Transcript for Part A:
right now
two usies
just about everyone has seen and been
Amazed by the Hubble Space telescope's
incredible images of our universe from
Star forming nebula and gigantic
galaxies to the beautiful planets in our
solar system for over 30 years Hubble
has been rewriting the textbooks as it
continues to expand our own
understanding of the
universe but operating in telescope in
space isn't an easy task as Hubble
orbits the earth once every 90 minutes
it's not exactly as simple as just
spinning the telescope around and
telling it to take a quick picture and
that's where the stock comes
in dedicated on February 14th 1984 at
NASA garded space flight center the
stock or the Space Telescope operations
control center operates the Hubble Space
Telescope on its scientific
Journey built in the early 1980s this
historic location was one of the most
complex
[Applause]
I'm here to talk to you about an
exciting radio telescope that is going
to be placed on the moon it is called
rolles stands for radi wave observations
from just about everyone has seen and
been Amazed by the Hubble Space
telescope's in
testing testing
testing testing
Transcript for Part C:
I'm here to talk to you about an exciting radio telescope that is going to be placed on the moon it is called
rolles stands for radio wave observations from the lunar surface of the photo electron sheath it's a
mouthful but actually it's a very simple instrument and it's going to detect all
kinds of radio emission that is falling on the moon
right now it is close to solar maximum so the sun is producing lot of coronal mass ejections and radium Mission
associated with them and we can detect these radio burst from the Sun a Jupiter can produce radio mission in this
wavelength that we are interested in and we can observe Jupiter even the Milky Way galaxy produces low level of radio
emission we can detect those radio emission we also produce a lot of radio Mission by man-made transmitters from
Earth and these radio interference can reach the moon characterization of the radio environment of the moon is very
important it has not been completely done and therefore rses will be able to contribute in identifying various
sources of radio emission on the sun if we setting up an observatory on the moon we should know what kind of radio
interference we get there commercial lunar payload Services NASA and American
companies working [Music]
together [Applause]
I'm here to talk to you about an exciting radio telescope that is going to be placed on the moon it is called
rolles stands for radio wave observations from the lunar surface of the photo electron sheath it's mouthful
but actually it's a very simple instrument and it's is going to detect all kinds of radio emission that is
falling on the moon right now it is close to solar
maximum so the sun is producing lot of coronal mass ejections and radio emission associated with them and we can
detect these radio burst from the Sun a Jupiter can produce radio mission in this wavelength that we are interested
in and we can observe Jupiter even the Milky Way galaxy produces low level of radio emission we can detect those radio
emissions we also prod lot of radio emission by man-made transmitters from Earth and these radio interference can
reach the moon characterization of the radio environment of the moon is very important it has not been completely
done and therefore rolles will be able to contribute in identifying various
sources of radio emission on the sun if we setting up an observatory on the moon we should know what kind of radio
interference we get there commercial lunar payload Services NASA and American
companies working together
[Applause]
I'm here to talk to you about an exciting radio telescope that is going to be placed on the moon it is called
rolles it stands for radio wave observations from the lunar surface of the photo elron sheath it's a mouthful
but actually it's a very simple instrument and it's going to detect all kinds of radi emission that is falling
on the moon right now it is close to solar maximum so the sun is producing lot of
coronal mass injections and radio Mission associated with them and we can detect these radio burst from the Sun a
Jupiter can produce radio mission in this wavelength that we are interested in and we can observe Jupiter even the
Milky Way galaxy produces low level of radio emission we can detect those radio emission we also produce a lot of radio
emission by man-made transmitters from Earth and these radio interference can reach the moon characterization of the
radio environment of the moon is very important it has not been completely done and therefore rolles will be able
to contribute in identifying various sources of radio emission on the sun if you're setting up an observatory on the
moon we should know what kind of radio interference we get there commercial lunar payload es NASA and American
companies working [Music]
together just about everyone has seen and been Amazed by the Hubble Space telescope's incredible images of our
universe from Star forming nebula and gigantic galaxies to the beautiful planets in our solar system for over 30
years years Hubble has been rewriting the textbooks as it continues to expand our own understanding of the
universe but operating a telescope in space isn't an easy task as Hubble
orbits the earth once every 90 minutes it's not exactly as simple as just spinning the telescope around and
telling it to take a quick picture and that's where the stock comes
in dedicated on February 14th 1984 at Nasa Goddard space flight center the
stock or the Space Telescope operations control center operates the Hubble Space
Telescope on its scientific Journey built in the early 1980s this
historic location was one of the most complex satellite control centers ever developed the engineers and scientists
working at the stock maintained the health safety and performance of the telescope as it speeds around Earth at
17,500 mph cruded 24 hours a day 7 days a week
the team at the stock evolved with changes to Computing technology in 1999
Goddard upgraded the stocks computers from mini computers to workstations and in 2011 the stock
utilized smartphone technology and automated processes relieving the need for 24/7
Staffing while the stock has undergone many changes over the years One Thing
Remains the Same the team's commitment to the Hubble Space Telescope the women and men of the
mission operations team have been constantly in pursuit of finding ingenious ways to prolong Hubble's life
to maximize its scientific return today the mission operations team members at
the stock continue to operate the telescope capturing data and images of the cosmos for all of us to enjoy and
enabling Hubble to continue its mission of unraveling the mysteries of the
universe
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause] [Music] [Applause]
[Music]
for
well good afternoon good evening everyone uh Scott Roberts here from explore scientific and the explore
Alliance and you're watching the 142 Global star party uh co-hosted by myself
and the one and only David Levy I'll bring him on right now uh we have um uh
eagerly anticipated this event event and uh I was uh uh looking for a good um you
know theme for the program and David came up with the perfect one and that was uh you know uh reflecting on what
we've learned about astronomy and so today's theme is Reflections I'm going
to turn it over to you David and uh let you uh kick it off well thank you so much Scott it's
good to it's good to be here i' like to add my welcome and I hope we're going to have a wonderful wonderful time we have
a number of interesting people here we have David Schuman vice president of the Montreal
center of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and we have David AER who I
understand would like to work at astronomy magazine yes H I hope you get
the job David anyway uh anyway it's it's good to see all of you we have and Don
NAB we have uh all kinds of people and
uh interesting people and Adrien bradle is here Adrien Bradley takes the prettiest nature and star pictures that
I've ever seen really something really anyway I usually begin with a uh with a
poem and since our them since our theme is Reflections this week we're going to
have Percy Shelly very famous romantic poet give us some Reflections on the
moon and we have the full moon coming up and it'll be the last full moon where
there isn't an eclipse till next month there will be a penumbral lunar eclipse
visible over almost all of the United States uh except for those who haven't
paid their taxes yet so pay your taxes and uh
then uh uh then just two weeks after that there will be another encounter
with the moon and the sun when we have a total eclipse of the Sun and that is
something that we are all really looking forward to anyway so the poem today is
Shell's fragment to the Moon Art Thou pale for weariness of climbing heaven
and gazing on the earth wandering companionless Among the Stars that have
a different birth and never change Ching like a joyless eye that finds No Object
worth its constancy th chosen sister of the spirit that gazes on thee till in
thee it pies and thank you and Scott back to you okay all right that's great
David well um let's uh let's move on to our our next speaker
here and uh that will be um Mr David AER uh and um I think I have
that correct let me double check
here sorry about this
guys we have a um pretty busy
schedule yeah we can go ahead and go on with David David uh David Aker has uh been
with astronomy magazine I think it's now over 35 years maybe is 40 years is that
right 41 too too long you might say 4 oh my
God but you've had fun the entire time I think that you really enjoyed your time
at astronomy and uh you know I think that um uh you
know it it would be a rare privilege uh to really uh stand where you do and to
see all of the professional astronomy all those discoveries uh all the space
exploration uh all the interactions with the amateur astronomers over this time
uh how would you say that things I mean if you were to reflect back on your 41
years at astronomy magazine what what is it that that hits you most uh uh
profoundly well well I mean everything has changed you know the last 15 or 20
years have really been a a revolution in understanding what we know about the universe in many ways cosmology
planetary science astrophysics the fundamental questions we've sometimes talked about here we either know about
much more than we did a generation ago or are leaning in on some pretty good
answers you know about the origin size shape fate uh of the universe Etc and
then of course the hobby thanks to people like Scott Roberts um has changed totally in the last generation as well
with with imaging with the availability of really good telescopes um with the
knowledge that you can I remember when I you know when I started I you you know I read that you you know forget the veil
nebula you can't see that in an 8 in telescope you know and and one of the things going
out with an 8 in telescope on the first night I had it and seeing the veil nebula you know something's wrong here
you know so so there's been a revolution in information of course as well as
technology which makes it of course a better time than ever to be interested in all this and to be an amateur
astronomer yes yeah we've often mentioned to each other that we're in the Golden Age of astronomy and uh and
that is true uh whether you're an amateur or you're a pro uh you know the rate of discovery uh
the realizations of our place in the universe uh you know the you would think
it would get clearer and clearer but the but the questions become more and more you know so um I think back to Bob
gastro's book you know um uh Cosmic Discovery was it called you know from
the late 70s in which he calculated very meticulously that we really may be and
this is not to say that fundamental laws that we believe in are going to be overturned gravitation relativity Etc
but we maybe know of about 20% of the kinds of phenomena in the universe
there's a lot to learn yet but we know a lot more than we did 40 years ago about
some of the big questions right well excellent um um
well uh last time you were on uh you talked about the um astronomy and the
Civil War we got part one and this is going to be part two back when I was young a long time
ago um I was tired of writing about coming home and writing and doing
projects on astronomy after doing it all day you know day after day after day so
I was given a bunch of stuff from a civil war ancestor a great great grandfather who fought in an Ohio
regiment under us Grant and William tumy Sherman during the war and so really got
interested in that and I had been brainwashed by my dad a professor who took me around to historical sites
before I cared about girls that kind of thing and that comes back to you you know later on so I was interested in
history among other things so rather than looking back in time at galaxies
tonight we'll continue with part two look back in a little bit in time to
15060 years ago um and think about the crossroads a little bit of of astronomy
in the Civil War the fundamentally transformative event in American history
if we can right okay it's all yours oh I well thank you Scott I will share my uh
oh I just sorry I got away from it I will share my screen and we'll see if we can start
with part two and I will start a slide
show if I can do that as well where do I do that play you got something up right
now sorry I should have done play from the current slide sorry you have to relive everything from last time here we
go okay last episode of the Civil War you may remember that we relived 1861
and 62 and the start of the Civil War which a lot of people of course thought would last you know a few weeks at the
outset of course the start of the Civil War was the changing political landscape
of the country the domination of Southerners in politics in Washington for decades from the start of the
country and um if in case anyone isn't absolutely sure the major cause of the
civil war with slavery and if you're not aware of this which some people
apparently still aren't you can read to convince yourself the papers and speeches of Jefferson Davis and
Alexander Stevens who elves spoke about that very plainly so anyway slavery was
the underly cause of the conflict and the war and it led to of course more
casualties and more battles um than any other that that then up to fairly recent
times the total Quantum of all other deaths and woundings in all other Wars
in American history so it was a catastrophic War at that time given that the population of course was smaller
so we'll we we left off with Fredericksburg in a brilliant Aurora last time uh a few weeks ago now we'll
start with 1963 and and rather than um astronomical
phenomena uh being reflected in many fictional ways which they had been early
in the war like with the appearances of bright comets and what that might mean and so on they also played a role in
real events one of them was the case uh with Thomas Jonathan Stonewall Jackson
Who uh was an important and very celebrated by Southerners confederate general as you may
know he was Junior only to Robert E Lee in the East who was the commander of the
army of Northern Virginia and James Long Street who commanded the first Army Corps uh in the army of Northern
Virginia Jackson was the commander of the second Army Corps but he was very
well liked and celebrated even though he was an odd guy he would ride into battle
with one arm up and suck on lemons because he thought that that balanced
the blood he was an unusual guy he had been a a militarist and then a professor
at the Virginia Military Institute in there in Lexington Virginia at first
Bull Run he acquired his nickname uh it's said by many that he stood firmly
in the center of the line there in the first large battle in Virginia like a stone wall others Barnard B who was a
colonel and was mortally wounded there um suggested that that what what was
meant is that he was standing like a stone wall in the way of the other Confederate troops and they couldn't get
through so the interpretation of his so if you will was somewhat cloudy in those
days but he uh pulled at a later battle in 18 63 now where we are at
Chancellorsville an incredible and very daring maneuver he had fought uh in in a
number of places early in the war in the Shan andoa Valley and and through second buun and antium and performed very well
there as a commander had a reputation as a daring commander and at Chancellorsville late in the action he
commenced with his core a flank March around a portion of the Union Army that
stunned and surprised red a good part of the Union Army that was commanded once
again by a knucklehead uh in this case it was Joe hooker Major General who was
in command of the army of the pomac at the time after a succession of other failures who included Ambrose Burnside
and George mclen and so on um and hooker stood up at the chancellor Tavern in the
middle of this battlefield against a column as the battle was going on when it was struck by a cannonball a
Confederate Cannon shot which knocked him senseless yet he refused to
relinquish command so the union command was in a a state somewhat chaotic State
there uh late in the Battle of Chancellorsville well anyway Jackson's flank March stunned and surprised the
union line um helping to secure a Confederate victory in in both senses
tactically and strategically however late on May 2nd of
1863 North Carolina centuries mistook Jackson and his staff who were on
Horseback for federal Cavalry riding into their line and they opened fire on
the group you may know the story if you're a civil war person Jackson was hit three times he was hit twice in the
left arm once in the right hand and this Monument that's very close to the
chancellor Visitor Center if you ever go to the battlefield there marks the
position of Jackson's wounding it's very close to the turnpike that you uh that
that follows the wartime road that you can go across and is kind of hidden in Brush but it's near the visitor Senter
there that marks the sight of Stonewall
Jackson well he was wounded badly and taken uh Suddenly by his troops to an a
a station down the pike which is at this site here at the J Horus Lacy Farm
that's National Park Service property now as well you can go and visit this called Elwood the mansion house here and
uh at the Aid Station that was set up here at the Battle just post battle the E that evening they amputated his arm
and they buried his arm under this marker so Stonewall if you really want
to see Stonewall Jackson you have to go to two places okay you can only visit his arm here um
in the in the uh Chancellorsville Wilderness there um this is of course uh
west of Fredericksburg Virginia hopes were in the Confederacy
for the recovery of Jackson because he was such a celebrated Commander um despite uh a somewhat mixed reputation
Lee was in despair allegedly saying that Jackson has lost his left arm but I've
