Transcript:
[Music]
dang we've got about 10 minutes
later in the program uh caesar uh
brolo will sign on and we are also expecting um kelsey poor and michael carroll
uh space artist michael carroll will be on
i'll be cool
so steve so far we have uh i think in excess of 10 000 video views
so don't you hate it when it's a slow day
[Laughter]
[Music]
okay
yes
okay
thank you
uh
[Music] um
[Music]
[Music]
um
hey scott looks like i'm gonna have to start another zoom session on the observatory computer to
connect to your telescope because i can't run but one zoom session on my computer okay
after we do this show we'll figure it all out and get you hooked up
okay we are all shared
steve davey says link us up on youtube scott we are linked up on youtube you go to the explore scientific
official channel and you'll see us there if you go to explore scientific here
i'll take you to a link explore scientific dot com forward slash live you'll see the live
stream there on our own page and if you want to go to youtube there's a youtube link that goes directly to our channel
so marcelo are you are you teaching classes today no no no yeah that's finished i do a few
classes here oh oh that's good today we are waiting for to
look at the conjunction for for me now is it is eight to five
and for for us it will be only possible to to see near 7pm [Music]
so david have you ever done so many star parties in one day before
this is a record for me it's a record for me too it's kind of
neat going around the world like this so i'm really loving this yeah it is it is we could only stay
awake for it you know hey hey scott yeah since this is technically
being recorded and time stamped do you think we can apply for a world record well maybe i don't know i i think it
might be a record actually you know maybe not because 100 hours of astronomy happened
and that was mike simmons did that and it was 100
hours of constant non-stop star parties going around the world
that was the ia 2009 one of the cornerstone events and they
think something like a million people um participated in that
i i think it i think it's time to challenge that record yeah we're creeping up on it
i'm enlisting mike in our program so you know we should we should we should go for 200
hours 200 hours yeah it'll be a telethon uh
internet-a-thon but not every platform lets you broadcast constantly
so you have to stop broadcasting and then come back on you know and facebook's one of them
um twitch will let you broadcast from i understand 24 hours a day seven days a week 365 days a year
constantly um i think tick tock lets you do that too
although we're not on tick tock
do you drink coffee david you're drinking some right now yeah
and so are you steve i'm down to the last couple of sips of
my coffee right here actually the last couple of drops
i think it's a requirement as a canadian is it it is yeah i think they passed a law that you have
to drink coffee all the time so i have a nice big mug of coffee that
i got this morning after our second one yeah and uh it's been
there's still quite a bit left in it i'm sipping it as slowly as i can
scott when the canadian armed forces go somewhere and they set up a base yeah they they build the tim hortons
within the base really important coffee yep
aaron thompson says coffee sure as hell is a requirement here in the morning particularly for my wife
now some people don't even want to be talked to unless they've had their first cup of coffee
right
so
mr grace is going to try to join us he says his car's packed and he's got to run fingers crossed
for hole in the clouds
people around the world are trying to see the conjunction it's cool
well hello everybody this is scott roberts from explore scientific and you if you haven't been watching
this all day today and i don't know why you wouldn't but
we've been broadcasting around the world with astronomers who've
been watching and talking about the great conjunction of jupiter and saturn
it's been we started david levy and steve molly and i started
very early in the morning to get ready for a 3 a.m broadcast out
of here because we had christopher go on from the philippines and so
actually he had us on just a little bit early i think maybe he wanted to make sure that we were going to be on with
him i don't know but uh but we got to watch the sunset from uh
cebu the philippines it was beautiful and uh and then we watched uh christopher
set up his telescope and get it focused and dialed in
so that we could witness a really true spectacle you know of jupiter and saturn
in the same eyepiece or same camera field of view what what did steve and david what did
you think of of christopher's imaging
david i'll let you go first okay thanks steve um it was fantastic he i don't know how
he does it he just throws his telescope together in about three seconds and takes these pictures to show the red
spot and uh life forms in the atmosphere of jupiter and all kinds of things
and then saturn with gorgeous rings and i think this is just uh so beautiful
the way they uh the way he does it it's magical like this event however
as steve has said several times and scotty has said several times this is a visual event you got to go out
and look at it it is yeah if you can if you can't then and then of course you know
uh watch it um through one of these streams but uh you know this is i mean today's the
closest right but it's still going to be very close in the days uh coming up so you're going to want to
try to watch it every evening that you can as it uh
slowly starts to separate wider and wider just watching that difference in separation
you really get the feeling of that you're actually in a solar system you know watching the planets go you
