccds
well I can show I can show you too some pictures
of the last year
where we have
here are was the different places that we we cited in the side of the Kurdish
era probably probably uh next year
we're returning to to the same place because yes yeah this is it's another place it's
not the place where we are going next week that's a week but this place is
amazing not for astrophotography if not
to to make visual observations and in the way you feel that you are in the top
of the world because these places that we decided are all over 4
000 meters a high all all
anyone is is is uh is a [Music]
is a below below 4 000 meters the old the
hotel is at yeah three thousand seven hundred uh but we was
totally amazing as soon as by the quality of the sky maybe this was about
three one um you know all pictures that they took are pictures of cell phone because
I we went totally uh completely amazed
to only use our eyes under this incredible sky
you know that that it's impossible to understand that this is the the typical pictures with cell phones of medium
gamma not the the the more uh the more sophisticated and
this is all that we we can um
we experimented last year I was uh
um third party with 70 people this year we are going to be
110 people that for Argentina is a great number uh in a because
um this is it's a big country in expansion but we are only no more than
45 45 uh million people
um you know and uh it's um for our quality of people this is a
great number for foreign for this economic our economic situation
now because for the people maybe you can see here the large and the small magellanic
clouds and this is the best way to to explain
how we feel in in our eyes the sky
I think that was more realistic with this because it was really really strong
the the big and the small magellanic clouds in
the sky really at the Naked Eyes
well of course we we carry
dobsonians maybe you you know this uh
um model of telescope that we enjoyed the the first lie 130 with the access
100 more RC classic ranks you know
the people really enjoy it enjoy it the the view the negative
the the naked eye view of this guy this year the the sky is going to be more similar
to World 3 to our sampari in uh Grande
you know we we're thinking to make a crazy place like last year and each
another year a normal place for the people uh because the the altitude
sickness really was strong in the in the in the people that came last year
um because if you are at near to 4
000 meters over level C C Level and maybe you feel a little uncomfortable
and sick and you need time to to to to to feel better
um this is so far away because actually we are going at only 36 kilometers for
for the city uh and last year the first for the city
of Captain America last year we needed another day to go to the mountains
because it's in the same Province you are going the shape of the province is
is that you are going from the center of the country to the West
well um I can show you two
some pictures that are full of foods
there's lots of reasons to go to Argentina if you're an amateur astronomer yeah
I can show you a small video let me
let me show you a a little video that
um that they prepare
try to share
sorry that is not with the the most uh high resolution
but they prepare they they would think that the the
terms and culture uh government the part of the government
dedicated to to this area of of
um culture and and tourism they are
working with us in a smart smart way and they are
support us because they understood that the Astro Turismo for this province is
very very important they prepare this um this advertising for tourism but with
the idea to to to uh show The Province like a
beautiful place to make after Dorito to see the sky and this is very interesting
because it's a very changing landscape and Province it's a province that that
here in Argentina is maybe the lowest uh no by the people
um in Argentina when you talk with the people many many people say oh no I
never I never went to Captain America and it's such beautiful it's incredible
um have a so different landscape and um biomas and places where do you you
can enjoy not only the sky if not the landscape in the day sports you know
um well this was something interesting where you have a a place that are really
interested in in work for for the growing for for
something that started the last year last year the governor of Captain
America visits us while the star party because for them it's very important and they really they
really are uh make a great support we have people
um of of the government working with us a very uh very concerned with the the
this activity and they are making a great
um a gray plant for teach after tourismo to receive
people in The Province to show the sky it is very interesting because they they
have an idea of this new industry that is in everywhere
receive people to to show the sky you know and it's very interesting really is
very interesting um well in any in all my videos uh of
course it's they I have food I ever ever I think that we are we are talking about
astronomia and gastronomia many times I I told that gastronomia with the G in
Spanish is something related with the foods uh um it's only a g of difference and our
our we told that many many times that uh why here is this second Corner
well we are waiting for the people next week um we uh of course that we are loving
for the next year that we return to probably to the to the Andes again that
people from from many many uh parts of the world from the audience uh are
invited because it's it's a great place and it's such beautiful
place and the people is really warm you know not only not only the the
the place it's not the people that receive in a in an abworming you know
um things that that are so good and this is really something that we are working
in this um of course at my return I'll prepare a
presentation of how was the the the Captain America Star Party
thank you very much thank you so much thank you
okay yeah um we are
getting some great comments from from people still uh
the uh from the audience and uh
let's see Barbara Harris is watching on YouTube
Barbara's uh has given a couple of presentations on our programs and she is
also a big supporter of the astronomical League she said the biggest astronomical
fact that was such a surprise to me is learning that when we are looking at
astronomical objects that we are actually time traveling we are looking
back into time I think that strikes a lot of people
uh Mary Allen reports he says public Outreach is a very important part of
astronomy to me RC watching on YouTube says thank you Dr Levy that comment of yours got me
interested in astronomy I'm sure that those comments uh that
David had discovered have gotten Untold thousands um looking up at the sky
Andrew corkill said I was I was surprised the last time in Lincoln uh
Nebraska as local physics students were at an observatory far out of town
I asked about Hyde Observatory and they never considered it they said too much light pollution
well you know with all the new technologies and stuff like that that astronomers
have available to them today uh observatories that are kind of stuck in
you know too much lit areas uh have gotten a uh a
new lease on life here so um I think that's great
Harold lock says I started seeing astrophotography by a cousin in an old radio buddy told by Stargazer buddy I
might get interested in that Hobby and he sent me his old Criterion four inch telescope
Joshua Tree astronomy Arts Theater is watching on Facebook I'm not sure who's behind that
but he's uh they said I moved to a Joshua Tree California and the night sky
was so brilliant as compared to Anaheim I can attest that I've gone to Joshua Tree many times that I had I had to see
that fuzzy spot in Orion so I bought I brought I bought a broken neck star 11
this is a Celestron nextar 11 at a local swap meet fixed it and that was it
without the go-to functioning I hand guided it around went to my surprise M57
centered up and with a gasp I was hooked yeah okay I can relate to that
um yeah so thank you thank you Cesar for
it's a pleasure it's a pleasure yeah and really well I hope to to return with the
with the material from the third party to in two weeks ahead
thank you very much thank you thank you very much okay so
um um next up is uh hap Griffin hap uh was
on the last Global star party and um uh we're very happy to have you back so
um he's uh he's a fantastic astrophotographer he's worked a lot with Primavera highsini on the asteroid work
and I think he's been an inspiration for many people so app thanks for coming on
and um uh what do you have for us tonight well I appreciate being here uh I was
surprised that you mentioned earlier about uh the overall theme of learning
things for yourself and that really really matches with what I'm gonna talk
about tonight um I'm a touch on amateur radio astronomy which is something that's
fairly new to me but uh it's amazing what you can do with with homemade equipment and
free software so that's what I'm gonna be talking about tonight let me share my screen
and go to here and
should be able to let's see let's get this there we go uh so we're going to be talking about
initial steps in radio astronomy um this is a picture of my Observatory
group we have five observatories on a dark sky site here in South Carolina
and as you can see there there's the Milky Way uh we all are astrophotographers so uh the front of
the observatories are open the roofs are open and and when we have the cameras going and running on automation we sit
out on the deck it back in the back at night and play guitar and drink wine and count satellites and and all that sort
of thing so we have a good time but the Milky Way is always a big a big uh Big Show there and the question is and
something that I've always uh wondered uh and you know for the last several
decades I guess as long as all of us have been amateur astronomers we've been told that the Milky Way galaxy is a
spiral and so the question that I had was how do we get from what we see in
them as a Milky Way to the fact that it's a spiral where we can't see beyond
the dust clouds that that are really just uh right in our immediate area
because light just does not penetrate we can't see the the you know hardly past the core much less the other side and so
how do we determine the shape and so this is the kind of thing that I like to do for myself is to to study on how that
was found out how that was discovered and try to replicate some of the some of the studies for myself and come up with
the same conclusions this is the front part of my Observatory uh near a little
town called Bethune South Carolina it's a it's it's it's only a board of five but it's about as dark as it gets around
here and uh cranberra has been there many times and uh behind this room
there's a a warm room with a bathroom and a kitchen and sleeping quarters and the control room and everything so I
don't have to be out here when it's when it's very cold all the telescopes are remote control from the other room
um but one thing I was uh interested in too was David's uh description of ic1396
that's a favorite objects of mine as well and one that I shot I think two or three weekends ago uh but I don't have
it on this laptop anyway my background is uh is in radio engineering television engineering
and I spent my I guess the last 40 years 45 years designing and building radio uh
transmitter sites satellite uplink sites uh television transmitter sites all
around uh South Carolina so I I my background is is is well into radio
technology and so partnering with that with with astronomy was just a natural
thing to do and of course if you look at a diagram of the of the electromagnetic spectrum
what we see is that little sliver what we see that our eyes and telescopes is
that little sliver in the middle uh of where it's marked visible light there's a whole lot of spectrum on both sides
both higher and lower lower in frequency than what we see and so we're limiting
ourselves if we only use visible light um to to detect uh astronomical objects
and we also live at the bottom of an ocean of air and the air is uh
transparent to some some frequencies and it's opaque to other frequencies you can see there uh let's see if I can move my
mouse here right here where the visible light is is part of it is pretty much
opaque but but it becomes uh I mean pretty much clear but it becomes opaque
at higher frequencies X-rays and ultraviolet light things like that which have to be studied from above our
atmosphere and satellites uh same thing here in infrared range that's why the uh
the web Space Telescope is is in space is because you really can't study infrared from from on the ground here
but here's a wide open area in this range from a couple of centimeters
wavelength up to about 10 meters wavelength where the atmosphere is totally clear and we can see lots of
detail through it now just like in any optical telescope
the limit of the angular resolution is proportional to the wavelength divided by the aperture and of course when
you're dealing with microns which is the wavelength of light you can get a lot of detail out of a small aperture but when
you're dealing with centimeters or even meters in wavelength you have to have a huge capture area and that's why radio
telescopes in general are very large um now here's a number of frequencies
this is a list of frequencies that the governments of the of the world protect for radio astronomy uh each uh material
or or uh molecule on the left over there it gives off a certain frequency uh in a
space environment and the one that I'm particularly interested in is is circled there is blocked out as neutral hydrogen
