Global Star Party 53

Transcript:

and it's kind of mean them but they did it yeah
and uh David Carson you you had become quite a Luminaire in my estimation
before I first met you I don't know if you even remember David I I met you at the Strategic Air Command Museum out
here by Ashland Nebraska uh oh that's probably what I've been 12 15 years ago now but uh you came and
gave a talk there Museum one day was Chuck Yeager there uh no it let's
see wasn't Chuck who was the the cop uh
Capcom controller guy that was that was supposedly said you know a
failure is not an option but he really didn't say that yeah yeah
I think he was the voice of NASA for quite a while yeah I saw him there but
David came and gave a talk and I even gotcha the autograph a couple of your books that's cool
that's one that I mean really nice things that most people do that are in
this community you know they know you know they've written books and stuff they know how important it is to
to sign books for for people you know that are inspired by them you know and
and those book I mean even a signed book you know you look at it you see the real signature you see something in there and
it just it gets you fired up it does you know oh yeah keep you inspired you know
yeah so I mean like uh you know there's I see a few of my uh
invitees are showing up here yeah hello John there's there's a sign block with
David leave me in there you know yeah and I got one of those too right isn't it wonderful I mean it is it's wonderful
by the way Dr Levy I just finished your book uh the guide to observing and discovering comments thank you for our
fun read I'm very glad you enjoyed it
Colonel thank you of course we have Nina Baker please Baker here
yeah great okay great
how's everybody this evening I think we're all good
I'll probably make uh yeah I'll make some formal in uh introductions but the
uh cleats and Nina are both active very
acting members of the Omaha Astronomical Society and have been tried and true members of the Nebraska star party
planning committee for oh golly guys how long 10 12 years at least 15. long time long
time um they um they're great supporters for
outreach programs here and around Omaha and and provide a valuable service for us up
at Nebraska star party so that's great we'll do some more when they yeah when we get to the agenda
well I kind of like the Hollywood Squares
kind of you know presentation it's nice
you can hear The Partridge Family music playing in the background you know
there you go background of my head all right
well if you guys are watching if any of you are you know presenters and you're
watching this again kind of playing back on social media you want to turn the volume down because your audio from what
you're broadcasting versus the audio that you hear is delayed and it makes Echoes and it it ruins the sound so just
something but you can turn it all the way down and you can see the comments and live chats and stuff like that and a
lot of the common commentators that and presenters here will chat live back to
the audience which is a lot of fun you know Scott where is the best uh place to join
is it your your Facebook link or is it from the the explore Alliance page I'm gonna believe the biggest audience is on
Facebook but that uh sometimes changes sometimes the bigger audiences YouTube you know okay YouTube YouTube gets all
the chats from all the different simulcasts that we're doing all the different channels that we're on and they kind of combine so you can see you
can see a chat from Twitter or twitch or YouTube or Facebook coming down on the YouTube uh uh chat uh you know feed
foreign
the audience to share this event because it's an educational Outreach event
um and uh you know if they're they can participate in Outreach simply by
sharing it to more people so
[Music]
um not next Tuesday but the Tuesday after is July 20th and that is the
anniversary of the Apollo moon landing it's also the anniversary of the Viking
One landing on Mars uh it's nice how they timed it like that um uh the
um I'm sure that was no accident um but uh Caitlyn Ahrens Dr Caitlin
Aarons from Goddard space flight center will be the special guest host for that so that'll be something you want to
bookmark there of
Jeff Bezos is flight into space Maybe oh seriously oh wow he's planning it oh
boy yeah oh godspeed huh
is going to be uh two competing flights what about five days apart from Basil's
and who's the other one uh but there's going to be two within space of a week or something Richard Branson's going up too on yeah
Virgin Galactic and blue blue origin huh and let's see the lady is 82 years old
that's going to fly on his uh wow that's crazy we'll be eclipsing uh John Glenn's
record of what 76 or seven whatever that figure was yeah
well that's awesome
[Music] um so
what do you guys think about this uh this big comment that's coming
I haven't heard about this which one is that it is let me find it for you
it may be big in size but it won't be very gets inside the
what's what they say yes you're right John we won't see this group okay so this is
on the New York Times it's nice that the media is picking up on it anyways uh the largest Comet ever found is making its
move to a sky near you this is on the New York Times uh astronomers by Rocky and icy wonders
of all shapes and sizes zipping past Earth all the time but earlier this month they were flabbergasted when they
caught sight of the largest comment they'd ever seen one of its discoverers Pedro or Bernard
dinelli an astrophysicist at the University of Pennsylvania conservatively estimates the object's
Dusty icy nucleus is between 62 and 125
miles long wow
this is uh Comet C C 2014 un271
it is still two or three hail Bops in size
so it'll be interesting nonetheless
I don't remember which magazine I was reading last night but I was reading something about a a comment that was
going to be the the site for 22 and 23 and that might be it
hmm [Music]
actually no it's not the comma is supposed to reach perihelion in like
2031 or something like that and it's not going to be very bright
[Music] hello Adrian
hello David I'm desperately trying to make video work but apparently my webcam
does not want to work right now all I got is Milky Way so that's who I am today is
my um you might try just rebooting your whole computer Adrian and joining back in yeah I'm gonna do that
um sometimes that's yeah it worked earlier I was at a I was at a uh WebEx
function earlier and it was working so I'll I'll do that that's what it is so WebEx has your camera
ah okay yeah and it won't give it away won't give it back right okay that makes
sense all right well I'll see you guys in a another minute okay go ahead and reboot
yeah
wow so it's so nice I see a lot of you a lot of new faces here and um it's nice
to have you come on and talk about Nebraska star party so it's great
it's so good to see that the start parties are coming back
foreign [Music]
[Music]
[Music] who do we have here tonight in the
audience uh let's see
okay so Jeff wise is tuned in says hello star Partiers but Davies is on says hello uh Andrew
corkills with us Martin eastburn made it and what a nice crew here howdy
everybody Andrew corkill uh saying hello again Steve Arnold good evening from Chicago
uh um Harold locks says good evening Jim's Astro hello how's everybody doing
tonight Andrew says I'm reading David Levy's book on variable Stars question for
David are you still getting out to observe most nights and what is your
current project thank you for that question I am getting
up most nights when it's clear I'm following one variable star still that
is TV corvy or Tomball star uh which is you can look it up on
Wikipedia to read about is a very interesting star and I'm also still searching for comets
and I love my favorite thing right now is observing meteors thank you for
asking very nice very nice okay
not a lot of the people that follow these shows their friend they've made friends through the pandemic and stuff
so we have people have become friends from coast to coast actually from around the world
um Harold lock says a lot of my favorite people are on YouTube for some reason I
like using Facebook best
uh Mike Wiesner says I saw one estimate that for that big comment it said that
the brightest it's going to get is uh magnitude 11 at brightest okay
well they're always unpredictable we never know what comments are actually going to
be close to 11th we might actually be able to see it yeah I I certainly you know
astrophotographers are going to get it you know I don't know what you know if they'll capture a tail or not but uh
maybe some coma you know Beatrice Hines who often is on on in the
audience says I just watched Jupiter with his four moons through my 20 by 80 binoculars from inside it was awesome
though my eight inch Newtonian through my eight inch Newtonian it would be even better unfortunately the clouds are
rolling over now got to get your viewing in when you can
well here in Michigan we've ruined our skies about 15 of us bought new
equipment uh about two weeks ago so as you know if you followed the Wildfire
situation in the United States the swath of smoke from the Wildfire
blanketed Michigan almost perfectly so we had cloudy weather beforehand we had
one night where it was clear and I was able to I was able to get out that night and I saw at a usual portal 4 Park I saw
a Milky Way naked eye at what appeared to be Bortel three five it was it was a
beautiful sight the very next day the smoke arrived I had a friend with me we
were gonna image and it looked like portal six or Worse same park same uh
time completely different the smoke arrived and it's here for maybe another
couple of days so that's that's what we get for a bunch of us buying gear at the same time
that's right there needs to be I think I saw somewhere an equation for the expense of
the gear how badly you wanted that gear you know how long you waited for that gear and then that equals how many clear
night or cloudy nights you're gonna have so you're gonna have well multiply
by 15. I think a lot of them got new astro cameras so oh there you go
I think we uh we found the limits of that equation yes
so those of us that are in and around the state of Michigan it's our fault we're sorry
you only had you only had about um five hours of clear sky in between
the end of the cloudiness and the smoke so I was at least able to see it for
that brief period um
really quick I did take time off for the duration of the Nebraska Star Party in
the event I can make it so oh yeah see what happens we'd love to have you out there Adrian absolutely
[Music] I will be listening in
[Music]
this is a great video on the Nebraska Star Party [Music]
yeah our dear friend and uh Lincoln Mark donkey put this together
[Music] who are those guys
there you are [Music]
thank you [Music] I have a lens like that
[Music]
beautiful
[Music]
thing is those exposures look like they may have been single exposures
and all that data came in yeah [Music]
thank you [Music] they are hungry
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
[Music]
well hello everybody this is Scott Roberts from explore scientific and the explore Alliance and it is my distinct
pleasure to introduce uh John Johnson who's our leader tonight for the Nebraska star party uh John's been into
amateur astronomy for 50 years at least yeah at least
he starts out I think with a three inch telescope and then you built like a six inch telescope hey good memory Scott yep
and you I don't think you've stopped getting telescopes since then I I think that they seem to find their way yeah
I'm kind of the like the the Wayward home for lost telescopes for lost puppies yep right and um so uh
I I know that you've been part of the I think the Omaha Astronomical Society uh
uh the um uh the Pontchartrain astronomical yeah down in Louisiana in
one of my previous uh careers you know right right and now you're with the Nebraska group
um so you know I think that that's that's awesome and uh
you know you are truly one of the most friendly and graciating guys in uh in
this community and who knows really who knows how many people uh you've turned
on to uh you know enjoying the night sky and um uh you know literally changing
their lives I know it does and uh so and I know you've been chomping at the bit
to get Alive real in-person star party going
again so um you know and it's going to happen this year between August 1st and August
6th you guys were gracious enough to come on and be the special host of
global star party our 53rd event and um so but you've been on a lot of them uh
John now we couldn't be a regular Global star party and uh and that's awesome
um uh but at this point uh uh I am going to turn the event over to you and um and
you can introduce our our guests very good well uh get the old uh
shepherd's hook out and pull me away if I start messing up here so I I this is a
whole new experience for me uh so anyway uh I
I'll go real quick with uh what we have for agenda and and uh
we'll um and we always will start with David Libby uh and then we have uh David icker
I I see a square up there but I don't see a video yet for him and uh then we'll go to uh Carol org uh
president of the astronomical league and then I guess we'll get specifically into
the uh uh the the what I'm going to call in the enthusiastic NSP uh supporters
and uh great I'll go down the line real quick uh just wave or nod uh uh on my
screen uh first one I have after Carol is Nina Baker and cleat Baker I mentioned them a
little bit earlier a long time Omaha astronomical members and I've been great
supporters of the Nebraska star party for quite some time uh next to cleat I
have John spack who has uh drives all the way from Chicago to join us almost every year and
I'll have him like I said we'll we'll have hm kind of do a little Spiel when we get to that part of the program uh
the next two I have a mother-daughter team with Julie and Jordan
um Jordan is a phenomenal public speaker she has given what two or
three talks at NSP in the past at least two right
and uh they uh there are also active members of the Omaha economical Society
finally uh but surely not least I see we have Kaylee and Sarah
and pardon excuse my Sarah basiago I I always mess that last name up if you
want to correct me
I remember them from the time I was there I was in Scott you remember when
you were up there in 2018 yeah Kaylee has uh has grown up some yeah
they're looking great lady yeah and more from you two uh when we get to your
point so and I uh I feel like I know uh you know Adrian quite well now he'll be
on later and Maxie I think we we just joined up with uh Facebook's friends and and Connell uh I was blown away with
your talk last week so I'm glad to welcome you uh again tonight so thank
you and then I think Cameron Cameron over on the other side has joining us too have I gotten everybody here so far
because that's something I've always wanted to do is get into micro meteorite uh analysis yeah with microscope so yeah
maybe he'll touch on that too so anyway I guess that's uh introductions um should we just start
with uh David
thank you so much it is really good to be part of this I've never been to the
Nebraska Star Party although it might be fun to go at some point however I am a
member of a nearby astronomy club in fact the Denver Astronomical Society
which isn't that far from Nebraska is the very first club that I ever
joined it was in 1963. I became a member of the Denver
Junior Astronomical Society and I became more active with the Das just a few
weeks ago and so I hope that the Nebraska star party this year is going to be a best
success with beautiful clear nights comets all over the place and uh I think
it'll be fun I always begin these with a little bit of a quote and tonight's going to be a
bit unusual I'm going to do the quote first and then we're going to discuss it a little bit
the first hour in equal of every Saturday is to Saturn and the second to
Jupiter but there are to Mars at the forest to the Sun the fifth to Venus and
the sixth to mercurius at the seventh to the Moon
and then again on the eight hours to Saturn the nine is to Jupiter the 10 to Mars
the 11th of the Sun it goes on the measure of the longitude of stars is taken
in the line ecliptic of Heaven under which line when that the sun and the
moon be lined right or else in the superficiate of this line that is the
eclipse of the Sun or of the Moon As I Shall declare and deeply cause why
but fourthly the ecliptic line of my zodiac is the uterus border of thy
zodiac there the degrees be marked does anybody know what that quotation is
from and we're all getting people shaking their heads and some of one of them is
saying now why did you bother to read us back you can barely pronounce it
I'm reading it I read it to you tonight because I believe that this is the oldest work
ever written in English upon an elaborate scientific instrument this is from just Jeffrey chalices
treaders on the out on the aster wave it he wrote it in 1391 wow and 1392 more
than 600 years ago and uh he wrote it for his godson
but like many of Jeffrey Chaucer's works I believe it is unfinished because his
godson passed away and we're very sad to hear that his godson passed away
around 1392 which means he has still passed away and um but
we also know this and this is from a book that I've always loved called the idea of the Canterbury Tales
he says the author says Chaucer never uses the word Travis to refer to a
literary work like a poem or a book or a song but always to writing's intros and of
course he applies Travis to his treadise on the astrolite
and uh so it's interesting I think that today as we celebrate the Nebraska star
party and uh hopefully what will be the most successful Nebraska star party ever
we are paying some tribute to Jeffrey Johnson and now back to you and thank
you very good very good
okay so uh the schedule says David icar is he
I am here John thank you very much can you hear me okay I
can know if everybody else can or not okay excellent I I will start with uh a
little bit of microscopy and what I wanted to do I last time I was on I
showed a few microscopic views of meteorites this time I'm going to show a
few microscopic views of some minerals um and I'll start with one that uh is a
popular one on earth can you can you see and maybe Scott I don't know if you can share uh mice
your full screen just keep speaking okay okay very good
um so this is a a little uh View and Scott and I have conspired to put this
microscope and USB camera together and we're going to see if we can uh do something to modify this maybe a little
bit slightly in the future because this is a relatively High magnification view
for rocks and minerals and meteorites but you can see spongy uh gold crystals
here and I thought I'd talk a little bit tonight about why minerals are important to astronomers and that is because you
guys all know about the periodic table of the elements and how the native elements like gold here uh everything
that exists in the universe is is made of these elements of course and uh the
origin of the elements is an important story to astronomy hydrogen and helium
and and deuterium and so on were produced early in the process of big
bang nucleosynthesis most other heavy year elements were produced in
supernovae and exploding massive stars but uh some interesting and uh very
unusual elements like this gold silver platinum and others that we treasure were produced in the collisions of
neutron stars and so here's here's a uh a a an interesting uh cocktail party
fact for the future if it weren't for neutron stars our jewelry would not be
merely so good you can spread that word around so anyway I thought I'd show a
few of these um examples of these then I'll see if I can switch cameras and show them uh as
hand samples as they really are and we'll see what they look like a little
bit larger scale so also other native elements produce interesting things that
we like here is a piece of carbon and this is a it's a pretty high
magnification view here but I don't know if you can see this this is an octahedron here it's a diamond a yellow
diamond from the premiere mine in Kimberly South Africa in fact the most
famous story diamond mine this is a raw uncut diamond and you can see that
minerals crystallize in different ways in what mineralogists call Crystal
lattices so this is not an accident this is not like jumbled up random stuff that
happens here the universe forms minerals it forms planetary substances in
specific ways because of the electrochemical attractions that that
the uh that the atoms have for each other so you can see this is an
octahedron which is a typical diamond crystal lattice here
all right well here is of course there are about uh five thousand and some uh
mineral species that we know this is wolfenite uh which is a favorite uh kind
of a pretty sometimes bright yellow or bright red mineral you can see the little crystals here on a on a matrix
this is lead molybdate that is lead and molybdenum uh have combined on a
lead-rich matrix the the background Rock here to produce these very distinctive
crystals this is a an important source of lead uh as lead ore as well
so then we can go and I'll just show you very briefly a few examples of you can
see that that Crystal forms I hope you can see that okay uh maybe
um take lots of forms this this is dioptase which is a copper mineral it's
a copper silicate hydroxide silicates are the most numerous uh
classic minerals and you can see the crystals here you can see with some isolated ones here are long barrel
shaped crystals if you will and that's how a lot of minerals crystallize in
this kind of a form here and of course the color comes from the copper content
greenish color then we also have another this is actually a slice
sliced to to look at the formation the patterns of the slice but this is
rhodochrosite which is manganese carbonate and and so uh the the pinkish
color which I'll show you in in the hand sample here uh in a moment I hope uh
comes from manganese atoms which are contaminate the the different forms and
of course most uh minerals like this crystallize sometimes in very brief
periods but often in very long periods as typically as they're hot fluids
passing through Rock and and they slowly solidify and cool and that forms these
crystals as long as there is fluid that contains these kinds of atoms in enough
numbers flowing along to keep the crew crystals growing so here's a more common one that you
probably have seen many times although this is a a magnified view of course
these are pyrite crystals which look a little bit golden and some iridescence here pyrite is is sometimes called
Fool's Gold it's irons sulfide so iron and sulfur
and it produces golden colored uh crystals and if I get down to the right
spot here on this perhaps maybe
um uh you can also see that there's lots of quartz
also on this specimen interlaced with all this and and typically uh pyrite and
gold and also lots of other hot hydrothermal minerals there you can see some nice little quartz crystals they
tend to accompany quartz and so that uh often lead miners to wasting their time
with a lot of pyrite and in the old days and sometimes finding nice veins of gold
so those are a few and I'll show you one there's one more quick one here because this is somewhat unusual if I can get
this this is boy that's uh just fitting in here the
edge of this that I don't know if you can see this shiny Crystal here in rock
this is Diamond that is in the Matrix there's a very very high temperature
volcanic rock that's called kimberlite and that's what this black rock is and
this is a diamond in the Rock it's usually hard to get these this is from Russia because Diamonds Are a monopoly
and they don't let diamonds in the host Rock get out uh the the uh De Beers
Corporation and others but this is uh from a locality in Russia and so it lets you see what a what a raw diamond
crystal in the Rock looks like and then one more quick one and I'll see if I can
switch cameras this is a dull uh grayish Black Rock which has absolutely no
features whatsoever that are interesting at all visually it's called a Casta tonal light however
and it comes from north of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories in Canada
and this is uh said to be one of the oldest rocks on Earth meaning at the
surface of Earth that's been recovered it's 3.962 billion years old so that is an
old old piece of rock and what is it called again
it's called a Casta tonalite that is a-c-a-s-t-a hyphen
[Music] t-o-n-a-l-i-t-e a Casta tonalite and it
is one of the oldest surface rocks uh known on earth that is back to the time
perhaps of the earliest micro fossil life on Earth and now if I can scare you
with showing you myself maybe I'll quickly see if this works I don't know
if you're going to be able to see this stuff well enough as hand samples is
that focusing well enough perhaps we can definitely see it so there's the first gold that I showed you
from the little Johnny mine in Leadville Colorado spongy gold so you can kind of
see what the actual sizes and some of these are now um here's the diamond from uh South
Africa oh nice nice presentation so that's a one carat diamond
um here's the wolfenite and you can see what these little tiny crystals are like
of the yellowish lead molyb date there
um I'll show you the rhodochrosite which was sliced and you can see here that's
pretty vivid uh bubble gum pink color of Manganese atoms
rhodochrosite is a popular one but there's that copper Rich dioptase that's
greenish uh long barrel-like crystals uh
and I will show you here's a one that I didn't look at here's a popular one that
is Tanzanite that's a popular one for jewelry that is uh Vivid bluish purplish
stuff that's very popular to cut and then I will finish off with
the ordinary dull uh pyrite along with a few other things as well in there that
we looked at with high magnification so anyway that's a quick tour and Scott
and I will work on uh kind of idealizing perhaps the camera here in in the future
yeah um here but that's a quick tour of a few mineral species they're about 5
000 mineral species I've got about 1800 of them upstairs so we didn't get
through all of them that are available here tonight but that's a quick sampling of a close-up look and also some hand
samples of why minerals are interesting to astronomers because they show us how
planets form How the Universe makes planets when the minerals are all ground
up as in a blender and disorganized from those natural
electrochemical attractions then we get rocks like that at Casta tone white so
mineralogists like nice pure crystals that that show us how the universe makes
things and rocks bless it it's almost 4 billion years old but mineralogists are
not so excited by rocks so there's the quick introduction to
that and I will if Scott will permit it be back with some other examples again
in the future absolutely absolutely
oh very good that's it for David David good to see you uh I must I must
pass along a little anecdote about David I you know I knew of him he was another one of these
fabled astronomy names you've known for years uh you know enter in Chief of astronomy
magazine but my most favorable memory of is of David is setting it as drum
playing Dr this trap drum set playing drums at the 2012 astronomical League convention in Chicago Sky we need to get
him on to play his drums there some night it would be awesome it would be awesome
if you're lucky we'll have to wait until we can get Brian May to come over and then there you go
that would be awesome yeah excellent well thank you so much David
thank you always appreciated thank you very much okay uh we're about right on schedule uh
according to my schedule we have uh Carol org from uh president of the
astronomical league is up front and center to uh tell us about the astronomical league and to tell us about
the prizes tonight oh thank you John good to see everybody and such a good
turnout from the Nebraska star party if uh a person is not willing but wasn't willing to go before after all this
enthusiasm here tonight you should go let's go ahead enough I'll share the
screen here and let's get started on the presentation
first of all uh I'd like to say a few words about Alcon
2021 virtual as most of you know it isn't a good year to have national
conventions in person so we've scheduled ours virtually for August 19th through
the 21st and we've got lots of wonderful speakers the main speaker the uh notice
note speaker is Dr Burnell the discoverer of uh pulsars
and David Acker who's almost broadcast is also going to be one of our speakers
David Levy also uh and there's the list Paul Cox uh Dr David Dunn and uh Alan
Dyer uh and many more so there's something for everybody there
we were uh not too long ago wondering what are we going to do two years in a
row with no physical convention and so the idea came and we were well into these star parties at that point and
Scott said well if you want to do it I'll provide technical assistance so that was that changed the game right
there so we uh all put our heads together thought well we can make this happen and it's just amazing because we
put out the words to our individual clubs in the league and said would you like to provide a door price you know
astronomers love door prizes don't they and so we have had an abundance of uh
contributions in fact last count our door prizes are valued at more than 7 500 so there's going to be a ton of them
there another reason to sign up and get ready for uh Alcon 2021 virtual
and the grand prize and explore scientific first lot 127 millimeter Mac cast
telescope with the Twilight Mount it's valued at 750 thank you so much Scott uh
so uh I think thank you have a picture of it on the next slide here also at the
same convention we will do our typical Awards and the league has uh Library telescope
Awards we have uh Mabel Stern's newsletter award and webmaster award and
many more and there's some special words we're not going to talk about until the event so that we can keep it as surprise
as long as possible and there's the picture of the grand
prize telescope that Scott's so graciously uh agreed to provide there thank you
and now we get into the typical screen we always show to alert people not to
look at the sun without protection if you win a door prize that is a telescope
or binoculars or something like that anything that you look through through glass then you need to have some kind of
protection so let's look at the answers from the
previous GSP that was number 52 from June 29th of 2021.