know moving across the sky and so um i think that that is i mean to me that effect is something
that it almost makes me dizzy thinking about it because i know you know we know how fast we're going
around the sun we know how fast the earth spins on axis we roughly know how fast
we're moving through the milky way and we have an idea of how fast the milky way is moving through
intergalactic space and so uh we are flying at unbelievable speeds
on this pale blue dot that we call earth so um but um let me introduce
i'm sorry scott i wanted to just say one thing i thought it was interesting think about it the uh the days were getting shorter as
the planets were coming together and then as soon as they start to move apart the days are getting longer now right it was like signaling uh right
right like the solstice is here guys we'll uh and if you looked at the google doodle
it shows uh jupiter and saturn like doing a high five you know uh which is really cool and uh so
you know the whole world is celebrating this um and and thanks to the guys at google for
putting together that uh that little animation because that kind of exposed millions of people to this that might
not have have known in fact i received phone calls i was trying to get a nap and i got phone calls from
people saying you know i didn't know this was happening today i didn't know you know tell me more about
it and so um but uh you know i'm always you know i i i'd like to i
like to add to what david was saying about christopher goat is throwing his scope up together
yeah uh quickly he's uh christopher goes a celebrated planetary
imager and he definitely knows what he's doing um i bet you david what do you think do you think he
could probably do it blindfolded with one arm behind his back actually i don't care
i mean the thing is he sets it up fast efficiently and he gets the best pictures so just
about the best pictures i've ever seen yeah there's someone at the warren astronomical society
that also does a magnificent job
excuse me he does a magnificent job when
his name is adrian and when he uh he makes the camera dance it's literally
dancing when he's when he holds a camera it's just wonderful
yeah well so let's let's go ahead and get started
um uh steve molly is here he is representing the royal
astronomical society of canada um the resc is a very you know very old
organization i think it's over a hundred years old and um uh you know we're really honored
that they are co-hosting this event um they um
pulled together a very interesting group of people uh that that will be on uh
you know including um uh well david levy is a uh past i think he's an honorary
president or honorary lifetime member of the resc i think he's
also past president jack newton who will be on later this evening was also past president
rasc um and you know they they do incredible
outreach they do incredible education within their own organization uh
very uh you know it was nice to uh be allowed to give a formal
presentation to them uh which i did uh earlier this year uh very
very early this year before kovid really took hold and um so uh you know it was just
um i'm honored that they're uh that they're participating in this way for the global star party it's cool
um uh steve for i've had you repeat this a couple of
times during the day but uh yeah there's new people watching um uh
what what uh tell us some things about the resc and uh why you should join
yeah so uh thank you scott um uh yeah the resc the royal astronomical
society of canada is uh an organization that's been around for 152 years
um it's steeped in uh great some great history um it does
scott you mentioned about education and outreach and that's something i wanted to bring up today uh well now that this time around um the
rafc has some uh amazing education outreach programs uh that that is set up both for its own
members and also for teachers in the classroom so that they'll help you with
uh a lesson plan um uh professional development uh science
fair project ideas um uh and and just overall curriculum
so if you're a teacher out there and you're looking for uh information uh for an astronomy uh portion of your of
your class you know check out the rafc website and there's some great information there but you know it not only is you know
outreach is just a a thing that's normal when it comes to
astronomy i i don't really think there's there's too many people out there that would disagree with me on that
um everyone's always excited and welcoming to let someone look through their telescope and explain
what they're seeing um you could probably get some pretty emotional uh reactions other people the first time
that they'll see the rings of of saturn or the galilean moons of jupiter or even just the moon up close
but what the society does is they also have their observing programs um and this is one thing i like about
this society it has a lot of inreach i like to call it in reach for its members and one of the things that
it it does is the uh with its observing programs is to help you learn the night sky and the
basic course if you will or the basic program called explore the universe and this takes you through the night sky
uh and you have to find certain constellations and identify and log them double stars planets nebula uh phases of
the moon and so on and a lot of it can be done unaided with a naked eye or with a pair
of binoculars actually everything can be done with the most pair of binoculars you don't even need a telescope what's even really cool about it is that
you don't even have to be a member of the rafc to get their certificate right
the other certificates that they offer you do need to be a member so you know explore the moon uh learning