that gives off a radiation frequency of 1420.406 megahertz and that can be
received on a proper receiver now how that works is that in any one
single atom of hydrogen on average once every 10 million years the electron
which is normally spinning parallel to the proton flips its Spin and that's called a hyperfine energy transition
because uh that state where the where the spins are opposite uh has a slightly
lower energy than the normal state where they're the same and so a photon is
emitted and it turns out that it's been calculated that it has a wavelength of 21 centimeters or a frequency of
1420.405750 megahertz now you would think once every 10 million years wouldn't be very significant but put 10
million atoms together and you've got a one once every million years put a
gazillion atoms together and it basically turns into a constant signal
if you think about a hydrogen cloud in the arm of the Galaxy that might be light years across uh it it's basically
radiating a constant signal at that wavelength now this was uh this this was theorized
back in the 30s when quantum mechanics was first being uh
researched and it was finally discovered the receipt the signal was actually discovered in 1951 by two researchers at
uh uh at Harvard University and this is some of the first maps that
they made of the hydrogen in the Galaxy which shows that there is some sort of the circular maybe a spiral uh detail to
it and I'm a follow-up on that with with some homemade equipment here and show you what can be done this was my first
attempt at it last year just to see if I could pick up the hydrogen at all and
this is a a small about a one meter diameter Wi-Fi antenna I had to modify
the feed so that it picked up that frequency uh the 1420 megahertz frequency better than the Wi-Fi
frequency which is 2500 megahertz and sure enough I was able to get it now
this is basically a block diagram of the real simple radio telescope that I put
together it's a modified Wi-Fi antenna that is fed into a low noise amplifier
that you can actually get on on uh on Amazon for about forty dollars uh and
felt it fed by another or followed by another amplifier module that's also on Amazon and followed by a software
defined receiver it's just a little SDR a little uh USB dongle uh that's another
about another forty dollars that you can get on Amazon so all of this together I've got maybe a hundred and twenty
dollars in it and then I use my laptop with some free software called SDR sharp
and uh you use delirium to figure out where the Milky Way is so I can see when
it's pointing or when my antenna is pointing towards it the antennas that I use are are fixed and so I aim them due
south and basically let the Earth's rotation rotate the the Milky Way
Through The Beam of the antenna now here's what we're up against radio astronomy signals are extremely weak
they're named after a guy named Carl jansky which did a lot of the original research for Bell Labs uh an idea of
what a janski is would be the signal strength of a cell phone from the surface of the Moon so you can see we're
dealing with extremely small uh numbers here and our signal strengths and the
strongest Milky Way sources are around 2 000 janskis and so I'm I'm easily able
to see these so my little little small radio telescope is obviously got a
sensitivity of better than 2000 janskies these are some typical amateur radio
telescopes that people have used some old uh satellite TV dishes they made some uh
some horn antennas like over to the right out of aluminized house insulation
uh the dimensions for these are all over the Internet and they work really well this is what I'm using now this is the
1.8 meter modified microwave antenna that I got
from the scrap Heap where I work and um I built the the frame to hold a modify a
homemade feed horn on it and it's placed at my Observatory complex and it's
remote remotely controlled from my house here about 50 miles away
these are some details of it you can see in the upper left the feed horn itself is a six inch piece of stove pipe which
turns out to be exactly the right diameter for a 21 centimeter wavelength uh waveguide uh you can see some of the
electronics down below that are built into a plastic waterproof box from Lowe's and then I built a
uh amount for it where I could adjust the elevation and the Azimuth angle I
plan on motorizing that eventually but uh I'll probably end up with a bigger antenna before that
just a little bit of idea about so we can talk about where where some some of
the geometry of the uh of the Galaxy the galaxies in four quadrants uh quadrant
you can see where the sun is there which is about halfway out from the the center in One Direction quadrant one is
basically what we see in our summer Milky Way quadrant two and three we can see in the northern hemisphere as the
winter Milky Way uh but we pretty much can't see much of quadrant four from from the Northern Hemisphere that's
where the Mid-Atlantic clouds are off in that direction and you pretty much have to go below the the equator to be able
to see that area um obviously we see a different scene at
night uh when the earth is in the summertime position versus the winter time position and so that's why we see a
different version of the Milky Way we see towards the center of the Milky Way in the summertime we see towards the
outer part of the Milky Way at night in the winter time now the Milky Way has uh has uh
coordinates just like the sky does just like we have latitude and longitude on Earth and right Ascension and
declination in the sky there's also latitude and longitude in the uh looking
at the the uh the Milky Way zero degrees longitude is looking directly towards
the core from where we are uh positive latitudes are above the equator of the
Milky Way negative latitudes are below and uh the project that I'm going to talk about here is primarily looking
along the plane of the Milky Way uh as depicted by that line there the
center of the Milky Way Again is Zero longitude and all of my measurements are going to be along that Horizon of the
excuse me along that equator of the the Milky Way here's another picture showing
zero degrees longitude and as you go out to the left there's 60 degrees 120
degrees and it wraps back around back over to the other and comes back and 360 is obviously equal back where you
started here's a radio picture at 408 megahertz of the Galaxy a panorama and you can see
how the center is really bright we can see some bright spots in cygnus and Cassiopeia we see some extra Galactic
sources some Some Loops up above but we still don't see a spiral
um what I'm gonna be doing with this project is it will reveal the spiral now
if we were just to be looking at a pure signal from hydrogen on a spectrum
analyzer or the type of receiver that I'm using where amp where frequency is along the x-axis and amplitude is on the
y-axis we would see a single pure vertical line but what we actually see
is a gaussian frequency distribution and what this is caused by is Spectrum
spreading from Doppler shift these clouds that we're looking at have random
motion Within These hydrogen clouds that where some of the hydrogen is coming towards us and some is going away from
us and so we have dopplership both both uh positive and negative it causes these
emissions to give us these gaussian frequency distributions
and more likely what we see is that gaussian distribution that in itself is
offset from the normal standard of 1420.406 if it's shifted to the left uh
or lower in frequency then that means that the object is moving away from us and visual terms that would be called
red shifted if it shifted to the higher end of the spectrum then that's called Blue shifted and that means that we're
heading either towards it or it towards us so we can tell the amplitude and the
speed uh along the line of sight by looking at the radio spectrum and what
we generally find is that when we look through the Galaxy we see multiple signals at different Doppler shifts and
so what we're seeing is multiple hydrogen clouds and those hydrogen clouds are the arms of the Galaxy
now we have uh when we're trying to measure speed there's a lot of local motion that we have to take into
consideration we're in orbit around the sun we are spinning on our own axis
depending on where how far you are above the equator that depends on or that determines what your rotation rate is uh
and so all of that has to be reference to something called the uh the the local
standard of rest and it turns out that that radio astronomers have determined uh that that is the center of an area
that encompasses the the Dozen uh closest stars to us and so there's a way
that you can calculate what our motion is within that standard of rest area and
you subtract that out from the Motions that we measure By Radio astronomy and
it gets complicated but thank goodness there are calculators on the web that help a lot with that and it's sort of
like if you were on a roller coaster going all up and down and around and back and forth in an amusement park and
you were asked to find the speed of a train off in the distance uh what you would have to do would be to measure
your or figure out your instantaneous motion and subtract that from the motion
of the of the the distant train to get a sort of a realistic uh relative to a
local standard of rest measurement and that's what we do now here is what you see
down below I've got uh stellarium running and you can see right about now
there's the equator passing by of the of the Milky Way and if you look at the Spectrum in the upper left graph
what you'll see is the the frequency right around 14
20.405 megahertz and as The Milky Way comes into the beam of the antenna which
is depicted by that circle at the lower right you'll see the clap the signals come up
and you'll actually see a move uh due to Doppler shift and different signals at different
levels within the Milky Way and so that's what I'm doing is uh
uh let me try to move through here a little faster this is what I'm doing I'm doing a systematic study of uh of the
Galaxy starting at the center and moving Eastward every 10 degrees since the beam
width of my antenna is about eight degrees so I don't really want any overlap and I'm capturing Spectra uh the
radio frequency spectrum as as that location passes the Meridian because my
antenna is aimed Deuce out because it's not not in motion right now are not movable and so over the last year or so
I've captured all of the uh points along the Equator that that we
can see from my location during the year and um
let's see so what we end up with is a spectrum that looks like this this is a typical radio spectrum from 80 degrees
Galactic longitude and the vertical line there is the reference that is uh the
hydrogen frequency as it's not uh shifted one way or the other but what we see there is three different humps one
of those is right near the hydrogen frequency and so there's not red shifted or blue shifted very much and that's
just the hydrogen that's around us in the arm that we inhabit uh then there's two other arms that we are seeing off to
the right and the numbers down at the bottom is the velocity corrected uh
calculated from the the frequency shift but also corrected for that local standard of rest
now one thing to to to realize and I'm almost done here is that before we get
to the meat and potatoes is that our orbit around the sun uh can can be shown
on a a graphic of the Galaxy here and just like uh the keplerian uh motions of
our own solar system everything within our orbit are closer to the core is
orbiting faster than we are but everything outside of our orbit is orbiting slower than we are uh and you
can see that in the uh the the the frequency shifts of the uh results now
for instance if I'm aimed at zero degrees Galactic longitude in other words the antenna is aimed by that
yellow uh Arrow over to the left aimed directly at the core everything in in its line is traveling
relatively the same speed in terms of radio velocity it's not coming towards
us it's not really going away and so all of the signal is is kind of crammed up
around the reference frequency there isn't very much shift but as we move to the east uh this is at 28 degrees
Galactic longitude we see multiple humps develop and we can see uh the Doppler
shifts and if you compare them to this graph which is a an actual official NASA
best as we can estimate a map of the Galaxy you can correlate every hump in
these radio Spectra to the uh the the arms of the Galaxy Note that at that in
that direction uh a good bit of well there's Motion in both directions now
the thing that excites me the most is that little hump over on the right and if you follow the Galaxy of the era that
is uh The scudum Centaurus arm on the other side of the Galaxy and so we're seeing clear you know 70
000 light years across through the the muck around the middle of the Galaxy and we're seeing hydrogen in an arm on the
other side of the Galaxy and as we move further east the Spectrum changes uh
what happens is that we move from thing seeing most things uh traveling faster
than we are to traveling slower than we are and so the graphs move over to the right where they're uh where they're
blue shifted and we're catching up to all of these hydrogen clouds basically and uh as we go on around and so I've
done this for the whole uh number of uh uh places points that I could see from
South Carolina and uh if you graph all of this
what happens is the spiral shape of the Galaxy falls out of it it's it's really amazing and so by using
a little small backyard radio telescope I've duplicated basically the research
that was done in the 50s and 60s that determined that we live in a spiral galaxy and you know it's all done with