question one from that meeting what is the coldest place in the solar system
the answer dark craters at the Moon South Pole area are the coldest places
in the solar system the Sun never shines there making it
colder than Pluto so that was the answer to question number one
question number two what is the hottest planet in the solar system
the answer Venus is the hottest planet in the solar system now think about that just for a second
uh the explanation right below it like question one this is a bit of a trick
question there is no atmosphere on Mercury Which is closest to the Sun
the atmosphere of Venus traps the heat of the Sun in a greenhouse effect and many you astronomers already knew that
or the uh newer astronomers they may not have number three
and the first Star Wars film and solo boast that his ship made the Kessel Run
in less than 12 parsecs what is a parsec and the answer is
a parsec is a unit of distance equal to 3.26 light years so when Han Solo
bragged in the first Star Wars movies a later movie clarified it was distance not time
making the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs met solo flute
39.12 years he was Speedy wasn't he
and we had lots of correct answers from that one Neil Cox Josh Kovac Cameron Dallas who's
on the broadcast tonight Andrew corkhill who made a comment I believe in the chat earlier Matthew Walsh Douglas Smith John
Kathy Adler tonal uh he's on here uh tonight and Beatrice Hans we mentioned
her earlier as well all right so I guess we should get to tonight's
questions and before we start there's the address to send your answers to secretary
astrolague.org now if you try to send answers to another email terryman gets
very irritated and she'll tell you about it so make sure you send them to the right place with secretary at
astrolig.org so question number one why does a total solar eclipse not occur
at each new moon why does a total solar eclipse not occur
at each new moon and secretary at australia.org
is where you answer that number two how close to Earth is the Aurora
Borealis so when you see an aurora Boreal Alice in the sky how those
beautiful curtains how far up in the air are those so send your answer again to at
secretary at astrolig.org and finally what are the three defining
stars in the summer triangle asterism what are the three defining stars in the
summer triangle asterism and again send your answers to secretary at astrolabe.org
coming up this Friday night on the 9th of July we will have our monthly
astronomical League live event this one will feature Michael Martin his
talk will be late night astronomy a personal perspective
and he's with the Roanoke Valley Astronomical Society we will be on there uh myself Terry Mann
Chuck Allen John Goss for the league and Scott of course and we're always honored
to have David Levy there as well so mark your counter now and doing it
for that at 7 pm eastern Daylight Time six o'clock Central and so on
and I think that's it John's
back to you John okay thank you so much Carol sure if you
know those answers uh send them in I was one of the lucky winners way back last fall so it does work
doesn't work oh yes okay uh well uh according to the
schedule we it's in a speed time right Scott yes it is yeah um
uh Scott kind of tossed this at me what last Friday in a phone call that hey
would you like to be on uh be the host bro John how I know
so anyway uh uh I I I just I was flabbergasted I'm totally honored to to
be part of this and and to have uh Scott have enough confidence that uh we can
provide some uh some entertainment and some education here about the Nebraska star party uh so we kicked around ideas
and what we basically decided was to try to get some other uh uh folks that uh
I've known that have have been to the multiple star parties uh and uh to
provide their own perspective on the Nebraska Star Party and uh so I think you know I've I've
talked to hm in the ensuing two or three days um but I I uh kind of left it free form
as to what they want to talk about I guess I would like to hear a little bit maybe just a a couple minutes on how
they even first got interested in astronomy and then what drew them to the
Nebraska Star Party initially and why they um why they keep coming back year
after year so how's that sound okay and we had uh I think uh let me see here
yeah we had uh Mr John spack who as I said earlier hails from Chicago Illinois
so he was the one of them that travels quite a great distance to come out there
so John are you ready to uh take Center Stage here and tell us a little bit
about a little bit about yourself have you got interested in how you first found out about NSP and and what uh why
you enjoy it so much all right very good welcome um thank you for everybody for attending
and thanks for having this time John thanks for asking me and uh but five minutes ago I got a little bit
of heart failure my my work computer here wants to uh just warn me that it needs to install some software so it
wants to restart but luckily that's not for another two hours so I'm good I just don't want to touch any buttons here
where it's going to automatically restart so if I go away yeah that's why so I'm not touching the
keyboard not touching the mouse so there's a fair warning so just a little bit about me uh I got interested in
store I mean I was a kid you know my dad probably you know the story could be a thousand boys when they were young they
got a telescope they didn't know what to do with it uh because you can't figure out it was very hard it was like a I
think it was a four inch it was a reflector a four inch one uh back then we looked at the sun through
those Sun filters that we just screw on the other night not too smart [Laughter]
so you know that's great but uh I live in Chicago
and back at that time Mayor Daley decided it was time to install Better
street lights and so not only do I have a street light in front of the house we they put in an alley light
well that kind of you know I was able to take the telescope in the backyard but that alley light kind of wiped things
out um I can still read the Chicago tribute in the backyard at midnight out there and step right uh even though we got the
new LED lights actually the new LED lights with full cut off are a little bit better than the old orange glow that
you see out of Chicago but we'll go to high school you grow up kind of lost interest in astronomy then
I'd say probably back about 2004 2005 I bought an LX 90.
um just to go back because once I realized hey there's computerized telescopes now I don't have to really
think because you don't really know the sky living in Chicago you really can't see much but if there's a computer to
tell me where to go great so I tried that I dragged that out to New Mexico dragged it out to the Texas Star
Priority One of the star parties I dragged it out to was the Nebraska star party I just found it on the internet I
was just searching for gee where can I go either get away from Chicago lights where it's really dark in Nebraska is
about the furthest closest let's say for this one day drive I could do it's about 13 hours
non-stop so you could do it in one day if you really wanted to or just break it up into two days if you really want to
take your time but it's really the best place that I've found near Chicago well not near Chicago
but from Chicago uh they can go observing locally I go to a place just two hours West of here in Dixon Illinois
south of Dixon Illinois there's a little uh Illinois State Game Preserve out
there which is relatively dark was out there last Friday and Adrian I was laughing about your smoke because I'm driving out there Friday night and I say
why is the sky so white it's just like this is crazy so I was on uh just the
visual satellite you see the smoke pouring down from Canada was you got a Northeast wind on Friday of remember and
the smoke is coming from a can I'm going forest fires in Ontario that really nah I can't be but eventually I kind of
researched in the other comes West from British Columbia and it was coming around and the Northeast one just blowing it down here but luckily it did
clear up for a couple hours there Friday night so you know we did some some observing but you know I could barely see the Milky Way there so where it's
not bad for Illinois it's a dark site but it's nothing compared to Nebraska so
why do I go to Nebraska 13 hour drive your SM elevation our observing fields at 3 000 feet so you'll get the humidity
that you can get in Chicago or if they go further south central Illinois um I've even thought of going to
Missouri at times because there are some really dark spots in Missouri but you
got the humidity and so I figured it went out all right I'm back on a you know I'm not gonna risk that
I've basically been going to Nebraska starting since I think 2005. kind of wore my favorite t-shirt this is from
the 13th annual Nebraska star party where it's was they honored M13 and the
uh fear of triskaidekaphobia which is the fear of the number 13. so it's kind of a
cool t-shirt so I kind of enjoy that one a lot so surprisingly it still fits me thank God for all these years didn't
even fade out on me so that's that's a good sign too but uh
the Nebraska star parties a family-friendly star party uh it's very
low-key very relaxed I mean I mean it's that is you know the skies are probably on par with Texas
Star Party uh although that's not a fair comparison because Texas is in Spring
early summer it usually April or May maybe even in June once in a while
in Nebraska is always in August or July unfortunately being in Nebraska in the
summer it's hot you have mosquitoes so there are some I'm not going to call them shortcomings there are some
challenges when you attend Nebraska uh the weather you're at the mercy the weather which is true for any Star party
uh but that is also bring some you know good back some good memories hey you remember that storm where we had to tear
down in 10 minutes or the flooding rains one night after the public star party as we vacated the the uh
observing feel before it got flooded out or before the whatever gullies might fill up with water because
when it rains out there it rains when the wind blows the wind blows so it's definitely uh you know you gotta you
gotta watch the weather carefully out there and uh you know you're at the mercy of the internet and hopefully if
you can get some phone service I understand now I think we might have 4G out there right here there was a cell tower they finally put up so yeah
you know I think would be much better from that standpoint so that's great uh but it's a nice place it's usually a
week off I kind of don't there's no where we stay we stay at some fishing cabins at the uh at the local Lodge
that's uh by the reservoir no TV I don't listen to the radio sorry I know
we have a little radio show Saturday clean I don't listen to you every Monday morning but you know I'm probably still sleeping anyway 10 in the morning
usually when you do your radio show uh but it's a good way just to kind of get
away from society for a while and then just get in tune with the Stars and and fellow astronomers and just friends that
I've made over all these years uh to uh get out there and hopefully
observe every night and uh you know there's a lot of fond memories um with that Alex 90 and I drag that thing
out there's a public Star Party one of the one of the memories from the Star party is at the public star party every
Friday and the Friday night we have it uh the lx9 has a feature where you can track the ISS and I was able to track
the ISS and was a low pass so it was easily able to keep up with it and uh
I'd say three or four people three or four people from the town were actually able to look through the LX 90 and see
the ISS uh go by with all the solar panels and that was kind of cool that I was have not been able to do that since
then so I just got lucky on that one so uh but it actually worked on that so
that's kind of a memorable event and I think Scott you were out 2018 I think we had that comment
what was it swashman Watchman or something I can't remember the name of that or I don't know some German name I
don't remember what it was but that happened when that week was or that weekend we had it uh was also won the
Cherry County Fair was and so we basically got slammed with the public
because the Pharaoh was I remember nine o'clock yeah everybody came out to the star party it was amazing we've had so
many people yeah Nebraska started the weather party there were there were
families out with their kids that had little 60 millimeter refractors you know they were they were observing the sky
enjoying it loving it you know and then it was wonderful that NSP opened up to
the public like that because hundreds of people showed up you know which was really amazing yep
yeah that was uh I was exhausted after that night just because of the lines of people going through we put by the
eating right now well I got I still have the lx90 but I also bought a uh adaba
use the uh Ultra compact 18-inch so you know that's that's a that's a moderate
size scope for out there usually there's people with their 25 inches of their 30 inch Dobbs out there too so we set up on
dab bro and so you get all the people uh lined up and uh I know sir and Kelly they built their
own dad they haven't got a great school out there too and uh me and cleat also
out there and then of course John's out there too uh and it's like you know we always anybody
who wants to look at the Scopes you know a lot of times you want to do any serious observing I mean you might not because people just
want to look through your scope all the time so sometimes it's just you're giving tours or you're just showing people you know sometimes it's just a
lot of the eye candy well then eye candy out there looks great compared to what I can see in Chicago which is basically
nothing so uh that's kind of why we go there and uh it's an enjoyable time again I said
family friendly uh we have a children's program we do when we have our our presentation at the high school uh so
the kids can get away from parents for a little while the parents could listen in on the talks we take the kids and we
teach them about astronomy or we'll go outside we'll get a solar scope out there and they can see the signs of
whether it cooperates and it's down 150 degrees out uh you know but uh it's a
lot of fun doing that and as we said we have the public star parties on on Friday nights usually usually the lately
in the last few years the weather has been pretty bad for that thing but but then like I said in 2018 it was a great night so hopefully this year we'll get
some great nights for that too so all in all I kind of highly recommend the Nebraska star party I've been you know
doing it since we got like I said since 2005. it's a great time um
there's food available for dinners uh usually uh like three or four of the nights that were out there so dinners
there's an option for dinner that you can get that we have catered uh that's awfully decent food and it's just a
great time and uh you know thank you for letting me share my experience with it and uh I'll turn it back to John thank
you we have a we have a question for John uh GMC Astro wants to know do they
have this Nebraska Star Party have a section for astrophotography yeah yes we
yeah we've uh we uh cordoned off a section of the of the area that's mowed
off and kind of make that the imagers alley we sort of call it yeah so we do
have a separate spot and and no problems if you got your laptop with the little light from your screens and whatever so
uh yes we we do accommodate the Astro imagers
some of the pictures you saw in the video were taken by Brett bowler he's up there with us on dab row so you
know it doesn't matter I mean yeah we do not like to like to see white light but if there's a little red light from a
camera that's okay we don't mind it too much yeah we you know we could live with it
we don't make a big deal about it no not really
okay thank you so much John look forward to seeing you here in a few weeks again yep couple to be there in a
yes okay uh I have on the schedule we have uh Jordan and Julie up next
so let's see here where are we at here there they are so uh Jordan and Julie uh
we'll turn it over to YouTube and of course Jordan has a a phenomenal story I
think if I can get her to tell it all so uh how we I don't even remember how we
discovered you Jordan but uh we sure did we're happy we did and you've provided some very interesting talks so you guys
take it away and well what I recall uh probably the seed that was planted very young in my
my early early years was from my dad I always remember dad was the neighborhood telescope guy and he would always get
the telescope out in the neighborhood and back then of course we didn't have as much light growing up here in Omaha
so we were able to see quite a bit uh so the seed was planted then but as I aged
I think some of the interest kind of waned but then of course Jordan came along and she decided she wanted to
study astronomy so then it repeat my interest and we decided that it was uh
fortunately enough I had a daughter that still wanted to hang out with her mom so we we decided that we're gonna make
the trip up to the star parties and just kind of see um if what else we could do to to pique
her interest and of course educate me in what the night sky was about
but one of the things that I was so incredibly impressed with is I have to
give accolades to all of the people that are involved to making year after year the star party what a phenomenal place
to go and an event to attend you know Nina and cleats and John are all
involved with making this happen and from even the first year Jordan and I
have been going since I think 2013 and from the very first time that we
were up there it everybody was so unless you just share everything that
they had experienced up there and and I'm sure everybody on here has probably
experienced an incredible dark sky but the people that
it's really fun to see the first timers that go up there to see what
um this show that that the Universe puts on for the first time seeing the Milky
Way come out and and show the spectacular uh view that you have going
up there but the people are I think is what really draws me back to that it's
it's incredible the people will share the knowledge that they have and it's really actually kind
of fun to even go I like to just wander around the whole viewing area because
you'll you'll get people here come on come here let me show you what I have on my telescope I gotta show you this I gotta show you this that is so fun to
have them as excited to want to show you what they see but also to learn from
their experience of of what is out there
no that's that's my experience but Julie's one okay Jordan
uh is can everyone hear us okay just making sure yeah
uh and if we break up just let me know we're out here in the country so sometimes our Wi-Fi is a little spotty but um hey everyone I'm Jordan and uh
Julie's my mom here if you haven't already figured that out um I guess just kind of how I got
interested in astronomy in the first place of course um like John Speck said it was kind of growing up I I always loved looking at
this guy it wasn't until mid uh Midway through high school that I really developed uh extreme interest in physics
astronomy it was through some uh NPR program they were talking about the particle accelerators the colliders they
had over in Europe and I wanted to learn more about that from that one program and after I researched a little bit more
I learned about black holes I'm going oh my gosh there's something like this out there that we have no clue what it is
how to how to even measure it and everything like that and so I wanted to study that and so that was Junior High
of high school or junior year of high school I went to uh college at the
University of Hawaii at Hilo so so that's the little sister College of uh Manoa so we're on the big island we're
the island with all the really nice telescopes you know a Subaru Keck all those great amazing ones and Hawaii was
kind of a bonus feature so I I had to go there and
um uh once there I really enjoyed my time there as an undergraduate student
it was astounding that I could work with telescopes and researchers and teachers
from all around the world and and I think it was by my sophomore junior year I was already doing some research with
the Subaru telescope I had a few internships around the the stage here over on the east coast
um and and just kept learning more about everything out there and my specialty
was kind of Galactic formations and and large-scale things so how galaxies uh
come together how they interact with one another I still loved everything small coming down to you know the comments and
asteroid size and the solar system size but um I I just loved everything and the black
holes always stay uh stayed with me through that whole time and I think you
said like 2013 2014 um we found the Nebraska star party and it was during the summer of either my
sophomore junior year uh we found that we went up and I think John Johnson you
were one of the first people I met and I think once I mentioned that I was studying astronomy your eyes lit up and
all of a sudden you just kept showing me and my mom around uh everyone and all the observing fields and I think from
that point on I became hooked she became hooked and like she said it's for me a
lot of it is the people going up there it feels like uh family for me you guys are all family to me and um I love being
able to talk about all that geeky nerdy stuff with people who are just as excited about it as I am
um for a few years um you guys invited me to give some talks I remember one of the talks I had
was before Clayton Anderson our Nebraska astronaut so that was really cool to be able to meet him and I know it was for
everyone else and everyone else that has come up and given talks like Abigail
um I don't know if she's on tonight but you know her and the other gal that were there a few years ago giving talks is
just uh it's inspiring for me now that I'm done with school
I'm trying to see uh people younger than me getting into it and being just as excited and and seeing where they're
going to go with their field um so that's kind of another opportunity for me when I go up to the star party
and I can say this uh being on top of Mauna Kea and Hawaii the sky was so dark
that the Stars literally popped out like they were 3D and I haven't been to a
darker place in the world besides Hawaii um and Nebraska I've been to a lot of
Dark Places up in Alaska down in the southwest over you know in Europe around the states Nantucket Etc and
um I gotta say Nebraska Skies up by Valentine I think we got the best you guys can you know prove me wrong if you
want to but I'm biased um and I love the skies up there and everyone that I tell to try to convince
them to come up and join us just for a few days you know even camping out or staying in a hotel the first thing I
tell that the sky is so dark up there you don't need a flashlight it's dark enough the Milky Way is now your
flashlight and it lights up the ground underneath you and you can just walk with the Milky Milky Ways light
um who in the city that grows up in the city gets that experience uh and I know so many people my age
older than me you know my mom's generation younger than me that have never seen
um the moon through a telescope Saturn was my first planet through a telescope and
um to bring them out there it's just a full 180 degree experience from growing
up in the city and I grew up in the countryside so I'm lucky I got to see that stuff um
so we keep coming back and I know we're going this year so I'm super excited to be able to see everyone and finally get
back out to Nature and just kind of reconnecting with the universe like John Speck said too it's just kind of taking
a break from everything and um um yeah reconnecting with everything and
yeah so yeah I'm excited I'm not sure what else I have to say do you have any questions well I'll I'll uh stack of it
it's it becomes you know I don't know where you are everybody is a different
place spiritually but for me it's a spiritual feeling to get out there under those Skies that
uh you know that our Native Americans had the early Pioneers had but we are
quickly quickly losing that connection with the the night sky and that that's
in my opinion is vitally important that we do what we can to salvage that and
yeah I'm sure I'll get all kinds of hair here it's uh you know I've been passionate about it here in this state
where we're we're working towards uh getting that whole area designated as a
dark sky Park uh by the international dark sky Association uh we may even try
for a dark sky Sanctuary anyway
we're working on that we may have uh some more information by the time the star party rolls around but uh uh it's a
passion as you know those of you who met me know uh how much how much of a passion it is for me I uh
uh but I like I said as as when Jordan and Julie first showed up up there I
just you know last on to him and and Jordan is a phenomenal uh public speaker
uh for her age uh I mean I I looked at her when I first saw her and got her
talking and I said oh there's no way I could have done that at your age so my
hat's off to your amazing speaker um we look forward to seeing you both