different features of the moon being able to identify certain regions and craters uh then it gets into more advanced stuff
the messier catalog finest ngc objects uh double stars
um and then there's even like an astrophotography certificate as well so it's a um there's a lot of diversity
in what the rac offers to its members for uh outreach and also in reach and it's
one of the things that i really enjoy about the rafc is that it there's something there for everyone not everyone is a deep sky person
for astrophotography they like to look through a dab and find an object and and be
immersed in the beauty of that of that object um and an organization like the rafc has the
programs to help you do that um so that's a little more about the rac we'll learn more about it later on when
we have members on and we're also going to have the current president of the rasc uh joining us and he'll be explaining a
little bit more and also some of the uh features of the observer's handbook that we've talked about earlier today
very cool very cool yeah that's awesome uh so um i've been doing the
introductions for david levy this time i'm going to let you do it steve so
no pressure eh no pressure but i know i know that you uh have really enjoyed
uh interacting with with uh david um yes yes it has been has been a pleasure of mine all day to
be able to to have a conversation with david um
uh i'd like to uh introduce david levy to to the program david is a honorary
president of the miss of the montreal center for the rafc and also the kingston
r a uh center for the rafc uh famously known for finding comets
and uh co discovery of the shoemaker levy nine comet that slammed
its way into jupiter i still have that newspaper and i'll probably always hold it in one day david when i get to
meet you i'm gonna have a sharpie pen so you can sign it for me um ladies and gentlemen david levy
well thank you thanks steven thanks scotty this was is a real pleasure to be here today it
is december 21st the day is here i think
the last time that the planets of jupiter and saturn got this close together was in the year 1623 the year
shakespeare's first folio came out but nobody could see them because it was a daylight event
this one is in the evening we don't even have to get up early in the day unless
you're steve and me and scotty having to get up and or stay up for a whole night as
we're managing to do yes but um really it just it says a
pleasant evening after dinner and before posting our drinks you just go out and see you look up at
the sky and you see this magnificent sight of jupiter and saturn so close together
and you call your neighborhood scientist and you say isn't this uh wonderful and
uh she or he will say no it has absolutely no scientific merit at all and she'll hang up the phone and bang on
the phone and kick the door down she's right the great conjunctions which
take place every 20 years have absolutely no astronomical
scientific value but boy are they great to see
and of the five or six billion people around the planet who
are around i would say there may be one or two that would say oh i don't want to look at those
but all the rest of us would love a clear night as we certainly have here in vail today
to go outside and take a look at jupiter and saturn quite so close it is not an astronomical
event so to speak it is an astrological event and before everyone starts yelling and
screaming and throwing things let me make my point i'm circling for a landing here and i do have a point
when we talk about the astrologers who write the columns for the daily newspapers that's not what i'm talking about we're
not interested in them we're interested in the astrologers who are here
one or two thousand years ago before there were telescopes long before there were telescopes
long before there was really a scientific basis to the night sky
when you studied the motions of the planets and you took accurate observations of where the
planets were all the time so you could predict you could predict conjunctions of uh
jupiter and venus the great conjunctions as they're called of jupiter and saturn every 20 years
and i remember one in particular in 1960 september the first my first nighttime observing session
with a telescope was during that great conjunction of jupiter and saturn i'll
never forget it i see it now i lose yesterday and it was absolutely wonderful got a
little story i'd like to share with you this is a telescope what is that
it's a telescope you ever seen one wow really cool this is a telescope
in case any of you don't know i'd like to tell you the story of how i got this
this old refractor wendy and i were on a tour of um the east coast of uh
africa and we stopped at um one of the ports and there was a nice
little uh place where you could buy stuff and had tables set up with all kinds of merchandise
we got off the ship and i went to the place and i looked around and they had a few telescopes there
and i thought this one looks like a nice little telescope and uh i sort of
looked around it a little bit and uh look looked at the
draw tubes opened up the last one and let's see if i can find it
here well it's certainly a you know junkie oh telescope taken from somebody's attic
and where is this come on um
yeah wendy i think i'm gonna need your help to find the uh the inscription here anyway
um you're all being so patient
anyway when he's gonna find this on this it's on this this one here somewhere yeah it does happen
excuse me if i survive this next five minutes and there's not going
to be a pile of david i will be able to finish my little story
[Music] right here there it is so i'm looking i'm looking around and i
