Global Star Party 152

Transcript:

there we
go for
so we have some people people logging on right now my queers first here says howdy from Southern
Arizona and Michael's watching on
YouTube good evening to you and welcome everybody to the 152nd Global Star Party
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well hello everyone it's uh Scott Roberts and David Levy and here we are on the 152nd Global Star Party with the
theme of Stellar bonds uh this uh this theme was inspired by um David Levy's
um uh thoughts about all the friends and bonds uh that he's made through you know
his uh lifetime as in in astronomy um uh
you know I think all of us have very special friends uh that we have met
along the way as well I think it's one of the most special uh aspects of getting together in uh amateur events
and conferences uh or just on uh programs like this where you can you can see your
friends from around the world on global star party so um we all share something
uh that is uh deep and profound uh with our appreciation of the universe and um
so that is uh that's something that I I'm glad that David uh uh brought to the Forefront front here David I'll turn it
over to you ma'am well thank you thank you Scott it's really wonderful to be
here especially with the theme of Stellar bonds because right now we're looking at
one's particular Stellar bond which is a very normally faint star in the
constellation of Corona Borealis it's a double star and in
1866 the fainer star of the two Stars blew up and became one of the brighter
Stars tied for the brighter star in Corona Borealis in 1946 80 years later it
happened again and those of us who have read lesle pel's book Starlight Nights
cannot fail to be moved by the person personality with which he took T Corona
Borealis he said where was I on the night that t Corona
Borealis threw off its covers and Rose I was
asleep and then he say he describes how he missed the Outburst in
1946 and he says I still watch the star but it is with a wary eye there is no
warmth between us anymore and when I read that the friendship and the depth
of personality that the man brought to his love of the night sky really
completely blew me away and uh kind of led to me to think
about not just Stellar bonds among stars we have from Tona oralis to most of the
stars in our galaxy which are double or multiple to one of the rarer Stars which
is our son which also has Stellar bonds connected to the one wonderful solar
system we have including this very strange planet called Earth and the Senate of the Senate of
the uh sun today decided to expel the Earth from the solar system so we're all
Scotty we all have to go with you tonight and find another planet to live
on but anyway that brings me to The Human Side of Stellar bonds the stellar
of astronomical friendships that I had over the years and
perhaps uh uh they began really with my relationship with the Montreal center of
the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and kareim who is with us today and I
will be looking forward to his his lecture very soon but Scotty and I became friends
while he was still working with me and uh I think we met at Riverside one
year when they had the Riverside telescope makers conference and that's
right and our friendship has just grown and grown over the years and and we are just so so friendly
with each other and uh we almost can predict each other's actions days of
fatigue days of Joy days of not so Joy but it's just been a wonderful lifelong
friendship I hope it will last for many more years to come yes which brings me
to my quotation for today it's another seller bond that
comes with a writer who I dearly wish I had known the writer is Henry David
Vero when I was graduating from Acadia in the maritimes and Canada maritimes in
1972 I was going through one of my frequent depressive episodes and my younger brother Jerry
found a poster with this quotation on it that he gave to me and I've had the
poster for years but then I lost it to recover it what I did was I just printed
out the quote and I hung it up on my wall and here it
is if a man does not keep Pace with his companions Perhaps it is because he
hears A Different Drummer let him step to to the music which he hears however measured or far
away thank you and back to you Scott oh wow okay all right well that's great
that's great well um tonight uh
Professor Kareem Jafar uh who is also a great friend of yours and and a friend
of mine too uh um I wanted to come on tonight and he has some
special thoughts uh that he'd like to share so I'm going to bring him on here we go you've got light turned on you but
I think that you wanted to talk a little bit about uh David here well so uh as
David uh is aware we are currently in the midst of looking at a new home for
our ASC Montreal Center Library and so a few weeks back we got together at the
library and started going back through through our collection and looking at the books that doid has given us and
that he's uh written his inscriptions for us we looked at some of the older
books that we have in our collection uh translations of Galileo uh books by
Edington several editions of edington's books uh periodicals dating back to the
late 1700s late 1800s for the sky and telescopes we have the first 98 bound
volumes of sky and telescope that we're going to have to try to find homes for and you know going through those
materials and thinking about the 100 plus years that the monreal center has been there uh doid has been kind of the
the anchor as our as our honorary president he's our institutional memory now uh We've we've lost some of our
local members who were longtime members uh our summer always ends with our now
our Papa cosmus uh Percy and meteor shower event uh honoring con Papa Cosmos
and before that event we go to stalhane which Constantine went to I believe more
than 50 times over the first 70 plus years of that convention and going back through that
history and trying to understand a little bit of what different people bring to the table when it comes to the
memory and the the way in which the Montreal Center runs is been kind of foremost in my mind ever since this push
that we're going to have to now move move space and consolidate the collection and with that in mind we've
had a few events in the Montreal Center things that were planning for and a trip that I took with my family that I
actually want to take a few minutes to to share with our GSP audience so again
with Stellar bonds you know this is this is a topic the The Human Side of our of
our Outreach community and the the bonds that we've forged that we've discussed
previously in Gs PS I remember um I believe it was Global Star Party 71
where I talked about the astronomy the Astro radio in the UK that I was part of
at the time and bringing some of those individuals on during covid time to give talks to the Canadian audience and we
even brought a few of them into the global star parties and the way in which our Outreach communities function are
very much in tune with what we bring to the table as Outreach Educators so one
of the things things that we've been doing at the Montreal Center as people are aware of is we've been trying to have more than a land acknowledgement
but a land and Sky acknowledgement and I'm going to touch on this because this has to do with the reason why we took
our trip to Washington DC uh over the past week but at the moment we are in our waning uh crescent moon for the
Strawberry Moon uh as the ojibway referred to it or the green corn Moon as the cre referred to it the small fruits
moon is referred to by many of the Plains Nation Indians this is the Moon
that tells us that we are in the hottest part of the Summer where we can pick the
berries because they have a lot of nutrients and a lot of nourishment to offer us but the fruits that we need for
the fall if we try to pick them now it's too early so we recognize the names of
the moons associated with what we see happening in nature around us and one of the things we see happening in nature as
scientists and as astronomers as doid referred to is that our sun is incredibly active so earlier this month
we actually had a huge festival called the Astro Fest at the Montreal planetarium this is something that I
helped create back in 2019 uh with the very first astrofest to celebrate International astronomy day
where we brought together groups of Outreach Educators from across the Quebec area uh to Montreal to the
Planetarium to deliver Outreach to the community for free and here you have my
son as part of the Migel group uh he came from University of Ottawa but the Migel group needed help so he stepped up
to help them with their Outreach activities we have the institute for research on exoplanets doing activity
stations to teach students about worlds away from our own we have uh the
planetarium team themselves outside building water rockets and then we had our local uh artist patina for who is a
member of our Montreal Center a past president a past librarian and she is
the Outreach person for the artist and residence program at SEI and so she did
a workshop on what alien life might look like we had one of our local Outreach
Educators uh Trevor curan who works with the Canadian space agency sometimes on
the communication side and he put up radio antennas to try to catch satellites as they passed over and we
caught a go satellite and we were actually able to develop a radar picture of the East Coast with the cloud
formations and everything in real time with a group of Youth from Grandy which is about an hour away from Montreal this
was all part of this Astro Fest and it was a two-day event this time around and my largest part was supporting my space
Club from John Abbot College and you can see them there doing an activity of teaching about constellations and
teaching about solar system planets and our RC Montreal Center astronomers who had set up their solar telescopes during
their day and lunar and planetary telescopes at night we had close to 40
participating organizations setting up boots each day for a total of 55
organizations participating uh at this one event and it got me thinking you
know what do we bring to these Outreach events because we try to share what we love about space with the youth around
us and with the families and try to inspire them and give them that that nudge towards why space is so important
in the Montreal area we have a lot of Industries we have a lot of uh programs at universities that overlap into space
Sciences so there's directions that people can go if they have this interest but catching that interest catching that
spark that spark is what you want to catch early on and so one of the things that I've been doing since I started
into astronomy Outreach in 2016 is I spend part of my summer trying to gather
more examples and more information and more real concrete context that I can
bring to my classes and to the Outreach that we do in Montreal and so this time around we decided to do this in
Washington DC to start off the summer now I went to a folk Life Festival back
in 2001 2002 sorry with my wife just after we got married and it was the Silk
Road festival and it was her first time going to the Smithsonian museums we haven't been back that's 22 years that
we have not been to the Smithsonian to Washington DC to explore and see what's
available to us in the US capital I grew up in southern Pennsylvania I used to do one-day trips down to see one Museum or
one Festival event or something like that but I wanted the chance to show my kids a little of what's offered there
and the folk Life Festival this year was for the 20th anniversary of the Museum of the American Indian so we had you
know how to make different types of foods and what the actual uh significance is of different crops in
the First Nation culture for indigenous peoples of America we had the crafts
from across all of North America but especially from the tribes that have presence in the actual states of the
US this is all in the context of still having all The Monuments there to go and
visit to read The Gettysburg Address with Lincoln's statues sitting there you know these are moving events for me as a
child and I wasn't sure how these would translate to my kids who grew up in Canada and who their only connection
into the US is typically with me or with trips down to see my sister so giving
them a chance to explore and feel what the heart of the US really is and you
know walking from the Washington Monument across along the reflecting pool to the Lincoln Memorial walking up
the steps of the capital as far as they would let us go driving by the White House these were all things that I was
really excited to share with my kids but what I was really wanting to do was to
show them what's available in the Smithsonian because here in Canada when you go to museums when you go to museums
when you're visiting Philadelphia or when you're visiting Boston you are paying an entrance every Museum you go
to the Smithsonian Collection gives that free entrance to the public because their mandate is to share their mandate
is Outreach their mandate is exactly the same as what we do here at the global star parties on the astronomy and space
science side but they're they're they're living organisms it's a different experience than what I saw 20
30 40 years ago when I went there growing up we went to the Library of Congress we looked at the Jefferson
collection and I wish I could have reached through those glass barriers and pulled out some of those books because
they were inspiring to see the the amount of material collected by Thomas
Jefferson and my daughter even made a joke going dad you know you've got a good start in our basement there and I
do and maybe you know 150 years from now it'll look a little bit like this but at the moment it's just kind of all piled
up in shelves one of the big reasons why we did decide to go was because we wanted
to see the Space Shuttle Discovery we had seen when we had gone to Kennedy Space Center you know we got our first
space shuttle on our bucket list we have yet to go out to California but I wanted to get to see the discovery because I
never got to see that in person and so going and seeing the discovery was the
first big museum event that we did and we did it on the same day as we done the Library of Congress in the morning and
then we went the whole afternoon to the udvar hay Center and I'm I could do an
entire talk on the things that we saw and the amount of knowledge at the adver
hay Center it is incredible but the one that stood out to me that I didn't realize was on display was the actual
cybernetic robot that they had to test out the different space suits and the
sensors to show whether or not the astronauts would be able to withstand
what they expected to go through for the Apollo missions and Beyond so it was really neat to see the level to which
our robotics were set up with sensors for testing out our space
suits the other big attraction for me was the Aaron Space Museum and here I'm going to call D's attention because they
not only have this beautiful write up on cly Tombo but they also also have that
uh the the blink comp uh comparator they have that they have a nice little video
showing how the blink between the successive images showed an object
moving at what could only be planetary speeds and there's a really beautiful video and write up and an entire area
dedicated to why the discovery of Pluto was so significant and also an
explanation as to why there's that argument in the scientific community in
the space Community as to whether or not Pluto should still be given planetary status even though it no longer meets
the definition of a planet and so this was this was what was really different
and this is why I thought to talk about this in today's Stellar bonds um GSP is because my Approach in the