again this year and uh who knows we're probably getting you know I
get you involved helping us up there this year again too some other uh projects or there's always a need for
for people to help out um so anyway uh anybody else anybody else have a question for
I don't see any questions from uh what's popped up out here I did uh
share some comments back to our speakers here but um Beatrice Heinz says that's true John we
should cherish and save those dark skies um you know it's uh I I think everyone
knows what you're talking about John that kind of spiritual sacredness you know I mean sacred right I mean the
Stars like that you know it is it's uh I I tell you I've been up there yeah I I
A lot of times will go up a couple days early because I get as those that know me I get so involved being part of the
star party and meeting people and talking to them and showing them things that uh I A lot of times will go up just
you know early uh and uh even though we didn't officially have a star party last
year I went up there and um uh the Friday before the the week we had the
unofficial star party and I was up on this uh Hill South of the the main
asphalt area we called davro all by myself and I was up there even though I
had driven all the way from Omaha I was up there for the whole night I saw the sun go down and I saw the Sun
go up so it it's that that's meaningful and I'm sure there's others on here that
feel the same way anyway looking at the schedule here uh do we want to go ahead and
we'll do it we'll do it right here we're running a little bit ahead of the schedule but I guess that's better than
to be behind we got uh we have some questions um okay Marvin Huddleston would like to
know are there RV camping spots available with hookups uh I'm I'm afraid to say that probably
all the reserved spots are taken um now there are some not there's
actually no Reserve spots at what we call the snake ground Campground uh
that's all on a first come first serve basis the there are other campsites
um that are on a first come first save basis that are hookups but it's just
being there at the right time um now typically that Park gets really
busy on the weekends of course people go up there to boat and fish and what have
you so uh there may be a site available uh you know come like a Sunday afternoon
or evening that is open uh but uh to reserve anything no they've been
all booked up for months um it's phenomenal I think this is the first year I've seen where everything that you
can reserve is taken but uh but don't let that be the the decision
that keeps you from coming because you may get lucky and find a spot and of
course you can always pull your RV out on the observing field and even though I can't yeah even better another question
Nebraska's our comment uh from Levi Nebraska skies are amazing I haven't
stayed in Valentine but I've stayed at a ranch near Mullen and wow if if if I
travel out west I always make sure to make a stop for uh to do some stargazing
yeah um Beatrice Hines says it's it's a shame that here in Belgium we don't have
dark skies like they do in Nebraska yeah great
um visit the United States and go to come to yeah these star parties I mean
it's it's a um it's a re it's a natural resource I I liken it you know we we
have people that want to save the you know the you know trees we want people that want to save uh the native
grasslands uh to me trying to save our our pristine
Dark Skies is just as important here yeah and uh just a couple other comments from Beatrice
um uh she says great talk John and great talk also from Jordan and Julie
so so anyways I I guess now is a good time
yeah let's go ahead and take our 10 minute break now you guys watching
um yeah uh you know this is a good time to go stretch your legs go get a cup of coffee make a sandwich you know you got
10 minutes and then we will come back um uh with uh cleat and Nina Baker
um to talk more about Nebraska Star Party say so we'll say 9 20 right
that's right okay sounds good there we go okay I gotta get a drink of water
yeah all right so those of you that have been to the Nebraska Star Party behind
me and I had to figure out what direction I want to turn I guess either way so
I took this in a portal to Sky my question is is that what I will see naked eye
or maybe just the skosh below when I go to Nebraska
from my experience Adrian once you're really dark adapted I have pretty good
night vision okay yeah uh
it it is a little bit a tad below but you visually you can see more than what
you're showing there I I um I saw a lot that one brief moment at a
portal 3 actually there's a portal 4 site but looking up at the Milky Way
when everything was clear I know what you mean there is a lot of detail that I saw yeah when I looked at this before
taking this picture I went and stared at it and I began to see the color in it
but it was faint it was it was in the sky it wasn't it didn't stand out so I
guess one thing I'm looking for forward to is having it stand out and and stand
out in a way that is going to be similar to the uh picture back there
um and it got close to what you were describing where you could practically
just work through the light of the Stars it wasn't quite that way and if if I were to move out of my uh background
you'd see there's some air glow there and there were there was glow from a
couple of cities a few hundred miles away so it it only uh was bortal two it
wasn't quite there and the descriptions I've read of Border one that that jump is kind of an ultimate jump into you
know the Stars really pop out so I'm looking forward to that you're gonna be blown away you will be blown away yeah
yeah I the cameras will be there I've been messing around with uh
my uh portable setups and and the first thing I'll probably do is
just stand there with my mouth open second thing I'll do is look around and see okay where what would be a good
place to capture it I'll probably do a snapshot um you generally do a long exposure 15
seconds or so I'll bet you I could take one of my cameras Jack the iso way way
up and I could probably snapshot a picture and you know get more detail than
you know what you could get going border 4 with longer exposures
um just something I don't it'd be a lot of noise but I'd be willing to bet I'll
I'll forget my fatigue if I drive I'm 15 hours away so an extra couple hours from
you John um back in Michigan so I'm um
yeah it's it sounds very awesome and it's something I did take the week off
so I'll see what kind of planning I can do because I look forward to it
yeah if you can make it out there's all sorts of places up there to just pop your telescope up and whether you want
to be around people or want to be on your own um lots of hills lots of valleys it's yeah it's yeah
I saw the river so chances are I'd try and frame that with you know whatever I
had so there's um it looks like there'd be some options up there
so I'm so I'm looking forward to it and um where's my camera it's right here yeah looking forward to it it's uh
sounds you know the skies are as dark as you say I I probably won't want to come home
so we'll we'll see how it goes hopefully the weather cooperates I know it
it could rain it could do whatever uh yeah I'm back on Adrian uh yeah I if any
I I tell people that you have to come for at least three nights to make sure
you're you know because I have a lot of people well hey hey can we just run up for one night or two nights and I tell
them that it's the chances of catching that one night that is just you know knock your socks off uh yeah I can't
that's well that's why I took five days and I am going to use astrospheric um I
know they they've gotten better at kind of predicting they missed When the
Smoke came in they still had it clear when I went back up um to try and
observe that's up here in Michigan where our skies generally aren't going to get
much better than that Portal 2 that I took that image with um that's pretty good yeah yeah that
that was about I think I actually did that for a minute on a Tracker um and there's nothing
that was purely a I can see the I can see color in the Milky Way with my naked
eye first time doing it I don't care if it looks like a wasteland in front of it
I'm just gonna image it so I went a minute and dug in and got that picture and um
there's some beautiful land around that campsite and uh where the star party is
so there there's some beautiful pictures to be taken there and that's after I get done picking my mouth up off
of the ground that's one that's what's gonna happen is it'll be setting up um yeah find that particular yeah
something that you can put in the foreground I mean it's we don't have a whole lot of trees up there which is a good thing but um uh yeah you can find
you do have that River doesn't have the river and some Sand Hills uh now there
there is a uh if you do come up I'll have to show you there is a spot over on
the north side of the lake by the dam that uh provides a a perfect uh you know
Milky Way Shop from horizon horizon with maybe a reflection in the lake if you
catch the lake culmina you know yeah if you show up I'll have to take you over there and show you that yeah that that
and that's probably where you'll find me in like two or three days because I'll probably be taking lots of frames from
over there no that sounds that sounds like the perfect shot to come home with and I'm sure it's been done this is the
thing about all these shots have been done but it's the shot you take it's the shot you take yeah I hear you yeah you
remember what you saw when you took it that's I remember what I remember how I felt and how it cost me a chance to see
it over some Falls my original goal was to go to uh in our Upper Peninsula we
have to quamen and falls and I was going to catch it stretching over the Gorge near the Falls I got there I had to get
up really really early I stopped to take this picture I got there and the moment
I set up my camera to try and get a shot is when the Twilight of the sun started
making everything blue and you could you could see and feel the light change I
went from Pitch Black to oh I can see every it's like all of a
sudden I could see everything and it just that little speck of light from the sun getting too high up you know still
below the Horizon but I just went oh I missed it I took one
shot and it's a it's a picture of the Milky Way as it's fading a few Stars
kind of to the South uh you know South by Southeast and
the Falls um the kind of the top of the falls and some clouds because of course there's
it's got to be cloudy at some point too so I still don't regret taking the picture
that I took because it was dead clear and there was it was flat around there and I said I'm
gonna go ahead and get this picture maybe another time I'll make it to the falls when it's pitch dark and you know
and there's no smoke in the horizon or or more people if I can time it when
people stop buying things in Michigan to do to do astronomy because we we seem to
get hit hard when people do that because I got a brand new two thousand dollar
Matt Cass scope from explore scientific all right we are
yeah it's worth at least a week at Clouds that's a week of class usually if it's explore scientific it's two weeks
of clouds it ruins the whole cycle yeah like I said this time
we really went bad because we we got hit twice
so but it's okay it's all worth it you know Adrian if a few weeks ago when I was in the
farm uh doing pictures of the Milky Way I was wondering and thinking about you
you know I was wondering what if Adrian is here to seeing this above our above
our heads oh yeah oh I know yeah do the
same thing yes
[Music]
foreign [Music]
well we're back I hope you enjoyed your break um uh John Johnson is uh here to uh
introduce more people to talk about Nebraska star party uh you'll notice in the chats I've been trying to uh put in
as much information about Nebraska star parties I can just so you understand the lay of the land uh some of their
features you know what's great about Nebraska star party but the it's hearing
people talk about it and all their enthusiasm uh you know should give you a little hint of just how amazing the star
party is I'll turn it over to you John okay thank you Scott thank you so much for allowing
us to come on and and visit with everybody uh we'll just move right into the next one that we had on the schedule
and that is uh cleat and Nina or Nina and cleat Baker uh as I had mentioned
earlier they are uh long time members of both the Omaha economical society which
I'm a member of of course and then have been working with us on NSP for quite a
number of years I'll let them tell you how long and and what uh what
their interests are so take it away uh whoever's first who who goes first I
guess that would be myself and it doesn't feel like we've been there forever but I guess we have
uh I got started in astronomy as a kid you know fascinated by it I grew up in
Southern California in Oceanside California and uh where I graduated high school
from yes exactly uh and the San Diego School District had
uh had a camp up on Palomar Mountain that they would
you know send kids up in the sixth grade did send kids up there for a week long uh Environmental Studies package and
have somebody from the observatory out there the Palomar Observatory come and show kids the night sky if the sky was
clear and uh I saw Saturn for the first time and said oh wow this is incredible
I got to do that one of these days well 40 years later I you know never had two
nickels to rub together I finally decided maybe it's time so you know at
the ripe old age of about 50 I bought my first telescope which is a 10 inch lx200
and I've been with the OAS ever since basically um
you know it turns out that we went to kid Peak uh we were invited to kid Peak
over a weekend by one of my boyfriends my my kid friends and he says come to Tucson fly to Tucson
and I'll take you up on kit beak Mountain we'll have the on the telescope for the night and it was just incredible
and so we were there with Adam blocks that night we were completely completely
weathered out except for one view of Saturn for about five minutes
we had a view on Saturn again and uh so that that was what did it for me uh but
we've been going to the star party for years um one thing I'll say about the star
party is you everybody says it's dark it's dark it's dark it really is dark
you're in a very rural climate a very rural part of the State uh just for
example there are 6 000 people in Cherry County and Cherry county is the second
largest county in the United States it's second only to Kern County in California oh wow and uh so that's that's one
person that the county itself is six thousand square miles so that's one person per square mile
that gives you an idea of just how dark it can be in fact the cattle outnumber
people by 28 to one in that county that's how that's how rural it is
so it has a tremendous uh tremendous bit of Darkness for you to enjoy you know
looking through uh that's really all I have to say I'll let my wife take it from here she's she
knows more about it than I do so he says we have a great time up there
and uh you know it's been said it's so dark and people have described it
several people have already described how dark it is and and how you can you can walk around and see just by the
Light of the Milky Way um what has always astounded me is that the
Milky Way casts a shadow it is so bright
um on a good clear night so that I've always loved that experience
um I got I had a start in astronomy very similar to everybody else uh it was a
neighbor who was the the physics professor at a local College
who would take out his telescope and I must have been fourth or fifth grade and
the minute he would pull that out I lived in a very tiny town of less than 100 people so he would pull it out and
put it in the middle of the street and the minute he pulled that telescope out and it was probably a three-inch uh
refractor not not anything really super huge but he would pull that out and set
it up in the middle of the street and I'd be there at his elbow saying what
are you looking at and so he guided me through just that
kind of an experience for several years later when I went to college again he
was the physics Professor uh I was a music student
but he found out I was there and he came up to me and he said well Nina would you
like to help me run the planetarium so even as a music student I was helping
to present the the programs at the planetarium for about three semesters
so that was kind of fun but then I got married and we had kids and we did like clet said we really didn't do anything
until um we were both in our 50s and he went first and I followed but we have
thoroughly enjoyed it we enjoyed the people I've got to say that
you meet the best people in this um they there are knowledgeable people
there are people who are interested in some things and not others but everybody
is so good and so nice uh we love helping with the star party
because we can help be sure that everybody gets the same kind of first
experience that we got and we love to see to it that everybody
gets their packet and they sign up for this stuff they want to participate in I
work with another one of our NSP group members on the observing challenges so
we have a set of oh wow close to 20 challenges
um very easy even children's challenges up through pretty complicated things and
if you do that challenge and complete it and turn it into US you're up for a drawing for a door prize that's usually
a very nice eyepiece it should be noted that that even includes people who don't
have telescopes oh yes yeah we even have a I don't have a telescope challenge
um that helps guide people around the area looking you know helping them know
what to say as they come up to someone who has a telescope and the whole what
are you looking at may I look at it too um kind of thing so that they almost
have a script for how to do that and if they write it down and fill in all the
blanks then they can also receive a door prize if they're if they're the one
chosen there's only one eyepiece that we give out so it's not like there's multiples but it's kind of a fun thing
to do we have a lot of people take challenges but not very many complete them and that's okay you get a chance a
flavor at it you see what what you can do um cleat and I over the years have tried
to stay up there in a number of different ways we've stayed at the resort we've stayed in town at a hotel
um We've Ended up camping we're now tenters have always tinted and so we get a spot
up at the one of the campgrounds where next to our friends
and uh we are sleeping on the ground in a tent even at our age that's that's
what we have found we prefer yes it's an outhouse I grew up in central Nebraska I
had an outhouse as a kid that wasn't a big deal um so you know you get used to it and
there's ways you you deal with that if you have troubles with it just ask people for guidance it's not that hard
um there's lots of ways to make things work we go into town several times a week but we also try to take days where
we just sit in the campground and enjoy the
nature of it there are many things to do during the day for people who want to
have activities you can swim you can fish you can raft down the niabrera
river which is really fun um that's a whole day activity
um there's a beautiful library in town so on super hot days you find everybody
at the library charging up their phones and their computers
and using the internet that's free there it's a very small library but it's just
beautiful and everybody is so friendly uh the folks at the hardware store know us really well both cleat and I as a
couple but also the Nebraska Star Party People
and they are so helpful with whatever nut or screw or whatever thing we need
to make something work so don't be afraid to to pack up
whatever's not working take it into them and say hey I need some help with this
and one of their guys will go over and dig through a box of nuts and bolts and
and find something that'll work for your telescope I've always been amazed at that kind of
friendliness with the community we try to promote for people to go to
the community to let the merchants know who they are eat
at the restaurant say you're from the Nebraska star party because that is bringing money into one of our
um it's not just a less populated area but economically they're not as as well
off as other parts of the state so it's nice for them to know that we're
bringing some money into their community and we promote that as much as we can so
I hope you all get a chance to come out and see what we have seen and experience
uh the skies as we have seen them there at the snake Campground in at Merit
Reservoir in Cherry County please come
okay any questions for Clete and or Nina
actually I would like to just make a comment uh as far as viewing out at the
um site I know everybody's talking about telescopes telescopes but John you were the one that introduced me to binoculars
yeah and I've had some of the most phenomenal nights looking through the
binoculars and you can see things out there with binoculars that you would never be able to see here in any type of
a city so if you don't have a telescope binoculars work just great in some
instances too uh thank you Julie for bringing that up I frequently at Outreach events people
are saying oh what does that cost oh I don't have that kind of money or kids we've we've done some things with kids
and I always suggest to kids you know does does mom or dad have binoculars dad
may have hunt binoculars he uses for hunting well you can point those up too
or people are looking at getting a set of binoculars and I always send them to
the hunting Department of whatever store because those are
always they may not be more expensive but they're better quality binoculars so
it's a great tool to use to just get started thank you for bringing that up
yeah and I'll later ate that too yeah it's it's fun to just
you know have a have a a lounge chair or one of these zero gravity chairs and and
just a lay back uh and and be comfortable and just cruise up and down the Milky Way you'll be amazed at the
the details and things you can see just in a in a seven by fifty or ten by fifty
or even like an eight by forty or 42 binoculars they provide phenomenal wide
field views good good comments okay anybody else
uh Harold lock comments he says it sounds like a near a near Heaven
experience maybe they should have renamed Nebraska Star Party the near heaven star party here having Star Party
well I tell you
nights or all nights up there all by myself and uh yeah it is it's virtual yeah I
mean it can you really get to you yeah for sure anyway okay so uh are we ready
to move on to the next group
is you guys are up oh hello hi hello so yeah introduce
yourselves okay uh I'm Sarah basaga and this is my husband Ryan
and our daughter Kaylee who's 12. um and we've we actually live currently in
Crown Point Indiana we Brian and I grew up um in the south suburbs of Chicago
so we lived in Omaha though up until what 2013 2013 we moved back to Indiana
um but we lived in Nebraska for about 12 or 13 years lived in Omaha we actually
became interested in astronomy when we were living in Omaha and we looked out
to the Western sky and we saw this really bright object and Brian had a spotting scope
that he'd use for you know use like shooting sports he pointed it at that right object and he was like that's
sadder yeah that's exactly what Nina was just talking about you know people use them
for hunting or hundreds of people having for hunting like binoculars that was our first telescope really yeah so somehow
Brian knew somebody at work who had a telescope that we borrowed for a couple
of weeks and messed around with it on our back porch um and then eventually we found the
Omaha Astronomical Society and I think we're technically still members we do get the newsletter
even though we are about a 14 or about an eight hour drive from Omaha in about 14 hours from Valentine
we've been coming to the Nebraska Star Party since 2006 so John that uh 13th
the triskaidekaphobia shirt that was our first time attending
um I can't remember what telescope we brought up there we went for just a couple of nights we had an eight inch an
old media and uh
now we bring a lot more than that we're we're uh regulars on dab row
um as you mentioned earlier Brian had well we attended
at that first star party we attended in 2006 there was a couple of guys from Wisconsin I believe and they had a
telekit an Astra system so Brian always
like doing home improvement stuff so I had been a kind of a handy guy we've
done a lot of Home Improvements and that's kind of where the Hobbies started to merge a little
bit you know they explained to me the process of building that telescope from a kit and I said well Nick I could probably do that and so I did it
and that was just the first telescope that I built I'm actually I'm number three is going to come to the star party
this year so it's been a uh 10 years or so and it's
kind of grown the hobby from just observing to now you know amateur telescope making
a little bit of astrophotography in there for a little while yeah and Kaylee's been coming with us to the
star party since 2013 2014 something like that so
she's sort of grown up on dabro you want to tell everybody what you like about the Star Party
um I guess it's really fun being able to like uh