lost my right arm Robert El Le said the wound wounded Commander they really
wanted to try to get Jackson back to Richmond for good medical care so they
took him they transported him uh to a rail head that was part of the way back
toward Richmond called guinea station this is also what's left of it here um
is also National Park Service property you can go and visit this here and he was in a bed here at the it's called the
Cher Farm office building at Guinea station here and here a number of days
after the wounding he died in this room that's on the right side window there on
the left part of this image here so that for Stonewall
Jackson well in 2013 a group of astronomers and history enthusiasts
studied the situation of that critical night at Chancellorsville found that the moon was very low in the sky it was only
about 25 degrees up in the sky and directionally calculated that the
southern troops seen this group of riders who they assumed were Union
Cavalry U made up but actually made up by Jackson and his staff in Shadow because of the geometry of the Moonlight
and and its elevation so that likely led to the tragic mistake and here's a post-war image from the Library of
Congress showing the wounding site long before the parks are or a monument
there so that was the end of Stonewall Jackson and then we go back to a northerner a union general very
interesting guy uh whose name is Ormsby mcnight Mitchell Mitchell with one
L he became a scientist and was a militarist early in his life also but he
was an astronomer he was born in Kentucky and he uh moved to Cincinnati my old stopping grounds as a young guy
um and he helped to found the Cincinnati reservatory and became its first director now believe it or not back in
the day in the mid 19th century the Cincinnati Observatory was one of the
most important most major observatories in the United States He also had helped
to found two of the other major observatories the US Naval Observatory in Washington and The Observatory at
Harvard College Observatory so he was an influential expert on observatories and
telescopes he was also a militarist and a friend from Kentucky of Abraham
Lincoln so when the Civil War cranked up and began he re-entered the service and
after a Time became a brigadier and then a major general you can see he's wearing
two stars of a Major General in this portrait so what did Ormsby Mitchell do
well after establishing the defenses of Cincinnati which they assigned him to
which was early in the war thought to be you know it was a large city Cincinnati in the west at the time before lots of
others added a lot of population before Chicago was so important um and it was
thought to be very vulnerable so uh he really built up the Cincinnati defenses
of course only a minor raid by John Hunt Morgan happened eventually near
Cincinnati but there was no invasion of Cincinnati after he built up those defenses he moved South in
1862 commissioned a major general and and Consulting with Lincoln he concocted
a plan to get uh Confederate operations going that would help to diminish the
rebel Supply effort in Northern Georgia this would uh help Union troops perhaps
Drive deeper into the South as well Mitchell established a group of
spies led by a civilian James J Andrews they plan to steal a locomotive which is
shown here called the general and tear up and disrupt track between Atlanta and
Chattanooga in Northern Georgia which would disrupt Confederate operations for
some time to come so what came to be called The Andrews raid or the Great
Locomotive Chase there have been movies and books and so on made about it it transpired in April 1862 and these this
undercover band dressed as civilians Southern civilians hijacked this
locomotive the general uh at what was then called Big Shanty station near
Kennesaw uh this is where you can see the Train on display now in a museum there and sped northward tearing up
track and disrupting Communications and rail heads along the way
the general by the way is perhaps about 30 or 35% authentic it's been heavily
rebuilt over time but it that is what's left of the
engine following close behind the Confederates were not happy to have one of their locomotives stolen and hijacked
and taken with chaos reigning behind so Confederates chased the General in in
the another engine the Texas this is now at the Atlanta History Center you can
see it and it's essentially pristine and and and completely authentic the Texas
this is the engine that pursued rapidly then the general finally had to be
abandoned north of Ringold Georgia uh in what later became the Atlantic campaign
cities between shabuga and Atlanta many of the Raiders were captured after they
attempted to scatter and Andrews and seven other Raiders in Confederate
custody were taken as spies and were hanged and they're buried here in
Chattanooga National Cemetery with a little Monument uh with a bronze of the
General on top of the monument here you can see them in Chattanooga National Cemetery anytime you'd like to go
there Andrews and the other executed Raiders were postumus uh awarded the
first ever medals not the Congressional Medal of Honor as it's usually called it's called the Medal of Honor and it
was the highest honor um given to militarists except for what was even
higher than the gold medal which uh Grant and a few others received but this
was the highest honor and it was created for the Andrews Raiders and then went
onward in time so they were the first recipients of the of Honor in American
history and that's what led to a lot of the end of the Civil War was this kind
of disruptive stuff because yes battles were won on the battlefield that um if
you read there have been many many books a couple of which I've written long ago about this when Southern morale cave
when life was much worse off in the South and ordinary civilians realized it
then it had been under the union that really began to cave for the
Confederates that led to its downfall if you'd like a little bit more
about this I've kind of raced through a bunch of stuff here a couple months ago I wrote a story I figured well I was
going to ask to give a talk about this it's some historical groups might as well crank out a story in the magazine
so I wrote a story about some of these Crossroads of a couple of interests of mine astronomy in the Civil War a couple
months ago in the Magazine and there it is so nearly 160 years after the war ended
we know what they did not of course you guys know this already but I'll end with that because I've been talking to
historians a little bit about this we live on a planet orbiting one star of course uh among perhaps 400 billion in
the Milky Way which is but one of about a 100 billion at least in the universe
so it's a big place and our stories of the past illuminate us in one way and we
can look out at distant objects of course the universe and see the past in a very different way so Scott thanks for
putting up that's with me that's part wonderful of the Civil War in astronomy
and I will get back to more weird objects in the sky next time
okay great great okay so um uh let
me bring myself on here there we are um
so uh is there much more to tell about uh uh astronomy in the Civil War past
what you've already described or well there is you know those are kind of some highlights things that happened you know
during or or after battles that that that people made notable you know the
great comets early in the war the Fredericksburg Aurora um Lincoln's visit
to curiosity and inquisitiveness about technology and also about the heavens
quote unquote his visits to the old Naval Observatory which you can still go
and as I mentioned the first time climb up the same worn wooden ladder that Lincoln climbed up uh where he visited
ASAP Hall you know who later on discovered the moons of Mars those are some of the most interesting Crossroads
and of course a lot of people who were involved in astronomy were not not just
Mitchell but others were involved in um astronomy as well of course because the
Civil War pulled so many people who were capable into military service the guy
who was ostensibly the Superstar of the US Naval Observatory and office and the
almanac office you know those of us who pay attention to planetary stuff the
astronomical Almanac is a Bible of predicting thanks to johannas Kepler
originally what's going to happen in the sky like eclipses and so on but the guy
who was in charge of that at the outbreak of the Civil War was Matthew Fontaine Mory a very famous uh Naval
figure and astronomer and he went and became a naval officer in the
Confederacy you know so things did go in in different directions there as the
Civil War approached was there technology developed during the Civil War that led
to techn ology being used in astronomy you know that's a very
interesting question because I think most of there was such an acceleration of Technology being developed at the
wars outside and during the war for military weapons and Lincoln himself as
I mentioned a few weeks ago was very interested in this and would would go down to either to the naval Navy Yard
which you can still visit in Washington or to the area that's now the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial
between the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument that was just swamp ground of old Foggy Bottom in the Civil
War days he went down there and would participate in tests of many many
weapons but there as I mentioned I think last time there's a really important
convergence of technology that happened not only with weapons accelerating
forward that led to such a bloody war with rifles weapons that were much more
accurate being used mass-- produced for the first time at the time of the Civil War but Napoleonic tactics of lining up
in rows you know that that led to murderous casualties but this also
coincided with the birth of astrophysics it was 1862 the first
spectroscopy of astronomical objects right at the time of the battle of
antium you know so so so the birth of astrophysics although
it didn't really affect the war dramatically too much instantly happened
at the very same time you know and for the Next Generation after the Civil War
during Reconstruction up to the Gilded Age interesting so they have a common
this is the the the end of cataloging stuff which most Sciences go through for
hundreds of years astronomy did and other Sciences of basic categorizing things and trying to understand sort
them out through a physical understanding of what starlight is and what it means happened at the same time
as the American Civil War also very interesting very interesting well thank
you so much David that's great um thanks God yep okay so our next speaker is
going to be the astronomical League um uh and uh will be Don NAB Don also has a
two-parter uh uh uh presentation this will be about the Palomar and one of the
telescopes I just really love is the Palomar 200 in telescope if you've never
been to Mount Palomar and seen this telescope in person it is an elegant beautiful instrument um David
Levy uh also uh uh brought Fame to to Mount Palomar with the discovery of
comet Shoemaker ly9 um uh just uh literally as Stones throw away from the
200 inch telescope so um Don thanks for coming on and I'm going to give you the
stage okay thank you I will uh share my
screen start my slideshow should be coming through is it
it is okay so the theme of Reflections uh we're going to look back reflect back
on the history of Mount palar and specifically the 200 telescope uh this
would be part one and part two be more of the the current 200 in in Mount palar
so this was beyond doubt the most important telescope in the entire world
from 1949 until 1992 and I'm not sure there's ever been another telescope that
rained in that with that title that long so uh before I get into that I do want
to mention that on uh next Friday March 1 will be
the next astronomical live I'll Chuck Allen doing the main presentation his
presentations are always fascinating he's going to talk about seeing faster than light objects and other perspective
on distance so uh that will be not this Friday but next Friday so how big is this Observatory
all right uh so sitting there on the steps of the 200 in hail telescope Observatory on the right there's my wife
on the left is's a dear friend of ours that lives in Southern California who we visited the polymor site with a number
of years ago how big is it well it's really big all right so I like the way this uh this photo gives you a a sense
of perspective on this uh this amazing structure uh as Scott said it's it's
incredible I think it's been referred to as the Cathedral of science it is amazing so you can't talk
about um I'm gonna hide my floating panel here a little cut there it's better you can't
talk about palar in the 200 in without talking about George Ellery hail this was the story of of palore is the story
of George Ellery hail and uh and one of his greatest quotes is make no small
make no small plans and dream no small dreams well this guy did not dream small he dreamed big so so palore is it's it's
a couple miles north of some San Diego it's operated by the Caltech the
California Institute of Technology there's five Scopes there and most of what I'm going to talk about here is the
inch although I will talk about one more scope at the very end here uh so again it was I said here at the start it was
the most important telescope until 92 and that changed when the kick in Hawaii
came on on on stream at 387 in but as I think most of us know that's an entirely
different style telescope the way it's built up in segments so on hail is a was
a character maybe ston W Jackson was too as David ier said but hail I think takes
a cake he was driven individual he worked he founded multiple significant
observatories the yeres in Wisconsin Mount Wilson Poore and The Hil solar
laboratory and at Wilson he hired harlo shapley and Edwin Hubble you know they
did some of the most important discoveries of the time and I would argue of any time the things they
discovered he was an amazing man as I said he was driven he was also brilliant
but he was tortured he had neurological and psychological problems he suffered
from insomnia headaches and arguably schizophrenia he claimed to have regular
visits from an elf who acted as his his adviser so he was quite the
character he's been honored many times as an asteroid uh named after him and here on
the left side is a crater on Mars hell crater on Mars and on the right side is
the hell crater on the moon so here's where he first reached
out into the astronomical World in a big way and this is York's Observatory and
uh by many scientists they considered this is the birthplace of modern
astrophysics okay and here's the telescope and it is still uh the largest
refractor ever built for night sky observing and research there is one
telescope refractor that's bigger that's in Sweden but it's a solar scope so to this day this Remains the largest night
sky observing uh refractor ever built and was dedicated in
1897 and there was quite a quite a crew here you can look at this guy in the middle and recognize him this is Albert
Einstein so George Eller Hill really walked in some very high and lofty
circles but 40 in was not enough for him he knew he had to see deeper and so he
then built the Mount Wilson 60-inch telescope and this was the largest scope
in the world when it was completed in 1908 um this is where harlo shapeley
measured the size of the Milky Way with using this telescope and that wasn't enough so
George Eller halale went on to build the 100in telescope also at Mount Wilson
Mount Wilson is northeast of Los Angeles and at the time it had incredible seeing
probably better seeing than Mount Palomar uh it was steady skies and clear
uh so Mount Wilson was the largest scope in the world from 1917 1949 and is here that Edwin Hubble first
proved and discovered that galaxies are not within the Milky Way they are far far
distant and then he discovered and proved that the G the universe is expanding so this is an incredibly
historic telescope so this was uh hail's second to bigest scope but he said this
was still not enough hail said Starlight is falling on every square mile of the Earth's surface and the best we can do
at present to gather up and concentrate the Rays that strike an area 100 in in diameter so he had to go for 200 Ines
this is a photo I took actually on a visit to palore this is uh at mon palore
I'm not sure where it's in Visitor Center or in the if it's in the observatory I'm not
sure this is an amazing drawing so another fellow have to mention with u
the hell 200 in is Russell Porter he was one of the earliest people to do the
Cutaway engineering drawings and if you take a look this is shows the massive scale take a look right there is the
size of a Man compared to this equipment so it's a huge huge facility um Wella
Porter is also well known because he and some others are the ones that created the stellane uh conference in
Vermont U another amazing engineer and
designer so here's the palar plateau before anything was really done to it um
it's it's pretty far up there the road up there is quite a trip uh this is the road back uh before
they when they started construction as you can see it was an absolute mess so
um there's no way they could think of bringing a 15 ton mirror up here or the huge parts of the telescope so the
county of San Diego who recognized that by having palar and the observ teritory
in their County they would get a lot of notoriety they started building a packed
Gravel Road they ran out of money but the California Department of Highways pitched in and by 1937 they finished it
so they call it the highway to the stars is still called that to this day here is a overhead view of the site
you can see down here toward the front those are the tents where the workers were were were were housed on the left
is Minister buildings and even a water tower over here but most interesting to us is this patch of white over here that
Pat of white is where the foundations were were being laid for the U dome for
the 200 in telescope so here is Construction in April
1937 and on top of this structure here on top of the the the walls they
installed steel rails on top of them they
installed 40 32 four trucks that would house the Dome to rotate now the other
thing you need to look at here is this Arch that's being built okay the central
Arch was there because fitted to it when it was finished was a a 60 ton crane in
order to get the components into the observatory and here's where they were
just about to install the uh the shutter on the Dome and here is the finished Dome so uh
this to me just looks like something out of a 1950 science fiction movie you know D Stood Still or
uh one of those movies but it's a beautiful beautiful
structure and here is the view from the top of the Dome and you can sort of see here is the struts hanging down from the
60 ton crane lifting components up into the uh the main floor of the
Dome these are part of the Yol this one is being held temporarily by scaffold