space museum what my daughter and my son saw what my wife saw
is different because of the Outreach community that we have been associated with by knowing DOI by hearing his
stories of Clyde Tomba I took the time to spend reading and trying to Gan as
much information as I could out of the exhibits that they had on Pluto my
daughter saw the plaque to Eugene Shoemaker and they this plaque had
nothing to do with the Comets with the comet discoveries this had to to do with him as a lunar Pioneer and a geologist
and she said is this the same Jean Shoemaker was this his dad is this his brother or is this the same Shoemaker
and I said it's the same shoe maker and she was associating it with all the stories that doid has told us about Jen
and Caroline and it gives such a different perspective when you actually
know some of the names that you see when it jumps out at you and you've stood on
stage with some of the individuals that they talk about or you've watched documentaries and you've heard their
voice or you've read their writings it changes what you get out of it doid was
with me at the uh at the RC General Assembly back in
2019 when uh first man was out and the writer of first man the individual who
had spent time talking to Neil Armstrong talking to his family talking to Buzz Aldren had spoken about Apollo 11 and
during the Q&A that happened on stage with the author and then afterwards with
J they talked about all the Apollo flights and they talked about you know the Apollo 13 The Miracle of how they
managed to survive to come back and seeing the mockup of what they did with
the filter system to be able to filter out the carbon dioxide and seeing that
having that Echo of a discourse in your mind playing while you're watching and
reading these it changes it completely and then we went to the Natural History Museum and I love rocks I've love gems
and minerology since I was a kid in southern Pennsylvania and now when I go to the Natural History Museum I have David Aker
going through my mind I'm hearing him giving the series in the global star parties about all the different minerals
and I'm imagining how much more I would learn if I walk through the Natural History Museum with David beside me then
I saw the two-dimensional crystal growth the dendritic crystals that he and I had
talked about before one of the gsps had started when I started talking to him about the pressurization and some of the
caves and he told me that there's beautiful two-dimensional Crystal growths where fractal structure is seen
and they had an example of that right there in the Natural History Museum then they had in the Peak Skill
uh meteorite sample and you get to see the meteorite samples from all of these
different meteorite impacts that you've read about now I've been reading about for the last eight nine years and then
of course they had an entire wall dedicated to Shoemaker Le v9 and you could see the impact you could see the
progression of the impact finally becoming just the dark streak in the clouds and my daughter and I both had
the exact same idea when we looked at this and we were like like it's not enough information there needed to be
more there we get we should get doid to go and add stuff into this exhibit because it short changes what a
impactful moment that was and right next to it they have a
piece of Martian meteorite along with an entire layout on the geological
structure of Mars and for the first time I was actually able to touch on Martian meteorite which I've never gotten to do
they even have a sample already from benu from Osiris Rex they have a sample
on display in the glass case there still not even completely analyzed but it's
already there on display to start talking about what we're learning and what we're expecting to get out of this
asteroid sample return mission that just got back to Earth and this is one that
left in 2016 when I became an astronomy teacher and came back last so I've
gotten to see this entire mission from start to finish now I got to see a sample coming from that mission one of
the big things that stood out to me is through the gsps I started getting active in uh trying to take care of the
night sky here in Canada especially in Montreal we have the third worst uh light pollution per capita uh at the
moment because of winter time when we are surrounded by ice and snow and they have this beautiful little display where
they have the same slot of Sky shown by the har Harvard Observatory taken in the
1800s and then taken in 2002 and you can see the difference in
what's visible and they have that what's nice is they have a lower viewing point
and a higher viewing point so that kids can see the difference and parents can see the difference so it's really
impactful that way and then they talk about the things they're doing in Washington DC with The Monuments with
the actual areas of develop vment to try to impact the amount of light pollution
put out there because it's such a bright City there's so many things that have to have lighting and they have to be lit up
even at night for security the way they're doing it to try to minimize the impact on the night sky is on Full
display there this really struck me and this kind of brings me full circle to
the folk Life Festival itself is they had one of their visual charts from in
this case it was the Lota and the lakota's visual charts start at the center and for each year every
visualization everything that they do is in a spiral coming outwards and so if
you look at this and you start to analyze you can actually spot things like a meteor shower from 1833 or a
solar eclipse from 1869 and you can spot these observations and in the solar eclipse
observation they actually show the sun being covered up and stars coming out
which is a visualization that we tend to think that we're so smart because we have this idea
now in the you know those those those uh ancient cultures were so superstitious
they didn't understand what was happening they show the moon covering up the sun they identify it as the moon
covering up the Sun and this is dating back to the mid 1800s for these
observations and then you go to things like the Modern Art Museum and even there space is prevalent where you have
an entire discourse by Lori Anderson on the idea of ownership of the moon is it
the Chinese because they have the most Rovers there is it the Russians because they landed the first thing there is it
the Americans because they're the only ones who have set foot there or is it the Italians because Galileo did the
first sketches except he didn't do the first sketches there are sketches dating back Millennia before Galileo so who
really owns the moon and it's a Conversation Piece one of three conversations in this one room depicting
the entire ceiling walls and floor these types of things are
available for free for the public to go and experience space Outreach for
themselves and one of the big things that I wanted to share which which I think kind of contextualizes why this
was so impactful for me I remember going as a kid kid 40
years ago as a 10-year-old to the Aon Space Museum I remember seeing the huge
flyers I remember seeing the Apollo capsule I remember seeing the space
suits I remember even getting to touch the capsule and step inside a model of
the capsule I remember the titles were there and that was about it the rest you had
to either get a tour guide or ask questions and hope somebody could answer them for you
now because we put so much effort into the way in which we communicate
information the there is an entire narrative as you walk through
these different exhibits and the exhibits are growing and changing constantly I know if I go again next
year or two years down the road there will be a different narrative in one of the exhibits that I'll get to learn more
and I'll get to hear more and I'll get to see more and so one piece of advice because it's
summertime and we're talking about getting away and doing things visit your local Science Museum go to Washington
and visit the Smithsonian institutes go to this Kennedy Space Center go to the Johnson Space Center go to space camp
Alabama like go and visit because it will enrich your Outreach to have these
experiences to have these examples to share with the public when you get out
there to try to share with them your love of space it can only benefit you to get these experiences for yourself Scott
back to you great thank you so much thank you I I love uh your your um
virtual tours of things and uh and your take on uh uh all things astronomical
especially the indigenous stories and stuff that you bring to us I think those are amazing you know it it helps us kind
of um uh realize that uh you know our thoughts are not so different uh than
than uh what um was originally uh brought forth in in uh in stories and
stuff by indigenous people they still they still uh uh embraced uh you know
kind of the Oneness of the sky and um you know and realize that somehow we're
from you know we're we're part of it you know it's not like something
you know separate from us so no the entire we made of Stardust is part of
their culture is that we are all yeah right the same thing Universe it's it's
told many times from different angles but but they're getting at the same thing which is really cool so exactly
I'm looking forward to even more I'm going to malantic this weekend and then I'm still trying to clear up my schedule
because I want to get to Alcon I want to get a chance to see explore scientific and see where all the uh instrument is
made and then hopefully Stane in first weekend of August yeah I hope so I hope so well
that's great did you want to add any comments here David uh yeah I was really surprisingly
wonderful to hear my friend kareim sort of talk about some of the things that
our Center has gone through in the last number of years and my my memories date back all
the way to October the 8th 1960 when I walked into the observatory
and the first person I encountered was Isabelle Williamson someone that became
a very dear friend in her later years and to listen to Kareem just sort of
talk about his visit to Washington his visit to the United States and the
relationship that the United States enjoys with Canada right now uh without really saying it he said
it he pointed out such wonderful and important things that really give us
some cause for Hope in these difficult times Kareem thank you 20 million times
my pleasure do and I have to say you know when you see the discovery and you see the Canada arm right there beside it
you know it it touches you you understand how close we are and one of
the neat things I when we go to the Steven uh ever hay Center they have
these virtual tour guides who are volunteers who are sitting at home on a
screen and as you walk by you can ask them questions and we saw one in front of one of the Spitfires and so I just
you know said hi because I saw the person just standing there waiting for somebody to engage with them and he
immediately you know replied back and said you know where are you visiting from and I said Montreal and he said oh and he pulled out a sheet and he said so
what do you want to know about the Canadian contribution to Aerospace because I have everything here and I'd love to give you information if you
don't have it and so my daughter asked him a couple of questions and we chatted with him for a few moments and then we
kept going our way and he was really happily surprised that we knew stuff that he knew and he got to actually have
that discussion rather than just you know one directional uh delivery of
information very cool oh David you're you're muted that
was really really wonderful thank you thank you all right okay so uh uh we are
um going to uh talk about uh all things
from the astronomical league with uh um with Lori and Sorge uh let me do I just
have these little intro uh videos here which I think is kind of cool
[Music] Lori thank you for coming on to the uh
152nd Global Star Party um your uh uh I
I think your talks are going to be uh uh including the astronomical league and
the upcoming Alcon which a lot of us will be at um so um I'm going to turn it
over to you but uh thank you for once again coming on to Global Star Party being part of this uh
tradition it's an honor um so uh we do have Alon coming up in Cana City but I
also want to point out given some of the topic uh topics of discussion
tonight is that uh the astronomical league has two challenges that are on
Astro league.org which is their website and one is what doid had mentioned
earlier looking for the tar The Blaze star in Corona Borealis and the other
one is in honor of the Parker solar probe and the challenges always include
some kind of a an Outreach which can be talk to your neighbors talk at your Club
um but I did want to offer up that those uh challenges are um available to folks
and um they should uh take a look at that because um those are a lot of fun
now I'm going to try and share my screen here as I do have something prepared and
I love the theme of Stellar bonds because uh that's something that's near
and dear to me that um keeps coming up and in particular Scott and I had had a
brief conversation last month about uh what I had done with uh folks and Girl
Scouts and I can say that it's uh tied in with the whole Outreach um topic that
we've uh been talking about here and um so I'm going to tell you a little bit
about connecting the dots and some of my stellar bonds with my green blood if you
will so um Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts all have badges that they earn and
depending upon which program you're following there's different
requirements and uh fun patches or something that they can get from your
club or from an experience that's like a participation badge really but there's
also the earned Badges and there's also for your trouble the astronomical leagues outreach
program pin that can be earned at three different levels and I'm honored that I
made it to the Master's level a couple years ago but because of Stellar bonds
which I'll get to in a second in Boy Scouts it's pretty much the uh same
requirements for all the levels but in 2017 2018 actually the Girl Scouts of
America came up with a new set of Space Science badges my friend Larry lowski that uh
doid has co-authored some books with um had uh been a main contributor to some
of the input to those badges this space science Badges and when they came out I had just
come back from the Girl Scout leader Camp astronomy Camp that's led by Don
Don McCarthy and Larry lowski at the University of Arizona we got to stay at
Biosphere 2 and my roommate also from my Council and I were looking at each other
one evening thinking to ourselves you know there's a lot of information that
they're giving us here and we've really got to share this more widely than just
bringing it back to home troops so we learned that there was such a thing as astronomy
days and we decided that we really needed to cover a lot of ground and
quickly since these new badges had just come out so how do you cover a lot of ground
when you've got for girl scuts anyway six levels of badge es well having been a girl Scott leader
for a while we basically um cross-pollinated back and forth and
simplified and engaged a lot of volunteers reaching out to our Stellar
bonds and we also wanted to create an opportunity for our older girl scouts to
have some volunteer and Leadership experience so first year we just had the
um younger Girl badges out knowing that the older girl badges were going to come out so for the older girls we had an
encampment we had them come on out and learn how to present all of these
different stations or create these stations that they could then present to
the younger girls so they were learning astronomy but also learning how to
facilitate the strict instructions to the chaperon and adults were when it's