see the inscription of the manufacturer doland london
i practically fell down i practically fell down in a heap i couldn't believe it and i took a deep
breath and i didn't know if the salesman
knew anything about telescopes and i said how much would you sell this telescope for and he said oh
it's just something we got out of somebody's attic give it to you for a couple hundred dollars and it turns out that all i had
was somewhere between 50 and 100 dollars and so i said would you take i'm not
sure exactly how much it was but i would just take 50 or 60 bucks for it and he thought he said yeah sure so i
gave him the telescope i gave him the money and i walked back to the ship owen gingrich was there the famous
harvard university astronomer was on our cruise and he meeted me he
greeted me at the gang plank and he looked at the telescope and he said you bought a dolan telescope for 50
bucks and i said yeah anyway the long end of the short end of the
story here is that last night i used for first light this telescope at last to take a look at
jupiter and saturn whenever i get a new telescope where there's new only to
me as this doland is or if it's new to everybody uh the first thing i try to look at is
jupiter and scotty when you sent me that lovely 12-inch reflector i know we're not
supposed to give you advertising that's one of the best pieces of optics i've ever had the honor of looking
through but no advertising anyway the first thing i looked at with that was
jupiter that was also beginning to set in the west but this time i got to see not just
jupiter but i got to see saturn as well insane field it was wonderful it brought me back to
julius caesar shakespeare and julius caesar well capernaum says
when beggars die there are no comets seen the heavens themselves blaze forth the death of princes
mean that that those two lines were one of the reasons that i decided to start is
a search for comments for comments and um anyway i
thought that this was something very special and something that i wanted very badly
to do and i and i'm i started it on december 17 1965
and i'm still doing it 55 years later don't expect ever to find another comment again
but i love the search and um i have two quotes that i would
like to offer for you tonight and um the first one is by christian
huygens who wrote these words in 1656 and this directly relates
to saturn which is part of the great conjunction he wrote in latin and little
singatur tenui plano nusquim coherent ad eclipticum in clinato it's translated
to read it is surrounded by a thin flat ring nowhere touching inclined to the ecliptic he was so
worried that somebody would steal his discovery from him that he wrote the latin as an anagram
with a's and b's and c's and stuff like that and he left it for others to decipher it so that's what it deciphered too
and uh in 1656 he discovered that the saturn had rings and on december
20th 21st 2020 at the end of this hideous year that we've had we get to
see jupiter and saturn in the evening sky almost touching a tenth of a degree
apart they will be tonight yes and um the final quote that i'm
going to give before i give it back to you scotty is from hamlet one of my favorite shakespeare
plays and some of you may be familiar with patrick stewart's quote of this
these very lines and i remember him saying what what shakespeare would ham what
shakespeare wrote with irony i say with conviction and so do i this most excellent canopy the air look
you this brave or hanging firmament this majestical roof threaded with golden fire
what a piece of work is a man how noble in reason how infinite in faculties in form and
moving how express and admirable in action how like an angel an apprehension how i could god the
beauty of the world the paragon of animals and yet to me what is this quintessence of dust
all these things talking about humanity and yet despite all the foolish mistakes
we made we still can go outside tonight and look at venus and look at jupiter
and saturn almost touching and look up at the night sky and absolutely wonder at the magic
and the beauty of it all and now back to you scott well thank you very much david that was
beautiful that was beautiful i don't know i never get tired of hearing david talk about these things so
it's great well let's uh let's introduce uh other people who are on with us today we
have besides steve malia here i'm not sure how it's arranged on
on the broadcast but what i see is jerry hubble jerry is our vice president
of engineering developer of the pmc8 system uh he is a
science imager uh very very interested in exoplanets and exo more recently exo moons and so
uh we will have we will have one of the experts for exo moons on a
later program we have rodrigo zaleda of north optics
he is the founder of north optics we have marcelo souza who is a
professor uh he is a cosmologist uh and uh he is in uh
from brazil in campos uh i always get it pronounced wrong marcelo campos de goyta casas right
is that right it is okay wonderful and we also have kelsey poor
from uh nova space galleries uh and michael carroll space artist so
uh really great to have everybody here um i know that marcelo's time is limited
uh he could only be with us for a short time so i'm gonna let him go next
so marcelo you have the stage
hi thank you very much for the invitation here in brazil everybody's talking about the the conjunction because
we are many of the people that live in brazil are christians then
we are near the christmas and then they are talking about the christian
stars then i i i would like before to show some
some pictures here because now in brazil it's very hot we are the summer