and you can see the crane here is lifting the other side I guess that is
the um one is the North and one's the South I'm not sure which is which
here this is another interesting photo here are those two parts that were just saw being lifted up and here is a
bearing and this whole structure rotates in a bearing so anyone has an equatorial
telescope uh can recognize this as an equatorial Mount so this axis from the
lower left to the upper right aims toward the North Star and then in these bearings in the center this is where the
530 ton uh tube actually mounts call a tube
but it's more of a an open trust this is where a mounts that holds the mirror and holds a telescope itself these are
hydrostatic bearings oil bearings so that uh you can't have metal on metal
contact with something that heavy so oil is pumped at high pressure as a
bearing um and there again as a man just to give you an idea of the scale of this the
structure it is unbelievable so here's late 1939 and the
uh there is once again there's a man to give you a scale of how big this
telescope is looking back at it the mirror is quite a story on its
own this is u a visit my wife and I made to the Corning Museum of Glass um you
can actually get there about an hour and a half from Cherry Springs State Park in Pennsylvania so it's just over the Pennsylvania new Pennsylvania line it's
in New York like there's my wife on the right looking at the the mirror this is the first first failed attempt you can
see these this like waffling pattern they when they cast it they put put um
fire brick silica fire bricks in and then when the mirror was fooled they would pull them out to save weight uh
but the first mirror failed and you can see the cracks going through here uh when they developed this mirror he
started the fellow that did it started with 30 in and 60 in and 120 in just to
practice to how to do this uh they had a lot of problems holding those silica fire bricks in place I finally went to
Steel bolts and that worked so the 200 in Mirror was eventually made the second casting did work and you know
I have to say for the time for this generation of people this is equivalent
to my generation's Apollo moonshot this was watched by the entire country this
mirror was transported by train from porning across the country and uh it was
it was like an event a media event it had a big markings on it towns came out
to watch go through I gave gave a presentation similar to this some years ago at a assisted living facility and
there was a fellow there Remembered at going through his hometown so this was the moonshot of their
generation here's the dedication unfortunately
um Mr hail never saw this he died in 1938 again you can see the scale of this
uh this skel there's there's the bearing that holds oratorial Mount so there a
bearing here and that's the bearing for the up end because this whole thing rotates in order for the scope there's
the scope itself and we'll see a lot more pictures of that on part two in
March but this is the uh the dedication M palar was the first St
space stamp ever issued by any government so that's enough on on the 200 in I wanted to spend a moment on the
now decommissioned 18inch uh David Levy knows this telescope intimately this is the scope
that that the shoemakers and he used to discover uh the comet shoer ly9 in fact
if you go to the palar website Mount Palmore you can poke around a bit and find a video of Dave of the shoemakers
and of David David is leaning on this telescope moving the levers around and talking about it putting his hands on it
and it's a it's a fascinating video it's only like seven or eight minutes it's worth looking for it and watching it
um so reflecting on what we've learned I wanted to put this up here now this is not one shot this is a composite from uh
Hubble and this is Shaker le9 headed toward Jupiter again both are Hubble
shots and I'm going to make a suggestion that this photo is possibly the most
frightening photo of all time when we reflect on it okay why do I say that these are the impact sites from Chum le9
and here's about the size of the Earth if any one of these had not been
captured by Jupiter and hit the earth we would not be having this GSP tonight okay so I I am going to suggest
this is the most frightening photograph of all time so that was part one uh part two
will be today's Mount palore we'll do that uh during a presentation in
March so I will okay great Scott if you can stop sharing my
screen for me I've lost yeah I'll do that I've lost control panel somewhere here no problem here we go
great thank you okay great yeah um and so uh yeah I I
am basically a uh huge Fanboy of George Ellery hail and uh had the honor of
being at the uh hail family reunion that was actually uh held at Caltech and got
to meet uh several generations of uh living hail members including um Sam
hail who's the grandson of George Ellery hail he is uh he is currently um heading
up the um the uh Alliance of historical observatories or historic
observatories uh which is now getting legs as an organization I think the next
meeting is actually going to be conducted in Rome at the Vatican Observatory so all these uh uh internal
National Historic observatories are starting to come together as well as many that are already aligned here in
the United States so I keep at my desk a um uh an astrophysical Journal uh this
is this journal uh is a bound edition of what was um you know the astrophysical
journal where almost like newsletters they were individual um things and George Ellery
hail would have these bound and so this is from George Ellery hail's private
library and uh inside um are several
stamps but I think the most remarkable thing is uh can I don't know if you can see that but George Eller com through
penciled signature wow yeah so I love I love this one day I will donate this to
a uh library or someplace suitable for keeping that uh but they
unfortunately uh you know as we reflect back on on what we've learned one of the things that um uh sometimes we haven't
learned is how to respect and honor the uh hard one um uh data collection and
and U um work that that uh you know all science has built upon these books were
actually thrown in a trash can okay and the reason why I have it is because somebody saved it from the garbage and
uh and sent it to me because they knew I would like that so wow yeah so um but uh on any account
I'm glad you're doing this and um yeah I look forward to your next presentation
okay thanks thanks Don okay all right so
um um up next is uh Dr Daniel bar uh
Daniel bar is uh someone that's been involved in astronomy for a long time uh
he even worked uh when I first got to meet him he was working in a telescope
retail store called scope City some of you might remember that um that chain of
stores in Southern California and I think there was one even in Las Vegas um
for a while and uh uh Dan then went on to get his uh PhD in astronomy and
taught astronomy at the uh college and university level and um uh just uh you
know it was like a perfect alignment he comes to Northwest Arkansas and comes in
to explore scientific and reintroduces himself after many years uh not you recognize me
first so I know you yeah yeah yeah so uh
uh it's it's great to have you on now uh Dan is uh uh retired from the University
he was working at University of Arkansas uh and uh he started out he
needed a part-time job I guess so he wouldn't go nuts um uh and that is now
turned into kind of a full-time job so we're very happy to have uh uh Dan bar
here uh he goes by the nickname of Doc and uh so if you are a um if you call
customer service you're likely to get doc uh to advise you on IP selection or
how to use your new telescope so I have all the best toys yes he does anyways um
and uh your talk today is the uh is about Hawking stars is that right
Hawking Stars okay all right now you gave you also have a show called how do
you know that that airs through our channels and uh uh uh uh Daniel is also an author of some
very good astronomy books uh including uh one that's given out for free uh to
um Educators and stuff so I'm sure he'll mention that a little bit but uh I'm
gonna turn this over to you Dan thanks for coming on thanks SC uh really fun
for those of you who like the books astronomy for educators I believe is now the world's most popular astronomy activ
AC it manual uh more than 10,000 schools and more than 65 countries use it can
put that into any search engine astronomy for educators it'll come up uh The Scholar Works website uh from the
University of Arkansas I'll let you download it for free and uh please do take a look share
you probably have teachers you know looking for astronomy activities right now they can get them in the astronomy
for educators book it's all designed to be low Tech uh pinhole cameras and
projecting the eclipse through a binocular onto a piece of paper and the like so uh if you know teacher looking
for uh some sort of activity because it's Monday it's a school day uh we of
course think that everyone should declare a national holiday across the
corridor of the eclipse but uh I don't know I suppose you could remember in
November to write in bar for Emperor and we'll solve all these little problems that was the joke always used to use on
my students in election years and it got progressively more funny as the years
went on in the classroom anyway so this talk kind of started out as a haha joke
question how would you hide a black hole and uh my producer back at the uh
explore studi said yes and if you're were going to how would you do it uh you
know you can't grab it well well it turns out there are types of black holes
that everyone thinks are there but no one's actually found yet we're talking
about primordial black holes uh in the Nan seconds after the big bang the
universe was a very dense compact Place Quantum fluctuations indicate that at
some point some of that density would have tipped over the line making perhaps microscopic atom sized
perhaps molecule sized black holes uh and various theories predict
how many we should have um it could be a great number well if that's
true we're either why don't we have a Shoemaker leing n event where a micro
black hole punches through Saturn or maybe punches a new crater into Mars
wouldn't that be exciting if it wasn't quite so close um
well it seems like black holes could get hidden think about a star forming nebula
like the Orion which we all love to look at on winter nights when it's not too brutally cold and we get out there and
you look and you think about ah here's molecular clouds condensing and what if there were primordial black holes inside
such a cloud such a molecular cloud collapsing into star
formation you would birth not nice young healthy stars but these sort of dragon a
things where you've got a star where's a black hole going to go anyway it's going
to go into the nearest gravity well the forming Stars if there are primodial
black holes in areas where new stars are being formed wouldn't we indeed have
stars with black holes in the center and you think about that for a minute and there's something both mad
scientists you know rub your hands and cackle with Glee and toggles quickly over into sort of an
alred Hitchcock oh no that's a sort of a horrible thought but it turns out it's not as
unsustainable as you might think you think oh what would happen if you put a black hole inside a star nothing good it
sounds like a great science fiction premise and I think Star Trek sort of did it in one of their movies they had
some primordial black hole they called it red matter but it was essentially a gravity bomb let's drop a small black
hole into your star and see what happens turns out nothing very fast and why not why not this the more I
thought about this ideas I'm I'm researching this I'm like but wait I had these kind of shock absorbers of the
brain bottoming out moment number of times we've well if you think about a
black hole the mouth that consumes is only the surface area of the shile
sphere we know how big black holes are because you can't go past the Event Horizon it's the point of no return
that's a sphere you can't stuff anything down it bigger than the hole itself if you think
of it as a hole in SpaceTime so when you're talking about a molecule size or even a city size or
even a moon sized black hole it's not that big compared to a star and our sun
isn't a particular L large what's a dwarf well it turns out if you're
talking oh a black hole the size of say a marble couple of centimeters
across that couldn't consume a dwarf star in the current age of the universe
so if some of these things started out in Stars they're likely still there is that the worst case of
heartburn you could ever think of let's start with a black hole in the center
oh that's just I'm reaching for the Tums now but if you think about this they're
christening these lovely things Hawking Stars Steve Hawking and Kip Thorne had
these famous arguments and Bets about whether or not black holes would be detected etc etc and it was kind of like
the classic uh silly Dollar Bet but if we think about this as a
Hawking Star as a star with a black hole inside could our son be a stalking
it's hard to say could our son be a Hawking star or an Hawking star
um it would take even if it was the size of the Moon hundreds of millions of years to consume so if we've got this in
turns out if you start thinking about well what happens we normally think of a star as the core being where the fusion
happens and outside that there's a radiative Zone closer to the surface there's a convective Zone and we know
about those because we can actually see with a good solar telescope the granularities the flares uh and the
prominences the other solar features well if it turns out if you have a black hole in Center you don't
just have a sink down which everything pours you also have an engine which
produces a great deal of energy black holes acquire material in
an accretion desk in a rich environment of the core of a star material you your
accreting is essentially uh superheated super compressed plasma with a density
greater than that of stainless steel and you've got this stuff going around heating up and giving off a lot of X-ray
UV uh I don't think it quite gets to gamma but you get a lot of very hot radiation coming off and you essentially
have now a new power source for the
star and it Bec comes crazy because this changes it so that the convective zone
now effectively goes all the way into the core so you're stirring material from the core to the outside and these
things are essentially their Fusion engine is different now think about oh what could you do
to you know in astronomy classes we joke about oh well here's our model of what
the core of the Sun is but of course how could you actually prove that and you know somebody always said well take a
submarine right take some sort of a probe and send it in and you start then you say okay well follow along with that
idea you get the idea that at the surface of the sun it's 30g gravitation
and as you go down density and pressure get worse uh so it's not even like going
to visit a wreck at the bottom of the ocean it's far far worse than that and
at Fusion temperatures but turns out these things do in fact affect
properties that we can see there's a new science called Astros
seismology we it turns out that when you have a gravitationally compressed wall
of plasma undergoing nuclear fusion at its core um this sets up an oscillation
and stars effectively sing we can watch them have Quakes especially yes what you
think during prominences and coronal mass ejections yes uh but we also they
have regular harmonic frequencies and we can see this because why the plasma
pulses in and out uh you may have seen these demonstrations where you have a pipe a gas Jet and someone plays an
instrument and you can actually see because of the Soundwave controlling the plasma from the fire it's much the same
here you've got a plasma system it has a resonant frequency and because the plasma pulse is in and out we can read a
Doppler shift and we can essentially listen to the song of the stars and
Hawking stars sing differently they're cooler at the center than they should be
if they were regular uh stars that we've all thought about growing up it turns
out if we look for red giants near the end of their lifetime some of them may not go bang the way we expect because
they've got something gobbling them up from the inside out it's like one of those horrible nature videos where the
was stings the insect or the spider and then it grows knobs all over as the things
eat it from the inside out you've got this horrible image of this red giant
which is supposed to have a spectacular Supernova and the black hole is getting bigger faster and gobling more and maybe
it just goes and goes away instead of going bang
um wow turns out we know at least 500 red
giants which are cooler than they ought to be which people have noted for decades but it's one of those
interesting facts well there's another cool one uh and what do we do about that and now suddenly pops out with this idea
and so um people are going hunting for a new kind of star
awesome awesome that's great well thank you Dan um I found this
quote uh from Hawking and it says in in space no one can hear you scream and in
the black hole no one can see you disappear so there you
go I like that very much yes anyhow uh that's great um well uh we
are uh moving along here and our next speaker is none other than Ron breacher
Ron um let me bring you on here thank you very much
Dan and there you are Ron thank you I first off I want to thank you personally
for all the great Astro photos you've been sending me um I love seeing them
and uh um you know it's just I always know it's going to be a a mind-blowing
image every time so it takes a lot of work on your part and uh um you know I
think that uh um we have been I've been talking with Terry man who is uh someone
I often collaborate with with uh her astronomical League live programs and
stuff like that and she's wanting to take her astrophotography to the next level and I said there's probably few
people that you should uh select as a tutor and one of them is Ron breacher so
Ron you you should probably be getting a knock on your virtual door here pretty soon from
Terry thank you very much yeah I'm I'm Imaging right now actually although
there's a lot of moonlight I'm Imaging in h Alpha tonight and uh it's looking
good maybe if there's time we'll check in on the observatory but
uh the theme tonight is Cosmic refle so I uh that's that's what I'm
going to talk about tonight okay and uh let me share my screen with
you and get to my presentation so uh I want to talk about
Cosmic Reflections tonight and I guess uh first of all whenever
whenever uh I do a talk for you Scott I have to reflect on the
theme and uh you always write interesting stuff and with tonight's
theme which I'm going to I'm going to show you what I thought was important um I want to talk about some literal stuff