like show people what you were finding in your telescope because I feel like
that's just very fun like when you find something like a cluster or something then it's cool to show other people and
I've met a couple people that are like my age so it's kind of fun hanging around with them too yeah when people
say it's a family-friendly star party it is I mean she's literally been coming to
the star party since she was five or six um you know falling asleep on da bro
we'll put red flashlights around her so people don't step on the child
um I mean everyone loves her you know there's people on jabro they'll they'll hear her talking they'll say oh Kaylee
come over here you know I've got whatever in my telescope and everyone's really patient and and loves having
children um come and look through their Scopes the Children's Program is amazing they
do all sorts of um presentations for the children they've
done some crafts the uh the year when the maybe it was the summer before I
can't remember exactly when it fell that year but the year of the solar eclipse they did a little craft with styrofoam
balls showing the kids how the Sun and the Moon and the Earth would line up and they got to take that home and that was
really cool um for the kids to get to learn that that kind of science
um everyone's super friendly like that's the best thing about the star party I
was gonna say I think you know every social Gathering that repeats itself kind of has a personality and that's
really one of the things you can't it's hard to describe about the Nebraska star party but you'll it will be easy to
experience when you show up there like there are a number of people that are there every year
and set up in the same place and you know camping the same campgrounds and all this stuff and you know their
friends I mean they may be friends outside of the star party or they may just be friends for that week but it's an annual thing
but but the cool thing about it is even if you're there for the first time like people just invite you in you just fit
in and uh it's very open very friendly there's a lot of Education a lot of camaraderie
and uh that's not something you get in a lot of places but you can get it at the Nebraska Star Park yeah that's
oh that's why we keep coming back like it's like a family reunion for real um especially
having been in Omaha Society member and now having moved every year we come back
and you know we leave a little early and we see some friends in Omaha and then we come to the star party and we get to
hang out with friends for a week I mean um when we showed up you know to our
first star party we didn't we barely knew how to work our telescope you know what I mean like we were a
charity case that first year so many people helped us out and and you know just showed us what to do and how you
know just how to get around how to behave and everything it was uh it was one of those things that
because of that you know friendliness and helpful nature that everyone seems to have up there like it really turned
it into a lifelong hobby for us now yeah and then like Nina had said there's lots
of great things to do in Valentine um we always every year we go to Fort niabrera to the Wildlife Refuge which is
oh maybe like two miles out of town um images kind of cool to drive around and
to see what the Prairie was like and to learn about the history and try to spot some of the animals like I think every
year we try to go spot bison and I don't know yet but there's they're there
somewhere we'll find them eventually yeah so there's lots of activities to do even when the the weather's not great
um yeah we we stayed we've stayed in hotels in town we've been staying in the
the cabins at uh the reservoir for the last few years um which is fine because I can't Camp I
like to stay I like to sleep in the dark and uh it gets hot in a tent we stayed
in a tent once for one night and that was a lot um but it's also nice in the cabins because there's electricity
you know we've got a kid now so to give her when she wakes up and we're still sleeping well now she can watch
something on a device or whatever and stay quiet so yeah I think another you
know the people can take this both ways the way I take it is it's a very good thing that you're yeah your cell phone
really doesn't work out there you you are it is a perfect opportunity to just disconnect and just be with your friends
be with your family be with nature and unwind in a real way yeah John so
there's a tower out there now oh is there okay well you shut your phone off then shut your phone off for a week yeah
yeah so we enjoy it we're gonna keep coming back um we've only missed I think the two years
that we first have heard so I think one of our claims to famous for
when we moved to Indiana we closed on our house and and put everything in a truck and it moved out to Indiana and
Brian and I went to the star party and that like we were we kept joking we were homeless we're like we have nowhere to
live we're just gonna go to the store party so yeah it's a good time right definitely recommend it for kids
I'd say um if you're thinking about bringing kids or grandkids or something like
kindergarten first grade is probably the youngest age group I would recommend they've got
certain things like that yeah correct yeah you have to learn they have
to be able to act a certain way like if you're going to bring them and have them go experience this they have to be able to follow rules like you know how to
behave around telescopes how to no running in the dark that kind of stuff making sure they stay by the adults
don't touch people's things yeah um you know but if they're if you've taken
them with you before they kind of already know the rules a little bit um probably the biggest thing is just
yeah how to behave when you're in the dark with a young child and then
you know just knowing that at the Nebraska Star Party your kid would be one of several kids right
they'll find a band and they'll run around at dinner um you know during the social event Parts
dinner is fun because yeah that's it's got a nice friendly
atmosphere and like I said the kids program does entertain them they learn a lot keeps them someplace safe while you
get to go enjoy the presentations at the high school so highly recommended
excellent okay well thank you um well uh I'm going to be anxious to see
what um what they're bringing for a telescope this year then I I showed
the one that they they're they're number two one I guess uh if if I can do this
can I share the screen there's Scott of course you can yeah okay uh let's see if I can make sure
it's here okay okay
I don't think it's doing it yet hang on I probably went too too far there we go
oh there it was it I'll I'll get it back just sit in here uh
uh where'd it go uh but uh Brian you were too modest on your your telescope
here um this what is it it is a 22 inch okay I'll get it on just okay
yeah now let's try I just can't double click right share
okay there it is yeah everybody see that yeah the that's
the 22. nice telescope beautiful uh tell us a little bit about you making
this scope yeah yeah that um that was the well after the telekit which was you know a
prefabricated kit this was the first one that I designed myself um it's got a 22 inch F4 mirror that
Steve Swayze made um and we've been observing with that scope for about 10 years about a decade
now yeah so it's it's held up pretty well I made that one when we only had a
we had a Volkswagen so I didn't have a ton of uh cargo space and this one
uh collapses the bearings come off and it folds real flat you can fit it in the back of a normal sedan
um so yeah so it's a great scope I love it still um
you know this year we're bringing something that's uh it'll be smaller I guess that's all I can really say but
not much power but but the biggest biggest thing about it is a lot shorter so be able to keep
our feet on the ground uh while we're observing with it so yeah let's just say there was some pandemic woodworking John
okay well yeah I would that's what it let's see can I can I let's see without
messing it up can I expand yeah I mean look at this thing this is some phenomenal Woodworking and and unique
design that went into the scope I was I've always been impressed with this one Brian yeah thanks I appreciate that um yeah
it's elegant looking yeah I'm proud of it myself so the next the new one looks pretty sharp
too yeah cool we'll be looking forward to uh to seeing that one then for sure
okay let's see if I can get back here now
stop sharing okay okay any other comments or questions for
the basagas uh Harold lock says hope I can do a big
job before I kick wow aperture fever always don't wait if
this is something you want you know go get it or make it there's a lot there's a lot of help out there there's a lot of good resources oh yeah yeah yeah that's
right yeah it was I think people are enjoying
the program overall okay well uh any um how we doing on scale we're we're
actually quite a bit ahead of scheduling right yeah a little bit um
anything else uh that uh any of the other uh guest hosts want to bring up or
any other comments from you Scott uh we uh you know I just I think it's um
you know having been to Nebraska star party I can wholeheartedly say that uh
you know that you know all the people that talked about the star party the friendliness uh you know the Dark Skies
these are all true things and um you know amateur astronomy is really
this camaraderie that's in amateur astronomy that's always been kind of a Hallmark of of
of what this community is like um uh you're not going to find uh
you know more friendly more helpful you know uh you know people leave many
thousands of dollars worth of equipment out all night long uh and you know
you're not going to see you're not going to see stuff missing okay let's just say that okay in these kind of communities
there's a level of respect and um uh you
know and you know Mutual admiration between amateur astronomers because each
one knows the universe in their own special way you know and and it's it's wonderful to see them uh especially when
they're doing Outreach and whether it's at a dark site like Nebraska star party or on the street corner it's just great
to see them um you know coach people along to really experience the sky for themselves so
and and that that tradition was played out really well uh at the last Nebraska
star party I was at because uh there were so many newbie people coming in
that had never experienced an astronomy event ever before in their lives and wow
what a what a great one to attend that's one of the things what's one of our Hallmarks that we really strive for
we um you know as all of the people I've had on uh have said it's a very family
very open friendly event um and I you know I think we appeal to
that genre of people that want a a new experience you know it's it's all
part of the you know it's kind of uh especially not coming out of the pandemic uh this interest of of getting
out and doing uh getting out somewhere and astrotourism uh in general is really
growing a lot of I know the the National Park Service really promotes
astrotourism and a lot of the states that's not just true in the United States that's true all over the world
yeah yeah and we um as I've said earlier we're working towards getting uh an
international dark sky designation but but I have gotten the pretty much the entire Nebraska tourism board on board
to promote uh not just the Nebraska star party but but Nebraska as a place as a
destination uh adventure to come out and enjoy what the
Dark Skies can really be like out in our mostly rural State now you got to get away from our our two major metropolitan
areas of Grand Island I mean of uh Lincoln and Omaha and then we have you know Grand Island's the second largest
has some pollution but uh but you get out in the country uh and it's yeah
pretty much the entire State still has Darkness denoted too that this year is the 100th
anniversary of the Nebraska state parks and they've asked us uh to to do
something special for the for the Republic for the public star party uh so
we're hoping that we can really get a huge influx for the public star party which is always the last night of our
star party on Friday night the sixth uh to get people to come out and see what
their dark skies are all about and see why we are so interested in maintaining the the Dark Skies for everybody
right right one thing as well Scott yeah
um so for everyone that has been listening to this one and then all the previous um uh virtual star parties that you've
held in the past few weeks I'm sure you've talked about all sorts of uh events that go on around the country and
um if you're over in Europe like the gal that's in Belgium um even if you don't have to say a dark
sky near you I hope kind of what you've been hearing from us talking this time in all the previous times I hope you've
been hearing some sort of ideas and getting some inspiration where you don't have to travel to another country maybe
you don't have the dark sky right in your neighborhood but uh if you and a few people you know are interested and
have enough interest just to view this nice guy you can go find a park in your area and create your own mini star party
and you never know where it could take you but I would I would be taking all the the things that people have been
talking about here and you know taking that advice taking those ideas and how you know the camaraderie that we find in
this community and see if you can find that where you're living and start your own menu one because I'm sure the
Nebraska Star Party didn't start out large um but it grew over the past you know 20
some years that it's been going and now like John said we're trying to get um recognized as a dark sky Sanctuary so if
you're in Europe South America Asia wherever Australia North Pole there's something and there's enough people out
there that you could start small and just make it your own little group and you never know what it could turn into
um so that was I think great advice it's great advice yeah
um many times all you need is the seed of uh interest and sometimes it just
starts with a couple of people and you just keep inviting your friends and inviting your friends and pretty soon
people hear about it and they start uh and they come you know so Nebraska star
parties kind of like that uh that movie where they built that
that's right and they did and they do a couple hundred miles are you still here yeah that's right that's right oh is
that really yeah that's over in Iowa yeah yeah so um okay I think we got pretty well
nailed it there um so I see I'm coming okay yes
so uh and we talked about everyone's got either a telescope or binoculars but you know what you don't have to do anything
bring your eyes because sometimes I'm tired of using the telescope I'm tired of standing I'm tired of even looking at
the binoculars so I'll just lay down in the zero gravity chair maybe grab a simple star chart and see if I could
actually because again I'm in Chicago so you can't do this but go out there and just find the constellations find if
you're looking South study Sagittarius and go up the Milky Way like this ever
if you look a North look at the Big Dipper look at the Little Dipper look at the house thing see how the cast lesions align and then
watch you know August 1 August 6th that's the beginning of the person meteor showers or sometimes you get some
really great meteors out there too so it's just not about using optical
equipment uh man-made ones you could use our own eyes too and that sometimes that's just
the just as much fun at least you know to rest for about an hour or two or at least an hour just don't fall asleep
[Laughter] yeah it's hard to fall asleep when the
sky is so amazing okay so um uh Libby are you are you there
yes I am here so usually I talk about astronomy and
teach about astronomy but today I'm going to be talking about the importance of doing Outreach and stuff because I
knew we were having um guests on from Star parties so I thought I would talk about the importance of doing stuff like
that um I definitely know that the importance of doing Global star parties like this
is very important to do stuff and um I wanted to talk about doing
um astronomy Outreach because I usually do a lot of talks about space and since I've been doing the star parties for the
virtual ones for about a year now I wanted to switch it up a little bit and do a little bit of something different
because I know this is um it is cool for everybody to be everybody
that is interested in the astronomy you don't need to have a bunch of random degrees and anything you could literally
be any age and you just post your own Outreach which um recently because of um obvious reasons
the world has been shut down so I it's very sad because I haven't been able to
um really see a lot of people on the star party that we have on usually and I
haven't been able to host a lot of parties and stuff so I want to talk about why these are important
um I know doing the star parties for I've been doing them for almost a year now um
I've um I know there's a big age gap between me and
everybody else in the star party and I know a lot of people are probably over their 50 on the star parties and we just
do a normal one um when nobody really coming on I'm um I usually just see a lot of people
over 50 and I started to think about this today like I wonder why are there not as many
people who are you know young into astronomy because I know kids my age
aren't truly into astronomy and I'd have my friend over at night and I'd be like look at Saturn and she'd be like oh cool
and then just continue playing on her phone and I started to realize back to
my days of going to preschool and stuff and they would teach us a little bit
about space and then you wouldn't really learn much and you'd have to really study yourself because you have the
resources you have a bunch of resources all around you to go study space and you
can just study astronomy you don't even have to have a book um I really just started um getting
interested in show me even because of Outreach I know um it was four years ago
in 2017 Scott was hosting an Outreach party at um in the down downtown and so
um it was an eclipse party and um I went there with my mom
and I was after that for the next four years I was fascinated with space and I
could not get it out of my head and I was like I wonder if that strange man that showed me that the moon ever still
is out there and then I went to explore scientific and I was like oh wait it is
him and um I remember ever since then I was so interested in space and I wasn't
even with explore scientific um and for the and last year I was um
before I went to explore scientific and started doing this Global star parties
um I went to space camp and I remember walking in to the first building where
all the dorms are and I was like there's so many kids in this building
right now that are interested in space that are nice that are like really nice to talk to and so I was just so happy by
that to be able to walk in a building with a bunch of other kids my age who are interested in astronomy and a lot of
them said that they were interested because of Outreach and seeing other people do stuff in space and then just
be immediately inspired and they were like all over all the over space for
next like for like the rest of their life and that will like forever change them and I
would it was just nice to talk to people like that and I'm so happy because I get to go back again this year and I get to
um see some more kids my age who are interested in astronomy and um
even adults getting interested in astronomy I know a lot of people in the star party I know we are all interested
in astronomy deeply and I know by a lot of um comments have gone on in the past
by other people and I know last star party I got a comment saying wow Libby
makes this old man love astronomy even more and I was just so happy by that because I feel like getting everybody
interested in space is just amazing because it takes them a long way and
ever since seeing the moon downtown I've just been in all with space for the next
for the rest of my life probably and I've bought um I've bought a couple telescopes I know I have a couple
telescopes and I just am all by space since then and um I want to teach you uh
talk a little bit about teaching children astronomy because um I really remember when I was in
school you didn't really learn much about astronomy um and the only really thing that we had
close social enemy is just having the meteorologists close to the school and
um he would come every year and talk about weather which wasn't really into astronomy but over quarantine has
started to realize how much I miss nature and I've started to realize that I always
thought I was a person who didn't really like nature and would just go out for the stargazing
but I just looked at how many more things I did out in the mountains and
that I enjoyed outside and I know I enjoyed um before quarantine and the
whole world shutting down I know um I enjoyed rock climbing I'd I still
enjoy uh mountain biking I did astronomy I did all the stuff outside and I
enjoyed it and then over quarantine I couldn't really you know I couldn't really access a lot of that stuff
but I would um but it was nice to be on the star parties because it's like sharing around
the world and I um I I know soon I maybe um co-hosting a star party and I have
um a couple girls that are interested in space that would like to be on there just my age and even younger too who are
interested in astronomy and I would just love to have more girls my age too because I know um DT dipty guitar
um she'll probably be on later um um she is 16 years old and she's as uh
star parties and it's just inspiring to see another girl you know and at least
my age Gap doing the star parties because you know I don't see a lot of that in my days but
um I think that um it is free to teach children um you can go to a library
and um I know you can go to a library and start a club and me even being a children a child
um I would love to start a um a club in my school for astronomy to get more kids
interested because I never really see a lot of kids my age on the star parties
earliest in my age Gap and um I know we've had a couple kids on but they
don't usually come back and I would love to get some more kids on that keep on coming back and you know like that like
Deep D has and stuff like that and I love to carry astronomy through every generation because I realized
if Outreach wasn't if um Outreach wasn't a thing and no one did
Outreach we would probably not be uh we probably wouldn't even know what we were
on we would probably we'd be like what planet is this even does this have
even have a name they'd be like well I know they named it like 200 years ago but we stopped doing astronomy because
we weren't really interested anymore and you know that and that would probably happen if you know we didn't do
all this Outreach and you know we wouldn't we wouldn't really know a lot about our universe and I think that it's
important to do this stuff because um we need a full um we need to carry on
the Outreach so that we can Inspire the new generations and I hope the global star parties will last forever
I hope like they'll last forever they just keep on going and I know um we just had our 50th
and I'm so happy about that and hopefully soon enough we'll have our 100th then
150th and then 200th and um I know they're um
I know that I will definitely try to do Outreach now that the world has gone in
a little bit better and um I know I will definitely be traveling to do some
um star parties and just I like to go around and do star parties and bring my telescopes I wasn't
able to really share with people who love astronomy because I would have my friend
um over and she she was not really too interested in it I mean she'd look at it
and say cool and then go back to sitting in the lawn chair and just sit there
but she wasn't really interested in it so I definitely think getting children interested in showing me is a big part
and how to host your own event because um I know
um a while ago David Levy gave me his book um about teaching
um teaching children for parents and teachers obviously I'm not a parent nor teacher but I would love to become a
teacher of a club and post a club for kids in my age Gap or even older just to
be able to look at the stars and you know inspired in the Next Generation and do Outreach and I told um I uh
I have a girl who's going to space camp with me and I told her I said hey I do this Global star parties I know if
you've heard of my Global star parties before if you want to join anytime just let me know I mean it won't be a problem
and we have people on that are new every single time and I was like just let me
know I will I will get you on that star party if you want to go in there and talk about space because I know that
you're going to inspire so many more people out there and I know you may love
it and you may come back on for the rest of your life too like I've been doing and
you may love it and I just want to give that opportunity to people of my age age
Gap and even older two and just girls and everybody
and so that is my presentation for today um that's really awesome I hope you guys
will be interested to go and do uh some Outreach events and star parties because I don't care how far away you live I