began today here in brazil i will show some pictures here about our tradition that
is like in the united states now this is our astronomy club here
very close here where we are we are near the tropic of capricorn
in this state here de janeiro states we are three almost 300 kilometers from
the city of hide chanel that is a world famous seat here is our seat we have a big river
crossing the seat have three villages to cross the front to go from one side to other side
of the city here and now it is very hot we don't have this beach
in our city but it is a lot to have in brazil to have
uh the beach near downtown here is located 5 50 kilometers from downtown here is the
copacabana in hindi then everybody even with the problems with kovid
we want that people don't go to the beach in the spirit but the beaches are full we are leaving a
big problem with the virus here and when possible in the summer and very possible man
visualizing january of 2020 we organized an event near the beach
to look to the sky at night and during the day we had the opportunity to show this the sun
from many people here but this year will not be possible to
organize events like this and we would like today to organize a public event
to observe the the conjunction but it will not be possible then they are going to show online
the image and at night we have the tradition to have lights
well this is a image from this ear here is the inhibition here we have here
a big tree christmas tree in a lake
here have many parts of even with the problems we have lights in the streets this year
we will not have big celebrations we don't have the celebration of the solstice here in brazil
well we're having any traditional celebration for us the most important celebration
this period is christmas in the new year then we are going to celebrate
in the night of 24 for that is a traditional genius that you
have in your house then this the conjunction in this spirit for us
for many people here they are calling that it is the uh christian stars
and many people talk about the battling it's correct my pronunciation i don't
know if he is and here is like we are going to see
here in our city today near the horizon after the sunset
then we are going in the sky now is clear i believe that today will be possible to
see uh have three days with the clouds here and today it's clear then i think that
will be possible then this is something that we discuss here a lot it's about the bethlehem star this
is correct why did you talk about this uh this was a uh
a painting by gilut we have many hypotheses about the battle hang
stars one of the hypotheses that's it maybe it could be a comet but
you don't have any register of a comment in the periods
and they have many doubts about the year that jesus christ born
then he we can this is the reason that the christians astronomers
look for events near the year that we consider now for the born of
jesus christ and one of the hypothesis is a conjunction a triple triple
conjunction between saturn and jupiter that happened seven years before
christmas this triple conjunctions happens in 29
may 29 the first time that they read together then it was possible to
see again in september 29 and aft in the last
it was in december four then in seven before in the year seven before fishing
this is the reason that see now people here is talking about the better lane style
this is a a way that yes christian astronomer is looking for a natural phenomenon
to be associated with the what you can read in the bible
but they are hypothesis and here the press in the media is talking
a lot about this about this and the many people is calling the
conjunction of these knights as the return of the battling star
after so many years this for for us is a good thing because many people
now want to look at the sky at these nights to see the conjunction
they have out brazilian channels tv channels old
newspapers and you can see many pages internet a lot of articles
about the conjunction then it will be a special moment here for our group the groups of
astronomy in brazil because many people want to see and hear our city we are going to
transmit live the observation uh we are receiving a lot of messages
from many people asking how that they can look the construction then it is
i think that is a special moment for us here and there is a way to popularize
astronomy here in brazil i think that the same is happening
however the words but here in brazil heavy as far as christmas is a very special
moment then i think that you also have uh another way to
motivate people to look for construction today
very good thank you thank you very much marcelo that's wonderful uh
we are marcelo is also the uh editor-in-chief for the
newly relaunched sky's up global astronomy magazine and i'm going to put the link down for
the magazine here um yes
it is good to remember that we have a special article about the conjunction that's
right magazine yes we do and it tells you how to observe it and how to photograph it
so um so if you you're interested in knowing more about the uh uh the uh conjunction
there's uh there's a full article about that uh you know with observing techniques
and photography techniques as well so uh but there's many other articles in there from all from astronomers from all
over the world it truly is a global astronomy magazine so and it's absolutely free so you can go
and download it at the link i just put in but i think you'll find it a good read
um let's uh marcelo thank you so much it's always a
pleasure to have you on our program up next will be uh rodrigo zaleda rodrigo is from
la serena chile and uh he will be he'll be joining us later
tonight doing some live imaging i think is it is it clear in uh in um