and you know that's always my excuse to show some pretty pictures but we need to talk about uh the figurative aspect of
cosmic Reflections as well and so I'll give examples of both so this is the
theme of of uh tonight's Global star party or part of it it's the part that I
focused on when I was thinking about what to talk about the idea that it's
important for us to reflect how astronomy informs me on a
personal level and how I integrate it into you know how I feel about the
universe how I feel about my place here and uh my purpose so um I'm going to
talk a little bit about that at the end but of course we need to talk literally first and um if you think about what is
reflected literally everything you see ever is
reflected um even even seeing a beam of light through clouds that light is
scattering off reflecting off particles of dust so just about everything you see
is reflected of course deep Sky objects um reflection nebula um dark
nebula are the two that I'm going to really highlight tonight solar system objects of course reflect the Sun's
light um but I'm not going to talk about those tonight and then figuratively I want to talk about the big questions
that I think about when I'm alone under the stars so uh let's talk about reflection
nebula and dark nebula and this is where I get to show you some pretty pictures so uh at the at the top on the title
slide I had this lovely picture of probably the best known reflection nebula in the sky and at least in the
northern hemisphere that's the ples uh Messier 45 the Seven Sisters uh in
Spanish Lees citas I think it they say the seven little kids seven little goats
nice yeah and um this uh blue color comes from uh the
dust that's surrounding these stars and and and the lights being reflected back
to us and it does actually have some red in it emission nebula you can see a little bit of reddish down in the bottom
right here um but mostly it's it's just a a big old reflection nebula and
fantastic in binoculars I mean it's also one of the best open clusters in the
sky um this is an example of a reflection nebula with surrounding dark
nebula and the reflection nebula here here is the Irish nebula NGC
7023 and uh then we have these dark nebulas all around it and dark nebulas
are areas of dust that are blocking out the Starlight behind
them so uh really quite interesting here and you know you find reflection and
dark neate together almost all the time and I'll talk about the reason why in a
minute here's a maybe one of the prettiest
starfields in the sky Orion sword or this is most of a Ryan's sword it uh
it's cropped at the top and bottom a little bit uh but you can see um uh NGC
1977 The Running Man nebula is mostly reflection nebula with a little bit of
emission nebula the purpley patch in the center the purple comes from the red of hydrogen and and the the blue of the
reflection nebula and uh you can also see tons of reflection nebula in m42 the
great Orion Nebula but there's lots of dark nebula here as well so that dust
when it's beyond the influence of the bright stars the top left Arrow uh well
I guess the top Arrow um there that is very similar to the blue region of uh
The Running Man nebula it's it's just not being uh lit up by by the Stars it's
a little too far away or the gas is a little bit uh uh it's it's a little bit
uh too diffuse and then there's a dark nebula down down here um around
m43 and there's more dark dark nebulosity here at the bottom left of the image now at the top right over here
this isn't really dark nebula it's U more just an absence of nebulosity and
the stars are shining through fairly normally this is the dark shark this is
a really uh cool object and uh it's it's
part of lind's bright nebula catalog but it's actually a dark nebula and it
contains uh another dark nebula within it more dense but it also has a number
of uh reflection nebula blue reflection nebulas in it most prominently are the
two Vandenburg nebulas uh VDB 149 over here on the chest of the shark and then
behind his head VDB 15 also reflection
nebula and of course everybody's favorite probably the horse head nebula
is actually a dark nebula in front of a reflection uh an emission nebula so the
red that you see behind it is glowing hydrogen but the horse head itself is
really a column of soot and dust that's blocking out the light behind it and so
it qualifies as a dark nebula uh by the way the reason I included dark nebulas
with reflection nebulas is dark is like a complete absence of reflection and
transmission it's blocking out the light behind and it's not reflecting much light which is why it's dark and another
type of reflection nebula here on the left is the flame nebula and then of
course we've got NGC 2023 just below Center this is a a very blue reflection
nebula with a bright star lighting it up in the center so um I thought it would be worth
now talking about the less lit stuff the big questions these are the things that I think about when I'm either outside
under the telescope or sometimes when I'm processing an image and I see something unexpected or more detail than
I expected I mean it's all shocking to me that we can now capture these
beautiful things like from your garden my my Observatory is across my driveway and
it's Imaging right now while we're talking so the big questions I mean we
all probably think about a lot of these maybe all of them how did it start and how will it end those are the obvious
ones and there's lots of documentaries about that um is there
anybody out there and then because we got to think about time as well as space that's what
the then is for uh and that's you know there again lots of uh lots of uh
content you can watch online but the last two questions s why am I here and
why am I still here maybe those are the most personal of all and there's no documentaries about those questions no
except for the ones in my head and those two questions are a little different why am I here is a
question about um my
purpose in this vast Universe I mean I can't believe it's just
us um so why am I here and why am I here right
now um how do I fit in what's my purpose and then the why am I still
here is just you know I can't help but reflecting and we all we all have this
stuff in our life um where you've done something stupid as a young person or
somebody else did something stupid that could have completely changed your life
uh I had a heart attack a couple of years ago so uh you know I must be still here
for a reason I don't know exactly what it is but that's one of the things that I think about pretty deeply when I'm out
there and I don't really have answers for any of these questions it you know
wouldn't be much fun if I did but I want to give you I just want to to finish off
the talk I just want to show you some stuff from a recent image that kind of blows my mind and and
really all of these questions come together for me so a couple of weeks ago I shot this
galaxy cluster this is the AEL 779 Galaxy
cluster it's about 350 million Lighty years away um pretty pretty far for the
things that I've shot but as I usually do I I want to identify
all the galaxies here I make an annotated image using various star
cataloges and um all of the galaxies uh in the image or many of them
I'll go back many of the galaxies in this image are labeled in yellow not all
of them so there's a Galaxy right here that's not labeled at all there's
another one right there that's not labeled and I can see more but what's really interesting is
what's labeled in white what's labeled in white are catalog entries from the Millie
quas catalog that's the million quazar project and everything labeled in white
is a quazar quazars are a type of active Galactic nucleus they're incredibly
bright and usually usually incredibly far away the closest quazar known as 600
million light years and um you'll see in the lower right there's a couple of these that are
circled I I looked them up and uh you can get the red shift you can see how
much the Spectrum has been shifted by the huge velocity at which
this G these two quazars are receding from Earth because because they're so far away and I looked up the red shift
and I looked up the formula for calculating the distance based on the red
shift and uh the one here at uh top
right you can just see it in the crosshairs wow look how far 9.3 billion
light years and even fainter if you look down here
12.8 billion light years that's less than a billion years after the big
bang wow so um going back to those big questions I guess all I can say is I
really don't know I hope I never stop thinking about those things uh but I
guess I don't I don't know if I'm ever going to find an answer but maybe that doesn't
matter 12.8 billion Lighty years you can see it there really clearly in the
center of the crosshairs so if you want to see more of my stuff check out astrod talk.c proudly Canadian
that's my website lots of pictures there you can sign up to get um new photos
when I when I publish them and um just for fun before we
go I I just want to show you what I'm working on
tonight so if I go into my temporary directory I Pro processed last night's
data early this morning and uh this is what I'm
capturing right now I'm going to stay on this target for a few weeks until certainly until after the moon leaves
the sky this is Messier 82 it is not a reflection nebula it's a Galaxy uh but
that's what I'm shooting right now so thank you for indulging me and I hope uh
I hope we share some of those questions in the quiet of our own thoughts I hope
you're thinking the same thing I am yeah Ryan I I think that I think that
all of us that are amateur astronomers have uh spent time uh perhaps uh you
know in solitude looking up at the Milky Way or maybe through the ipce or at our
computer screen yeah and really just letting yourself absorb uh the distance
um when people first I notic that when people first
recognize recognize these things they um uh they feel very tiny and almost
insignificant and I think that that part of being humbled before the universe is
actually very important you know because uh yeah you know how how much of our
lives do we go along trying to Puff ourselves up and get through our careers
or what ever you know and uh but you know there's a it's a glass half empty
glass half full situation yeah if you feel tiny maybe right now your glass is
half empty but if you feel like you're part of something really big maybe your glass
is half full yeah that's true that's true you know certainly your mind is as
vast as of the universe as you can comprehend yeah so it's crazy yeah so
I'm glad that you uh tried to bring those things up oh my glass is half empty it was half
full but I just uh missed the spare I'm giving you this
presentation while in league and a couple 200 games but we all
could have been you know our universe was clean until I missed the spare so oh so it's
half empty right now but uh I was while while doing the uh bowling I listened to
the presentation and uh enjoyed your presentation Ron you basically said everything and anything
that I'll be saying in my short presentation so thank you for that um I
am you give me the floor Scott I'll go ahead and add the one image that I want to share thank you Ron and hopefully
yeah and thank you Ron it's see you soon guys beautiful images as always take care um so you see I'm hanging on to my
iPhone because I'm in league but that does not mean I
can't share my uh reflection um my reflection journey is
going to be a fairly short one I'm going to start with this
image and there's another one that I wanted to do but I'll start with this
image and go ahead and share can you all see the
Cottage By The Lake yes okay looks good so yep my first
reflection um for those who those who may know um come from a
Catholic background our priests who used to live in this cabin that passed away recently he lived in a beautiful cabin
nice thing about it is he lives in Portal the portal for Skies the sqml
meter reads around 21 .1 to 21.2 right over his house even
though it's hazy you can see ory and uh this was a place that I do a lot of
reflecting from looking over the lake a lot of looking at the sky that you were talking about Ron um you
definitely you can look up and you can feel tiny where you see um not only if you image over a vast
Lake but you also you look up at a vast sky and you feel like oh how am I a part
of it and um one of the things that has helped me is because the sky looks the
same no matter where I go even if I'm in a different location I always feel like
I'm a part of the I'm I know where I am because I see familiar constellations
and I know what direction I'm pointing in and I immediately begin to feel like
I'm a part of the night sky and sometimes I try and capture that by
intermingling I missed the serus a little bit over the chimney but I do a
lot of this where I try and mix celestial objects and have them landed or feel as though they are part of this
entire scene um so that's one way that I try
and reflect and then another way that I try and reflect I'm going to
secare screen here and see if I can
find um I had an image that I had put
up and this is the image here can everyone see
this yes okay so here you have a literal
reflection of the center of our galaxy in this park and you've got Stars
reflecting in the water and um yeah and you're hearing uh
you're hearing some folks that work here in this air in in this Bowling Center um here you have a literal reflection
photographers love to do Reflections and it can be amazing sometimes to look into
this River and see the reflection of something 30,000 light years away still
casts a reflection on Earth so it's another sort of metaphor
for um you know we we are part of this big universe I'm put my hand with camera
we're part of this big universe we're not um we're not in fact Alone um one of the things that
uh you know we reflect on when our time is up what
happens and but one thing we know for sure is that our atoms will live on and
be a part of continue to be a part of this universe you know even if we're not
physically in the body and breathing and of course that gets into belief we we won't go into that um everyone
individually must reflect on that but uh you know this you look at things like um
the Milky Way if you've ever had a chance to see the Milky Way I invite you to just stare at it look at it get your
binoculars out do some observing I always recommend if you do after
photography bring along something and do some visual do some visual observation or
observa as a friend of mine used to call it um continue to look up and
um you know just whether you're reflecting on how things are going good
that or otherwise are you're reflecting on how many stars you're looking at or you know you're reflecting at the night
eyy for me it gives me Comfort I don't you know I'm outside but I don't feel like I'm in some sort of dangerous area
I feel like I'm just a part of the universe looking up at itself and and uh
you know seeing it it always brings me Comfort to see these images which is why I take them over and over again so with
that it's probably my turn to bowl Scott I'm going to go ahead and cut it short
go go B astronomical frame yeah that's great thank you so much for coming on uh
you're uh one of the few uh multi multi-talented um uh lectures that we
have but I I'm really happy that you don't let anything stop you from giving your presentation so that's really cool
not at all low battery on my cell phone doesn't stop okay yeah so I will B you a
do but um those of you watching enjoy the rest of global star party remember
to keep looking up I don't care if you sold your photos I don't care if you make money I don't care if you're new to
this and you haven't seen the Milky Way before keep looking up and keep making yourself a rem reminder when it's clear
outside go outside and look up and if you take the opportunity to go somewhere
darker and get connected with this universe of ours I think that'll help you so that you don't feel so
alone you feel like you're a part of something you're a part of the universe so you're part of all
everything yes so that's right all righty Scott Ron and everyone else have
a great rest of the global star party all right good luck with your bowling take care thanks I'll need you okay okay
all right so that's great um our next speaker is uh David Schuman David has
been on our programs before um and uh as soon as I saw his face I instantly
recognized him uh he is with the Royal Astronomical Society Canada the Montreal
Center the same place where uh David Levy comes from and Kareem Jafar uh
comes from as well who's often been on the on our programs uh he is uh he he has a
background in graphic design but uh you know he Blends his skills uh to do
things like uh uh produce this video that you're about to see um he loves uh astronomy space uh
you know uh uh you know rocket launches um he's fascinated by NASA and and is
made many trips to see big observatories and uh um and has been to see uh uh you
know uh many of the Great sites that astronomers dream they could go to so
um this uh I'm going to let him tell you about his mini documentary about uh
chasing the Moon Shadow but uh David thank you for coming on to uh Global
Star Party hey thank you for having me in hosting um so when myself Paul sard and
Alex stepanescu uh two members and executive members as well from our
Center decided to uh check out the solar Eclipse back in 2017 um in South
Carolina and little that I know at the time I wasn't planning to create a documentary story out of it I just
wanted to witness the eclipse try to photograph it and everybody says don't photograph it just enjoy it the next
time you go you can photograph it um now forget that I went and photographed it
and even used a counterweight with another Sony camera that I had to actually film video and that CER became
the counterweight on my uh little ioptron track so it all worked out and I was so
happy to share the high-rise images so I decided to with my friends make a little
story out of it and using a lot of uh images and uh you know um after the fact
interviews candid interviews that were done in sequester um with a couple of friends uh
we put together this documentary and if you want to go ahead and present it I'll
I'll uh mute okay all right so this is about a 20 minute video um and uh
uh who are the friends that are in your video Yeah well Paul former past
president um and um he uh longtime friend we went to PA actually uh and
what a gorgeous Observatory that is a classic white Dome and uh Alex stephanz
is a longtime um um executive member and he takes care of our Observatory actually Observatory and on aark we
decided to travel to South Carolina and we flew down and um experienced eclips
together and you you'll see it almost didn't work out but um um I'll I'll let
the doc speak for itself okay all right that's great all right so let's make
this happen here we
[Music]
go Sim you know some people might say we're nuts to travel down to the States spend