this this homemade equipment here uh some of it's from Lowe's some of it's from a junk pile some of it's from
Amazon and uh what I'm working with now is I'm working with a uh uh a Facebook friend
who's a mathematician and he's helping me to develop some automated uh data
analysis using Excel to find what the what the amplitude and uh and Doppler
shift is of every component that makes up each of these spectral signals
so basically out of all of this we we can make several deductions we're surrounded by hydrogen in distinct areas
so it's not non-uniform structure around us these areas all have different
relative radio velocities to us within each area the hydrogen is randomly
distributed with motion both towards and away from us that gives us the gaussian frequency distribution of the humps and
we see different spectral patterns as we look at various points along the the equator of the Milky Way and by plotting
these radio velocities at various angles along with a bit of math the spiral
pattern emerges which to me just blows me away moreover the relative velocities versus
distances from the core if you extend this and I've got more material on this that I don't have time for you actually
find that uh that our galaxy does not follow a pure keplerian mechanics and
that leads to the uh to the conclusion that we are immersed in a uh a group of
dark matter that they're that dark matter surrounds the Galaxy and gives it more mass that we really can't see
so I've got some future goals there um but I'll go ahead and move on to questions okay all right we're going to
ask the questions Here app um and they have to do with um
building your own radio telescope um uh Adrian nowick from YouTube is uh
he wanted to know uh his first question was how did you modify your antenna did
you was there any modification or well the the uh they're I guess he's
talking about the first one um they were the reflector itself is a parabolic so it's not frequency
sensitive other than the fact that the spacing between the the bars has to be
uh less than a half a wavelength at the frequency that you're going to be using uh for it to be an effective reflector
the feed point is what determines the the actual frequency of the the
antenna's operation and of course a a Wi-Fi antenna operates at 2.5 gigahertz
or 2500 megahertz and I needed it to operate at 1420 so I took apart the uh
the little dipole feed in it and reconstructed it with a longer element that matches the lower frequency and
also backs it up a quarter wavelength behind the uh driven element with a
reflector and it turns out that a compact disc is the perfect diameter to form a reflector for 21 centimeter
radiation so because it's aluminized and it you know I just glued it onto a
little piece of PVC pipe that was a quarter wavelength long and that uh that cleans up the pattern of the antenna and
keeps uh uh radiation coming directly into the radiator that doesn't reflect
off of the reflector from coming in out of phase and doing some cancellation so it helps the pattern and the gain of the
antenna um I think there's a group of people here uh watching right now that want to
build their own radio uh telescopes so yeah and I I would like to do a magazine
article at some point on this because it really is is fairly simple uh a lot of
these antennas these uh I'm trying to think of the name I was I
was using earlier but you can make them out of uh anything that any kind of aluminized plate like uh a lot of guys
use these styrofoam sheets that you insulate your house with they have enough oils yeah and yeah and you make a
uh a cone or a waveguide of the proper dimensions and it's just a matter of
going to Lowe's and buying 10 bucks worth of insulation and you gotta you got a radio telescope antenna
yeah so those of you watching when was the last time you only spent 10 bucks on a piece of astronomical gear okay really
and thank you all the way across our Milky Way yeah and the feed horn on mine
is a piece of six inch stove pipe which turns out to be the exact Dimension you need for for a circular waveguide and
the rest of it is just scraps from your Hardware being you know from your your your junk box and uh and some pieces
that you can pick up on Amazon I love it and I'm seeing I'm seeing radio waves like you said from 70 000 light years
away what's most important here is that uh you know a lot of us will read things
that's uh coming from what we believe to be reliable scientific sources and stuff
but how many of us actually get out there and try to prove it to ourselves and so that's something that uh is the
whole point of this that's really great so I always liked it and I've written some things for you for that that's
great I love to to figure out how do we know what we know that's right that's
right wonderful have thank you for coming on I hope to have you uh back on again because the audience is really
turned on by this thank you so much all right okay so
um we are going back down from uh from the USA down to Argentina again to Maxi
folaris and Maxie uh uh thank you for coming on to the 133rd Global star party
uh what do you have for us this uh this week good night everyone thank you
for inviting me sorry if I I'm going to cough because I'm I can't
I'm kind of sick right now but anyway about being on virtually is that they
can't catch whatever yeah no no sorry nah my contentious
you no no you can think about my wife this weekend because
she tells me that I'm going to sleep on the couch because
all the night I was it wasn't possible even for me you know
but uh you know I give it an advantage for that so I've been doing
astrophotography so anyway everybody wins okay
well uh good night everyone thank you for inviting me uh what I'm going to
show you sorry is what I'll be doing the last
Wednesday and weekend because I was working in different
objects in this case again practicing to Saturn because we are in
planetary season but also try to capture the moon the surface and the craters to
see what I will get with the with my my dobsonian telescope
but I put it anyway on my equatorial Mount you know but let me share my
screen okay do you see it yes yes right so
well basically what I've been doing was like I said a capturing a the Moon last
Wednesday and I was working with a bottle of 3x
and a dedicated camera for a astrophotography or deep Sky objects but
anyway I work with Roy um a resolution
and for example this is one of the first results that I get that night
this work from The Edge because the moon is going to be a full moon so I only
have two nights before that so I want to
see some craters and you know or practicing a planetary capturing SRA
lunar capturing and for example this is another one uh
this cost me a lot of gigabytes sorry
and I lots of like I say a lot of gigabytes of data because this is almost
the field of view with the Barlow 3x let me
put it on one to one and it's like you are auditing the surface
of the Moon so hmm and of course this particularly crater
that calls a Pythagoras
you know I was blown mine to have this uh because
you can see the shadow a of this
the nucleus of the crater uh showing almost touching the The Fringe
of the crater and I think this creature was almost
a 70 kilometers of diameter almost so basically it's like a
is traveling from here to a Mercedes another City from here
so anyway I really love to to practice with this and the night you
know for doing this it was a really good one because the the atmosphere was very
stable so I give a chance now with a more a less a resolution sorry
to again but the same the same
pillow View and now I turn it upside down because I
I want you to see the perspective of this one again but in the different way
and like I say it's incredible to see the shadows in the surface of this
creature and this nucleus here and the if the border that has also the his
shadow and you know it's like I said it's like you're orbiting the Moon is incredible
and only with a eight inches telescope um then more later I went to capturing
the Saturn I was doing almost a 20 videos of one
and a half minutes everyone and each one sorry and then they rotate
a and stack both of them so I have these results and I really
loved the sharpness that I get or that night
sorry and you know now we are going more
farther but anyway you can still watch it and
sometimes you can see some moons passing by and of course if you have more diameter
of a or aperture sorry of your telescope you're going to see much more details
and even sometimes they they shallow in
the surface of the planet so sorry
um one the then the the weekend I grabbed my equipment outside
and I Was preparing I I did a little
video to share on the social media and I don't
know if I can put a heated Scott because it is in Spanish but anyway I I
want I I want to show you but first of all uh
uh if you can't hear anything because I want to chase the the in Excel stereo
uh let me
okay do you hear me hmm I hear you yeah yeah okay yes
because I'm changing the uh now do you still hear me yes yeah
right so we're going to be more uh with the sound me
do you kill this the the sound bar now
okay well anyway let me put it on
we don't hear any audio so you might want to uh that's yeah let me maybe if I share
this uh now you did you hear it no no
no so they put this again so anyway if you find me on my Facebook page you can
see it but like I said it's going to be in Spanish uh
so well uh what I was uh saying on that video was that I Was preparing the my
equipment to um take pictures or all nights to one
single object that was the Alex nebula that is in Aquarius
here's the the my night sky from the
southern hemisphere and you can see here is Saturn and from allowed a star
but between those objects is the
hell is nebula and this Red Square
do you see it or not the Red Square
yeah you can see that the sorry the the mirror the the window of the stellarium
ah okay okay sorry uh where
now yeah yes ah okay okay sorry
um so like I said well this is the the my field of view of this object and
is between Saturn and from allowed on these days in Aquarius constellation
is here and then I went almost two nights of capturing
this object about the 40 degrees because this single
option is really high up Crossing almost my Senate if I put this
here's the object and
you can see it's almost at the Senate of my sky so it's a really
good one to capture and even you are in the pollution area using a like I use a
lxtreme filter you will going to help you for that so
let me show you what I what I get this is
sorry okay this is a single picture
of the night uh like I said this is a square a sensor so this is the field of
view that I get with my F4 telescope and you can see here is the nucleus star and
surrounded the the inis ionized
and that's a gives you the this the
lights and the colors of this place so I doing the the processing the
stacking and what I get was this which is the DBA
image so it changed a lot between
you know the I really love to see like this sun rays but between the this
I think clouds and this is my first time that I get these
results I I did the last year but with
the LST filter helps me to to give these details
so so well uh what I get for that to come
to compare when I process the the image was this and you it changed a lot of the
colors and the details uh like like you can see a
the colors and the shapes of the clouds are really really thin and I really love to to try this object
again and I'm really really happy about I'm still
working on it to continue processing and and what what the result that I will
get and then I'm going to like the results
that I give a chance because uh we have a large Channel Cloud racing
up so I give a chance to NGC 2017 and the result of that night a only one
and a half hour was this with the same with the same gear
and of course the structures and completely different
and the small clouds of dust and colors and shapes are
incredible you know it's like a
a painting objects
so I was working with the Forex palette to to try to get these colors and shapes
but I'm still working on it but but this
object I will capture in the couple weeks maybe
to to see what I what I get so well this is for all for me tonight thank you for
inviting me and I'm glad to to see you all again and I'm glad to see you again Jerry that you came back with us so well
she said enjoy your vacations next week and thank you maxi
and send send us pictures of those really ill those a pretty good night
okay yeah I'm Curry wine for you baby
thank you okay okay
so uh yeah a lot of people wishing you well Maxine and that you get better soon
so but thank you thank you everyone that's really um you know
uh uh great if you see my my desktop right now I have my new license
yeah and now it's on my path to two of
my my lungs so but I had to keep recovering thank
you thank you take care okay all right so uh coming up next is uh Jerry Hubble
Jerry has not been on for a while he's been missed um by not only us that give
presentations here but by our audience and uh Jerry thank you so much for coming on
to the global star party again and I see you're still at the start party
there now I can talk okay your audio is a little a little down we need to pick up the volume
while he's doing that Scott can you hear me pretty good I sure can awesome I just
wanted to double check that yep and Myron how are you doing I'm
doing good I'm in my garage now so if it's a little echoey that's why it's the only piece to place my house right now
okay can you hear me good maybe I just need to talk louder is that better
it's still kind of very low volume
how about now same that's the same
yeah I'm not sure
why don't you uh go ahead and just start talking Byron and I'll work this I'll see if I can