go time let them go and this was in front of the girls don't step in unless you
are asked and then magic happened and the magic was that even this the the shy
ones who didn't speak up much were on the Fly doing some marvelous uh problem solving
and showing their own leadership skills and the parents did stay to the side and
they weren't asked to do anything and the whole thing was managed quite
nicely so we had all the materials from these uh astronomy Camp experiences we
found other alumni from within our Council that helped to uh pull things
together we had uh the Girl Scouts themselves prepare stations and things
to do for everybody and we provided for an overnight camping and for telescopes
and thank goodness we actually had clear skies for this first one so that the
older girls got two night to observe and they got to facilitate with um some of
the younger girls for the first night and here this little picture um is um
from night sky network but it features my my husband there uh showing some very
young Scouts the moon during the daytime using one of the celestial on first
Scopes so basically we um maximized our impact by having large events we helped
several hundred girls earn their badges that year and then several hundred more the next year we only did the write up
for astronomy day that first year and uh this is a little clip from the
astronomical leagues reflector showing that we actually won the astronomy day for that year but more
important uh we strengthened these Stellar bonds that we had with folks who were of like M mind and uh provided
meaningful experience and so many of these girls I run into again at other
events and sometimes as Boy Scouts now and I get to hear their stories of where
they've gone and what they've done with that in other um Outreach events so just
real quick showing you some examples of the content we have have an older girl here in the top she's showing the
younger girls how to do a sunclock which is set for our latitude and they get to make them and
go outside and watch the the time change there's also the making of moon cre
craters which I typically will do with cocoa and and corn starch but in this
particular case we use some blue chalk dust just to make it interesting we also um use cereal boxes
and CDs to make spectrometers to help explain absorption and emission lines
for how astronomers can find out what makes up Stars we had them do
classifications of stars by cards that uh we got from the
astronomy uh program for girl Scott leaders and they were learning about how
scientists classify things to understand them better everybody made a star wheel
these star wheels are still available for free on uh sky and Telescope U Magazine's um
website and there's another one of Larry's uh projects in the the upper
leand corner there where we take a model of the human eye and line it up onto
different size circles to show what that light Gathering capacity is when you get
to larger telescopes and mirrors for um one of the events it was too
cloudy so we basically put up the National Geographic map of the moon set
up that little first scope again at the other end of a Long Hall and still gave
the girls an experience looking through the telescopes here we're showing them how
to uh put together bracelets with UV beads that model the distance between
the Earth and Moon so that you have 30 Earth widths between the Earth and a
one4 size bead representing the moon which gives them something to talk about when they go back to uh school the next
day and then of course star viewers have you ever tried to explain to a very
young person how it what makes up in a constellation or when you're pointing at
the sky what to look for well basically taping to one end of a tube a paper with
holes in it that's in the shape of a constellation gives you a great first model for trying to explain that to them
we did revolutions rotations eclipses and again
a lot of these materials were made by the older girls themselves and you can see them U presenting and of course the
good old pocket solar system that represents the distance between solar
objects and for the older girls we got into um what effect UV has and
construction paper is really great for that putting some sunscreen on that uh
one of Larry's uh programs is Venus topography in a box and basically you're
using a coffee can that you can't see in and a measuring tool in this case a chopstick to determine what it looks
like on the surface of something you can't see and then of course regular Star Party fund for how to find
constellations in the sky and one of the Girl Scout programs has a 3D
constellation of Orion giving folks a sense of the fact that what we see in
the sky is in three dimensions and that the stars aren all on the same plane or same distance from
us but rather all different sizes colors temperatures and distances making up
those constellations we see of course we um went directly to the girls to see
what they liked best and what to do or not to do again so that we could make sure that we improve for things in the
future and we set up during covid uh
because we were doing a virtual astronomy day a couple of times in astronomy scouting on Facebook where we
also parked the different links to different girl Scott councils because they were then doing
astronomy and Outreach and badge uh creation or or badge activities that the
girls could do on the internet since they couldn't be in person during covid so that's what I wanted to to
share with you in terms of Stellar bonds it's amazing how many of these girls and
their parents that I I will see it at other outreaches and this whole
experience has definitely gotten me to get more active in my own or in in the
local Club here which I I call my own club now I'm treasur of the Westminster Astronomical Society and uh definitely
have an Ever growing passion for for sharing this and I know there was a
comment I made earlier too about how this is really um something that creates
these strong bonds no matter what your background or experience or politics
even and we're all all looking up at that same sky and sure enough it's a way
that uh we're able to continue to to talk to people and have something really
wonderful in common um so that is what I
have to share today any questions
anybody I really did enjoy what you had to say I look forward to being in
person at the uh Alon coming up later this month I'm looking forward to that
very very much and uh thank you for sharing your insights with us this
afternoon thank you and I look forward to seeing you there too I'll have something for you to seeing you all
those that make it Ron are you coming or no not this time and Cesar you are in
South in AR not this time well we shall have to catch up
another time Ron but the rest of you I'm hoping to see you all there too excellent presentation Lori and thank
you I love the Outreach and the the levels of Outreach that you're doing I
I'm Blown Away by how many different activities there were for the girls to
do and in particular that 3D Orion model one of the girls had such a big smile on
you know what if they're having fun they're going to want to keep doing it sure that's that's the number one name
of the game you have to come to them where they are and it has to be
enjoyable yeah good good well done great great well thank you very
much Lori and uh we'll see you at uh at elcon very
much okay all right so um our next speaker is uh none other than uh Dr Ron
breacher um he is an amazing astrophotographer um and uh it's always
a pleasure to see uh he he throws in my inbox uh you know beautiful images of
galaxies and nebuli and and this type of thing so it's always so inspiring to see
someone uh uh really go the next step and and try to do the The Cutting Edge
of what Imaging can B um Ron I recently wrote A Blog after uh being sent a video
from um from a gentleman that uh is involved in doing speckle
interferometry right using amateur equipment combining it with an old
historic yet professional telescope the 100 in you know and so this kind of Blended technology of using the
Ingenuity of what amateur astronomers can do um you know I can just imagine Ron if
you had the 100 in and uh you know for a series of nights and what you could do
with imaging with this you know this Monumental telescope on right near the top of my
bucket list is going and using the 100 inch either visually or to take a
picture or whatever yeah but you know I I actually have some data from the hundred
inch that that was given to me and I've never processed it and I'm I'm
embarrassed to say it but I just like getting my own data I
like getting my hands dirty I like sure I like being out there with the
equipment and um I have access to all kinds of data but I it's rare for me
to process it if I didn't if I didn't if you didn't do it and that's
understandable it's understand so I want so just to close that Loop if
in case anybody's listening yeah I want to go use that 100 inch telescope and
gather some data that I will be happy your own yeah yeah yeah and any other
big telescope they're all on my bucket list and you know the other thing I want to mention before before I start my
presentation is I noticed we have really good representation from Montreal yeah is that I'm a Montreal I'm
a Montreal boy too I grew up up in in uh TMR town of Mount Royal and uh I grew up
inspired in part by David you know I was I was well aware of
you even when I was just in my teens so
uh there anyway there we go okay all right take let David and I off and let
you get started with your presentation I'll I'll share my screen
and uh just switch to my my slideshow
and start from the beginning and you got to have a sense of humor
it's just not funny um you know when I when I see stuff when I see data coming
in at at my computer when I'm doing some deep Sky
Imaging this is often my reaction are you kidding me that I'm in my backyard
and I'm pulling this in in a 5 minute exposure I can see all this are you
kidding me so anyway I thought I would I thought I would use your theme tonight
Scott or part of it because it was sure there was a lot of parts to the theme tonight yes um I thought I would try to
link that up with that feeling that I get when I look at things in the sky or
on my computer as as my telescope is gathering the light from the sky but
many of what I many of the things I'm going to show you tonight are are uh visible through the eyepiece of a
moderate telescope in moderately good Skies so that's not true for everything
I'm going to show you but a lot of what I'm going to show you is um so tonight I want to just start with a little bit of
patriotism and then I want to connect to the theme tonight uh and give a few
examples uh that connect to that theme so uh we just celebrated Canada day
yesterday in Canada and uh you have Independence Day coming up in a couple
of days in the US and uh you know I just wanted to mention
that I don't take it for granted how lucky we are to be where we are when we
are with the people we're with and uh if you want to talk about
bonds that's the bonds e between Canada and the US um most Canadians have family
in the US or have you know I have a sister who's married and lives in
Florida so and that's common for many of us so we got to stick together here here
Stellar Bond so like I said there was a there was a lot to read in that theme it was very
complex um but but I wanted to pick out some of the stuff that I thought maybe I could talk about and uh the main one
that I connected to was gravitational binding in Stellar systems and uh I've highlighted and
underlined some of the things that are really important so gravitational forces
um I wanted to show you some things that show gravity um I wanted to show you things
that show that the universe is a dynamic place and uh undergos continuous
transformation and gives us some insights into the nature of what's going on so all of the uh pictures that I'm
going to show you now connect with this theme in one way or another and I'd like to just start I'll start close and we'll
move further away uh as I go through the presentation but I thought I'd start
with star cluster so anytime you look at a cluster like this this is an open cluster Carolyn's Rose mgc
7789 you're seeing gravity in action these stars were
born together out of the same cloud of hydrogen gas and it's gravity that's
holding them together and over time they do drift apart but some of them stay together for a very very long time but
here's something kind kind of interesting the uh you see the red star the bright red star uh sort of upper
left of center um when I went to take this
object take a picture of this object again for a friend two years later that star was
gone and um I I couldn't see it in my image and I thought I had actually
discovered something I reported it as a new discovery of course it wasn't a new discovery it's a well-known variable
star called Wy copia and in in this picture it's one of the brightest stars
in the field but two years later it was barely
there so how cool is that the universe is so Dynamic uh here another cool thing
is you know don't let your eyes fool you uh this star is in the foreground it's
not part of the cluster in the background just another little aside so
this is a mirror type variable star that uh goes between magnitude 7 and 14
somewhat irregular uh period but I happen to catch it at maximum and at
minimum so how lucky is that and it's why you got to keep going back and take
pictures of the same thing over and over different equipment different Skies different thoughts in your mind when
you're doing it different things going on in your life that you can relate to in your pictures this is a different
kind of star cluster this is Messier 13 it's a globular cluster and and unlike
this which is a few hundred Stars globular clusters are a few hundred,
stars um unlike open clusters which are in the spiral arms of our galaxy cular
clusters are in a halo around our galaxy um
and they look so densely packed because they're quite far away if you are
actually in the middle of the cluster you might see a lot of stars in the sky
um but they're they're not touching or anything like that when you look at uh
this object in the eyepiece there's a really really obvious feature in it and
if you look in a moderate Tes moderate large telescope say 10 or 12 in or
bigger there's a really obvious feature called the propeller and a lot of images
don't show it because the the core gets Overexposed but I'm wondering if you can see it in this image it's it's below
left of center there's the propeller right here it's just right here so
there's one vein pointing up and then two pointing
down uh um one of my favorite objects this was my mother-in-law's favorite object we used to look at this visually
together all the time another type of Stellar
Bond not all globulars are really really splashy some look more like open
clusters um this is NGC 5466 and even though it's sparse it's a globular that
contains almost 200,000 stars and it's crazy old some of these objects are
really really old this one is more than 11 and a half billion years
old wow which is interesting because it's
not that far away right it's only just in the Halo of
our galaxy but the cluster itself is very very
old so nebula you know they don't show the
gravity um but I wanted to include a couple of
nebula because they're so Dynamic so this is AEL
13 uh I didn't find many pictures of it I I wasn't the first one to take a
picture of it but I didn't find many pictures of it and certainly none that are this deep um I don't know if you can
see it clearly but uh next to this bright star there's a really faint star
in the center of the nebula that's the star that's Illuminating this
nebula and that was once a star kind of like the Sun but now it's a white dwarf and the
