Transcript:
I'm have my telescopes up and running as well for regular imaging tonight so. after.
after probably about 10 o'clock, 1030 central time it'll be dark enough here. or
earlier than that, I can show the moon if we need a little bit of space filler.
I think I'm thinking of doing the same thing Molly I'm gonna. bring out. We're gonna do a
couple of smart things and I've got. I've got two people that I
invited over from Fraser Kane's program. the virtual Star Party
series that we well we had to cancel the series because there's never enough people available with clear skies I'm
invited to of those guys on as well and it sounds like they both are gonna have clear
weather so we'll keep our fingers. Crossed FY beat
everybody to the chat. He's he's the first one to. it's
always a contest. Hey Jeff you're listening to us as my
volume okay. Norm Hughes says good evening
Panel of distinguished guests and speakers.
I think your volume is just fine. Yeah. sometimes it sounds good to other people, but it
doesn't sound. Oh TF y is perfect volume. Okay. Alright.
Yeah. It's not bad. It's not it's not echoing like it was earlier. actually, it's not it sounds echoing to me. Oh yeah
sounds normal in the end now good.
So I have a mechanical keyboard so apologies in advance.
Well, Molly, we are all excited to have this program and having you as a special guest. Yeah.
So that's awesome. Yeah. I'm really excited to to do this. Yeah and to have all my friends
Come on. Yeah. Okay everyone smile. I'm gonna take a selfie. okay.
Alright there we go there We go was it just you and the selfie or oh it's a snapshot for
everybody with everybody. Okay good and there's like an eso or
whatever it's called nowadays there you go. let's see. No
stop, I often ask people to suspend I only ask for 5 minutes a day and only 5 minutes but just 5 minutes
where you only think of me just 5 minutes.
Is that too much to ask really? Well, it depends on the context
I mean people may think of you because they like you or they may think of you because you
hate right. Yeah. So maybe you alongside the request you want
to kind of put some 5 minutes is too much time, then just 60 seconds and $5 sent to this
address. Okay, right? Can I I hire you as a fundraiser?
Scott. How about $600 I don't know how about $60 in 5 seconds. Scott. That's even.
Better that's a thing or you you spam Facebook with a thousand posts today and people
can pay you to stop this is stop it. I'm already there so
like like the modern day version of putting pink flamingos on your on your friend's yard and having them
pay you to move them into somebody else's yard. That's right. yeah million, a million pink flamingos. Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. and you have a pink flamingo removal fee. We almost
did that on the cross country team as a fundraiser when I was in high school. I like the way
you think. We did play we did ding dong
ditch to bring gifts to our graduating seniors 1 year. How did it work out It worked out
pretty well, except I had a broken ankle. Well it was at the healing stage where I was
off crutches, but I was still wearing AA boot and I couldn't move very fast. That's what the
you're coming out with a shotgun. yes with the Buddha. Your foot Yeah, it's okay
because we had a sleepover one time a big team Summer party
and part of the team didn't come but then went and Ted us instead. it was very weird.
Brutal, I think it was planned so we have so far We've got. of
course, I mentioned Jeff Wise who's on Norm Hughes. Chris Larson says. Hello Molly Jeff
Norman, Scott. Ronald Green says hello.
Somebody named Molly Wakelin is on. oh, I thought I was logged
into my account. That's right. Oh. yeah. I am not in my
account. Yeah. we've got
Richard Grace on the other side he's normally on this program. He's not gonna make it to the
show tonight just tired glad you got a packed house anyways, oh and howdy everyone well it
will be on. Back to the broadcast ends, Yeah.
Cameron gills He's he's on this side of the fence this time. and Rick Dark moon. What a cool
name? Oh. yeah. He's he's a friend of mine from from when I lived in the Midwest. Yeah,
Louisville, Kentucky tuning in. Yeah. he he's the one he gave me the the Newton that I'm
currently using for my my science ring that I do a ABS
observations with oh very cool, very cool.
So this is an outreach program and if you would be so kind is
to share this broadcast. before we get going to your favorite
groups or if you're on YouTube, just subscribe. and. Facebook,
of course, if you like that would be nice.
And I'm going to share this with a number of groups here.
One of the groups I like is the dogs and cats of astronomy.
There's a group like that. like cats have space in the sun, Excuse me. Yes, is it. which
social media platform? We're talking about. That's Facebook. I've been meaning to take some
of my astro photos and like Photoshop my cats into them in various poses.
I started the product I haven't haven't actually made any images yet but started going through and picking out the
ones, which are good candidates for creating such images. How do you get a cat pose? That's
what I want well. you just gotta catch him, You know, gotta be quick with the camera button.
And also good at the Photoshop. Yes.
Okay, we're gonna share with our friends at Facebook Astronomy Club, one of the biggest clubs out there we
shared with the Neil degrasse Tyson Group. that's 100000.
100000 my. See how many of them watch us tonight. We got
telescope addicts. Oh, yeah. I think I'm in that group. I'm in that group. Oh, no. I'm not in
that group The Astro imaging channel is in that group and I cross post from the Astro Imaging Channel group over to
their group for our astro imaging channel broadcast. so imaging. That's right must be
two words. Backyard Astro Imaging Club No. I don't want
to yeah. have to change that.
There is the online astronomy society.
We're all very quiet right now we got lost in deep thought and
prayer. I'm gonna throwing Facebook posts around on Facebook. Oh my god.
Twitter I couldn't get my internet to work, so I threw the computer across the office
and out the window and then brought it back in and out it works just fine. That's fine.
That does seem to work very well. That's artificial
intelligence David, the the computer knows you're mad at it. Yeah or you just forced it
to turn off and then back on again and I was in undergrad I
worked in IT in the dorms, instead of like like front end IT support for the students and
it was a very frequent occurrence that I'd get a call and I would head over to somebody's dorm room and as
soon as I walked in their problem was fixed like the thing that was that was being weird stop being weird and
it'll be like I swear. That it was broken, I said, It's just intimidated by my presence. You
know, there's this AI robot now that's in development for use on the ISS that if you don't
engage it, one of the astronauts for a certain amount of time it will turn on and say. I'm disturbed to sense
that you may not like me. you know this is getting to be a little bit weird isn't it with
AI now it's like that's me right there. So,
Bought one of my friends, a howl 9000 model, you know, it's just it's a piano with the red.
Dome on it. You know his first question is this gonna try to kill me just don't try to
Unplug it. That's whatever you do whatever you do and don't leave the pod Bay doors locked.
that one unlocked. mm hmm.
Well, we are sharing this also with a lot of our. astronomy
clubs that serve Latin America. astronomy groups, which is
great. Lots of interest.
Now, Scotty, I can't find it very hard to hear you right now. How about now that's much
better much better much better. I just gotta get my voice next to the microphone as do I.
yeah, yes.
Okay. let's see who do we have? Oh good Mikayla's here. Makayla.
Hello. Mikayla is is my minion.
My my protege if you will.
Hi, Michael. How are you good? How are you? I'm doing well? I'm Stella.
Michael Instagram.
I should start my camera cooling down. one of my cameras, it gets a frost spot
on it if I don't cool it down really slowly in like 5° blocks
over 5 minutes like it's really picky. How many rigs are you
gonna have out tonight? Molly? You got you got the drive for
working on the other one eh. Well I. my celestial on a VX
mount still like the deck motor still like kinda jumps every once in a while, and I can't
guide it, but if I limit it to 62nd exposures, most of them turn out, Okay Cool. Awesome.
Yeah. I use that one as the science rig since I have a CD on there and can be two by two
to get better sensitivity. Looks like
we're rolling. We want to find earth like planets
around sunlight stars cuz that's our best chance of finding a world with life on it. Today is the day that truck
carrying the new instrument has arrived over the next couple of days. We'll start integrating the whole system together, but
the first step is to actually get here and today the instrument got here The instrument is a velocity
spectrum It measures to very high accuracy The wobble of a star as a planet who was around
we are trying to do this the level of sensitivity more than anything that exists at the
moment. We're gunning for is one of the most precise measurements of a frequency.
Astronomy and I'm hoping we can get down to the point where we're really we're really probing the limits of the star
and nothing else the idea with new, It is really develop something that is so stable that you're purely dominated by
a ration for this not only will they detect planets and measure masses of lawn planets, but you
can try for direct detection of planetary forearms so that you can try to distant tangle the
very small reflected light signature from the planet itself instruments like Ned
present the first capability for being able to do it one of the things. A wanted was an
instrument that could actually help the community follow up test objects.
I think it'll be a very valuable resource for confirming test planets. It's a test provides the one half and
knew it. I think will do a wonderful job providing the masses for a lot of these confirmed plans. Another goal
for aid is to identify potential targets for the because the AST will open the
doors to characterizing these planets by actually looking for
atmospheres and images And so it's very important that you find the right ones to spend
time. The tennis court.
Well, hello everybody I wanna welcome everyone to the
Thirty-ninth Global Star Party and our special guest tonight Guest host is Molly Wakelin.
Now Molly has been with us on many of these global star parties. She's done some special programs with us as
well. What I know about her is, of course, she's she's a fabulous and to get along with.
but she's great astrophotography, She does she likes to do a lot of outreach
through these the virtual. Items that we've been doing, but she also likes to get out there. she has her own trailer
set up so that she can get out to remote areas when she can, But she does a lot of imaging
right from her own backyard. She got started in astrophotography in the summer
of 2015 and she has really just pushed herself to do some
remarkable imaging. She knows a ton about image processing and she's always willing to lend a hand. And she's very connected.
She knows a lot of people here, which is awesome and. apparently she only just
scratched the surface of all the people that she could have invited on this program for this to go around. so we're gonna have to have another
global stock party with with Molly. hosting it so that we can get more of her friends on.
but you're also involved in STEM outreach and you have it
says here and maybe you've already improved on this over 100 hours of volunteer activities reaching over a
thousand people you're in double. VSO Ambassador and you
know broadcaster on the astro imaging channel on YouTube so
Molly thank you for for doing this, you're making my job easier tonight and. I'm going
to turn this over to you and you can kick off this program. Thank you. Alright. Scott.
Thank you and thank you so much for inviting me to co-host the show and to bring on AA slew of
I think are going to be fantastic speakers and presenters and and some live telescope views as well. I
wanted. For the session that go with the theme of of
highlighting women and young people in astronomy when you look around your astronomy club
or at your Star party, women and young people are the two people you are at least likely
to find there I say from experience the first summer I went down to the Texas Star
Party I had my car piled up with gear and I pulled through the gate and there was a gal
there checking people in and looked at me and. In the absence of a of a spouse and
looked at the back of my car and said Are you a woman? a woman astronomer and I was like
yeah and she was so excited to meet another one. There's a few of us. so I wanted to highlight
some of the other women and young people that I know in astronomy to to to kinda show
everybody else that that we're here and you can be too. There's so much opportunity to
get involved in astronomy either in the Ato front or doing stem outreach or. All
kinds of things. and I wanted to to highlight those people
and invite everybody to come participate in astronomy. So
our our first speaker tonight is the famed David Levy He's if
you're unfamiliar if you don't watch the show he is the David Levy of the Comet Schumacher
fame and the one that crashed into Jupiter. has discovered and co discovered numerous
other comments. has authored 34 books that, according to Wikipedia. was including a
biography on Jean Shoemaker and Clyde to. The discovery of
Pluto and it's a prolific astronomer, and he always has really cool poetry on this show
and really amazing stories share from his time in astronomy. So thank you for coming back on this week. David
Well, thank you so much Molly and it's really a pleasure to be here to add my welcome to all of you tonight around the
world and we have a lot of people very interesting people tonight a slightly different
group from what we usually have. I'm really looking. Forward to Stella's
presentation. and II think that we're going to have something
very interesting and very unusual tonight. I'm looking forward to all of your
presentations, but I always I'm asked to open up the stark parties because I offer. a
little bit of poetry to get us into into our session and
tonight we're going to go back to Shakespeare and. the first I
have. Quotes from Shakespeare to offer tonight, the first is one that I believe I gave last week, but I'm gonna give it
again because it is so powerful and then the second one is one that I did not give last week.
you mentioned Shakespeare sitting down at his computer and opening up Microsoft word
version minus six. 6008 and he's he's he's at the part of
his play Where. he's about. Announced that. Macbeth wife
Lady Macbeth, has just passed away and he's thinking of what to write and the queen. My lord
is dead is what he has just written. and Macbeth starts to write she should have died
hereafter there would have been a time for such a word and then you kind of imagine there's a
tap on his shoulder and Shakespeare turns to his left and it's God who is looking.
And he says you know, she says will go take a break. I'm gonna
take over for a few lines. and. this you gotta say, is
something that does have divine inspiration because he talks
about space and time and the continuum and this is the quote
that he comes out with to which I'm going to add one final line. tomorrow and tomorrow and
tomorrow creeps in it's Petty. From day to day to the last syllable of recorded time and
then is heard no more out out brief candle life's been a walking shadow, a poor player
that stretches and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It is a tale
told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing.
signifying everything. The second quote is from hamlet and
I think a lot of you will be familiar with this, especially those of you who are Star Trek fans. because again. there's
that episode in which Patrick Stewart playing Jean Luke Picard. he says. What what
Shakespeare writes with irony, I say with conviction. This
most excellent canopy in the air look you this brave or hanging firmament this
majestically fretted with golden Fire. What a piece of work as a human being? how
noble in reason how infinite in faculties inform and moving how express and admirable in
action? I like an angel and apprehension like a god the
beauty of the world, the paragon of animals and yet to me. What is this quintessence
of dust? And on that note, I'm gonna hand it back to you. Molly Thank you for giving me
this opportunity. You so much I was you know when when you see
a lot of these astronomy outreach shows and it's a lot of technical work and a lot of.
you know regular astronomy things. but on this show we get to have some really cool poetry
by some amazing people and presented by David Levy here. so it's always a delight. so.
next on our schedule is David Eicher for a special
presentation in quotes. I don't have an introduction for you.
Unfortunately, that's okay. That's okay. Thank you Molly. today. I wanted to do something
that was a little unusual and that is to talk a little bit about my dad. who was a
scientist and today is his 100th birthday. Now we lost him
at age 90.5, but he was an influence with Astronomy
magazine and with deep Sky magazine if you remember back in the day that that public.
And he's sort of outlook on life and inspiring view of
things is important. I think to us to remember so I'd like to talk a little bit about him
tonight. He was a professor of chemistry, a Manhattan project
scientist. a philosopher of science He taught the philosophy of science in a
humanitarian. And I think it's important to remember someone who goes through their entire
life continuing to evolve and to learn as much as possible. Always that curiosity is a huge
driving factor. for us who care about understanding the way things really work so he was
very interested in many many things he was passionate about all of his interests. He was a
lifelong learner and that I think falls in line with what a lot of. US in this group and
talking to each other about our interests are like he was an Absorber and a sharer of
everything that he cared about for many many years, many things fascinated him, he
taught school because he continued after his emeritus retirement from Miami
University in Ohio to teach. a an institute for learning and
retirement at Miami. and so he taught a grand total of 50 years as a teacher thirty.
