Global Star Party 160

Transcript:

all right he should be signing on short
he better sound on because I don't to talk about other than him oh here he comes okay
good there's Bill there we go I guess uh get a little special effects in there ah
good good so accidentally so this is uh so Scott
starts the meeting you know at 10:07 he starts a you know a broad a stream going in the meantime before that we can
uh have some idle banter if we want any with anyone here the the mics are hot
but that's okay we're live right now okay yeah so keep it
clean the curing to [Music] aile so anyway David ier was saying
saying um we're was to Philly and uh like two Tuesday nights ago was I got
started getting texts from people they say go outside look up so we went about 9: saw a little bit so we came in watch
a show and we're back out at 10:00 I looked to the north and it was it was really prominent I look to the West it
was there I look straight up it was there it was everywhere it was amazing it was everywhere around us yeah that
was the best show in a few years that I saw it once before here and that was
like 20 years ago so wow it was incredible I got some great and it showed up better on the sofh pictures
than it was in reality but uh I got a pretty good picture of uh it filling up
the um summer triangle excellent wow that's great it was a blast and then a
few days after that we went to local park and saw commet Atlas and uh that was really cool it's
really faded now I saw it last Thursday but it's really faded yeah maybe sixth magnitude by now yeah need been for a
while yeah oh yeah a naked eye Comet and Aurora within a week of each other that was really special I saw the first time
I saw the comet was from Easter Island in the morning sky behind some of the
Easter Island statues so that was quite dramatic it was very bright wow that's an amazing site to
begin with hello familiar
gentlemen Kevin Ian how you doing see
you Hi how are you thank you good to see
everybody I'm looking forward to seeing so many of you in person in just a couple weeks it won't be
long I think that's what everybody around here is um terrorized about it
won't be long
right about two or three times a century a massive star in our galaxy explodes
the star's core May survive as a neutron star or a black hole but the rest of it rushes into space as swiftly expanding
debris behind a powerful shock wave as the Supernova Remnant grows it sweeps up
Interstellar gas and gradually decelerates yet even thousands of years later its imprint on the Galaxy remains
impressive exploding stars and their remnants have long been suspected of producing cosmic rays some of the
fastest matter in the universe where and how these protons electrons and atomic nuclei are boosted
to such high speeds has been an enduring mystery now observations of two
Supernova remnants by NASA's FY Gamay Space Telescope provide new insights because cosmic rays carry
electric charge their Direction changes as they travel through magnetic fields by the time the particles reach us their
paths are completely scrambled we can't trace them back to their sources so scientists must locate their Origins by
indirect means which is where fmy comes in the interaction of high energy particles with light and ordinary matter
can produce gamma rays the most powerful form of light unlike cosmic rays gamma rays travel to us straight from their
sources in 1949 physicist enrio fmy worked out how what he called magnetized
clouds could accelerate cosmic rays later studies showed that a variant of his method called FY acceleration worked
especially well in Supernova remnants confined by a magnetic field high energy particles move around
randomly sometimes they cross the shock wave with each round trip they gain about 1% of their original energy after
dozens to hundreds of Crossings the particle is moving near the speed of light and is finally able to escape if
the super of a Remnant resides near a dense molecular cloud some of those escaping cosmic rays May strike the gas
and produce gamma rates but electrons and protons make gamma rays in different ways cosmic ray
electrons do so when they're deflected by passing near the nucleus of an atom accelerated protons May collide
with an ordinary proton and produce a short-lived particle called a neutral Pion these pons quickly Decay into a
pair of gamar rates at their brightest both types of emission look very similar only with
sensitive measurements at lower gamma ray energies can scientists determine which process is
responsible now fmy observations have done just that they conclusively show
these Supernova remnants are accelerating protons when they strike protons in nearby molecular clouds they
produce pons and ultimately the Gamay emission fmy sees NASA's fmy has
detected Gamay from many more Supernova remnants but the jury is still out on whether accelerated protons are always
responsible and what their maximum energies may be nevertheless the FY team has taken a major step a century after
the discovery of cosmic rays in establishing just where they arise something that would satisfy but
certainly not surprise the original
fairy well hello everyone this is Scott Rober from explore scientific uh this is
the 160th can you believe it David 160th Global Star Party we've been
doing this for a few years now uh it's been um uh a lot of fun a lot of
Adventure I have learned a lot uh from listening to the lectures and speakers
from Global Star Party um certainly have uh uh not only of of what's going on in
astronomy but uh uh I've learned a lot about the passion that people bring to
educating others about um uh you know our universe and you know our shared
experience and Discovery uh which by the way will be the title and the theme of
the next Global Star Party the our 161st but um I wanted to talk a little bit
about this one you know we have um uh of course uh David Levy starting off every
uh Global star party with uh some commentary and and a uh and a poem um
but uh you know this theme that we have and I try to have a theme ready for every Global star party uh I come up
with some of them David comes up with some sometimes we get themes suggested from our viewers or our other presenters
which we're happy to um uh bring forth but um um but uh this one is a Star
Stream and there are all kinds of uh uh aspects of Star Stream some of them are
Galactic streams of stars uh that shape our Cosmos there are
streams of coming from our own star uh as it affects our own planet and the
rest of the solar system I think the most dramatic U uh aspect of that for a
lot of us recently was Comet Atlas uh you know showing his beautiful taale it
was so big and bright and long uh you know so that that was
fantastic um we will have also um Don
NAB Don NAB is coming on uh U with uh bill mcin bill is uh does a podcast
called the light pollution news and of course light pollution is a a big topic
for many of us uh in fact I would say for all of us that are amateur astronomers and professional astronomers
as well um uh and Don writes that Bill's
the regional rep for the astronomical league for the m east region uh and uh and that he puts a lot
into his podcast so that's great hopefully bill we can uh um help spread
the news about your uh program um we have a we have special presentations
from Kevin Schindler from uh L Observatory and Ian mclennon and they
are going to be talking about the recently completed uh astronomy
Discovery Center uh which uh David Levy and Ian and Kevin and number of us are
going to be there uh to help them celebrate that ribbon cting cutting um
ceremony uh David AER is uh on as well and he'll be talking about some of the
most beautiful galaxies in the universe or one of the most beautiful galaxies in the universe I think so um you know we
always enjoy David's insight into the cosmos um so thanks for joining us today
and being a part of this uh particular program and uh feel free to chat and
will try to answer your questions live and um I'll turn it over to you
David well thank you thank you very much Scotty and um the last few days I've
been watching Comet Su and Sean Atlas uh very very religiously every
night and it's been wonderful and I want to congratulate David Iker who is one of
the few people that knows how to pronounce the name of this comic and uh it is it's really it's
worth learning to pronounce it I think to to show respect for the Discovery Place to show respect and love for the
comet and I'm thinking today it's been kind of a rough day you know I've been it's been over two years
now since I lost Wendy and most of the time now I'm getting into it I'm getting
back into living back into life and I'm looking at at Wendy and having the
memories but then there's sometimes that things happen and I slip back into into
a real depression again and today is one of those days and it was very simple I was just
getting ready actually to come to this Global star party sorry to blame you
Scott but I was and I just imagined Wendy sitting at her desk and flashing
one of her smiling faces at me and boy did that get me upset I really miss her
so so much but my poem today is going to be is is is is one that I know I have
not read here yet and it's by Hana sesh and it's
called yes kosim and uh it was Supply to us at the
recent Yom Kipper Services we were at our synagogue and the rabbi had a whole
bunch of extra prayers I don't even know if we did them during the service but they were just extra prayers and this
one I happened to see it I read it and it really overpowered me and so that's
what I'm going to share with you right now there are stars up above I don't
think anybody will argue that point and uh and I'm
thinking that for for me the stars are not just stars and much as I enjoyed
that um lovely video that Scott just prep
presented uh I don't see the stars so much as astrophysical objects but I see
them the way lesie peler saw them as personal friends I see the moon as a
personal friend I see certainly comets like the
one that's been in the sky lately as personal friends because I have a personal
connection with these objects and something that has enriched my life and
has made it so much joyful there are stars Up Above So Far
Away we only see their light long long after the star itself is gone and so it
is with people that we loved their memories keep shining ever brightly though their time with us is
done but the stars that light up the darkest night these are the lights that
guide us as we live our days these are the ways we
remember thank you very much Scotty I'm back to you okay okay so let me bring us
back here um so uh you know it's nice that
you do bring up Wendy David because uh she was on many Global star parties and
she was a great inspiration to many of us so I appreciate it so um we will uh
move on next to uh don NAB from the astronomical
league and he has a special treat for us uh don um let me bring you
and and your guest let's see there you
go okay and there we are we got some cool mood
lighting going on there that's awesome spooky Halloween spooky yeah thank you
season thank you so much so you know the astronomical league is also a co-host of
our event and um they uh have supported Global Star Party from the beginning and
um they are uh preparing for their next astronomical leak mention but I think
that the thing that's also very important about the astronomical League asides aside from the fact that they are
the world's largest Federation of astronomical clubs uh and have a huge
membership of I think it's over 20,000 members is that right yeah something
over 20,000 22,000 like that you know know yeah and uh they're always looking for ways to help people uh become
inspired through their award programs through their uh teaching programs you
know they have so many observing uh uh programs I think over 80 different
programs that you can get involved with including an astronomy Outreach one which would be my favorite um but uh I
think it's cool Don that you brought uh this gentleman on and I'm going to let you do the introduction and uh take it
away so um my role in the astronomical league is that I'm chair of the mid east
region so we have several officers uh that support the mid east region bill is
this summer became the regional representative for the mid east region we call it Merill mid east region
astronomical leag Merill so Bill's a regional rep he is a member of a club
that is on the out Western outskirts of Philadelphia it's one of the four clubs that I'm a member of uh and I met bill
it's the club is called Delaware Valley amateur astronomers one thing unique about the club when they have Outreach
events once a month they do it at Valley Forge National Park and they're always a lot of fun usually have a little bit of
moon in the sky because you can imagine close to Philly it's very light polluted but I've seen Bill there under the stars
I spent time with Bill at the York County Star party for two years and uh
got to know a little bit and I'm really glad he joined the uh the economical League officer so bill is uh he's when I
when I talked to biller the Stars he mentioned this this podcast called light pollution news and of course I'm
interested in that every every amateur astronomer and professional should be interested so I tuned into to his uh
podcast and uh he's the host of light pollution news uh bill is a dark sky
Advocate he's a member of the Pennsylvania chapter of dark sky International he spends time in nature
of the Watershed Steward and he's a crew leader with a local cons cons conserv Conservancy group uh but he started
light pollution news as a way to uh explore the topics associated with uh light pollution is environmental and
ecological plate that we're in with it um his show um presents an open and fair
platform discuss Topics in the news as they pertain to life pollution so uh
I'll introduce Bill and let him take it from here yeah uh thanks a lot Don and thank you
Scott because uh what you guys are doing here this is a phenomenal show um so I really appreciate the opportunity so
thank you so much you yeah I'm looking at your website right now which I'm gonna Post in chat and um uh you know I
like the uh yeah I like the the tagline a podcast shedding the light only where
needed very cool yeah um
let me let me get started here I know Don asked me to do a little talk on light pollution so and I know this isn't
going to be a topic that is faren anyone here or anyone listening or really anyone on the speed um if you don't mind
let me see if I can get share some slides here and uh I think I'm up and
going okay yep coming through excellent uh if as I go through here if you have
any questions on citations or what not I can get those over to you in a couple days um I pulled this together we've
been traveling a lot we were just came back from North Carolina so uh didn't have a chance to really site out
everything but I pretty much through the podcast I pretty much know some of this stuff by
heart uh and the podcast will start up in 2022 after the time of covid I kind
of looked at some of the things that I really uh valued in my life and saving
the night uh was was definitely one of them stars have done so much for me and as someone who's an amateur astronomer
former president of the DVA and uh you know it seemed like a natural lead it uh
but I did learn something I learned a lot in doing this podcast so let's start
off with some time travel right let's um let's start off with let's go back to
early days of 1900s pretend that you're in Paris uh in the City of Lights at
that time time according to astrophysicist Brad Turner who we came across some records from the French
astronomer gilam bodon uh indicated that you could still feasibly see the Milky
Way just out your window could see our home Galaxy span from Northeast to
Southwest in Paris that's roughly 100 years ago 100 years in time and we've gone
from possibly you a sky that looks like this uh to a sky that looks more like
this for most people uh it's it's pretty stunning how much things have changed and stunning how good the skies were
back then I'm working my way through the astronomical leagues obsolete constellations list one of these I think
list that doesn't get enough attention and many of these constellations require a limiting magnitude of somewhere around
six uh just to make out a large chunk of those Stars sometimes more and by doing
some of these great astronomical League lists you really gain a perspective on some of the things that we actually lost
so to that point we do appear to be in the midst of a hockey stick like curve shooting upward unfortunately this is
spurred in part by you know public policies that uh incentivize rapid conversion to
LEDs and also by cheapness of Life fixtures and energy expenditure
associated with them that would otherwise be too costly in an earlier time so what who cares if we can't see
this Sky it's a question I I think everyone on here has had people ask or
maybe thought from in conversation you've had with other people say family friends uh anyone who's passionate about
the night sky has probably had the field this question in some shape or form uh
you even hear this from amateur astronomers you'd expect to have a little more skin in the game but to be fair you know we do our fair share to
promote responsible practices responsible policies we tend to be uh it tends to be a simple numbers game
whereby we're just a tiny percentage of the total population but boy do we punch above our weight uh so we're not sizable
enough to sway public opinion and mass but I think you know we are making slow
inroads the problem is the pace the pace and halfhazard approach of LED
installations has uh changed the sky brightness in very short order we witnessed degradation
right here uh I look at my time here in Philadelphia in the past five years I've seen the place the area that I live live
in go from a high bort s to a borderline bort 9 U so it brings me back to that
initial question who really cares well obviously I care and I know you care I
assume that you care because you're watching me talk right now uh I like
walking around in the dark there's something human about being able to turn down your sense of vision and turn up
your sense of listening and touch nighttime brings out different functionalities and challenges to for
your brain it also helps us appreciate our environment and see things that we
would really never see sorry little behind my slides here I took this this photo right here from New
York County Star party and there's something magical about being able to actually see nature on the other side of
the day so so who really really cares about this
right isn't it this is just that common refute well Darkness breeds crime and
that's why we must light the night to infinity and beyond now I'm not arguing that or I'm not stating that we should
put out all lights I think lights are very useful it helps us walk it helps us be able to navigate areas it helps us
see what's coming down the street it helps us in many ways but we're talking about the excess use of light here what
if I were to tell you that crime actually occurs during the daytime I mean they're actually linked uh most
crime studies appear to have an in inclusive link between light and crime
reduction or crime increase positive studies the positive
studies appear to have commonly site corresponding daytime reduction in crimes often driven by perceived
investment in an area so if an areas redeveloped they often see a daytime reduction as well uh negative studies
show no change or even link Street crime um to evenly lighting to Street crime
spikes there's also another study that came through because criminals do need light and this one is uh from Vienna
they looked at in the middle 20s a LED conversion in the city of Vienna and
during that time the study is the study is emblematic of the crime studies we
have so the study found that lighting when during that period
I'm sorry crime During the period of the LED conversion actually reduced but crime in specific neighborhoods that
had led conversions actually had a high correlation between the new lighting and
crime say burglaries or uh robberies so in one sense is saying that hey lighting
actually deter crime in the other sense is saying that lighting did nothing for Crime so maybe maybe lighting isn't the
right variable to assess this by and here we see that we have the weakest link between any of the other studies
that are going on in assessing artificial light in fact we keep trying to put up light and say that light is
going to be some magic variable when we know uh through many studies that it's just not the strongest reducer of or
strongest correlative variable of crime
well that's all good to know but I'm sure your friends and family still will probably be skeptical and why why why
would they be well for one it turns out that light pollution really isn't the easiest pollution to fix darkness is
scary Darkness isn't rational fear isn't rational our fear of darkness is one part evolutionary and one part cultural