will be traveling because right now I will be going to um next week I'm going to space camp
um I'm leaving on Saturday and I'm staying for a week so I'm very excited about that that I get to go back
because it was just such a fun experience to see people my age and my age Gap really interested in space and I
know it was really fun too because it's like I got to do all these simulators I got to be a Capcom and I had a big
headset over my head and it was like these giant headphones and every single time I talk about space camp I mention
that and I remember my friend was it was a big long desk and the room was supposed to look like Kennedy and we had
all these TV screens and my friend was just sitting right next to me and she was um she was a paycom and I remember
hitting the button on my desk to talk through to the astronauts where we're
not really astronauts but my other friends who were um who are acting as astronauts because you
got to do a project and I just felt it just felt really cool to do that and I
feel like I felt I feel like I made friends of everybody because I was like if you're interested in phase two I
never hear that in my hometown I never hear kids getting interested in space and you know
I would love to get more people on and I just like to go to space camp and there's people from all over I mean
um this year sadly they made it to where kids um from around the world weren't able to
go but kids who are in the USA were able to go and I just here I know I have a
friend from New Jersey I have one from Tennessee I have one from Washington and
um it's funny because I still connect to them over the phone and I still connect to them through emails and
and it's just still nice I'm like hey if you guys want to come on at any point just let me know
and you can come on and share the love of astronomy that is awesome it would be awesome Your
Enthusiasm level went from on a one to ten scale it's probably at about 11 or 12 okay so I'm just so happy I get to go
next week and see more people who are actually interested in astronomy because I remember
um the inside of space camp just looks like a cruise ship and there's just people everywhere there were probably
good thousand kid thousand kids at this at that camp and I was just running around and I was like hi you want to be
my friend because you're interested in space too and it was like and by the end of Camp I have everybody's email and I
was still emailing them like hey it's me from Camp if you ever want to come on the star party let me know
that's the most impressive I have to say Libby uh you your wisdom is well beyond your age I
can tell you that you're most impressive it was just beautiful I hope I can get more people who are
decided in astronomy who are in my age Gap and everybody too I mean I can
Inspire everybody and I hope I'm uh I was sad because over quarantine you know
I couldn't really do a lot of Outreach events um because I wanted to make sure
everything was safe too for everybody in every age because I know for old people
it was a little bit of a risk and I am asthmatic and I'm 11 so that was also a
big risk for me and I do have a lot of allergies and stuff like that and so and
it was at my top of my concerns to stay safe from the virus and I wasn't sure if
I wanted to host one in and plus I was virtual in school too so we didn't get
recess time so I didn't really get to talk to anybody in my class and um you
know it was kind of hard because you're just so stretched out from everybody you don't know what anybody's interested in
all my classmates solved me was this this year and I didn't really get to say
a lot more about me myself and I and it was just a hard year to host Outreach
events but I was still able to do the star parties every week am I um I know a couple a couple of my
teachers watched my first star party when it was on and I was just very excited about that that they knew that I
was interested in space and that they that hopefully um I'm going back this year if anything
if anything doesn't if anything does not traumatic happen
um in in between this time um I hope I'm able to host a club at my
school and um I hope I'm able to get some more people on this star party too because I know
um we have a lot of people on um I know we had Sai Bella she's outside
my age I know we have DT um we had a kid a long time ago who came
on and he was really good at math and I was interested in that because you know I don't really see a lot of kids my age
into math or astronomy but when I went to space camp it was just amazing so and
even and they even have Adult Space Camp too so if y'all are interested they even
have Adult Space Camp and space camp for the whole entire family so if your whole
entire family is interested in space you can take them and do a trip together and it was just a lot of fun and it was just
it was just unreal how close it was to being a real person
working for NASA and I remember my friend what um the two girls that were
in my cabin one of them was a paycom and then one of them was an astronaut and I was like
oh look at her go she's in her rocket ship has really um
it was just like playing as an astronaut but you get to learn a script and you
get to learn what to say to the astronauts and ask if they're okay but they're really not going to space but it
was just inspiring for me to see that and it was Unreal how cool it was to see my friend
and as just both sitting at that big long desk with three monitors for each
of us and all these TV screens just around us trying to and it all looks
just like Kennedy Space Center that's just and I remember and I um had that
big chunky headset um behind me as you see there I have um a photo collage of
me at space camp and I still have a photo of me that I use a lot
um of me just at my desk and my I have my mask on and my headphones and I'm looking down at my script and I'm
pressing my button trying to talk to the people and I'm just hope so happy things are
getting a lot better to host and get more people on the Star Party well Olivia I think you should plan
in your not so distant future in the chat you'll notice there's already two
different star parties that are interested in your service including the
Nebraska star party and uh starmus uh you may be going to the southern
hemisphere uh to be doing stuff so keep all of your options open
yes I'm sure it'll be done but uh um this summer
um this summer I traveled all the way to Key West in a car for 21 hours and my
mom and next uh on Saturday and I'll be driving eight hours
to um Huntsville Alabama to our space campus and I know I'm going up to
um Ohio and my grandma we're seeing the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and I just love road tripping so I'm open to go to
any Star Party even to the airport to fly to the southern hemisphere I will go anywhere I've been to Italy I've been to
Mexico and I want to travel the world so I just left I hope your mom hears all
this and is saving the money for it you may have to work well this sort of stuff
money I put it put it in the chat but I'll say it out
public to everybody uh you're going to get an official invite to NSP next year Libby so Stand By You may be adding
Nebraska to your uh you will be adding Nebraska to your list of uh places I
know the Outreach the Outreach that you love to do I think you're going to get an awesome opportunity to be doing it
around the uh us so uh we look forward to that and uh
supporting you um conal you you've got the same future
even if you're a little bit older um so just you're gonna have to travel but everyone needs to hear you all
um the younger crew and I know this is running is a little over the younger
crew you all Kono Libby and all the ones that you know are very important um Jordan
um I know you talked about your work um we do have a world that is really
getting steeped in pseudoscience and uh not caring as much about these things
of real science that you all do and it takes you all to turn that back
around um there is a lack of authority out here
um but listening to peers is what changes things it's like the little the
work that you're doing that your parents are enabling you to do um
that's what's going to help us we've uh we have our problems
um but just being who you are there's no need for you to change your personalities
just uh being able to talk to different people listening to what they have to
say even if they come up and they're asking you where the aliens are you can still get into a conversation with it if
they're coming you didn't say it I don't believe any of this is real just listen
because it's all it's it you see it at every Star Party someone doesn't believe that what they're seeing is actually
real I had a young child your age look in my telescope and say this the picture
they saw Saturn this just looks like a picture to me so we have a lot of we
have a lot of people to talk to about space and hopefully through all these efforts we can you know we can make a
dent and that's that's all we can hope for sober while we're glad Scott's doing this and well I am glad to be a part of
it uh my community so this is the same thing go ahead Libby in space or I love
storms I love being in the mountains I know I've been all the way to Italy I've
been to France I've been to Mexico and I want to travel the world and I feel like quarantine just literally just chopped
off a year of my life so I want to go and explore nature I love doing biking
rock climbing I love meeting people and doing astronomy of course and
not necessarily though Libby because you've learned how to present better
than I can better than a few of us can that year of quarantine was actually a
year of you learning how to present space to people so they can understand it so it was not a wasted year
so keep that in mind it's we've I've only been on a few star parties and
already seen you Blossom from a connection that didn't work cameras that
kept internet that kept freezing and now you're crystal clear I mean that's
that's the type of growth that we all had during this pandemic so it was not a waste of time at all
just so now we have better ways to reach people if they can't come out we can reach them through their computers and
their devices so it's it's always a win you did the best type of travel you
traveled with your mind I don't want to go over but I remember um my first star party
um my first star party I was so confident and I was talking about how I got interested space and I remember my
second star party I started my solar system series and I was doing this have
a uh all the planets and everything and I remember I was talking about Mercury
and I realized and after a while I started to realize you know you can't just spit out facts you have to put your
own opinion and your own um you have to put your own view of mercury in it you
have to put your own um you have to share your experience of looking at Mercury you have to share your
outreaches you don't just want to spit out facts you want to spit out personal stuff that's about Mercury and
even just a lot of facts about Mercury you still want a personal stuff and
that's what makes up a good presentation just not just spitting out facts really
fast and be like okay so let me start first to the first fact you need to put
your own opinion and you need to talk about it more instead of just just spitting out facts which I remember
I got so nervous because I only um I just talked and I just said a fact
for just literally literally to about three minutes and that was it and
I got really nervous and I was like oh snap I did a terrible job I was like oh Lord I just spit out fast I didn't say
anything about Mercury I just spit out facts
when you're speaking from the heart right now uh Olivia is uh wonderful excellent
well great well it's time to uh go down to Argentina uh to our good friend uh Cesar brolo
hi Scott how are you hi everyone [Laughter]
that I I was uh not surprised me because
we know to Libby and Libby's is a is a genius
um I don't know if it's a case say that it's a genius but it's nice um
I I say here like something good because
sometimes my ideas of in English you know when when I'm speaking in Spanish
Argentina and um but every time that Libby a person
something that the I can feel that I say okay why
she have 12 years old and she speaks like this is a really it's great it's
really an amazing every time that that you Libby
exposed all that you talk and we are happy to to
to have in in this Safari of course that you are invited to Argentina if if you
can in the future to to to to came to Argentina to our third
parties too there you go that's a great invitation of course sure it's a great invitation
to everyone but Libby is it's a it's a an excellent an excellent
uh to encourage another kids uh to to know more about the stormy that only
talk about eggplants you say it's like she she talked it's
incredible well tonight um it's it started a little Cloud now
it's a mix of cloud um stars but of course that with this change
like everyone when we start to to prepare the telescope and say okay it's
cloudy it's clear it's cloudy it's clear and you yes is this essential that every
uh amateur streamer have not only the sensation the preparation of the telescope and you finish with a
telescope in the middle of preparing um without to be ready to to use
um uh hi Maxi how are you and uh Maxi
Maxi went to see the penalties because yes yeah well it's another history and
and and um it's about soccer team our second
national team the Edition and um and I have
um supporting the return of open and presenting people and real present
people surprised really I'm enjoy I enjoy from the beginning This Global
third parties But like everyone we miss to to uh to know in person to everyone I
think that maybe next year I really I hope to to go to the United States or of course
people that can visit uh in Argentina in our surprise is I think that we are all
all thinking um about the same I I saw your pictures
Scott Roberts with the the ice cream I I started to think ah you went to the
safari yes because it's it's actually it's something that that we are so so
um a big expectative I like to go to chibil
koi to eat an Asado with maxi or of course go to our Kansas and so and yes
come on and uh well I have I have uh some pictures let me
share my screen this is directly of um of our Facebook let me
put in in the chat the the the page where where is are the pictures but of
course the different thing is that I'll explain the pictures in live because
normally the people visit visit this but
you can see the fair the picture yes yes sorry that our scalloped in a small one
because many of them let me
well this is our first we we actually the next year we will uh have a 25 years
of our sir parties in Argentina this is the first one uh we made some
sir Paris in in the past in uh before
this uh surprised in 1996 uh we started in 1994 but this one is the growth of
the end of star party you can see that some star Trail is not a dust if not
it's a no here this is an star sorry this isn't a star and we use Flash
photography this is the time of the film it's not digital picture of course and
this was the the small group that we started with uh no more than 40 people
and this is a smaller group this is me younger my brother-in-law Matthias
Eduardo Marcella uh I don't remember Ruben Barros and Danilo Sanai my wife
Evangelina I don't remember another names but this was the picture of them
of the first subparities was my egg cassegrine telescope use you can see
that it's yellow because we in this time and this time we import from Italy a
brand that the name is conus and they both to mean a
Casino in telescopes and they paint with yellow color and they put
their brand but when we started to report and say okay do you do you
Manufacturing in Italy Schmidt castle and when I received the first uh of this
I I found that was meal eight inches telescope and maybe do you remember if
you if yes if you start do you remember that if you
um sale sold to an Italian company well uh middle telescope there are the
telescopes that we've all they come from USA to Italy and we came to Argentina
wow a lot of money world traveling yeah
absolutely come on but this was my my first uh modern style telescope then
other ones was telescope that I made home with the Optics you know
um this is the the one of the third star parties where we started to to make
pictures of the Milky Way sorry that that I need to to fund again the the
original pictures to scan to scanning with a better resolution this was a
summer party in the same year 1996 with
more than 100 people in in the in the place was at uh no more than 70
kilometers is about 40 miles from City of Buenos Aires and this time this part
of the sky was okay actually it's impossible because it's all completely
full of Condominiums we we call it country clubs and it's people that love
this is my friend uh people sorry that love um illumination the tennis these chords
with lights in the night without playing um you know the the sky was totally uh
real and uh well this is my friend uh Domingo
barracina this was the time of uh of all of people with egg
inches Celestron telescope in 1998 sorry that the size of of the the some
pictures because the the quality and fine Cesar okay this is this is Scott
this is my son wow his first sir party yeah he was shorter
then he was not sure this is the door yeah
and the people yeah yes this is like like Direction something with the people
assembly their telescopes right and this was a 1999
um in near to of course near to to Buenos Aires two
um um another people yes we had Celestron this time only only
brand and it's normal that in our pictures you can see
um more sales from telescope and in the old ones uh and this is another of of the the the
talkings about astrophotography but after photography with film in 1998
right this was this guy was a genius he had he he his name was
um his name is is well of course is Manuel Lopez Alvarez he made uh three
books for for fun for uh fine fiending supernovas in with a Galaxy catalog
um yeah Supernova guys he his uh books was sold in Wilman Bell
you you remember Wilman Bell of course yeah yeah right this was he he was my
friend because I found this guy that he had a 14 teenagers are Smith Schmidt
camera for oh wow 35 millimeters and for 127 millimeters and we made a lot of
picture with him and was from was wonderful that because our house was
only at one block from him wow I I found
it yes it was incredible what this was uh because he was a legend in in our uh
for our amateur astronomers because he really he was an excellent amateur server maybe one of the best uh he was a
member of uh Association Argentina Amigos
something is Argentinian Association France astronomy
in the order that and uh he was like you know an honor member because their books
was an excellent was to found um and to found a supernovas because it
was a catalog he made the pictures by pictures of Galaxy by galaxies in the South
Hemisphere and he really was a genius and I had the opportunity to to make
pictures with him um yes was the end of the time of the
film processing for uh with with uh I don't remember the Elio or nitrogen I
think that was with we impressive hyperson civilized uh you I don't
remember the exactly word in how to pronounce the exactly were in English
um and uh well the process for for to make more sensitive the the field the
film photographic film um really I enjoyed to be to be a a part
of the history with uh Manuel Lopez I'm here so young yes yes uh yes the price
of the telescope typically in our parties in this is my the owner of the company
my but this is my my no no Celestron company it's a Rocco
company yes Jorge sarako was my my father-in-law
yes my father-in-law we are a real uh uh
family business um very Italian style and uh really well
we in any any third party we made uh a prize you know well I am in in the 90s
in the in the you know this position I I'm like to to be in the future with this
but with Sprouts in different Stan of course this was it known in Argentina
this was in Georgia Atlanta I decided in 1999 a picture state stargaze in Atlanta
Georgia I was an amazed with the South Hospitality the fertility of the people
from everywhere in United States of course um really I enjoyed this I I don't
remember if anybody of you of yours do you do you know this guy this this made
um with telescopes and I I was talking a
lot uh with him and really you know the people that you known in some parties in
in real person are incredible people yeah any country where you go I I felt
like in my car I felt really really in my home in this is our party
look at the the counterweight it looks like concrete
yes yes absolutely with concrete counterweights
um all in Iron yeah genius well this is my my first telescope was similar but
not in wood the typical the typical morning I love
this the morning in the sir Paris I really miss I really miss the the
morning in South Park when the people say hello good morning we are going to the first the first talk uh at on I
don't know maybe 11 o'clock or um I love it too early in the morning
yeah yeah well we started in this is a party we started with that with the um
how this is the name pancake is not that waffles we uh the the the the the wife
of uh of the the club the wife of the the members of the club they organized
uh waffles dinner sorry uh breakfast at me I don't remember the wolf maybe at
seven a.m I remember that I I really I slit I
slept only two hours right yeah yeah yeah I I love sir parties I I the
Science school this is incredible because it's a it's a man from I don't remember where but he had uh it's a
great idea that I found this guy um this is not the only I I don't have
the picture of the owner and he made a telescope Sony and Telescope to make a
sign to make a sign for everyone in in a in a white uh color
over the black the black color you know it's I I like
uh like a Blackboard a telescope like it's like a Blackboard to sign the people that that like to to to put
their name well another picture that is from from uh Atlanta Georgia and this is again in
Argentina in 2000 this was a 300
this was a lot really um women are today surprised but near to
Buenos Aires this is a 2004
we have uh we had a a place in a very direct place at only maybe 40 miles from
from buenos a city and in a great place
and while we made a lot of different uh things like
um and solar scale solar system at the
scale not not a perfect scale for but for example typical thing that we made
in the third parties is that the kids paint
um you know a sphere um paint the different planets and the
plane the planets are put of course uh at the scale in distance to make an idea
[Music] ah yes this is this is the first time of
yeah very cool this is my this is this is my my my nephew that actually he
worked for a company that is supplied of Tesla Motors and he live is Argentina
but he lives actually in San Francisco huh yeah listen well the the kids that
are interested in things made a great career I think
yes absolutely yes paint Planet make a great career
and yes and this is a great a great
um what's a great this was in the in the in the 2000 third party uh with a great
third party with 300 people that United States is a smaller Safari and here in Argentina 300 people is it's a great
start party more people with 14 inches 18 inches uh
they they they um Carry carried a lot of telescopes
this is for example this guy carry this 14 inches uh with a system
that um starting uh with a hydraulic uh peers
um in a few minutes no no yes he's an annulment at gnews a mechanic engineer
um when I say okay I saw you I okay I don't need a tripod no problem and when
he uh showed me his invent was amazing wow and the the best part is that this
this vase was made in a truck and
can carry in a truck without disassembling the system was amazing
very cool yeah it's ingenious sometimes what yeah the astronomers come up with
so absolutely absolutely yes you found all the time this is uh Fernando colom
Fernando colon was an Argentinian an Argentinian physics that he worked with
parasagan in the city project the United States and in our civil and he of course
we were we was amazed to to to to have him in our times
yeah in a dark outside on outdoor in the same
Safari the typical price more pictures you know a lot of this is
a very was amazing some some picture with flash you know that the people hate
you but of course that
sometimes when when we make uh pictures with flash we don't
make any more because today with the digital cameras we prefer to say to the people
um come on stay quiet um we only use a leg of a cell phone and
you can make the same picture with the Stars here but in the you know 2004 you
we still use no we this is digital but the the
the first cameras was wasn't a great like today or maybe from 2010
you can be able I can be able to to take this picture typica with stars you know
well I don't know the number of third parties that we organizer
I love this picture the typical picture when they start with the with the sunset
um with the people preparing their telescopes this was my own telescope in this time
I sold it of course like my old telescope but I mean my equipment again
it's me a younger sister brolo
this guy made an excellent pictures uh with uh with the films