energy that it's giving off is causing the gas around it to Glow um one of the interesting things
about this particular planetary because I could have shown you all kinds of planetaries is this one really just
didn't have any oxygen in it that I could see most of them have red and teal
like a blue green color if you think about something like the dumbbell nebula
or the Ring Nebula they have both of those colors but this one doesn't just the hydrogen it's about
3,500 light years away and here's another one this this one is absolutely
C off the process uh it hasn't even been sent to your inbox yet Scott it's going to be uh it's going to
be coming out in the coming weeks this is the cats ey nebula and uh I did a quick process on
this the other day when I had about four hours of data but now I've had three
good nights since then and I now have 24 hours of data and I'm going to process it properly and send it to your inbox
Scott well wonder the star the star in the very center I don't know if you can
see that star at the very center yeah it's 10,000 times as luminous as the
sun and it's probably pretty young this this nebula probably formed less than
1260 years ago they say likely a th000 plus or minus
260 and here's one that has just oxygen there's no hydrogen so this is the other way around
now this is a really cool object I don't know if you've seen it before but it's it's the largest known sphere in the
universe and uh it's 2.8 light years across it's a nearly perfect sphere and
it's translucent you can see galaxies right through
it it's in the foreground at 3800 light years that Galaxy is hundreds of
millions of light years away
crazy Supernova remnants I wanted to includeed a supernova Remnant again
because it shows the dynamic nature of the universe and it shows
gravity um so the veil nebula formed from a star it's called a pro progenitor
star because it it was the star that gave birth for the to the Supernova Remnant and this progenitor star
exploded 10 or 20,000 years ago it's not known exactly when it's about 2400 light
years away but what you're seeing is the shock waves from that blast that are
compressing the gases that it released mainly sulfur hydrogen and oxygen the
sulfur and hydrogen is pink in this image and the oxygen is
that nice teal color that you see particularly uh to the right of
Center okay if we're going to talk about
gravity we have to talk about galaxies first of all most
Galaxies have billions of stars millions or billions some maybe more
stars and most of them have super massive black holes at the center maybe all of them I think there's
a a conversation going on about a couple that were found to not have super
massive black holes at the center whether that was an erroneous uh finding um so gravity lives here in
galaxies um this is M82 the cigar Galaxy not only does it show gravity but it
shows dynamism it's really a dynamic Galaxy it's called a starburst Galaxy
it's forming a lot of new stars and it's ejecting these Jets of a amazing
hydrogen gas uh most galaxies though
don't appear uh one at a time in the sky there's a lot of galaxies that are
interacting with each other in some way and uh this is the whirlpool galaxy is
the main galaxy in the center of this image to its right is the smaller NGC
5195 those two galaxies are interacting with each other they're about 23 and A5
million light years away but uh the other thing that's cool here is that in this image uh all the stars all the
individual stars that you see they're all in the foreground the whirlpool Galaxy is sort
of in the middle distance at 20 3 and a half million light
years far far in the background are all the other little
galaxies that you see isn't that crazy is crazy it's just
no I and yeah I've been doing this a long time and for me it never gets old
it never gets old so I said yeah galaxies often uh
have partners in the sky and uh these are sometimes known as the butterfly
galaxies uh it's NGC 4567 on the right and NGC 4568 on the left and uh it's a
pair of interacting galaxies 62 million light years away and that interaction
that Collision is happening in real time one day these will merge in a very long
time they'll merge to form a relatively featuress elliptical
galaxy so I said galaxies usually aren't on their own this galaxy the the uh the uh needle
Galaxy NGC 4565 is 53 million light years away but
it it has a a few satellite galaxies one of which you can see at the upper left
and another one is down here below it and although it's really hard to see in
this image because I I didn't focus on that region up here in the upper right
there's a little cluster of galaxies and we're going to talk about Galaxy
clusters right now so this uh is part of a galaxy
cluster called ARP 286 uh ARP cataloged these uh peculiar
Galaxy clusters and uh the brightest Galaxy that you see here the biggest
galaxy is NGC 5566 it's not just the biggest galaxy in
this image it's the biggest galaxy in Virgo so the biggest galaxy in the Virgo
cluster in terms of real size it has a diameter of
150,000 light years and it's 66 million Lighty years away and it's the
gravitational Center of this cluster and all of the other galaxies are held by it
again Stellar bonds and um this it's hard even for me
to find the label I put on here but it's over here this is AEL 779 another crazy Galaxy cluster it's
sent Ed on NGC 2832 that's the most massive Galaxy in this
cluster um and all of the yellow galaxies are uh part of the
cluster I should say all of the galaxies whose position is marked in yellow are
part of this cluster uh but if you see a number of labels that are in white those are
actually quazar and they're much much further away back to near the beginning uh back
to near the Big Bang just a few hundred, years or 500,000 years after the big
bang I have a couple of them circled here uh down in the lower right and the
bottom one here 12.2 billion light years away the one above it almost 10 billion
light years away so uh amazing and you know uh gravity Works across all scales
of space it's not uh gravity isn't just a thing that's in one place it's a field
that permeates the universe so uh I'm glad you let me show show you my little
my little tour and some of the things that have uh really inspired my interest
in in this sort of topic for a long time if you want to uh get in touch with
me for any reason my email is R breacher rogers.com and uh you can look for my
articles in sky and Telescope if you want lessons you can contact me privately or check out masters of piix
insight.com this is me on a very happy day with my c14 in the observatory
waiting for dark I I think you have many happy days Ryan I um you know what
uh one day one day we'll have to talk about the Gratitude Stone yeah oh yeah that's right but I I uh I try to wake up
I try to start every day being grateful and it uh it sets a good tone for the
day sure does that's right okay well Ron thanks so much man thank you thanks see
you next time okay next time all right uh our next speaker um
uh David is uh Caesar brolo uh Cesar is uh down
in Buenos Ares and uh here he is set up on his balcony um
and his talk is Stellar bonds From A Balcony yes yes absolutely uh I'll start
before my small presentation and trying to show more
object the first example of uh bonding between two stars that are
rotating reel Kus and I proceed to show
now reel Kus in the telescope with the camera now is a live
image first of all I show you
the the image in now in
sequence of um few seconds for example now we are using I'm using
sorry um uh little more than half second
6002 milliseconds and we can use him to show
more stars in every single every single
exposure let me show you how the the area of R Kus Kus
is but we are watching only one star
here and the idea is show that r k is a system of two
stars and I try to show you this changing the
field in only in this area and uh
putting low the gain of the
camera this is something so easy that you can make with a
telescope uh with a ipce and your phone of course that is something that you can
see of uh of uh by your IPS
and with your eyes but I'll show you with a camera how we can change this
first of all I change to the minimum
part of F
and I'll put well look this but this is a lot of
light because it's is a flowing the sensor the you know the the pixels but
the real thing if you put your eyes you can you can see this you can
discover two stars only [Music]
you can see yes this is a a real life image like a
video image yes you can see
that and we can see to the the wind the but this is for the people for the a the
cation that's happening yes absolutely uh because the star is between the
weldings and the current of of wind are strong it's not a a strong wind KN like
uh is my tradition but it's enough to make some turbulence local local
turbulence to to make this but something that um we uh appreciate is is this is a
image uh very near how we see that to the with our
eyes through through the the eyepiece in a telescope it's very
interesting um well I'll show you a small small H presentation
of about the another sense or
bonding um because the things that make Union between the people uh in Astron me
and now it's four years ago five years ago we had the in South America Chile
and Argentina we had the
eclipse I returning today this is interesting for the people
how we can make we can change exposure and make pictures
yes many many times when we present uh for kids or or H you know ER for
audience in live and we show we show H live
image the kids first of all start to understand the levels because we project
normally we project in a in a in a screen this kind of with the same kind
of uh image and controls um the the kids are the first
to say Can you can you put a kid that never that
never know about this software for astronomy but they are
so so smart uh that they um are uh totally concerned
and uh to say ah you can change the gain and
exposure maybe they are 11 years old but they understand so quickly how the
things Works about about exposures and and and uh the sensibility of the camera
and I love change and show them the the the effects of the single
exposures well um is a craziness despite that we know that that
the sensibility of the cameras that this kind of Stars full of star around
R we can uh take this this single image
from the city actually I have a Tarina or
another clusters very near to the whe to the
welding back from me and the problem is that I have some Reflections to to show a a a decent
image but um in the same time I show
you I show you uh I change the
screen share I'll show you asly
a small small presentation for the from the memories from the eclip in sanan the
same Eclipse that you you see you saw in in Chile
okay here we are can you see the okay
yeah well BS from balcony and now uh the
presentation is uh especially um the the our experience our remember
our memories uh from the clip in s
Juan was an an amazing uh an amazing
eclipse and really well I like to share so fast as possible the
some pictures and share memories about this with the audience uh
we had in a place that more than 3,000 people came in in the location of Bens
and Juan um we make a ob we in s our company
Sako we install uh observation Corner this is
in the morning when we start started to put the the things in the place and um
of course that we was not only us we the the place was full of shows um
people watching the the the clip um we put telescope because many many mostly
of the people don't have the telescope to to watch the clips of course the the amateur strumer they have but the common
people people they they went to the place to obser to obser the the clip um
we put a telescope to to bring the opportunity to have the to to
give the opportunity at um for watching
the the the the eclipse uh the clipse the
movement of uh from sence a telescope with a telescope
and the people came from from their cell phones and share the experience and say
oh I can believe or you know and um and well this
is part of of the the an a small Corner
comparing with the huge huge place fully full of uh music shows Rock
folklore and was an incredible day and be a small part of this was was very
very interesting and to our area the people came to to to uh watch uh the
clipset by solar filters of course and we make filters for the
TV channels uh media reports you know uh volunteers
like my friends of B Cosmos is they help me to make filter for the people that
for the cameras and this is this is the
the the explor scientific feels like 90 in
action um we put a lot of this telescope for for for using for the
people um was a a really really helping for the people the people uh was happy
and kids of course to to see the uh the
Sun and part of the of the first part of the clip know the totality of course and
really was an amazing an amazing uh experience that really we uh we
was amazing to share never know we had a so big experience and for me was was an
amazing uh totally incredible uh
experience yeah it's a lot over the BEC
friends yeah yes and I have a video um I I in the video some people
can can think that ER maybe I I say some
explicit explicit words but of course that that
maybe I can translate oh what's marvelous thing or you know but
um where um every time that I found the video
that I took of of the clip print the the idea of how
I feel and it's it's incredible thing it's
incredible this is the first part and for me was like a roller
coaster yeah
but there it is
yes well and this is H this is my my part of of the the
bonding the ne bonding for astronomy uh and it's nice to to
remember uh five years ago that we is still
my first and most incredible thing that I seen I saw in my life is was I don't
know why because I saw I I went I I I saw the the clips another Clips TOS in
vetta and another part of Argentina but this one maybe was the first or maybe
was you know with the the Corda something mix like a hole in a a hole in
in the sky over the Corda something that I I I
thought in when the Asian people watch this kind of
of of phena um without any information
without any idea of and this is something like
this very cool all right okay so so um
Cesar thank you so much uh for coming on and uh sharing with us and I think it's
cool for each of us to kind of reflect a little bit on the special friendships and uh bonding that we have as uh in our
you know worldwide um fraternity of uh of
astronomers that stretch all the way back to when people first looked up at the sky you know so it's it's something
that uh all of us um uh can connect to so thank you so much Caesar thank you
was a pleasure thank you Scot for inviting me um if I have another another
object between like a separator between the speakers I I I advise you but thank
you very much all right sorry your your lecture just now reminded me of two
aspects of our Stellar bonds and one of them is the hemispheres where the Northern
Hemisphere and the southern hemisphere offers such vastly different views of
the night sky it's incredible it's almost impossible to
appreciate uh but it's there and we love it and my visits down to the southern
hemisphere over the years have been so special and I just treasured them the
ones that I was there uh before Wendy and I were married and
the times that Wendy and I were in the southern hemisphere absolutely
Unforgettable and um and the the other thing is the friendships that have come
out of these many visits to the Southern Hemisphere and they were actually introduced to me before I made my first
trip by Dr Bart Bach and I know we've had movies about bart in earlier
Global star parties but it was his views of the Southern Hemisphere inspired me
to want to go down and look at them and boy I have to tell you it was the most
wonderful experience to be able to go down there the other side of our planet
and really see what the night sky has to do it's one thing that I think about the