when you put those two together we have countless Illusions and metaphors that make night and darkness out to be bad
while light and daytime are always pure and safe I would I would even bet that on this very show and I heard it last
week you have countless times when someone says the phrase illuminate Enlighten shine a light as a positive
connotation of intellect or purpose right while dark or maybe shadowy is a more derogatory framing of the of an
idea so let's let's move on from crime no one really likes talking about crime
so let's let's move on from here okay now over in the health side our understanding health related issues with
artificial light at night gets us a bit closer to the real story here the correlations are a bit easier to see uh
we can say directly that colors and brightness of levels of light act at we
can say directly that colors and uh levels of brightness at night actually do affect human circadium rhythms H
there appears to be a trend in research directing us to recognize that artificial light levels May create long-term health problems you know we
have a study biological rhythms that found infants born pre-term discharg earlier when experienced darker nights
than the group than did a control group group that were sitting in a 247 lit environment the American Medical
Association actually suggests that we have street lights at 3,000 Kelvin or
below which is what the IES has implemented as guidance Across the Nation from the Journal of hypertension
research it's found that artificial light at night actually affected rat blood pressure patterns typically blood
pressure RIS at night but when exposed artificial L night the pattern became unhinged pointing out potential impacts
of cardiovascular control of blood pressure and from the American Heart Association individuals were
regularly subjected who are regularly subjected to artificial light night uh
had greater risk of developing strokes and then there's that Alzheimer's study
that came out about a month or about two months ago uh which looked to say that
AR to areas and communities to had greater artificial light had a higher
correlation to Alzheimer's well okay uh by now you can see that the
initial definition of light pollution set out by David Crawford has expanded quite a bit right including household
objects you can think of indicator lights air freshener lights clock lights you name it everything in our bedroom environment has gotten dramatically
brighter but we still don't have a direct tie to say that this light is
actually causing some of these illnesses right this sphere and and due to this we
have issues like this the sphere uh a popular entertainment new entertainment
facility that was built in Las Vegas and came live last year was looking to
expand out to London and they uh looked at straford and and they offered to buy all the residents of straford blackout
Curts so instead of Simply being a good citizen and turning off the globe after a certain time the company would rather
elect to impose on others and the owness of preventing light trespass appears to be solely on the recipient of the plight
it's not on the perpetrator themselves imagine other forms of like poll of pollution were like this let's go look
at other forms of pollution like this right noise ordinances uh instead of having noise ordinances we just told
people to thicken their walls um we didn't have regular water regulations we told people to buy better filters uh
what if we didn't have air quality standards we would just tell people to wear walk out the door with uh respirators right it makes no sense so
we covered crime and health but the in reality beyond anything else the very
strongest data we have about light actually is the impact on our environment and to this there is a there
were two journals that looked to um actually let me reset myself here a
little bit in that last slide let me reset myself again the
decrease what we're going to see here Scott really relax I'll be good
here no problem so I'm going to show just some of the articles that we had
that uh came through over the last year and it's astounding the amount of
research that's going and looking at how artificial light affects the natural
ecosystem this in addition to this slide there's a decrease melatonin levels uh
in Birds which reduces their cognizant abilities when you're in artificial lake envir or artificial light environment
artificial light and lakes ponds rivers reorder the culture of life living in
that Waterway artificial light deters traditional nocturnal animals from hunting in that area artificial light
enables both nocturnal and dial daytime predators to extend their hunting to the point of exhaustion artificial light
thickens leaves and trees thereby making them hard to consume by insects and
reduces soil artion by earthworms artificial light traps moths and other
insects that Orient using lunar or star light now it could be fair to say that
artificial light on its own isn't the cause of an insect apocalypse that we're currently living through but it's
definitely one of the driving forces involved so light pollution isn't all about astronomers and this was something
that I had to learn when I was when coming out of Co when I was getting into getting back into kind of seeing What
mattered to me and I looked at light and light pollution and I started realizing this this is actually much more of an ecological issue and US astronomers were
not really affected that much by outside of having professional facilities have data collection obviously that's a
costly issue but they're not being imposed uh in a way that the environment is being imposed so artificial light at
night is a real plut and last year we saw two journals science and the philosophical translation of Royal
Society B dedicate additions just to light pollution and I just want to bring up let's see if
I can bring up this uh this definition somewhere in there okay so
this definition here i' like to bring this up because this really helps I think if we had
a um if we thought of light as being an actual pollutant we'd make much better
decisions and this helps build that framework uh so what they did in philosophical transactions of NE Society
B one of the Articles the lead article uh outlined a framework for why they
considered light pollution to be an actual pollutant it's a form matter of energy that are produced by human
activity are present in the environment concentrations that alter natural ones and may cause or may reasonably cause
harm to humans the environment and or other Goods of nature which is the usual scientific and legal practice consider
considering what a plut is um so to summarize crime in light don't
appear to have definitive Links at this time health and light appear to have potential links maybe potentially strong
links but that said there's much more research that really needs to tease out what's going on here we know circadian
rhythms are affected by light color and brightness uh this in turn affects melatonin uh we we may not um we may or
may not influence a multitude of ailments uh via
melatonin May or this affectation of melatonin may or may not affect or
influence a multitude of elements however we do know that much more research still needs to be applied here
and to understand what's really going on on the environmental impact of light however it's pretty clear it's well
documented that light pollution changes the physical environment and for some reason this message just isn't getting
out enough yet so I'll finish my talk out with a little anecdote um and many
cultures have calendars Heritage or stories that showcase the night sky the
night sky after all is the largest and cheapest anthropological Museum that we have in this
world there are many tales I could tell you but this one I'd like you to ponder
and the antibellum South seeing the sky was much more than just a nicity it was a matter of life or death for runaway
slaves songs like Follow The Drinking gour was C which was code for the Big
Dipper helped guide folks to Freedom via the Underground Railroad if that doesn't help explain
the magnitude and power of the nights Sky shared Heritage then I'm not really sure what does so I want to thank you
Scott for allowing me to jump on here and uh yeah for great show so much Bill
that was excellent that was excellent you know there we cannot learn uh you
know learn too much about the benefits of a dark sky and um you know
we we we waste so much money with just bad lighting you know um you know I I
had a friend that was uh uh having we were doing astronomy Outreach and
somebody came up and complained about how much money was the billions of
dollars that were being spent on you know wasted on science programs you know
flying to other planets or whatever you know and uh uh he and another group of
friends I'll have to maybe get this information for you but they had calculated how many billions of dollars
that we would save just by redirecting light or turning off lights okay um and
uh you know with that we could feed the world so something is simple as that if
it was actually a program to turn off lights and the money that you saved you gave it to people to eat um then uh you
know we could have our science and and eat too so there you go Scott if I can
just jump in real fast I think one of the things too is that people get afraid when they hear about uh dark sky
Advocates or starting night Advocates uh that were going to take away the lights and you know that's simply not the case
dark yeah well people are afraid of the dark but uh just having I really think if you look through the framework that
if you make your decisions based on the fact like you would do for your yard or for your house or pesticides or
herbicides or any kind of chemical pollutant that you already recognize if you looked at light from the same
framework you would make really good decisions and you would put in really good fixtures in just your own property
there and and it would help you know you would have good effective lighting and you would also have
responsible lighting right yep well great I hope you
come back on sometime um I hope that uh people that got that link uh uh for your
podcast will share it and um uh you know keep up the great work thanks a lot
thank you thanks a lot okay all right did you want to finish up anything uh
don with um no no the uh Al live was canceled last Friday because Barbara
Harrison was Ill so we're looking to get that back in the schedule don't have a schedule date
yet very good very good yeah uh sometimes things like that
do happen so yeah people get sick it happens we keep on going on yeah um uh
speaking of things that keep on going on we've got David ier who has been
painting his house nonstop uh and uh it's amazing he
doesn't have like paint all over him you know because uh after a while I mean I I do on me when I when I'm painting so
I'm I'm what they call an unskilled painter Scott so I'm getting most of the
paint on the walls but a little bit on me a little bit on you too okay well that's good yeah it washes off you know
right most of the time y yep indeed well great well I mean what we can see here at this little window of your house it
actually looks awesome so I would say good job well I'll give you a tour in
another six or eight weeks it'll be all done okay that sounds good well David
thank you very much uh for coming on um and this time it is NGC
2685 is that right indeed and light pollution is so important that was
really good that talk and and or we will never see after another few Generations
galaxies like this and of course with so much light uh you know if you look at a light pollution map of the United States
now or many other places countries it's really distressing to see the light that
is going out into lighting up the solar system which does a lot of good for
electric companies but uh doesn't really do much of anything on Earth here so so let's hope in many ways we'll have more
intelligent Lighting in the future or astronomy is going to be tougher and tougher to to
do but while can see them galaxies are among the favorite things that I have to
see and when I'm not fooling around uh with painting or with astronomy magazine
I will share my screen share the right thing see if I can start this slideshow
somewhere and talk about another object um and I talked about the eclipse from
Easter Island last time um but now I'm back to deep Sky objects and I'm not
going to talk about Centaurus a but as Scott said I will talk about NGC 2685
tonight briefly which is often called the Helix Galaxy it's an odd Galaxy it's a lenticular Galaxy which of course
Hubble thought of a little bit bit originally but then Gerard dealore really put into a precise uh um format
of classification when he came along uh in the late 1950s to kind of complete the
modernization if you will of the classification of galaxies it's a PO it's not only a lens-shaped Galaxy
lenticular is a fancy word for lens-shaped but it's a polar ring Galaxy which is truly a rare kind of Galaxy
that shows a polar ring of material perpendicularly to the Galaxy's main
disc and Scott this is a happy coincidence for once you know I'm working my way down through hundreds of
objects from north to south this is one that intersected with your theme really
well because of course we believe what creates polar ring galaxies is
interaction with other nearby galaxies in the distant past in a very peculiar
way and this creates of course streams of stars that are orbiting the galactic center of this galaxy so this is fits in
right with your theme for once here um and it's also a Seaford Galaxy You Know
Carl Seaford in Nashville uh produced back in the day when there were all
these high energy so-called active Galactic nuclei were Mysteries um and
sephr galaxies had energetic nuclei that were unusual um and not well understood
for about 30 years and now we know know of course all these phenomena of so-called active galaxies are black
holes uh in the centers of these galaxies that are viewed with different geometry so that's what we ended up with
Carl Seaford and many other kinds of galaxies this object is about 42 million
light years away it's in Ursa Major and is at about half the size the dis of this galaxy of the Milky Way the bright
disc of the Galaxy about 50,000 light years uh and it's a little brighter than 11th
magnitude and and about 4 by two in a fraction AR minutes across so it's
relatively small it's uh you know moderately bright not super bright but it's easily Within Reach of moderate and
larger scopes of course and even small Scopes uh under a dark moonless sky uh
if we can get away from those lights it's a rare Galaxy as I mentioned
in that lentic are are fairly unusual as well um and uh really rare as a polar
ring Galaxy of which they're only a fairly small number of a few dozens of really good bright examples of
those it's a great Target for observers and imagers so I again I suggest uh to
go out and shoot stuff like this uh and uh also observe it I I'm a live Photon
guy I had one season of astroimaging and then gave up when it became much easier
uh publishing my first little magazine to go out to the mailbox and get uh
images from really good astrophotographers here's a a section of Ron Stan's Atlas that shows where the
Helix Galaxy is uh just below the bowl of the Big Dipper or that that gourd of
of uh the Civil War era um of uh slaves moving EXs slaves moving
northward um following the Drinking Gourd uh and you can see it here it's also
classed as ARP 336 uh because of its active uh nature
and they're of course a field of many galaxies in Ursa Major that we can
see Mark Hansen produced this really nice uh image of NGC
2685 and you can see the polar ring is a little tough to see here but you can see the main axis you know going uh from
lower left to upper right right and then you can most easily see the dust Lanes in front of just below the nucleus of
the galaxy of the Polar ring and also material that's sort of that lighter cyan or blue color uh and the
interaction of those Stellar streams uh producing a new generation of younger uh
blue stars which normally probably wouldn't be happening uh if not for the
tidal forces that are acting uh uh out side of this galaxy
Center here's a little bit closer a better view with the Gemini North telescope that's a little bit of an
aperture Advantage here and you can see the dust Lanes pretty well in front of uh the left side of this galaxy on the
left side of the nucleus uh and that's the Polar ring of stuff that's not exactly dead on to us but it's uh a
little bit leftward there as well as the main body of the Galaxy and uh if you
have the Gemini North telescope you can see some really nice background galaxies as well but that's that's getting to be
really faint stuff here in this field so that's it it's the Helix Galaxy
is my uh uh example this time and the November issue of astronomy uh has a
little bit about uh the sun it's kind of a uh a status report on what we know of
our the most important star you could say to us of course we're just we've just passed now solar maximum but
there's still a lot of activity uh with our star right now and we're going to be going over the next few years to
slightly decreasing solar activity in that 11year cycle we've also got a
report on the last starmus Festival that number of us attended in Slovakia uh and some other stories as
well and we will be having another staris Festival coming up uh next spring
if you want to join us in LMA which is off the uh North western edge of Africa
the Canary Islands this is a wonderful place to go this is the largest telescope in the world here which edges
out the kex in Hawaii uh 10.4 meter and
uh we'll be having this late in April estaris festival with a lot of Nobel Prize winners and Astronaut explorers
and astronomers and other scientists and some rock and roll as well so we hope
that you'll join us in the canaries for the next staris Scott that's all I have I will
end my slideshow all right can move on and end that share and thank you as
always for having me on it's always a pleasure to see everyone here and I
always enjoy it and I'll go back to painting walls pretty soon here and we're not in danger of running out of
deep Sky objects for you to talk about are we well the the initial list that I made of going through a couple of
atlases which was a fun exercise for a few days I came up with I think they're about 400 more to go so we're not going
to run out anytime soon I think it was about eight and a half years worth when we started this so I think long before
eight and a half years you'll say Dave I'm really tired of you we'll see you
later and we won't even make the 400 I think but there are quite a few to go yet we're in Ursa Major we're working
our way from the north Celestial pole Southward and remember that our old pal
Scott and David Bart boach you know used to joke many years ago David when you
were the one who introduced me to him David you know all the good stuff is in the southern hemisphere he wasn't
exaggerating that much with that statement you know that joke he used to like to absolutely absolutely that's
pretty much true one just one visit down there in a dark sky site that's you will
absolutely agree so on Easter Island we had about an hour before seeing the
comet um uh when it was in the morning sky and boy you know an hour with the
southern Milky Way the melanic clouds and I always like uh to see the Orion
Nebula okay and look over then and see the Karina nebula that's three times
larger and four times brighter and you think holy cow that's a nebula you know
wow you know love the Orion Nebula but my God the Karina nebula is something to
you want to do that as an observer at least once in your life the southern hemisphere no doubt about it now David
did you see the meulan clouds when you were at Easter Island or yes they were up in the early morning Sky um and we
had a beautifully dark sky I went out to the eclipse site and then saw a brief
Eclipse um of it was an anular eclipse this time uh about uh 22 days ago I or
I'm sorry 27 days ago I think it was now um and it lasted about uh oh four
minutes and change you know a decent uh but it was a it was an annular you know which isn't quite you know as exciting
as a total but we had a beautiful hour or so that uh morning with the southern
sky with Karina and krux and the maganic clouds and the whole rest of that that
song and then the comet and then the eclipse so that was a triple play
observational day that was hard to beat and you're surrounded by all these Stone
faces and stuff so you know the the moai the statuary there most of them I think
were made between 1250 and 1500 ad um
you know and and these were guys who didn't have a lot to do on this I mean this is a long way from anywhere this
small island Easter Island no kidding you know right even now it was a 5 and a
half hour flight Westward from Santiago back in the day you were a long