Years in in university and even even. thereafter, he thought he
never sort of lost that fire for learning about things continuously and sharing what
he learned and what was evolving in knowledge as as he went along and that's really
critical. I think for us to to keep close to our heart as well. he wrote about a lot of
things he he inspired me to write and to learn about lots of things, he wrote a lot about World war. That he was involved
with as a civilian, he wrote a lot about the civil war that he had a ancestors in fighting for
grant and Sherman. He wrote a lot about atomic energy that he was involved with when he was
21 years old. went directly from his undergrad school into the Manhattan project, he wrote
about the west and mining and neurology a lot and back in the starting his adventures. Out
West from growing up in Ohio with his parents who could travel extensively in the old
days and so they explored the west through long trips that
inspired him beginning in 1926 when he was very young, he wrote a lot about the
philosophy of science, he wrote about codes and cyphers that
fascinated him, he wrote about stamps and coins and was interested in collecting artifacts and in museums
museums being the sharing of artifacts that collect our knowledge. Of course, together
from the root word and he wrote a lot about American history. so I'd like to share if I can
share my screen, I'd like to share just a few images of him and talk just a little bit more
about how he inspired me now I am sharing. a Microsoft
Powerpoint not Modesto now let me see if this works can you see what I am seeing yes and
can I start? Slideshow And I'll show a few pictures of him
perfect now here is John. at soon after his birth with his
parents in in Dayton, he grew up in Dayton, which on Ruskin Road a nice little house that
was built in well they they moved to a couple of from a couple of simpler houses to a
very nice house that was built in 1929 where where they were up until World War two when he
went off to work on. Project and he lived a couple of houses
down from a famous woman and he got to know quite a number of
people around Dayton. Of course, course, Dayton was the birthplace of aviation. He was
fortunate enough to live two houses away from a woman called Ivette Wright Miller and she
was the niece of the Wright brothers Now when he grew up there, we we think of how
incredibly distant to many people now. the early. Of Nasa
of spaceflight seemed to us now which we love the exploration of the moon, the Apollo days,
you know, we're unfortunately, we're losing many of those astronauts now who are still our good friends some of them,
but here's one lifetime goes back all the way to the invention of powered flight,
even which is incredible. They're in Dayton, of course, Wilbur, by the time my father
was growing up, there was long gone, but. Every once in a while a big black Ford touring
car would pull up to Ivan's house as my dad was out playing with his friends and Orville
Wright would get out of the car and he would talk to Orville Wright. You know so that that that's incredibly close to us
still in the sort of tapestry of history if you will and he was a stamp collector at that
time, Missus Miller thought he was a cute kid and and took a shine to him and so 1 day.
Invited him up to her attic to pick out a nice stamp for his
collection to have and he picked out a nice envelope and he regretted this often for
years later, but he pulled the letter out and handed it back to missus Miller and only kept
the envelope and stamp thinking he shouldn't keep the letter well and here's the envelope.
It's it's an envelope that is from Jimmy Doolittle in 1932.
Dressed to Orville right, wow, so you can imagine what the letter was about here. Oh my
goodness. That this was, of course, Jimmy Doolittle became very very famous of course for
among other things for doolittle raid during World War two and so on. so here he is as
a young child in about 1925 here. just to talk a little bit
about him he. had this thirst for knowledge and excitement about science, which, of course
was really taking a hold in the early twentieth century of of
logic of an analytical thinking of experimentation all those hallmarks of science were very
important. To progressives, of course at that time, this is
John about the time that he went to work for the Manhattan project He worked for Harold Y
at Columbia University in New York. the original portion of the Manhattan project and what
he worked on was the expansion rate of the Agassi expansion rate of uranium hex of which
was an important component to understand so that the scale of Oak Ridge that. Of the uranium
material for the Manhattan project could be worked out, so that's what he did there at Columbia That interrupted of
course, a lot of people's lives. he went back. He got his PHD at Purdue and he became a
professor at Miami University of Organic Chemistry. He was there for 37 years teaching at
Miami the original Miami that is in Ohio.
He got into lots and lots of writings and and was very interested in he was able to
track what was happening in World War two from afar. He always joked that he helped to
successfully defend New York City from the Nazis, but he was also interested as I said in
the civil war and so later in life after my mother died, we took a lot of trips together
and and got into relics and artifacts and papers that we had together of writing about
the American civil war. Well, and this is how he looked in
1982 about the time we were cranking up and working on deep sky monthly the publication
that I started as a 15 year old and led to my involvement in in
astronomy, Astronomy magazine and so on the first issues of which rolled off of his my
machine at Miami and his office was very sophisticated stuff and and he always supported to
a great great degree. My interest and and the interest of others not only was he
curious and a lifelong learner and fanatically interested in understanding the details of
things that's really critical for us as people who love the universe and and love
astronomy, but he was genuinely interested in people and that's a really important aspect of us
too of the scientific reasoning and I think that's why we're here on a program like this.
Tonight and and what you do Scott for us and with us here and he would be delighted I
think to know that we are. doing this kind of discussion
continuously of things, which is exactly what he thought should be done more and more
among science minded people. This is a I'm sorry, Scott, I said. Thank you, you know,
yeah. absolutely. and this. this is a photograph of of human 2014. you're the end of a
couple of years before the end of his life in his. Chemistry office at Miami there that that
I took and I wanted to just end with a couple of thoughts from him, He was not a particularly
conventionally religious guy. He was a scientist an imperialist, but he did
cofounded two Unitarian Universalist churches one in West Lafayette, where Purdue
was where he went to school and one in Oxford, where Miami was as well and and a few years
before his death. He came up with a revision of what he called a religious. Ten
Commandments for scientists, so I thought I should share this with you as well and I won't
read through the whole thing you guys know what these are, but a religious credo is a guideline for life. A
suggestion of purpose or a goal. Ten is an arbitrary number for convenience as we
know and and you guys know what Commandments are in natural theories are so he included the
conservation theory Anthropology Quantum theory radi. Theory particle theory
the scientific theories not theories, meaning hypothesis
ideas, but these are tested known quantities that that science follows these theories
in the scientific sense Evolution theory relativity theory and psychological theory
and John, although he was a peer scientist and and loved people he he had a bit of a
soft spot underneath him and so he had two final. Ones here that I thought I would read
behavior theory there's satisfaction in helping others toward happiness, which is
often reciprocal personal immortality is achieved by the
views of others. And lastly, ethical theory for a worthwhile
existence, we must strive together to maximize freedom with responsibility and find
fulfillment in peace and in love. so that is a quick group
of thoughts from John Eich, who who was very inspiring to me and my closest pal and working
on lots of things and very inspiring to what happened with the evolution of deep sky and
of astronomy. Magazines so he would be proud to know that we're all talking about all the
scientific stuff together now. so thank you for listening to
me and happy 100th birthday to my dad.
Happy birthday. and I will David If you don't mind I'd like to say a couple of things
about this of course, David because I have John David quite well. Yeah, I knew him we
watched the movie Lincoln together. Yeah, Wendy and I and you and your dad watched that
movie together here in this house. Yeah, but I have one two words to say about your
presentation tonight home run. Oh I've heard many presentations. you've give this
one is by far the best one I've heard and it. Me so much of my
own dad who I was also very close to yeah and you know if
you're wondering how long you're going to miss him my father died in 1985 and I'm
getting around to not missing him as much as I used to, but it give another 1520 years and
I may get over him but not quite yet. I remember stories
about my father who was a big help in my early years in. The
night sky. but I had a special friend, a Greek amateur
astronomer named. named Constantine Baba Cosmos, and he
was all the friends that I've had. He was the one that dad loved the most and as my father was slowly dying by inches from
Alzheimer's Disease 1 day, Constantine came into the house. and dad could barely
remember who he was who he himself was, but he never forgot Constantine and I
remember 1 day. Was there and dad looked at Constantine and said. Do you know what's going
on with me and said yes, I'm afraid I do and dad looked at
and said I can't live like this. I wish I were dead and I'll never ever forget. the
look on he's face when Dad told him that and I know that you must miss your dad in a very
special and personal way and I wanna thank you so much for sharing this incredible thought
with us tonight. David it was. Really, I thought the best of all the talks I've ever heard
you give I just wanted to tell you that thank you so much. David and thank you for your
thoughts about about your dad as well. Thank you.
Thank you so much for telling us about him and telling his story and what a what a remarkable man and I thank you
for your thoughts as well, Other day.
Well, our our next guest is. my my minion Mikayla Weller. she
we we met and when I lived out in the Midwest before moving out here to California in the
same astronomy club and as as we were kinda learning
astrophotography together and. working on on that skill, she
will be graduating with her bachelor of science and astronomy and astrophysics this coming may from the Ohio.
University you're welcome. Sorry, Michigan people. She's
planning on attending got to at school starting this coming fall to pursue her PHD also in
astronomy and astrophysics she's currently. researching as an undergraduate, which is
awesome The formation of compact binary and for her graduate work. she's she's
interested in researching in areas of nucleus synthesis retros nuclear astrophysics all
things that I also love.
So she is going to give a talk tonight on her current research
of compact binary and how we use radio velocity to detect them so mikaela take it away.
Yeah. Thank you. I hope my internet holds out sometimes when I'm doing zoom it doesn't
yeah. So, of course, I did yeah very good so as I said, my name
is mikaela Weller, I am a peripheral as. Physics major at the Ohio State University, I did not include the.
But Y'all. so I won't go through the spill, but I am getting my BS in May I don't
know where I'm going to go to graduate school quite yet. I'm hopefully waiting on a few more offers from my top choices, but
I really am excited so throughout this talk do feel
free to ask any questions. I'll try my best to answer them and I'm gonna try to leave a few
seconds or something at the end questions as well. So. Today, I
will be talking about my second undergraduate research project I started this in the summer of
last year through the summer Undergraduate research project at Ohio State as you can see
from the title my research is about using radio velocity variations to hopefully dissect
compact remnants, which is mainly black holes and neutron stars orbiting massive living
stars. so normally finding these systems is done through
other means of observation like through detection of X ray. Due
to a from the secondary but these in general only account for a small fraction of the
total number of these types of systems so finding other ways to try to find these are is
very important. So before I dive into what all of that
meant I want to talk about why these systems are even interesting to us. so back in
2002015 as I'm sure most of you remember I go directly observed gravitational waves for the
first time. It was very exciting. and. As a result of a binary black hole system
merging together to form one super massive black hole and through this gravitational
waves were emitted and detected after first being theorized by Albert Einstein many years ago,
and if you're looking at the numbers on the screen and adding up the masses, you will actually see that there is a
difference of about three solar masses between the final mass of the super black hole and the
masses of the two separate black holes and. I think Molly knows where I'm going with this that we all know Einstein's
famous equation equals MC squared, which relates mass and energy. So we see where the three solar masses went, which
is is the energy put into the gravitational ways, which is so cool and this is why we are
interested in finding these systems as we want to be able to have the potential sources
to look for in the future. hopefully before they merge so.
There are a variety of different ways These compact boundaries are created and I
mainly focus on neutrons or binary binary black holes or a system with one black hole and
one neutron star because in the event of a merger, all of these will emit gravitational waves
the type of formation I use in my paper is when they were binary from the very beginning so an initial binary
population, However, this means that the system has to survive the first supernova kick from
the massive primary and does not get. And here destruction just means that the secondary
start is kicked from the system and is no longer gravitational bound to its companion Glycol
Neutron star. also these systems can when other stages of evolution depending on
orbital parameters common envelope phase or a mass loss. so we may not always end up
with two compact remnants. Another quick example of information is a capture event
in which one black hole or neutron star. Another compact object in its orbit, but that
wasn't included in the package that I use for my simulations. So now I want to talk about
what radio velocity even is. I'm sure many of you guys have heard it before, but maybe not
have a good conceptual idea of it. so by definition, it is
basically the component of the velocity of the object that is along the line of sight of an observer. so when the object is
moving for particularly to the observer, the radio velocity is
zero and when the object is moving parallel to the Observer of sight and the radio velocity
is not only non zero, but it is also. At it's maximum magnitude. this setup sounds
very much like a curve, but just a sign wave which is what
we actually do see as I will show a bit later. although this curve and practice will have
different shapes due to eccentric and things like that, But aside, the old soil is a good approximation in general.
This image is a good illustration, though a planet is used instead of another star, which is what I focus on
this is like. Because the radio velocity method is used for the detection of exodus, which is a
very hot topic in astronomy that I am not part of.
nonetheless. It also shows the Berry Center, which is the center of Mass for the system
often times the very center for a planet will actually be somewhere in the star, but for massive planets like Jupiter,
the Berry Center is right outside the surface of the star usually. So let's talk
observational techniques, How do we measure the rate of velocity can amateurs radio velocity The short answer is
no, and yes, you have to have a spectra handy and a really nice telescope for maximum
resolution although the air does tend to be a bit larger with amateur equipment, it's
not impossible, though, especially if you have the time money and the drive to do it.
but to measure the velocity of the target we actually measure. Spectrum and we actually know
which corresponds to which wavelength for measurements in the lab, However, when we
gather the spectra, these lines are typically red shifted or a blue shifted by some amount, which is just a shortening or
lengthening of light as these targets are pretty far away from us. and since we know what
these lab values are here, the lab value is the picture at rest and we can compare our
measured values from the spectrum that we take and see how. Of the lines are and we
can plug these values into the Doppler shift formula and we can get a radio flossy out of
it. large surveys like the sky do this, but things like
resolution matter a lot too, and they also only observe a target an average of three times although some stars have
a lot of observations, but what I found it was about three so they don't get the entire radio
velocity curve, which. I did incorporate that into my simulations as well. So getting
into my research, some more the main question I sought to answer was how many of these
compact boundaries can we expect to see mainly in our galaxy alone that surveys like
the Milky Way map or can observe in the future? to answer this question I
simulated a population of binary using cosmic, which is a compact object Synthesis and Monte Carlo Investigation code
and it is simply a python package where I can set certain parameters and prescriptions.
Create an initial binary population. then through the class and cosmic a bodily
systems for however, long I want, but I set the systems to evolve for the entire lifetime
of the universe to make sure we got mergers although in theory
stars evolved quite fast compared to lower mass star wars. So maybe one billionaire
would have done the trick, but I just stuck with the default parameters. So the output of
cosmic gives a lot of data including kick info information
that contain various useful parameters that describe the binary system at every time
step, which is just important ES within the evolutionary history of the system such as
the moment when one of the stars moved to the herb gap on the HR diagram or when rush
lobe overflow commenced and there's a lot more examples but anyway these parameters include
things such as the masses of the stars, the orbital period the semi major. Access and a lot of other things. and with
these parameters, I am able to calculate the semi amplitude K, which is about thirty
kilometers per second, here and radio velocity as a function of time in which the entire curve
is seen in blue in this plot again, large surveys don't get this blue line. Instead, we get
these five points. I do randomize some angles that describe the orbit such as the
inclination angle and the argument of of persist because these are included in cosmic but I do. The Delta from the
supernova so that's really cool, but having a radio velocity as a function of time
is useful because we now have the ability to know the radio velocity at any random Epoc, I
am even able to mob real observations like from those surveys I mentioned prior.
where we have some data points within a few days of each other and then a few more observations after months or
years later, which can be seen in a pot as the black points. This is known as the. Of
observations nonetheless, you can see the blue ship, which has negative velocities, which is motion towards the observer
and red shift Positive velocities, which is much away from the observers so the maximum rate of velocity of the
system is about plus or minus thirty kilometers per second and again when the RV is zero,
the body is moving directly perpendicular to the observer, but another more useful
parameter we can measure is actually the spread in the RV from the observations so here.