thousands of dollars to get ready for this one event that lasts just a couple of minutes but I feel the other way
about it I feel it's an event to behold it's something that everybody should try to see once in their
[Music]
[Music]
lifetime [Music]
[Music]
[Music]
I've always been fascinated with astronomy as a kid I grew up in the space age in uh
1968 and I was always fascinated with the Apollo moon landings my father used to bring me home some 8mm films and I
was just completely excited about the whole thing I am passionate about astronomy from the first time that I
looked through a telescope and also I had when I was a child I was given books
on astronomy and I started asking well what is the Big Dipper and what is the small Dipper and what are stars and I
asked my father well there was a full moon rising how far is the Moon can you
go there my interest in astronomy started way back since I was 10 n somewhere around there one of the major
influences for that was also Star Trek the original TV series and uh my
grandfather he was a member of the roal Astronomical Society himself and he introduced me to the group in Montreal I
was always fascinated as a youngster about the 1979 Eclipse when I was in elementary school they told us there
would be the first total solar eclipse in a long time and that it would be interesting to view this but our school
kind of all huddled us inside the gymnasium closed all the windows so that we wouldn't accidentally go blind we
never got to experience anything and I think it was actually overcast that day in in any case but I always remembered
Now's the Time because the next time you'll be 49 years old in 2017 when
there'll be another eclipse of this kind in North America and in 1973 there was a total eclipse of the
sun which crossed over Nova Scotia the totality band but me being in Montreal
and being a student I could not afford to go by myself to Nova Scotia after
which I never had a chance to see an eclipse of the sun of any kind until came the one of
2017 I've been friends with Paul for quite a while through the club I met him and Alex has been a board member and
he's befriended us and Paul and I were already planning to go to South Carolina to witness the eclipse why South
Carolina because it's easy to get there by plane and it doesn't take long if you want to change your vacation plans in
the first instance what I had planned to do is to go with another club soet astronomy planetarium the monreal and
they were going to go out west in western United States where there was the highest probability of having good
weather but one thing led to another I was a bit of a procrastinator and I didn't get on board that particular trip
now at the Rask I found out that Paul and David were going and I
asked them if they would care if I join the trip which I
did uh planning for the uh the for the E clipse itself uh started way
back I'd say probably the year before somewhere near the end of the year before 2016 you know fall of 2016 or
something like that uh we were I'm we were uh trying to planner what one where
we're going two what equipment we're going to bring you know we want to capture the event even though it was
always um recommended that you don't on your first Eclipse not to try to record
it because you'd be missing the eclipse if you're too busy fiddling with your equipment and there's truth to that
however we weren't sure if we were ever going to see another one so we needed to capture this we we were sure when we're
planning our trip to go to South Carolina cuz we've been there before I've been to myle beach David's been to
Myrtle Beach and and Alex has been down there down to South Carolina so we knew
we were heading there a lot of the a lot of the suggestions were to go out west but that's far we were were sure we
wanted to go South Carolina so we focused on South Carolina the only problem we needed the only thing we
needed to know was where it was crossing uh through across where it was going across South Carolina and to see where
we can set up and that turned out to be not so easy in the end I went further
south and I found a place called the aisle of Palms it's it runs along the the shore line just outside Charleston
and there is one problem with each and every eclipse is the weather it would be
uh foolish to go specifically for an eclipse spend many thousands of dollars arrive there clouds move in you don't
see the eclipse and then coming back to Montreal 3 days later with a much lighter wallet and disappointed so the
eclipse viewing has to be combined with another activity well my intention for
the eclipse was to actually take very high resolution still images and then use them in a time lapse for video and
my friend Paul ended up taking a wide shot with the fisheye lens that I had lent him and my friend Alex also had a
similar setup to myself where he would take still images every few minutes to take the partial phases the actual
Eclipse itself of totality the diamond ring effect and then the final parts of
the uh partial
phases we were pressed for time because of a an event that we were supposed to do the Saturday before the eclipse we
were supposed to do a fireworks show but that got cancelled but we didn't know that at the time so we had to plan our
trip based on that so we had to fly out Sunday the day before the eclipse itself
okay and and then somehow get a rental go to the hotel sleep and then travel
out the problem is is that flying to Myrtle Beach from Montreal is not easy
on a on such a short schedule we were to go through Atlanta Georgia and then fly
to Myrtle Beach one minor incident the airplanes the scheduling was very tight
and we had like maybe half an hour to arrive in Myrtle Beach to get our car otherwise the counter would be closed
and in Atlanta Georgia on the plane guess what a passenger had a heart attack and we were delayed for 20
minutes because trying to get an ambulance and get a stretcher on board a 727 aircraft or whatever it was would
have been in a complication they and he didn't he he was okay he they gave him oxygen he got off the plane with help
and we were on our way but we were getting it very tight to the uh car rental but we got there about I believe
quarter a midnight I don't quite remember because it was late but and there was somebody there in fact there was only one person there got our car
went to the hotel got what is it 3 hours of sleep or something for maybe four if
we were lucky and then we be we left
the night before the day of the eclipse we decided we're going west we're going
Inland because the the the weather was not looking good it was a nailbiter
because of the weather the place that we were supposed to go which was island of
palm it was going to be cloudy Plan B Charleston plan C because Charleston was
no good plan C we were going to go to Anderson near the Tennessee Border cuz the weather looked promising in that
direction when we were at the hotel we were looking at you know Weather Network and finally we decided Anderson looked
the most promising for the distance we had to drive in order to get there on time with plan a we had to drive about 3
hours because Myrtle Beach was not in the band of totality now to go to Anderson which was the plan C while that
was the furest distance was uh like somewhere between five and 6 hours of driving however during the trip uh
during the drive towards Anderson uh we needed to make his pit stop in the meantime we found out by checking on the
internet because while I was driving both Paul and David they were checking on their iPads various satellite maps
and we stopped for a coffee halfway in between and of all things between the two bathrooms there was a big map
showing this uh State Park and that's when we we made a calculated decision
where it looked like in the park it was a better chance to get good weather than in Anderson and I told the guys look if
we decide to go to the park well we we're out of Anderson so we started
heading south and we finally found the park then we were trying to find the entrance to
the park that turned out to be a challenge so we started winding our way
around the north side of it and then finally we found somebody at this end at what appeared to be an entrance although
it looked like a b back entrance so we stopped we start we talked to this gentleman and he said is this the way
into the park or where's the entrance to the park and he was saying no no it's over there and we also told him that
we're here for the total solar e clipse and he says no unfortunately the park is all full it's it's because of the tolls
clipse it's all been booked oh okay well that's a problem yes totality was supposed to take place around 3:00 on
Monday afternoon and this was starting to become close to noon already so if we didn't find a place quickly enough we
wouldn't have enough time to set up the telescopes the cameras adjust the filters and just get uh orientated uh
properly uh so we accidentally met up with two gentlemen that were following us we actually stopped our car and got
out they stopped and they were actually looking for a place to park to go witness the eclipse as well and one of
them had a paper some sort of flyer and it was about a a total solar e clipse
party at a place called the uh Barber House in Hopkins South Carolina we was
wondering what is this the Barber House is this a place where you get a haircut no it turns out to be a historical Plantation that is preserved over time
the surrounding area that of the sites that we chose was a Heritage House which was built I believe in the
1800s and it has a large property which was mostly grass and it was surrounded by Woods very quiet it was uh also very
Scenic I mean you there were no industrial structures or city structures because it it was certainly a much
better alternative I mean we were ready to go and park in the parking lot of a Walmart or a Burger King to set up the
telescope remarkably this was exactly under the path of totality we couldn't ask for better as time was running away
we also consider ourselves very fortunate because now we would have a few good hours to set up properly it was
very very hot that day that's the one thing I'll never forget it was over 100° Fahrenheit and well into the 40 Celsius
and that wasn't going to stop us so one by one we set up the tripod and the next thing was we set up the equatorial
system and then we mounted the telescope and the camera setup we put the special filters on and we were getting ready so
the whole setup took on site took about half an hour and then we had another
hour and a half two hours to wait for the Sun but we could take some practice shots and we even had time to to uh have
lunch and as time came on we noticed that the clouds just went let up and
this is where we kind of felt we did every possible thing we could to make this happen but we were worried that it
just wouldn't come true for us so at the very beginning of the
eclipse event we there was we missed a little bit of it at the beginning because there was some cloud and it was
slowly moving away but um there was a point in time when when it almost looked like it
wasn't going to go away it almost stopped but then it started moving again and that's when things something really
odd happened that's when the clouds started to part away it's almost as if the sky parted ways with the clouds just
for us to witness the eclipse in time and I was elated I couldn't believe this I was actually going to get my partial
[Music]
phases I want to see you playing fly outside
is I want to see a
blank oh [Music]
God [Music]
[Music]
oh look at to move oh yo it's getting dark [Music]
oh he's [Music] [Applause]
[Music]
close at the beginning the uh partial phase I knew what to expect now when it
started to get exciting is when we started to get Bailey's beads and it was like real wow I mean to look at the sky
because at that time you remove the solar filters and you look you can it is safe to look at the sun with your bare
eyes or through the [Music]
telescope oh you can see the ring you can see the ring that oh my
[Music] god when it's at totality when the when
this moon is completely covering the sun you get to see literally this the sun's
atmosphere all the radiant um gases that come off of it and that's the Corona and
it's not even straight it's kind of not wavy but kind of curls on itself in
certain ways depending on what the solar wind does at the time one thing that surprised me the
most was that during the actual phase of totality it wasn't as dark as I expected
yes we did see Vega and yes we did see some stars but I never quite got to see
the night sky as dark dark as you thought it would be it was kind of a deep navy blue and when I did look up
during my filming I was able to take pictures with the remote trigger but I actually stared up as I was taking those
pictures so that I actually experienced it for myself it was it was beyond um
almost to tears it was beyond emotion it was um it was something that I'll never
[Music]
forget
[Music]
it was like around 2 minutes the totality and I found it went very fast I was so busy working behind the camera
that the next thing I knew well we had the Bailey's beads on the other side so
it was time to now put the filter back on and uh keep it [Music]
safe I know oh
man oh [Music]
wow [Music]
after totality we just wanted to finish off filming the rest of the the the the
finale if you will as the sun started revealing itself more and more at this point we were not so much as elated or
stressed or anything we just more or less relaxed because the main event passed we saw it
we got it the rest of it basically icing on the cake while the partial phases
were ending it was a wrap for us we actually finished everything we had to film and I was actually starting to get
anxious to get back to the hotel see the filming and the footage of this to actually take a look at the pictures
what I finally found during totality was a sense of elation a sense that yes I actually completed this I got to see
this and uh it felt like a deep satisfaction of uh of completeness that
I've been waiting for this event for many many years I was definitely elated
to actually get to see the eclipse like once totality was over we won the
eclipse and in fact on my Facebook I put a photograph of the eclipse and I said
victory [Music]
I was looking forward to this event for many years throughout my lifetime it was always in the back of my mind because
you know 2017 Ah that's only 7 years from now oh it's only 5 years from now well guess what the time was now and
when I finally witnessed the event I felt like I said to myself I finally got
to see this Eclipse I finally did this thing it's one of my bucket list items and the only problem with witnessing a
total solar eclipse is at least for me as an amateur astronomer I want more I've been asked what my feelings have
been from seeing a total eclipse and I'll have to say the same thing to I'll just say what I've said to everybody the
only way to know for sure is to experience yourself do not listen to other people's experiences and because
it will not be the same for you okay you will it'll affect you the way it affects
you
in
well David I wanted to be the first one to say how much I enjoyed that that was
absolutely wonderful with a capital W and a capital l thank you and I want to
say something about the Society of which you I my first visit to the Mont
group was on October the 8th 1960 so it is well over 60 years that
I've been involved with the Montreal Center and one of the uh most famous
episodes was when one of the older members there tried to have me expelled
in 1967 I love the story of exciting events
that took place uh and all kinds of things it was difficult and I remember dad taking me
for a walk during this time and he said David if you didn't have such a big fat
mouth and if you could keep your mouth shut and not argue none of this would
have happened and he was so angry I just had to sit and take it the problem is that
about a week two weeks later was my birthday and as I'm having breakfast dad
says another walk I said okay let's get it over with and he doesn't say he's not
saying anything and we go outside and we turn the corner and start walking up the street together and he said
David it's your birthday I was wrong and I said no you weren't wrong dad and he
said you were provoked and what you did was the right thing and I was wrong and
I said no no you weren't wrong I do have a big mouth and I don't think before I
talk and uh you're absolutely correct and I think I need to do a little bit of
growing up and dad looked at me held my shoulders and he said I think you've
just done some and uh it was amazing Story made
even more amazing with about 10 years later when the person who was behind the
whole thing and I got to be much better friends than we ever were at the
beginning and uh she was still active during Shaker leaving n and was writing
to me quite often at that time and it was a just a turned out to be a very
happy incident it is my deep honor that I am a member of the Royal Astronomical
Society of canidates Montreal Center and I hope I'll be a member of it for another 60 years anyway David that was a
wonderful wonderful presentation yeah wonderful to watch it and now I know
Scotty's wanting to take it away so s yours no it's it's a that that was a big
effort on your part David and uh the images of the eclipse were stunning uh
you know but uh as as as you the people in the video point out
no video no picture uh nothing can replace actually seeing it and uh and I think that uh
your friend was right you know don't listen uh too much about the experiences of others and just go okay well I I I
Now understand what that experience is like because uh when you see a total eclipse
something it touches something uh profound you know it might surprise
you that you have these kinds of feelings from seeing something like that and I I think you were surprised I'll
tell you one thing uh just briefly uh uh to celebrate our 100th anniversary we rented a local Cinema uh like an AMC
theater here in Montreal okay actually we actually screen the documentary in front of For All Mankind I got a license
for it and we also filmed stuff in 3D because I do stereoscopic video as well
and uh to see these images on the big screen in high resolution um it's it was stunning you
know rather than YouTube and everything but uh um hopefully when we come down to
the ranch um we'll have uh part two um and yeah we're going to present with his
T-shirt fantastic thank you kindly thank you so much thank you we look forward to
your new Eclipse work uh after this uh 2024 e clipse here so all right so let's
um let's move on uh David our next
speaker is um Cesar brolo and Cesar is
uh as we all know if you follow the show you know that he's down in uh Argentina
in uh Buenos Aries and uh if we're lucky he's got some clear skies so let's bring
him on well good night good night David and
Scot it's a pleasure return but of course as is my religion