way from anywhere so you had fishing and making statues and I was blown a waste cot I knew there were quite a few of
these and they've restored and uprighted many of them you know but there are
nearly 900 of these statues on Easter Island it's a
you know so they are all over the place well yeah I can imagine uh you
know the isolation and all the rest of it but um you know maybe there was a lot
more to it than just chiseling out another head you know when I heard about this trip you know I assumed you know
we'd be taking a Cessna to fly out to Easter Island here we had a
787 there were enough people who wanted to see the eclipse oh wow the largest
commercial plane you normally easily get we landed at the air strip on Easter
Island and this 787 came to a stop Scot
with about 50 yards to the end of this R this Runway was about the whole length of the island you know okay so
fortunately we stopped we got off we had a good experience sure that's good all
right well I'll have to uh try to get out there sometime a lot of my friends have visited Easter Island for various
uh astronomical Adventures so it's it's got to be a cool spot to go to it's
really something to see I think you could see the whole island honestly in about three days we were there for about
four in a fraction um but it is an amazing place to see uh once at least in
your life yeah very cool very cool well if you guys missed um uh David's program
uh you can just search for the uh 59th Global star party and um uh
he'll tell you all about what it's like to be at Easter Island for an annular Eclipse so okay thanks David thank you
Scott all right okay uh so our next uh presentation will be with Kevin
Schindler uh he's the prime historian at L Observatory he's a great guy uh
incredible knowledgeable um and um uh together with Ian mclennon and I don't know how they
want to uh make their presentation today but I that but uh I think it's cool that
they're together uh tonight to talk about the new uh astronomy Discovery
Center that's being esta or that has been established at L Observatory uh I
know it's been quite a while in the making uh maybe years more in the
planning um but uh you know I think that uh when we get there on November 16th
for the ribbon cutting ceremony we're going to be duly blown away so um Kevin
I'll bring you on and um do you want to get started
first and then bring on Ian or how do you want to do this actually we'll both go at the same time we're gonna just kind of chat together okay all right
well let me bring take myself off and bring Ian
on and there we go so uh Ian mclennen is
um uh a consultant for all kinds of science installations and he's been
doing it for a long time he's extremely well known in the planetarium Community
um but uh if there's any kind of uh it seems like any kind of Observatory any
kind of Science Center especially one for educational Outreach or any
planetarium installation going on if Ian's not directly involved in it he
knows all about it so uh and I know that he was very involved with the L project
so I'll turn it over to you guys thanks Scott um and it's really great to join
you guys again I I feel honored to be with a bunch of this Allstar cast and what you and David have been doing you
know I'm looking forward to the to the 92th start party when when we get caught
up with Dave Vier um deep Sky object so don't have me on life support or
something you know as I do it I've got it on my calendar okay all right well
really thanks for having us on here and this is U something we're pretty excited to talk about not just as a you know for
me a homer of L Observatory who loves the place but for somebody who really appreciates astronomy Outreach and one
of the thing that David Levy talks about a lot is the inspiration of the cosmos and you know you know it's not just
looking at things but how it makes us feel and and wanting to go forward and do something good and and you know this
inspiration all we feel and that's really this new astronomy Discovery Center and it's really great that Ian
can be here um with me because Ian is is just a legend in the astronomy community
and has helped create so many unique facilities around the world and I don't
know how many unique facilities you can have but this astronomy Discovery Center is certainly unique because it's you
know it uses state-of-the art technology and programming techniques um and then
by the way it's affiliated with a Observatory that's 130 years old with a long Heritage of research and education
so there it's really pretty unique um and we're we're really excited to be to
be um talking about it and opening it soon I think I think among staff outside
of our um Chief Operating Officer Amanda Bosch outside of our office she has a a
daily countdown X days till the opening and and you get a sense of excitement
and pure Terror as the days go by that you know this is happening oh this is
happening oh this is happening but it's um you know on a smaller scale but you know when we flew to the moon 400,000
people were involved with making it happen and again a smaller scale thing but you look at the the number and
diversity of people and organizations that make a project like this happen from planning to designing and building
fundraising promoting I it'san it's staggering and I I love it when you know
you find out what your team is made of when when things are getting tight like when the observatory to build our little
Discovery telescope years ago they were figuring the secondary mirror and it
shattered and um and that was a moment of um excitement for everybody on staff
but but everybody pulled together and made the most of it and ended up with a product that that is unsurpassed so I
think the same with this you you have great people um Ian and his team have
done so much of this to have their expertise you know L has a lot of smart people but not not a lot of people
who've designed something to this magnitude so um it's really cool for us to be able to talk about
it I think Kevin it's worth mentioning perhaps that um one of the aspects of
this that's that's really quite exciting and rewarding is that this relates back to
the very beginning of L Observatory where perel L the founder of the observatory in the late 1800s dictated
that the observatory would would always be a center of Leading Edge research but
equally in equal measure U public education and U because of that um the
the the observatory has excelled in both areas and um Kevin will talk about some
of the discoveries that have been made at L Observatory but but those have been twinned with the impetus to reach out to
the general public and that's a that's a great link Le and Ian and in fact um I'm
hoping this slide is showing um Scott maybe you can confirm with p l yes okay
so in one of when LOL founded the observatory um he wanted to do scientific research but he said you know
what's the point of doing it unless we share it with people and excite and Inspire them much as David Levy has done
his entire career and so you know LOL wrote We want to make people
co-discoverers not just do it ourselves but we want them to feel the excitement of of looking up at the sky and feeling
like they've discovered something themselves you know we can we can all get jaded after looking at Saturn or
Jupiter so many times although I don't think anybody in this group does but you
know we want we want everybody to make that Discovery you know the first time you see something like
that may maybe you didn't Discover it for humankind but you discovering it for yourself and to feel that connection
with the cosmos is just really special and this is something a personal you
know said from the beginning this is what this Observatory is going to be so Through The Years um this Outreach has
been a critical part of um what we do and from in the beginnings in 1894 18
years before Arizona was a state um Observatory is doing research and and
you could see ads in the local newspaper come on up to the observatory on Saturday night and look through the big
telescope the 24-inch Clark which is shown here and through the years that
that interest expanded when when cly Tama discovered Pluto in 1930 that certainly spurred a lot of interest in
visiting the observatory um as the years went on visitation grew we we had a visitor
center that was in a small room the the so-called rotunda um but then in in the
1980s we got a new Soul trustee Bill putam who's a um Grand nephew of of our
founder and he said you know what P said we want to make this accessible to everybody
we're going to really expand our public programs and so we build a visitor center completely dedicated to doing
this and this new Visitor Center would allow us to Triple our attendance so we could get maybe 60 to 70,000 visitors
who knew maybe we could get that many so we planned for that um and had this
unique blend of of astronomy programming the opportunity to look through classic telescopes like this refractor the
stories of Discovery like of Pluto plus the opportunity to interact with Scientists um who in general are real
people too and really great to talk to um and so you know it's a it's a great
combination of Outreach and science communicating science that's what we do
and so this kept going along and then again Pluto reared its ugly H as it were
when we had the New Horizons fly by in 2015 again that spurred a lot of interest from people to come to the
observatory and and see the you know the heritage of Pluto the home of Pluto where it was discovered um and so many
discoveries related to it have been made and our attendance started really jumping up to over 105,000 visitors a
year and that's a facility that was designed to accommodate accommodate 60 to 70,000 and so we started our
leadership started thinking that you know we've hit a we've hit a Tipping Point we can either keep doing what
we've done and watch a lot of um unhappy people Circle the parking lot a couple
times and leave because they can't find a parking spot or stand in a telescope line that takes an hour and a half to
get to the eyepiece when it's you know 25 degrees on a cold winter night or we can expand um and not only not only
expand to where we have more things for people to do um but also make it the
best quality if we're going to do it let's do it right and thus began this idea um gosh right after New Horizons
really 2015 um this idea of expanding the visitor experience so it started with
you know kind of an immediate need we we have a lot of people um they're writing in long lines we need more telescopes
and so so phase one was let's do a a quote unquote Quick Fix and build this
um new observing Plaza the giov Vol open deck Observatory that has six telescopes
um four of them are are eyepiece and two of them have monitors to where we can look at a variety of things on any given
night um in in different ways through eyepiece through monitors um and really teach and inspire people and so this
opened in the fall of 2019 just in time for Co to hit the next spring so we're
you know but we got it open and and it really helped us with with our Crow control um and just giving people more
things to do and more inspiring opportunities and so as this was
happening then the goal was okay this is kind of what our director Jeff Hall calls the appetizer the main course is
going to be this new visitor facility it's not going to be a modified version
of what we have it's a brand new facility we're we're essentially starting from scratch we're not going to try to make what we had a little better
we're going to start from scratch we're going to bring in people like Ian and his team
and and um talk to fundraisers and talk to the community and make sure we're
we're creating something that is that goes beyond L Observatory it's a crown
jewel for Flag Staff for Arizona and for the field of astronomy and so thus was
formed this idea of an astronomy Discovery Center we decided not just a visitor center but a
a a science center essentially um because studies show that um especially
kids learn a lot more from those interactive informal science opportunities than in the classroom
quite often so we decided to build this um this this new facility and maybe Ian
you can comment on like when you came on board and what your thoughts were about this well it might be useful just to
reflect on the fact that uh the initial idea was to build a small planetarium um and it was it was an
interesting idea Michael West uh with whom I worked in Hawaii um came back
when he started with L Observatory and talked to Samantha gourney and um
suggested that U we might build a small planetarium at the LM and that would
take care of the visitor needs for public exhibition in
astronomy and we Bill Peters and my partner uh in Consulting he and I ran
various workshops with the L team and uh eventually the idea expanded and this
wasn't a result of any agenda was nobody's agenda this this just grew
organically as we began to realize that there were opportunities as well as
obligations to uh right siize this thing if we were going to be dealing with an awful lot of people So eventually over
time this small planetarium grew into a major astronomy Discovery Center with
many of the elements of a planetarium but with much
expanded and it really did and it's it it grew into a 40,000 square foot three
story high facility that um you know to me it really has a little bit of everything for V our typical visitor
well not just our typical visitor any visitor whether you have a really interest in astronomy a passing interest
or you've never looked at the stars um there's something for people of all ages because one of the goals at LOL is to
make astronomy available to everybody um your it doesn't matter your gender your
race whatever we want to try to make it accessible to everybody and so this
that's how this project came about and so what we'd like to do is kind of do a
walk through of the of the we'll just say ADC astronomy Discovery Center and
I'm GNA show as as Ian and I talk we'll show a a combination of drawings as well
as um pictures taken over the last few days um and to give you an idea of
timeline we our our last open day of our current steel Visitor Center is um
October 31st so just a couple days away and we're going to maintain that facility not as a visitor center but as
as the steel Learning Center so a place where we can do summer camps and and science conferences and that sort of
thing um and then the new ADC officially um the groundbreaking is on
November 16th but will be open to the public for a few days before that but then starting even before that we have
some sort of soft openings for donors and and um and family members and so on
and so some of the things I show you um some of these pictures are just a couple days old but they've changed a lot over the
last couple days because um the final touchers are being put on so let's just
go through this as you as you walk into the center and this is the main entrance
and there's a brand new visitor parking lot so if you've been to LOL and the
next time you come up you're not going to park in the same spot it's the new parking lots you kind of go around the old one um in this parking lot
is much larger the old one had something like 60 parking spots and this one has 260 or something to that effect um and
so it allows for really increased growth when you enter you'll see on the left
side um that's a Mars Rover um the perseverance kind of a model of it and
the idea is you know this is a science center but it's low Observatory so we want to we want it to feel like L and
represent how we're serious about our science but also you know we we have fun
doing it and so this this um Rover here you see three kind of smallish green
blobs those are martians kind of in in um reference to our founder p l who
believed there is intelligent life on Mars um that's not necessarily what he thought it looked like or anything but
it it kind of connects that Heritage of the observatory so as we go and
side um we'll oops so I forgot I've got another
view this was taken just last week this is this is a view from the other side so
you go in on ground floor and there's three levels you go up a level and then
you come out here are the back doors and um you notice the glow along the
sidewalk those we don't have any lights along there those are glow stones that um glow in the dark but they don't
affect your night vision and so you can leave the building and transition into
into Dark Skies um as you walk um kind of where our view is is where the jali
open deck Observatory is those are phosphorescent stones and and they're
absolutely beautiful it's quite an Exquisite thing to be walking over those
and some of the shapes are Galactic and and um and other star forms as well it's
it's quite magical it's cool and I think it it's to me this represents um all the thought
that went into this there's so many details and you know we're in an observatory how do we how do we make it
safe for people well we don't need lights um to go outside we have these glow stones um there's just a lot of
really um insightful planning that went into this so we go back to the front again on
entry and as you come in to the right um there's a cafe and it can see about got
about 40 seats or so um and we just signed the contract with a local
restaurant um Jitters they're going to supply you know sandwiches and soups and drinks and stuff like that and so in the
in the summertime you can sit on the patio out front and in the winter time there's a nice fire fireplace in here uh
to make it for a great atmosphere and then on the other side is our gift shop and um the gift shop this
is actually what it looks like right now they're as soon as we close the other Visitor Center in a couple days they're
going to move all the stock over and and completely get this stocked up so this
is pretty close to what it looks like right now and then you go toward the as as you go toward the main part of the
building um you enter kind of the main Gathering Place and this is this is just
such a cool thing um it's it's called the origins gallery and um that kind of
that spiral um feature in the Middle with all the different lights um that that kind
of demonstrates the origins of life on Earth from the earliest molecules the Big Bang at the top and the earliest
molecules to um eventually development of life um and and there's at the bottom
there's a display that that has different features representing life on Earth and and thenan I'll um jump in any
time um otherwise I'll I'll talk I'll just keep going on and talking about
some of the other highlights okay one one of the things that I should mention is that the exhibition design has been
done by a company called keyspace design uh and it's headed by Juan tennis who's
a brilliant designer with Mexican flare in his background but he just he brings
such a wonderful design aesthetic uh to to his work and he's done a superlative
job with this uh installation and this design you know last up till last week
this sculpture had been up and but the lights hadn't been on yet and then last week I saw with the lights on and it it
just comes alive it's such a it's such a different feel and you know pictures of course don't do it justice but you get
kind of the idea of what's happening so this is kind of a kind of a central Gathering area in the main part of the
observatory kind of the Hub of the V Visitor Center so if you if you again continue on the
left side of the building um there's two exhibit areas the first one is called the orbits curiosity Zone and you know
one of the things that was important I think for Samantha Christensen um who's
kind of headed the exhibits in here in programming was making sure we have
something again something for everybody in the past we had an exhibit hall but it wasn't really designed for younger
kids and we have a lot of young visitors like you know under 8 years old so this
orbit curiosity zone is designed specifically for up to eight years old
although I'll have to say in walking through it last week and going down the slide and playing with some of the stuff
I noticed a lot of us so-called adult staff um they really had a good time with it so it's it's something designed
for the kids but it's it's really stunning this is a picture for this is a picture I took last week um we have the
planets hang from the ceiling um to scale and then there's just everything is tactile in here
there's only one monitor which I'll show in a second but everything is is something you touch it's it's I mean
it's like kids go here they're playing but but they're learning stuff it's it's um everything is educational and ties in
with astronomy and kind of leading them through the way is marsy this little
character in the middle and to the right is PL and because of lol's connection
with Mars and Pluto those are characters that you know they're going to be kind
of leading kids through their experience and we even have like stuffed animals that are going to be in the gift shop