hmm we are and we moved to Mendoza Susan Rafael in the same 2004
and started to make the surprise this is Pedro caissar that you you know him
right yes on our programs a couple times yes yes and um it's me my my friend
Domingo maracina um a lot of we made a lot of surprises
with with uh my my friend Jaime Garcia
[Music]
we are in the picture because we we have an a great a cosmic ray observatory in
near what 200 at only 100 miles from San
Rafael the place where we made the star party and sometimes not in all years
sometimes we went all together 200 people maybe 100 depended the year and
we went to a and to malaria with a place where it's a cosmic ray Observatory and
we receive a conference attack from the physics from the astronomers
um really something that when we can make this we love it and another stun
another presentation in another third party this was in Santa Fe
province of Santa Fe and well I I think that that I prefer well star
Parties by a lot maybe three or four by years I have maybe I don't know 1 000
pictures but I prefer continuing next next third party next
okay no yes because it's too much and but the idea is is
um that at the beginning the I I put the the Facebook uh uh the Facebook link uh
Scott to to share if the people like to okay like to to visit the our Facebook
with this all right and then chat right now that's great yeah thank you and
um and this is something that that the feel the feeling I I'm really
um uh I really I am expecting the the the uh listen to John Johnson the
Nebraska star party because uh it's where the people starting to return to
to to found found by itself under the sky
um we ever ever we talk about you know the
the the the kind of people that we are and sometimes
if if we enjoy for example Global Safari I I think that we are the same people
that we still talking when many people went to sleep and we are maybe the few
ones uh you know the the smaller group that you are talking Target with the beer and it's you know
and talking jobs and and this is uh it's
a it's a great a great feeling I really I I work a lot a lot I work a lot in
store parties in Argentina um and I my my opportunity to visit a
uh the the Atlanta Georgia surpari the picture
States Sergey Atlanta storm Club um I I really I really I I need return
to United States to to visit another third parties in the United States really it's uh it's uh because I enjoy
it a lot a lot and something that um like in this time I I worked a lot
with Celestron like a technical supporter was Brave was great something
that was unexpected for me was make support for the people
because you know it's like I use it as a restaurant this year because I had one
but what I was not from California I was from Argentina and the people tell me oh
thank you a support Thanking us over from Celestial come on I need to
I work it yes this was fun because the people say okay this guy is from Celestron but why do you where is your
accent okay no problem but um yes was it great in this time the people
had issues with um connecting um
in selection especially with the you need to connect the encoders optical
encoders outside the mounts connecting with a black box that was an electronic
device to see the numbers and when when you uh when you go to zero you was in
the start terrible and the people when when you have an elusive access
a loose access axis of of your encoder of course that you have an error and I
make support in USA Bain from Argentina
this is this is unreal but people say okay thank you thank you where are you
from no from Argentina I am not from Celestron call First maybe Celestron
Argentina yes yes it was a total craziness and and really I enjoyed all
all of this because when you when you the best part of to make support in
technical support is the happiness of the people when you
resolve the problem yes really really it's something that in
my 30 years of career working with telescope I am telescope dealer but the
part if you talk if you ask if you um told me who is my favorite part of the
work is make technical support everything sometimes from astronomy
sometimes I receive a calling in my cell phone I receive at maybe 11 o'clock
for people that have myself and say hi I am a customer of you this is something
that is right in the Horizon it's Jupiter come on I'm at 11 p.m o'clock yes let's
say how this guy have first have my my cell phone number yeah how do you get
your cell phone number yes yes but the world but but the fun part the fun fact is that I'm sir I am using my telescope
in this time and say yes I'm watching this computer I am with my telescope too
and this is the part where you say okay I am I am in in one part I am I I feel
the same I I understand the Curiosity the further steps the first steps of every people I
enjoy every time that the people the people make
I I never I never I founded Tyrell just
to to see the further steps of the people in astronomy in a matter of sorry when
they start to use their telescope well this week I am making support I I give
him support sorry uh for the how to to put the the software with of the
Explorer stars in a tablet other people say oh okay I have oh I
have that's my type of my my table my uh
how do you say table is it's stable yeah it is a smart table and the people I can
see the smile the smile and I say like like a kid and this is the best part of
this and because it's a hobby it's uh have pleasure uh have uh or make
pleasure make happiness and this is a really a great a great uh
thing is similar when I make we work in something that we call it uh sir
sub-normal Edition in another in an hour another Parliament that we make special
glasses for people that have a macula maculopathia is in English I don't know if you understand
um when the people say I can see something again I can grab something again and all people you know that smile
again is something that this is more more serious thing that is incredible but I
really enjoy enjoy the how the people when discovered that they can make
something with their telescope in the further steps because maybe they have the telephone one or two weeks only
their new owners are really they enjoy and
you know smile like kids this is amazing yes
excellent see you sir it's a pleasure excellent
okay um John you still with us I came back yep
had to get my my glass of milk that's great
okay uh uh who's up next here I think we have
uh Maxie yes how are you everyone Maxi how are
you so yeah this is yeah southern hemisphere section of our star
party right here it's a little bit it's a little late right now it's a one p a 1
a.m but it doesn't oh yeah yes we we can
do it because we are tomorrow we have to work but uh
and how I said and we we are asleep very short in here so we are
accustomed rated to sleep only five hours four hours and then a wake up and
the day goes on so hey hi everyone uh when I want to
show this night in the never the virtual Nebraska Star Party
I want to to show what I did the last GSP
from pictures that I took of a Omega Centauri and Jeffy nebula but also some
kind of uh details on that pictures and
what I did last Friday um practicing with my my new Mount uh
that night was very cold and yeah and and I was very freeze so
I try to put everything automatically so I can
only with my cell phone move the telescope if I have to do it if
I not let's keep continuing to to take pictures so let me show my screen
um me here
so you can see oh yeah great a wonderful clip shot
it all starts with that Eclipse shot it does yeah but I love it every time every
time we know that the Maxi computer so basically this is my my scope and and
eight inches telescope F4 and this is the new Mount that I spoke last week
that my fiancee say is the amount or and sell the
another one or you are out with the mount so basically I put the cables try to
align to polar octans or tank this
um stars to to the southern polar
and I was trying to figure out how it works the the moments and everything and it
looks like I'm going to um destroy and start it without these
cables but now the the reason is I try I want to capture that lights
so a this is the light of the leaves light of
my neighbor you can see every night every single night at 9 00 pm at almost
a 11 or 12 a.m it continues to stay on so
then when this goes out oh it changed a lot
so I started to well this is the Friday
night the the 12th July at what 21 almost 10 pm
I was trying to pick it to take pictures to
um they cut Paul nebula and that's an interesting enabler because it has a
a lot of hydro I I know hydrogen
hydrogen hydrogen yeah I don't know how to say in English sorry no you got it pretty much that's
it so uh with the camera you can grab a lot of
information that it's very um verified when you yes to to capture
but you need a lot of information to to take it so I find Nebula is really fine
it's incredible the picture that you took because so your your picture I don't like to
spoil this but what okay yes okay so this is a capture of my cell
phone because I was a and
the worst I don't know and I was with the program any desk
doing um a remote control
yeah this is the screen of my notebook yeah but I was in my cell phone
and also in this computer uh seeing what's happening outside
without
and you're dead you you um yes you drove your telescope remotely
exactly I yeah a a box above the notebook because uh maybe the weather is
going to freeze the computer and everything so yeah to protect it and you
are from my club yes of course but
uh so I was watching and monitoring everything that maybe sometimes goes a
little bit with the The Guiding but everything was go okay so I started to
to take pictures and that night my fiance is staying home because she
doesn't work so this helps me to be time with her and
and I'm not I'm not a night to say oh again with the telescope come on I'm
here in common and you are out now Okay so
this is a picture uh also at almost 1 am
and doing at nine seconds you can see the the enable yeah some some little
clouds but uh still guiding maybe some okay
and this is a single picture uh
opening in pigs inside and stretch it so I see if the pictures was okay with the
Stars enable and everything and you can see this is a single picture of five minutes uh it's so 800.
and the the neighborhood was in the center so okay let's continue in taking
pictures the nice con continuing so basically
that night I I went to sleep with the equipment outside I put my alarm my
phone alarm to 4 AM my fiance was sleeping so I connected
again to my cell phone to see how it was going to everything
and he continued to to to capture in the single in the in the in into the nebula
but it was in the other side of the West a almost a 40 degrees uh above the
Horizon but at that degrees the the light pollutions and some smoke
gets me very orange picture so that at that time it doesn't matter I I
went out but I said then I continues so
what what I do now I was searching in my cell phone what I
can talk so I decided to went to dumbbell Neville
about a tree it was in front so I with uh with the tracking
with the program a carducer and the the the echo mode program I was a jumping to
start to enable her to start to a global cluster uh viewing in the the guidance
scope and to and I had to find the
uh the Galaxy the skulls of the Galaxy they was in the east at almost 40
degrees it was in the other side and but
all that I did in my bed with my fiance sleeping I and I was
lady yes the phone warm but uh but you know I I can do it
yeah sure and this is this is something that yes I I made the part yes it's
really something that yes we resilient deserve this this Comfort because now
that then I was it was really really cold yeah so this is how and this is
really wow this is amazing and first of all when you have all that work properly
that because you when the uh from the West to the East and the moon it's going
to the to the point you're happy because they say come on maybe I will have some
errors so that's why I went uh
yes of course I I will need that to to get more uh precisely but I I was
jumping to a star to enable it start hopping yeah exactly go to Star hopping
it's it's an amazing time I I reached to this culture of nebula at
almost five a.m of the morning yeah and
see the temperature that it was outside three what was the temperature
three three degrees Centigrade above the zero
[Applause]
you win you win yes yeah yeah
no no so well this is a single picture of a Omega last week
show us they show you last weekend uh
my picture from the city and yeah come on this is the the processor yeah
beautiful beautiful I don't know is a Cameron is in there
and we can see the color of my favorite color I'm hearing the red ones and the
blue ones yes yes hi Cameron how are you do you remember
last weekend we talked about some tiny galaxies
oh yeah I love it when they're they're in the same field of view of these these show objects you have this beautiful big
Omega Sentry and then some galaxies hundreds of millions of yeah
oh my yeah it's imperable that you can you can
and only in one minute pictures yeah maybe I did some for one hour but
sorry I have some uh hot pixels that I couldn't took but yeah you know Decor it
wasn't a very brightly so you see the all the
stars very very yeah sure it's a great picture because it's a
color yeah the colors are nice it doesn't over saturate the uh the Overexposed the car the Stars so you see
all the colors it's beautiful thank you thank you so they away the foreign
to him because I don't know what those guys that that little galaxies so he
sent me this uh um what's the information
in this case in English you can see one of those is an inspired Galaxy in Center
audios magnitude 13.22 yeah
and look at the distance it's around the corner yeah it's around
the corner just around the corner years yeah and it's in the catalog of PGC
yeah yeah and other number and this is the another galaxy
it has a 40.23 magnitude and it's more closer
like um from where it is yeah so you'll get there a little a
little sooner yes and a lighter
this is a single picture in three minutes of you can see the the
color of the traffic nebula but the all the the graph of the the light pollution
of my sky uh talking about my light pollution let me remember you oh
here where I'm from this is Buenos Aires here it is come on
don't show me any more of this here's what I am yes
when you I I didn't know this but when you point in the this is all people
making barbecue
the important I was remembered it was saying I think the last year a five or
six but now is class seven seven oh my and also I'm still doing this
when I process about I don't know it was two hours in three minutes pictures uh I
take this wow it's a great really great beautiful
beautiful yeah nice you know I think maybe the the the
background of the the obviously this is the Galaxy but when I do uh for a photometric
calibration uh the background goes very orange but the nebula it doesn't affect
you know because it's real because you have the amount of hydrogen in the spectrum of
the color of the background yes that is real um because you can see that when you
make a photographic photometric color correction it's real because the
software is comparing with uh calibration with another basis of the yes and this is this is the best way to
to have the the color because for me um before the photometric calibration I
had I remember that I had my my uh
red wine color that is not real because maybe I like the red wine but it's not
real the color for a nebula you can say Okay photometric calibration we solve this
um not any more red white color hmm so so uh well this is the last 20
when I was in the GSP but this is a picture of uh of five
minutes of the cat's power nebula you can see comparing with this in three
minutes a very in the same spot is more bright and more it doesn't see
anything yeah what yeah incredible Maxi oh yeah
do you have actually yet um alien
aliener artifacts uh like artifacts in the street you know the orange one
Mercury lights yes that's why it's orange but now the the government
yes they they are encouraging the Red Slide because obviously it's for a
safely uh for the to when you are in the street when you're driving you see
better but
is okay because you have a blue expected a blue part of the spectrum that is
really bad for for help about this Guardian red meat or you know but for us
top photography now it's more easy to filter because it's a it's in a narrow
band I need that I need to find a farm and maybe in here
[Music] or maybe went to my mother-in-law
province that he she's from Santa Rosa and also my fiance but I'm going to be
here I don't know he is worthless one yeah you know they're saying that we
have that the same that we we use in or we have in San Rafael is Mendoza let me
show you we are not in San Francisco it's a great City but we are here
sure but you are no no no our third party is in a gray zone is one
yes I don't know
um because I don't have some really yes yes you do have the yes but this is this
in the south is no no no no no
it's a near to this level yes but
but the third party is in a place where is in this like this song Sorry that I
well this is not in aggression it's in a dark area well here's the frontier with
Chile you can see all the the Chilean light pollution and
the other side of the the Andes Mountains
there's a lot of desserts
no yes and in the north of Chile in the part of telescope is the same it's very dark yes it's very hard but yeah
between Mendoza and Mendoza in the Argentinian side and Santiago de Chile
[Music]
of Chile yeah you can see across the the country and Chile it's like pollution
but you see this province too is really because
it's a an active economy Farm area and many many exports of from farmers are
from Buenos Aires and you know you have a a lot of cities that work in the farm
areas and the economies around this um it's a it's a net that you can see
like a net of cities you can it's it's a
very popular areas going to what is a city of maybe 2
000 or 200 000 100 000 100 maybe people it's not a town
it's a city it is it's a city yes yes
so basically let's go to when you come here it's more like a farm desert here
is the the white Pampa or Pampa Omega and that's why it's a lot of farm places
but in here it's a nursery yes yes sorry
we call it a Pampa Sika yes a dry Pampa dry pump
so what this this is not an island you know this is not an accident this is the
the fishing boats from the other countries
yes for Calamar for I know shrimp in the border of the
future yeah yes so what basically that's where I am from
uh so in some forms from here where it is going to be the the next
um Observatory maybe it's going to be Portal 3 where I was yes like I said
you see so I think that that bottle's tree is great
and especially if the for visual is amazing yes it's amazing and also for
pictures you know but for visualizing Portal 3 it's not bad guy border three
is the start of Milky Way with structure absolutely congratulations begin to get obscure you
begin to see things naked eye that you can't see even at portal 4 things start
to drop off um I I call it in the win in our winter
time here Portal 3 it portal 4 is where Orion you start to
see the vest of Orion there three stars that look kind of like a v-neck uh like
Orion the constellations wearing a vs yes uh but it's one of the one of my
personal ways to tell how dark a sky I'm in so or when we can account the the
players yes the the north players yes when you can
say how many stars have the player with you are maybe in four and start to say
something and say okay it's start to talking about it yes you remember me
that we talk about the playlist the the southern player this and I was taking
some calibrating pictures of to try to to get focused
and now I oh sorry no but let me show you
the best thing of the player this is
this is the the southern player this but this is a single picture I was trying to
get focused the Stars looks like the yeah this it
was uh maybe 30 seconds yes yes the southern players and also they have this
open cluster here it's amazing the the Stars looks like uh
there are almost the same like like the the the common player this
well let me continuing uh I was seeing here with a live pollution nebula and
when I on I stuck almost four hours and 40 minutes a a five minute pictures and
ESO 800 and processed and everything I have this
yeah come on yeah this is what I say I I I like not spoil
spoil spoil it alert because they say the picture was amazing yeah
you know this dark spot it's Donna mine you know yeah see this
uh Dark Cloud contrasting the the rest of the the
place all and also the the colors of the nebula and everything but this is
amazing you know so basically this was a almost five
hours stuck in in portrait seven uh maybe import the free is going to be
better but with the camera that I have is it's not prepared it's not a cool
camera it's a simple dclr but you can still do
some a astrophotography with with a single equipment
and this is a single picture of the sculptural Galaxy
you see the Galaxy here very blur and very pink
Skype but this is a little process I was working but I couldn't do it anymore but
this is what I get in almost one hour and 30 minutes
wow these are wonderful pictures great job Taxi thank you
I am a crab crop it because they because I
was thinking to to share in the social media but the you can see the the the
field is a enormous and the Galaxy is going to
be very tiny so I crop it a little bit but
for a you can and everyone see the the the oh yeah of the Galaxy and the core
if the picture is more bigger the the Galaxy is obviously smaller and the the
details of the Galaxy you lose it you know
that's why I grew up the the yes you grow up because the the size of the
Galaxy and the the social media they break down the the images oh yeah yes
especially in Facebook I don't know oh yes they they yeah they have a mid
um [Music]
off come on yes yes
from the the wall of uh Pink Floyd the same thing like this yes I don't remember yes I don't have the
word exactly to say that but broken in small business yes well this is
uh the last Thursday this it was some a water it was about the the trailer of my
father I see the the it was very shiny because it's a lot of
ice a lot of ice yeah and but it has I have uh to break it and you see
the the the the the size of the
foreign
they will say going to get you free you remember cecially say they're going to
have a um snow but uh it doesn't snow
everything in the morning yes but it's very strange to get snow
here I know yes it's impossible yes sometimes we have areas where for for us
to see if a snowfall is very strange and
when we see it we say oh snow we like like yeah like young kids
another situation because they have maybe one matter of they had in April one matter
of snow in the city but uh in only one day but no we are at the same for for to
explain where we are uh we are at the same 35 South degrees it's the same like
Atlanta Georgia yeah it's a medium um it's not the Tropics of course a 35
is is uh hot in summer is is it's a mall
of Northern Texas maybe Georgia is the same like Buenos Aires
for example it's very fine in degrees um yeah that that's about what Dallas and
maybe a little noise Houston Oklahoma maybe yeah yeah and you have wet Summers you know
hot and it's not so cold it's it's like he we are really we we like to say all
my goals so go back we if we compare with people in Patagonia they are crazy because they live like work or people in
the north North Dakota for example you know people from North Dakota they say come on it's winter you are you are you
are alive yes okay yes because it's people or We call we we watch the the
movie of remember Fargo and people that tell me no no this is real
yes like Argentina is and Chile is going more stretched to the South we don't
have many cities in the most in the in the part more call of the continent
um we have only in the south in the Chilean side and shuaya in the
Argentina side of the last Iceland of this Tierra del Fuego but we don't have
a many sites really called um in the medium from the median to the
north of Argentina of course that is is it's a medium temperature is normal but
of course that the problem is that in how Maxes say
if we call it and the humid with the cold weather is a
explosive cocktail it's it's relates to your bones yeah it really gets to your
bones I I understand yes this is the problem with many people that this is why for example I all time
I think um our current people to to work like say Maxi from the bed and say with the
cell phone using the camera outside because the people make more as a photography and don't abandon the the
hobby it gets old yeah oh yes me no you but I'm talking about
me but you're young come on and maybe maybe I remember that the time
where I was that my kids was babies um especially I remember that I I bought
my third CCD cooler camera and black and white 3 320 by maybe I don't know if six
for 640 the the number of the the resolution
um I remember that I started to use for the whole entire night because by uh
when uh my my now my kids was a baby he
you know have the kids have a time that maybe until two hours they wake up to to
bring milk you know and I prefer it in this time me and my wife say okay we are
made pictures with the CCD because we are not sleeping because we are uh
um and this is Maxi that this is why you need kids now because