clouds see the CL but but let me show you as as did you get some earlier yeah
uh no no no I can show you I can show you something okay uh something uh live let
me let me uh share the screen
okay and if you're new to Global Star Party Cesar uh tell them exactly where
you are uh where I now yeah my my home is in
in a apartment Tower uh in in middle of
woes capital of Argentina South hemisphere uh this is a part of the skyp
that you are watching a part of the Skype let me
Center G nebula in my telescope maybe I having some it's so so
this is so so live image that you are what the the
clouds yeah but you can definitely see stars okay first of all we can yes we
can we can try with oron nebula sorry the the rainbow effect is
because it's so so near
to to the like apartments that the
refraction over the
obser I try but it's a it's a very very
Weare very rare effect and I can't remove this
rainbows all my God this is a it's a lamp very near because this is the Prov
the the nebula is between well we're seeing the elements
of the uh of the lamp yeah maybe
ah I yes there you go sorry sorry it's
horrible it's pretty yes loves it absolutely
sorry my God yeah well the first image is a live
image it's a it's a oron nebula but it's impossible to make something good
because it's not the problem of the cloud the problem is that I have
lights between the the nebula well I now I have I have
clouds but well it's something that we
are not lucky tonight not only the clouds but only I
can I can change the target maybe to the South let me
try to the um
23372 maybe we can point
you are watching that we are really really in a in a
live total live uh telescope watching
image showing sorry image of the we are
going to the ETA Kina
nebula maybe this part of the sky have less
clouds okay
well
okay this is terrible well it's like a the live image is a nightmare
sometimes okay now is
well we can try stars
of um yes we can try some stars
of if of uh Southern Cross
okay and we were just down in the winter at the winter star party in Florida and
the Southern Cross is so far down to the Horizon that um you know it's it's a bit
of a challenge to see it uh plus you have to wait up pretty late um at night
to capture it but it's always a treat absolutely it's
good here we go now you can see some Stars okay okay
okay still have some glow from your yes lamps that are nearby oh it's where
where we don't have this is the the Southern Cross area very near to the Southern Cross area
and we can and explore this area
okay okay okay perfect this is the area of
Southern crass
ah we are I am making short uh 4 seconds
Exposition we are watching Stars the
magnitude over over uh uh eight and nine very very
very very very uh here here is for
example let me show you
okay to have an idea this star this star is AG
okay arus okay AR is the the braas star of the
Southern Cross we are going to
point
okay actually acrux is the brightest star in the the exactly
David I like the picture anyway it's a good
attempt if something change is because for example now is is passing a
cloud but I see yes this is live astronomy
sorry but astronom astrophotographers can shoot even when there are partially
clouds because there's moments where there's no clouds and you can take those
frames and stack them one on top of the other you just have be
patient totally here I changed I changed
the to to see a more live image I change
it the time of
exposure so this is the bright star acrux is that right yes yes the bright
so this star is uh 323 Lighty years
away and has a magnitude of almost um almost one it's 77
magnitude pretty bright star yes
absolutely I changing the the the game the camera
mhm this is the 13th brightest star in the
sky here do have a bir first
VI I'm going to show you another part of
the AR gr of the of the grou so don't
cross
I'm moving the the telescope with my cell phone okay is to to to show to the
audience how I'm using a middle
velocity and I'm making short exposure of only
only 4 seconds this area this area is
very very full of stars this is the old area of Southern
Cross and we are we are um
we are flying by the Southern
Cross part of the
sky I'm moving short parts of the sky
[Music] mhm where
we can found
different different parts of the
sky especially in this area where I
go is this I don't know if you're watching
um let me
here's the area where we are watching now this is acrus and we
are going to this
far every
return to the camera T
goope the St trail that you can you can
see is are the movements of [Music]
the it's amazing you're all the way in the southern hemisphere um you're able to share your
night sky with us with a pretty easy to set up system so
yes look the different colors of the Stars that's looking better if I make
colors of the Stars yes we can I'm trying to make a live
stack to have more information on Stars
if I'm lucky In This Moment don't pass passing uh more clouds in this
area you can see in in live stacking
how you can you can see more and more
stars well maybe I can I can say some
introduction of equipment for this year is similar to the last year talking
about keepman Scott uh okay but for this year the idea is make more and more live
image yeah where the people can see the telescope
M here is is the telescope the finder the finder have a 90° uh prison more
easily for to catch the image if have a
coincidence with the things that I I see in the camera in this moment I have a a
new a live image of this part of the sky in sound cross I'm appointing my
telescope only at to this part because it's empty of clouds in this
moment but and the idea of course that um it's
going to show more live image let year we have many many opportunity to to to
show live image um and well the idea for for this
year is working with this telescope uh the apoc chromic uh refractor 80 mm for
um for to show live image is much better
have a visual visual um finder to to be sure that I have the
the object that I was but where my idea
is to show in live it's it's very helping if somebody
um for example if you are not guiding because in the show in for the audience
my idea my principal idea is is uh show the image to the people and it's more
helping to have uh instead the
guid guidance scope is much better a visual finder because I can Center in if
I have some problem um the the object that I need to
to to show to the people uh the M work very very well it's the Yus 100
and is working very very well with the beta
application so John Ray says it's come a long way from my star hopping with a red
flashlight charts and an unpowered scope truly a new golden age of amateur
astronomy to watch Caesar live from the southern hemisphere thank you Caesar
okay thank you very much one of the one of the reasons that I really enjoyed your presentation
Caesar is the fact that you're giving us a process what most people do is they
show us their very best astrophotographs and we all think well
okay you you go outside and you open your eyes you open your camera and you come out with this lovely stuff or even
wor you go and look at the web telescope and if your camera doesn't take as good
as the web telescope then you give up and do something else but from Cesar here we are seeing the process of what
it's like to go outside with love and ambition and uh a
sense of failure that eventually will lead to success yes and you take one picture and another
one or you just decide to look through the telescope and see what there is
anyway we got a good view of that and thank you very much for sharing it with
us thank you than you thank you David and Scott uh really it's a honor share
with you with the audience uh very much tonight was I'm not successful but maybe
next week we are having more more luy and I prepare I
prepare image uh for for in the week something that I I couldn't make this
week no problem excellent good night I thank you so
much ah thank you okay all right we are going to move to our next speaker um we
have um marchelo Souza uh from Brazil and um
let's
see okay all right marchello marchello is in uh he is in Brazil he is a
professor of uh physics and astronomy he is an amazing Outreach Ed
educator uh and uh never seems to get tired of uh showing the Public's
especially young people uh the wonders of the universe and uh so he's done many
things to inspire kids and including uh they built their own Cube SATs uh he has
introduced Brazil's only uh um uh uh
astronaut um uh uh at uh his amazing programs and uh uh he's had Buzz Aldren
there he's had many uh uh luminaries in in astronomy and space exploration at
his presentations and uh when he throws a star party thousands show up and so uh
thanks so much for coming on uh martello is also the editor of Skies Up Magazine
which we have a new issue out right now hi nice thank you for the
invitation Scott and it's a great pleasure us to be here with Dr Dave L is
a great pleasure and all all the participants here ever is a
great pleasure to be here I I I have a short presentation with some
Reflections okay I will sh my computer work today and I show
this is some first I will talk about the technology the new technologies that you
have now that maybe in a short period you change everything you know this is a
image of your Carnival group of astronomy but it's is not a true image
it was made with artificial intelligence that's I ask them to produce an image of
a group of astronomy during the carnival that looks looks like a real image but it has made
using artificial intelligence everything here don't
exist it's it's a False Image really it it looks like a real
image it looks real yes I haven't we produced we are producing many of the
this as a test of the use of the artificial
intelligence and uh the good news is that is some think that will help us to
get best images better image from the
space but we also can produce a False Image like this one that looking real
and as I'm talking about the technology uh we have an FM I don't know if you do
it correct in Portuguese but is a moment here in February
2018 I think that everybody remember when oh yeah the SpaceX launched the H
car in the direction of Mars now this happens in February of
2018 this was a private mission let put
a and after this begin trip to
Mars and a yeah fantastic moment for the
private companies and now in this month we have another
private Mission from SpaceX also that
they tried one didn't work but they try again to send the
H uh L to to to the
Moon that is the O and here I maze is taken by the
Rockets the spaceship that is driveling to the Moon and and here is a major of the
earth taken by this spaceship everything looks that
it is working well and if everything work well
in 20 uh 22 of this
month they will land on South Pole of the Moon then in 2018 they they made the
joke send the car was a marketing events that are successful and
now the United States with a private company is returning to the
Moon after n 1972 is the first land sent by United
States to the Moon that
everything is showing that be successful this this land this is land and we land
in the South Pole that will be the place the region of the Moon that
the man will return to the Moon I don't know if it will be at in the end of this
year or 2025 but have two countries United States and China that have hackets
and the already has a a ship a spaceship that can send men
and wom to the Moon not to them to the Moon then technology is helping us now
and if all the new pce that is available
now like the artificial intelligence I think that
in few years we having many private companies
that will be sending uh satellit ships to the
space and Everything Will Change very quick as well as
the the CH the change when we begin to send small satellites to
space they have now you can send this this this small satellites that will do
the same thing that 30 years ago was was possible with a big
satellites now have as small sat that do the same thing and this is something that you
need to think about because H with a lot of satellites in art we have problems
you you need to have HS about the the
quantity of satellites the op this is will be a challenge for the new
generations how how to make H
hoods to explore the space yes with the new technology this
will be a big challenge for the United Nations for the countries because
many countries soon we have condition to send the satellite to and many private
companies also then one moment we need to fix something
to have some documents some rules laws
to uh control this because the only the
star links you have thousands satellite in if each company wants to send
thousands of satellites also H in few time in few years we don't
have a space for my satellites you have problems to send satellites because they
they can Collide and then it is something that is a future profession
maybe the special the space rights something like
this and this is I will talk about another thing now that is this fantastic
image I don't know if everybody saw taken by a guy from
Turkey that's s that's in February
12 this son was very active and he took this fantastic image yeah showing the
activities on the on surface of the Sun then was fantastic because
hyperactive yeah very active I had the opportunity to to look to the sun in the
spirit and one of the
uh of these regions was possible to see with naked eye
with the glasses was possible to see was very big one and so the sun is very active I
don't know what will happen because it is very active
yes yeah it's making some beautiful Aurora as well and is s the a lot of particles in
direction of the and I don't know if few
months ago we have a big explosion
that wasn't in direction of the Earth but they found two planets
then you need to to take care because if you have a carington events
nowadays probably we have problems with the satellites with the communications
here on the earth and and now I'll show some activities that developed in the
spirit this is a special place that we are planning to have a dark sky place
there it's a a very special protect region forest here is a journalist that
ref here in the VIS and what I would like to show is this here I don't know
if you can see h baby turtles here in front of the headquarter here
you have the ocean and the they protect the baby turtles there oh those small
black things on the beach Turtles this one and the during the summer they go
and they invite people to participate in the moment that they er
bring the baby turtles for near the ocean and let they go I see here is the
moment we have a lot of kids here participating what this what is relation
with the baby turtles and astronomy there is something that is fantastic for us here because in Brazil we have a a
law that protect the baby turtles from artificial lights then near the region of you have
baby turtles you have to take care about the artificial lights
there is a and this involves part of the
coast of Brazil then near they it's prohibited to
have lights in the direction of the yes s of the beach they need dark think that
now we are using for astronomy also because now we know that near the
coast they need to protect H the baby turtles
and they can't install a
big strong lights there then some that we are using now to
help us to show importance of don't have so intense
artificial lights in the streets and here is this place that is
already prepared for the sky observation they have very few artificial lights
there and also they have Smart lights only when you pass in front that's like
Danel this is our new vision this
is another special moment in the city of Santa Maria madalina we were there and
the city signed a documents first time in Brazil they signed a document that
they will support the international dark sky week and they will support
the protection of the nature animals and also the
people avoiding to have intense like artificial lights in the city they
will follow the the hills the HS from the dark sky International now they sign
a documents I hope everything work well will be the first city in Brazil
that is doing something like this and he is a hotel that's where is locate our
our nucleus in the city and now have the VIS
of from Norway y h that work withad that already participated here
that she the manager of the Global Science Opera is visiting our city and
we are H training teachers to participate in this project the
associate Arts and Music these These are images of teachers from 20 schools in
our region in Brazil and we are going to involve
almost 50 or 60 schools in this project and the topic of the Global Science
Opera is the James web telescope then we will be
talking about astronomy for in many schools here in our state in Brazil
these are imag of this project we visit uh three schools today
this are from today develop today this activ
here and this is another school this three schools and we found another place
to develop as tourism activities that is
this region here that is near waterfall here in our city we here we
organize the first meeting with the Department of Education then we we will
be we train students to be guides and we
develop act tourism activi in this region here that's very dark here also
they don't have artificial lights and a very beautiful place
yeah this is what we are doing this are activ that you developed
today and as we are near the eclipse the
moment of the eclipse right that see you will see United States you not see here
I I will show my experience with with eclipse in the south of
Argentina almost in the same region where will happen the eclipse this year
in October in Argentina in the South Argentina near in the city of caat I I
travel there to to in 2010 it was in July in the moment that
happened the last game of the World Cup I I was there to see the eclipse and
what was fantastic when I arrived there the first time that I saw these companies that organized Vis to see the
eclipse a lot of people in a
hotel participating in presentations uh madebe from experts I
show here my the Ames I took of this Eclipse I I arrived there I was with a
camera a small camera and the beginning of the eclipse wasn't possible for me to
because the Sun the camera didn't allow me to have image of the sun then I
decide to not register the eclipse when the eclipse began I tried again and it
work it but I I was I wasn't the tripod more and I made a all the video with my
hands on with without the the tripod and these are the mes I will show with the
sound of the
sounds I don't think we're getting the
sound here as the presentations that happen in
a hotel here is the place where I
was it was very cold it 5 degrees and I
felt like something like 10 15 was very
cold and as the eclipse happened at the
end of the afternoon H it's just necessary to travel to a
mountain because in front of us we have under this mountain and was it possible
to see the eclipse at the end of the afternoon I I will show now in this
place we travel to the top of a mountain 1,000 meters and from there we saw the
eclipse near theand Mountain
this is why the place the hotel in front of your
Lake and in front of your you have under Mountain
here you can see here's M and you have here's mountain and you