Marcy and pl and um just this light-hearted way of doing science that
shows that science science is fun it's fun to learn yeah there's a there's a cuteness Factor there too but it belies
the fact that the Lowel astronomer paid a huge amount of attention to every
scientific detail that was incorporated within the exhibition design it's really
quite a remarkable balance and I think that's another comment on um you know
getting getting a whole team together because you know the astronomers certainly can share their knowledge and
make sure things are accurate but they don't design exhibits um that's what you
guys do Ian and and Juan and and crw and so getting all the different experts
in their field together um was really critical to making this thing um work so well I this this one is has been a staff
favored already this one you launch a rocket so this in the middle there's this little or right here on the right
um there's this little lever you you pull a few times to pump up the air pressure and then you can move the the
launcher to different angles and try to get it the rocket through circles it launches um and it just it makes you
think about you know what it takes to fly in space and and thinking about
changing trajectory and speed and things like that so again it's all all different ways of just um having fun
while learning oh let me go back I I I forgot to mention um right in the middle
here to the right I think you can see my cursor that's the only monitor in here and it's an infrared detector so as you
walk up you can see yourself walking in infrared so blues and oranges and reds
and such so it really it really captures you know your attention when you see
it and then right next to this this um Hall is the um stard Stardust lab and
this is kind of a a traditional Science Center but again very tactile like to
the right you see this picture of p l and a picture of Mars well that's
actually all 3D um so you can touch P of L and and feel
the conjour of face but then all also the canals that he thought were on Mars those are depicted here and so and
that's how this exhibit hall is there's just about every sense um you use her
there's even an exhibit about smell the smells of space um and um and so it's
again different ways of experienced astronomy and becoming inspired about astronomy
so this is on one side of the main floor the other side is something that that
Ian has um just masterfully brought together this is this is from upstairs
this is um the LOL Universe theater from the top they're about 180 seats here and
down in the front there's a stage um and that looks looks all very
ni good and well but this is an image from last week with um part there
practicing one of the shows we're doing um the screen is 25 ft tall and what's
the how's it measure around 160 degrees or something like that 160 degree it's a
it's a wraparound almost cinama style LED screen that surrounds the
audience it's just a remarkable facility and the the LED screens are so bright
and crisp that uh the imagery is stunning it just abs absolutely stunning
and you can you can kind of see the screen I'm outlining it here it's distorted because of our view but this
is it so that that's 25 feet tall there and then it comes around and then
there's another screen up here overhead screen yes for for overhead effects and
Sky effects and ancillary imagery and it just enhances the whole thing and
this this replaces the idea of a of a tradition planetarium because it it has
planetarium programming capability built into it but it it is a different type of
uh theater format alog together that envelops the audience in a in a oneway
seating and and this is an example that like you're saying and we could play the
Super Bowl on there or the World Series or something if you can get the right format but but the the programs we do
they're not just de show a video um live interaction some of the programs have
actors um this is them practicing this one um our first program that we created is about imagination and the critical
role of of imagination in science and this takes advantage of one of L's
strengths historically and that has been its staff has been trained to be
presenters and so we're we're tapping into that so the these will be live shows augmented by by this
amazing 3D LED experience yeah so this
this is just one of the theaters though there's another one we'll see toward the end here um as we so so that was on the
first level we go up to the second level and there's um something called the Great planetary Hall which is a a big
room with super sized images of planets on the walls and that'll be a great place for doing um for doing programs
and and luncheons and weddings and um breakout sessions for science
conferences um and so and then it empties out into the onto the main
campus to the to the goo gial the open deck Observatory um and then we get up to the
upper level and I'm skipping a couple things but here here by getting the highlights we get to the upper level and
you come out onto this Terrace which um this was the original this was going to
be the original top of the of the building right Ian yes and the idea was this was going to
be as Ian said you know this this project started with an idea of doing a
planetarium and so the universe theater kind of takes care of the components of
the traditional um planetarium but then on top here we have another kind of Quasi
planetarium um this is the entryway this Terrace and then um this was the
original height but we added another eight feet so you'll be just at the tree line rather than having a your view
blocked and this is this is this theater up there um these are the seats being
installed um two weeks ago um these seats notice these aren't just seats
there's all this wiring these seats are heated so this is another adaptation of
the planetarium concept except you're not sitting I mean these seats tip back you look up you're not
looking at a ceiling with stars projected you're looking at the real Dark Skies of Flag Staff this is this is
this is one of the most exciting things I think I I've ever been involved in this is a a real
planetarium uh with with planetarium technology built into it but with heated seats and instead of a a dome screen
above you it's the real sky and it's going to be absolutely exciting and and
thrilling and a groundbreaker Al it'll it'll be it'll be
this is going to be a GameChanger and and it's stunning because it it takes advantage of
flagstaff's famously Dark Skies um during the daytime the views in here of
the surrounding landscape are just phenomenal from seeing the different
buildings of the observatory bird's eye view to seeing all these Cinder cones on the horizon but then at night time to be
able to have a 360° Horizon essentially and you know like in in a planet ter we
have somebody that maybe is pointing out the Orion Nebula for instance and then
what's neat about this is the screen that comes up and we can get a closeup
view of the Orion Nebula as they're sitting looking at at um at Orion in the
sky and then later on when they're done they can then go to our telescopes and
see this closeup with their own eye and so it it it has this ability to really
um embrace the night sky and see it in so many different ways and I agree Ian I
mean for me this is this is the coolest part of the ADC is I think because
because it's so stunning I mean the views are amazing and and to be able to do a program like this um
outside and it it pays homage to the the history of the planetarium which is just
exactly 100 years old this year um but historically it pays homage to
that but it also pays homage to the real night sky which is a loal tradition and
so it's a wonderful marriage of two historical aspects and Ian just to
clarify you weren't there for the first planetarium right I just wanted to make sure we got
that the date right on that yeah thanks Kevin I'll get I'll get you back for
that one so this is this is just kind of a basic introduction to it but it's it
really is stunning and and um we've had so many people viewing it previewing it
and we've had a lot of media that are covering the construction and you know
that like Ian said there's just not anything like it it's it's it's um taking advanced technology marrying with
a a research facility that that also is an Outreach facility and it's just a
unique and so whatever your interest in astronomy I think you're going to find
you know something here that's really enjoyable and and inspiring and you know I can't wait to have um the Daves up
there and Scott um Ian is so familiar with this because has been such a a
leader in making this happen but having all of you others up there for opening day and you know seeing pictures it's
like seeing pictures of the Grand Canyon and then you see it person it's you know it's stunning and I can't I'm really
looking forward to that to seeing not only kids going into the exhibit area
and the look on their faces but to see people like you guys who have been doing
astronomy a good part of your lives and and to see how how we now present that
to the public and by the way as a as kind of a
a final note I guess um you know when we built the steel Visitor Center we had no idea what
attendance could be um and the same thing with this we don't know what the maximum you know what we'll top out on
an attendance but we want to be ready for the future in case astrotourism as
the current trend is continues to grow and so one of the Forward Thinking parts
of this is um infrastructure was put in behind the two exhibit holes to where
down the road if we do the need to expand we can just remove those walls
and the the hardware for um electricity and everything is there um so it's already in place that's um and and with
our land we can also as we need to build more parking areas and stuff like that we have the capacity to continue growing
as needed and so that I think is is really great for the future and and this
will be a contribution to the advancement of Astro tourism in Arizona and Beyond yeah absolutely absolutely
you know I I think this is uh one of the crown jewels of uh astronomy Outreach
and astrotourism in the United States it's really um you know stupendous what
you guys have put together and uh I can't wait to sit back in one of those heated seats and look at the sky and
have a um this kind of planetarium experience I think it's going to be a lot of fun uh we got a question uh Lori
uh is watching on Facebook and she is wondering when is everything going to be
open uh I know that there's the grand the ribbon cutting ceremony on November
16th uh but there's some other aspects like the 160 degree U um screen and and
this kind of thing when we everything be ready to go it's all going to be ready on November 13th that's kind of a soft
opening so okay yeah so 13th 14th and 15th it's all it's all ready and then
the 16th is just a celebration yeah you need to you need to meet us out
there so um November 16th uh ribbon cutting ceremony um I know that uh I
think that you can become a member of this astronomy Discovery Center and get in a day or two early uh which is
great in fact we have we have membership we have member days before the 13th that
current members can sign up um to see it even earlier than that we're we're starting to do kind of previews for like
contractors I think are the our first open housee in November 2D or 3D and
then every few days we're doing something else for a couple days of members some nights for donors and so on
so the first public night is 13th but depending on if you know if you're a member you might be able to come earlier
and that's a member of of Lowel Observatory yes right yeah now you might have mentioned Marley
or the Marley family um what what got them really inspired to put the the uh
you know the endowment or or the uh contribution to make this
happen well the Marley the Marley Foundation um has certainly contributed
to a lot of a lot of um public things in Arizona the the Phoenix Zoo for instance
they're big support of the Phoenix Zoo and and and beyond that um I maybe you
can talk talk about this a little bit more but I know that some of our leadership Jeff Hall and leis the actor
and others went to talk to the Marley foundation and and they saw the value of
this again not just to L Observatory or Flagstop at all of Arizona as this would
be a real Boon to astr tourism and and inspiration in general
and so they saw the value of this and and the money they gave was the largest donation they had ever made to any um
efforts I think it's significant that there are over 700 donors to this this
project everything from 20 million down to a few hundred um and and the Marley
Foundation is by far the largest single donation but uh Lisa actor who was head
of philanthropy and headed a team team and she and Jeff Hall the director just
did a magnificent job of fundraising even during covid when everybody else
played dead and they um and they had a wonderful story to tell and and um they
rarely asked for money I think this is important they they simply got people
excited and wanting to be part of this this great story that they were telling
and when they brought people into into the fold and got them excited about it
uh people would ask them how can we help it was an amazing story and one that's
quite unique in my experience that's great Alan Dy is watching on Facebook and his question is
are the historic telescopes like the Pluto astrograph open to the public as
part as a typical visit and the old historic Library Rotunda
it was wonderful to visit thanks thanks Ellen and I know you're a good friend of Claus brj who speaks of you highly
um yeah all the all the stuff that LOL used to do for the visitor experience is
still happening and the telescope viewing on good nights you can view through the 24-in refractor um the
Tories of the Pluto Discovery telescope the Rotunda Museum in fact over the next
couple years um we'll be redesigning the runda museum
and um you know making that redoing that kind of not not to the scale of the
astronomy Discovery Center but upgrading it and bringing in some new exhibits um
so all that stuff is still part of the experience and that that was important to do that that while the ADC could
certainly be a standalone destination um there's all this other
stuff about L that makes the whole visit unique that we want to make sure people still have access to yeah and will want
to preserve the character of the Rotunda the exhibits will be modern and that that certainly was a big
consideration of um we don't want to change who L Observatory is it's still
right we've still got this strong Heritage of astronomy communication research and Outreach and we want to
maintain that yeah it looks like LOL has made steady improvements all the way around
that um Pluto AST graph is incredibly well restored it looks like it's brand
new yet I mean it I think every part on it is either original or if it's if it's
not original it certainly looks it so right yeah um how do people get tickets
to go see this uh the astronomy Discovery Center well it's pretty easy
can you can get tickets online um or just show up at l. edu is
that.edu the website yeah or just or just show up I mean we you know I mean
opening day is going to be a little bit different story it's gonna be CRA there's gonna be a lot of people there
but in general I mean um you can get tickets ahead of time that might save you a little time but you don't have to
you can get them on site walk up and get them yeah that's great and you might bump in
Kevin there and um or any of the uh uh
the interpreters that are at LOL I one of the things I really noticed is how well uh that they perform you know uh in
sharing the night sky and and sharing the heritage of L Observatory and um uh just uh being
there uh it just feels energetic you know you've got um uh many young
interpreters there and at first you you you're kind of thinking they don't know as much as someone that's been spending
decades in it like you have Kevin but uh um but they're they've been trained
quite well and they're very enthusiastic about it they get the spirit you know you can feel it and so many of them are
are astronomy physics students over at Northern Arizone University so it's a nice kind of partnership almost with
them excellent all right guys is there anything else you want to say before we wrap up well just thank you got for for
this opportunity it's great to see you and great to share this story with everybody yeah it's great I'm glad you
guys did this so thank you thank you very much um there is one last question
here from Frank floran watching on Facebook he says will the facility operate year round or there plan
closures of the facility at certain times of the year FR it'll be it'll be
year round um they're you know it'll be closed for select holidays you know Christmas Thanksgiving
that sort of thing but pretty much um yeah all right and I I might just add
one more thing there um sorry for a little more time but you know one of the things with the observatory in the past
is um we have people you know visitors might want to come up but it was it was cloudy so they decided not to come up
because they think of the observatory as a clear weather Place well the astronomy
Discovery Center is an all- weather place and in fact I would say you know when the weather is kind of cruddy
outside and you can't go hiking you can go to the astronomy Discovery Center and have a great experience so it I think
it's going to be interesting to see um how it changes our visitation um you
know weather-based visitation sure excellent okay well I can't wait to
get there uh you know I'll be there Ian will be there Kevin of course will be there David Levy will be there uh many
of my friends plan to be there as well so um and I hope that those of you
watching uh join us as well um because uh it's going to be a a real experience
so again thanks Kevin and Ian and we'll be talking to you in person very soon so
sounds good thanks thanks okay thanks everybody
thanks okay our next um presenter we're going to go down to um our Ina to Caesar
brolo who is set up on his balcony uh and uh Caesar are you uh are you all set
to go yes yes I'm setting something but
okay I'm going now to
connect and take a moment here so we've had some great uh presentations
so far really uh really happy about this um and also some great um uh people in
the audience asking some interesting questions and there you are
Caesar well um tonight uh I have made a short
presentation I'm making some exposure uh from from the balcony
um um I'm I'm trying uh to use uh something that is very easy to use um
it's an an entry level National Geographic telescope um which have um have uh uh
four four in and half and a very short very short uh focal length over a um
exus 100 Mon and um with a planetary camera uh one time
last year um I used the same the same
setup for H make pictures of um Omega
Centauri claster and tonight I'm taking picture
uh from uh I'm appointing to um when I
say the 47 to kind cluster um I'm trying if it's
possible um make some pictures uh of tarantula
nebula um the position is it's okay but maybe later I make an um some uh
appointments uh and some likes to to
make a better a better um how do you say
a better uh stacking pictures uh I use out the stacking pictures but the idea
tonight is is uh maybe I can let me see
if I can um share my screen from some some kind of pictures
how I uh assembly uh or this set up in the balcony okay few hours
[Music] ago is it windy there tonight no no it's
a it's a quiet H it's a quiet uh night good this is is it's
gray we got some wind here it was we did have clouds in Arkansas but they all
blew away so [Music]
well here H first of all talking with the audience uh is the the first
pictures that I showing is how in uh
regular bags I have here the tripod I
have I can I can show you so much better the
equipment this one is is the tripod is it's very
small this is the Mount and here is the telescope with the
camera you might Cesar you might want to stop sharing for a moment if you're G to
show your setup there ah okay okay you you're watching the the the pictures
okay yes all right that's two hours ago yes I W that's a nice view that's a very
nice yes very nice was a very yes it's an excellent night um I'm I don't have
pictures pictures already but later maybe I can I can
um share with you some picture uh because it's maybe something basic
because I'm using a planetary camera but I think that I can take some
picture maybe near to the end of the St body mhm okay well here is Con I'm
connecting the the cables uh the wires uh from the air um R
Ascension to the declination Motors this is ready the connections
between the electronics and uh electronics for declinations and motor
right the mount is ready the bar the counter bar is ready
too this is the the camera I see the
camera is going to to be placed in the same place where you put the the ipce
normally to to watch yeah