The magnitude of the spread in RV is about forty kilometers per second since our most
positive velocity observed is about ten kilometers per second and our most negative velocity
observed is about negative thirty. so. I don't know I
don't know where that one came from. the most important thing to take away from this plot is
that the maximum Delta RV is large. The aero bars indicate
that if we got more observations such as ten, then our maximum that's RV will
approach the true value of the system.
That's that's that's only a bit about my research. I will say that our results are quite
encouraging and I am excited to see if any systems can be detected. I am currently
writing my paper on this topic, so I don't wanna give away too much before it's published. So
that's all I have are there any questions. haven't seen any come up on YouTube yet, which
is also getting the chat from Facebook and Twitch and whatnot, but does anybody in the room? have questions? Yeah.
David You're you're muted. I'm
muted. I'm also going to. Covid shot tomorrow and I have heard
that everybody who has gotten a second covid shot has done so next week. You're gonna hear me
beyond but then I just wanted to say that to hear a
presentation about. about.
about a specific. I'm trying to just compose it with David's
talk. That's really I found overwhelming and. Say that I
really enjoyed your presentation so much and just.
just to be able to to compare the detail contained in it to the generalizations that David
had offered and that Molly has been putting in is just wonderful. Thank you so much
for sharing what you're doing your research with us tonight. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you We
appreciate that. Thanks.
So nothing in from from YouTube, although people say they like your presentation and
seems like you're doing just fine. from one of our commenters, I will add that
during Mikayla's presentation that we had another eleven shares on Facebook, so we're up
to almost sixty shares right now. so the people liked it mikaela. That's good news and
I'm duly impressed with what what you're working on and what you know so that's very cool. Thank you. Yeah, I mean my
graduate research will probably be a little bit different than this, but it's been really fun
to work on this. so great. Yeah. I really hope that you come back on the program. It's
well and that goes for everybody on here but you know it's so inspiring to see you
know a young person. get so involved in science and
astronomy in particular and so. You know, II can only imagine
you have an extremely bright future ahead of you. I sure hope so it does indeed she
doubts herself, but she doesn't need to. You can't see I told
you. yeah, very good. Alright. Well. Thank you so much Michaela for your talk. It's
fun to get some some real hard science on here as well as all of the kind of more day to day
astronomy stuff that that that we tend to see so that's that's really cool. Thanks for coming on and and feel free to hang
out in the room for the rest of how long you wanna be online for. I'm really appreciate it.
Alright so our next guest is doctor Stella Kafka She is the
executive director and CEO of the American Association of Variable Star, Observers or the
AA VSO, which is an international organization focusing on engaging professional and amateur
astronomers in science within the auspices of the abs. So doctor Kafka is working towards
enabling individuals from all backgrounds to actively participate in research projects Building a community of science savv. Citizens who
are collectively to understand some of the most dynamic phenomena in the universe, which is you know really when
you think about the universe like when we're looking at our to our telescopes, it seems like it's unchanging. but there's so much. that's that's
going on that that we can observe these changes with and and amateurs can get into that
Doctor Kafka acquired her bachelor of Science and physics from the University of Athens in Greece and her master's in
PHD in astronomy from Indiana University here in the states. Kafka research interests are in
the Semi-detached binary star systems such as cataclysmic variables, which can become
type one a supernova so doctor Kafka take it away.
See you. everyone, This is Stella Kafka and for this group
I am Stella Molly. Thank you so much for the wonderful. introduction. I you know so
many so many thoughts. before I start with the presentation and the first one that comes to
mind is Newton's quote if I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of
giants for most of us those special individuals are our parents who are always our
cheerleaders, no matter what we do where we are in life and. The tribute that was given. to
a father who was not only a cheerleader to an extraordinary
individual, but also a very accomplished astronomer and very accomplished citizen of
the world is actually highlighting what our barns mean to us. my. I'm very
fortunate to still have my parents around they are the thing I am the most
extraordinary individual in life and there is nothing that. Change their opinion but today
speaking of extraordinary individuals when Moley invited me to participate in the Star Party and mentioned that she
wanted to highlight women in astronomy. I thought of giants who have influenced science in
unique and very powerful ways and did not gain much recognition until quite recently and I love Mikayla's
presentation not only because if it's for scientific significance and inspiration,
but also because it reminds me that we have gone. Always since the even last century and our
future is bright and our future is is actually female. So today I would like to take just a little bit of time to talk
about some of those women the women of history the giants in science and their work with a
disclaimer that this is only a teeny tiny sample of the female intellect that has made
extraordinary discoveries over time and the interesting part is pretty much historically. We
don't have much information about women in science, although we have indications that the contributions were
substantial, the few that. Mentioning history is Elena Pisco, who was the first woman
to earn a PHD in 1678, so we're talking about recent history here and Caroline Herschel,
who's the first astronomer to be allowed to publish scientific results in a journal and then, of course, it was a
matter of time and changing culture and also changing needs in science in our modern
history before computers were discovered, women were used as Calculators in science simply because this. Jobs that men did
not want to do those stocks were extremely tedious they required much attention to
detail and they considered to be very trivial. so the women who were involved in this type of work were underpaid and
overworked. This is a group that was employed by the Harvard Observatory Director
Edward Pickering at the beginning of last century. who was actually paying two women
for the piece of one man while all those women who were cataloging. From photographic
plates and we're performing very complex mathematical calculations required precise
mathematical measurements and data analysis by hand. Remember, there were no computers at the time there was
there was no any other aid, but they're a piece of paper and
pencil in their eyes. Wow, so it was truly only on the
twentieth century when what we know now as computers and. Algorithms started being
developed so with that in mind, I'd like to introduce four women to you without which
computing and astronomy as we know it could not exist and I
wanna start with actually the end of the nineteenth century late nineteenth century A
Loveless one of the first known women mathematicians and computer programmers before
computers existed in actually in 1837, Charles Barb. It's
analytical engine, which could have been one of the very first early computers if it was fully
built life lasts wrote an extensive in-depth analysis of
the engine not about both the technology and the implication of the machine and actually she
would not be recognized until decades later, her notes were published only in 1953 so she
actually build a theoretical model. First computer a first computer algorithm without even
knowing what the computer look like or without even having something solely to work with and even test it fast forward.
Heidi Lamar Hollywood glamour one of the most accomplished individuals in the entertainment business, she
leads around 1942 and you know
she's one of those icons that showcases beauty and grace. but what not many people know is
that during World War two in 1942, she developed a secret communications. There was a
pattern for an idea for radio signaling device, which was a means of changing radio
frequencies to keep enemies from the messages The system became such an important step
in the development technology to maintain security of both military communications and cellular phones, and not only
that that technology. would allow later the invention of wireless signals like Wifi and
Bluetooth. We wouldn't have Bluetooth right now. Look very very different or WiFi if it
wasn't for Heidi Lamar. Actually World War Two was a time of innovation in many
different ways. No one supports a war, but it kind of helps us push forward. What we know we
don't know in order to protect our loved ones so during World war two rare arm and Gracie
Hopper, who was actually working at the Navy. was sent to Cambridge Massachusetts in
1944. And was assigned to write programs for Mark one, which
which was the first electromagnetic computer, which actually run ballistic problems
with the Navy her work at began her career as a computer scientist or whatever computer
science could look like at that time and later she was she
reimagined programming as a user friendly language and actually, she wrote the first compiled and develop programs for all. Machines in her spare
time actually in 1952 she created one of the world's
first compiled she envisioned a code to use English language based instructions and her
programming language design work led to the creation of coal. How many people know what
was heard of it. There was one of the earliest programming
languages and actually it is used to this day. So. That
brings us to the middle of the last century middle of the twentieth century. The post war
era was extremely interesting when it comes to the attitude of society and of of science
and scientists when it comes to women. around the 60s software
engineering was considered to be a woman's work because it was thought of as clerical so
hardware was a difficult work and and and so it was a job for
men and actually cosmopolitan famously run. Issue about the
computer girls however, women kept making a difference
exactly because of not only their intellect and skills, and that was recognized at NASA to
begin with when it comes to astronomy in the space program.
At Nasa, things were very visibly changing the first woman to break the gender barrier at the NASA Langley
Laboratory. Langley Memorial Aeronautical Laboratory at the time was young. She actually
arrived there at the beginning of 1920 as an engineer. and she
became a chief technical editor for the National Advisory Committee for Ana's, but even
more than that and even bigger door opened around early 1930s.
Group of women came to the center to form a computer pool so the idea was that those
women would be processing all the data coming in from wing tunnel tests and flight tests.
It started as an experiment, but then very quickly became
very much much bigger than it's intent. So. in about nineteen
just showcasing that about 1942. human computers became so
essential to operations at the center that the memo the circulator is that April put it this way the engineers.
Themselves that the girl computers do the work more rapidly and accurately than they could so women started
being recognized for the work that they're doing and remember there was a time where a computer would take space as
big as a room. So we're talking about this huge constructions that had less memory and less
computer power than what you have on your phone right now. and out of all these women I
would like to highlight this one This one is. here we go.
Katherine Johnson. She was a physicist and mathematician and actually came to NASA in 1953
as a human computer and she eventually joined Nasa's Space Task Force by 1958. She has
become an aerospace technologies that was a that was given to her and eventually she joined the space Task Force
where she calculated trajectories for some of the mercury missions and actually
Katherine Johnson. calculated the first. For the first month mission to the moon and history
tells us that. but at that time, John Glenn was a little
bit concerned about the calculations the success of the mission. Remember he was on that probe right and he
famously said. Get the girl to check the numbers and he was referring to Johnson Johnson
was one of several women who worked the way out of the computer pool and actually went
into engineering jobs, something that we. More frequent through the the 60s
and 70s and moving forward and actually in 2016, it was really
nice movie. that featured some of the most brilliant women and
the challenges as being you know some of the computers or and first engineers in a very
male-dominated world. if you haven't seen that's called hidden figures, one of my favorite movies ever. so jump.
To our country as women, we are inspired by the work lives of those with extraordinary
individuals and as women in science, we're leaving projects now we're making recognizable contributions. We have our own
place in society and our own place in science. We're making very strong marks. and actually
they're even apps where you can find out more about women in space science if you're
interested in so just check it out. it's open source to everyone and also we have
programs that we're launching. Grounds where we inspire the future generation and the
generations of today and showcase and mentor them to be the future and be themselves be
creative. Be strong be as amazing as they want and actually channel their energy
to science because we need. everyone on board you want to understand the universe and for
that I'm gonna show I'm gonna kind of throw something that the atheist is doing. we have an. Ambassador program. that is
our way of engaging inspiring and cultivating younger members and actually Molly is one of
the of the program. She's one of the first individuals that
join that program and this is a way to engage younger
individuals in all kinds of activity included but not limited to outreach. community.
Variable stars participating in public engagement doing research sidewalk astronomy
analyze data anything and everything those young individuals want to to use as
their Segway to introducing astronomy to everyone or empowering themselves. They're
very welcome to do as part of our ambassador program our ambassadors by the way get a free a VSO membership free
registration for our meetings. you can publish or journal etcetera. So this is the
information if you you are interested in joining the program or you know someone who
would be interested, please contact us and please spread the word some final thoughts.
Women in science or in general are very diverse and inclusive
scientific workforce draws from the widest range of backgrounds, perspectives and
experiences. so it helps us maximize innovation and creativity and science for the young people out there, You are
the future Join us Enjoy astronomy have fun with the
night sky and if you think that the AV is so can help in any
form or shape, please contact us my email is here with that I would like to. You for your
attention and stop sharing my screen. there. you go all yours only. Thank you so much Stella.
That was an awesome presentation and you know I even though I'm a women's
scientist myself, I still feel like I don't know enough about other women scientists who came
before me so I'm always happy to to learn more about that. And yeah, it's it's been really
fun being a part of the AABSO ambassador program and I think that they do a lot of good work
at AB SO and. Able to contribute lots of cool data as well. but yeah, and I actually
got into a VSO because of Stella she she dragged me in so. I'm very good at
volunteering people. Alright. well, thank you again and feel
free to hang out. our next guest tonight is Chris Elliott
He was going to show some up for a second I do have a question or a comment actually.
I really. Really enjoyed Stella's presentation just now, but I wanted to point out that
Stella's own organization the AA VSO has an incredible history of encouraging women to
get into astronomy when I joined back in back in and the
1960s, Margaret May was a long time director of AA VSO, but I grew up and matured. I hope a
little bit they're under the director of Janet Matty, who was here and. On a number of
times and whom I was able to interview during one of the visits when she was when she
was here and I finally got to meet Stella during one of her
recent visits to Tucson and I really really enjoyed your
presentation tonight. Thank you. Thank you so much for having me. I hope to come back. Thank you. yes. I'd love to
come back. I hope you do. Nice. Yeah. absolutely. Alright so
Chris Elliott was was going to show us some La telescope views. Unfortunately, where he's at it is clouded over, but
he's been doing a photography out of Niagara Falls for about the last well Niagara Falls New
York for the last 9 years and and it has AA YouTube stream where he live streams a lot of
as photography as well. so go ahead. Yeah. So I wish it was
yesterday. if only it was yesterday cuz I was out here for about 5 hours as we got.
Colored images as I use a monochrome camera out here right now, I'm in the midst of
just transferring files from one to the other. so cuz I have I've used a dual PC or laptop
to go through everything so I have them saved on one. I'm just using the OneDrive and
just going through I do have I can actually pull up. I don't know if I can. I'm not used to
zoom here. I'm used to YouTube so I'm just trying to figure out. To share the screen here.
Hang on. Oh here we go I'd recommend sharing your whole screen that that works too.
Yeah. So there we go. so there's one of the images now. This is a stacked image that I took earlier this year in
January, I don't know if everyone could see it of the of the rosette Nebula, which is NGC 2244. This was taken just
eight images at 5 minutes, a piece and stacked them using hydrogen Alpha. filter and then
just use. Steep sky stacker to stack them all together and then use Photoshop to process
the image and I use this I have my own shed, which I built took
me about 6 months to build and. I have my own office, which is
really really cool. It is unbelievable and I have other images here too that I can show
you. I'm just so what what's your telescope rig? So I have AC gem two mount and It is with
a William Optics Zena star eight millimeter refractor. It's an aromatic with a USB
filter wheel and the DSI four. It's a sky imager and it's a
monochrome camera that I use and have it all going through
the house into the office. Nice. Yeah. how's the light pollution in your area? White.
terrible. It's probably the worst you can get we have Niagara falls to the North. We have buffalo to. Is terrible,
It is absolutely terrible, but with you know long exposures and hydrogen Alpha, you can
withstand anything narrow band is the way it really is. I have two filters on the way I'm
gonna be doing the Hubble palette, which is hydrogen, Alpha oxygen, three and sulfur
two. which. which brand did you end up going with. I'm gonna be
going with ZO Okay. Okay, I I Mean II looked at astronomical I looked at. you know there's a
whole. Of them, but I was CW only because I have their light the luminous red green and
blue, so I decided to just get the whole set of seven. so this way I have them all and then
the hydrogen Alpha filter. That's a seven nanometer. Okay. Let me see if I have cuz I can
pull up another one here if I can just show color sure, it's remarkable that you can do the
work that you do in that in those conditions, I'm I'm always amazed at that. Yeah. I
mean just. Live just north of San Francisco and Oakland and
II do do some wide band imaging, but I've been shifting more and more to narrow band.