had to go to this mountain and you stay there in
front the direction of the
Sun and then we will begin the eclipse but I show in the middle of the
eclipse here is the the eclipse the eclipse of the sun is near the
mountain but was almost 2 minutes and 30 seconds
something like this the dire dire of the eclipse
here and and I have the ring of diamonds at the end you'll
see here that's cool it a special moment for
me you see in few minutes you're going to see the ring with diamond that is the moment
that you finish is finish the eclipse is shaking because my hand why
shaking it's very Co to excited no now now I think that's now
that you have the diet
mon is a very special moment he just got it look at that look
at it light up the clouds behind that's beautiful that is
beautiful and and here everybody
so don't look to the to the eclipse with the naked eye everybody that was with us
only me and my wife that use the glass everybody was looking without without
glass and you see here the city ofat with the lights all the lights turn
on yes then this why a very special moment
for me because and at the end
Mountain if we Wen in the mountain we
couldn't see the eclipse the sun because we are 1,000 M High
here wonderful it was very cold very cose and now we are organizing the our
international meeting it happen in April 2527 now this are going celebrate 150
years of one of the who began with astronomy here in our
region he publish articles in
the Journal of the society astronomy Society of
France in the beginning of the 20th century and is we found his Publications
there and he as the last person in the world to report the observation the high
comment by by n and this will be our event everybody's
invited to be with you here be a pleasure receive all of you here
be very special moments for us and this is this fantastic magazine
that's is the last edition of Sky app that I I already read two times because
the articles are fantastic they have articles from many different countries
with different experience man is uh for me is one of the best Edition with many
different articles from different experience yes it is a global astronomy
magazine and it's free and so I I just put in a link for the imaa uh event on
Facebook and um and then the sky up uh Magazine Link and you can even see past
issues if you'd like thank you very much thank you for putting it together thank
you very much Dr David thank you nice to meet all of you for me ever is a great
pleasure to be here thank you very much it's an honor to have you here too so
that's great all right Marella thank you so much uh you have a good night what what
time is it there now oh it is at 13 to
midnight okay it's almost midnight here time to go to sleep
yes today I'm very tied but ever it's a great pleasure to be here okay all right
thank you okay all right our next uh speaker uh will be Robert Reeves he is
someone that uh we always um uh really enjoy um because of his knowledge of the
Moon uh David um how would you rate Robert as far as
his I mean he's I think he's is like one of the best experts on the lunar terrain
of anybody I've met but uh you have more experience than I do
um what do you think of uh Robert's um images and knowledge of the lunar
terrain I've known Robert for some time now and uh I'm so impressed with the
energy that he brings the uh knowledge that he brings about the
moon uh I think it's something when you look up when you look up at the sky and
you see the moon like tonight right this minute and you go out and you see the gibbus moon in the
sky you need a telescope you don't need a telescope do you need a you need anything you don't need anything how
much does it cost to look at the Moon nothing it's it's also romantic if
you're going out yeah and you've just you just have uh someone to enjoy it
with uh uh a friend of yours or a lover
to just go out and enjoy the moon it's free and it's wonderful it lasts a
lifetime and Robert I think more than anyone else can explain it to us and do it extremely well it's my
honor to introduce Robert ree well thank you very much
David um I wish I had on Tenth the
linguis IC and poetic ability that you do so I could expand on my um relating
the moon to people I can I can tell them the science but um getting the emotion
through um U just through pros and poetry that's something that I I lack
that uh like I said I wish I had one tenth of your ability in that and uh I think it would double by uh the ability
of my ability to impact people about the moon uh science only goes so far
enthusiasm only goes so far but the Moon is very much uh something attached to the human heart as well so U um um I
mean more more there's so much pros and poetry uh is a moon related throughout
history but um tonight our theme is Reflections uh so um I try to trying to
reflect back upon moments in lunar history and in my history uh that uh um
not only U we're a leap in our understanding of the Moon as a science but uh my own
personal leap in understanding my own relationship with the moon um and much
of it uh centered on my uh realizing I don't want to sound um
egotistical here what happened something's happening with was
Zoom my screen went blank am I still here we still see you oh
yeah something with all due respect uh I think you do have that
ability with with with all due respect I'd like to correct
that well thank you very much David um
that means a lot coming from you egotistical about this but some of my the thoughts that I have when I reflect
back on the moon are are realizing that I was better at uh understanding of the
Moon that I thought I was until I learned something from uh uh one of the true Pioneers in in lunar studies and uh
we we'll we'll see a picture of a couple of those here in a few moments let me uh try the uh Infamous screen share and uh
see if things come up hopefully
you're my postcards from the Moon introduction there you go it looks good
is that is that working this time yep it's working fine yay yay okay all righty well let's
move on to the of course my uh usual uh I'm not able to advance we're gonna have
to do this manually the hard way um um Reflections okay um you know for for
centuries for aons for um as long as people looked up and saw the moon uh
they saw the light and dark areas on the moon the dark areas um the lunar Mario that create the face of the man and the
moon um up until telescopic uh astronomy
uh evolved back in the 17th century uh and even then after that for a while U
people thought these dark areas were oceans like they were on the earth U so uh we can reflect back and see what a a
great leap it was U oh by the 1800s uh observers were were quite sure they were
no there were not oceans after all but uh merely dark regions on the moon U but
uh people really didn't understand why why these broad dark areas why the uh the light areas and then in the late
1800s it took a geologist not an astronomer but a geologist to finally realize what was happening uh that's uh
this guy Carl Grove Gilbert this for a crusty looking fellow who is just as
comfortable hopping on a horse and riding out west as he was uh residing in Washington DC I see him as
a a century earlier uh version of Jean
Shoemaker um this fellow studied meteor crater back then it was thought to be a
a volcanic Mar a crater created by a steam explosion volcanic steam explosion and um um he incorrectly diagnosed the
true the nature of uh of meteor crater as being created by volcanism but he
also was fascinated with the craters on the moon and uh he observed the moon
through the uh Naval Observatory uh refractor the same one that Ace of Hall
used to discover the uh the moons of Mars and he observed the moon for three
weeks and came to the conclusion that uh
well where is my slide something is out of order
here okay came to the conclusion that Mari embrium which we the round Mari the
upper left hand side of the moon that we we interpret as the man of the moon's left eye was created by a gigantic
explosion uh it was this this region on the moon is circular it looked like a crater but his U uh definity proofs in
his mind were looking Beyond Mari embrium down toward the middle of the
Moon and in this picture which is actually a a merge of two lunar orbitor photographs not my own I'm sad to say um
you we see these vertical streaks these gouges ripped across the face of the
Moon uh they intersect crater rims they tumbled across the uh the the highlands
these were created by Mountain siiz blocks of material flung outward from
the creation of the embrium Basin by the gigantic explosion uh he correctly interpreted uh these streaks which are
still to this day called the embrium sculpture uh as the results of a
gigantic explosion that created Mari embrium so back in the late 1800s this
was a significant jump and understanding of the Moon unfortunately um Gilbert's conclusions
were in an in-house paper that remain buried in the uh uh uh uh government
archives for over 50 years before people like Jean Shoemaker unearth them read
them understood them and continued the studies and established the crater
origin of many features most features on the moon so jumping forward a little
bit um like I said Mar
embri round impact origin and um definitely not a watery ocean like it
was thought hundreds of years ago so um oh that's why I wanted that slide there
um another um um moment where um I reflect is how I didn't trust myself for
decades I have thought that the embryon Basin extended well
beyond uh the boundaries of Mari embrium uh we see in textbooks how the uh um if
you see my cursor rolling around how the uh boundary of Mari embrium seems to
form around Crater we we assume that was the boundary of the embrium impact but
uh I have for decades have looked at it and said that's not right there's something wrong here we go up the
appenine mountains we go up to the Caucasus Mountains here they don't intersect the Alps they extend further
north and uh the actual rim of the embrium Basin is more like what is in
the next Slide the Caucasus Mountains continue the arc up to the northern
shore of Mari Fus and U I finally got enough guts to talk about that
openly uh very recently and um surprised Don Davis the same fellow who along with
William Hartman uh propose the big whack theory of the formation of the Moon where the Earth Proto Earth and another
planet collided and that's what created the moon but he said Robert you've been right all along that is how we now
Define the basins uh uh the Basin at uh uh the embrium Basin so I've got to
learn how to trust myself more though that was kind of a interesting reflective point where oh my gosh for
decades I've been writing I've been too afraid to admit it or or to talk about it um moving on a little bit um this is
my picture of alonsus Greater taken from the uh Observatory on top of my garage
which as we speak is taking a picture of sh 2-31 a rather lovely uh uh um nebula
in um the west of Canis Major so uh but anyway um this um crater is
kind of special to me it's another reflective moment because back in 1965 when I was a senior in high school uh
Ranger n impacted in Northern uh alonsus
crater it was targeted there specifically to investigate for
volcanism uh in 1958 the Russian astronomer Nikolai kaziev uh got some
spectrograms of the uh area around alonsus that suspiciously looked like
there was some sort of volcanic gas in the region uh an obscuration of alonsus
uh it hasn't been seen since it wasn't seen before but the photographic spectrograms um clearly showed something
was going on so uh Ranger n flew off to the moon and uh in March of uh 196 5 um
the um technology of being able to convert a live lunar image from a
descending spacecraft on the moon was mature enough that they were able to broadcast these live on national
television and the entire American audience rode along with Ranger nine as it got closer and closer and closer
alonsus and finally crashed in and and obliterate itself but I'm very happy to
see that this picture of Ring of alons has taken uh by uh uh Ranger 9 uh is
very favorable to my own taken from my backyard uh Ranger nine was a lot
closer but uh nonetheless the um um you got a remarkably areas of
volcanism yep the areas of volcanism though are quite distinct U you look
around the inner rim of alfonsus and you'll see these dark spots 9:00 over around 3:00 down around 5:30 uh these
are volcanic ash deposits that were ejected from volcanic vents now I operate under the assumption
that if a dark ash is deposited on the moon it's going to have a lifetime similar to the bright uh material
ejected from a crater that forms crater Rays crater Rays rarely last more than a
billion years because of the constant churing of the lunar Surface by uh ongoing micrometeorite impacts or or or
or larger meteor impacts um plus a certain degree U solar mass coronal
ejections um tear up the moon's surface also so these dark spots I think can't
be more than a billion years old but we are also under the assumption that the majority of lunar volcanism had ceased
by about a billion years ago so I think this is very definitive uh evidence of
uh slightly more prolonged volcanic activity on the moon and uh it is entirely possible that one
of these vents burped back in 1958 just as kazy rev was doing his observations
we haven't seen anything like that since but I think the chances are very good
that uh it was a volcanic burp at the right time when he was able to see this
so uh another reflective point for me and
uh um another lunar orbiter photograph I am buried in lunar orbiter
pictures which is another point I'll bring up uh so uh I've been having a lot
of fun backing through all of these historical photographs that uh read
the60s we went from fuzzy earth-based photographs to Crystal Clear down to
several meter resolutions overnight because of lunar orbiter and and U here
is a a similar shot to my backyard shot we still see the volcanic ash deposits
also a very good portrait of ktina Davy the Crater Chain at the upper left um about a 40 km long string of craters
that are best described by invoking my friend David's uh favorite Comet Shoemaker Levy n we remember how it
broke up and impacted Jupiter uh in in a sequential string of impacts well this
is what creates uh kattin or Crater chains on the moon and uh let me untangle a cat out of my earphone cord
before something bad happens so anyway uh pressing on here um
more Reflections uh this gentleman uh a year or two older than I
am um Yan Whitaker he is one of the original uh staff members of the lunar
imp planetary laboratory in Tucson gerid Kyper brought him over along with darthur uh back in the early 60s
specifically to ramp up the lunar imp planatory Laboratories uh study of the Moon as uh the space program was
beginning to accelerate and uh the moon became a viable Target I visited him at
his home in in Tucson and uh he he welcomed me back to what he called his Moon Room uh a uh bedroom jammed with
what is now historical artifacts uh Yuan unfortunately passed away uh a couple of
years ago and virtually everything in his room is now in a museum at the University of Arizona but
um uh it was fascinating talking to him about his his activities with the ranger
program uh with the creation of the Kyper lunar atlases uh which were the definitive uh
lunar steady uh uh tools prior to spacecraft mapping of the moon and the
next picture if it's what I think it is yes here I am sitting on the floor of
his uh Moon room um opening up uh a his
personal copy of the Kyper Atlas photographic lunar Atlas I had never
seen one before and notice the deer in the headlight look in my eyes I'm
looking at this thing which I had revered I had revered for decades thinking that this must be a repository
of incredible photography I found out that all of the pictures in this Atlas
were worse than the pictures that I throw away because I don't think they're good enough of the Moon and uh I'm I'm
not saying that the photographic lunar Atlas was a a terrible creation it was the best they could do at the time but
it was more a testament of how good amateur astrophotography has become
because um my my picture of alfonsus is an example how it compared
to a ranger photograph but uh it was fun to finally hold this historical document
in my hands and uh speaking of historical documents that were just laying around his bedroom or his spare
bedroom actually uh it was literally crammed with all this uh Moon
memorabilia this map in German and you'll notice that the uh the Moon is upside down because that that dates it
automatically as to how old it is pre1 1960 u in German and notice all of these
scribbling all over it this is the original Moon map that Gerard Kyper had
with him at McDonald Observatory when he used the 82in telescope to observe the
moon and come to his basic conclusions about the evolution of the moon this
this piece of paper with his scribblings on it is the root or origin of the lunar
and planetary laboratory in Tucson and uh we all know how famous that place is
and uh I got to hold this thing in my hands and it absolutely frosted me to be able to hold that
thing another reflection meeting one of the uh the the other greats from back in
the early 1960s Peter Schultz uh he just recently retired from Brown University
but um had the pleasure of visiting him a couple of hours up at the Brown University in their laboratory up there
and uh um pull out lunar orbiter prints and spread them out on the tables and and really get down to the nitty-gritty
and and talk to him on a very high level and U uh discovered that I could keep up
with this fellow uh uh and understand what he was saying about the images and
reply in kind so it was it was one of the another one of those reflective moments where I finally realized that
I'm better at this Moon stuff than I thought I was you learn you learned some things along the way yes sure do um a
thing another personal item that um uh I I hope this is showing well enough uh
this is a topographical map of part of uh Mari serenus the Sea of Serenity Now
one thing that uh really endear me to this particular uh uh view is
uh follow the cursor as it circles the crater Mary well within walking distance up
here the creater Robert Robert and Mary me and my wife within walking distance
of each other on the moon now these are not named after us specifically like uh like the asteroids are named after us
the two asteroids but uh I thought it was just so uh amazing that by
coincidence Robert and Mary were right next to each other on the moon and uh Mary's been with me for we've been
married for 44 years now and uh um we'll be laying next to each other of the moon
for eternity and moving on lunar orbiter like I said I am
swamped with lunar orbiter photographs lunar orbiter flew back in the 1960s and
it was the dividing point between uh earth-based observations through a
telescope and understanding the geology of the Moon as viewed from close up low lunar orbit uh From Below 50 km above
the Moon this uh the satellite carried a photographic package uh in the middle of