in chile tonight rodrigo hi scott yes
well that's great yes and last night and this weekend a clear sky
in the late i take pictures for the conclusion yesterday and
today i put my telescope to the waist
i see yes so do you um uh did you did have you been taking
images uh recently of the uh of the conjunction
yes i i have now i share with you my my screen
okay to [Music] i show you my my setup of telescope
and imagine
oh wow i recognize that telescope yes it's a nice telescope
yes i i put two telescopes one for a photography and two for
observing and this great magic
for the conclusion last night [Music]
okay do you see my picture now yes yes yes very nice yes and
my daughter observing with my wife the concussion is very amazing for for for further
and and this is my my picture is uh
very nice it's very difficult for the the the law on the sky with
the the turbulence atmospherics this is another picture wow oh i think i
see the red spot yes there is that right yes yes
yes at the southern rings the and then moon who withers
right yes this is the best imagine uh i i changed yesterday
few minutes [Music] down to the origin the the
as atmosphere is more turbulence and more difficult see the the images
right beautiful beautiful and tonight
this afternoon i point my telescope again to the conjunction and
if i share with you my money in a lifetime yeah
wonderful that's great so we get to see the um so tonight uh we're gonna have many
astrophotographers on so we'll try to go give everybody a little time as we go through all of them and uh um
and then as we have more time we'll we'll uh we'll settle in on each astrophotographer maybe they can
talk about technique or how they're how they're getting these images so
but very cool i'm excited so rodrigo thank you thank you very much yep
okay all right so um and then uh up next here is
kelsey poor from novospace.com and michael carroll who is a
featured artist this month is that right he's not featured this month he's featured all the time
especially for christmas because he does he does so many amazing christmas cards and so much spiritual artwork that i
like to feature it during christmas time especially sure so uh tell us a little bit about uh
uh the gallery and um the history of it and um uh and space fest as well
yeah oh so much to talk about right first of all happy great conjunction day to everybody
here um so my father was a space artist who
started doing an art gallery where the only art gallery that does space art solely we've also started selling
other little tiny gifts and and we have a huge price range now so it's not just art there's astronaut autographs as well
yeah it's located here in tucson arizona and we decided to do a space fest annually of course we can't
have it we couldn't have it this year but um that features the astronauts
signing so if you're an astronaut autograph collector that's the place to be it's very personable
it's not like these other places where you go and you can't really talk to the celebrities the astronauts are our celebrities
the space artists are celebrities so we have a huge space art show and we have guest speakers everything
from astronomy to space travel past present future
and i started last year i had somebody come talk about time travel actually wow i started touching on a
little bit of theoretical physics um michael carroll is so important you guys
that's why i wanted him on this big show tonight so i have an introduction i wrote about him
on my phone and i'm going to read it for you and then mikey you can take it away michael carroll was one of the founding
fathers of the international astronomical artists association in the early 80s so he's known my father since the 80s
when people have known my parents before i was born i always say i've known this person before i was born that's just
how i put it so i've known mikey since before i was born um in addition to painting he is also an
author of both fiction and non-fiction books all of his
creative work has scientific detail so that's something that my dad really loved about him
and that's why he's featured prominently in our gallery he's got a lot of work up we sell his books his art
um he really gets the scientific facts in his paintings and and his books um
his art has been featured in national geographic sky and telescope and much more
and he you know we probably don't even have enough time to scratch the surface on everything he does today but i am so
grateful that he took the time out to chat with you guys so
mikey okay michael all right well it's great to be here
thanks so much yeah kelsey and i definitely go way back
right so uh i you know i used to follow um kim poor
for many years including going back into the 80s because
that's when i really started getting involved in the telescope industry and
you know it was just entering this whole amazing world you know of of astronomers scientists
astronauts uh space explorers um and you know incredible images done with
telescopes and from spacecraft and stuff but no one gets the essence
of space exploration like space artists do they put you in a spot often that would
be impossible to be in to imagine what um
you know seeing the rings of saturn from one of its moons for example you know places that we have not been to
yet so uh how would you describe your work michael
well i think that's certainly the goal of astronomical artists to to put people in a uh in
in a spot in one of these amazing places that we're discovering these days
much of the visual imagery that we have is you know taking that at ranges of
hundreds of thousands or even millions of kilometers and so but we get a lot of
science even with non-visual uh instrumentation and the space artist can