The results are just so much better. Yeah. Oh. yeah, no doubt. let me see if I can pull
up a colored one here. it looks like you've got a microscope set up back there as well. I do
so on my stream What I do on YouTube is not only do I do on clear nights. I'll do telescope
but on cloudy nights, I'll do microscope I will do I'll look at blood cells. I'll look at
you know plant cell. I'll look at organisms whether it's a road or if it's Cecilia
anything anything to just you know I do like I last night I did two nights ago. I did hot
sauce and milk. I wanted to see what would happen with an acid and a base and see what happens with it. I did yeast I did
vinegar and baking soda. you name it. I do it. That's really cool. So here's a colored
image. I'm gonna pull up here. Let me see if I can do this here. Do you use one of your
astro cameras? I dope. Yeah I. I use what's called the T seven, so it's an actually you
can probably see it. It's right here and actually have it looking right down into the microscope and I mean it's it's
really cool and I did what's what's called dark field so what I did was instead of actually going out and buying
one I used construction paper and I actually cut a circle and
put it right in front of the condenser and what that does is it uses dark field so you can actually see it actually
enlightens the edges around the actual organism, so you can see it's like a highlight. instead of using. The white field,
which is you can't really see much. Yeah. So here I'm gonna share this next one here. Okay.
So this is the dumbbell. Oh, yeah. Yeah. this is mt twenty-seven and this is using
red green and blue filter so with the monochrome camera you have to do like 3 minute
exposures if you are 5 minute exposures take all set flip it to green. do a whole bunch flip
it to blue do a whole bunch and then stack them, and then that's the color of them as you get We got some great star
colors in there. Yeah. I mean these I think we were about 8 minute images so these took a
lot. Yeah. Yeah. yeah. it's too bad. It's
it's cloudy where you're at but thanks for for showing us some of your images and and talking
about your setup. Yeah III hope to have a shed at some point.
I'm I'm renting a house, so there's only so much I can do. but someday someday. I'll have
a cool big big old backyard shed that I can have all three of my telescopes in the best
way to do it is get a balcony. That's what I did for mine. I have a. They have a second story balcony that comes right
out of the bedroom and what I do is I bought an arrow shed. It's one of those metal sheds
that you use that you buy it at home depot or whatever, and then what I do is I rigged it.
So all I did was I built it and built the roof on the on the side and then I use cabinetry.
So. in other words, you have the the wheels and how you pull out the cabinet. you have the wheels right so I use those and
then put the roof on it with the wheels and then you could slide it back and forth
insulated. From top to bottom using a board put flooring on
there and then use an air conditioner heater WiFi and put that in there so I have the equipment in there so I can set
the temperature in there year round whether it's air conditioning or heating. That's awesome. Yeah. Alright, thanks
for coming on and hopefully next time it'll be clear. I hope so I really do. well you
can tune in to his YouTube channel for microscope and Telescopic views and on the
nights when it's actually clear Yup. Alright our our next
speaker is a good friend of mine. Also from when I lived out in the Midwest Terry Mann,
Terry is the past president of the Astronomical League and is the current secretary. She's also the president of. Ohio
Chapter of the International Dark Sky Association or ID. She spends her time working on
projects coordinating and co hosting Astronomical League life and giving talks about imaging, light pollution or
astronomy in her free time. you'll find Terry and her dog tater. Oh, that's cute. under
the stars imaging or just enjoying the view and Terry is going to talk tonight about the
outreach efforts of the Astronomical League. Well, thank you. I appreciate that.
let me share my screen here in a minute.
There we go Alright, I've been on here before with the
astronomical quite a bit and you what you might know or might not know we've got about
18000 members a little over that and about 304 societies
divided into ten regions across the US and we have some international members now what
we've all noticed. I think think it doesn't matter if you're a vendor if you're an amateur astronomer or where
you're at, we have all seen an increased interest in astronomy and with. Increased interest, I
thought I thought it might be a good idea to tell all the new people welcome to our world.
You will have a challenge of learning how not to sleep once the skies are clear. There's
something about not wanting to go to bed because the stars are out and sometimes like in Ohio,
we don't always have a lot of stars out so that is definitely my talent is not sleeping at
night. So what I'd like to talk about a little bit is outreach
and about what this is what it is. what it was going to start
parties and just hanging out with people going out to dinner being in talks sitting shoulder to shoulder and we can't do
that right now, so it has really changed outreach now is
exactly what you see right here and we're all still doing it. We're all still active. We are
just doing it in a different way. We've learned a new skills and how to go about all of this. So I think what we. Going
to see once we get through all of this is we're gonna probably go back to our star parties and
yet I think we're gonna keep our skills that we've learned here because we have learned how to reach out and do more
things to see more people to take more classes to go to different parts of the world
and look at live views of the telescope. There's so many cool things we have learned that has
really came out of this. so I think what we will see as we move forward is a combination.
we're gonna have a hybrid. I think it's gonna. Be a bit unusual to be at Alcon this
year. It'll be virtual but next year when we have Alcon, I bet you will still see a virtual
component of that because we can reach so many more people and have conversations with so
many more. Now, this is one of one of the things that you
kinda have to deal with. I don't think you can talk about astronomy without talking about two other things when you go
out and you make plans, you're gonna image or whatever and all of a sudden you have clouds
well, I went to an an Aurora conference up on the North Shore Lake Superior and he went to see the Aurora and instead
that's what I got. I had a blizzard it was unbelievable and that's from the deck of my
hotel room. but you know that's one of the things we deal with
another thing is like pollution, just as Molly said, I'm president of the Ohio
Chapter if we don't really start watching light pollution, we are going to lose our dark
skies and yes we can use filters but for people that are brand new to this and for people that want to save a
natural resource, we need to really start. On saving these dark skies, they're very
important for wildlife for health for so many things so you can't hardly talk. I can't
talk outreach without talking about always remember it might not go as planned. You might have rain, you might have snow
and you might have clouds so always remember that but let me
give you some resources and some ideas of what we kind of see you know as far as outreach
and things we can do now the astronomical. Just started a YouTube page and Molly was one
of the women that has been interviewed by John Goss and
David Levy both of them are fantastic talks. Please go to our website and check that out
one of the the talk before the last that we did was from
Noris. gris and you can pick up this is pretty much what it
will look like and then it's almost at the. Time I would be getting a noris is an amazing
an amazing author. what she does is she has made braille
books for astronomy Now these are that the are embossed. It
looks like on paper, they have the lines the bumps the textures, but as people come to
the telescope visually impaired people can feel what it is and
actually if they could see even a little bit through the telescope they can tell what they are looking at and these
books look. Incredible I have ordered the two I could find I don't have them yet, but I
think this would be a great addition to any club because it allows you to reach out to more
people maybe people people that don't understand it in the way we do or cannot see in the way
we do so it gives them some other way to communicate and these books look amazing. one
is called touch the Stars and the other is everyone's universe and I think touch the universe is out of print I I
can't find it anywhere but seriously look at this, it would be great for a club
library. Another thing that I do, I am
fortunate I only live about an hour hour and 15 minutes from serpent mound. so when I'm
giving talks around, you know this area, one of the things serpent mound, you know there
was a lot of talk about a meteor crater there at serpent mound and that was one of the
issues that I went into and we discussed serpent mound but when you bring astronomy home
with your own landmark in that area that really helps and if Dave. IR is still here there's
an amazing rock shop down by serpent Mount. just amazing
things there, but this is another way to link astronomy maybe in something that you
have in your own property or in your own area that you can talk about. and one of the things
that's hard to understand, especially for new people and even you know for me is face and distance I understand what
it is but trying to put wrap my head around huge numbers. okay
The diameter of the Milky Way is 100000 light years and that's what. Travels in a year,
okay, I can't visualize 100000 light years, but if you bring it down a little bit and talk
about light traveling around earth at seven times, a second, it brings a little closer to me
still mind boggling, but to look at that, it brings it a little closer to help me
understand a little bit and I've found the more I can relate to something that someone can relate to like if
you have a picture of a galaxy and you have a picture of a moon you ever notice. Public is more drawn a lot of times to
the moon because they can relate to that they see that in the night sky. and this one I
every year. This is my favorite thing to do Perse and meteor shower. This is another one
when I do a talk and I have kids, I was fortunate enough to run into a meteorite dealer and
I told him I did outreach and he gave me little chips of a of a meteor and or a meteorite,
and I took this to one of my tops. you tell some kids in an audience that when they see a
meteor, especially the perch. Be traveling about 130000 miles an hour it blazes across the
sky and you see their eyes get big. well, then you tell them how big it actually started
off. it could be a small pebble down to a grain of sand and usually less than one to two
grams and then you hand them a tiny tiny chip that they can hold in their hand and take home. It is amazing the kind of
feedback from the scouts from the the girls that I have worked with. Is amazing what
that does to a kid to put something in their hand from space that they can take home.
it really hits home. and then one of the things when I was speaking at a senior citizen's
home, one of the senior citizens came out and they said you know what I liked about your talk. You made me think so
many people come in here and they don't challenge us to think and one of the things we spoke about was you can see
twenty-one. 21000000000000 quadrillion miles at least you know you give him a big number
and they don't really realize what it is that can be seen. Out there but Dina's sickness
is about nineteen 19000000000000000 miles and then you know many of us have
seen the Andromeda galaxy. Well, that's about 15000000000000 miles away You
start throwing things like that. Those are huge miles. They can't grasp that, but they
might grasp being able to see this in the sky with their own eyes and so that made a group
of people really think that I was talking to you know what you really can't see and I just ran. This is from Ohio State
University Department of Physics. They have a monthly movie night science fiction versus science fact, and I wish
I would have seen the others tomorrow night. They're gonna attack gravity and talk about
what is stacked and what is science fiction and I wanna watch this, but this is all the
farther their schedule at was for tomorrow night and I missed everything else. This looks amazing to me, it would be
something so good to talk about, especially for sci. Buffs you know so that is another really high point that
I think I would enjoy a lot and I think others would too and then we'll go back to the
league now if you go to the league's website and again, I apologize, we are rebuilding the website It is going to take
a while because we're gonna overhaul the whole thing it will take us a while and so you might have some deadlines. You
know you might not see exactly what you're wanting to see and if that happens, please contact
any of us that are on the contact page all of. Downloads are there for you to download
to copy and to hand out at any event that you want to to help
kids understand one of the greatest things that we have got is the first time you look through the telescope We have
got that and all you have to do is just fill out the name and the date and the object and oh
my gosh kids love it and a few grandparents got a kick out of it too. So these are a real big
hit definitely print them out and then. Fill them out as people are looking through it.
It is really fun for both sides I think and then I'll talk a little bit about the league
outreach program. We have this outreach program that at three
different levels our first level is if you do five events and each event must be 2 hours,
you will earn a pin and a certificate, and this is a pin for a total of 10 hours of
outreach and all the paperwork that I'm talking about here is on the league website.
Everything you need to download to fill in is there. We have a
stellar outreach program which you must have completed the award before and you will add
fifty more hours so for the stellar outreach program, you'll do a total of 60 hours
of outreach and that is a certificate only. And then the
master outreach you have to have the other two awards before a little bit more detail
about what you need to fill out the paperwork for this. This is our highest our master award in
outreach for a total of 160 hours and for this, you'll receive a certificate and the
pin. I couldn't find a picture of the pin, but there is a pin that goes along with that the
the for me doing this tonight is the last couple of hours I need for the master level. so
I'm really excited. And you know for all the people everything that we're doing
online, it will make it it helps. It's it's still outreach. It's we've adapted to what we need to adapt to to
meet and reach other people So I'm gonna close with one of the
things we have astronomical live coming up April 23rd and as I said our conference the
Astronomical League conference will be virtual this year. It will be August 19th through August, 21st and Scott. Will be
broadcasting so thank you Molly. I sure appreciate it. Thank you so much Terry and
everybody who is involved in any kind of astronomy club or outreach or anything can take
some of these ideas back to your club. You can work with the astronomical League or they have lots of resources or to
see some of these ideas to continue your club's outreach activities, which I know a lot
of clubs have probably stopped doing during the. Pandemic but it's really important to to
continue that and now that everybody's kinda used to being online on zoom calls and and
YouTube videos and stuff I think it can we can still make a big impact definitely.
Alrighty Thank you so much Terry and our next speaker.
Don't okay. Yeah Our next speaker is a personal friend of mine. Sarah Krug She is she
majored in physics with a concentration in astrophysics and a minor in anthropology at the University of Notre Dame
while while in college, she worked as an Observatory assistant for an astronomy 101 class and did research in star
spots and gamma bursts. She's a PHD in electro, optics and photons from the University of
Dayton, where her dissertation focused on telescope design and image processing precovid. She
was. Of her local astronomy association and she's volunteered for various
outreach events over the last several years, including presentations at local star parties helping with telescopes
at a Girl Scout event and giving optics demonstrations at grade schools and Sarah's talk
tonight is about Archie Astronomy. so Sarah take it away. Hi. Thanks Molly. Let me
see if I can share my screen right now. Yeah. Okay. Good. It looks like it's gonna work. Can
you. See it. or not it's it's
working. Alrigh t and let me make this
full screen here actually I'm gonna hold off on the full screen so. I wanna start by
saying that yeah, as she said, my main focus is more in telescopes and astronomy, But
I've always thought that Archie Astronomy is very very cool. I came across it at one of my internships, somebody else was
doing research in this and I've always wanted to know more about it. so I went ahead and took a look at it for tonight
and. Terry Mann brought up serpent mound and I actually.
can you see the. the internet screen that I just pulled up or
do I need to do that you need to you'll need to share your whole screen if you're gonna go
back and forth between just checking so you just have to stop sharing and then start sharing again. Yeah. let me
pull that up then.
Alright. Here, let's let me there we go.