it uh you see the little lens cover opening there in the two lenses that photographic package is actually adapted
from the um Air Force's Samos military reconnaissance satellite although at the
time when it was adapted to lunar orbiter they were not allowed to say that's where it came from but now noways
we know the full story uh this thing is basically a spy satellite turned into a ler Explorer and uh moving on here uh my
little kitty here rusty she stands guard
over 3,000 of those lunar orbital photographs that are now
mine uh back in the 60s we we we we poured over sky and Telescope magazine
in the and the newspaper articles when uh these magnificent pictures of the moon were
brought back sent back from lunar orbiter seeing details on the moon that we we never knew existed and uh showing
geologic Wonders that uh uh were just astonishing and U by u a strange twist
of fate um I inherited about 3,000 of
these uh turns out some were duplicates uh actually 900 and something of them are uh individual images which leaves me
about 2,000 duplicates that I'm finding other homes for but uh this basically
means that now I own half of the images returned by the
lunar orbiter project and for somebody who's in love with the moon like I am somebody who's a true selenophile a
person who loves the moon um getting these photographs uh was was so amazing
like I said Rusty she stands guard over these things there stacks of them at my
office and U she looks down upon them while I'm studying them and uh uh I
think she's come to the scientific conclusion that the lunar surface sure looks like one giant catbox to
her but nonetheless so Reflections um some some
technical ones that Advanced our knowledge of the Moon and some personal ones that uh um um resonate very much
with me so uh um my I'll conclude with the uh the standard slide there is so
much to love on the moon and I invite you to come out and play with me on my playground uh the moon doesn't care
about light pollution you can see the moon from the middle of the brightest City uh the moon's in the sky uh most of
the month at one time or another and it's the only world that we can see in
our telescopes that we can see details as small as a kilometer we can't do that
on other worlds so uh the Moon is there for us to enjoy and I uh do hope that
you will add it to your um observational repertoire and not avoid it because it
blocks the Deep sky but to embrace it as an alternative when it is in the sky so
uh again I've I've enjoyed the chatting about the moon and uh I hope to do it
again in the future so uh let me unshare really appreciate presentation
thank you so much Robert you're welcome can I say things here uh I really did
enjoy that it was so special and I totally think you're wrong about saying
that you know about you don't have the feeling and the passion for it because you do and I really really loved it
I'd like to share a story about thank you I'd like to share a little story about Jean Shoemaker when I was
interviewing him for my biography uh that I wrote about him uh
Jean was telling me that uh about the uh
survey or one Mission you know they were having a lot of trouble they the the
Rangers finally started to work with Ranger 7 but they figured that Ranger
surveyor one would not make it to the moon and you know he told me about how
you know he was gave a hug to Carolyn as uh he were he was going to JPL he said
we'll be I'll be back shortly after because this ain't going to make it this is just our first try and uh the rocket
launched and the second stage was okay and the mission was on its way and they
said okay but it's not going to make it to the moon and so it started
to get into in near the moon and uh the
um it it started to come in and uh the
um the mission was doing pretty well and then the final thing was when the uh
when the spacecraft began to retrofire for a soft Landing that's where Jean
thought it wasn't going to work and expecting a crash so it it the uh the
spacecraft retr fired and uh slowed down and slowed down till it was about about
50 feet off off the surface and it was just got to a stop and then the turned
off it dropped to the moon and it's still working it's still working it's
still working I remember that I remember that well it was broadcast live
it people we ever saw it still works and we made it and Jean was so surprised and
I remember him talking to Carolyn that night and saying I think I'm gonna be here for a little
while and uh because it worked I couldn't believe that it was working and I think when he was telling me that
story the memories of the success of surveyor one came right back to him and
he was just as excited as he was the night that it actually made it to the moon I just wanted to share that with
all of you well that that Landing was broadcast live and um all of the
officials there the commentators everybody had all their stories prepared in advance about why did it fail when it
succeeded they were slack jawed and dumbfound they weren't quite ready for that they weren't ready for that they
didn't know what to say except stare at it in awe it worked so um yeah I
understand that story very well I I remember watching it so uh more Moon
later it's been fun yep that's great thank you Robert thank
you okay all right so we are um we are about
ready to wrap up our uh 142nd Global
Star Party David our last uh speaker is uh Maxi FIS and uh he's also in
Argentina and maxi is the one that uh when he first came on to our program he
was showing us how he made images with a smartphone where he had tore the lens
off of the of an old smartphone and was just using the sensor I think on a 4 and
1 half inch uh reflector and was returning some pretty stunning images so
anyways he has H since gotten better equipment and better cameras and and
learn more about image processing and he leads people uh you know uh at all
levels to uh inspires them to do more astrophotography down there and uh Maxi
I'm gon to bring you on with David and I here you are hello guys good night um
thank you for inviting me it's a pleasure to be here with you two so well
yeah thank you for the presentation uh I like like you said it's almost six years
that I started with doing as photography I'm mat as photography but with a little
a little equipment with my smartphone and you know continuing
continuing practicing capturing also starting of course with the moon some
deep Sky object like m42 or and my goal was capturing
galaxies because I really love to to watch what is beyond there uh Even in
our own Galaxy but watching the
Untouchable thing that is really far away from us so that's my my inspiration
to continuing and trying to every time get it a little better you know uh but
uh of course ER in every time you you you start um the the processing the the
the the gear and Equipment changes and the technology changes you know 20 years
ago you can't even think that you can do astrop photography with your smartphone
and and 20 years ago you didn't thought about an smartphone so right now you
have everything on your pocket but well let me share my screen um what I want to show you uh is
my my latest work that i' be practicing and
working ER with you know I like to ER go with experiments so I try to do uh with
my 8 in F6 telescope that that doonan
that I put it on my um equatorian Mound but I give a shot to to try to capture
deep Sky objects with a planetary camera with my latest zwo
60 662 MC it's an uncolored camera is only for
you know the moon Jupiter Saturn Mars planetary gear objects
but let me open this sorry this this spoiler this for next more later I tried
to of course capture the m42 enula and this is the F of view that I gets with
the single gear you know with the this
planetary camera it's incredible the the shapes that I got of the Cur of of M4
too I know the colors they are not too much green but anyway I really love the
the Stars pretty good Let Me Assume like one onone yeah this is one onone picture
it's beautiful and it's amazing the shapes of the clouds and dust yeah it's
like curdling curdling nebulosity it's beautiful exactly and there you got
the the trapesium the trapesium sorry um anyway how do you call this uh
feature in Spanish trapesio it's it's similar oh very similar okay trapesium
is like it's I think it's a Latin word so some you know some words we we we say we
we say it like you you do even our language came from a different
origin uh but you know uh and this is only one only 15 minutes
I think of stacking H with this camera you know it's uncredible with the dobsonian
telescope what it was a Newtonian 8 in F6 and this planetary camera and only
think taking one minute per shot ER of in 15 minutes it's unbelievable pretty
incredible so I when I capture this I say I can give more you know I can do
more so I went ER today Cesar was showing or tried
to show in the the soln cross and nearby the soln cross is the ju closer
box this is an open ER star cluster that in the center you have
this red ER particularly star that when you watch it through with your eyes it's
um um you can't stop to watching this in your telescope like many
Jews and it's in all the FI of view of that H camera too so so I say okay this
is all only Stars ER it's not maybe a
planetary nebula or a Galaxy or something so I pointed my equipment to
another place and went to the ghost of Jupiter planet Chula wow and look at
that you can see all the shape of the plan you know and the core and the No No
if it this object is pretty easy and you can capture it with your cell phone you
know I did it with a small equipment but it's very very bright and watching
of course in a dark space or dark Fields is really shows up the even de core but
taking the details it's you know I was shocking to
to capture the so and I think also was 20 minutes and
that's all and then I leave the equipment almost all night
capturing this galaxy but this is not processing yet this is sorus a Galaxy
nearby the Omega sensor Global cluster
and it's am amazing the ah one thing is in my backyard in bort six
or seven you know and I did single shots of that kind of minutes because it will
be very difficult to ER grab out grab out all that light pollution but
anyway ER capturing this and the shape and the colors of the core of this lular
galaxy it's incredible so er I hope someday they do
again ER deep Sky cameras with ER refri
refrigerated sensors H but anyway I don't see too much ER noise of
on the on the stacking and well you know ER if if you don't if you can't get for
forward with the Deep Sky camera you can maybe start with the planetary camera
and of course first of all with your cell phone or even with your webcam of course
but well let's continuing um last weekend ER
we we meet with two friends from buenos
Gabrielle peruso and Herman bakaro that
we went to the alberty um Observatory is
nearby from my city 40 kilomet from here um they went Friday night so
I close my my my work where I at the end
of the day I had my equipment inside my car and traveled to there so when I get
there I start to to bring all the equipment
and this is a picture of Gabriel peruso that did that night you know
here's my car here's my equipment uh here's a heran equipment and here's
Gabriel's equipment but you can see we have a lot of Sun sorry
Moonlight H is almost day we can see each other easily and but you know when the moon
goes out ER we we really enjoy the night capturing deep Sky objects anyway I went
with my effort 8 inches ER there so I
give a chance to capture in a galaxies like I say I really love to capture
galaxies and and now we are start starting the the Galaxy season so I had
to give a chance h i we we struggled with some clouds and humidity but the
The Guiding and the sky was really clear and very perfect guiding and and it was
okay so the next day I I came back because I worked Saturdays so there I
have to to open the store at the middle of the day and then worked for three hours only
and close they shop some food and came come back to the observatory to to
continue the the day we we get some rest here in this place you know it was
really hot weather ER and it was really cloudy that ER afternoon but then almost
6 or 7 p.m. the club they went and the clear sky comes
out and well we have our second night so
the results of H well the the the object that I captur was in the dis place the
large Magen Cloud it was the in a place not the the chant it was a place that is
more beyond the that Galaxy uh
m47 so sorry m87 ER because I tried to capture the
the Maxi we are just seeing your file folders yes
yes okay and another place of maranian change and some galaxies but here are
well my goal that I was I I I captured
two years ago H but I have to give a chance with not new processing new gear
and everything so my go principal goal was the Leo STP plet
and let me show you the the single shot for
example this is only one minute
exposure and you can see the three galaxis okay but when I Stu this for two
nights I got this and process and everything I got this
results nice so so 65 66 and that's NGC
3628 is that right exactly uh-huh
and of course there's a lot of galaxies Beyond there in the background but the
principle galaxies you know they have this beautiful beautiful
shapes and forms and dust and clouds surround the core of these
galaxies and you know I really really like this
processing also this bright star is really thin I don't like the very Globe
stars and you know I I will post this
image maybe tomorrow on my personal Instagram page ER but you know I have
another objects and maybe the next month H we say we have to come back to
capturing maybe another another galaxies or maybe continuing capturing the same
same galaxies to to get more info uh the another object uh that I
captured was this this is the NGC
5066 uh this is in nearby Dorado
gellation and the James W James web Space Telescope did a
picture of this place in near infrared red and of course the core is really
really with very high details not like me but anyway with
the with not professional or kind of professional equipment you can you can
do this particular Galaxy and of course a lots of another objects
so the next one they are not processed yet only stacked so I went to the needle
Galaxy and nearby objects you know this is one and
one and you know I really love this galaxy it's like the somero Galaxy but
of course bigger you know and I only have it for maybe 4 hours or five hours
on the sky so you have to maybe get a lot of hours to to get
more details and you know but anyway on the background like I say there's a lot
of galaxies ER floating in the
nothing but it's amazing
um this this is another one Galaxy that is in the head of Leo
and this is one onone scale and this spirro galaxy I remember
maybe five years ago I tried to capture with a cell phone and and you know here
in my backyard but I couldn't have the same details of like um the tripet of
Leo but anyway I I really love to to
capturing and I have to still processing this see how
the shapes going and the colors of the stars but uh you know
ER the I really love to to capture this and this is the
pl question uh the one that you said originally was 101 are you sure that
wasn't NGC 4565 instead no no sorry one one is the
scale of the of the image this is one this is the original size of the
picture and this the software when you go zoom out this is a one on four
scale yeah and for example this is the two on
one that that that what I I I mean now this this object was let me remember the
the NGC ER 4665 yeah and no sorry that's the needle
the needle Galaxy and this galaxy is 29
06 05 in Leo is here
uh here's the well the Leo constellation and I see it upside down from here and
here's the the object this is the the Galaxy in
stellarum and this is my picture so I have to to process this and
see what I get and the another object of the need nearby um large man cloud is this place
F of stars because it's in the in that
Galaxy and you know I have all this ER
particularly gas and dust objects this is like I said not processed this is
only and out of stretch you know this is the
the the lineal frame but this is is out of
stretching and you have a lot of a little Global CL star clusters like this
one there and also all the the dust and the
gas colored in red and a little bluish
green you know and H there's lots of objects in this field
of view uh I captur this place with an Alex stream
filter H if you want and we we have time I want to show you the the
compensation uh was the last year uh
[Music] September no
uh no not here in October yeah there it
is for example here we we're going to let me copy the the file
[Music] Direction because I didn't well I didn't process this or I think I did
but here's the same object and sorry
you can see the same object and this was three minutes H three minutes picture and this
was only one minute picture and you can see the different
the differences on the the shapes oh yeah but remember this is only one
single shot and this was the stacking of I don't know maybe one hour or something
like that but uh anyway the stars with
the those kind of filters that went away there's almost
nothing so here you have full of stars so that's
what I don't like too much using these kind of filters because they are very
very restricted in the in the light but if
you are in the pollution light area you have to use it you have to
use so well this is my little presentation I hope that you like it and
I'm glad to be here with you guys Scott David Robert and thank you of course all
the audience and and thank you for reminding me yeah thank you so much
thank you well it was great um I really uh I want to thank uh uh David Levy for
uh U being a great co-host for this event and um uh you know as well as all
the presenters that came on in our audience uh we had a great audience uh watching from around the world and um uh
for those of you that didn't watch this live uh we want to thank you for watching it uh after the fact and um
we'll be back again with the 143rd Global star party so you guys have a
great night any uh closing remarks David uh yeah I'd like to say that the
uh sweater that I decided to put on tonight is my McGill sweater yeah I
notice and because everyone saying such wonderful things about me but Mill is
the University I flunked out of not once but twice I have the honor of flunking out in
1967 just before I was almost thrown out of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and then again in
1968 so I was I flunked out twice at Mill and then to celebrate that they
gave me an honorary degree later so that's the story about
my Mill and it's one of the universities that I really enjoy being at I'm so glad
this was a wonderful Star Party Scotty i s for the theme for the next one but um
anyway we'll see you again when we do the 143rd and thanks for joining us
tonight yep all right thank you okay well that's a it's a wrap and uh you
guys have a great night and we will um be back with more Global Star Party
take
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yeah