well the the another part of the setup
computer cable wire from from the camera to the computer and wire from the mod to
the computer or we you I can use the cell
phone uh with application that I have the same I can make a um all by uh
uh Wi-Fi mode
yeah now it's is the red light ready and the green light uh say that is all
connected well the the red uh dot point for for this def finder and all is ready
to to use that I made it now I I uh using the telescope
H searching um this uh in this side of the sky of course it's impossible to
see between between this uh two two buildings we
have the large the large uh megalan cloud and in this area the small
one uh we have maybe maybe I can show you some Sun stars of course that is not
so let me let me see if I can show
you we have H we have an astronomer watching from H twitch uh tonight and he
to know are are you using any kind of light pollution
filters yes something that is important I'll share I'll share now the A View
From the camera it's not something uh uh um how do you say it's it's not
something static or because it's not a finished it's a live view there
are polar um uh stars in the area of the
uh our our uh polar uh
polar South Sky Southern polar Stars yes sou yes yes um but this is a live image
of stars um later I I'll appoint the telescope to
the uh large maganet Cloud to try uh how how
we can do it AST astronomical pictures from a camera that is only for planetary
planetary pictures and this is very important to to talk with the people uh
because it's something uh where you have the
opportunity to to have um a low cost
equipment because maybe you don't need for starting um a goto WiFi mount in a
second step you can buy this but you can start uh with a
regular equatorial mod with with a a um motor stepper motor or regular
motor uh to have TR the rotation of this of the sky this is is I'm
talking for kids I'm talking for teenagers or people that um they don't
know if spend a lot of money in their first steps in astronomy um today do have um a real ER
bound or uh uh options in a in a low cost and good quality uh products uh
this is uh was impossible only 10 years ago was
impossible think in cameras that are cheaper uh or are
a than less than 200
US average in the world uh do you have the possibility to make um nebula
pictures uh maybe the bright the bright nebulas
um and with a telescope that is very simple but very good because you have a
um short focal length um enough diameter
to to collect light um for for uh having
um uh good good uh kind of of uh results
good kind of pictures and have enjoy you can put of course here an ipce to to
watch or you can put your cell phone with an
adapter normally in this kind of telescop is provide uh well it's
starting to to have fun this is all for tonight but it's the first is a new a
new uh time that I returned to the
balcony um to show Singley is
easy um with results that have happiness
you know yeah yeah very good very good and so uh
you're collecting data right now you're you're taking images right now H not now
because I returned to the to the um so South Pole and I'm going again oh
you're just P aligning right now okay how about towards the end of the
program uh maybe if I have if you have some to see okay yes yes yes totally I I
choose now um return to the soall and going again to the to to choose something in
the sky uh because you know that I have this welding that you have sometimes a
little of reflex reflex light Paras parasite light you know uh but I I show
you the the live image just uh with the stars of the pole and it's something
that are very very low bright stars um
it's impossible to see if if you don't uh because in this part of the sky I can
see any stars but I show you in the in the light I show you to the AI camera
sees it though that's yes yes and it's in in a low in a low
sensitivity level that I put because uh but I try yes I try to the end of the
show to to make something okay okay all right we we'll
return to you uh Cesar uh good luck on the Sky there and we'll be back okay
okay thank you very much all right thanks okay we see you later Marcel and so now we're going to move up
to um uh Brazil to H marchelo Souza marchelo is uh I've introduced him many
times but I can't uh overemphasize the fact that marchello is an incredible uh
Outreach force in in the world and he has shown many many many thousands of
people uh sometimes many many thousands in a single event uh the sky to show
them a comet or an eclipse or something special going on in the sky he is the
only person I know that knows a person that saw a meteorite fall okay uh so
that was an incredible story Marella has hundreds of Amazing Stories he's met
amazing astronomer from all over the world astronauts from around the world uh and so if you ever get a chance to go
down to Brazil uh to one of his events you won't be sorry so uh marchello
thanks for coming on to Global star party again uh we're getting closer uh
marchel is also the editor of skyup magazine and we're getting closer to our
next issue here so marchel you are I think you're M muted right now so yes hi
nice to meet SC thank you very much for the invitation it's a great pleasure to be here thank you for your kind
words thank you today I uh here in
Brazil in our city it is raining since Saturday we have one week of ranks
prediction yeah and now is the we are not in summer but we are preparing for
the summer and and this Begins the period of rains here in
Brazil during the winter is the best moment to look to the sky and now we
have many days of rains now begins in the spirit and goes until February but I
hope this year we have days to that you have opportunity to look to the sky with
without rains I will try to share my screen now I hope it
work well today my computer ever is we don't know what they want to do but I
hope that today will help me I think that
work yes today one and I I will talk as
we can't see the sky directly I talk about uh something that is a a special
moment about radio asy that this year we celebrate the 50 year of the Nobel
Prize about the discovery of the
poar the neutron star and is a fantastic
history that's I think that most of you people already know that is importance
of jine Bel in this process she that made the overy of the first Neutron
sta she was a graduate students with 24
years old and she was working at the mul
R astronomy observatory near Cambridge and first in August she noted
a different signal and her super visor pH supervisor he was
doing pH in astronomy his a pH supervis
said that it will be great to have more data from the signal and then in 20
November 28 1967 she had the opportunity to receive
again the signal from the same source and something different as she
noted in August that a
signal different from other s that she received when she was working with
this H telescope and was something that she
first we know that the first H name that she used was Little Green Man
it's like some life was trying to talk with her
she didn't believe this as supervisor also didn't believe because she he Al he
worked one year ago find different
sources that's was recorded in radi
astronomy and with the signal that this was the when he was
recorded the August 6 1967 and then in in November
2867 or 1967 was recorded again is like a
message a short something that repeat with
frequeny and the her advice knows someone that's why
was working in a different kind of
star the there was a mut star and the one year later they published the first
article about the discovery of a neuton star and this is the maze neon star I
will talk uh a little about the neon star before I return to the history of
this discovery this is a uh a presentation of uh a neutron star
with the strong magnetic fields that neutron star has and the
stands uh you have the send the the information
that you receive here from this the post because of the strong Fields as it is
rotating very fast we receive the signal like uh I don't know the name that you
say in English that is the the light that comes from to advisor the the ships
that near the Earth it's like in Portuguese is far all I don't know the
the name of this light that change with frequency rotating to say to the N the
Sheep is that you have land that and it's like it's like this but I find
in in English in few moment then is rotate very fast and how that
appears from astrophysics you had a prediction of
the the existence of neutron stars as you can see here the
life cycle of a start very short representation here I not I only show
the end here that is what is important for us we have a neula that was the
origin of the Proto stars and this Proto Stars
you have it an star depends on the mass of the original uh Mass you have a massive
stars or un star like we live is the center of the our system
here the Sun and every St the evolution is like it begins a red giant and then a
planetary nebula and then finish Life as a white GL this is the future
almost the future of the Sun and you have a massive stars begins a red super
giant and what happens in the center nucleus of the star H you have a nuclear
fusion that's producing the elements you have a
hydrogen with hydrogen have Dum then you have tium they have alium you form the
elements but when you begin to have diffusion of the
iron this change everything because diffusion of
iron the needs energy from the start to then this you have here the energy
produced by the fusion of elements in the nucleus they have equilibrium between
this energy and the gravitational fields that pulls the elements to the center
then the Stars has an equilibrium for app but in in the nucleus if you have
iron begins to have iron diffusion of your iron needs energy then everything
collapse to the nucleus of this star and then this is like a
bomp and after this you have a supernova and you
have the iminent of this can be a black hole or a neutron star that's also a
very Dense Star as name say is a neutron because you have the electrons and the
protons they you in this process you
have the most of the star composed by neutrons because of
the strong pressure that you have and
then work like begins at as I said is something very small and is difficult is
we can't see using telescopes remember I showed the first image from the Hub of a
Newton star it is it was not possible to see using telescopes then one way to
find a Newton star was if using a radio telescope that you receive the signal
sent by the neutron star that rotate very fast and directed The this the
signal and when he rotates send the information rot again send information
and then we record this energy that comes from the this kind of stuff o
sorry and here is the first article
uh reporting the discovery that was published in the nature magazine H the
name of observation of a happily pulsating Rao s Pula is used by a
journalist that he used this name to H instead to say ping Radio St they
use p and they use this until today and this article was publ in February 24
1968 you see the authors here hsh anony hsh he supervisor of the Jin Bell of J
Bell and the the the last name is Callins and this
article was the first article about the discovery of
a neon star and this AR and Mar H that also is one of the authors and
the an he was received the Nobel Prize in
1974 for the discovery 50 years ago but
jeline Bell didn't receive the Nobel Prize she was the person that she was a
student a graduated student but she was at the observat the radio Observatory
and he was responsible to detect signal but she was not included as one of the
person that receiv received Noel prize H she's very after this she became very
famous because many people didn't agree
with ER she not to be included ER in the
prize and I also think that she needed to be there is a cognition of
her but didn't this didn't happen and
here a a representation of a Newton star and here is the imag mar recently
of jeline bell she born in
1943 if I'm not wrong yes 1943 then she has 81 years old
now and he even she didn't receive no prize he received her cognition in all
the world for her Discovery and here is the first reported
image of alone neutron star made by the hble
Space Telescope in 1997 this a
fantastic image obtained by the H telescope the first time to have a star image in
1997 and as I'm talking about radio astronomy i' would like to talk with
about another person that for me is something is a fantastic person that is
can't colors I don't know if they know and I think that few people
knows about him but if you saw the move contact
then you have a character there this was is participating one of him girl was
born in July 1949 and the son of
engineer his birth was premature and to save his life he was placed in an
incubator filled with pure oxygen the excess of oxygen damaged his
retinas Oh leaving him totally blind Wow when he he
born his father that engineer that like
physics read astronomy books to colors when colors was a child influencing the
boys later aspirations now and he grew up in
California and he was a great students at
school and he begin to study psychology but he changed to Major to
his major to physics and he received his PhD in
physics from the University of California in 198 he is the first totally blind
physicist that will in United States and also I think that is one the
first of one of the first blind physicist in the world and also the first astronomer totally blind that we
know in je because we have another astronomers that at the end of life
became blind like Galileo galile and the other astronomy but he was the first BL
from birth probably that he finish a PhD
in astronomy and Kent C is work he he as a
he was blind and he decided to work in astronomy that he studed some things
that he can't see it's something that is amazing I show that
ER anyone can do what wants and can work at set that search
for intelligence program and she works there from 19 85 to
1990 and he was a Target search Signal dete team
leader in the set Institute and in one of him if you who saw the movie contact
you have a character there that is blind and you work
the radio radio telescope that is this one
here that's is with Jor Foster here and his character was created in honor of him
and then she is an example for all of us a blind person that choose to work with
astronomy and made he was very important research and
at search program here he died in
2021 now this was the history that I would like
to show today that's two fantastic person that jine Bell and the Kent cus
for me I reference when you talk about raidy for the importance of their
contributions in direct examples then this is what I would like
to talk to the right thank you very much for opportun yeah I did not know about
this gentleman and uh uh you know during the movie contact of course I was I was
quite captivated by that character so um uh it's uh there are people in
astronomy education who um work with sight challenged people
or even completely blind people I guess they would also be what would you call
sight challenged but uh uh there are many many ways that you can understand the universe beyond uh uh vision and so
uh you know through your eyes because there's Vision through so many other things just earlier today I was watching
a video because I didn't know one existed of Helen Keller and Helen Keller
could not hear or nor could she uh see and so but she learned how to talk and
uh she had an a person that worked with her that was kind of an interpreter and
she would move her fingers on her hand and this is how they would communicate and is really amazing so
um we developed here a planetarium for blind people here that we call the
unnown universe that you have a special place and we put in
3D representation of the constellations and the sound of radio astronomy that
come from R from stars and they also we have a book with WR that publish by Naza
that talk you can with the fingers and in the
book and it was fantastic because we involved also the population because the
guides as blind people blind students here from our seat they they
were everybody puts a protection in the eyes oh so they and yeah yes and then
the the the students was they were the guides inside
the planetarium and they felt like they
felt without the division sure and we did this for three years here in our
city and I will show next the image of the I would like yeah I would like to
know we did here and they called the UN now universe that was in in the biggest
big shop the biggest shopping center of our city here in braz now that we had to
support and install installed a special place ER with
the ER the this representation of the con the constellations and it was an
fantastic experience for us and the changed our idea and we also developed
project in a school for for blind people that you have here
in our city for during two or three years that you developed this year and
this changed many the ways that we imagine life think that was for us it
was a fantastic experience yeah it's wonderful thank you very much thank you
for such a great presentation marello and we will see you next time okay okay
bye thank you okay all right so uh we're going
from Brazil to the bowling alley with uh with Adrian Bradley
Adrian multitasking yet again that so uh you're seeing some of my uh buddies that
came to tell me my team just hit a grand slamming their up they're also here to tell me that it's my turn to bowl it's
your turn to bowl okay yeah so what I'm going to do is I'm going to do a little
quick presentation we talked about um okay the uh like think the theme of
tonight's program had to do with solar basically solar streams it's um you
wrote a really nice piece about how everything the sun does affects what
happens on Earth and not just the phenomenon that we been seeing right um
so what I thought I'd do yeah yeah so what I thought I'd do real quick
hopefully this works without the sound because one of the things when you're
looking at Aurora it moves and
uh it takes a while to for the hopefully it'll allow me to do I'm not sure why
let me cancel start over I need to go to I need to do
this share screen and so I'm going to take you guys
inside the bowling alley while I'm doing this because I'm going to go ahead and throw my
shot and uh what I wanted to share was when you do a time
lapse such as this you really see the screaming going uh you may be hearing music if you
are I'll stop it you're also hearing a lot of people screaming cuz you're in a bowl
alley [Music] so well I don't H the Bowl yet so let's
stop that before we and let's look at it again different types of music and I
wasn't able to mute the music there um but I got permission from this gentleman
to use his music so hopefully that be we okay this one in particular is
interesting because you're going to see what happens when it the Aurora picks up
you know the streams can come in any time look what happens there and that's something that's uh quite amazing to see
in real time so here so I wanted to share that
because uh there's some things that you can
see um make it eye and there's some things that video helps you to
see um I'm G to deliver my
shot but uh video helps you to see even more than what you would normally
see naked eye and it can be quite impressive and it's all coming from the
same Sun that we have yeah everyone looks at every morning
sometimes takes for granted so let's see if I can make a
spare nope so with that Miss spare that's the
end of my presentation I'm gonna okay stop the share of the screen but uh here we go all right yeah
okay what we will do okay I I can see that you're you're up
to Bowl here so good luck on on your game oh I already threw the shot yeah and it didn't go very
well but uh my favorite team's doing well at least and at least my buddy's
doing well so uh get out exercise go out and see the night sky sure and don't
forget to look up even if you're not doing well yourself it's uh
it can be quite impressive to see the effects of what the sun does and I have a feeling Scott we're going to have a
lot more before um before this is over since we're approaching maximum I think
there's going to be some bigger displays we've already gone through
maximum but uh you know it takes takes a while for for things to to calm down so
you know you think we've got another big auroral display coming I've got um I've got a great
video too that I'm going to show it's only a couple of minutes long but uh I'll show it to the audience it's of the
Sun and uh you know uh showing uh when that really that really big Sunspot was
I'm sh I remember that big it was naked eye you know so I remember that and yeah
yeah the Aurora It produced um you know I would wish and
now that it's not my turn anymore I would wish for everyone to see the
aurora the way we saw it when that big Sunspot was there um I'm G to
try and share the uh image that I
got yeah those those images weren't even the uh W from that Aurora May
10th and and as the story goes as I flip through here I felt it looked like
somebody was shining a flashlight as it was getting darker and I said someone cut off that flashlight we're trying to