night sky while we're on that subject and that is that the that uh you know in
the daytime we have you know debates and arguments and fights and everything but
after the sun goes down and the stars come out and we look up is just
absolutely does so much to bring us together earlier this afternoon I had
the honor of watch of listening to a national public radio broadcast
of the night sky up at Yellowstone National Park and they were talking it was mostly about light pollution and the
possible end of night there but but it's wonderful what they're do what the park
service is doing to preserve the night sky and I hope they really really hope
and pray that they continue to do that Cesar thank you so much for your
presentation thank you David for your words really it's a honor for me share
with you and Scot and the the all participants that are really really uh
make an beautiful Global surar every every time
that that it's a pleasure for me participate and thank you by by your
works thank you great well right now we have people watching from the
Philippines from Belgium from South America of course from North
America um it's a uh we have a global audience and um it's uh I I get these U
moments where I think about you know so many people are able just to tune in
largely for free I mean as long you have a a computer or a phone or something
like that and can tap tap into the internet and you have an interest you know it's always interesting to have
um uh our Global audience watching and uh making the global Star Party what it
is so thank you thanks for participating again Cesar take
care okay all right so our next speaker
uh uh doid is um Adrien Bradley Adrien is one of your favorite nightscape
photographers um I love his work too I mean he is uh I he is a talented uh uh
landscape photographer he has uh really embraced uh the night sky through uh you
know his beautiful images of the Milky Way and um you know not afraid to mix in
clouds and all kinds of other aspects of what the night sky looks like um but uh
Adrian thanks for coming on uh your topic has to do with humility and and I
find uh I find that um uh is an aspect of astronomy that all of us go through
um I I think that once you start to understand you know you look up at the
Milky Way and you have this feel this sacred feeling that you're in this
amazing you know Temple of of uh you know of stars and uh it touches I think
everybody's Hearts when they um really uh experience this and I think that that
is one of the uh tipping points for me to understand that someone is is really
becoming an astronomer so and and you will be you do experience this humility
because you start to understand your uh tiny uh place that you occupy in this
universe so yeah absolutely and it's uh it's something I grapple with all the
time because I'm a part of forums online you know we have social media and um you
know the Stellar bonds um theme made me think you know
there's rather than focus on you know each
imager phographer astronomer and their pursuit of either their pursuit of
perfection or their purs suit of I've got the best image or I'm an expert at
this or things like that I tend to look at it and say we all play a role and so
um perfect timing I just uh put the finishing touches on the presentation
that I will share with everyone um and let's go for it let's see if this
works everyone sees my screen okay yes okay good all right so I will go
ahead and start into presentation mode yeah I'm gonna start from beginning here
okay and let's see if it works there we go Jason dark sky Stellar
bonds so D you will always recognize this as you can see I uh the
pictures that seem to grab people the most when I show them are the pictures
of me looking up at the night sky and basically this is my version of a selfie
I I don't turn and look at the camera I'm trying to demonstrate what it is I
think we all ought to do and that which draws us together um looking up at the
wonders of the night sky um it's you know the night sky is here and I'll say
it again it's some point without the night sky what would we see um so I'm
always I always try to be careful and exercise this humility as the detail that I'm looking
for in Milky Way Photography begins to come out a little
more even in places like this with these bright cones um light
pollution it's it's always a goal to remember you know there's a purpose for
some of these and you know the purpose doesn't have to be to tell everybody how
good I am at things the purpose can be to share with others this love of the night sky that I have and so we'll go
through the presentation some of the images have been taken very recently some will be brought from the past um
couple years of Imaging um this one's a fairly new one and we're talking about this varied community of in um imagers
so there's many people who are drawn to doing Milky Way ncape
Photography um this night's sky is what draws us and um there's
different ele you know there are different folks who come out with cameras or telescopes and and in this
case we'll be talking more about the cameras and want to capture the night sky want to want to make beautiful
images so there's there's often different motivations here as a
photographer you know you you've noticed how beautiful the night sky is and you want to take part in this you know and
taking these beautiful Vistas you've got resources and you know how to use your
camera so you may all just looking up at YouTube or any other um presentation it
may not take you long before you're already getting some pretty good images
and you're using rules of composition like leading lines and and things like
things that you've done in your daytime photography um rules of thirds and
things like that um I'll be discussing some of the cons I think when you come
into this realm and you bring in some of the photography um I'll say rules and
regulations um and again some things that I may struggle with you happen to
live near dark sites you may take it for granted that you're always going to get an image that looks like that you know
that has detail um in the Milky Way and um
sometimes that may not happen as well you've got those who are nightscape
enthusiasts and then keep in mind I went I am still going through all these phases it it doesn't
you know you you ascend to one phase but you drop back into any of these I go
into a photography phase I go into the nightscape Enthusiast phase where I'm
taking pictures of the night sky and um you know I've done it for a long
time and you know the Milky Way photographer
who ends up being a content creator shares his um technique shares
the tips that he's learned or she has learn learned over the years if they've
had good images and if a nightscape Enthusiast has won a competition with
their images they will be glad to share with anyone who's with an earshot how to
do a quote unquote proper Milky Way photo and yes I went through that phase as
well because even if my I had one photo win a competition and I had a couple of
other photos that came very close and for me that was that was still pretty good to beat out a lot of
people um according to whomever the judges were and then you know the
amateur astronomer side if you notice I'm take the image that I put
here is not the image of the core it's another part of the night sky and you
when I go to the amateur astronomer side I tend to
overemphasize things like the coat hanger here and other parts of the
nights guy that I might know I might know that this is Alter and that this is
tared the star and that this little region which I won't be able to zoom
because I'm in presentation is Barnard's e and I start going up and down and
naming different um constellations delen is here I start doing that I start going
seder region I start demonstrating knowledge of the night sky but to someone who's
just getting into Milky Way Photography I don't know if that is
helpful or not so helpful now I call this dark nebula Plankton it's got
official name and number but to me it looks like Plankton from SpongeBob and to me sometimes making
that connection brings more people in than to get into the nuts and bolts of
what we're seeing here and so there is a common theme Here we have the galactic core and
in a lot of nightscape Photography it's this Galactic core that
is a part of any and every nightscape that gets done whether it's done with my
modified camera as you can see the ha regions carrying this bright pink or
it's done with a regular camera um and but by regular DSLR mirrorless that
comes stock has not been modified for allowing hydrogen Alpha emissions
um the amateur astronomer knows about the hydrogen Alpha emissions the
photographer may call it an infrared mod um it's very similar thing it's
wavelengths of light we can't see naturally but the camera can see them so
for instance this cat's paw and The Lobster Claw here show up when you use
such a camera you may not see them so much if you're using
a stock camera and it's as an Enthusiast of Milky Way
Photography it's something I look for in my own images and sometimes I'll see if
I can see it in other images as well as M22 M23 m17
M16 um so I'm getting a note that my internet connection is unstable hopefully I'm still on here so let's
move to my next slide and let's talk about some of the issues that I fight as
a photographer and that I seem to see within others
and it's the worrying about the minutia of an image this I use this background
image as a as an example because here there's a whole lot going on you got the
cord of Milky Way but in the same view there is a giant cloud with
with lightning bolts all over and you've got my two companions were looking at
this just watching all of the lightning going this giant storm I was enthralled by the fact that
you could see the Milky Way at the same time you could see this storm and um I
took the picture of the whole thing classic photography would want to pick
maybe crop it right here and just say this is enough but I like the whole
thing and that to me is what the story is so there can be some differences when
it comes to what to photograph do we photograph for ourselves and say I just want to capture
what I see here and that's good enough for me or do I want to make a picture
that it will be liked you know that I think people will think is beautiful and
the answer to that was look to the night sky for an answer if
this is what I want to capture this is what I'll capture and let the people look at it and decide for themselves you
is it a nice picture um and what's that theme Scott
stay humble and just say here's I'm simply trying to capture something I
think is beautiful and amazing and I don't see happening often especially when I'm back home
so it's uh it's something that interests me so I take the photo and sometimes we don't worry so
much about the elements we worry about whether we get the photo and so then you've got when I'm in
when I do take an image that has the look of there's a great foreground here
you got a lighthouse you've got a beautiful reasonably detailed Milky
Way and I post this picture it ends up in a calendar that's great but can I
also use my images for more than just myself I can tell people where this is I
can say it's dark there you can see the structure you may not see all of this color you can see some of this detail
here because this is a fairly dark area it's along a beach the water's behind me
and if you like doing Imaging it's a great place for you to go share some of
the uh techniques I use to take this it's a composite image um Milky Way They
there was a a single shot for the lighthouse and then there was a tracking
shot for the Milky Way talk about what's in the Milky Way M
M22 the small Sagittarius star Cloud there's the butterfly and there's tmes
cluster the things that are visible because the sight's so dark so your image expands more Beyond I took a great
image you talk about what's there what you like about it and as an extension of that you're
saying what makes the night sky so great and why it compare with light
lighthouses um trees beaches anything you pair the night sky with to me
instantly makes that image beautiful and one last thing is is if there's someone
who was born in December and is a Sagittarius you point out the stars of
Sagittarius and it's it's whether you love astrology or not there's a
connection you make by pointing out those stars and here they are and
there's M22 again so use these images so
now the Learned amateur astronomer there's absolutely I'm not sure if these are stars or hot pixels they might
actually be stars but there's obviously nothing else to see so the Learned
amateur astronomer goes home but there still might be something to capture pull out your camera and see
what you can do some of the same techniques um were used to capture the lightning in
this shot and um I put this down here as
my humble way to remind myself night sky belongs to everyone without without the night sky what would we image well on
this night this is what I imaged the night sky is not there no Milky Way Photography so either you're done or you
make do the best of what you've got and then another note of humility our images
don't have to be in competition I really feel strongly about it I've been online
and seen some amazing this is my my first Milky Way shot uh it's a single
image and I just need some tips and tricks to get better well this was my
first Milky Way shot that I was proud of compared to some of the things you've
seen me do you know the best thing I can tell you is well I'm using the similar
composition more stars and less star drag this was a 49 Second image and I
had no idea how long I needed to have the image run I had a can
30d and an 18 by 18 to 55 mimer f3.5 kit
lens for those that remember that Canon kit lens but they're
Sagittarius and if I look at this image close enough there's M22 we actually did get we've got data
here M8 even a bit of M20 but would not
have known that didn't get him four didn't look like that showed up did not
know that was just shooting in that part of the sky and said let's see what we get we got a little bit of um B's window
here in this part of um Galaxy and the Crazy Horse so Valiant first
attempt but uh you never get discouraged if you truly do love the night sky
itself and you are interested in that sort of hobby and then we're all a part of this
universe we take pictures of so compos competition only do it this way only do
it that way it's something that I work to not have in my vocabulary when I talk
about my night sky images I talk about what I'm shooting what I love to see and
these samples here are of places that are not the core in dark guys and in
other locations the uh other parts of the Milky Way can be just as fascinating to
image against the ground when they present themselves so night sky
photography does not stop at the galactic core and all of these are examples of
night sky photography and some have Milky Way in them there's another storm image with
the Milky Way Emer ing there's clouds and the Milky Way shining through that
then you've just got you've actually got Stars here you may not see it on your screen there's stars above this giant
Thunderhead the thunderheads this was the first big one and then I started catching other thunderheads and catching
lightning bolts coming out of them so it's a bit of a Fascination and as you can see I also get out there when it's
cold and that doesn't stop me from going at a Ryan whether it's rising here or
setting and there we've got a late frozen lake here um and the moon there
might be a lunar eclipse going on I do have solar eclipse pictures I did not
throw one up here but we'll we'll keep the focus on the night and very nice
lunar yeah you've got the lunar eclipse you got Uranus right here um
unfortunately didn't catch the color of it but it's right there and then you've got the lunar eclipse this is what the