Alright so I'm going to share and then I'm going to pull up
full screen. share that there's Thor. Can you see Thor? Yes, you can see Thor. Alright there
we go so now over on. the right
you can actually see a picture of the end of serpent mound and it turns out that serpent mound
is the mouth of. Is aligned with the sun setting on or
sunrise on the summer solstice so this leads in actually very,
very well into the idea of a astronomy and what was used for and kind of how it is used. So
from there I will go ahead and go into the slideshow so. to to
start our astronomy is defined as the study of beliefs and
practices relating to the sky in the past, especially prehistoric. And the uses to
which people's knowledge of the guy was put and. I think a good
starting point a good question to ask is why did prehistoric people look at the sky because
besides it being cool and a simple response to that is that
in farming societies, the seasons were very very important. They need to know
when to plant food when to harvest when to get get ready for winter. and being able to
tell that from the solstice and the equinoxes was a matter of It wasn't just a hobby. It
wasn't just a job they had to do it in order to live and. Because of that they've started
looking at more and more things in the sky, such as the moon and realizing that the phase of
the moon and the cycles of the moon could be used to measure shorter periods within solstice
and the equinoxes I believe I've heard somewhere that months and Monday actually come
from the word moon. so yeah since the month is about the same length as you have to you
have to face cycle of the moon.
I've I believe that importance of these cycles led ancient civilizations to. start
incorporating the sky and astronomy and what they saw into their religious beliefs and cultural events as well. So
then they started looking at eclipses they started looking at. the planets and comets and
supernova and other things that showed up in the sky and. I'm going to show a few examples
of. different sites besides serpent mound around the world
that are very very interesting in terms of our arch astronomy.
So to start I'm going to talk about Stonehenge and
Stonehenge. over the past century, there have been about twelve astronomical alignments
that people have have found and theorized can be that's the
Stonehenge can be used for and some of. Cycles and some of the alignments that that they have
found it it would take it takes decades for a cycle to
complete, which means that these ancient people were taking notes and observing the sky for possibly centuries
before building. and compiling centuries of knowledge before building this site and the
three most interesting points for me is first. on sunrise for
the summer solstice if you can see. Me here The Sun shines on
the point of the heel stone over here on the top right and it goes all the way through and
it hits the center of the altar at yeah and in the circle and
then it goes on back out from behind the or out behind the
hinge. a second thing that's really interesting is that the
horseshoes in the middle if you stand. One of those and you look out through a specific
hole in the outer circle of stones. you can it there are
alignments with the moon rise and moon set for certain
solstice is when when the moon is at it's or at it's further
furthest points from. yeah for those points from the West and the east when it's rising and a
third thing and I think this is the coolest is. If you see this
outer these outer circles of holes, one person has theorized that these outer circles or
these outer holes could actually be used to place marker stones in and if you
place the marker stones in at certain intervals during the lunar or during lunar cycles,
then they could be potentially be used to. to determine when
the next the lunar eclipse would be so if it was used. That that's really cool and it almost turns it into a bit of a
computer. so that is the first
one the second one I kind of think is more interesting since I'm from the states and I'm and
it's closer to home is. that Chaco Canyon in Colorado. and
this was a site that was first settled in a 200 A but the
Anasazi turned it into a large city in 800 5080 and it
actually contained buildings that were four to five stories. And could hold up to 700 rooms
so this this was a very large community and a lot of these buildings. look like they were
to different astronomical points, mostly. yeah, mostly
solstice and and such, for example. casa. Renata, which
you can see over on the right. It's a big circle building. and
it is believed that there were holes on the outside of this building that may have been
used to predict. The summer solstice and there's another building a little bit further
away from here that they believed might have done with done that with the winter solstice as well. the another
interesting one was there's another house or another large building. whoops there. We go
called the Great House Pueblo Pueblo and it is aligned with a
natural rock structure called Chimney Rock, which shows that.
Which when you look from the house to chimney rock, you will see the moon when it is at
luna's one of its lunar standstill points, which is basically. so the sun has. it
has two solstice solstice in a year The moon has two solstice
lunar lunar sisters. in or in a just in a month period. and
however, since the moon is. By
or the moon's orbit is off by five. Yeah by 5° it's orbit
actually processes around the earth in an eighteen and a half or 18.6 years cycle. so every
eighteen in .6 years you're going to get a lunar solstice that is a little bit further
away or close. Yeah further away or. from yeah, do East or
the West. As you would usually get and they have it aligned to
that, which which means that were at least observing for at least 18 years to be able to
get that point. Alright another or the most interesting part of
Chaco Canyon is actually on top of Faja Butt, which is up or
down on the bottom left and there is a cliff face on the top of this and on this cliff
face the essay Tripod actually stacked a few a few large
boulders such that when the sun was hitting them on the. Or on
the winter and summer solstice back behind the bowls on the cliff face this dagger of light
ended up intersecting one of these two. large spiral
petroglyphs, and this will only last 20 minutes 2 days a year, so that's really cool.
Unfortunately, they've actually closed the site down to the public because too many people are going up there and the stones were actually starting
to get knocked over. but. Any images and pictures and videos
that you can find of that are really interesting. the last site that I'm going to talk
about today is actually my own culture as a whole, and it turns out that my own city and
temple are a gold mine for a astronomy. There are multiple
examples of buildings being being aligned to the solstice and there is even one case of
one being aligned to to Venus cycle and. Aside from that,
there's other temples and buildings. as well, for
instance, this bottom left is a pyramid that has a. it has a
carving of their of a mayan serpent God on it and it's this
mayan serpent God is the only thing on this side of the
pyramid that is is illuminated on the equinoxes or yeah. Certain times of the day on the
equinoxes and it makes it look like the snake is coming down the stairs and coming on to earth and getting ready to eat
people so that one's pretty cool. The second image that
I've got here is Elle, which is believed to to have been Mayan
Observatory and I I think it actually looks like an an Observatory Modern Observatory,
which is really cool and they have found twenty different
sight lines for eclipses equinoxes solstice and many other astronomical events. and
that's only in. Part that hasn't been knocked down so there are probably more as well on top of this, there are a few
surviving Mayan books that have many many astronomical charts
of different you know, events and cycles, and that includes
the Sun Moon and planets, and it includes a 33 year chart protecting every single solar
and lunar eclipse that could happen in the world and it includes a correction scheme so that you can. That 33 years out
anytime in the future so being able to do that without any sort of any sort of computers
is really amazing. So those are the three that I wanted to talk about today that I think are
really interesting. There are plenty more out there. There's also a connected study called
Eno Astronomy. which is the study of astronomy in different cultures, often in modern day.
But II find it seems like the two. Coincide a lot so, for instance on the left here, this
is the a star chart that was on the ceiling of an Egyptian tomb The center image is an old very
old. Chinese set of constellations and then on the
right is or on the bottom right is a Hawaiian star Compass that
they used to teach. sailors how to not get lost on the Pacific
by using the stars and using astronomy and all of these. Are
yeah, just yeah. It's amazing how people use this in the past when they actually needed it to
survive instead of instead of doing it as a hobby and the way that they looked at it was different and the things that
they found were often spectacular. so I just wanted to raise some awareness of this
interesting. you know this interesting. study or field of
study and if you can find some areas near you, it might make
for some very interesting. A. Astrophotography So I'll end
with that and if there's any questions or comments. go right ahead, Let me. that was super
cool. Sarah Thank you share. Did I share it? Can you I can
unsure you can't do that. That's a great plan there you go. sorry about that. No
problem now, I think that that stuff is is super cool and I got when I got to go to Peru in
college, we learned a lot about the Inca connection to astronomy and lots of stuff
that they that they built and and plotted and I'm always fascinated by what these
ancient cultures were able to figure out why their observations and and math and stuff like that you know when
I'm sitting with my calculator and internet access, you know.
Yeah. I'm popping over to Facebook to see if there are any questions does anybody in
the room have any questions. Lots of great comments. about
the presentation. I think that Archie Astronomy is a favorite subject amongst many people.
You know it just lets us. understand that humanities. I
mean very survival was based on being able to understand the stars and. you know. It's still
continues today, so there's just a common thread that you can just you know, look back
just a little bit further a little bit further a little bit further and you'll find that humanity is totally intertwined
with astronomy so. And when you go out to a dark sky site and
you get to see the Milky way and and just the many more stars than you can see in the
city. it's it's. you have to think that how could how could people not become obsessed with
it and I think I think every culture even if it wasn't recorded must have been obsessed with the motions of
the fixed stars versus the unfixed stars. You know the planets and stuff like that and. yeah cuz you're just
seeing this. Sky every night, I think it would be hard to not become a us to live. Yeah. it
feels sacred. you know. yeah. good word for it. You know I think the the The other thing
is just the rediscovery by different cultures. You know, we're all in a self discovery
in our own way and it's really neat to see that recorded from
different cultures and you know the journey that they took to discover and interpret the
universe. And what they saw yes. agreed. Yeah. Thank you so
much. Sarah thanks for having me today. Yeah. yeah. Feel free to hang out if you so desire
but and I love your necklace. Thank you. she likes to flip
over a lot, but this is. solar system necklace here. Yeah
we'll have to we'll have to get together and and chat some more soon. It's been a while.
alright, well our next speaker one more before we take a 10 minute break is John Briggs and
II have CBD as a topic for you. so please go ahead and tell us about yourself and what you're gonna talk about. I'm
especially interested in the history of astronomy and history of Inc instrumentation
and last week I joined the group and Scott remembered the
fun we had together at Mount Wilson a while back where I had an unusual solar specs scope
that was made in the 1870s and I thought it would be
interesting to say more about it and share some pictures of it and. Since Scott had brought
it up last week and because my internet link here in New Mexico is sometimes flaky, I
sent a presentation ahead to Scott and I think maybe he can share it with for us from his
screen, but I'll stay on live in case there are any questions or comments at the end of the
presentation that sounds super cool. Alright. So here we go let me put this in presentation
mode and there we are. So, hi,
this is John Briggs in New Mexico and I'm gonna speak today about astronomy of
yesteryear John Browning Solar specs scope. I'm speaking from
the Astronomical IM and Magdalena New Mexico, an an informal museum of astronomy
history. The volume is pretty low. Scott maybe you can crank it up, although it's sure I've
learned a lot about solar from here. Let me try something here.
I think there's an audio sharing feature in zoom if I recall yeah, but there's
something else I can do here. Okay. yeah or something you can do to your streaming software probably. Alright, This is, of
course a total solar eclipses that clever ones in the nineteenth century. So you know
you did not have I did not okay these are typical. let's see.
Everything's turned up to 100%. But let me try one more thing
here. I think it's just not getting
piped directly through to the stream. It sounds like it's coming over your microphone or something. Yeah hold on for
just a second. The 1870s and
astronomers were learning a lot about solar pros It's labeled cues promises.
You all other sorts are being drawn and recorded all of these
without waiting for a total solar eclipse. How do they do it? They didn't have hydrogen
Alpha filters like we can take for granted now filters that limit light so exactly just to
the red of hydrogen gas. Nevertheless, they figured out how to do it with the specs as
I'm going to demonstrate and they made these kinds of drawings. Check out this
recorded by William Huggins in England, the first observation of a prominent in full
sunshine. It's. well primitive a little crude, but it's
impressive that he was able to see this without waiting for a total solar eclipse. As
astronomers got better at the technique, especially through the 1870s, they got drawings
more like this, very impressive. this was recorded by a fellow named Trevor, a
French man who is an observer at Harvard College Observatory in the 1870s and his
astronomical artwork has become very famous.
Now most people interested in telescopes and astronomy have learned a little bit about how
specs scopes work along the way in this case here, This is a drawing of a simple specs
scope. They really are pretty simple to understand if you know about how telescopes work
in this case, there are really two telescope like objects, The
column, oh, and the other one labeled as a telescope, but in between them, is that triangle that. A block of glass shape
well as a prism so in in this diagram light is entering the
column from the right hand side and there's an entrance aperture S stands for slit The
light expands through the slit fills the lens AA columns the
light, which, in other words, turns the the the slit light into parallel race The parallel
rays go through the prism P. The prism spreads the light out
into different colors lens be further along the left. refocus
the light coming from the prism and in the eye piece of the
telescope at the lower left, you actually see the rainbow like spectrum of the light that
was originally all mixed together coming in the slit on the right hand side that's
basic. Of specs scopes And, in fact, here's a real life
nineteenth century specks scope and you see the slit mechanism
down there at the lower right if this were attached to the telescope, it's the the slit is
where you would have the light from the main telescope lens or
mirror focus and image of the sky or the sun or whatever light you wanted to analyze
Specs Gop In other words, turn it into its spread out. And
then measure the various brightness of the different colors. You can learn a lot
about the physics of the light source from doing that type of thing. That's what physicists
were figuring out in the middle of the nineteenth century. Now
astronomers were interested in celestial objects so this here is a drawing of a widely open
slit. That's black rectangle right in the middle, but notice the disc of light on the left
hand side with a couple spots on it that disc of light is supposed to be an image of the
sun with some spots that's being focused right on the slit, however. just the edge of
the sun is. The widely open slit so the relatively faint
light that's coming there from the chromosome and the prominence is that's the light
that's actually entering the slit and going on through the specs scope without being
completely overwhelmed by the very bright light of the solar
phosphor. If you set this up right this
is the result at the eye piece of the specs scope now I think this is a little idealized.
There's been some artistic liberty here making it look easy how much of the
chromosomes structure In other words? The prominence is are visible in the hydrogen Alpha
absorption line of a solar specs scope, but it illustrates. Idea and I can
show you more realistically the way I've been able to record it myself. This is a picture that
I took myself of the solar spectrum, but the spectrum
graph was tuned to the very wide and dark absorption line
of hydrogen light hydrogen Alpha Light The Red Light of the Sun, but that's what's in
the center The dark line from Dark vertical line, which is really an image of the slit
without that much light coming into it cuz hydrogen isn't shining very brightly at that.
Call her but notice there are some white spots. That's
because I'd set up the specs scope so that only the edge of the sun the atmosphere of the
sun was entering this instrument and at that spot on the edge of the solar disc,
there actually a prominence so I am in this way imaging some a
prominent structure right through the spectators scope now you're not seeing a lot of
clear structure, but nevertheless it made it possible to detect prominent.
And with very careful adjustment of the instrument
and manipulation of it and then drawing astronomers of yesteryear could get pretty
darn clear. impressions of prominence by observing them
through a spectra scope when it's tuned to the the Alpha absorption line, It's really a pretty cool technique, but it's
very old fashioned nowadays. How did I do it? well? it was
way back in 1990 and I was lucky enough to have access to the famous. Snow horizontal
telescope at Mount Wilson that was designed to do things like this in in Soroptimist. The two
optical flat mirrors at the snow telescope captures sunlight and direct it down a
long path into the darkened building a path that's approximately horizontal. The
Sunbeam hits a twenty-four inch diameter paranoid down there at
the lower right in this picture, but then it it reflects off the braid now
finally being focused. and in this time, exposure shot where the beams are illuminated by
dust in the air. the f thirty paranoid is focusing on an
optical flat on the ceiling and forming an image on top of the white mechanism the white table
at the lower left of the picture. Built in to that white
mechanism and extending below it was a very large solar spectrum in here where students
back in 1990 learning how to record these kinds of features.
But 100. 120 years before we were doing that at Mount Wilson. this is the kind of
compact instrument that astronomers were using for similar pioneering observations
of the sun. This year shows that same small
specks scope attached to the IP send of a six-inch refractor
that was was at Harvard College Observatory. That's cool. In
England, the similar increments look like this this example
made by John Browning in London an illustration out of his catalog for a design that was
circa 1870 or maybe a little bit later. Here's the same
thing in real life beautifully tucked away in it's storage
case. Here it is assembled or at least set up for laboratory use
because you could use it that way as well as attaching it to. it's all scope.