film the Aurora and the FL it shined in my eyes again and I said listen someone you got
to turn off the flashlight yeah stop messing around here stop messing
around and I turned to see okay where's this light coming from and who am I
going to have to give a Stern talking to
and and we're going to get to it here we go um you know give a Stern talking to
somebody and I looked up and saw this wow I would wish for everyone look at
that is that is that Cactus no that's just a tree that I use to try and frame
the shot looks like reaching up to this spectacular display in the heavens yeah
and it's right it that's so the curtain like this you see it in the distance
that's when you're part of the curtain it's right above you those I the things are getting ionized right above you and
that's experience I would wish for everyone to have so uh so Scott since it's just
about my turn again um I'm gonna go ahead and go but uh to the uh those who
are watching um you know there are some amazing things that happened this year
maybe a year in review if we do another Global Star Party um that would be a
great I think that'd be a great topic because there were a lot of great things that happened this year folks that you
know I I never thought the Aurora would look like this at my uh latitude but it
did so yeah so I was thoroughly impressed with that but uh yeah would be yeah that's
great yeah well thanks for having me on I'm GNA go finish my abysmal game at
least my team is up and uh and I'll see if I can at least throw
one strike this game throw a strike dude okay throw a strike all right thank you Scot thank you for take care bye bye
y okay um I think we'll check in Caesar are you uh are you listening in at this
time we can check in with you and if
not then I've got this video that I want to play here so I know Yan and uh zizo I
guess that's how you pronounce your name uh Adrian does make some beautiful nightscape images so uh I think he even
sells them so uh you can check Adrien Bradley on the internet and uh find some
uh really amazing stuff but this is uh about that giant Sunspot I thought you
guys might want to see this this Sunspot is a huge deal in
Spring 2024 NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured the biggest Sunspot
we've seen in almost a decade at almost 14 times the size of Earth it was so
large you could see it with your own eyes using proper eye protection of course
sunspots form due to intense magnetic forces that block some of the sun's heat from reaching the surface as a result
sunspots are cooler than their surroundings and appear as spots with a central dark area the Umbra and a
lighter outer area the penumbra sunspots are frequently linked to solar flares which are among the most
powerful explosions in our solar system this Sunspot produced more than 100
flares and triggered several Earth directed coronal mass injections which are explosive Outburst of magnetized
plasma from the Sun resulting in the historic May 2024 solar
[Music] storms yeah so if you guys watch that
with your solar filters I think that was really cool I see that Robert Reeves is here uh Robert can you hear
me he may be having dinner
okay all right so um look I I think that uh I want to uh you know thank uh
everyone for participating um we do have a couple of extra uh presentations to give here um
we have Carlos Hernandez who is uh hurrying home at this moment he'll be on
in a few minutes um and uh if you guys give me a couple of minutes uh in
between this Gap uh we will continue on with the program so just uh bear with us
and we'll be [Music]
back
for
e
for
for for
all right guys thanks for hanging in there with us um uh we have on with us
right now Robert Reeves uh down in Texas and uh Robert is our much more than our
resident uh Moon expert he is uh someone that poetically and uh very uh
uh how do I say this technically uh uh describes the moon for us and so um you
know I've I I wish early on into my uh
hobby as an amateur astronomer that I had learned more about the moon I can tell you over the last couple of years
that I've learned more about the Moon from Robert Reeves than anybody so um
Robert thanks for coming on to the global star party again well thank you for having me uh it's been uh been a
while but a lot of water's gone under the bridge but uh here we are and uh ready to rock and roll again um right
the um General theme um I thought was uh dealing with the solar wind solar stream
so forth yeah so I um thought I would talk a little bit about how the solar
wind affects the moon and it does so in profound ways that many people don't realize and uh one of the net effects of
the interaction of the solar wind and the moon um can be seen in the uh the great push to go back to the get man
expeditions to the South Pole of the Moon where we believe there is water on the moon and the solar wind has a lot to
do with the creation of this water so U let me see if I can um get screen share
working and go to Boom it appears to be working great
um first slide up not the moon but the sun now um
um when we understand the solar wind originates from the sun it's this flow
of hydrogen and helium uh that is rushing outward from the Sun velocities of well over a million kilometers per
hour this stuff streams out from the Sun sweeps past the Earth uh the Earth um
let me get my slides going here so I don't overtalk myself um and not only the solar wind but
occasionally we have these coronal mass ejections and these get a lot of play lately because they trigger The
Marvelous auroras that we've been seeing lately and also if a chronal mass ejection uh is strong enough and
directed toward the Earth it can have a profound effect on the performance of our satellites in orbit our
communication satellites or weather satellites U even power transmission um
through um uh tension wires here on Earth um real strong coronal mass
injection can disrupt that and uh have pretty significant effects on the earth
and uh these coronal mass ejections um if they arrive at the proper time uh
they can have a great effect on the on the face of the Moon as well uh we'll see how here in a second we see this
diagram where uh the Moon is emitting the solar wind the coronal Mass ejections all of the stuff is spraying
out into space in all directions and U in this slide we see the Earth has our
magnetic field that protects the Earth from a lot of this uh the solar wind will wrap around the magnetic field of
the earth and stream around it and some amount of particles will uh become
caught in the magnetic field funnel down we see them as an aurora if that coral
mass eject and is strong enough uh it can disrupt that magnetic field the
impulse will be felt directly on the earth and uh we pray that we don't have
what we call a Carrington event where a solar mass ejection is so strong that it
would destroy Earth's electronic infrastructure so um kind of keeping
that in the back of our mind and bear in mind that the moon orbits the earth in
um an orbit that takes it in and out of the Earth's um Magneto sheath the uh the
magnetic field that is protecting us from a majority of this radiation so the moon can swing out of the magnetic tail
um be off to one-sided or even in front of the Moon the Earth between the uh the
Sun and the Earth and bear the full brunt of U the solar wind or chronal
mass ejection now bear in mind that the solar wind is made up primarily of hydrogen gas hydrogen atoms and it's
about 4% helium and um while this uh
does have an effect on the moon uh a slow erosion effect which I'll explain in a minute um a chronal mass ejection
has up to 20% helium a heavier atom and U um a chronal mass ejection if it goes
on for two days uh is strong enough that it can actually strip off 1 to 200 tons
of material off of the Moon by eroding it atom by atom by atom as this Fierce
solar wind and this bombardment of uh of helium atom strikes the moon and uh uh
that's about 50 times greater than the erosion from just the solar wind alone
so uh we tend to think of the Moon as a very rough rugged place and uh we look
through a telescope along the Terminator will give you that impression um a very rugged sharp uh impact chiseled uh uh
surface um kind of reminiscent of of you like this but in reality um much of the
moon is much softer more rounded not so sharp and angular and uh in this view U
we can see the um twin um craters near
the middle kind of look like owy staring back at us that is isidorus and capella on North Northern Mor nectaris and um
then the little um pearshaped crater off to the upper left um um Tor chil and uh
we see a lot of other territory uh surrounding it that looks softer not quite so angular or sharp and U here we
see the same thing the palis and merchison a similar crater pair on the left and um uh we see a lot of territory
that is just not sharp and angular like it does on the right but over on the left duller and more smooth and uh this
effect we see also on the older craters the younger one on
top um is um wner crater the one on the bottom Alia sensus much older and you
can see the physical contrast between them u space weathering the constant
constant erosion by the solar wind the constant grain of microm meteorites
chipping away just chip by chip by chip and um this goes on not for thousands of
years not for millions of years but it's going been going on for billions of
years so at any place on the moon you can have about a square meter size area
and you don't need to get but a strike every couple of years in that area but
over a period of time over a b billions of years it's like it's been sand blasted uh by an industrial sand blaster
smooth down worn down now so the solar
wind as part of space weathering helps smooth out dull down lunar features uh
this particular one alonsus and tus on the uh on the left and almost mirroring
them um hipparchus and alatus on the right um I remember when I took this
picture gosh it was over 10 years ago and I remember looking at it on the computer
screen as I was taking it I said someday I'm going to write a book about the moon and this picture is going to be in it
well I've done that twice now got two books out and that picture is in both of them but uh you can see these aged
craters are smoother uh now some of that is in part due to the Deluge of debris
thrown out by some of the Basin impacts if the crater is old enough like TUS at the upper upper left it is filled in and
smooth by ejected from the embrium Basin so uh this one's very old predates the embrion Basin but other craters that are
younger uh they are slowly sand blasted down to to they get this this
smoothness but at the same time this solar wind is striking the moon and the
hydrogen atoms from the Sun impact the surface and react with mineral oxides in
the the lunar regolith uh the U uh much of the rock on the moon the Silicon
titanium various other minerals are in the form of oxides so there is oxygen in
them and that solar wind hydrogen atom strikes it and combines with a hydrogen
atom it becomes a hydroxy a molecule that is one atom of hydrogen one atom of
oxygen not H2O but ho and then eventually another hydrogen atom comes
along and we get H2O of course uh in the vacuum of space
we can't have liquid water or it it evaporates but on the moon uh these this
water can form literally molecule by molecule and be in the soil and of
course the sun has another effect on the moon it Heats it up the lunar day is about 14 Earth days long so the uh the
surface of the Moon near the equator can be well above the boiling point of water and this this water gets cooked out but
the solar wind and the electrostatic levitation of various forces on the Moon
make these water molecules dance and levitate and the solar wind will slowly
migrate them to the northern regions of the moon or sometimes even escape the moon entirely but enough of them migrate
slowly over aons finally they get to the Northern parts of the Moon and they fall
into these permanently shadowed craters that never see sunlight these things on
the these these permanently shadowed craters on the northern part of the moon in the North Pole are the coldest place
that we know of uh I read somewhere recently that there was a colder place in the solar system I forget what it is
so I will call the the these perpetually shaded polar craters the second coldest
place in the universe colder actually than the planet Pluto which is four billion miles away but I don't know if
the audience paid you know everybody's paying attention to this last this
segment that you're talking about but this this part where you're talking about how water
molecules dance on on the moon okay this this is amazing this part is amazing
because you're explaining where ice forms in these cold uh uh bastions on
the moon and in these deep recesses and stuff and uh this is important stuff if
you it is it is the future of Mand lunar exploration that's right finding this
water and um this is how some of it formed over over millions and billions
of years now it's not pure water there's quite a bit of uh other uh U material
mixed in with it carbon monoxide carbon dioxide various um uh
um combinations of uh that basically form forms of alcohol um so um that has
to be um strained out filtered out distilled out before this water is good
for human use but it is still U water which U humans need and rockets need as
fuel hydrogen and oxygen is excellent Rocket Fuel so the these MO ules slowly
dancing toward the northern poles so northern and southern poles and eventually falling into these craters
and freezing and becoming um hopefully substantial layers of ice that uh we
hope to find uh very soon we've got uh uh missions ready to go to the Moon just
within the next several months under the commercial lunar um um um oh what's I
forget the exact name of it it's the CL PS commercial lunar payload Services
yeah the uh program that NASA has where they buy rides to the moon on Commercial
spacecraft um the first one to go up earlier this year uh didn't quite make it it uh had excess horizontal velocity
broke one of the landing legs fell over on its side but nonetheless it made it so there's a um more of these in the
pipeline and very soon we're going to be landing spacecraft an unmanned spacecraft
uh at the sou near the South Pole and seeking this water ice making sure that it is really there so uh the um South
Pole of the Moon U kind of hard to spot from the earth uh the um foreshortening
of the territory becomes rather extreme uh here we're looking at the the lower limb of the Moon u u Bailey crater the
the large Basin U elongated uh at the very bottom of the Moon uh here we've
got moretus crater and the various itineration of of the Newton craters and
the Shadows below it and that uh if you can see my cursor dancing around the
shadow line going down along here points to the South Pole on the moon and uh get
the next slide up here uh we see the similar effect merus crater again a very
common Landmark to set the uh location in the clavus crater up here where my uh
cursor is dancing around but here we've we still see the overlapping uh various
iterations of Newton craters ABC whatever and they make a channel that uh
leads down to the South Pole and right here this little
sliver um being struck by sunlight bit I'm circling with my C my cursor maler
massive maler Massif one of the nine Landing sites uh potential Landing sites
named Yesterday by NASA for the emis 3 mission where the next crew to go to the
moon will land it's been 52 years since Apollo 7 17 lifted off we are long
overdue uh this particular picture taken by my friend Don pet the astronaut who is now on the International Space
Station uh he took this picture from his backyard in Houston with a Celestron Evolution 925 and uh he graciously let
me use it in my new book the uh photographic atlas of the Moon and uh
again it uh shows uh moretus crater the channel made by the um various Newton
craters leading down to the South Pole right around here and here we see that malate Massif just poking up into the
sun uh the areas at the South Pole um many many of them are in Perpetual
sunlight because the inclination of the Moon orbit is or axis is so shallow that
the sun just rolls around the Horizon um on Earth we get that effect at certain
times in the polar latitudes the land of the Midnight Sun but Earth's axis is tilted even more 23 degrees I think
versus the one and a half of the moon so uh there are regions on the moon holes
where the Sun never sets yet these uh heavily cratered Shadows are nearby
heavily heavily shadowed craters are nearby so not only is are these areas where you have permanent solar power for
a lunar base there is a ready well of water nearby as well so uh uh this water
on the moon that is generated by inart by the solar wind is the key to Future
man LUN exploration and just yesterday uh NASA released uh the uh um candidate
sites near the South Pole where Artemis will land and uh eventually will be
setting up a moon base at one of these regions personally I think uh it'll
either be on mons muton Plateau which is very broad very flat um relatively I
mean this is about 60 km across but the elevation only changes about a kilometer so that's relative flat a lot of these
others like the peak near saasb or malit mif um um some other regions around here
they're the the top of some extremely high peaks that rise six kilometers so
uh your navigation to land the spacecraft on that Peak is going to be
critical and uh now that's why I think they'll probably be uh initially landing on the mons muton Plateau or the broader
area of Mel Massif instead of on one of these mountain peaks uh they've got to
have a couple of uh unmanned test flates of the Starship to make sure that it uh will land okay and uh uh geologically
investigate these regions to make sure they're seismically stable uh you have
seen the illustrations of the Starship on the moon it's tall uh almost 150 fet
tall D thing looks like a monument on the moon sitting down on these little tiny uh Landing leg
not not this broad huge spidery legs like the old lunar Excursion Module in Apollo but fairly narrow footprint so um
that place must be geologically stable but one of these regions is going to be
the Artemis Landing site and um the the key to it uh Perpetual
sunlight for solar power and near these perpetually shaded craters that never
see sunlight and may have vast amounts of water in them and I hope you have a better
understanding of how that water may have come into being now just literally molecule by molecule over billions of
years just migrating up there one by one by one accumulating with all the other
trash but it's there and it can be mined and uh uh evaporated and distilled into
a a useful resource so uh what an incredibly precious resource it will be you know my
God so well um the other six Apollo Landing sites have been immortalized in
uh in print and uh and in film for um a half a century now but one of these one
of these sites is going to be U the new 21st century Tranquility base and uh the
um official NASA timeline for it 2026 uh we can assume that's fiction um
that's that's just not going to happen uh internal NASA documents are targeting uh somewhere in 2028 so it's going to be
about four more years before we see footprints on the moon again but it's coming little by little they on the way
yeah yes it is so well it be very interesting to see you know I I I I know
I will be holding my breath uh as they land just like I did for Apollo 11 you
know me too I was uh I was an adult when Apollo 11 landed and I remember it very
well the the whole lunar program uh uh I remember it uh we first started sending
the Pioneers up to the moon when I was a in grade school uh the Rangers finally made it to the moon when I was in high
school and then U Luna Orbiter in Apollo well I was an adult I mean I was in the
Navy then so definitely an adult I was off to war so uh but
now half a century later we're going to do it again right it's awesome well our
audience is happy to see you back um I'm glad to be back yeah uh let's see Zeo
1984 comments I also heard the Luna Landing sides need to be planned really
well because of the earthquakes happening all the time well that's what I said to make sure it's seismically
stable yeah yeah I've heard the U um discussions about potential moonquakes
in these areas and um um that that needs to be resolved like I said we are
sending uh unmanned probes up there very soon literally within months and uh
it'll be they will be checking this out to make sure these hypothetical or
postulated moonquakes are not reality if there's a lot of shaking a rattling a rolling going around there uh it's
really going to alter plans a bit um the Starship may have to uh be set aside for
more benign Landing sites and then jump straight to bezos's Blue moonlander
which has a broader uh Landing landing gear on it more stable so um um we we'll
see how it develops this is not a cut and dried uh laid out plan uh