night sky looks like during a lunar eclipse in uh
pre-dawn as um you know there's there's maybe two hours left before or an hour
before astronomical Twilight when I took this photo and so I believe and there no
excuses so we don't just image when it's convenient we don't just image when it's
the core we image and we see what we can get
during all seasons and of course the southern hemisphere sees a lot more of
the um Milky Way they can see the entire bulge from north to south up to a point
to the north to the South you've got ad carne you've got um the uh where the
southern crosses and you've got where the melenic clouds are which is below
Orion if you if you look at any part of the Milky Way where Orion the Orion spur
is the Orion spur disappears below the northern Horizon you would have to go
further down um below look below Horizon with your X-ray vision to see how far
south the melenic clouds are um so that's something that's on my uh let's
see I think that's it yep that on my list to uh experience just like you did
deid um I will stop the share there that's uh in a nutshell my experience
and growing appreciation for not only what I've learned over you
know the years of doing some doing this Imaging but learn from others and rather
than be in competition or you know not like certain
critiques but understanding where those critiques are coming from people come from all different walks of Photography
bring their um you know kind of bring their rules and ethics so to speak into
it and the night sky draws us all in and it's it's up to it's up to us to talk
about the similarities and that's right and not so much the differences so
that's that is my presentation thank you Scott as usual for having me thank you
Cesar Robert these Moon pictures you're about to show us are going to be awesome
that's why I only showed one picture oh I didn't want to take Spotlight from you
um you regardless of what I shoot you take fantastic images and you tell us
about him which I value and um I think Lori and Ron are Ron's out there in his
Observatory Lori you may be um out there kind of lurking but uh always good to
see you and I'll see you at Alcon okay all right I wanted to I just want to say as
you and most of our regular listeners know when I look at your pictures I
always think of Mozart and I think of the Beauty and the joy that he brought to the world is seconded by the beauty
and joy you're bringing to the world through your magnificent photographs but in this particular presentation I just
heard the particular part of Mozart was the 29th C Symphony because it starts
with this very fast D and then gets into a slow second
movement and then the third and fourth movements get fast again and it kind of
shows like the E and flow of the night sky just as you presented
really nice going Adrian good work thank you thank you de that's uh yeah I've
gone back to trying to do these presentations because uh I think there's more to share and you know more that I
learn after putting the presentation together so uh very interesting observation I have a slideshow and I put
in Klein night music to that slideshow I will show you when I see you in Kansas
City how it turned out I'll be seeing you soon there Adrian
looking forward to it all right Scott all right thank you
so much all right so David we're going to wrap up the 152nd Global star party
with uh uh with Robert Reeves Robert is just coming back from covo um and uh he
wanted to touch on uh kind of the connections that he made with people
half a world away and uh um Robert thank you for hanging in there with us uh and
and presenting uh on the 152nd Global Star Party well always my pleasure to be
here and uh um Adrien I'm always stunned by your presentations uh you the the the
human connection you make with your photographs uh put my moon pictures a shame and I I really do appreciate your
kind comments about my shots but uh uh you've got something there that um that
is is is special for for the um regular person uh I go after the scientists you
go after the human heart and you do a good job of it uh unfortunately no Moon pictures today like uh like Scott said I
uh returned recently from Kosovo and um while I was over there an amazing
collection of people from all around the world gathered to to celebrate the opening of the uh kovo National
Planetarium and Observatory and um we did not let let the clock stop us in the
evening so uh we got by at about three hours of sleep at night kind of like we
do at the Texas Star Party and I have not yet recovered I mean I'm I'll have to admit I'm 77 years old and these
allnighters for a for a week have definitely caught up with me so um um
I'm apologize in advance for uh forgetting names that I know I'm going to forget but uh let me go to screen
share and uh do the great experiment and uh see if I can get things to work and
um hopefully we are now seeing a picture of a very young pra henic um she has
hosted this U Global star party before uh if you don't know who BR Vera Heen is
uh you uh have not been keeping up with the astronomy world uh this young lady
popped up on the scene when she was in high school and um made a name for herself creating AOK the astronomy
Outreach of Kosovo um her and her AOK team um work
this thing into the largest astronomy Outreach organization in Eastern Europe pran ver caught my attention early and I
deliberately waited until she was 21 to invite her to the United States and speak to the Texas Star Party and uh um
she parlayed that crack in the door that I gave her into a return trip where she
made connections with the University of California where she uh did her uh master's degree in planetary U Sciences
and uh now she is um if I advance to the next
slide hello next slide please yeah whoops too many slides
and now she is um in her PhD program at the University of California in Santa Cruz but she has never lost her love and
her affection for her home country uh AOK uh the people of kovo and uh I was
just stunned when I was invited to go to kovo to install the sron 14 uh in this
Observatory commission it get it running and be part of the Grand Opening Ceremonies uh for this institution and
um um I I went over to do a specific task uh install this telescope and uh and get it
running but instead I received an education that I did not expect uh the people of kovo are the
friendliest smartest sharpest people I've ever seen um they love Americans
and I will talk more about that toward the end of this program but uh the main thing was uh to get this U Observatory
going and um this what it looks like out in a literally in the middle of a corn field uh near the V the town of Ste or
steam however you pronounce it in covo cost the cenan government about a half a
million dollars to put it together and it's h got a 9 meter Dome planetarium
dome in it it's got a 6meter Observatory Dome we put the Celestron 14 in it got
it working uh it's got a lecture hall in it it's got a a museum display area in it they've done a really nice job of
this and uh we'll take a look at uh this as we go along uh the sign on the side
of it literally W up behind my back when I arrived it had no sign on it I blinked my eye and they had installed it um both
in Albanian and English national Observatory and planetarium of
covo uh a view of it at night it's surrounded by red lights on the exterior
of course and uh this is what it looked like we arrived up on a Monday and this
is what the place looked like a bare blank empty room yes the facility was
complete but it was not decked out with with anything so pran is sitting in
front of this massive bunch of boxes from skywatcher and Celestron we uh provided her with a Celestron we I say
because I work for Celestron Uh Kevin um Kawai and I went over to assist on this
uh Ben Hal um Vice President of Sales with ceston um was there as well and um
in the course of 48 hours we went from a blank room to a fully functional um um
Observatory and U and a planetarium so let's scoot through some more pictures
one thing I want to point out like I said kovo is very friendly a unique country I've never seen any place like
it um when you go out to eat the um destination is going to be a gas station
and uh here in the United States you think of gas station food is a a weak old burrito that's been underneath a a
hot lamp too long but in covo this is a Shell station not far from where the observatory was it had a fully stocked
bar it had a chef that cooked for the
the people who came there to eat and as I go through uh the series of slides around the table you will see that the
our meals are very competitive with a very good uh uh restaurant here in the
United States so uh one of my first introductions to uh the amazing culture
there um of course uh other people that came over as well uh pran Vera hen's uh
PhD adviser um to my U to my right um Dr mirian Tellis from the University of
California U on my uh to the left of me um Dr uh Raja than thanura the head of
the ason Department University of California at the um um um they in the
like I said names are going to be Vanishing with me I'm still jetlagged at Santa Cruz and of course in the foreground everybody knows uh Steve
Ramson of the Charlie Bates solar astronomy uh project he was been a longtime supporter of
pranvera uh here we all are in the streets of kovo as we're going to visit some of the dignitaries there and uh uh
many many group pictures around dinner tables as we're we're having dinner with
uh our uh new friends from the uh uh Board of the astronomy Outreach of kovo
uh the fellow right Square in the middle uh in the white T-shirt um that's uh um
Oran um he's a electrical engineer and he turns out to be the chief engineer of
the uh uh Observatory the guy is amazing um he could do anything
and here uh um U buhar meedi and P Vera
placing the cgx l u u telescope mount on top of the uh star Zona perer adapter
that uh I just installed we had to drill into the concrete and uh sink anchor
bolts and put that adapter on it and then the c14 was mounted on top of that
and um here bhar is showing off her handiwork c14
installed and uh like I said Celestron donated this to um the astronomy
Outreach of Kosovo specifically for this Observatory uh a good many years ago and
it's taken pranvera and AOK u a good number of years to finally get the cost
of our government to finance and build this facility it's at starts and stops
with governmental changes and so forth and like any U bureaucracy here in
United States uh AOK fa the same issues in Kosovo but it's finally complete it's
installed it works everybody's happy and yet another view and here are
the uh the team that uh was working on uh uh preparing the observatory
celebrating uh getting the thing in action and uh a lot of the uh AOK
members uh many of them are are young girls the an amazing number of very young girls
uh I'll point out the uh lady in purple U second from the right uh she just
graduated from high school this young lady is studying particle physics her dream is to build a cubat to study uh
neutrinos in space and uh if she has half the drive that the rest of the AOK
team does she will get it done and uh me uh standing by the reason
why I was invited to co up to kovo and uh we got this thing working and
pranvera seeing first light through the telescope that she sh The Observatory that she shephered along over all these
many years and she took a quick cell phone snap of of the Moon through it and
uh turned out reasonably good for a handheld picture just holding the phone straight up to the eyepiece and um pan giving her opinion
of the uh newly installed telescope uh next went up some wall
display in the observatory itself and uh um like
I said Oran chief engineer U that guy shimmed up that Dome like I mean he he
he craw but we call him the master Dome crawler he's Fearless he shimmed up that thing and a heartbeat to take care of a
minor electrical problem and uh here we are the c14 about
to do first light the moon shining through the uh Observatory slot way too
many pictur of the telescope and uh I finally met pran's father um medy heni
and uh unfortunately her mother died of covid during the pandemic and uh the
young lady to pranvera left is her new
stepmother uh the day of the grand opening we uh were invited Steve Ramson
and I were invited to appear on a half hour long morning talk show on U cenan
television on K in Pristina and that was that was an awful lot of fun uh uh
fortunately the uh the questions were were kind of softball so uh uh the translation from English to Albanian was
fairly easy and uh here are some of the team that uh was producing the show the young
lady in brown right in the middle is the host um she spoke really good English
asked the questions in English and then uh bohar the uh lady the the
guy to the left of the the host he did the Albanian translation for
us another uh activity we did not expect the day of the U grand opening actually
uh around lunchtime that day the grand opening was later in the day about 4:00 uh we're invited to the cenan Parliament
and uh the the entire American delegation and the AOK uh board were
invited to meet with uh um oh I hope I can pronounce his name uh Glau kukka the
uh uh president of the kavanian parliament he's the fellow on the extreme uh left U seated with the jacket
on and he is basically number three in covo a position equal to uh the American
speaker of the house and uh of course a group picture of all of us uh um
uh the young lady in a white and black spotted dress immediately to my right um
um Diana from uh sky and Telescope she was there covering the uh the event for
sky and telescope and I was there doing double duty also representing astronomy
magazine uh My article about it will appear after the holiday July 4th holiday uh Diana's um article has
already appeared online on the sky and Telescope website
uh a facet of the covo Parliament building that really caught me by
surprise the hallways in this building in the uh cenan parliament are painted
black to remind the legislators of the horrors of the Kosovo War U the Bosnian
War uh where so many thousands of kosovars were um uh exterminated by the
Serbian genocide uh there's the last were known words of many people who
disappeared are written on the walls in white and hanging from the ceiling or
over 1,000 Keys each representing a person who is still missing after the
Serb genocide so a very sobering place to be uh a very graphic uh example of
the horror that this this country went through uh just a generation
ago uh one thing I did not realize Mother Teresa the uh the the uh nun who
was so well known for work in India was born in the uh in the region that is now
kovo and she is extremely revered in in kovo um big giant portrait of her in
this in the cenan Parliament building now the day of the uh of the U
grand opening happened about 4:00 in the afternoon not a cloud of the sky some of
the hottest temperatures that kovo has ever had yet uh almost 200 people
gathered out there for this grand opening and um uh Steve Ramson on the
left uh Kevin Kawai and I from U Celestron uh among the people there um
two policemen showed up and said uhoh what's going on oh no here they are they took a seat and they just wanted to see
the show uh they were curious about uh the new Observatory as everybody else so
uh they came by and joined the crowd and enjoyed the festivities um the uh be program began
with the playing of the Albanian and the kovanian national anthems followed by
the American national anthem and uh of course the Americans stood up hand over heart and uh it was a very moving
experience to to have all of these national anthems playing uh at the same time I mentioned it was hot here we are
97° at 3:00 feels like 10:5 for me it didn't
feel that much different than being here in Texas but boy you was sure beating down everybody else it was it was a very