take all that data and put it into something visual that people can
understand so that's the challenge and that's the fun of it
uh we are surrounded by a new frontier out there and and uh ideally space art
inspires people to look up and out and and just imagine
uh what it would be like out there and also to learn a little bit about it right right i also too i mean early on
i mean all we had was space art that could help us imagine what space exploration would really be
like so you know if you look at some of the uh science fiction books and the covers and stuff like that from the
1940s 1950s you know of what the moon's terrain might be looking like if you're
standing inside of a crater or you know you're uh around another
planet um or you know some other exotic location in space you know
it it did help interpret what we might see what we might discover
some some space art back from those days was remarkably accurate and uh of course some that we didn't
have enough information to maybe portray it um but uh
what what has inspired you about uh as as a space artist and and what are
your favorite pieces of space art that you've made great questions before
i get to that though i want to comment on your last comment which was great um i have a i think it's an analog
from 1948 and the cover on it is a painting of jupiter seen from
europa it's got palm trees on it oh cool yeah i know it's great i love it because
one one element that space art embodies is it it takes a moment
in history and freezes it you can look at an astronomical painting
and understand what the science at the time was telling us uh chesley bonastel late 1950s
did paintings of mars and in those paintings he showed uh in the distance subtle hints of
vegetation uh the canals were these long straight uh channels of water he wasn't
committing to anything specific except that they were real features and so things like this uh really tell
us uh what was going on scientifically at the time it's fun to look at the older space art see what we
got wrong and what we got right and right now you know in the last few years it's
it's been a very exciting time because the things have accelerated and the
space artist has time to make a guess and then a few years later find out the
reality because of the the orbital telescopes or
the spacecraft for sending out and so that's really a great um
a great feature of what's going on in this exciting time that we live in
um in terms of inspiration bona cell certainly uh was a biggie for me and for many
and in fact he inspired a whole generation of scientists and engineers um
lucian rudow was a painter at the beginning of the 1900s he was
also the head of the mudon observatory in paris france he was a very good observer but an accomplished
painter and he painted what he saw he didn't guess he extrapolated scientifically
and his paintings hold up very well today so and then i'm inspired by a lot of my
colleagues today kim poor certainly was an inspiration and continues to be so uh
it's nice to be surrounded by uh so many talented people out there
right wow that's great that's great um so um i see that kelsey has shared
a link uh to your artwork which is great um what are your favorite pieces of art
can maybe we could uh that you've created or the most important pieces to you
oh okay um well probably early in my career one that was
used the most uh was a painting i did of the phobos
soviet phobos spacecraft there weren't very many paintings of it and we i got the opportunity to go
to the soviet union in 1987 for the 30th anniversary of sputnik
kim was the head of our delegation in fact along with john lomberg and the
planetary society who has always had a great relationship with the
space art community and so we got to see one of the fobo spacecraft there that
was uh ready to be packaged up and sent off to mars
so some of those my paintings ended up in some magazines
that i had not been in before and so i was i was thrilled about that a lot of
a lot of that is timing you know and and luck so uh yeah
you guys were on a big adventure and uh you know uh i i'm a believer that uh you make a
lot of your own luck and so uh you know and if you've got the tools and the energy and the mindset to uh to
deal with it um you know you can make something out of that and you know by you i mean making these
pieces of art and sharing it with the world uh you know i can only imagine that you've
really propelled the inspiration of so many generations of people so i think that that's that's wonderful
i'm going to dive into your work and and check it out for myself and i hope
that by the time we get to the next space fest in july kelsey has invited
explorer scientific to uh be there and so we would you know if i do go there we will
broadcast from there as well and so we would uh really be able to uh check out the you
know the kaleidoscope of space art that's there and uh and try to learn more
about uh what it is to be a space artist because being a space artist i think is a is a
type of technical artist but they they're they hold the responsibility of
not only inspiring people but to accurately propel uh the you know state of the art as far
as uh technology and uh and to help us get to the next level
so it's gonna be a lot of fun and i really appreciate uh you and kelsey for taking time out
today to be on our program uh yeah thanks for having us it's fun
to uh see what's going on there right yeah so so anyways um
uh kelsey has shared that link you want to check it out um and uh you know i think that uh
if you get the chance you should visit the gallery during space vest and visit some astronauts and