This is the area that would screw into an English telescope aer using the standard threads
they had in those days called RAS threads for Royal Astronomical Society and inside
there, there's some little bit of complication but basically that was the imprint slit of
this compact specs scope. After passing through the slit, the
light would continue through the tube entering this picture on the right hand side, but
then finally pass through a lens on the end of the tube and then the column light would
enter this elaborate little prism crane the first block of
glass the light. entered looks like the prism that you might
have taken out of a star diagonal, that you'd be familiar with from modern
times. The tube associated with the
slit is on the left hand side in this view, and you can see the light coming out of it goes
right into a the face of a prism there and however, that
Prism directs the light onward through the entire chain of
prisms that is linked together. Mechanically so it's to stay in proper adjustment. The light is
dispersed more and more as it passes from Prism to Prism. finally at what appears to be
nearly the end of the train. Over on the right hand side. there's another block of glass
that directs the the well dispersed light back through
the same prisms but on the bottom half of the prisms notice, how the two brass tubes
are actually at different levels, The one on the left is a little bit higher than the one on the right That's because
the light enters the lower right-hand tube coming out of.
Bottom of all those prisms and that is how this thing works as
actually a double pass specs scope for effectively a total
disperse dispersing power of ten prisms well that spreads
the light out a lot in the solar spectrum, so you can see fine details in the rainbow
like spectrum. In this shot overview again notice how all
the prisms are clustered fairly tightly together relative to
the metal disc underneath them. This is the same angle on the
increment, but if you notice compared to before the prisms are now more spread out
relative to the metal plate underneath them, that's because they're all linked together.
Mechanically in such a way to maintain proper alignment as
you make this adjustment allowing you to sweep through the entire breath of colors. in
the spectrum of the sun that you see in the eye piece, that's it so. That it's they're
they're linked together, kind of like the links in a scorpions tail.
Using small instruments like this small but very elegant instruments astronomers in the
nineteenth century began to understand how spectacularly dynamic the solar spectrum
could be here a bright emission light is is erupting in what is
normally an absorption line in the solar spectrum. Some of the light is being shifted to one
side and the other. From another part of the solar surface is being shifted in the
other direction. That's what's accounting for the. odds squiggle of of radiation.
that's of in the middle of this field of view. That's it. it's it's caused by the very violent
motion of the bright energized gas that the telescope was
directed towards as it fed the light into the specs scope. It's pretty neat.
One American tall scope that was equipped with this kind of accessory right from its
beginning is the eight-inch Alvin Clark refractor at sea grave Memorial Observatory in
North Scituate, Rhode Island and this wonderful tall scope and it's incremental is
maintained by the skyscrapers incorporated the astronomy Club of Rhode Island and I'm proud
to say that I'm still a member back there if you wanna learn more about the history of solar
spec Osco, there's a wonderful book that's on the internet. free. It's a. Download It's
from the 1880s and later editions 1890s simply entitled
The Sun by Charles a young Google it download it, and you
can learn all about this stuff many of my illustrations were taken from that book for this
brief presentation The Sun by Charles a young a great book
thanks for your attention.
Excellent that was cool. I'm fascinated with like like older
old scientific instruments. You know, I haven't grown up in a very digitized age seeing how
analog instruments work. it's kinda blows my mind a little bit.
It's a very impressive looking. at how detailed of the
deviation was back in in the 1870s of of of so prominence is
thanks to this kind of visual specs toy and we take fabulous
hydrogen Alpha filters for granted today, but the old days they had to work really hard to
see the sun in hydrogen Alpha but they succeeded and it's a beautiful. And I'm I'm grateful
for your attention sharing more about it but my presentation was longer than I told Scott it
would be so he's tolerated that very politely, but I'll I'll
I'll I'll for myself. so maybe we can take a break now that we all deserve. I think. we're
running a little bit behind schedule at this point, but one thing I would like to say if you don't mind, yeah go ahead
is that when we listen to a talk like John just gave we're going back. Time and it's not
as if you know, I feel the years the days and the years and the nights are sliding away
back to a different time and a different place and I think this is directed maybe more at
Libby than all the others who is so young and it represents in many ways the future of
amateur astronomy and the night sky. because we are seeing what
what it was like to be alive at a. Time and it's so
interesting. to hear a speaker like John who really can move
us back so effectively into that time show us the Spectra
show us the telescope that took the Spectra spectrum and. gave
us a real sense of what it was like back then. before the age of computers, Libby will never
know life without a computer. I don't know what she would do if she woke up 1 day. There were
no computers allowed ever again. I don't know how she do it on our generation would do
it and I look forward to hearing some thoughts both from her and from John about what
life would be like without. the instruments that Libby has access to right now. John Good
talk really enjoyed it. Thank you. Thank you. David. Yeah.
That was really cool. Thank you. Hey well at this point, I guess we'll all take a 10
minute break. It's time to get a sandwich or something to drink and we'll be right back
with some more great talks here on the Thirty-ninth Global Star Party with guest host Molly
Wakelin.
These talks have been so good, okay time to go Make a sandwich. I'm gonna make a sandwich. that's right. dinner
time. It's a kind of a late dinner for those of you out on
the east coast right now I work till 830 and then I got here like immediately, so I haven't
had time to eat. Oh, really. yeah.
I'll be right back. the one that we did. the 24 hour one
that we did. at the conjunction of Jupiter and Saturn it just went on and on and on for so
long. and you might have said that was too much of a good thing, but it wasn't I really
loved it. I enjoyed it so much being on that.
I'll be right back. I'm just gonna get something to eat real quick. Yeah. Okay.
Peanut butter and jelly sandwich, which required.
Well, David, This has been a really a great. global star party. I think so I've really
been enjoying it. Yeah. Thank you.
Yup.
I think it's been really very successful and unique. I'm really glad that we're doing
this. Yeah me too. And yours is coming up next
week so next week. Yeah. mm hmm. kind of a interesting line
of speakers, but I'm thinking we may have slightly fewer than we have usually. But I don't
know I'm hoping the suggestions. Yeah. But tonight
is Molly's night and we're very proud of her. Absolutely.
absolutely and we're all back now. Hope you enjoyed your
short break and the next run here we've got more exciting
speakers to come so you know take it away. Alright welcome
back. Hope everybody had a nice break. I managed to grab myself a PB and J and some chips and
some cake that I made and put in the freezer and warm back up and now I have cake. Made chips
and cake. Yeah, oh and apple juice in in this really cool
Nebula cup. They don't have a set of ahora with different nebula on them. And one more
for Passover. Oh, yeah.
Yeah. Okay. So now that we're back from break we get to move on to the door Prize segment of
the show and that would be with our own Terry Mann. Whoo hoo.
Thank you. Molly. I'm going to share my screen again. We're
gonna start with our starting slide that we always start with. a solar warning whenever
you're using an optical instrument not to look at the sun without protection for your
eyes Sunglasses aren't okay. you need an actual filter for.
Optical equipment you're using. And I wanted to announce we are
going to start doing door prizes different starting in April, we will continue to ask
and answer questions, but we are not going to announce the winners each week. We are going to be awarding prizes at the
end of the month and then we're gonna add two grand prizes a year so with every talk
starting in April a slide will be added at the end of the PowerPoint with the individual
names that have given correct answers and. Names will go on
an excel sheet and then at the end of the month and twice a year, we're gonna use a number
generator. choose the winners randomly from the list of door from the list of names and then
as I said twice a year, we're gonna do a grand prize and all of the names will be added in
at that time. So what we're looking at right now is we're thanking one of the grand prizes will be during Alon in
August. And the other one might be in December, so what you're gonna see tonight is you're
gonna see me again even after this one I am going to give the answers from the two last star
parties with their questions. Then tonight I am going to ask my questions and probably about
a half hour later. I'm going to come back on and just give the answers for those three
questions so we can kind of wrap up the old style of door prizes, so we can start new
next month cool. So let's start with Star Party Global Star
Party thirty-seven, which was March 16th The question was where do we find the star
Beetlejuice and that was in the constellation Orion and the winner was Lauren lemon. Oh
congratulations. Question Two. What is the name of the path of the Sun, Moon and planets take
across the sky as seen from earth That is the eclectic the winner. Jus Stewart
Question Three. What are the names of the two stars in the bowl of the Big Dipper that point to Polaris and the it's
Dubai and Merrick and the winner is Richard Grace. and
those are the winners from the March 16th Global Star Party. Here are the winners from the
March 23rd Global Star Party. How many planets in our solar system have no moons. It is two
mercury and US and that is John Purcell won that one. the next
one. What is the name of this northern constellation that seems to wind around the bowl
of the Little Dipper The answer is draco the dragon. Ernie
Jacobs is the winner on that one. the third question these
two prominent features are visible from southern latitudes on Earth. What are they called
me? And the winner is Suzanne Leap. Now, I'm gonna ask the
three questions for this Star party and we ask now that you
send the answers to secretary at Astro League.org. so, as I
said, I'm going to send them in as fast as you can probably within the next half hour or
so. yeah, I'm good. Yeah. I'm gonna be a real race right yes.
I like the I like the tension. This is good. Yeah, I'm gonna
be working with the door prizes behind the scenes here and so in the next half hour, I'll be
back to give the answers and the winner to these questions. and like I said Secretary at E
League.org. Okay. Here's the first question What is the hottest planet in our solar
system? Question two how many earths can fit inside of the
sun? Question three if you could
lump together all the thousands of known asteroids in our solar
system, their total mass wouldn't even equal ten. 10% of the mass of the Earth Moon is
that true or false and send the answers to secretary at Astra
League.org and I will be back in a little bit. Thank you very much.
Oh my goodness. What was it was? it was that
applause on from you and Terry or did Scott play that that was Scott? Oh, my gosh, I need to
get one of those like sound boards that that like the super duper streamers used to are
like the radio host. you know that make different for different noises. Maybe maybe not we only have a few I mean
there you go.
That's amazing. Don't encourage you all. please please that's
right. Alright your mind to that man behind the curtain.
Alright. Well, thank you Terry and we will have her back on in half an hour to announce the
winners so stay tuned and there's also a lot of great talks in between. between now
and when Terry comes back on to announce the winners that you should also stay tuned for including our youngest guest
who has been a regular on this show and is a perfect example of how practice makes perfect
her presentations get better and better and her obsession with space, go stronger and stronger. that is Libby and the
stars. Take it away Libby Okay today I'm talking about gravity
I made a presentation. add some cats at the end. It's why not
so what you're getting at the presentation. I quickly had a
cat feathers knowing that we were all cat fans. so that's the end of the presentation not
the topic, but you're already a professional. welcome welcome to the community. so. Gravity
so gravity is like something that's like very hard to touch on because. it's very hard to
explain what it is because. I usually just explain it as it is a force cuz you can't see
gravity so you can't really explain a lot of what it is and what it looks like and you know
that stuff so I usually just explain it as gravity is a force and. Only in the planet
to have an atmosphere is. they have the gravity that pulls
down to the center of the planet. So? I remember once
when I was at space camp, we were talking about gravity and we're talking about if we were
in Jupiter. That like the gravity is stronger there, which will be pulling us to the
center and therefore it would be hard to lift our legs and
walk around and again we were talking about how we were on another planet with that was a
little bit smaller. On how we would be able to walk a lot
easier because the smaller the planet the weaker the the gravity is because the gravity.
like the bigger the planet. there's more of that stronger.
gravity if it's pulling you down to earth and that's how everything on earth works is if
I dropped a cup of water. then it would fall straight to the
ground because that's being cool. Center of Gravity and
Now, if you were underwater like say you're scuba diving the farther you get down to the
center of Earth, the more tighter it gets because you're
being pulled it in and the force is getting stronger and stronger and we've actually
touched a lot about this on. my school science class. We just
started talking about it and I started a huge conversation between a lot of my classmates
on the different gravity in between planet. And We're
talking about zero grabbing and you're like you're in space.
And when when you're in space that you're in zero, gravity obviously. everyone knows that
when you're in space and zero gravity and when you're in zero
gravity, there's nothing really pulling you around. or pushing you down to its core, You're
not at the center of gravity or anything and really. It's like
you're you're not being pulled anywhere and you're weight was so like if you see the
astronauts out into space on the international space station, they are just floating around because they're in zero
gravity. and they're not really being pulled into. into any
center of gravity around any of the planets or any of the moons because they're far away from
that. So there's zero gravity so. So they're weightless and
When you're weightless, you're just floating around and. I was thinking about this and they
kept on dropping something on the ground today thinking about this like the second that I let
go of that and it's dropping. a alert just a second, my mom
just hacked my ceiling fan.
You're walking through space, Okay so my ceiling fan has Bluetooth and sometimes my
mom's phone connects to it. So it's just sort of playing music and I was like, oh snap.
Back to where I was. so I was
thinking about like astronauts on other planets back, I was at space camp. There was a
simulator. there called the one eight simulator care and they trapped us into his chair and
we went through all these springs like all over the place and so they taught us a little bit about what the simulator
was doing and. To simulate basically Earth's
pressure like the like the gravity that's pulling us down or not the man has one eighth
of Earth's of Earth's gravity. so they call it the one eighth
chair and I read a lot about this because it was like so interesting cuz I wasn't even
on the moon and I was experiencing like different gravity and. I was thinking.
Because like if I was on mercury. Then I would be
floating around like crazy because the pressure point. like mercury is a small thing,
so all the gravity that's pulling me down isn't very strong. and the same with the
moon and with Pluto so you will be floating around more than
sticking to the ground like you went on Jupiter like Jupiter. If you look at it, it's not the
higher it is the. more gravity there. It is. that's pulling you down astronauts win. Able
to walk so they can have their feet stuck to the ground trying to wobble around because you
you can't lift your feet up in that gravity because everything like on each and every planet.
the. the more gravity there is the more you weigh and. I also
was thinking about like what have you traveled to the highest point on earth like
let's say Mount Everest, where you went to the top of that you would actually wait less.
You're not being pulled in to the gravity of earth and that's
gonna get weaker as you go out. so you weigh less on top of.
You allow you a less on top of Mount Everest and you will
weigh heavier if you were all the way at the bottom of the seat. And like in the center of
grabbing or score.
So the rules of gravity, there's a lot of rules. I mean there's a lot, but here's what
I just came up with and researched a little bit about.
stars that don't have atmospheres because there's honestly at any second a flame
can randomly come out. a star into space, so there's no atmospheres and the atmospheres
they also help with the gravity that's pulling me down and.
We we were touching a lot of this on recently in school and
We probably stormed all about this and argued about like what would happen if we set an
astronaut to a different planet and what would happen for probably about an hour and we
came to the conclusion that like. and we never heard of like pressure points before so
if you were to look at the little measurements that with like all the difficult like
signs on them if you don't really understand, I mean for me as a fifth grader, I don't really understand a lot of
those symbols, but. I could touch base of it on my classmates and we sort of
arranging conversation about that and. we were talking about
what would be the EDS plan to go to and what planet and the
universe like has the hardest gravity like and then we were thinking of the sides of the
planet cuz the planet would have to be big if the gravity would have to be strong
because. the core of it would have to be strong and I wanted.