you prepared to don't sleep [Music] so keep Imaging as long as you can
um you make great images there will be plenty of time for the kids and the telescope to collect dust later right
okay so I'm taking the the the the the graph to to Adrian now so we can
continue to schedule them so thank you everyone and I hope you like my work and thank you again John Johnson
yep and I'll go ahead and just jump in now um Scott I know you and John
um my name is yep my name is Adrian Bradley and I've been invited to do
um these Global star parties and share the night photography that I've been doing
um really quick When the Smoke comes you can do some day
photography as well and shoot right at the sun please be careful when trying to
do images like this because you can ruin your vision looking at it but when the
sun is low on the horizon wow that is when you can take photos such as these
um low on the horizon or sinking that is when you do it
um yeah when it's higher in the sky this is about as low as it gets before you can
start taking when it's higher in the sky and you can see the effects of the smoke here
um you can start burning your sensors without a filter so be careful
but let's talk about the night um here's an image
so this is a portal this is a portal 4 Sky Milky Way image
um this is all we can see in the north those in the South can see a lot more and in fact um it may be a surprise to a
lot of you that are from the southern hemisphere from other areas to know that
there are places where the Milky Way is actually cut off from what you can normally see but this is what we see the
northern part of it um here's another image now this is
before the smoke arrived over our state of Michigan
um liken it to a portal 7. so this is portal 4. so we'll look at this again
this is like portal 4 and these are you see enough of the Milky Way to where your images come out like this and then
Portal 2 is behind me that's the you aren't seeing it because I'm sharing my screen here's what happens when the smoke comes
in and you want to image that is it same place
where's the Milky Way it's you barely see it right here along these streaks of
satellites and planes and I hope for meteor and there I don't see one
that's what happens and what makes this interesting is this imitates trying to
get the Milky Way in a bortal seven Sky if this were all light pollution that
develops over time a lot longer time this is how your night sky gets reduced
um so what you're looking at is basically my pictures of the Apocalypse
this is what my Milky Way Photography would look like it would demand a lot
more um creative ways of shooting
at the Milky Way using a Tracker a Tracker would be a must and none of these shots were taken
with a Tracker I'm using the tracker for something else that night um and you'll see what it is
your Milky Way shots you get you can get beautiful foregrounds still but because of the smoke
in the atmosphere and this basically light pollution has the very same effect it limits the things you can see in the
night sky you have your stars but they're not very distinctive you have to
look really close to see the Scorpion right over here Scorpius is here stars
and Sagittarius are around here but you can't make out you can't make them
out very well and that is a huge difference
from making them out really easily here there's
um they're Sagittarius right here there's scorpion
um ophiuchus is back here um I think in the other image I took you
have Jupiter and Saturn you kind of have them here with some of the clouds so
that is it's a huge difference a lot of things you just can't see now when
clouds come in cover you can still get images like this where well the Milky Way is supposed to be here but the
clouds covered it almost perfectly for me um picture
uh yeah a more natural picture yeah
but I love your pictures yeah that one this have a movement show the movement
yeah it's it's like a a live picture because you you transmit the the
movement of the of the clouds and um the mix of people say okay it's not
completely clear I don't take pictures not it's with some it's a great it's a
great effect clouds um and the Milky Way yeah it's really great and yeah that's
and my process is ever ever changing and getting Milky Way shots here is a
close-up with the 50. this is about all we would be able to do is deep Sky Imaging we'd have to take long frames
cut through the clouds to shoot things like the crescent the Seder region North
American and Pelican nebulas yeah yeah that is that that's basically what we
would do it does make for you know the smoke actual smoke makes for these
sunsets where you have a reddish sun setting so you know getting beautiful sunsets is
a nice thing however um it does drastically affect your night
uh night photography so that is all that
I am going to share the interest of time get conal on here one more shot here
with the uh in St Joseph Michigan that's pretty yeah yeah yep Lake
Michigan um where you can take photos at so
you have to be creative when it comes to handling um
when you know when the skies don't cooperate and that's in my subtle
warning for the worst case scenario for light pollution where you have places
like the Nebraska star party where you can get away from it all
um it's another reason to try and go and visit these star parties and see the night sky the way that it was seen you
know years and years ago before the Industrial Revolution and see things
that right now you have to get them in pictures but you can see them with your
own eyes if the skies are dark enough so so we we have to we do have to continue
the fight with light pollution um not only so that we don't lose our
skies like that but if um we also protect the nature and the wildlife the
natural sleep cycles that are out that uh come from day and night the uh the
cycles of the Moon everything that's out there um it's interrupted with the tungsten light that comes out the Mercury light
that you know we it shines a lot of light a lot of cities are working on getting the
light pollution under control yeah um and it and it'll it improves the quality
of the night sky and the you know our ability to preserve the night skies that
we can share it with uh with others so yes so with that public
service announcement I will Pat turn it over
all right thanks very much Adrian um it is good to know and consider some
of the things that are going on with our night skies I think Nebraska star party is a great
opportunity to to get out there it sure sounds like a lot of fun to see nature in its element
so I'm going to share tonight a couple of objects that are favorites of mine and I think they make great targets for
sharing with the public as well begin sharing my screen here let me know if you can see this
[Music]
hold on a second here
working with a new computer here so it's uh that's always fun yeah yeah yeah you
know you know how I do it is I just go okay just share my entire screen I think it gives you options to share only your
certain parts but I just say forget that I'll just share the screen and then I'll control
what's on there it's I just find it easier well it says it's um
got some privacy issues like uh oh like I had some setting to block it or
whatever okay for a second here and if we can't do it then um you can tell us
what those objects are I can move on we're all familiar with them all right
well foreign
might be behind Cameron um that's a favorite object that of
course you can see it in the winter or really early in the morning I think
starting in August I think Orion may rise um
it'll be it's like low to the Horizon at Sunrise but uh
I know that the uh Orion Nebula NGC 1977
next to it is a very popular complex
um behind me Royal fuyuki um and the top of the Galaxy is a off
shot target and M22 is through my head I'd have to
move for you to see any part of it it's in Sagittarius and this was Rising so it's barely above
the ground then the summer triangle is above um where you've got M27 and 57
and a couple of uh colorful doubles like alberio is somewhere in there
um so you can you walk the sky along the Milky Way and most of those
objects are going to the favorite objects year round will be seen
um let's see if kono's uh if you're able are you able to try sharing again uh
colonel yes I apologize I got it worked out now so a deal there we go I just had
to quit the meeting for a second you're on screen sharing is that correct you can see everything right yes we can
yep and now you're yep now you're ready to share these objects
so tonight I'm actually presenting in Sky Safari and as I said I wanted to share some of my favorite objects some
ones that I think are great to share with the public now typically when we're doing our Outreach events
um usually it's Jupiter or Saturn the moon those are some common common highlights that we like to share we call
them showpiece objects usually deep Sky objects I don't think are as commonly shown to the public and I
understand that NSP has one day where they are opening the star party up to
the public and sharing their telescopes with them so of course we're not going to be focusing on the the moon and
planets if we're out of the dark sky site it's all about the Deep sky and the Milky Way High up in the summer
now I have a Sky Safari here that's where I'm presenting from now I have the
control set to Valentine Nebraska about 11 o'clock at night in that first week
of August and I'll start the tour we have Tolo mace cluster here also known as Messier
7. now this is quite a large object uh more suited for binoculars than a
telescope but very bright nonetheless the stars are very bright maybe fifth or sixth magnitude probably closer to
seventh and it's a great opportunity to open things up and show people what an open
cluster looks like I have some globular clusters as well now I selected these objects I wanted a
diverse group that has different types open clusters and globulars and nebulae and then some ones that are very bright
and and very satisfying to to look at rather than a faint fuzzy that that we
might be hunting for with a 32 inch dub or something like that so M7 is a great thing wrong with that
at all oh it's a beautiful one um I still remember seeing it for the first time from a dark sky sight and
some binoculars and it just it filled up the binoculars I I couldn't have found a
better way to to spend an evening like that now I'm going to move up a little bit
next we have the Lagoon nebula now I typically observe from bortal five skies in the suburbs in northeast PA
but the Lagoon nebula has always been a really fun Target to look at now I'm zooming in here it looks like
this huge mass may be photographically but typically when I'm observing it you see this cluster here and then there are
two lobes of the nebulae sort of and then there's kind of a dark Lane that weaves in between them that's what it's
looked like to me both from home and from some dark sky sites but it's a really fantastic Target to look at it
fits the telescope well if you have a wide field eyepiece right now this is
about 1.5 degrees this blue disc here so it fits great into a wide field
telescope or some binoculars as well a great Target to show off to people and explain how stars form right in the
middle of the summer when people are underneath the Treasures of the Milky Way like we talked about a week or two
ago now another one of these bright nebulae in the region and Sagittarius is the
swan nebula now I remember seeing the swan nebula for the first time in a telescope it was only a year or so ago
but I was surprised I hadn't come across it up to that point the swan figure is very distinct they
have it highlighted here a little bit you can kind of see the body of the Swan here with some it almost looks like
feathers but there's some knots of nebulosity and then the head comes around that's what it looks like in the eyepiece now also this this shows up
more on photographs but you can also see it visually I've seen parts of it there's this Loop that comes around
you don't always see what's in here but there is sort of a ring that comes back around and that's why they also call it
the Omega nebula so that pushes the the target makes it a little bit more challenging but also fun and rewarding
to explore so I'll zoom out here we're going to move up to a different part of the sky
up towards Aquila foreign a dark sky site here and it doesn't
quite show up as well in the program but Barnard's nebulae is dark nebulae when
he was looking through the Milky Way with his photographic plates uh among the most famous of those is b142 and
b143 they form an e in the sky I'm sure many of you have seen it and photographed it yep I've read that it
looks great in binoculars though I haven't observed this myself I'm sure it would be wonderful from a dark sky site
and like I said it doesn't quite show up in the program but you can see the nebulosity of the Milky Way all around
and then there's this e shape um by these clumps of gas and dust kind
of blocking out the Starlight from the more distant portions of those arms in the Milky Way
moving up a little bit more again I focused on a lot of binocular targets here the coat hanger is always a
favorite some very bright stars I'd say about fifth magnitude in fact we can check here
um yeah the third fourth so so they're very bright and they form that really neat coat
hanger shape um I think when people look up to the sky they're wondering about asterisms a lot I commonly get asked about the Big
Dipper in my Outreach or the summer triangle um a little less known as the winter hexagon at other times of the year so I
think it's really fun when people can look into the sky and see something they recognize even if it's just a little
household item like a coat hanger um it does connect them to the stars and it does give them something to remember
it's something to appreciate and enjoy from a nice Star Party moving over we have the dumbbell nebul
here not too far from sajida just off of the tip of the arrow
now that the program here shows it in its whole form as it appears in many
pictures I've really only seen the orange part here at least it appears that way I've always thought it looks
sort of like an apple core but the dumbbell nebula is among the brightest planetary nebula in the sky so it's
really fun to show people because you can pick out structure with a wide field telescope with no trouble at all and you
don't need to hunt down or fiddle around with a nebula or UHC
to really bring out that detail it's right there for you nice and bright so that's a really fun planetary nebula to
show off to the public and explain some parts of Stellar evolution you know we looked at Star forming in
the lagoon and Swan nebulae before and now we can look at how they end in some ways with a planetary nebula
like this scrolling over to cygnus here M39 and
the region around it is a really wonderful uh part of the sky to look at so I'm looking at about five degrees
here from the bottom of the screen to the top M39 looks like this little Jewel box
hanging in the Milky Way you can see all these clouds uh the North American nebula many people have said they can
see from a dark sky site with the naked eye and I've spent many summer nights
just scrolling around this part of the sky I usually focus on deneb first and you can see many bright clusters of
stars you make your way down here there's little tiny open clusters that pop out at you but M39 is really the
show piece here and even if I zoom in you can see it's a very rich field and
it looks great in many wide field telescopes so going down we're getting closer to
the northern Horizon now all of these objects so far have been along the Milky Way now this object is coming up a little
bit later in the night during the summer perhaps when some of the public have left but I included it nonetheless
because it's a very fun cluster to look at this is the owl cluster in Cassiopeia
you see there's all these this structure I think someone else called it the the ET nebula somewhere like a little alien
so you can see there's eyes here there's sort of a wingspan that people say they see in in the in the form of an owl it
looks like we also have a carbon star in there as well so that's a really beautiful open cluster uh just
spectacular uh in an open field telescope a wide field telescope and it's in a very rich field as well
because you can see there's a couple other open clusters around here there's one there's two surrounding the larger
owl now if we zoom out we are still in the
Milky Way uh astrophysically speaking but not quite in the plane we're looking out of it now almost straight up at the
Zenith around 11 pm many of us know and love the Hercules cluster M13 uh one of the brightest in
the northern hemisphere in fact the brightest you can find it between these uh two 6.5
7th magnitude stars and it's situated right there in binoculars in your finder scope and it blows away people in any
size of of telescope I've shown it to some of my neighbors just from my backyard the six inch reflector and I
get stunning responses when I tell them that that's a cluster of about 200 000 stars all packed together
um and they've been there since since the origin of the Milky Way people really find that fascinating
now M13 as much as it's considered a showpiece I have to say I have a soft
spot for the other globular cluster up here M92 I remember seeing that for the first
time and wondering how I hadn't gotten around to it I guess M13 kind of takes
some of the attention away in this part of the sky but M92 is really one of my favorite clusters
again it's a little bit dimmer but you can see there's there's a couple of yellow stars there's a bit of coloration
in there and it's also quite well scattered so you can resolve some of the Stars around
the edge even with a smaller telescope so that's a really beautiful one to share it at Star parties with the public
if we zoom out here looking at the whole Horizon you can start around Sagittarius right
at the core of the Milky Way with M7 and the Lagoon nebula and work your way up through the stream up to dinner in the
North American nebula and M39 then there's the owl cluster for later in the night and then some bubbly globulars up
here so I think that's a great range of objects to share at an event like NSP or or maybe a black forest star party I
hear is coming up those are the objects I would choose to to share with others if you're looking to to blow them away
with with a bright Target from a dark sky so thank you very much thank you Connell
excellent excellent presentation really well done and you know you get
that what you've done here kind of what's really nice is uh you know that expression of kind of getting
googly-eyed when you when you see the Milky Way right uh you just don't know where you're gonna look and uh this gives you some
really great uh binocular objects or even naked eye that you can you can start picking out
it's really really nice thanks thanks for that well thanks to you I looked at one of my deeper Milky Way image that
I've got back here and found that Barnard's uh the uh darkness that yeah that looks
like an E I went and I found it somewhere back in here and I go okay I
imaged that too um so that was something I didn't know so thank you for adding even more things
that I can look for I think you cannot because I I don't know some of those
subjects because I can see it from here I almost reached to the double nebula
and then almost the signal was constellation
um I have the Galaxy Galaxy almost
20 degrees in almost two hours only so yeah
those objects yeah but you boast of objects such as of bega Centauri of
Omega Centauri was a nice guy we wouldn't look at M13 or M92 we wouldn't
look at anything else and um you've got the Centaurus a I think is you've got that
Galaxy there there's and then you have the real Jewel box we uh M39 does look
like a jewel box in our skies the real jewel boxes near the Southern Cross so
each each uh hemisphere has its Treasures
um and um there are some things that we neither hemisphere can see which is why it pays to be able to just travel the
globe and go see the entire thing um another big part of it is just the
just the familiarity the orientation the orienteering and knowing where all the
objects are in relation to uh you know familiar uh constellations
but all the other all the other ones that are kind of off the beaten path as well to be able to be able to say okay
ah now I know where that is and then the good part is with different you know Optics whether it's naked eye
um you know camera or or binoculars telescope you know look at it and you know where everything is and
that that's a wonderful feeling to be able to not just you know it's really
nice to become to get that intimate familiarity of all the the objects I think that's a very important thing to
get that connection and uh so this is all part of that uh what you've done Connell I I think that's really great
I agree I mean uh wonderful I I think it's sticking with tonight's theme the sky can make all the difference I
remember um I was observing for for maybe a year or so and I got the chance to look at Messier 22 I had a good Horizon for that
but I again I was observing from the suburbs and I was looking right over a local mall so I zoom in on M22 and it
was there in the finder scope I could find it well enough but I looked in with with one of my best eyepieces and I
thought really this is it and um it wasn't until I got out to a dark sky site I saw the tripod nebula for the
first time in binoculars never could find it with a telescope the Lagoon nebula was stunning M22 at that core of
the Milky Way all in Sagittarius that's a great place to look and I think we
should all celebrate having that high up in the summer for our beloved star parties
thank you very much Connell that's great excellent well Mr Johnson uh you uh you
put together a great lineup of speakers I was really inspired by all the uh
great comments and I mean just real yeah life experiences that people were having
at Nebraska star party and certainly the influence that uh uh you know that
yourself and and others uh at Nebraska Star Party have had on these people so
uh of you know spanning a wide range of Ages and backgrounds and all of that so
is there anything that you'd like to uh other than thank you so much from the
bottom of my heart yeah I I that's what I wanted to do I think we pulled it off it was uh I mean I could have had
probably a half a dozen more people but uh I think the ones we next time next
time and um yeah I I don't know how much time I I
wanna can I show just a few seconds of a of a video uh here's what Kaylee I mean
she was uh a little shy there everybody that was with me is off now but I I want
to show you um I want to show you what Kaylee was like
this would have been three years ago when she was a she stole the star party so let me see if I can do this
everybody say that yeah this is Kayla nice mount
[Music] no
well there's this telescope foreign
yeah we can't hear her but you can't hear her no oh
yeah but I can tell she's very excited I wonder how why
you probably have to share your volume as well but it's okay it's okay but yeah we can see we can see your enthusiasm
just by the way okay well I joined this in the whole thing I'm so excited to uh
to have uh see all these young people Scott you you've gotten uh these young kids
involved and that is it's it's it's we absolutely have to I mean absolutely
yeah you know I'm always looking for other young people to be on the program
uh you know it's it's um of course it's not every parent's
wish to have uh you know their youngster on um you know in a public forum like
this but uh you know when I see them you know it takes a certain amount of
confidence and oh yeah you know and they they you know they they want to share
their enthusiasm uh uh you know and and there's they're still learning about
about the universe they live in so they they it's it's really wonderful and
great to see you know what what the universe looks like Through The Eyes of very young people young yeah and that
inspires that inspires our audience and everything so I'm grateful for the peop the young people that do come on uh
yourself included Connell so yes for sure you know
but uh um you know it's it's just I I it melts the
audience's heart a lot of times too because they just they know uh that these young people get it and um so
well yeah excellent well yeah I I have nothing more it was a fantastic night
appreciate it appreciate it thank you very much John we're we're gonna take about a 10 minute break here and then
we're going to come back with uh Cameron Gillis and uh and others here
um but it's been it's been a fantastic night and so thanks for hanging in there with us and we'll be back in just a few
I think I'll uh bow out uh okay good night I'm retired but I do have some
other populations in the morning so yeah that's right all right thanks John great job
five minute break how about that sounds good
[Laughter] oh I was a when I I was in the the whole
the GSP but in a moment I had to went to the TV because I was I was watching the
the the game of Argentina against Colombia from the the Copa America and
they have scored one goal and we have one goal so we're going to penalties
uh so basically I have to see this no I I
skate for some just a minute how did it turn out uh we won all right it was worth it the