warm day but didn't slow down pranvera she was in Full full more U uh she was
she was on the money she pulled off this this grand opening uh uh and she was
going in Grand style now Steve Ramson like I said the U head of the Charlie
bat solar astronomy project longtime supporter of uh of the astronomy Outreach of Kosovo U he's been helping
them out with equipment and uh support for many years and uh he presented AOK
with 1,000 Euros to help maintain and run the observatory it's been a longtime
um situation with uh Planetarium and observatories where some donor will
donate the money to build the place but then the people that inherit it discovered that the actual operation of
it actually costs more and they wish that uh they had built it and the donors
would uh support it uh but uh here Steve uh gave them a hit start ,000 EUR will
go a long way in Kosovo prices are extremely reasonable
uh the Grand Opening Ceremonies included ribbon cutting here we see a the um
baldheaded fellow in the middle is the mayor of uh the lady in the brown Stripes is
the conanan Ministry of Education then U Steve Ramson pan Vera and then
representing Celestron U Uh Kevin Kawai uh cut the ribbon and then in we went
now notice the balloons those balloons were put up the previous night and then
during the day it started getting hot and those balloons swelled up and did
what balloons do in hot weather and it is shocking how loud they were when they burst I equate the uh their popping to
the same as a 38 caliber snub nose at the at the pistol range it was quite
scary when they when they started exploding inside uh the Ministry of
Education being shown the U yeah the the Museum's meteorite collection by by
pranvera herself showing off a rather um marvelous example of a thin sliced
palite
oops and the entrance to the Planetarium uh um the inside of the planetarium look
like a planetarium rows of seats nothing terribly uh uh inspiring about the picture of it so uh I we just say that
uh there is the facility and uh it really works well the interior of the museum uh people Milling about enjoying
themselves trying to get out of the Heat and uh on one wall the u u u Board of
AOK the people who made this happen the people who did the hard work uh worked
with the government got this place built the people who are running it today and uh some of the uh many uh
displays and wall murals that went up literally overnight uh both in ALB
alanian and in English and uh the Celestron Observatory the stairs goes up
the stairs to the observatory which uh I'm skipping slides um oh this is just uh major
donors that helped put the place together and then upstairs the uh
displays around the uh uh the walls of the observatory Dome itself and uh explaining various things
in both Albanian and English uh stairs going up very nice portraits of uh very celestial objects
um the U lady in the wheelchair in in attendance uh Zera metage one of the uh
local well-known poets was there and uh uh she gave me one of her books of
poetry uh echo of the Albanian Soul was in English and I'm enjoying it very much
um pran Vera descending the stairs from the observatory in stiletto Hills I'll give her High marks for pulling that off
uh I could barely do it in regular shoes I mentioned that
uh uh many of the uh astronomy Outreach of Kosovo uh members are young girls uh
a very high percentage of the U people interested in astronomy in Kosovo are
are young ladies and uh uh they are movie star beautiful let me tell you these these are some remarkable
people sharp as a whip uh these people are going
places Steve Ramson setting up the 150 mm solar telescope up on the observing
deck uh outside of the main Observatory uh this now uh gives the Koso planetary
and Observatory the largest solar telescope in Eastern Europe
and brand ver are showing off the 14inch to the uh minister of Education um I'm
not even going to try to pronounce her name and uh solar observing up on the
deck uh the minister of Education taking a look at the Sun and getting a a feel
for what AOK is trying to accomplish in their country um BR ver and her uh uh PhD
adviser by the telescope on the extreme left uh Ben h um uh vice president of ceston uh Diana
honey and again with scan telescope and I forget the gentleman's name on the
right I am sorry and Kevin and I up on the observing deck enjoying the Texas like
heat and another shot of bran Vera with her U with
mirian um tell us her her PhD adviser and in deference to the heat PR Vera has
shed her high heel shoes and as the moon Rose we continue
the enjoy of the evening and uh like I said it was it was rather remarkable a huge number of people there very excited
about the facility uh nighttime fell uh everybody enjoyed themselves very much
uh the next day we were asked to uh attend an audience with the mayor of
steam uh again a name that is impossible for me to pronounce but uh he's the gentleman in blue at the right at the
end of the right hand side of the table uh the entire American contingent and u
u the board members of AOK in attendance uh me and Kevin and James Winer a
longtime uh friend of PR and uh Celestron getting a a word of
recognition from the city of Ste for our uh help with putting the observatory
together and of course bran also being recognized for the amazing work that she did in getting this facility built and
operational and the mayor uh doing the crossed hands cross hooked thumbs um
spread fingers uh symbol of uh the Albanian flag the Double Eagle uh that
is on Steven's t-shirt uh it's a very proper popular symbol over
there and of course outside grew picture of everybody with a mayor uh that afternoon uh the day after
grand opening we began a series of uh lectures at the uh uh planetarium uh uh
uh lecture hall uh I let off with a lecture about the moon others uh
astrophysics uh space observatories uh analysis and meteorites
uh a very varied but very in-depth program and uh the final day we were
there we got to look around covo a little bit and one thing that we we had to do is visit the u u family compound
of Adam jashar the national hero of uh
kovo he was the leader of the kovanian Liberation Army uh fighting against the
serbs when the serbs were trying to were doing the genocide in in
kovo um I won't uh show you the shocking details of what happened to them but the
house behind this this this sign you see it's covered by a structure and it's got
a scaffold around it that is to protect it and keep it from collapsing because you see there's holes in the wall uh
that's just a minor part of the bombardment that this house suffered at
the hands of the ser RPG rounds machine gun fire artillery
rounds uh this is the home of Adam jashari and his extended family 57 men
women and young children everybody was slaughtered by the serbs and uh this is
a national monument in uh in in kovo Adam jari is is revered as uh um the
leader of the resistance against the serbs and uh um he and his entire family
were were uh obliterated in this attack so um across the street from from where
this happened is now a National Memorial this is Adam Jar's tomb and uh I was
able to walk up to it and lay my hand on it and I had the same feeling that I did back during the uh annular solar eclipse
here in San Antonio when so many of my friends came here for the eclipse and we all went down to San Fernando Cathedral
and I was able to lay my hands on the tomb of Dave Crockett the hero of the Alamo and the the parallels between the
Alamo in Texas and the fight at the jashari family compound are extremely um
uh I mean there's a a high parallel there and it just struck a chord with me
as a as a Texan as an American and to see what this meant to the cenan people
um all 59 members of his family each are now enshrined in a white marble Tomb at
this monument and uh those of us who went
over to visit the monument I have not mentioned uh Terry Wright the gentleman on the extreme right uh he also came
over for the uh um Grand Opening and he is an actual Apollo 13 flight controller
who got Apollo 13 back to Earth back when uh uh Jim Lovel and his crew had
that disaster on the way to the Moon wrong
way uh I mentioned the love that kovo has for Americans that stems directly
from the American intervention in the Balan War back in the the late 1990s the
UN stood on their hands while mvic murdered over a thousand covars shot
them down in Cold Blood Bill Clinton said enough is enough we're going in we're stopping this uh Clinton's
intervention saved Kosovo and they are still grateful to this day um go to the
next slide here yeah there's a picture statue of Bill Clinton in downtown
Pristina uh the main drag is named Bill Clinton Avenue there's another uh street
named after mine Albright this our secretary of state at the time another one after Senator Bob Dole all in thanks
of America saving kovo from the genocide and uh this history is just you know I
was aware of it but when I was at the jar Memorial I ran into a a family there and
uh they recognized me as American from my speech and one fellow um he he had
been in the war he had been shot by the serbs in the face and his face was so disfigured that his mouth was literally
off set on the left side of his face this guy went through hell but when he
heard I was an American Military veteran he stood up put his hand over his heart
he bowed to me and he was sobbing when he thanked me as an American for saving
his country I had nothing to do with that war my war was 30 years earlier in Vietnam but they so Revere Americans
over there that he had to thank me and it really really touched me so uh in the uh city of rushi uh the
pran's hometown there is a memorial 250 citizens were shot down by Serb soldiers
one of them was pran's grandfather shot in the head by a Serb so uh it the history over there is
is so gut-wrenching yet this country uh it's a beautiful country it's physically
recovering it's a a very vibrant country uh Pristina is a growing city uh I
looked around I could count 20 construction cranes building new buildings um it's a very vibrant and
growing society and uh they are healing from the War uh the covir say uh we
forgive but we never forget so U um as a
generation removed from the War uh these are extremely bright talented motivated
people and uh we're going to hear more from these folks um final day we were there we invited to a big dinner at uh
pran's father's uh home um about a on about a half hour drive from bristina um
um big roast lamp dinner for everybody and uh uh good send off for us all U the
entire medy family and uh the American contingent all uh together there for uh
one last goodbye now my final picture I mentioned the covars rever Americans
everywhere you go whenever you see a cenan flag you're going to find an American flag next to it I have never
seen such an outpouring of love for America as I did in covo I've never seen
such a motivated talented bunch of young people willing to build their new
country to learn and to uh um grow with their country and and be part of the
world and it was just uh like I said I went over there to do a task install a
telescope but I got an education that I will never forget these are amazing people and U um like I said you're we
haven't heard the last of them yet so thank you for letting me share all of this Robert there I have two thoughts on
your uh lecture that I just heard the first one is that uh you're you're delving
into the political problems that this country had brought me back to about the
same time when this terrible terrible uh
thing was going on was the same time that out out of
Jupiter a comet was colliding with Jupiter almost at the same moment that
all this was going on in Kosovo I remember both events very well the the
other the other thing is that it's your presentation showed me better than
anything else I've heard better than the debate last week better than certainly better than the
debate last week better than almost everything how lucky we have it here in
the United States yes this is the United States is a wonderful country why can't
its citizens remember that and I hope they'll celebrate it on Thursday anyway Robert it was wonderful
it was emotional it was moving you talked about the night sky you talked
about the the history of that country country that I myself would like to visit perhaps someday and um
congratulations good work thank you very
much it's it's also a the whole thing's encapsulated with uh pra's dream of
looking up at the stars and and uh wish to uh Embrace
um uh the whole U aspect of
educating uh the Youth of coso to to uplift them out of this out of the
horror and the and the The Strife that they experienced you know it's I think it's a uh a wonderful story of healing
and uh yeah of course the to hear you speak of the aspects of how love the
United States is there uh is is certainly um uh you know important uh an
important aspect because people do take if they've never been out of the United States they don't know okay they don't
know how lucky we have it okay but exactly but I think the I think the more
important story for me anyways uh about pram Vera and her mission is that that
um uh you know she has healed uh so much of the country and there's a lot of work
still left to do you know and this this facility that uh that they have built uh
is is very important towards that effort and for those you watching if if if you
want to uh help contribute to that Observatory certainly you could get in
touch with Robert Reeves he knows how to U uh get directly in touch with with
these uh with this group and definitely absolutely yeah yeah my my humble more
equipment and help and and uh you know uh maybe volunteerism to give
presentations and stuff actually in covo I'm sure they would be invited so well
it's a it's a marvelous country and I would uh if you have an opportunity to go there I I unhesitatingly say that you
would be very welcome uh you'll you'll um see something that you never expected
and you'll be very surprised at the people there and um um uh like I said
I've I've openly advertised um pran Vera as the next Carl Sean and uh she is
doing marvelous things uh already even before she get finishes her PhD so uh we
haven't heard the end of this this is just uh the opening chapters of a long book yeah sounds like it and you know um
there were two things that came to mind one um you know this we had a comment
about the uh you know from John Ray this has been your best presentation of all
um you know no well there were some Moon pictures so yeah we stuck with in there
didn't we he did sneak a moon picture in but uh no very riveting and amazing uh
presentation I dare say it puts mind to shame um just the significance and that
and that's the other point is I saw I saw the pursuit of the night sky and
just looking up that Observatory what it meant to that country and to the city in
particular um I couldn't think of a more perfect way to talk about just how far a
stellar Bond can go if we want to go ahead and put a bow on it that is one of the better Stellar bonds you could have
you have an entire city ravaged by War um and America in a good light um
you know we know our country loves to kind of go back and forth with what's wrong but there we had um you know we
had a military come in and help liberate kovo and um you know the
astronomy piece of it is what's bringing everybody together and that's um I think that just shows
how powerful what it is we're doing um and why I mentioned you know
the the beautiful images that are taken of the night sky and the the beauty of
the night sky to me has more than just a purpose of well that looks good let me
go you know let me go do something else I was thinking about the young the young
women that were there and you were saying they all wanted to pursue science and as me and I'm thinking well you're