work this out okay I can do that um I'll let you guys sort
this out and yeah if you want to kind of listen in Jerry while you're doing that I might um ask you to if you can share
your screen for some of the videos yeah awesome cool okay well um hello
everybody it's uh it's really fun to be here I've been away to for a while doing other stuff and life happens you know
how that is um but um Iron with Suda I live in Virginia and
um I have a a partner in crime uh Jerry Hubble who both of us operate a small
remote Observatory here in Virginia called The Mark slavery observatory in scotton explore scientific have been generous benefactors for that and um
we've been uh our purpose is to just try to bring uh telescope time to teachers
and students and amateur astronomers from around the world but lately I've been distracted with another uh activity and that involves
having access to a really large refracting telescope um I live
fortunately only about an hour from Charlottesville Virginia and in Charlottesville is the campus of UVA
University of Virginia and on campus they have a 26-inch Clark refractor
um it's the observatory is the Leander McCormick Observatory and the Charlottesville astronomy club meets
there every month and um as one of the benefits of membership of this of this club you get to
look through this telescope well looking through it's a lot of fun but um I'm always I'm never happy just looking
through a telescope I want to test it I want to put it through its Paces to see what it can do and and uh to to really
do that I need as much time as I'm able to get on the telescope and fortunately
I've got a good friend down there in Charlottesville his name is Boris tarasta who is the observing director at Charlottesville club and uh he's
basically as enthusiastic as I am about observing and I've pitched several
projects to him about uh this telescope and one of them was I'd like to start using it to just capture
astrophotography uh video images of the moon and sorry about that my phone just left
and to um to maybe make animations that are um not possible with with smaller
instruments and using the immense focal length of this telescope and the resolution capability uh I think that
opens up a number of cool projects one of them being high resolution lunar Imaging and planetary Imaging using CMOS
cameras I thought what the heck you know this might be a really cool telescope to do that with so what do you do with a new telescope
that you get one of the first things you do is you star test it right um You go Okay how good is this telescope so the
very first thing I did with this 26 inch F-15 refractor was um we aimed it at
serious this past winter and last December and um I I was able to using my
iPhone and I don't have this video I don't think I sent it to Jerry but uh using the iPhone I was able to do a
pseudo phone call test with it by keeping serious just off the center of the field of view and then using my
iPhone uh afocally to image the Stars pattern through the the telescope uh
with the eyepiece out so I moved the the camera lens in place of the eyepiece
around just a little bit almost like you would be using a micrometer and I got it to the point where Siri the images series was just on the very edge of the
view and so you see this this shimmering um brilliantly lit lens that has the
seam pattern kind of flowing across it like Ripples and water and superimposed upon that seeing pattern are the
potential Optical defects in the lens and it's almost like a raunchy grading it's kind of a hybrid between a raunchy
grading test and a a phone call test and I was just amazed at how I could see
little dust specs on the lens I could see um just how good this lens really is and
it was made in 1873 or 72 by the Alvin Clark and Sons
um firm and the only defect I could see is a very very faint central zone of
about seven or eight inches in diameter where the tools were being used when they were polishing it and that was
probably less than a quarter wave easily so I got to thinking you know that looked really almost perfect to me and
and that was very encouraging of course I knew it would be very good lens but I had it I had to see it for myself you know oh sorry about that I think he's
fallen I'll just hold it it's kind of like we we were talking about earlier you know you want to know
the why and and the how and so I wanted to verify my verify for myself this was a really good lens so
um I went online and I did some research and I found out there was certainly uh enough testing done in the early days of
the lens and and showing that it was it does meet the Rayleigh criteria of a
quarter wave and that was a good thing because um it was used for high Precision
photometer or our Parallax work in its early days and 1870s 80s and 90s and
early 1900s it was a photographic telescope it used a 5x7 last plate and
they actually um would measure Stellar uh parallaxis
by guiding the telescope well technically um they don't guide this telescope so
how do you think how do you guide a 26 inch F-15 you know 45 foot long tube
um telescope how do you guide that without like Auto guiders and without really Precision right Ascension and
declination Motors on the mount the mount by the way is the original Mount that came with this telescope too
so um the the guiding was actually done by
using a micrometer plate holder that had screws in rectilinear manner so that you
could move the plate very very slowly in One Direction and then at right angles to that direction by these two Drive
screws and then you looked at the star images in live time on the plate as they were being recorded and you guided the
plate you didn't guide the telescope so that's how the average the the professional astronomers back then got
really nice Sharp Images on the telescope um by guiding the plate actually
so I thought well okay that brings up the next obvious question well how much periodic error is this is there in this
mound and and so I said I know how to do that I can figure that out so I began taking some images with my CMOS camera
and and uh exposing them for several minutes or taking a series of
multiple images um and then stacking together and you could get the kind of little wobble back
and forth of the periodic era and it's not much actually I was surprised that it looks like it's maybe 10 Arc seconds
or less actually at the most and sometimes it's even less than about six six or five art seconds which is
incredible I mean I thought this is a mechanical 150 telescope you know and
yet it's tracking pretty darn good so the bottom line was I I could I can
image um 30 seconds with an ASI 120 mm camera at the Prime Focus and and get
pretty pretty round Stars almost every time so Jerry can you share the um image
I took speaking of the ASI 120 can you show the image of M15 there we go let's zoom in on that so so
this is yeah so this is a Bend two by two and that's a Bend one by one image of the
core of M15 the globular um no guiding of the telescope that's a
using Shark cap I did a a series of exposures that were one second long and
I stacked about 650 of them and that's the the image we got and the goal was to
try to capture the faint little planetary peas one that is known to be in the globular
there's only four of them that we know of that contain actually planetaries so I was somewhat successful and somewhat
failed um I failed because I could not actually
capture the faint nebulous envelope which is only one Arc second diameter
however I did capture the Central Star quite easily and that's what that object
is that's highlighted the lower right hand corner that is actually the central star of peas one and I think if I had
used colored filters if I didn't RGB image instead of just a monochrome I might have been able to see that star
looking kind of pinkish and therefore being much more convincing
that we captured that particular um uh nebula there so so that was
um taken just on Sunday night just a few few nights ago actually so the real
reason we were down there though was to image to get really nice images of trying to to get images of the planets
and you know visually looking through this telescope it's when the seeing is
good it's spectacular I mean the view of a of Saturn that Jerry and I got
um on Sunday night was the best view of Saturn I've ever seen in my life we we
could see um multiple multiple bands of of the the
um Cloud bands on Jupe on Saturn with with this telescope and the Rings were
just tack sharp with cassini's division being traceable almost visually almost all the way around the Rings the
um this is an image we took sticking uh that same night we stuck uh our friend Boris and Jerry and I stuck this and
Scott stuck this um monochrome CMOS camera at
the Prime Focus of the telescope just to see what we could get and
I was really impressed with how good it turned out considering that this lens
this tells you it was never meant to be used like this it was never meant to have a CMOS detector that has infrared
sensitivity and blue sensitivity and and green and red and and these Focus that
this lens as good as it is visually and it's beautiful visually I mean we could see Titan as a globe I mean it was an
orange globe with this telescope okay that night um this this image was Prime Focus
though and surprisingly turned out pretty well considering that there's a large amount of chromatic aberration in fact I measured the blue and the red
Focus differences is is like a third of a third or half of an inch so your
cranking this wooden knob at the end of the telescope a good you know maybe quarter turn to get the red focus in and
then a quarter turned bad to get the blue focus in right and so we thought the best way to get images with this
telescope to kind of show what this Clark instrument can do is to use monochrome camera with filters so
I I inspired I I humbly inspired a number of people in the Charlottesville
Club to start taking images through this telescope using their iPhones using the
other club uh webcam and and so I think I've started something and I'm really
glad to be able to say that there's more people that are interested now in recording using modern Imaging
techniques what we can see through this antique telescope and it is challenging
because of that chromatic aberration it's really not as easy as you would think um but we're making progress and our
images are getting better we're trying a different number of cameras um we do seem to get the best results
with the monochrome camera with colored filters and and then stacking creating a
tri-color or RGB composite that does give us our best our best result so so
but this particular picture of Saturn here um is the one that they took or is that
is that no that is the one phone that's your phone that's my phone yeah so so
here's what you can get through the telescope I've just taken your your um cell phone and holding it up to the
eyepiece I used a iPhone SE and a this was taken using a
a a 20 millimeter nagler and on that particular telescope that
gives a little bit over 500 power and then um I just snapped a picture I mean this
is just a focal snapping a single frame of of Saturn so it doesn't capture
anywhere near what you can see visually but it still looks pretty good and considering it's just a really easy way
to take a picture of the planet so I'm trying to get people in the Charlottesville club and other people
and the Rappahannock astronomy club and and msro to you know think about just using their iPhones and their cell
phones to take pictures through their telescopes and if it's the moon and planets it shares pretty good Jerry can you pull up some of the lunar images
that we got um or actually can you share the video the one with Utah I could show the video
yeah I'm gonna let you guys watch this video and here's the amazing thing uh that this video captured this is just a
if you would admire and have Jerry uh unshare for a moment okay and then when
he shares he needs to turn on system sound okay if there's if there's audio there
it's in the lower left hand after you before you commit to sharing you know
you select something that says share system sound okay you see that can you can you still
hear me you're still kind of not too bad it's bad but we can hear
I got my hearing aid turned up I'm losing uh
hold on system sound is it under more
there's green and I'm on my iPhone so I can't help you
[Music]
this is for sharing I mean if you're going to share like a video that has sound well the sound I can I can I can
um comment and what do they call it common that can be a commenter uh on the video
okay all right you want to just go back in and share it share sound is on okay
good turn it on then it should be good I just want to make sure that let's play the video in its entirety and
what I'll I'll just tell you in advance it's going to show a number of moons so I exposed my phone to overexpose the
planet because I wanted to see how many moons I could capture I was seeing a whole bunch of them visually and I
counted like five or or so and or six but there was one capture that I didn't
see visually even with my looking at the planet at as sharp as tack as those moves looked and how good the scene was
I missed this one moon but the video caught it and just barely I want you guys to see this because it's very very
um it's it's the first time in my life I've ever seen this astronomical object it's
the smallest moon in the solar system that has a round shape that's spherical it's also been the study of recent uh
research that shows it actually may have a subsurface ocean as well like Europa that might on on Jupiter so
um let's zoom in on this can you see my screen yes