It off today with some cats that is my cat Bowie because I
quickly I was doing this presentation and I quickly
realized a lot of people. I'm here with cat people so. I had some pictures of my own cat
Bowie and she's my space cat. She comes out to her with me.
But she has a little stroller and we take her out with we take her outside of us and
she'll sit out in the stroller and I always leave all of this new space once I get to her and
I always tell my mom, I said if I don't become an astronaut, my cat will because my cat's so
smart, I always. I always love to tell our stories about space and I'm sure she gets very
bored of it. but that cat is so cute. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I
did I call it Cat astrophotography as well as doing a shot of me you get a
cat. photography. catastrophic.
my cat astronomy. Yeah, we used to take a lot of pictures of my cat when she was super young.
This was like in the week that I got her. I still do take a lot of pictures of her, but you
should I decided to add the younger ones because she's become a little sassy with me now and she doesn't wanna pose
for me. Oh my gosh. My cat does the same thing as soon as I pull my phone out they stop doing whatever cute thing they
were just doing. It's like my cat will be like so cute and everything I take my phone out
and I'll be like. oh that's to my website or whatever or I'll add this to my Facebook page
and then they just completely get out of the pose right they know. I think there's something
like majestic between space and cats because. it's like the
perfect combination of those things that I've ever like seen in the universe because.
I don't remember a long time ago, I did a school project on
the cat who went to space. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I think that I
think it's very common sentiment that people love cats and and people love space when
you put the two of them together, It's just an irresistible combination. When you have some time, I have a
question for Libby. Good. Yeah. Okay. Thanks Libby. I really enjoy each of your talks more
and more than the one you gave the week before and this one tops them all but I do have a
question and a little bit of difficult homework assignment to give you.
I had an argument about the very first line of your talk a number of years ago with Roy
Bishop who is a member of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada and this largest person
I've ever known. I was reading in one of the additions of the
Observer Handbook and Roy had written there that gravity is
not a force and as soon as you said that in the first line of of your gravity is a force I
thought here is Libby versus Roy and I wonder I wonder if
you and Roy wanna get into this together I do because I did with Roy II talked with him for
hours about it, he said. Gravity is geometry. It is not a fork. And he explained it
strictly geometrically and it certainly is that way, of course, Newton thought it was a
force but Einstein kind of said no it's geometry. and that's what Roy Bishop says. And. I
still disagree with him on that I agree with you Libby but I'm gonna give you a little bit of
homework to do and maybe to get in touch with him and ask him to explain to you an 11 year
old with the brain of a noble. Winner. What? why gravity is
not a force and why it is just geometry, so I think is a very powerful question The other
thing I have to say is that. with the slide that you showed at the end, will you introduce
us to a cat? A dio telescope?
Yes, that's it. Libby Libby came up with a really good one before we came up before we did
the show and and she was going to name a constellation after a cat cats. I can't see that was
a serious lack of cats in in the constellations we need to
need to add add one more constellation to the eighty-eight noon. but the cats
that's cat's eye Nebula. I was just about to say the cat's eye Nebula. That's a nebula. My favorite Nebula is a very
favorite planetary. true. There's a there's another aspect of libby's talk. where
she mentioned that if a planet did not have an atmosphere, it would not have. Now I've seen
both of those statements that that they do and they don't on
the internet. and I'm just wondering. and it's talk about gravity. How does the group
weigh in? It's actually a fascinating deduction. because
if you look at the solar system, we have the smaller all
of the planets that don't have atmosphere are the smallest ones right you got mercury and
you've got Pluto and you've got you know the moon, for example, which have a less mass and
therefore have a they don't have no gravity, but they have lower gravity, which I think is what you ended up saying later
in your talk anyway. But it's really fascinating deduction to to you know to look at the
solar system and say, oh well, obviously, the planets that don't have atmospheres are the ones that have less gravity and
it turns out that those two aren't exactly connected that that in that way, but I thought
that was really fascinating deduction that you made there. It has ends up having more to
do with the magnetic field around the the planet and whether it's core is still
spinning or not. but it does so happen that the smaller bodies of the of the solar system are
the ones that don't have atmospheres and and of course they have less mass in their
poor little gravity just, for in molecules and molecular clouds they have, I would
suppose they would have to be coalescing, not just by external forces but mutual
attraction by gravity. On the international space station,
see. Dont, yeah, he one of the astronauts up there. He took a
bag of of water and and little rock particles and kinda shook it up and and they immediately
started forming clumps with each other as they kind of attracted each other, which is
is partly their gravitational force part of the electromagnetic force. but yeah, every everything that has
mass, which is everything except for certain masses particles. Photons have
gravity. it's a lot less than you know the earth. It's really
funny once I remember going to spacing and they were teaching
a lot about gravity a little pins and how I do the universe
is on like a plain sheet of like gravity like that. We're all being held together and it's all three dimensional and
stuff and I remember going back home that night and I had the
worst nightmare that we were all just on the blank like she
of gravity out in the. Just sailing along and stars that's
kind of exactly what's happening. But very, very long
time skill billions of years. you you you won't be around
when the sun dies don't worry Here's some comments from our our audience here. Norm Hughes is saying I think of a planet
spins it will have some sort of some form of gravity but could have no atmosphere. Harold
Locke if gravity is not is not.
if gravity is not it is strange to me because it is almost. The duplicate of electromagnetism I
learned in physics class, it's described as an attraction of mass. Yeah, and actually that's
one of the things that I thought was so incredible when I was an undergraduate in
physics taking my first physics courses was that the equation that describes gravity is the
same as the equation that describes the electromagnetic force just with different cons and that it just was so
beautiful and we now it's and it's such a part of the standard model. In the early
like at the very, very, you know moments after the big bang all four fundamental forces
were actually one force and we can kinda look at the different the four fundamental forces we
see today, Gravity electromagnetism and the weak and strong nuclear forces as
being four different sides of the same thing. it's just incline or dice if you will
yeah. John Pierce, chili says. Oh boy let the arguments begin
I agree with the royal of. Astronomical or the Royal of Canada Gravity is not a force.
rather, it is a property of space time and may not even be a property of our universe.
Okay, There's been some really interesting hypothesis on on why gravity is so much weaker
than the other forces. It's it's tend to the power of of negative thirty-nine so .00.
.00000. .00000000. .000000000 all up to 39. Times weaker than than the force that holds protons and neutrons together
inside of the atom and it's a lot weaker than if you just.
then then then you would expect and. there's there's some really interesting thoughts on why that might be that are
still very much kind of in you know like pre theory even in a hypothesis. You got something
going today. I'm not new but seems to be that gravity is a
result of mass and space, but the jury is still out and I haven't got the math.
Let's see Martin who is I think he's a physicist, he says, Light bending of photons been
by gravity or two stars. by gravity or two stars or a black
hole and the star draws them in. So a heavy heavy masses
like like Galaxy clusters or individual black holes. they
end up bending light around them as the light goes through the gravitational well, they're
they're dipping in in space time I could do a whole show on just a fun topic, but I think
we should probably start moving on to our next group of speakers. Alright. Thank you so
much Libby. That was a great talk and and anything that that stimulates some scientific
discussion is is always awesome and you know this is the kind of stuff we we chitchat about.
In the graduate lounge at school, you know in the in the physics graduate lounge so it's
always it's always fun to have these discussions. well next up
is one of my friends from this this women's as as a
photographer's group known as Stella, I was going to have the founder of that group on tonight, she unfortunately
wasn't able to make it. but we have Andrea here who's a member of Stella and she's a long time
visual astronomer and has just been. Into astrophotography, she's from Canada and she
remembers trying to use film to image the night sky, which I've heard many tales from various people on on the extreme
difficulty of using film as a as a medium and she's going to talk about hyper star imaging.
So Andrea take it away. I don't know how I'm gonna follow all
of that. I'm not a PhD I don't have any degrees in physics.
I'm a lawyer and I practice law and I do this for fun. just
fine. you won't see my screen Molly Yes. so we're seeing the
PowerPoint screen if you wanna go ahead and start the presentation. Yeah. Here we go
perfect perfect perfect so II will say I do have one sort of memory of when I really began
to invest in the equipment in this field when I had my very first legal job and I had my
first paycheck, I went and I got a telescope good and then I went, I told my mother I was
going to a dark place in Toronto, where there was gonna meet people. I hardly knew and
it was gonna be totally dark and she was very concerned but it turns out. We went there to
watch Comet Shoemaker Levy hit Jupiter so that was with my very first telescope. Awesome.
I was quite lucky that when when began the pandemic I had
already purchased sort of next telescope. This was the next one up and it's a celestron.
It's eleven inch Schmidt casa. and it was kind of a beast and
it's very big and very heavy and I got it out during the pandemic and I really tried to
learn how to use it and it's a beautiful visual telescope. And
then I thought well, how can I possibly start doing imaging cuz that's what I always wanted to do the only thing I ever did
in the past was I had taken some film photographs of. of
solar eclipse in Aruba once but now everything was digital and my daughter was helping me take
some pictures with digital. so I thought I could handle this so I started doing lucky
imaging, which is using a video camera to take images through
the. Of the telescope and it turns out that's really a great way of doing planetary work and
I love this picture here. This was actually doing using an iphone right at the eye piece
and if you listen carefully you can hear crickets. Oh, can you
hear crickets? I heard one. Yeah. so this is me and my
backyard and the crickets were going like crazy and I did a picture of Saturn and this was
I was hooked that was the end. I actually managed to stock
images from my iphone, but it didn't look very nice so I did end up using a simple little
video camera through the prime focus and I was able to capture some pretty nice planet Images.
Jupiter is still a work in progress, but I was happy with Mars and Saturn. but then I
started thinking about how was I gonna do take photos of deep space object. and if. Can see
from the screen. One of my really big issues was that an eleven inch Schmidt Casa
Telescope is. 2008. 2800 millimeter focal length that is
incredibly long focal length very, very narrow field of view
most people who use that telescope for imaging use a 0.7
Reducer that takes it down to 1900. 1980 or so. I compare it
to say a telephoto lens. that's more like 400. 400 your basic
lens you get with your DSLR is about fifty millimeters. This
was a big challenge. These are two very famous Youtubers Dylan
O'Donnell and Trevor Jones both of them have cables both of
them use reduces and both of them have massively giant mounts and I didn't have that
kind of mouth so and they were struggling if they have trouble getting images out of this
system. then I figured I was never gonna be able to do this at least not right away. So
that's why I ended up looking at the hyper star lens. It
seems like this magical thing that turns a very, very slow telescope so the Cle is f ten
natively and it converts it into AF one point. 1.9. lens,
which is crazy very very fast. You'll see there's a picture of
the front of the Schmidt Casa tube, and you take obviously that central mirror you remove
that and you put the hyper on. This is what it it looks like on my telescope at home as you
can see the camera attaches to the hyper star lens at the front and I'm using an
astronomical camera ZO camera so it is circular so it kind of matches with the circular
nature of the hyper star lens. I have seen people use a DSLR
as well, but not for the smaller Schmidt casa grains they usually do sort of nine
and a quarter inch and bigger.
Basically it's made in the United States. with Arizona. it
is makes a much wider field of view you have to if you go to order one of the hyper stars
you have to specify is it a CAC fourteen. because the lens will
change depending on what telescope you have. I have an edge HD optic scope if you have
a standard Schmidt casa, you would use a different lens and similar. If you have different
cameras, there's different adapters so you would have to get in my case. I've ordered the ZO cooled camera adapter
because that's the time I had. And basically, this is how the
hyper star works on your left, You can see how the light comes in in a typical Schmidt Cassie
Telescope it bounces. twice before it gets to the lens of the back of the scope. with the
hyper star I seal off the eye piece. I close it up. in fact, I tape it up so no light can
get in and I wear the red circle is that's where we put the hyper star so the light
doesn't. So far, so that's how the focal length gets reduced.
I'm not a physicist. That's just my. layman's analysis. So
what happens now is, I have a telescope that is actually has a focal length of 540
millimeters, which is kind kind of like a telephoto lens. which is nice. It's not so narrow and
the the trick about a very narrow narrow field of view. is you have to have precise
guiding and your little picture will often your target will flow out of your field if
you're not careful. and but really the best part of it is it's f 1.9 now if. Have any
photography background? You know that the lower the f stop the faster the lens the more light it collects. if you
compare F ten to f 1.9, it is, according to Arizona 27 times
faster. So that's a lot a lot more light and a much shorter
amount of time. So what the what does that mean it means you can do a full image and
maybe a few hours one evening. Some of the tips and tricks
that I've learned about mainly from other people is that it collects light so quickly your
stars get really really bloated and overexposed quickly. so I instead of doing some people do
5 minute exposures. Most hyper star users do 62nd exposures
32nd exposures Some of them don't even guide because they are such short exposures. I
tend to guide so I have to mount a guide scope on the top.
There is a place where you can put filters, so I often use a narrow band filter like the
Ellen Ha. I use one shot colored camera so I don't use mono, but I do know people who
do use mono cameras and there is a drawer that you can slide different filters in and out
and because it's so fast you're not needing to spend as much time. There is a Facebook group
that I belong to and it's full of people we all do hyper star we all share information. It's
a great place to start if you'd like to try doing this, I will speak briefly about filters.
There is something called bandwidth shift with fast
optics so if you're using a very very narrow bandwidth
filter such as a hydrogen filter, three nanometers or six even you may not get. Very
good, very good performance at f 1.9. So there's a lot of
chatter about that I use the Ellen. a lot of people have trouble with the Xtreme filter.
It doesn't really work very well on hyper start.
It is super fast optics like I mentioned and as a result, there is a significant
vignette, which is the bright circle in the center of your image, so I had to learn about flat frames and how to do flat
frames and how to. How do you do flat frames on your cameras right at the front? so you need
need to do because you'll have to put a light panel on top of your dowel. Some people do Sky
flats, which is pointing it at the sky. even with skylights even with a light panel, you'll
see I have cloths on top of my hyper start. It's so fast so that if I do a sky flat, I like
half a second. I'm getting stars so I have to dim it down if I wanna get a flat frame at
around, you know a second second and a half. But you can
go after a very dim targets. I try to go after dim targets because we can get lots of nice results in a very short amount
of time you do have to watch your cables at the front you can arrange them in a special
way so that you can have the fraction spikes and you don't like spikes, you can do it Another way you'd have to ask
the experts on our Facebook group. and these are some of my images, which is the fun part.
From left to right, I have the cave Nebula below it is. in GC.
1333. It's a reflection Nebula. I have the tadpole and of course the cone Nebula. I've
also started doing a lot of galaxies with the Hyper star and I'm just getting you know
used to them and obviously this is a Leo Triplett I have m
seventy-four and m 81 and m 82.