back home young kids out of high school want to start Tik Tock videos and they want
to do content creation ex like where where are we going wrong so it's like
that's it's a challenge to say um regardless of the country getting the
youth interested in things like astronomy is just you've highlighted just how important that is and we do
have youth that are interested in astronomy they presented here in global star party so it's not like we not like
all of our youth are just doing tiktock or sport but um it's just worth pointing
out that there are so many different there's different Avenues in science and astronomy is one great field it's one
that I wish I had done while at Michigan I did Computer Engineering and may maybe
I should have looked at um astronomy as a a sort of minor just because of how
much I love being out there now so well never too late it never too late Adrian
that's right well that's what I'm trying to do now I'm trying to catch up for lost time well as the Fourth of July
holiday is around the corner I hope you um um reflect a little bit on how much
Freedom really means and what I saw in covo and how much those people love love
America because of what we did to save them and um uh
there's a direct link there and uh whatever abut whatever they've got in covo I wish I could bottle it and bring
it back to the United States to motivate the young kids to be as aggressive in
pursuit of doing good and education as the people over there are yeah we said
we have Cesar over there on Argentina and I know that they are similar efforts and Cesar you've LED some of those
efforts and I'd be willing to bet that in your part of Argent
you stir up that entire city when you have your uh with your presentation
you've got your kns your um star parties the barbecue anytime you show those pictures
everybody's out there so totally something that that is very very
important that ER Robert say about another countries with love or hate
America I can understand this
Arguments for people that sometimes or maybe sometimes
American that hates things of America America is is something for us is like
uh democracy Liberty is our our um
feelings for Americans and for in Argentina we have mostly with the same
Democratic feelings um things that Adrian say the the the feeling
um about friendly Friendship and a lot of things that we love live in Liberty
in uh um it's not politicians about Libertarians you know if not the the
really the real Freedom that the people need and the culture need and this is
the the challenge for us is the same education it's a um grow education about
science about things uh I had the the opportunity to to receive with my family
to pran in Argentina in bues um I I agree totally with you Robert
that is the next car second because she is brilliant really
and um I happy to to Really to know that finally she have
his uh her her dream come real come true
um I enjoyed in in Facebook all pictures when you went to go
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and really I was expecting no of course I love your your pictur of the moon but
I all do no I'm incredible they'll be back no
no but the the was a a beautiful surprise for me the
presentation um really that the the feel of this people
the feeling of this people about that they they uh really
um this country really uh I think that
they suffer a lot and they how these people is going to go
ahead um is really it's really
uh important that you you know this for me of course that was
to uh when p as us about the the
country all that we We Know by the news
in the 90s about the war but now the things that they come outside they came
more growing in in beautiful country this is amazing sometimes argentinians
too we um we don't we don't see how
lucky we are and uh sometimes we don't
love enough our country um and when you watch this of
this people that love and go
ahead with this energy like Raa and you really show
how these people is and how strong they are to go and grow and grow more um this
is fantastic like like a a member of global party for another
country I I feel really I I I I felt very uh near the the
things that you show us thank you for the kind
words you just that oh great well guys I really thank
you for uh coming together for another Global star party and sharing uh what's
in your minds and in your hearts and uh um I know our audience uh loves it I
know that they resonate with it um uh you know the uh you know the awe and
wonder that we have of connecting with nature and then you know understanding
nature better through science you know is really something that uh uh it it not
only reveals the beauty of it but um um but lets us all start to ask more
questions you know and keep exploring that's that activity of that personal exploration that we have uh in with the
universe you know whether you know you're someone that uh has discovered comets like David Levy or you know uh
make incredible uh nightscapes like Adrien and uh know the moon like the
back of your hand like Robert Reeves or you know Caesar's uh introduction of uh
the wonders of astronomy uh from his Southern Sky patio you know and Lori uh
you know explaining uh you know the achievements of uh of uh Scouts and
girls learning uh more about science and astronomy through their
programs um you know it's uh it's I think I think that uh more than what uh
countries have going for themselves it is how uh looking up at the sky kind of
unifies all of us you know and it's it's something even if we couldn't explain it
in our own language uh to each other um you know we we
innately understand it you know so that's that's the thing that gives us the bond you know so but
um okay I think that uh this will conclude our our uh Global star party
for tonight and uh um I have H scheduled
uh July 9th which is next Tuesday for the 153rd Global Star Party so uh stay
tuned for an announcement um they'll be coming out on Facebook and and off of
our website so again thank you very much uh special thanks to David Levy for
being our co-host um uh and also for the astronomical League to in all their
participation and support uh that they have for Global star party uh if you are
going to the Alcon event to many of us will see you there so uh keep looking up
and uh good night good night good night night everyone night everyone
night my name is Kelsey young and my role with the Artemis missions is I am the art science flight operations lead
what that means is I'm responsible for making sure that science all of our science objectives are incorporate into
the Artemis missions from a perspective of the flight control team um do we have science representation on the flight
control team does that science team have the infrastructure that they need to be successful how will Artemis astronauts
accomplish science objectives how will they be trained how will we design traverses around science objectives um
so my role as the Artemis science flight operations lead is really to make sure that science has the right role to play
in the operations of these exciting Artemis missions uh for Artemis 2 my role on the
Artemis 2 mission is I am the lead for the lunar science objectives for the mission so when the crew are flying by
the moon they'll be taking pictures of course out the window at the lunar surface they'll be making observations
um and my role is to lead those lunar science objectives the jet 5 Mission was the
highest Fidelity Artemis 3 surface Mission simulation to date it in included a science team that worked both
before the mission and during the mission to insert science objectives in as high a Fidelity way as possible what
that science team did was before the mission happened they interrogated The Landing site with of course their science glasses on what science
questions did they want to answer where do they want the crew member to go to address those science objectives and the
Eva or spacewalk traverses were built in large part around those science objectives during the jet five test that
same science team supported the edas from control in Houston so they were able to provide science guidance up to
the crew on where to sample how to best address the science objectives and how to maximize the return from the jet 5
Mission just like they'll be doing with the emis 3 mission to the lunar South Pole Mission simulations like jet 5 are
so critical to prepare the team for emis surface exploration it's critical to test the hardware like the geology
sampling tools in the these High Fidelity analog environments but it's also really important to prepare the
ground teams the flight control team and specifically the science team for what it's going to be like to actually be
conducting these science operations on the lunar surface for example how should the science team structure themselves
how do they insert that science guidance those science recommendations up into the rest of the mission control team how
do we develop the ground support infrastructure the tools that we need to work in Mission Control these Mission
simulations are really critical to give us these testing opportunities to allow us to figure out how our teams will
operate the San Francisco volcanic field is the field site for the jet 5 Mission simulation it's near Flagstaff Arizona
which is an area that's actually long been used as an analog for preparing for planetary surface exploration uh Apollo
crew trained not too far away from where the jet 5 Mission simulation occurred uh and that San Francisco volcanic field
was chosen in large part because the terrain you know mimics the lunar surface in a lot of really critical ways
it has the SC the types of science objectives accessible to Mission simulation that Apollo and Artemis
astronauts have answered and will answer um it's the right scale of exploration so the science targets the Eva targets
the spacewalk targets are at the right scale of exploration that Artemis astronauts will experience so it gives
us a really high fidelity and robust way to test our hardware and our infrastructure in a high fidelity
environment and for me as a scientist it's really exciting because it enables us to ask robust and compelling science
questions that our crew members for five will have to answer and have to rely on the science Team Real Time to help them
answer which makes it a really ideal testing opportunity to start to prepare for the emis
missions the jet 5 Evas or space walks the traverses that the astronauts were running out in the field were designed
in part around science objectives they included astronauts visiting sites of
interest from a scientific perspective collecting samples collecting samples of the rocks and the regali in the area to
answer sence sence questions that the science team was really excited to have the astronauts perspective on WE
conducted some of the jet 5 Evas during the day and some of them at night and the reason for that was to test a
variety of lighting conditions one of the exciting things about exploration at the lunar South Pole is that the
lighting environment is really Dynamic uh the Sun is going to be moving within the course of one surface Mission and
the astronauts will have to be prepared to encounter a variety of different lighting environments so by testing some
during the day and some at night it enables our teams to prepare for everything that Artemis astronauts might
experience the jet 5 Evas were conducted with astronauts in the field out in Arizona in our test site but they were
supported by a mission control team back on Earth so to speak which in this case meant Houston Texas and Mission Control
so we had a full Eva Flight control team supporting the jet 5 Evas at the traverses as they were conducted and as
a part of that flight control team we had a full science team in the loop as well so just like we expect for future
emis missions we had a science back room full of lunar scientists and geologists
providing guidance to the crew real time uh and we also had a science flight controller embedded in the Eva Flight
control team as that sort of senior voice for science within the rest of the Eva Flight control
disciplines the science evaluation room is the science back room for Artemis missions and we actually had that
science back room populated for the jet 5 Evas as well what the science back room or science evaluation ation room
for Artemis is is actually the Brain Trust of lunar scientists and geologists who are responsible for accomplishing
our lunar science and and lunar surface science and geologic observations and objectives during each Artemis mission
in that room we have a whole host of the lunar science and geology Community represented and their job is to feed
insights and recommendations up to the crew during a mission to make sure that those objectives are represented and
accomplished throughout the mission so it's really kind of where the lunar science magic happens within the flight
control team and Within mission control back on Earth during an aremis Mission the science evaluation room or science
back room for an Artemis Mission has a lot of different kind of roles and expertise represented within it you have
lunar scientists you have geologists you have experts in imagery and imagery analysis because images are of course a
critical data set for the science Community after a mission you have experts in Sample science people who are
really wanting to study the samples when they return to Earth you have software experts and lunar data experts all
working together to make sure that the science objectives the lunar science objectives of that mission are accomplished and that science expertise
can be injected through the flight control Team Real Time Artemis lunar science objectives will include those
accomplished through geology through GE geologic sampling we'll be using geology tools like a rockhammer to get samples
in situ to collect for return to Earth but they'll also include science payloads or science instruments that
crew Deploy on the lunar surface but that return data back to the science teams for those instruments on Earth so
the lunar science team the Artemis Mission science teams will include those representing geology lunar science the
lunar science payloads and the allbe working together to accomplish the lunar science objectives it takes a lot of
work to create a geology and science well-trained crew member and we do that in a number of different settings we do
it in the classroom we do it in the field we do it through mission ulations and we do it by pulling on science
community members from across the number of science disciplines for which we have emis science objectives definitely takes
a science Village to create that well-trained crew member and we're fortunate to have those well-trained crew members as our science team proxies
on the lunar surface
these films were taken on the 23rd of March 1993 Carolyn discovered the uh comet on
these films two days later and uh and on about 16 months
after that all of the fragments of this Comet collided with Jupiter giving
Humanity its first view of what happens when a comet hits a plan planet and uh and one of the exciting
things about this is that when comets hit planets they don't just drop uh dust
they also drop um organic materials uh carbon hydrogen oxygen and
nitrogen which eventually turn into proteins amino acids RNA and finally on
one magic day DNA comets com impacts are really the first step in the origin of
[Music] life I'd like to invite all of you to uh
to come to the next Global star party they are run by Scott Roberts of explore
scientific and me we we co-host this program and uh it's usually done on
Tuesdays and uh usually at 6:00 or so
Central Central Time and so I hope to see you all there my name is David ly
and I hope to see you all at the very next Global star party thank you
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