start the video over no that's not the video that's not the one it's the one that shows Saturn really Overexposed
that's not it that's not it no oh okay no go it's the one of the last ones I
sent you it's it's Saturn shows really bright and it shows all the moons around it and you can see the chromatic aberration as a blue fuzz around the
planet okay but there's like a bunch of moons all around it see if you can pull that one up
the files you sent me yeah I can see that
um I might have sent you the video on your phone I didn't email a video I sent it I think I sent it on your phone that
might be a problem isn't it for over I gotta say that's okay let me
just if you want to try that but I'll describe what what we saw so okay so this particular video
um as I was watching it I was like I see all these moons I went on my program and identified um tethis and and
and oh we saw by the way we saw tethus come out of a shadow or or um behind the the planet I'm not sure
which one because in one video that I made it it wasn't there and about half an hour later I took another sequence
through the telescope the eyepiece and there it was it was in the in the Gap where the ring Shadow ends before it
touches the globe so um so it appeared either because it was just really close to the planet maybe it
was transiting in front of the planet or maybe it was in a shadow behind I don't know I did I haven't had time to really research that but my attention was drawn
to I think little tiny spark of light at the right edge of the Rings that I didn't notice visually and I wasn't sure
I saw it at first I kept looking at and look at it and then I I basically was able to confirm that it was there and it
was the moon memes the closest Moon of of of Saturn and it was actually
recorded on just by holding my phone up to the to the eyepiece and I could see
it is a faint little tiny spot of light at the very edge of the Rings there and that's how how powerful this telescope was I mean
the Rings aren't even at John and we we recorded memes with an iPhone casually holding it up to an eyepiece looking at
the um uh the the planet Saturn at 500 power with the 20 million 20 millimeter nagler so
um I don't think I can share my screen there's no way that I can is there on this iPhone
I don't know either um but so so so that was the the highlight
of that video and what I could do if we can't get it here tonight um I'd be happy to to join you guys
maybe the next one and just to kind of give you every now and then a presentation of what we're doing with
this this gigantic refractor and um so here's the here's the view of Jupiter that we took you can see that one right
there that was again with a uh an ASI 662
MC color CMOS camera uncooled we just stuck it into the telescope and focused
the best we could and voila there it is and by the way it shows the exact same face of Jupiter that nine days earlier
was impacted by an asteroid and so these Japanese astronomers were able to capture on September 28th I think it was
um and and impact Flash and so I made sure I imaged the same face of Jupiter
to see if there was any remnants in the cloud tops of that impact and as far as
we could tell even with this big telescope we could not see any any effect other than the normal Joven type
of cloud features so if you scroll down a little bit more Jerry um we we do some lunar Imaging
this is the creator um poseidoness and
um that was a really good night too the scene was very good there um again you can't really it doesn't
look much different I guess probably in this presentation that it would with an amateur telescope but when you're looking at it through the telescope visually and when you look at the raw
data on these images um it's it's spectacular and I don't know if we can zoom in on those at all
but but probably not but can you go down to the one that's did do you have the plate crate okay here's the lunar limb
um this is the lunar North Pole I kind of like the perspective here uh because it looks like you're in a
spacecraft going over and and these images aren't that much really probably
better than what you can get with a really good amateur telescope but but we're getting them quite easily you know
with without any skills and without any effort because the aperture is so large in the focal length which is 9900
millimeters is so long now this is Western uh this is actually Eastern mare
Tranquility lunar Eastern tranquila status and what you see here are these
two domes and they have on the domes um I don't know if you can zoom in Jerry but they're they have little
see if I can open these they have a little tiny stomach crater lit on them which was resolved which is
really cool and the cool thing about these lunar domes is they are actually volcanic features that disappear once
they get too far from the Terminator because the lighting they're very shallow they're they're mounds of
they're only about like a degree the slope is only about a degree so if you were walking around them you almost
wouldn't even notice them in real life if you were there because they're so shallow but they're visible at the time
of lunar sunrise and sunset and we happen to catch that time with this telescope on this night and I was able
to get some really nice images of these volcanic reels um and that's a that topic that streak
at the top is actually a um a scarf so it's actually a fault where the local
terrain drops down and and created that that kind of tar that fault and and you
could see it just basically you know with your eye looking at the telescope as if you're almost like in orbit around
the Moon The View I can't stress how incredible the experience was visually
looking through this telescope it's such immense power and resolution it was just the most
the most ethereal lunar experience I've ever had observing and I'm just trying to capture those that Essence visually
um that I get in these images and to share them with as many people as I can there we go beautiful see how you can
see those those summit crater on that one right there you can see the the summit pit oh yeah and
and that is just it was it was fascinating to see that uh and and I've never seen them so clear these are
little lunar volcanoes actually thank you Jerry that's awesome that's
that's beginning to show what we were kind of like seeing visually there so um and that that bright line at the top
is is a scarf that is lit up bright like this at Sunset lunar Sunset and it looks
like a dark line um on lunar Sunrise so this was taken when the moon was a waning gibbous
just about two days or three days after after full moon do you have the create the Play-Doh
image that I took on there as well I sent that I sent that see if you can pull that up
Play-Doh was image the same night it was uh the sun was much higher up but I was amazed how much detail we
could see there it is beautiful can you bring that in and full resolution on that we were able to resolve I mean like
six or seven crater let's on the floor and they actually look like craters they're not just little spots they look
at three-dimensional craters so I'm gonna ask Jerry to kind of zoom in on that this is this is my favorite
image of Play-Doh I think I've ever taken and again this was um created using the
uh ASI 662 MC camera and then I import that avi
file into Auto stackert and then um take that stacked image into registak
6 and use wavelet sharpening and that's all I did and to get these images so it was really pretty easy no-brainer kind
of processing that any of us could do here
that's great there's Plato so what I'm what I'm hoping to do with
this telescope also is to start using it for making animations of visual binaries
that have really short periods so you can imagine their separation is very small and I'm using a book that I got
it's observations that were made at Yorkies by SW Burnham and he has thousands of double stars in there that
he was using the 36 inch lick refractor for and also the 18 and a half inch Dearborn refractor so I figure I got a
26 inch refractor access to that I should be able to get some of these targets and image them so I'm going to
do that as a multi-year project some of these orbital periods are only about a year or two but the separation is like a
15 uh a 50 a 27 Arc second which is going to be really really tough to get
with this telescope but some of them are like a quarter of an arc second which should be doable so and they have periods about five to
seven years so I'm going to put some videos together which I'll share eventually which will actually show orbital visual binaries in motion
so stay tuned for that that's all I have um I would be happy with you guys again anytime to show you the latest that
we've got that Jerry and I are getting and uh and continue to share results with uh this this beautiful telescope
thanks so much guys thank you yeah thank you okay all right uh we thank you again Jerry
for coming on so um here thank you we are uh we were
going to have a 10 minute break we're running we're running a little bit over here so I'm gonna skip the 10 minute
break um and we are going to go straight to our next speaker
um and uh that would be uh Ron breacher Ron
thanks for coming on to Global Star Party the front is here
here he is
there we go hi there Hey Ron how are you
I'm great I've been watching from upstairs I see and I was going to come down during the break but I just uh
I just yeah dashed downstairs running way over at this point so I thought let's just go ahead and
oh that's that's fine with me I'm ready to go when you are right so so you're going to talk about a few of your
favorite things yeah and uh there's a little teased about that yeah well I did I'm with you
man so Steve Malia uh suggested that I am
singing because it's I love to hear that from Julie Andrews uh yeah you're not
gonna get that tonight okay we don't know each other well enough me and all
the people out there we'll we'll get there with time yeah um anyway look let me uh let me share my
screen with you and I'll get right into it um
last week I talked about overlooked objects
so this week I wanted to talk about sort of the other the other end of the
spectrum for me and show you some of my favorite things so uh thanks again for
having me to the global star party and um
you know Scott you send out when you send out those invitations you always set it up with a theme
yes and I always read those uh I don't know if everybody else reads them I read
them and I think about how can I how can I say something that might might
fit in with that theme and I just want to show you uh that that
uh this is what Scott sent this week I don't know if everybody else read it
I thought this was really inspirational particularly the second paragraph
for me um the the idea of how vast the universe
is and um you know we can just explore explore
the universe so that's that's what I want to do in this talk but instead of going after the overlooked objects I'm
going to indulge myself in some of my favorites and I I've been Imaging
but seriously imagine for about 10 years now
uh sorry 20 years I should say um but it's really in the last 10 years or
so that that I've been publishing my pictures and I started my website in
2014 so these are some of my favorite photos and I've got some photos in each
of the categories of deep Sky object that I tend to shoot so first of all open clusters this is the wild duck
cluster M11 um actually when I was talking about overlooked objects last week I had a
comment in the chat box from somebody who said um
surely you're the open uh the uh wild dot cluster is one of your overlooked
clusters no it's not overlooked lots of people shoot it it's a beautiful place
to Target because it's got these beautiful dark nebulae that you see to
the upper right and uh actually the whole right side and to the upper left so that's one of my favorite open
clusters and here's another favorite open cluster shot this one I took uh
back around I think it was back around 20 2012 or 2013 and it's been published all
over the place it was in the sky and Telescope calendar it was in the ASA calendar the first year I had my ASA
tenants go and the Beautiful diffraction spikes on these stars are from the
design of that telescope uh Astro systems Austria make beautiful reflectors they don't make them in this
size anymore so if you come across a used 10 or 12 inch ASA reflector go for
it you don't often think of the Pleiades as
an open cluster but it is especially if you look at it with the naked eye it's fantastic in every uh kind of instrument
that you could look at it in yeah that includes your naked eye low power
binoculars high power binoculars a small telescope a big telescope so I shot this
with that ASA I was talking about and all the red circles
um encircle locations where there are little galaxies so this one right here
has a little Galaxy in it so there's stuff hidden everywhere you just
gotta look for it yeah globular clusters so I have a few friends Sean Nielsen
Gord Simpson a couple other people who tease me because I really like globular clusters
they say they all look the same I don't think they do I don't think they do at all
um in fact there's a there's a scale for globular cluster density that
differentiates them and um here's three of my favorites the
Hercules cluster uh M13 and then what I like to call the other Hercules cluster
it isn't kind of an overlooked object but not by me Messier 92 it's probably
you know I might like it better in the eyepiece than M13 and maybe the best
Northern globular cluster of all Messier 22. which when you look at it in the
eyepiece you see it doesn't really look round it's kind of got sort of a
Aggie oblong kind of shape to it anyway they're all different and I love them