the um I'll give you a clue the January issue of astronomy magazine the cover article will be about Artemis and I
wrote it so I'll be discussing stuff like that uh the um the trials and
tribulations uh facing the aremis program and how to how to get to the
moon and um the architecture to send Men Back To The
Moon very cool that's great okay all right uh Robert thank you again so very
much um uh for coming on to Global star party and uh um hope you can make the
next one our next Global star party will be our 161st of course uh the theme is
Discovery already yeah and play into my hands play into my
hands yeah um and it is going to be was it
November 12th so there you go November 12th so
I'll be sending out an RSVP here probably tonight and um um hopefully you
can make that as well so that's great look looking forward to it okay all right thanks Robert all righty okay so
um let's see if um
we can bring on Caesar are you
available I think he might be in there making a pizza okay I want to show you
guys something um Let
me let me bring up hi Scott are you there yes yes I'm here but it's it's
it's a complicate uh and uh to have something
now but I my my I promise for next week
I have the some pictures some pictures uh ready some
image um because uh some reflexing in in the
in the from the weldings um and it's impossible to have uh good a
good position to have because because if I show this is not the the idea of
quality that I I like to show actually I'm I'm near
to to um to
the the the object but I prefer or um er
a white um half hour more to to take the
pictures um or maybe in the week uh maybe from
not from the balcony if not from the top roof it will be without H Reflections
from from uh well look the the plane right uh yeah
yes um from the wiing uh because the
contrast of the image from a reflector maybe it's more difficult to make H in
an area between buildings uh about the parasite lights
uh this is the problem but um the telescope with the camera work very very
well very sensitive and it's a great
idea um the kind of this telescope uh because uh maybe uh in the audience
or for example say kids that H they they received the gift last year
of the two of the telescope in a in a Al
Al month but they can think in half for
this year they um they if uh they are going
to have uh go to m and um this kind of
cameras or using their own cell phones um they can having H uh a good a
good choice uh like uh like a product like a telescope like a their own
Observatory many many times we we talk about about this Scott uh about encouraging
the people to use not only the the you know the the high level stu stuff or
gears if not this kind of of uh tubes are excellent
um uh it's something that maybe when the people say oh I need oh I need a go to m
or I need no you can start having the
the the tube over a single Alim
M um the next year
um Aire uh or buy a equator Mo go to Mo and they
are um growing in the activity
and a camera to and this is the idea of this I if if if you agree I completing
the week the pictures sure uh in a single way without a lot of uh
processing if not an idea of a kid can make with a with a h free software you
know without without a lot of expert processing and stuff but as yes yes
single process the first time ABS absolutely absolutely
Scott okay um well this is my my my experiment tonight but I continuing I'm
continuing uh working in this um next week we are watching the pictures uh
maybe some some kind of uh maybe earlier November 12th you have more than one
week so excellent ah perfectly okay yes
okay yes I have yes Save the Day okay thank you very
much you have a good night thank you good night good night okay all right so
we are now with um um uh uh Carlos
Hernandez Carlos is a longtime friend uh he's also one of the best uh
planetary uh ill well technical space artist that I've that I know he sends me
amazing uh images of uh uh you know views of of planets from locations where
we have no spacecraft and uh you know like views from maybe one of the moons
of Jupiter or the moons of Saturn uh he'll also often send me images of of
the events of spacecraft uh taking off or Landing or docking so all of that
stuff's very cool and uh so I know that he uh uh sped home tonight to do this
presentation uh he's a very busy physician and uh we're really fortunate to have him on tonight but he's also
happens to be one of the best Mars experts around uh and he's been studying
Mars for an extremely long time with some of the best uh uh planetary Astron
rers uh on the globe so U uh Carlos thank you very much for coming on to
Global star party and doing this well Scott thank you for this uh
wonderful introduction and uh I hope that everyone
uh enjoys and learns from the uh presentation that I'm going to be giving
on uh mostly on the current Mars Apparition uh occurring at this time
see this
St giv me one moment it's been a little while since I've trying to find out how
to share my slides here can you hit the share Buton you will see several Windows
pop up you have to select the one that you want yeah to it there you go
okay well I'm gonna be discussing the current and if you want to bring that
into presentation mode it'll go full screen right I'm trying to
where you have to forgive me a moment I'm a mostly a Mac User I'm going back
if you go down to the bottom of that uh that box off to the right there's like
it looks like there's a a a screen that's kind of pulled down that's
presentation okay I think that's it okay okay here
you are all right great so here we are at the 2024 Mars
Apparition and it's how to observe the planet Mars in 2024 then into
2025 uh this is a painting that I did of what the Martian North Polar cap may
appear to a future astronaut in which you can see U what's called layered
deposits of of dust and Ice within the
north polar
cap Mars is the fourth planet from the sun and its diameter is a little bit
over half the diameter of the Earth Earth is about 7900 miles and Mars is
about 4,200 distance from the Sun Mars's average is about 142 million miles
and or 228 million kilometers which is approximately one and a half
astronomical units one astronomical unit is 93 million miles 150,000 150 million
kilomet the orbital period of Mars is 687 days which is almost two years it's
1.9 years and the rotation period of
Mars ironically is just just a little bit longer than the Earth's by 37 minutes and 22 seconds now that is that
is called a martian Soul s o which is a
Martian day the Martian soul is 24 hours 37 minutes 22
seconds now ironically the actual tilt of Mars is pretty similar to the Earth
Earth is 23 and A5 degrees and the actual tilt of Mars is 20 5.1 Dees now
whereas the actual tilt of the earth very little over long period of time the
actual tilt of Mars can actually go from zero which is almost on its side to 80
degrees over hundreds of thousands or millions of years and the climate is is
affected at that time and uh Earth is the densest planet
and Mars is the fourth densest planet
now this is an illustration I made of the different Martian Seasons compared to the earth Seasons whereas most of the
Earth's seasons are pretty nor pretty equal in length ranging
between uh 89 to 94 days the Martian seasons are much much more irregular and
much more longer especially the fact that it's orbit is uh much larger than ours
and the shortest Martian season in
the Martian Northern Autumn and its longest season is the
northern spring and it's one's 143 Souls the other's
194 um also because of the eccentricity or the ESS of the orbit of Mars that is
one reason why the seasons on Mars are not equal compared to the
Earth's a picture of the of Mars taken by the h space telescope in 2016 shows
the uh what astronomers see in a telescope the dark what's called albo
features and the clouds at the top you can see the Mars North Polar cap at the
bottom you see the South polar Hood and um Mars is mostly uh made off of this
Baltic Rock and dust from the reddish color of Mars is due to rust or feric
oxide and that's uh what gives Mars the reddish
color picture of Mars taken by the Viking Orbiter showing the
vast Valley Canyon on Mars called valis marinaris that
stretches 3,000 kilom in width in length and over 8 kilometers in death so it's
it's a huge Canyon large in the solar system that exist near the equator of
the planet Mars over to the left you see a dark oval circular features that are
actually the tops of the thoris volcanoes of and surrounded by
clouds but Mars is a very fascinating planet that has been explored over time
by multiple spacecraft and Landers a picture of the
largest volcano mountain in the solar system Olympus Mons which is over 400
miles in width and up to
16 up to 77,000 fet and height it's over
two and 1 half times the height of Mount
Everest and uh it's a massive volcano it's considered a shield volcano similar
to the uh what forms the Hawaiian Islands uh it's lava coming up and
building over at one spot and that's why the Olympus Mons became such a huge uh
structure of that over a million of years the lava kept building up over it
and reach the current height from the crater at at top is the
Caldera a picture of Mars uh taken by the Viking Orbiter showing the reddish
color and the dark albo features and the polar camp on top to the bottom towards
the bottom right above or below CEST major is the helis Basin lowest point on
Mars and at the center is considered the Zero longitude and zero latitude of Mars
in within sinus meridiani this is a painting I did of
the helis Basin which is an enormous Basin over a, kilomet in width and up to
8 kilometers in depth that is located over the southern hemisphere of the
planet and within this enormous Basin many death storms originate which
the highest surface pressure on Mars is located within their Basin now
the atmosphere as Mars is extremely tenuous it's mostly carbon dioxide with
a little bit of argon and very very little oxygen and uh the surface pressure on Mars is
600 pascals compared to the Earth's 10 13
kilopascals so the surface pressure on the surface of Mars is less than 1% that
of the Earth's um but even so it can still hold on to uh clouds and dust and
other other structures as well
Now dust storms originate on the surface of the planet that the solar radiation
strikes the surface and heats it up there's a layer of hot air at towards the surface and right above it is cool
air and so those two airs combine to form what's called dust devils which are
are little little tornadoes that pick up the dust now if enough of these dust
devils form and get together it can be they can develop into a
regional or even a planet encircling dust
storm this is a painting I did showing the dust devils located within Valance
marineris that may or may not develop into a dust storm but they are constantly seen and have been recorded
by the Landers on the planet Mars picture of the hble Space Telescope
on but on both sides one taken in June of 2001 and the one the one on the right
on September showing the development of a global dust storm over the planet it's
a dust storm completely encircling the planet and that's why you cannot see the
dark albo features clearly because of the presence of the dust and ironically when Mariner 9
arrived at the planet in 19 72
7172 U it was completely encircled by a planet encircling dust
door the painting of The Martian North Polar cap that I did showing the
different layers and due to the changing tilt of the axis of the planet Mars uh
it sometimes has deposits of dust and then it has deposit of ice forming these
layers called AED deposits and that's seen mostly in the north polar cap you
can see it also in the South polar cap but it's much more prominent in the north polar
cap this is a drawing of the Martian North Polar cap showing the minimum
extent of the cap and the largest extent and uh sometimes you have these outliers
these remnants of the cap at the edge of the cap as it shrinks
and uh you can see these in moderate aperture telescopes and if you have steady seeing
and they they're very interesting to observe painting of uh the innermost
satellite of Mars Phobos orbiting the planet Mars that I did and it looks like
a giant potato actually with streaks and grooves on it it's beautiful very
dramatic thank you um so this is what I believe astronaut orbiting Phobos would
see if they were looking back towards the planet Mars and and uh it would be a
very striking scene and this is a painting I did if you were standing on the surface of
Phobos and looking towards Mars This is what a future astronaut May witness if
there we finally were able to arrive at Mars now ironically um plans have been
devised in which uh future astronauts would set up a base on Phobos because
this the gravity is much less than that of Mars so if they were to set up a base on Phobos then they could go back and
forth between the Moon and the surface with minimal uh needs of propellant and
that's a a a proposal that's been made for the future
this is a painting idea of Mars as visible from the outermost Moon
deos and you can see the planet appears smaller because it is further away now
what I didn't mention was that Phobos being the innermost moon has an orbital
period of 7 hours and 39 minutes which means that and it's only a little over
3,400 miles above the surface of the planet so
this moon rises in the west and in a period of about four and a
half hours sets in the east of Mars and
this occurs twice a day twice every Martian day so you have a moon rising in
the west and setting in the East compared to our own Moon and other other
satellites that rise in the east and set in the West in accordance with the
planets rotation and deos being further away uh
Rises normally in the East but because it's about 24,000 miles away from Mars
it period is about 30 hours so actually it rises in the East but it doesn't set
in the west until about two days later so you have these fascinating
small moons but uh they play uh Celestial um dancing above the planet
Mars is it possible for any kind of uh of eclipses to happen where you would be
on one Moon looking at the other passing in front of you U there there does occur eclipses
and they have been imaged by the Mars surface Rovers The perseverance robers
but the the size of Phobos compared to the size of the
disc of the sun which is smaller at the distance of Mars doesn't cover the whole
thing and Phobos is not circular in shape it's a like I said it's like a
like a potato so it does cover it does cover parts of the Sun but you you never
have a total eclipse as you do on the earth I see some sort of strange annular
Eclipse yeah strange annular Eclipse yeah but you can find it on the the
internet if you look up uh Phobos Eclipse uh and you can see images
obtained by the surface uh Mars robers Carlos John Ray who's watching on
Facebook right now he comments he says I'd wallpaper my H my home office with
your images beautiful work well thanks a lot I appreciate it John I just tried to
uh be as accurate as possible with the information that we have on these and
incredible uh celestial objects and uh I appreciate it thank
you now the current Mars Apparition
um will occur the opposition itself occurs on January 16
2025 when Mars obtains a parent diameter of 14.5 arccs now this is not the
largest this is actually one of the smallest opposition sizes that you see um the
largest opposition sizes apparent diameters occur during the uh peric
oppositions and what we're experiencing now is an AF helic opposition um now the advantage of the
AF helic oppositions is that you can see the Northern Hemisphere better clearer
and the north polar cap compared to the per helic where we see mostly the
Southern Hemisphere and um and on January 16th
will be the opposition and it will attain 14.5 AR seconds so currently it's
approximately 8 Arc seconds in diameter which is actually a good starting size
to start observing Mars because if if you start observing Mars now by the time
you get to opposite position your eye will have been craned sufficiently that you'll be able to pick out a good number
of dark and light features over the
planet oh and the different references there the Els of s is the longitude of
the sun that's how we reference the position of Mars within its orbit zero
is Northern spring 90 is summer two uh 180 is Autumn and 270 is Winter the DZ
of is the declination of the earth DZ ofs is declination of the Sun the deck
is the apparent the latitude in the sky the p is the phase of the planet so
obviously at opposition it's 100% And the magnitude and its distance
in astronomical units the Mars will be located in the
constellation of Gemini of the twins on January 16 2025 and it will be actually located
next to uh poock and it should be a a striking uh scene which I'm sure a lot
of imagers are going to be taking wonderful uh Widefield images
of now Mars as it's moving through its orbit it moves like all other objects
from west to east but during oppositions uh the Earth which is in
inside inferior orbit to Mars starts to gain on Mars and then as
it gets closer and closer or more actually closer to per perpendicular in
the orbit to Mars Mars appears to slow down stop and then it starts going from
east to west instead of from west to east and then uh once the Earth passes
the orbit of Mars then Mars starts to move again towards the uh
West and this is called the retrograde motion in the sky and sometimes it even
forms a loop in the sky if you were to trace
it now this is a picture of myself in the Middle with
hair a long long time ago in 1977 78 with my good friend Jeffrey Bish
another noted astronomer and engineer and my mentor Charles Capen and this is
the 12 and a half inch telescope of Donald Parker who's a very well-known
Astro uh planetary imager and this was his 12 in and he actually later used a
16inch reflector but uh we learned our trade if you want to call it that from
Charles Capen who was an astronomer affiliated with low Observatory and um he learned from
another astronomer um Earl slier who took thousands upon thousands of images
of Mars over decades and whose brother was vestos slier who was instrumental in
discovering the red shift and U they learned from personal l so we were
actually trained by a successor of LOL so um we're very fortunate to have made
friends with chick and for him to want to help train us and make presentations
on Mars now we are blessed with air and an
atmosphere compared to other planets but unfortunately that Atmos mere isn't
always steady and um if you are able to have smooth laminer stable air over your
observing site then you should be able to have a steady image of the planet now
if it encounters any kind of obstacle whether it's a building or a mountain or
Hill or anything else then it can uh produce a turbulent air and the What's
called the seeing or the the steadiness of the image is severely
affected another thing that affects the seeing besides the the uh atmosphere and
the large structures around you is What's called the local seeing and that is like objects as
buildings you're in concrete if you're observing near it and anything anything
that can hold heat will affect you're observing though try to observe as late
as possible and try to observe if possible over grass or objects that
don't retain heat we use different seeing scales this
one was developed by the Harvard astronomer Will William H Pickering it's
a scale from 0 to 10 which zero is absolutely worse the worst it's a
completely useless image five is average uh with sometimes you get uh some
defraction rings and 10 is absolute perfect uh perfect uh steadiness of the
object and now living in Florida I'm perly California but uh we used to enjoy
incredible seeing conditions and that they were that was obvious by the incredible images of the planets taken
by Don Parker um and we used to kid people and
say that if the seeing was less than a seven out of 10 we would close down so
uh but it it's uh it was fantastic to have great seeing now the seeing and I
don't believe now is as good as before because there's more buildings and stuff but uh we did enjoy great seeing at one
time another seeing scale is the Antonia seeing scale it's a one to five with one
being a poor image and five being a perfect image and so you can use either
scale to grade the seeing condition while you're making an
observation now the tools of the trade are the telescopes that we use and I'm
showing here uh two types of instruments one is the top is the uh refractor using
a lens and the bottom is a reflector using a mirror or mirrors to produce an
image and uh you have different types of uh refractors that use uh two lenses
acromat lens or if you're fortunate three lenses triplets that produce
fantastic sharp images that are are very high in contrast but if you don't have a
refractor and you have a reflector if you modify it so you don't use a large
secondary mirror and the surfaces are very accurate and use a small focuser
you can produce images that are nearly the sharpest refractors but uh the