i i'm sure michael you'll be there as well yes you bet if they're open i'll be
there awesome awesome that's great okay so um we have uh
um one one uh person left here jerry hubbell do you would you like to add
anything or yeah actually yeah while you guys have been talking i i got on the observatory
mmsro we still have partly cloudy skies it's going to cloud up a little later but i've actually i'm
actually on jupiter right now in the daylight in the daylight plus let me share let me share
okay i'm trying to see saturn there but i can't quite see it let me let me do this here see how it works for
you yeah a lot of people don't think you can see planets and stars in broad daylight but you can
you're still there they are still there
oh there it is you see jupiter there i see jupiter that's i'm trying to adjust the exposure
maybe i see a faint hit of saturn too really let me let me do that thing here let me try to maybe it's
noise just a little bit let's check well there how's that
where do you see saturn at if it's up and to the left like at the 11 o'clock position would that be right
right here no no closer oh down here yeah i don't know
i'm just it's maybe not tough this is a tough uh yeah let me let me let me brighten it up
just a little bit more maybe we can see it it's if i go too much then it overexposes the
whole sky and you can't see nothing you can see it starts to wash out now yeah you need the contrast yeah let me let me
but i thought i'd give it a try plus there's clouds so i don't know how many clouds are
that's a better image yeah well that's half of the conjunction right there yeah that's about half
that's about as uh that's about what i can do right now all right i may be able to i don't know
if i can adjust the contrast any further or not probably so maybe i should go to
monochrome um clearlife 58 is saying this is really
cool the fact that you can see it through clouds is yeah and in the daylight too
so so i'm going to be getting on your on your scope later on and uh we'll be able to see it much
better than that but i thought i'd give it a try just to see you can see the scope there also pointing up at the sky right um
it's amazing it is so all right thanks jerry that's awesome
all right uh so i think we're kind of towards the end of our program i was
expecting uh cesar brollo to show up but you know cesar and uh and rodrigo
also are running businesses and uh you know when when customers are are
there they take front center so um is there any uh would anybody like
to add anything before we close out this program any other comments i'm not going to
thanks the opportunity and invitation again to participate it ever is a great pleasure to be here
with all of you thank you very much thank you marcelo that's awesome thank you
okay well we will say uh uh well we'll say we'll see you later
because we are going to be back on um uh at uh
about uh 4 45 p.m central time okay which is uh
22 45 universal coordinated time so but at 4 45 we'll have on
of course david levy david einker from astronomy magazine will be joining us and and then we have a bunch of
astrophotographers coming on uh that will be showing uh the world uh
the conjunction through their telescopes including rodrigo zeleda so um it'll be a lot of fun getting that
we do have a tight window though because these planets are setting right after
the sun so they have roughly i don't know maybe about an hour or so of imaging time there are of course
different time zones that we're working in so we'll try to coordinate that as as we
go along steve malia will be helping out a lot because he has a big crew coming in from
the royal astronomical society of canada and i think we have almost like 20
guests or something like that that will be coming on there may be more than that towards the end of the program so
and then we'll just run the program until people run out of things to say
but there's always more to talk about when it comes to astronomy
so thank you very much thanks for watching uh thanks for sharing our program and
liking us and subscribing to us and all the rest of it this is an outreach activity and uh
we're glad you took part in it and um for now we'll close down and see you in
about two more hours so roughly take care
good evening everyone my name is rich oser i'm a volunteer with the shabbos-based science center in oakland california
we're going to be watching the conjunction tonight through the 36-inch research reflecting telescope
otherwise known as nelly and we'll be starting our program at five o'clock
and going for about 30 minutes uh that is roughly sunset till the telescope hits
its limit of 15 degrees above the horizon so i hope you can join us tonight um
it's very easy we have both a facebook live link and a youtube link and they'll both be
simulcast so uh feel free to tune in to either one of those two uh whichever is more convenient let me
put up a slide that's got the link on it and here we go and uh for facebook users
just go to facebook.com slash above space slash live and wait for the program to begin
it'll show up on the live page uh at roughly uh a
quarter till report until five uh for youtube users uh you want to go to
youtube.com and then do a search for shabbos space and science center
and the live program should show up as a thumbnail there so anyhow i hope you join us tonight i
hope you've had a good time looking at the conjunction from all over the world
you should also know that we have a regular program at these same links every saturday night at nine o'clock
where we do live viewing from this telescope and i hope you can join us sometime anyhow that's it for me
uh have a good evening
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