all molecular clouds so these are these areas that have uh
these uh kind of light brownish nebulae and and this particular region
called the dark shark I think you can see him here's his dorsal fin over here and his eye and he's got his mouth open
gonna bite yeah um this has all kinds of other really
cool features to it some some beautiful blue reflection regions over here down
here um the the dust that's everywhere gives these lovely Halos to the Stars
and over here kind of hard to see but there's a really pretty little Galaxy go
to my website look for the dark shark and you'll be able to zoom in on that little Galaxy
and here's a cosmic salamander another one of these regions that's got some of
this Cosmic dust molecular cloud the red is
from hydrogen Alpha um I just love these kinds of objects
there's other one other really famous ones like the parent said nebula and so on that I have an image yet myself I'll
be going after those uh as soon as I can and this is the angelfish nebula
sometimes called the rotting fish nebula one of my favorites of these kind of
bright um Dusty regions and let's move on to a mission nebula
this is Orion's sword I think it's got to be one of everybody's favorites
um I I this has always been a favorite shot of mine and I I took it a long time ago you
can tell again from those diffractions pipes this was taken uh probably around
between 2013 and 2016 or so but I had a
huge honor uh late last year having this photo chosen for the cover
of the fifth edition of Night Watch and uh just today I received my copies
two copies from the publisher and I know Terence Dickinson
um this was one of his favorite photos of this region and and uh he had a hand
in choosing this so uh quite an honor for me even more emission nebula this is so
this is cool little series of of uh images because uh we're gonna we're
gonna see this up close and personal and in a different light so this is the
North American nebula on the left and on the right you can see the Pelican nebula
although I think it looks maybe more like a pterodactyl than a pelican with
this uh crown on the head and my wife pointed out to me about five years ago
my wife Gail pointed out to me about five years ago this little
Lizard Head peeking out of the cave here and once you see that you can't unsee it
that's right and there it is there it is up close and personal taken with the news 14-inch HD
Celestron Schmidt cash brand that I've been using and I mentioned the Pelican here it is in a different light this is
the Pelican nebula in Hubble palette so for those of you who aren't familiar the
hovel palette um is really a color mapping technique you
shoot with a black and white camera through filters that pass the emissions of very specific elements so sulfur
hydrogen and oxygen oxygen are used in the Hubble palette
sulfur is a assigned to the red Channel hydrogen to the green Channel and oxygen
to Blue and then you mess around a little bit with it
throw in a little bit of magic and you come up with some really amazing beautiful images that not only reveal
structure but they reveal differences in the gas composition so I can't tell you
exactly how much hydrogen sulfur or oxygen there is at any specific spot in the image but
I can see where it is changing so I can see that in this area that has a green
tinge along here that the chemistry is different than this orange region over
here I don't know exactly how they're different but I know that the gas mix is
different oh and by the way there's my little lizard head again that's right I
can never unsee that another really famous emission nebula
and one of my favorites is the bubble nebula this time I'm just showing it in the hobble palette so this little bubble
over here is being blown out of the gases in the region by this Wolf Ranch
star uh the bright star uh at the edge of the bubble there and if you look at
the lower left of this image this sort of bluish structure here that is my Imaging Target tonight
and I'm shooting it at very high power it barely fits in the field
so uh I'll be sharing that with you in the coming days
dark nebula so these are areas where dark dust glots out of the stars in
behind and uh this is the seahorse nebula Barnard 150 one of my favorite dark
nebula I've shot this a few different times this is probably my favorite image
that I've taken of it although I've seen some great images of this region by other people by all means go out and get
it this was shot with a four inch refractor and a full frame size sensor
so uh easy to get with relatively uh small telescope
another really famous dark nebula actually there's a couple of them in
this in this image but the most famous of of course is the Horsehead nebula and
um as you look at this very colorful image it would be easy to mistake the horse
head as some kind of an emission nebula there are lots of emission nebulae in
this image but the Horsehead nebula is actually a finger of dark dust
that's kind of billowing upwards and blotting out the light of the stars
behind it so it is classified as a dark nebula and you'll also see a dark nebula
running through the core of the flame nebula which is on the uh lower left of
center sanitary nebula everybody loves planetary nebula again
I shoot the dumbbell with every type of equipment that I have and I was again if
you look at the diffraction spikes you might recognize that ASA telescope this
was taken in 2016. and uh it featured on the August issue
of sky and telescope on the cover my very first cover of sky and telescope
and Supernova remnants of course the Crab Nebula um I love all the tendrils and fingers
in The Crab and again you can tell by the diffraction spikes that 10 inch ASAP
like it was a real keeper the veil nebula complex uh very
challenging to get with a moderately sized telescope because it is so big
um this is actually a mosaic a two-pane mosaic two panel mosaic so the top half
and the bottom half were stitched together but more than that I made a top half with two
different filters and a bottom half of two different filters and so I had to combine all the data to to reveal the
red hydrogen and mostly hydrogen some sulfur emissions and the teal oxygen
emissions from the Supernova remnant
galaxies so boy galaxies might be my favorite kinds of objects of all and I
can't show them all to you so I just picked a few this is M101 the Pinwheel
Galaxy uh shows lots of fine detail and lots of faint faint structure if you can
go along on this go long on it this is Messier 33.
um another beautiful galaxy that's worth spending a lot of time on
one of the things that's tough when you process this galaxy is to avoid it
looking really flat and so you have to kind of work hard to to make the core
pop a little bit without burning out um Love is trying to get back into
bowling and of course I I would have to put in
the Andromeda galaxy this uh image was taken in 2020 with a One-Shot color
camera but I actually just processed it a few weeks ago live uh on Masters of picks
insights so masters of pixinsight.com uh I teach with Warren Keller we do video
tutorials and um Sorry video workshops as well as
video tutorials and I process this live in a photons to photos Workshop this is
how it came out so uh again one of my favorite galaxies
so also in the category of favorite I have to put in favor because it's new
and I acquired these I'm going to show you a series of three photos of this object
I acquired it last night and the night before I got some of the
RGB the night before but most of this was acquired last night it was finished last night for sure so this is sharpless
2 188 it's sometimes called the the prawn nebula or the shrimp nebula I've
heard it called the dolphin nebula if you rotate it 100 degrees apparently some people see a dolphin jumping
um this is uh natural color RGB enhanced
with hydrogen Alpha to make the red pop the stars are natural and the background
is natural color RGB but I I went ahead and I shot this in a
couple of other palettes so this is called the thorax palette
and uh again uh because this is all narrow band it reveals
areas where the where the gas compositions are different and changing so I think that's really cool and I also
processed it in a traditional Hubble palette and there it is showing some
really nice yellows and vibrant blues and even some Greens Greens are okay
in narrow band well thank you very much for indulging me
that's all I've got to say I try to keep these short and sweet because I know you got some great speakers and uh want to
make sure there's time you're one of them so thank you thank you that's great okay so we are
moving on to our next speaker Ron thanks thanks so much for your kind
words see you later yeah okay uh let's see our next speaker is uh
by the way Ron is also known as astrodoc and so you'll see him I think you can go
to astrodoc.com or CA astrodoc.ca proudly Canadian yeah Canada
that's right all right thank you all right so we're moving down to Brazil
uh to Marcelo Souza and Marcelo thanks for coming out to Global Star Party
um what what are you bringing to uh to us this week hi
nice to meet you I love you thank you very much for the invitations cards thank you I I will show
some experience that I had with the job observation of your solar eclipse
now here we are I'm working out today our preparation for the observation of
the partial eclipse solar eclipse that will be possible to see here in Brazil in most of the Brazil
in the North Africa of Brazil will be an Allah Eclipse like you see also in the
United States but I will share some of the videos that I recorded from
my first observation of a total solar eclipse and they are also one of the
observation of their passion solar eclipse here in our region in Brazil
uh this rice I'm showing first the World
Cup because it is associated with my observation of the eclipse this is the
statue of the final game of the World Cup of 2010 that's happening
a game between Netherlands and Spain in 2010 in this stadium in South Africa and
the the game happened here for us in South America Brazil Washington
uh on July 11 at the end of the
afternoon almost at the end of the afternoon and at this moment
was the moment that we observed the total solar eclipse in the South
adhesion of Argentina then when I arrived there was from here and a
fantastic experience because I arrived in the city of El calafat that's in the
south region of Argentina in 2010 I was with my wife we arrived in the city and
I imagine you have few people there I can observe the eclipse but when I visit
the first hotel with a lot of people waiting for the
observation of the eclipse and the Ace in front of us we had the earliest
mountains we needed to to go to a mountain and one thousand meters High to
City Eclipse because it's happening at the end of the afternoon I will show the
video that I recorded when I was there first of all for all uh it's not a
professional video because I was with my support for the camera but as it tries
not to work in the beginning of the eclipse then I quit everything going to
see the eclipse when the eclipse begin I try to record and do work it then was in
my hand then right shaking I'll show now but then this is why the
eclipse of 2010 in the south region of Argentina and Chile that was possible to see
here is the region where I was here in calafat in calafat that is a wise a
total eclipse that house almost almost in the middle of the totality of the eclipse
here and here is the video that I required this image was in a hotel in
calafate where you have a private company that's your organize a trip to
see the eclipse and this happens the eclipse we saw the eclipse during the
final game of the World Cup at the same moment all right fighting against
geology club with the Netherlands I was in the top of the mountain to see the
eclipse during the the game I will show here the future
I hope to hear the music
from foreign
before the beginning of the eclipse
and here he was very close very close yeah the temperature was degrees
Celsius but it is we feel like it less than minus 15 degrees Celsius with the
top of a few months was very positive we have a big slope I must say
yeah 17 centimeters
and it was very cool very good you need to do that because
is located the mountain in front of us this is
and here's the mountain that you need to to go to the top went to the top of this
mountain to see the eclipse twice age of Japan then you have the Earth's
mountain in front of yours I need to go to a mountain that's the
high is 1000 meters are here here is the top of the mountain
where we are prepared to see the eclipse and it was the only
place that you found a possibilities that you go to the top deposit Audi
other places very full of people wow
oh my God that the eclipse you can see the
ringing of diamonds that's a special moment that's at the end we have to decrease
Premiere was a fantastic experience for me
this is what is the name of the singer
a few minutes I'm going to see the ring the
Fight The Ring Of Time Diamond the range of diamonds
at the end of the eclipse so it's fantastic for me
I
was here he's a fantastic amazing
I will show the city of California without the lights or
here the city of calified there
we feel the light zone and here as here is my wife like a
Taliban when he hair eyes you can see because it's always very close
experience
it was a fantastic experience for me and it's been won the game but I only
knew about this after the eclipse because I had to stay there for one hour
two hours after the eclipse waiting the transport to go to to head down to the
hotel it has a fantastic experience during the last game of the World Cup in
2010. the other experience here near us oisgs
that was an eclipse in February 26th 2017.