And then these are just some other. these ones were done without filters and so that
shows how many stars I got when when I didn't really use on that narrow band filters so the
crab Nebula was a broadband filter so was the flaming star and then so are all of my
galaxies and that's the cat's eye galaxy Molly. So there's a cat for you. That looks great,
I'm gonna. the dog is really cute. And that the the this is
my was my very first hyper store image was the bubble and I think Molly gave me some tips
on how to process it and it's really I thought I think it's a great solution for a beginner
like me. Wonderful awesome. Yeah. I've
seen some people getting into hyper star I've seen more people now thats are a thing get a rasa instead, which is is
quite similar but the advantage of hyper stars that you can still image with your Schmidt
Casa grain in in at prime you know and do a planetary work. so it's very very versatile
telescope. The Schmidt cask screen and II I've been to like nervous and. Hyper star just
because it seems very finicky so it makes me feel good that other people are finding success cuz I might try it at
some point. I have a well I well I have eleven with a very floppy mirror and then I have
AC eight with a much less floppy mirror. I mean, if you're finicky, there's things
to be finicky about hyper star some people don't like the stars in the corners. I'm not
very finicky. I'm I'm pretty happy with most of my inventory. Oh yeah those images. that that mosaic I can
just imagine a whole wall you know of a prints done like that as you're walking into your
hallway or your living room or something like that, I would just be amazing so beautiful
work. Yeah. awesome. Thank you so much for coming on. I might
like to try to get a hyper star. How would I go about getting one? Well? you would
follow the link I just put in chat you would go to star Zona.com and I'll put it in
there again and the reason I haven't done it is because the the hyper star units are a
little pricey. but still like less than getting another
telescope to do those wide fields of you Plus you have one. I'm gonna say one of the
things that II already had the dew heaters. I had all the stuff to do like I could've I
looked at by. Another refractor, but I already had this so yeah it made sense to
just buy the liquor store. The reduces are almost impossible to find right now. I have one
on order. It's supposed to come in September. Whoa. Like I've
I've I've noticed that there's been a lot of delays with Otra gear, but September is pretty
extreme. a lot of astro gear in the industry with all the companies it's it's running
towards summer the fall at this point so much telescope gear was bought in 2020 that it
exceeded any other kind of event you know, including amazing events like Comet
Shoemaker Levy event Comet Halley. Comet Bop The Mars
opposition the big Mars opposition there was was more telescopes during the pandemic
than than at any other time crazy. They're probably also all stuck in the canal. That's
what we'd like to say, but that's not that's not really the the reason Yeah, I know I know it's just somebody said
that there was it doesn't help say my telescope is in here you know, pointing to a container on the on that giant ship. so.
Anyhow. Alright, Oh. thank you again Andrea and if you have a Schmidt Casa Hyper star is is
worth looking into. you can do some really cool stuff with that. Alright Our next speaker is a friend of mine. I think we
originally met at the Texas Star Party or something around there, but we've kinda stayed in touch. It's will young he. I
think you live down in Texas right I do. yeah, I guess Y'all can hear me right. Yeah. Yeah
and he's in the vicinity of of where SpaceX does their
starship tests out there in Boca Chica, so he goes out and covers those events on his lives. And he's gonna talk
about the starship tests. see I have. Oh, okay. Yeah. So I'm
pulling up my my introduction spreadsheet. Well, Well, it's avid visual astronomer from Texas who's combined his
passion for astronomy with his love of music creation on his platform, Deep sky dude. his goal is to help inspire and
educate the next generation of amateur, astronomers and space fans. so we'll take it away.
Hey, thank you so much for inviting me. Molly. This is awesome. I've I've been
watching these explore scientific broadcast for since since. Got started on and it's
been absolutely amazing and like Andrea, I don't know how I'm gonna follow the
awesomeness that has been this evening. I mean David Levy is here. David is one of the
reasons that I got started in astronomy of course, Shoemaker Levy. I was a little kid. I was
like what is that something's hitting Jupiter and so you know from and here I am 37 years old
and still doing amateur astronomy. I guess I'm displaying my screen. It's a is it up here for everybody. Yeah.
It's fine. Okay. Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, this is a shot that I
took this last year at the El Dorado Star Party 2020, which did go forward under heavy
covid restrictions. No talks all kinds of social distancing of course masks in buildings
and everything was great. There was a lot to have a shared normally and I know that Scott
is very familiar with El Dorado Star Party been many times with explore scientific. in fact, my
friend won the Grand Prize one time, which was an e. 102 and
he had the magic ticket that day and so, but I promptly stole that scope from my friend
and have since done some insane insanely. awesome stuff I caught during the lunar
eclipse, the thing that hit the moon. I caught it with that I did the solar eclipse with that telescope. so Scott thank you
from the bottom of my heart for that awesome gift that you gave me because I have torn the sky
open with that thing. So you're awesome. You know that's great and this is. Yeah, this is a
shot from that El Dorado star Party that I hope we can all get to 1 day and and hang out with each other again. That's
me at my scope. It's a twenty-two. That's my main scope. I guess the most astronomers have three or four
toys. We like to play with out there right and this is my main one. This is a twenty-two inch
obsession. Dobson I figured go for it right. I'm still young. I can still move things that
are heavier, you know, so I might as well. do it now. and I've got a little warm room over there. Those ice fishing
tents that you guys may or may not not have seen on Amazon ebay. Or whatever those things are great y'all, they're
bottomless. So there's there's no bottom. you just put a tarp down or something plot that thing right up there it sets up
super fast and it's a great little warm room. You can have your table in there if you're an amateur, the wires can come
in and out it's great. and you can see my buddy brand got a really big one. He got this
massive snow tent, which is which is incredible, but he can actually put his Dobson in
there So let's see if I can go forward here there we go. If
you wanna find me on social media, it's at deep sky dude on everything. Instagram Twitter
YouTube, Whatever if you go to deep sky.com, that's where you'll find all my links to all
my stuff that I'm doing out there and like, Molly said. I'm here to talk about Starship cuz that's where I am right now.
I'm in a hotel room. This isn't an awesome green screen like most of y'all have and I just picked the hotel background.
It's an actual hotel. I've been here since I don't even remember I got here I left like Thursday at 10 PM. I got here
at 5 AM and went straight. The park to try to watch eleven be launched well, it's a scrub and
so all weekend, we know they're not gonna launch because of things and then so Monday came
scrub and then today was the foggy day I've ever seen in my life and they launched it
today, which was crazy. I'll talk about that here in a second but these are the star
ships right here. You can see these massive rockets they've got down in South Texas. This is a SpaceX operation down
here, a little place called Boca Chica, which is a tiny little. Of town, it's the
furthest South Town in in Texas, basically, it's a little bit. It's on par with
Brownsville, but maybe a little bit further south about a mile and a half from the Rio Grande and both of these rockets right
here. These are called the star ships both of these rockets are dead or gone. They are no more
they have ceased to be they were detonated to one of them on the pad just landed in
hardcore, which I'll I'll show you in a second, the other one landed and blew up 8 minutes later, which was a sad story
for me because I put my lens cap back on my camera. Walked away and then the rocket
exploded. this is what I'm shooting it down here with this is an astronomy rig that I've been using to to do sort of
like like like Andrea's like the wide field stuff cuz I can go from 200 to 600 millimeter
and then I can digitally crop it down twice that so I guess up to what 1200 millimeters or
so and this is the setup I'm using here at Isle Blanca Park, which is where I'm at for this
particular launch, and you can see the cameras pointed across the way towards where. Rockets are launched from about five
miles south of our location in Isle Blanca Park, which is south Padre Island if you're
familiar with Texas this was the launch of SN nine, you can see the rocket there it uses
three engines. They're brand new engines from Spacex, which is pretty interesting stuff
again. I'm not a rocket expert. That's just you know kinda what I've been doing the last several months is coming down
here and you know just going out and it's scrubbed. I guess I'm going back to the hotel for
the rest of the day to take a nap or whatever go out there the next day. Be the same story they might fly. You never know
it's a test program but but nine did what we're seeing here and this is the sort of the shot that I got one of the
shots and unfortunately when it came down. the engines exploded
only one engine turned on properly and it couldn't do the job of correcting the the
rocket and it exploded and that Pelican is now very famous. so good for that little pelican.
But this was the aftermath here and notice that S ten and I
showed you one with two rockets on the pad. Still there unharmed amazingly by some
miracle the shrapnel from this exploding rocket did not hit the other rockets. so it's
pretty impressive but you can see this road right here and I'll I'll tell you guys really quick. That's a public road
when they open Highway 4 Boca Chica Road as it's known, you can go go out there and where I
was. I'm right across the street on public lands. Wow viewing. Yeah. It's a rocket
facility and this is the closest you can get if y'all are into rockets, even just a. Little bit guys, This will blow
your mind down here and there's something magical about a rocket launch. I don't know if any of y'all have ever been to
one filmed one seen one whatever it is a magical experience and and especially
out here because this is a whole new program. that you know has never existed before
and they're trying to land these things vertically on that cement pad where you can see there's sort of metal parts
from SN nine everywhere and you can see it vaporized the plastic on their fence right there all that. Vaporized
plastic is from the massive fireball these are methane and oxygen engines versus like the
Apollo with like RP one or you know. what do they call it? I
forget the name of the PRP One kerosene is basically kerosene so these are methane engines a
little bit different, and I think that might be a clue to the issue that they're having out there This is this is a
video I won't show the whole thing because it's a little. Long and I know we need to get get moving here to some other
guests and stuff, but I will just show the beginning and then I'll show the end so this
is right as the the rocket of course takes off and nobody's aware the sound hasn't hit us
yet and it won't for several seconds. I think it's about 2022 seconds or so, so do the
math there on how long it is because I haven't. I haven't really timed it. It's just so incredible to see it and it's just awe inspiring but the
rocket goes up to ten kilometers and then it turns flat and falls back to Earth
vertically. With the engines off oops, so I don't I'm not
seeing my mouse cursor here. This is kinda weird. Let me just do it like this. The the
rocket, so here's the rocket. falling back. to or let's see if it'll allow me to do that.
Okay. Well there we go. sorry guys there. We go so they've turned the engines off. We're
in free fall. what 250 miles an hour? This? It's a it's AA grain Silo This thing it's 100.
160 tons empty and I think they put some I heard like something like thirty tons worth of fuel
on board before they fly it just boggles the mind when you. Stand up there next to the thing you're like how does that
even get off of the gravity of earth? you know how does it even free itself with those pounds like Libby was
discussing earlier? it's I don't know. I don't know how it does it, but it's an awe inspiring thing and it is
astronomy in a way cuz we can tie it back to we're on the side of the planet where these creatures living on the side of a plan that launching these
rockets in the space, you know that's kind of astronomy a little bit. So that's how I tie it in. It's very sneaky, but
that's how I do it. That's how I justify all these random trips down here. so what they'll do is. They free fall
until or right at about a kilometer, they'll turn on now they turn on all three engines they used to only turn on two
when one fails you don't have enough to write yourself so you'll see him turn on the
three engines. the vehicle will ride itself vertically and.
hopefully hit zero miles an hour at zero feet, You know
where the launchpad is this is s ten Starship serial number ten It got really close. In
fact, I mean you can see here it is landing technically this.
Ton behemoth landed at twenty-two miles an hour so it was just enough to crack the
egg If you will this thing is thinner than a coke can at a scale so twenty-two miles an
hour cracked something and there was was a leak. methane leak or something or and and
that's had a fire going and then the tank boiled and exploded eight and a half
minutes later well again, I put my lens cap on. we all thought the launch was over. We're
congratulating each other on a job well done for days and days of waiting for this thing to go off and I watched it visibly
with my eyes right across the island there explode which I didn't get on camera and I don't regret. I regret that,
but that's the way things go. Don't stop filming ever guys. That's the lesson. I learned
that day so if you're in Texas, if you're around Texas and you
want to do this, it is definitely something you should do because even if they don't have a launch, you can go out
to the site area. And just observe these things up close and personal if you want and
while I was down here to tie it all back into astronomy here at as I close it out. this was
taken the last time I was here, which is earlier this month for a different launch, but that was ten. and you can see this
is a cellphone picture. It's I'm not winning any prizes with this one, but I was super stoked to what I saw because
I've never seen it before. so there's Santos. a constellation, most of us are familiar with, but there's the
top three stars in the southern Cross Got Brooks. Crooks and
Deltas I don't know and there's the Isle Blanca Park, where I shoot all these launches from
and I was just walking along the beach and I was like wow Centris is really high and I was like I wonder if the
southern cross is up and I cuz I've never seen it, you know and I looked in all three of the top stars were and the
bottom one came up later, but it would have been at like 3 AM and it would have been low in the in the high pressure sodium
lights of of Isla Blanca, So I was like I'm just gonna say I saw the top. And we'll we'll deal with with that later when
I to the southern hemisphere and so yeah, that was a that was a cool thing. If you wanna
follow me on Instagram and all these places, these are the kind of videos I post now which have been wildly popular on
Instagram. I can't even believe the the kind of results I'm getting on Instagram. It's
pretty it's pretty insane, but this this is done with the night vision binocular. so
imagine a telescope night vision like Military-grade Night vision ran into where the eye piece goes and then an eye
piece on that too. And then I just take. Cellphone you know we're talking about cellphone
astrophotography, which great job and it's great stuff. and this is I ran video on the
crab. Nebula SCA one as a lot of us have probably seen this in a scope, you know I think and even had a picture of it.
So it's it's an awesome picture, but this is what it looks like with just a telescope and an image
intensify These are military grade so but anybody can get them as long as you're willing
to sign the paperwork for it and pay. Pay the fee pay the tax to amplify the light, but I
look at this as kind of a light microphone right the the the telescope takes in the light.
this device takes it in it turns it into electrical energy amplifies that electrical
energy and then turns that electrical energy back into video or or visible energy
right. and that's how we see the image through the night vision binoculars. It's a brilliant technique I don't
pretend to understand it fully but you. Produce stuff like this and I always when I put a little video on Instagram, you
see I put stuff in there about the object if I can and like
the RK astronomy ties right in because II, you know the supernova pito in Chaco Canyon
is about this supernova back in 1054 ad. So that's what they that's what I've heard in
Chinese Astronomers also noted it at the time I think Arabic astronomers as well right there
in Taurus and then now we get to view the beautiful crab net. But that's it for me again. I'm
I'm will. I'm the deep sky dude. You can follow me on all those platforms that are out there for some reason. there's
so many platforms, but I appreciate so much of the time tonight and to to be in the in
the crowd that I'm in, I mean David Eicher being here the real reality show. I mean I love that stuff you know this is it's so cool. so Molly.
Thank you so much for inviting me and I'm forever in your debt
so. Thank you. Yeah. Absolutely. thank you so much for coming on and. I love you
know you you do stuff. That's a little bit different than all the other as photography that
I'm in all the time on on social media the my vision stuff and. the the Starship
tester are really cool and I wish I lived somewhere closer, sometimes to where to either
Cape Canaveral or down there to be able to witness those. It's gotta be something else to see it is absolutely. Yeah, that's
really cool. Alright, you can stop sharing your screen and feel free to hang out. it was
much longer for the rest of the show. If you like awesome, Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. That was that was that was
really