contrast would be a little bit less for similar apertures but still you would get great
images these are pictures of my instruments that I have and have used
the one on the left is my original 1976 vintage
Celestron that I used to make my initial observations of Mars and the other
planets and the moon and I still have it and it's a excellent instrument it's a
jack of all trades and produces excellent images but my my current
primary instrument is the one on the right it's a 9 inch maxutov casser grain
it produces fantastic images very sharp very high contrast and I am fortunate to
be able to use this instrument now now if assuming you have the
fraction Limited Optics whether it's a refractor or reflector or copc which is
a combination of both the next the next part of the equation are the eyepieces
now in the p in and people use different design or type
of eyepieces here are shown three very popular ones the top one is the ab
orthoscopic the middle one is a very common plal eyepiece and the bottom one is a Brandon eyepiece which all produce
uh excellent Sharp Images with high contrast now for my personal
observations and um I say this because I really use them and I think they're
really excellent are the explore scientific eyepieces and um you have different
choices here for the planets they they have a 52 degree field they have uh
62 degree field and even an 82 degre field eyepiece that all produce sharp
eyepieces and the added for in my case the added Advantage is that they're also
waterproof so they're excellent eyepieces to use and you know I tell that Scott all the
time thank you now a way to get high magnifications
in instruments without without having to resort to to eyepieces with very tiny
lenses and very very small apparent Fields is to use a longer focal length eyepiece a
medium focal length maybe with a barow or in this case a teller extender that's
available at explor scientific and depending on the degree of magn magnification that you require you can
go from 2x to 5x and these are also excellent for Imaging the planets as
well another useful accessory while observing
the planets are filters and um the different color filters allow the
Observer to detect different features over the planets and especially the
planet Mars uh the red filter on the right and and the orange filter are very
useful for detecting albo or dark features or actually making sharper and
if you're seeing your seeing conditions are average these filters actually
improve this the sharpness of the image at times the yellow filter is also used
for surface but it can see uh some ice features as well the green filter is for
ice features especially the Caps or or uh ice on the surface the blue filter is
to detect clouds and hazes over Mars and the Violet is also for detecting high
clouds and hazes over the planet Mars as well this is a series of drawings that I
produced of what would Mars what albo features are primarily visible at
different longitudes of Mars at Zero longitude sinus murani that I mentioned
previously is located in the center and next to it is a Long Bar of sinus abas
and to the left is ceris Major which is a very prominent albo feature on Mars
and there's aosd delium towards the bottom right which is the most prominent
dark feature in the Northern Hemisphere and then if we go over to 90 degrees
you've got the Solus Locus region and to the right of that is the tharsus region
that contains the uh the volcanoes and um and you can see clouds
Fe Cloud features over this area frequently if this is the longitude
that's visible to the Observer at the time at 180 are other albo features uh
including alysium meerum rium and the 270 degree is very
prominent certis major very prominently visible and other dark albo featur over
the southern hemisphere this is a series of drawings
that I did the top left image is actually an image of Mars taken by my
good friend Donald Parker and I took that as a Baseline and the immediate
image to the right the top right is the outline the outline of the of the
features that were VIs visible and then slowly above the outline I added the
darkening of the alido features and viewed in in this case imaginary viewed
through the eyepiece until finally you get to the final drawing at the bottom
right uh which gives the appearance of the planet at a specific time and this
just shows that it it's a gradual process and not a
question of being an excellent artist in order to produce images that may be
compared to photographs it's actually more of a record for the individual observer in order for them to remember
what they observed at the time when they were observing Mars or Jupiter or Saturn
or any other planet these are two two observations I
made of the planet Mars the one on the left was on July 24th 1986 using a 12 1
12 inch nutonian reflector at almost 500x showing the Solus Locus region to
the top left and other albo features and the thorus region um of the planet and
the image on the right was an image an observation I made nearly 20 years later
of the same region now the differences you see is due to the tilt of the planet
at the time and so and the image on the right so the slakas region is more
clearly visible now there are multiple features surrounding it like a like a
Sunburst that look like canals but these are actually if if the seeing studied
sufficiently you would see these broken up into dark blotches and they wouldn't
look like straight lines continuously but it because the
atmosphere fluctuates our atmosphere and Mars's atmosphere you don't always get
the clearest view of the surface so and because of this and difference
differences in contrast May produce uh what appears to be canals or Canali is
caparelli saw in 1877 but um as we know there are no canals no
water canals on Mars there's channels and there's Canyons but uh no canals as
stated in the end of the 19th century now a trick that may be used for
observing the moons Phobos and deos especially towards opposition is to use
what's called an ulting bar in which a person plac es a strip of aluminum or
wire across the center of an eyepiece and what this does is it blocks
out the glare the very bright glare of Mars and if Phobos and deos are
sufficiently elongated away from the planet uh and you have sufficient
aperture you might be able to detect the
moons this is a map that I uh produced for explore scientific that shows the uh
majority of albo features visible over the planet uh of Mars and you can it's
available on the explor scientific website and the uh Observer can download
it and if they want they can laminate it and take it when they're observing the
planet Mars and to be able to identify certain features
Now understand that not all these features dark features are visible
during one any one opposition or Apparition uh it depends on on the the
tilt of the planet the size of the planet and the fact that dust you know
the dust over the surface of the planet sometimes covers these dark features so
it changes the appearance slightly but for the most part this is the uh majority of the prominent albo features
on the on the
surface and this is a painting I did of a future uh Starship on the surface of
Mars and this is the end of my presentation and I welcome any uh
questions that you may
have yeah I don't see any question right now I did post your uh link to uh your
articles and within those articles you'll find also the Mars albo map and
all the rest of it but uh gosh I just I'm looking at that that spacecraft and
just the kind of open hatch on the side they're just G to lower people down I guess is that that's the plan so far as
far as I understand it yes and U actually is an early painting the latest
uh designs are probably going to incorporate leg on the Starship when they land I hope so yeah in order to
stabilize in order to stabilize the rocket yeah yeah goodness well Carlos
you'll find in your inbox I image process that image of you and Jeff and
uh chick color corrected it and sharpened it and straightened it up and
and everything so let me know what you think of it when you get it okay I use that picture Al also to show
people that I used to have hair so this shows your hair
[Laughter] better well I hope it I didn't lengthen
it but yeah so anyhow very cool very very cool well
thank you uh Carlos and uh you know I know that you can see Mars now and um so
uh it's it's time to get out there and start uh making some observations
so great all right well thanks again for
allowing me to present okay well thank you Carlos thanks for making it and
we'll talk to you later if uh any of you have questions um uh later on that you
want to ask uh just get in touch with me and I'll be Happ
uh to get those fored over to Carlos uh Carlos has has uh helped many people um
understand uh you know planetary uh drawing and imaging and observations uh
so um and he has many many stories of uh of uh some events including that
mysterious flash on Mars that you I think you were there with Tippy and Don
Parker and you guys recorded this U perhaps a frozen lake on ours is that
right well actually unfortunately I wasn't with them but they were tippy and
Don and two other observers were in the keys the Florida Keys and they were
observing uh with a telescope when they noticed a bright flash near sinus
meridiani over with the bright circal oval if you look on the map called Edom
Edom and U they saw this bright flash there which which has also been observed
in the past by Japanese observers yes and they predicted when it would come
back and they saw it and they predicted when it should be visible yeah and it they think that it's due to the Isis the
ice on the surface of Mars and the particular angle of sunlight
that um that produced that Flash oh and we forgot to mention that and Scott
pointed this out to me that they believe now that the zodiacal light may actually
be due to dust that's released from the planet Mars yes so that's that's a very
interesting uh uh Theory and it's it's going to be further investigated but um
for the longest time we've we've seen this zal light on the earth and we
thought it was due to dust but we didn't know where it came from but now it looks like it may come from the planet
Mars very good very good well thank you
Carlos um I think that will conclude tonight's Global star party and uh I
hope to have you back again I know I know your time's very tight and precious but uh it's great to have you on so uh
uh so I also want to thank the rest of the presenters that uh uh were on global
star party as well I think uh we've got one more here um uh and I think Robert's
watching in the background there but uh um uh Cesar's still out on his balcony
isn't it bedtime for you I mean it's late right
yeah you're muted still
muted still [Laughter]
muted I say I say sorry sorry I say that
11 11 yes 42 yes but but take a dinner yes
we take a dinner in Argentina at normally at 9:00 and you know you have uh the
problem is that I am star all yes I am star um earlier in the morning but it's
our style of life um I enjoying astronomy because I took some pictures
uh of quar City toana between the wildings with some uh
reflections of light but uh I'm still enjoying for me
uh the moment and I following the excellent presentations that
uh I I I can follow tomorrow I put in the screen in the store ever every the
entire week apprciate I put in in my real in in the screen of the our
showroom of telescope uh everever we we um put the
the global surar in the in the screen in in in a screen in the in the
showroom um it's really something that we we enjoy um the customers ask me I
saw that or you know it's a an excellent point for starting a conversation yes
it's great it's great um B uh despite that that I put the
telescope for the show and but I still enjoying astronomy and this is this is
the magic of of this H with a single telescope entry level and you can make
the same no you the people the audience of course um
and return to the to the singles to disciples things uh Elemental things
it's it's great great that's great uh you know something that we've started to
do here here at export scientific I don't know if you guys can see this or not but uh we are wow we're holding
classes uh in the parking lot too much here sorry but uh uh it's it's also a
great opportunity to photograph our students doing astronomy and um uh they
have a lot of fun uh in the safety and convenience of being here at the store
and I let them try ey pieces and telescopes and such so uh our next event
will be November 9th for that and um so uh I know that's hard for everybody else
around the world come here but uh you'll know in your hearts that I'm doing it okay
so yes of course but is is is the
capacity to return to say uh to or to to
to be aing or you know like kids uh
tonight I I just I watched the Tanta
neula um but this is small telescope with a planetary camera uh maybe it's
not the best image but if you if you uh turn to the your brain when you when
when you was a uh it you enjoy again the the things the the
surprise of something that is is at many many like years um you know it's great
it's great yeah cessor I'm a little jealous of you because when Mars is at
perhelion when it's closest to the earth for you for you in the southern hemisphere it's almost directly overhead
oh absolutely yes yes H it's agree opportunity to take pictures with a a
good seen capacity good scen
uh conditions um ever ever that that we
have our the planet in a in a high angle
is is the best thing um some something that especially with Mars that you have
Mars uh each two two half year if I I I
don't I I I don't I know I don't know if I am wrong but I think that this the
period is two and a half year when the closest um opposition
oppositions right every sorry sorry yes tell no oppos oppositions and I didn't
mention it before you're referring to the synotic period the CTIC which is
780 days which is two years and two months between successive
oppositions that's called the CTIC period And as I mentioned before there's
very helic oppositions and afh helic but um they're pretty consistent every two
two two and a half years yes and over this uh the opportunities
to see something cloudy nights um the position of the planets for me that I
don't have an landcape clear it's a mix between weldings and um really when I I
um I work with telescope i s telescope but when I have the opportunity as tonight that is a clear
night in the city but um and showing the the the things that H were you have a
planet uh or something for example Saturn was in excellent conditions two
nights ago um I don't remember from my maybe 20 years that I I don't see a
beautiful um view uh of Saturn with my small maxo
telescope of only 4 in and this is something like I am really enjoy and
enjoy game because the things are like comets that returning every year or two
and a half year you know and I say all to the people all time they say you use
your telescopes if you live in the city use uh um your telescope don't don't put
the telescope inside the box if not take the your telescope or your binoculars uh
H assembled in a living room ready to go to the balcony to the backyard you know
because our each night each uh clear night is is a magic night and and you
have a lot of opportunity to to see something different is is the the real
thing that's very true C because the instrument you have is the best instrument that you can use because if
you you don't use it then you're never going to experience what you're describing and um by observing more and
being AA being drying different nights uh and especially leaving the telescope
outside uh you can observe great images of the planets and as I mentioned
previously previously uh if you can factor in your local seeing like in your
case with the buildings next door or concrete and stuff if you allow time for
for pooling Sometimes the best images of the planets are towards midnight or
after midnight or sometimes in the early morning but um you you adjust to
whatever your living conditions are and very few people are able to observe in Wide Open Fields most people observe
from the city and uh you know I wish you the best of luck yeah yeah thank you very much and I
was a following your presentation that was really really really
interesting thank thank you s thank you all right okay all right guys well have
a good night and uh I'm gonna go home and uh have some dinner and uh think
about all these amazing talks that came on to Global star party and uh it was
fun so those of you that are new and are
audience that are just now wa watching or have are watching uh you know uh this and rerun
uh thank you for joining in with us um our next event will be November 12th as
I mentioned in the chat um and you can find it at explor scientific.com
for for for slash I'm tired
sorry GSP for Global Star Party GSP 161
and you'll find the page W yeah the schedule's not accurate right now because I have um uh I have to update it
as people come on and and change presentations but it'll be good thanks
thank you Carlos have a look at that picture and let me know what you think about the restoration and will okay all
right and Cesar thank you very much and have a good night everyone yeah bye you
Scot thank you okay thanks
thanks and before I go I'm going to show a video that I thought was so cool
from the soo spacecraft of um of the uh Comet uh
A3 so let's see if I can pull that up
let's see if this is that [Music]
beautiful stuff
[Music]
[Music] Tom uh it's been almost a year um since
we were here last time and the uh 100 inch mirrror was out of the telescope we
were siging on a kind of a wobbly scaffolding right it was very stable it was just narrow but we had hard outs on
we were safe yeah we were safe that's right and you were starting to explain to me how uh you do your public
observing program but you use explore scientific equipment to make that possible so U uh tell me how this whole
this whole system works well well it's um it's not complicated just follow the
light uh we have the 100in mirror which is right above me here uh we were just
inside the telescope where where we saw the secondary mirror way at the top uh a
tertiary mirror sending it out to to this relay optic system and then uh
following the light path down to your Explorer scientific t7 Ed oh great so
behind us here we've got the Ed 127 airspace triplet this is a 4in Starlight
focuser that has a custom adapter to attach to this telescope and then we've got a 3-in diagonal and a 3in 30 mm
eyepiece Tom what's the focal length of the telescope again about 33,000 millime
33,000 millimet so with this eyepiece we're going to get over a th000 power 11 magnifications so with 100 degree
apparent field it's about five and a half AR minutes true field of view so that's uh that is a great view through a
very high powerered telescope and how many people do you
have coming through to do your educational Outreach programs well we have the educational Outreach as well as
the public kns and our our client nights so we've probably done about um 800
people this year through this well it's I mean it's just a great honor for us to have uh our equipment used on the 100
inch I know it's used on the 60inch telescope I've used it on the 60 myself and the 40 inch so you know we got a
sort of a trifacta with h uh with George Eller hae's telescope and so if someone
wanted to rent this telescope um uh what
do they do they go on what's the website that they go Mt wilson.edu and we have uh Pages for both
the 60 inch and 100 in that you can make reservations and it has all the information uh for that process on our
website that's fantastic all right well that's
great by the way this is also used on the 40 an refractor ures so they use a
whole slew of ey pieces but you got a ton focal length here what's the focal length of this
scope I forget the calculation is it's way long okay we'll do this
again okay here we go a 101 one it's 101 inch it's not bigger bigger than they
advertise knew you know yeah uh time 12.6 or you
[Music]
32,000 it's 32,300
millimeters okay let's that's long that's long right so 32,000 so what's
the what's the magnification GNA be 32,000 divided by 30
32,000 that is crazy it's about th power
more 30 3 2,000 or 35,000
32,300
24 30 1,77 magnification so
1100 100 107 is
0.009 it's five and a half Arc seconds or arc minutes arc minutes five and a
half Ark minutes that's that's impressive a bad feel that's impressive okay so five and a half okay
all right so now we know the numbers let's hide our calculator here
so nobody knows that's right we could do this in our head
right what's the focing of the telescope again about 33,000 millime 33,000
millime so with this eyepiece we're going to get get over 1,000 power 11 th magnifications so that would work out
with 100° appearent field it's about 5 and a half AR minutes true field of view so that's uh that is a great
view a very high powered view through a very high power telescope
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Applause]