that was also initially in the south of Chile in the Argentina but for us here
it's just possible to see it that percent of the exam
recovered by Jim almost this man but this reorganized an event and it's
happening during the carnival Sunday I I think that why Saturday or
Sunday during the carnival here and yeah we
a lot of people participate to see their clicks we made a campaign here
and they didn't believe major Caribou are going to see the eclipse and but what I can do
observation RPG partial solar eclipse
it's another fantastic experience in another city near us that is
another citizen demise all right we were there all right the
partial solar eclipse here have some clouds
a lot of people visit us there
yeah you're having six years man that has possible to see the eclipse
anyways transmitted for how our state our experience to see the
eclipse now we are going to do the same thing
that you did in this time but now we are organizing job salvation to eight
different seats at the same time what will be our first experience to
organize so many seats at the same time we we are
creating here uh
here you go to see the Massimo of the partial eclipse
he at this moment to be more than this man here probably 30 percent you have
clouds
and they are showing what's happening with the birds at this moment but it
tries to die yeah he is a Massimo of the eclipse at this
moment 2017. and so that's a fantastic experience
with the Republican here and you know I hope this time we have
the opportunity to have so many people participating in the eclipse the observation of the eclipse
it's a very long reports
are here against the partial eclipse
it's just fantastic and now for us here it will be like this this time
and the Effigy where the helpers in the difficulture day it is with a lot of
clouds it is rain we are concerned about the weather Project clips but even with
this concerning we are organizing their team for the clips we are going to heavily supported of the
Stephen harms them we have glasses to give to the people have uh
six thousand places to distribute for free for Audi people that you see the
eclipse in and they really plan to organize a big event and last week we finished the
preparation of the first activity for preparation for the eclipse with the
planetarium mobile planetarium here and you have the participation in four days
of 2 000 students that participate in live stream
and also we had the observation of the sun with a lot of
in three different seats and there is a fantastic experience and
the in three months we organized Main Events here you had a total
participation of more than 4 000 people that participate in these events in
three months only last week we had two thousand people because FDA planetarium
the objective that you organize and they this week we have
uh Thursday and Friday an event Saturday and Sunday is another species next week
will be involved directly only with the organization of the eclipse then squats
thank you very much for the opportunity thank you so much here what a fantastic view of that um
that Eclipse as it was grazing the mountains there I uh I can't imagine
seeing an eclipse so close like that so it's beautiful
for me don't forget about experience well for all of those people out there
who have not seen a total eclipse you have to go see one at least once in your life uh it is it is it will change
things for you you will change inside your mind will change so and there's uh
you can't uh gosh you really can't describe it very well you know so
but uh thank you very much
thank you thank you very much okay all right um up next uh is uh Adrian Bradley
Adrian are you with us there he is I am but there might be a lot of background
noise can you hear me over the music playing behind me and I'll explain why I'm here in a
minute um I
um I just got done bowling didn't do too well and um so I've moved into an arcade
to do my presentation so um
with the backdrop of an arcade we're going to go into unchartered Cosmos and
uh theme I decided to pick was um
and I am just going to use desktop different ways to get images of the moon
um I saw some Moon images earlier and what I wanted to do
will share some of my challenges that um that I have is Moon Imaging is a
little different you see some of the Milky Way photos I have here but you know and then some others but what
about the moon there are a few challenges that I put for myself and I
extend them to those that like to take images of the moon and the first challenge
would be Earth shine um taking pictures of the Moon using
Earth shine it can be beautiful if you pull it off and I'm sure I'll have a couple more
images of that later but um and then Reflections as well if
you can do that the other challenge is getting the moon with the Milky Way as you can see
there's some work that I would need to do to process this a little better
but um that that's that is a huge challenge for those that like to image
the moon and there's a couple different ways that we can do it besides just simply
taking pictures now most of the time when we do Moon images the Moon is blown out
and you have your you have your scene but your moon is blown out one of the
challenges is to take a picture of the Moon where there's detail this is
something I try to do a lot and as you can see this one this
particular image I had the help of clouds but it's still rather dark here you can see the lake but
the fact that we got the moon with detail on a single shot is uh is very
much a challenge for anyone that likes to do Moon photography let's go to this
is another version of the Moon with the Milky Way this is moonrise this is the
Sun is going to rise as well the Milky Way is fading um getting the moon in the Milky Way in
the same frame is a challenge I've seen Alan Dyer do it during an eclipse
So speaking of so a couple others moonlight
using Moonlight to take a photo so the moon doesn't show up here but it's light sure does and you pull that
light in and you're able to illuminate almost as like daylight but with more
with a longer exposure that's why you see the cloud shape the way they are so
that's always a challenge just using Moonlight itself now when we get a Rising Moon
we it often looks like this but uh John Schwartz knows the image
that I'm going to look for and that is before I do that getting the moon during
an eclipse is always a challenge because there's the moon in front of the eclipse Sun total eclipse I've seen some really
beautiful shots here's a challenging one for you Moon and clouds but the Moon is
sharp that one you have to make sure if you're using autofocus
you make sure your dot is on a part of the Moon and not the passing clouds wow I got one just like it yep I knew you'd
have I I saw it I mean it might be the same one yeah so that is a challenge
um for those who like to capture the moon here's another challenge capturing the moon the way our eyes see
it here we are at Blue hour we're at moonrise and this is the moon the way we see it
and notice with my processing I took out a lot of the bright glow from
one of the images these are usually composites when it when there are no
clouds to block the Moon the Moon is simply too bright so
doing Composites tends to be the way to get a shot like that we all love the
close-up moons where we've got detail I'm not sure if I can zoom in or not I'm going to try but I don't have my mouse
with me but you can see here and this is the moon that we that we just passed
um right now we're at the Moon where it's uh waning it's about here
um anytime you can use a camera or a telescope and you can get your close-in
move let's look at a couple of other examples this is a tough one
moon rising in the zodiacal light I'd love to see some images out there those
of you that live in dark enough sights and in September the zodiacolite in
September this is um m44 The Moon Rises while the
zodiacolite is still visible I'd love to see some images of that especially
if I have let's see if I have it here I don't there's an image of Orion this image
here but with the zodiacal light making the cross I know it's somewhere in my group of images just not not here
but um having that and the move
this is lunar X and lunar V there's the X there's the V if you catch the a certain
use catch first quarter at a certain time these craters the shadows and the
craters form what looks like an X and what looks more like a V the X looks
like it forgot something over here the little stem over here isn't quite as long
but this is the these craters form an X when the shadow
the uh Sun the Rising Sun hits it just right that's another challenge
all right I'm going to there's only six there because
Ah that's right I lost the uh bet with my um
one of my teammates so I didn't win all of the money in that last game
so so that's a couple more moons before we turn it over to um Schwartz and his
beautiful drawings and eclipse the Moon it's worth taking a picture of an
eclipsed Moon um because of the way it looks a lot
different from a regular first quarter you see the shadow eating the Moon away
most of the time people look at this you know here this is when it was 97
percent I've got a couple more that are 100 but let's let's show it in
different you know different places along the ecliptic in the sky near the Pleiades
it's a good way to show eclipsed moods and we'll skip through some of the you
know the styles of moons this is a daytime Moon capture the moon in the daytime or at
dusk and see if you can get that detail with the sun shining on it this is a
this is a challenge a lot of folks get the moon looking like this
let's go to total eclipse I used what I had there's
mountains there's an eclipse moon peeking through clouds sometimes you just have to use what
you've got Earth shine moons hear some more shine moons that I took
and the nice thing about the Earth shine moons is basically get a full moon if you expose long enough the tough thing
about it is this limb extends longer than it should
um this limb grows if you do a longer exposure the Moon is moving so the trick is to get
the limb to make this the perfect circle perfect the spheroid that it is and yet
get more of the full moon and stars you end up with stars if you're if you
get a pretty good shot of it a lot of astrophotographers do mineral moons this one they call this little
feature they call the Golden Horn when the shadow is just right this feature
this rim of this uh crater sticks out or I should say this wall because you can see this is the mara here
um craters filled in the mineral moons show Colors as it
turns out titanium this element is really here those of you that are
following along probably know a little more than I do these colors represent elements that are really in these places
on the moon um quite a while ago one of these won an apod
um the colors were accented even more but uh mineral moons
shooting the moon through clouds to try and get again trying to get the moon to
look the way that we see it this would be a binocular view of this moon with
the clouds following that's a challenge
Gore moons as it grows another Milky Way in Moon photo is here
let's see I'll try and capture the moon when there's something
going on astronomically important and the moon just happens to be a part of the lineup
that is always a challenge moon with Aurora I haven't done that one yet that
would be a that would be a good challenge for it so we'll finish up here we have another
composite of the moon rising over the lake we have
a beautiful picture but the moon's All Stars some folks love this
and I don't blame him it was a peaceful serene
picture when I actually took it I just laid the camera down on the wild Beach
let's do we're going to skip all the way to
the later images okay a couple more get a nice clean looking
totally eclipsed Moon with a star feel
this one shows you there's Uranus right there it's one of these two
Uranus does appear right here there's the Moon
and also what does the sky look like there's the moon this is a true to
for a 16 millimeter image that's how big the Moon is in this image there's your
eclipse moon and there's your sky with your winter Milky Way in Orion depicting the moon as a part of an
overall sky is something I'd love to see a lot more of being done
um it's a little different now of course we had the occultation
of Mars by the moon and here it is keeping I believe this is when it was coming
back out I do not recall which side of the occultation it was on I happened to have
if you see this dot right there there's Mars there's a moon and that's the cloudiness that I had to fight
so a couple more here's one that
if I could zoom in I would show you this is a realistic how
the Moon looks if you're looking up at this Tower and the Moon is here even if it's cloudy you can still get some very
interesting moon photos so never give up if it's not clear the Moon is a good
Target for you it's moon with planet either Mars or Jupiter and getting detail on both well
when you have a camera you're not going to get much detail on the planet but you can still get detail in the Moon
and then finally let's look and see where
see moonlight moonlight affected images like this one
you know attempts to put the moon on top of something there are a couple of gimmicks you can do
oh more Earth shine here's a what I consider a little bit better Earth shine photo so there are gear
mixes and then there's challenges here's a gimmick you got the moon on top of a tree you
know this kind of shows the size the Moon is rather large larger than we think in the sky to be able to be a tree
topper at that size and then finally let's just shoot all
the way down to Blue Moons whenever there's a blue Boon just take your processing and and
lower the temperature so you end up with a blue moon it's a it's a wonderful gimmick or try and make a mineral Moon
out of it or the way it looks to our eyes
so you can process a couple of different ways and then finally
toenail moon is uh one astrophysicist uh Dr Becky Smathers calls it when there's
just we've seen some amazing versions of moons coming just out of the uh you know
the very first um waxing press the as thin as they can
get if you can catch it and now here we go last few a Rising Moon this is one of my
white whales to get as much detail as I can with a moon that's Rising
making this look a little more natural is a goal of mine yes this clouds were
here this glow is here but one key that I think I'll have is if I
turn the opacity of this Moon so that it looks more like it's shining through the clouds instead of popping it right on
there looks kind of like it's blocking an eclipse here and that's that's not the effect I want but
something to keep working on here we have stars we have a scene in which
the detail of the moon was uh composited with this overall shot
this is a freighter it's actually heading for this uh light and then you've got the lights of the
freighter here and you've got the Moon there's more work that can be done to
get that crater out it's it's definitely a challenge and then finally you have once again
when your Moon's not completely full and it's a waning gibbous you see more craters on one limb waxing current
um waxing gibbous you see craters in this one and that is where I'll stop
hopefully everyone was able to hear um over the talking yes I want a little
bit of money from the last game because of my hard hand but um that is where it's at so those of you
that like to do moon photos those are some challenging thoughts as far as
getting different ways that we can see the moon not just one way close up
or featureless we can we can try and image it we can put features in it we
can the biggest challenge is to image the moon as we see it in an environment and
uh or see its effects there's there are some endless possibilities and of course with the total solar eclipse
the annular solar eclipse it'll be for those that are going to see annularity
are you able to get detail of the Moon in front of that ring that might be an interesting image and then totality of
course there's Mundy or do you have Moon detail that
you can get with a good enough exposure um can you get moon detail in front of
the Sun and that Corona so challenges indeed Scott yeah all right well it
looks like you're having a good time out there too and uh all right thank you very much Adrian
and enjoy okay so we are thank you Scott I had
mute on uh John I'm gonna I'm gonna turn my camera off my mic off I'm gonna watch
you go buddy you're unmuted you're muted John
if John you're still muted you're still muted I'm learning how to do this stuff
I'm getting pretty good at it so anyway um it's bright in here this is a
beautiful shot from uh that is Amboy crater we we were out
there you could see it Milky Way beautiful moon on the horizon
no this is the Milky Way yeah Milky Way anyway yeah it's a great uh winter time
spot to view from it's very dark and uh dry it's the desert you know
Amboy crater anyway let me get started
Adrian it's good to see you oh same here
yeah I've got um I've got your um
exact Moon there it's kind of crazy but let's uh start it up
I got these sort of in order I wanted to put them
you know what's weird on Zoom they're backwards so you set them up backwards I'm learning
and we're gonna be doing good okay
there it is look it's like the same exact shot almost it's crazy that looks
familiar yeah that must have been similar um you know I've been getting a lot of moon
in the clouds lately it's pretty cool that one's for you this was uh Mount Pinos now this is the
the last star party in August where the Marine layer came in and it was
basically at the base of the mountain so everything was covered you can see how
beautiful the Milky Way is and uh that's my telescope straight in the middle
the 28 the 32s on the left and uh 22 is on the right
but that was a magnificent night we had a really nice time really dark and
transparent this was one I did from there uh the skull nebula NGC 246.
it's a real nice Target um to look at with the 28 it really
opens up and you can see a lot of detail in there especially with that transparency we had
very nice um I think this has a Triple Star too
which is unusual there's my new ring I'm working on
this is uh I'm trying to nail it to how it looks in the 28 in the eyepiece
very eerie color that our eyes pick up uh greenish
you know blue because our eyes are more sensitive to oxygen than hydrogen
but I'm really proud of this when I'm still working on it I I can never get them perfect the way I
like them but I'm happy with it see the double star inside
you're getting a view of the double the second star
so that was a great View Crab Nebula one of my favorites this one
I used um some Mallon cam data to add to my previous
but it's just an amazing um thing to look at even in the eyepiece that looked
amazing last month probably better than I've seen it in a long time
this is m61 again the Mallon cam brings it out like
this I mean when you do it visually even with a 28 and a 32 inch telescope it's
not as bright as you would like it to be now if you study it and um spend some
time looking at it using averted vision and you can start to pick up some of the
detail the core and the basic round shape with a hint of some spiral arms
but this is the Mallon cam unveils the detail so I made this other thing out of uh
just a like a Mount Pinos pretty cool
imagine laying in a grassy field uh on top of a mountain
and say it was Andromeda was coming in so in like two million years it's going
to collide with us but you would be able to see this massive Galaxy like that it
would just be mind-blowing to see this is just a quick mock-up I made I'm gonna
probably do this in much greater detail thank you yeah it's just like a place
you know we're always waiting to see it like that yeah I do too although if we
can talk to the aliens they might get us there get us out for a trip and we could see
it you know what it takes I'll talk to them please I just want to go to 51 and
that's it no further you don't want to go any further okay no because well I'm afraid if we do that when you come back
there may be nothing left I might have to live out my life with the aliens you might this is uh sombrero again you
know this is how it looks in the eyepiece uh with the 28 it's amazing you get a
hint of color and um just it's such a great Galaxy to
see uh with the 28. it's an amazing uh Edge on
love the add Johns
this is uh NGC 5907.
now I I added some of the Mallon cam detail my original sketches it was
similar it wasn't quite this good but um you know this isn't Draco it's a
beautiful Edge on to look at it's absolutely gorgeous
it's one of the better ones to look at this is m74
again Mal and cam is very helpful in uh getting this
detail it's really helpful to have various tools to
you know use when you're after of night of observing with the 28
literally you can't walk the next day it's pretty bad you're on the ladder all
night especially when I'm trying to sketch these things on the phone my legs and back everything just goes numb
so the second night I decided to hook up the Mal and Cam and just relax
sit down and enjoy the show and see the details that you can really
get um in like seven seconds it's pretty much life
I don't even just contrast it's just such a powerful tool and you're seeing in color
what's nice about the sketches uh the Stars aren't bloated like the Mallon cam
but um you know being an artist I can remove the stars and put them back much like
astrophotographers do so if you were doing Orion and you were trying to
expose the trapezium as well as the whole Orion Nebula itself you'd have a
real hard time because the brightness of that trapezium would burn out the whole
image so you would take that out and add it back later and you could really get
some great effects here's my newest of Ryan
very proud of this one I mean I was trying to get it I spent a
lot of time on the dark nebula today I could just do this one every day
it's like my favorite Nebula look at the Trap the detail
so this is the view pretty much like right there when I was in the daytime we were looking at Orion
with that filter and this is like what I was seeing and what you notice is inside the
trapezium and around it there's like mackerel clouds and um that was described I think by um
sir Lord Ross or was it William Herschel one of them it said that the the clouds
were very similar to macro clouds like uh Sailors you know see when
they're out at sea you know they're like flocks of sheep I call them or they're called mackerel is the term but
this is actually how the the dark nebula in front was appearing
and had holes in it I've never seen it with that kind of detail and I'm not certain if it's because of
daytime or if it was um the filter in the daytime you know how
Jupiter can be really good at just uh Before Sunrise or just after sunset
you still have light so what happens is you get the colors come out and you get a moment that's really steady so you can
really see the details and the belts and the red spot on some of the best times
to view and it actually works on Orion I couldn't believe it trapezium at 705
in the morning still looking at it but I really like this one
I have another one I haven't shown beautiful thank you yeah this is uh years of work
by the way this is um just taking my best rendition
and and taking it further I was trying to capture that view I'm
going to hopefully get a shot of it so I could show everyone there's my Mars from the um
Mars Transit of the the lunar Transit of Mars that was uh one Adrian was showing
this was actually how Mars appeared in the 18-inch sambuto
Star Master very sharp and and um Dusty with a
little polar cap this is Venus in the daytime you know I don't know if anybody's ever
tried but um I used to look at Venus and find it in the daytime
just because I knew you know where it was and you could spot it pretty good with your
naked eye when it's in this phase it's actually closer when it's a crescent
so it appears bright but um when it's three quarter phase it's it's smaller so
it's harder to find that was actually in the daytime
This was um my first publication in astronomy magazine years ago
I'm still trying to find out which Edition it was but um this was the triple Shadow
Transit of Jupiter and it was cloudy
and um I got so lucky because the clouds just opened up and I was able to get it
I was really happy with this so hopefully I can uh get some new ones
in there this was a moon in the clouds I love this one because the cloud is the way I
you know painted it it appears to be right in front you know and
um this was a spell where we had a lot of clouds for a lot of time
so I would just be able to get little peaks of the moon like Adrian and
I have to admit some of the best views are when the clouds part and you get
these beautiful Vistas that are just more than a Stark Moon even clouds can
be beautiful so I really like this one
that was part of the reason I started shooting with clouds up because I'd always when I got started just trying to
learn it was it's too cloudy can't do it or some other atmospheric reason and I'm
like I don't want to stop shooting just because of the clouds No you know um that was the thing on cloudy nights I
did one and it was like just after Sunset and it was blood red the sky and
there were streamers really high cirrus clouds and they were just drapesing
across the Moon and um so I drew it and I posted it and a
Gentleman said you know I I could kick myself I should have done something last night you know even with
the clouds you're able to do something this good it was just amazing and this is just walking my dog I see
these beautiful flowers and the clouds and you know the best time of day to capture
um these kind of pictures is like right after sunset or early in the morning those are special times of the day
photographically to capture the real mood and um
just something about that time of day when you take pictures it's absolutely amazing
here's another one and just beautiful stuff I like flowers
too I love them yeah they're like uh very you know symmetrical and the shapes
I think the shapes are repetitious in nature the way they blossom agreed yeah
pretty crazy how everything is defined by the physics of you know the cosmos is
right there yep just close up don't mind the eyeball I
was trying to pose with my dolly paintings so this is uh my two paintings that I
did 30 by 40 acrylic on canvas and um I got them framed so they just
came back from the framers and they were bubble wrapped but uh there's the other one I didn't show you
before and this took quite a bit of time not as much as the other one but if you look in
the eyeballs the other one is special there's actually veins you know
parodylia yeah it's a photorealism that's what I
studied in college you know I did graphic arts as well as fine art you know sculpture
uh figure painting yeah yeah new nude models kind of crazy
when this one guy he was like an old sailor and I'm not certain if he was out at sea too long
but um he always liked me probably because I did great pictures of him
this was uh just a simple on paper and uh India Inc wash
so one of my exercises and how I would figure paint is I would always
start with um pen and ink just a regular little ink pen and dip it in the bottle
of ink and just rough it out and then I would come in with uh water and I would dilute the ink and create
different values of monochromatic shading tones to create you know this is
high contrast there's very little shading needed but you can see how the hair you diffuse
the shadows and it gives that effect of floating in front and then there's a
nice core line on the chin yeah little techniques but I actually found this not too long ago so
I was pretty happy with it just a quick rendering
and there's my little friend as usual he's with me right now he didn't get to
eat because we again didn't almost make it I I got so much to put together and and
I'm last minute every day it's crazy I I did a lot of stuff uh
for the wife this weekend you know honeydews so I made sure I did
that first even though I was killing myself not being able to get my my um
tsp file put together and there's my little friend again
it's my best buddy when I'm doing the moon shots he's always out there with me and a lot of the Moon shots I
put him in but um it's good to have a friend someone that
wants to be with you even if you are doing astronomy he'll sit out there and wait for me and
just sit there and I can't believe it he's a dedicated friend
that's uh pretty much my presentation all right for this time thank you thank
you thank you so my pleasure I really enjoy doing this
stuff yeah thank you so much Adrian thanks all right so we are
um uh we are going to call this a night here um we want to thank all of our
presenters uh that um that we're on tonight um it was great to see uh Jerry Hubble
after uh uh a Hiatus here and uh seeing
them active with that big refractor you know so uh so I'm I'm hoping to see more from them
and of course we'll be back next Tuesday with global Star Party
um hoping to have a couple of surprises in store so you guys keep looking up and
we will um definitely be back with more of our
Global star party activities yeah and John we shut down another one
yesterday buddy man those are beautiful shops I love that one of their first
ones you showed with the um colors and the Moon that was spectacular there there's an apostle
I'll check it have a good evening YouTube right now
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are your eclipse glasses safe for looking at the sun let's check to see if your eclipse glasses can handle the heat
or if they need to stay inside first off never check your eclipse
glasses with the sun that's a good way to injure your eyes take your eclipse glasses and find a bright light like a
lamp or a flashlight hold your eclipse glasses up to the light and look through them the light will appear extremely dim or
not appear at all when looking through the glasses for example you should only be able to see the filament of a light
bulb but not the glow surrounding the bulb also if your eclipse glasses have any marks or scratches on them don't use
them if you have older eclipse glasses from a previous Eclipse give them the check to make sure they haven't been
damaged or scratched all safe eclipse glasses will meet the iso 12312-2 standard
best to store eclipse glasses in a safe place where they won't become scratched or punctured remember never look at the
sun without eclipse glasses or a solar filter be safe and happy sound viewing everyone
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