Saturday it will be the the final against Brazil
so it will be a a war
[Music]
that's excellent yeah I used to always watched Argentina and Brazil playing in the World Cup
we call it the classic it's classic yeah it's like it's River Plate like a word
from here in Argentina I don't know what yes it says what is your favorite team
riverblade [Laughter]
is very good man
for baseball baseball equipment from the latest States I am from the Astros
but they say baseball is is something that we don't normally people in
Argentina don't know it's a a great name
do you guys are now in uh uh getting out in deep winter right now
right in in the South yes we the the 21 of June yes we started in winter
so now you were saying earlier sir that now you're actually you're a little bit South right further south is that right
I'm from uh from the from the West okay so yeah same other climate or is it
a little bit different no no maybe this is the same ah yes it's the same yeah maybe one degrees because
if you go outside the city where Maxi is
especially in farm areas is like everywhere you have maybe three or four
degrees less than in the city I think that five degrees
but you are beside the river played and uh yes that makes certainly
maybe we have a a a a yes race great
driver
great a great one and the climate and then the temperature
is more uh it's a little more higher than from here because the the river
makes it a little warm yes and also obviously the city in winter is very
cold but in summer um Buenos Aires is getting very hot
but here in chilikoi when the Sun goes down
maybe one two hours of a a very hot weather but then it's a a nice a night
here in in Buenos Aires is not like that
[Music]
well folks we're back um uh we are uh it's we've had this
group before yes yes I think I think that the uh the
astronomers from Argentina have the staying power to really keep going on yes yes it's very late for you guys
2 A.M yes you know you know it's good that we
actually in the in the last surprise in San Rafael we started to make a barbecue
uh at four four a.m and first of all you
know Eric Gonzalez Eric tell you the the history of this was
crazy because the team of a professional astronomers making the barbecue was the
the fun thing that I was I watched because uh
all doctor read very serious uh astronomers not us that we are amateurs
they say okay we can make another Queue at 4 00 am of course yes first week why
not
barbecue at 4 00 am and now it's a it's an actual uh this was a
at uh maybe five years ago and actually in our surprise it's a tradition and
it's all people think oh sorry all people ask about okay tonight we are
going to to take the the we call it choripam because it's like a
sausage be a big sausage
it's something that you know in the United States some like Germany sausages
made with boyfriend yes yes okay not not
like chorizo then a little bit we made it
is similar yes and we make a a very cue with this
um the flavor of the summation and you know when you are a little cold you know at 4 30 a.m or five a.m in the morning
or it's night ah it's like the heaven is something that the people enjoy enjoy
yeah do so much it's the same that when you when a very long party of marriage
party and a beer party I say in many many communities they make same
barbecue made in that of the party and you say come on it's incredible that you
come on you still have hungry and where we've found we found that that
um a professional assurance make the best friend reviews
astronomy and also Gastronomy yes yes
yes I don't know if in English it says that the the word Gastronomy because we talk about gastronomia is the word with
G first for to talk about the things about the Foods
um and everything every time we we call it the we make the show with this
because astronomy and Gastronomy Gastronomy it's it's the it's it's a
word about uh to to that describe the the cooking people yes yes people from
yes yes
um but but yes the sense of humor in Argentina it's it's about Foods football
you know it's come on like I said to say what is your
favorite relationship and uh yeah and I don't know what the
competitive astronomy but no yes
but but um we like to talk about everything yeah
yes and I I I am something that that we
of course in the entire world the people enjoy astronomy and you can found this
same kind of people that when we when you start to know people that love
astronomy you really found the same kind of people and you don't have any problem
to talk and you are in the same in the same fragrance that's right people I I
today that I I show you the the Alana astronomy traveler's third party which
is the cell gate I really I I don't remember if I talked in Spain or in
English because I really I I felt so comfortable that I remember the jobs but
really I remember the jokes for the people or or the the very nice uh talks
that we have but I remember in Spanish because for me it was something that that I don't need to translate because
it was beyond the link which is how do
you how you understand the things and the sense this is incredible and the
time where we have the last time of a surprise near to the morning
um when the people more crazy take maybe the biggest telescope and is going to
watch you know the American can change Galaxy sir okay I can count five or four
I don't know yes come on for you every everywhere is the same yes because yes
that's right the competition who can see more relaxing no no that competition is
is it's uh um I think that this is something
um that uh maybe um first of all that the people turn all
in in the end of the time of the surprise of the day of the night the
people turn off their cameras and it started to talk and see with
oculars with eyepiece Sorry by telescopes because the people enjoy a
game um a turkey and only see with the Naked
Eyes some finds some lines objects in the sky
the more impossible ones that you can see are naked eyes and this is a nice
base um well it's it's it's really great
excellent I hope the next the next year I will go to ah yes you you need to yes
really really I we are uh we are excited to to have in our third party San Rafael
anyway Mendoza
camera are you uh um you ready to give us um
your latest yeah guy survey yeah let me I gotta you know as usual um
I have a an update but I I I'm gonna go in a couple of things
before I go through the update I just kind of just generally um to tell you uh I'm going in several
different paths in parallel one of course is the sky survey which is the central uh theme of everything uh just
making sure I take my observations that I've done with visual observations go constellation by constellation
look at all the objects and then uh and then categorize them into objects that
are relatively bright you know easy to to see in my eight inch Schmidt Castle green for smaller telescopes
um but then I'm also uh augmenting that with uh smartphone smartphone uh
pictures uh where I kind of started to take smartphone images of those objects
that are categorized as brighter and at the same time uh I just recently
um in the last month I got an astro a dedicated astronomy camera
and I'm learning all the trials and tribulations of that as well because as
as you start to add the complexity of course there's a lot of um I want to do
this in a in a nice uh pace so that I can take my learnings
and share them with with everyone um and and make it make their path their own Journey that much more enjoyable as
they go through because you know as you go from visual to you even visual astronomy has its
challenges if you're starting to look for fainter objects and then when you get into full smartphone the lining it
up with the eyepiece is you know frustrating uh you know and then finally uh the uh Astro Imaging is uh you know
has a lot of equipment and there's a lot of calibration you have to do and so every time you add another layer
um you you uh it's a it's a journey and you want to make sure that you keep that fun
uh so that's that's what I'm uh that's my goal and uh let me share my screen
that I've kind of told you that so I have been doing okay let me show my screen here
it's a pleasure to see your pictures oh no thank you so much Caesar I really
appreciate it obviously it's a very much a pleasure seeing all of your pictures too you know all both the uh the real
life right I mean what's in the star parties and and everything and of course all the Astro images as well it's it's
great I love it um so let me uh so I have a
let me just go to that okay so
just in summary let me remove this here so I've actually increased uh I
I was do as I was doing my Astro Imaging as I was telling you that story about getting into that there are some
frustrations it's not all fun and games all the time uh you know you you have
some nights that you really want to do some good Imaging and then you you know you try to calibrate the uh the frames
and it gets the noise as you try to perfect things so uh so I actually uh I
got to a point where it's like okay um I'm I'm going to make some improvements I'm
going to sleep on it so to speak and I'm going to switch to visual again and so I I increased my visual observations to
finish up a couple of the um objects in Ursa Major Ursa Miner and Draco uh that
because I have an l-asmic Mount uh they were they were not an ideal locations
those objects uh in the last uh in the springtime because it was directly
overhead with an equatorial of course it would be perfect um so but I don't have an equatorial
right now um but uh so I finished up as Ursa Major
was swinging around to the West uh and there was a minor in Draco I started to finish up that so I added another
um um 40 objects uh observations in the last week doing that at visual app
station observations and then on top of that I categorized went through that
list of objects and added another 44 objects to uh the survey
that are considered best and brightest so now we have 821 objects and this picture here is just a you know a Sky
Safari Zoom similar to what Connor was showing earlier uh and all these dots these rings represent uh uh what we call
best brightest um and uh you can see the galaxies here
in Virgo carmenistius going up through uh Ursa Major you see the Milky Way
objects open clusters nebulae and uh and um and globular clusters all along uh
here and then of course some uh galaxies and other planetary nebulas and that um scattered in between so now I'm I'm in
uh I've been creating a some structure where I've just finished uh Southern
ophiuchus uh in in this can astronomy weekly we're on episode 8 tomorrow and
uh so tomorrow uh we're going to cover a northern uh opiocas
um we're going to cover serpents uh Eastern serpents which includes the Eagle Nebula and uh scudum so those are
the objects there's uh there's uh 18 new images between smartphone and astrocam
that I'll be sharing and uh and uh 12 different objects that we'll be
categorizing and um so that we're going at a good Pace I think about 10 objects
per per week per session is is a pretty good Pace um and that's that's what we'll do and I
have the pictures here I won't go through them all but just I will show an example like the M12 globulator cluster
uh this is a smartphone image this is kind of my first pass and you can see Glide requesters show up
pretty nicely actually in smartphone um and then M12 in the my Imaging uh
system and you can see very nice resolution but you can see you know the
image is has uh vignetting um there's a dust mode and there's a lot of things so I'm learning stuff but uh
on that note uh what I wanted to share with Flats That's goes out yeah exactly
so now flat Starks and biases what I've been doing sorry I'm skipping it so I've
been playing around yeah actually yes it's the best way so basically I started
off doing this and I found out oh that isn't very good because uh I don't get the the proper uh dynamic range in fact
I just was emailing me give me a second here I'm gonna I can't remember myself I think that that this technique that you
do use is the best way is is really to show to the people that many people that's exactly what I want to thank you
thank you and I want to hear that uh see sir I want to make sure I'm on the right path because I want to give credit I
want to give a shout out to Jeff wise uh Jeff wise has really been helping me tremendously uh he is
uh he has been fantastic and he's given me a lot of tips and between his uh this
is excellent because it's really a flat really how the world says it's really uh
um very very um how do you say sorry in English very
uh uh well flat yeah yeah
very similar in different points it is the eighth one equal yeah I I have this
he's is it great it's great with a cell phone you can do that because uh when
you if you move a little bit of the the point of focals uh
it will it doesn't matter because you move it and when you stack the image with the
flats it doesn't the same spot that the maybe the the dust is in the focus and
it will be there again yeah so in this case with that a astrogram
it will go okay yeah and and and this is going to be
this to be continued like this I just threw this together right now because I haven't fully you know it takes time to
to properly document uh you know the learnings and filters through all the uh
the the other stuff and and and and so I've just thrown this together just to show you guys a little bit of what what
I've been doing and um and so for example this this first picture here is
where I was like okay well the ceiling is evenly illuminated and I closed the door yes but but the problem is the the
if you look at the the histogram uh this is a correct histogram if I if I go um
uh actually let me go to um this one here this is this is a better one this one here yeah Yeah so
basically what you want is you want you want your uh your picture to be
um sorry it's just taking a while to load up there we go
um so what you want is you you want your histogram centered around 24K right
um yeah and and so and then you have your spread here the other thing I learned is if you use different filters
different amount of light comes through so you have to change the brightness uh if you use a UHC filter for example
you're going to have to change this in order to calibrate this and you know this I didn't want to spend too much
time I'll have a proper uh explanation as I learned and actually get the image
that we want um but basically you can see that this is a proper flat
um and and um oh it's going to say uh they go back to my presentation here I want to highlight
uh what's what I learned is to try to get that calibration
uh I used this uh Monitor and I just put a PowerPoint presentation on my computer
with a white screen and I present put it in presentation mode so that gives me an
even white flat and I may make sure that's perfectly perpendicular about an inch away from the surface I make sure
this is tight this is a just a pillow case I put in pillowcase is better than t-shirt because it's a more Square yeah
and then and and then I uh I doubled up and then what I did here's the neat part and I want I want to share I'll get more
when I actually make better images and show you the results but I can tell you
that this is wonderful because you can change the brightness and you can with this brightness control you can actually
calibrate it and take take shots and then adjust the brightness very very little bit and you can move this
histogram uh that you can move this histogram left or
right based on two different dimensions one the brightness of the screen and two the exposure duration that you use on
your flat so you can if for example I I might change from one second to two seconds but two seconds might be way too
much light so then what I do is I back off the brightness of the screen and
that can be that can give me like one and a half second equivalent you know what I'm saying yeah so uh so it gives
me that type of calibration I need with a lot less frustration and you can do this at night you can do it at daytime
you can do it anytime uh which which is another Advantage um of of this technique so but again
I'll share more as I'm getting successful here um but uh but again the point the goal
of all this is I'm going to make the cheat sheet for anyone to uh to come
along and say hey I'm going to be able to make my calibration frames and uh have fun you know and have that
confidence is say yeah I'm gonna I'm gonna get good results because ultimately what I'm going the minimum
I'm trying to do is I want to get my pictures I want to get my
pictures like uh this Eagle Nebula right um yeah yeah I want to get this reliably
sorry I'm just uh my mouse is uh there we go
so I want to get this reliably uh so that it doesn't have this big netting it's a nice flat and I can take repeated
uh exposures that give me consistent good results because remember I'm doing a sky survey so I want to get reasonable
results with the with the building blocks and then once I've got that in a
in a repeated nice easy way so that I I don't have set up time I'm ready to go
and I have good reliable quality pictures that are decent enough and then those are the building blocks for higher
quality images that you can start stacking doing more uh Advanced image
processing and then getting the good quality data so that you all that data
becomes very useful in the future as you start you know even years down the road
you just keep on adding more images of the same frame and uh and and make a better quality image right I mean
so so that's basically uh my update for today so
it's amazing and I think that you can show uh
the techniques for for the flat earlier next time to to the people because it's
it's amazing our presentation especially of of the these techniques for the flats
because many many people I have problems to take the flats and take it in the
wrong way the flats and have problems and you show something that is crazy
because it's everyone have the this Mo the monitor the computer and the best
part is that you that you say you can regulate or rather make the quantity of
light that you need um do you have two two ways to
to to graduate the the brand of the screen
and the sposure of your floods this is amazing really
yeah no that's awesome I'm glad you recognize that that's that's exactly what I what I wanted to to realize is
that you you now have two different parameters that make it a lot easier and then here's the other thing is people
talk about using different tools and that you could actually use this I'm
using this you can use whatever whatever tool that works for you and then and then and then this gives you
just enough control so that whatever tool you have uh is is it works right I
mean but that's the whole point is uh absolutely and yeah nothing is more more
complicated that make a good a good flood for a Schmidt Castle Run telescope
because it's mean cancer in telescope and especially with the 6.3 uh reducer
corrector is is a mix of songs of darks
and illuminated areas and really you need a gray flat
um and when I say this I say I I believe completely that this work properly
because I used to
that is okay with the T-shirt but I think that single simple simple things
like this that you say use a pillow case
and use the screen change completely everything because
um it's not it's not um a small thing that you do use this and
this is how the things works and releases it's a simple change and work
properly it's a great camera you know what I try to do Flats images
from the calibration I try if they did when the before the
sunrise comes a I searched some
blue some clear um areas of the sky yeah no no the
Arizona is maybe above but it's going to get some a blue light blue for example
like blue yes yes so without a cloud and also without some
bars a flame because when you took the picture yeah maybe it appears some
pairos or something like that you know but
um I I see doing this with
[Music] um taking pictures to the sky uh without putting the the T-shirt or
something white only to see to get a a
flat blue a and also helps me to when I stuck them
you know uh yeah in and the color correlations and the and the the
vignetting and everything goes out you know yeah I I use uh normally my balcony I use the
the the sailing of the another bipony all over me that is is white
um because it's great because only I need to point to the to the
to the sale um it's okay
um work but don't works the the the techniques that Cameron show is much
better because it's like you make your own Flats into your laboratory
because automatic fats yes you have no you have more Contour because with the
sky you know or me like sometimes I use it as a sale uh it's not perfect I
prefer something like a screen computer is so simple and so it
trustable trustable uh yeah it's less stressful too because you know
if you're trying to do that in the middle of a nice evening and you're trying to figure out the timing and the lighting there's a lot of things you're
thinking about and this way you can you can separate that yeah piece and then
and have a lot less stress right I mean uh um and the only the only thing is I have
stress now because uh when I when I take these images and I
still haven't perfected the images I'm I'm having other issues um that I won't you know
stuff like that there's a bunch of other things that I've been playing with shielding on cables and so I'm just
trying to yeah yeah there's there's a lot of other things that are coming in so I trying to break it down into little
confuses so that I can I can gradually and then that's why I'm spreading it out I'm not trying to you know you have to
go in burst you do a bit of this and then I say okay I need to take a break I'm going to look through my telescope
and enjoy the beautiful night sky and just relax and then you can make the
darks and the flats to the another day before exactly or absolutely I think the
same I I prefer um keep uh keep wake up and make more
lights and when I my my brain is near to turn off
right now because I'm really tired uh I stopped to take lights I say okay
anymore bye bye and go to sleep and tomorrow I'll I'll make the the darks
the maybe you know that the darks you prefer sometimes make the darks with the
same temperature yes I will say that but if you don't disassemble the Eureka man
sometimes maybe you know that the ride is not coming or you know if
you have the the equipment side out door and without Observatory
um you can still for example uh two weeks ago um I'm the last thing that I made before
sleep again like Maxi from my bed with my cell phone working with my uh
remotely working with the cell phone over the computer outside was start to
take that I slipped it's something that yes no I only I went
to the telescope I put the cover I became with my pajamas a crazy man in
the balcony you know yeah I don't know that my neighbors think but
I don't care but yeah and but
I I only I started to make darks
um I put you know 200 no no less but maybe 50 50 darts with the last uh
there is blah blah and no more problems I'm the the but the floods
is something that you need to make in a great way to make the best flat and is
the is the best thing that you show us a camera because it's something like you
say come on the screen you you are right yeah excellent excellent oh that's uh yeah
that's that's good feedback and we have of course on on Fridays we have the uh
astrophotography start has a lot of great programs so yeah we have a whole
uh we have a mini network of programs so we got that second so I I will repeat
some of this of course uh because you know there's there's a lot of good
things you cannot uh repeat some of this enough uh there there's always little
refinements and the improvements as we go along this journey and um and uh I'm
I'm very happy to uh yeah to at least come this far but uh but a long ways to go I've just uh scratched the surface um
but um again uh I wanna I wanna compile more so that we we have some really nice
tutorials for uh for people to really give them a good introduction
as they as they go on the journey so yeah yeah
that's cool thanks guys thanks uh great great to be with you
yeah great all right thank you well
um anything else that you uh Maxi or Caesar do you like to wrap what wrap up
uh maybe I I I I found some when Adrian was talking about the the sunrise
pictures I found a a pictures that I take
um the last year a holiday that we went with my fiance to a Santa Clara Del Mar
besides of Mariel Plata the Atlantic Ocean
and let me show the screens if okay wait second
um okay now this is it doesn't the picture
uh here here's some pictures of the Moon and I awake
I wake up with hell because this this morning we come back to our house so no
what happened here well the moon I was taking but it was without Focus like
yeah this is not the sun yeah no no no no no the other place uh well this is
come out a I was trying to to take pictures when
the Sun goes out but you know in the moment that it comes in this place a
very green above the ocean I see in some pictures that it takes a a little
seconds it's like a it is not Orange it's a green it's like a sun green for
example but well this is the one I started I was taking pictures and
well this was Elden was talking about here we have a some smoke that comes
from the the farm area so you can see in the sun some clouds but this is not
Cloud this is smoke for the fire for Fires for fires in in
exactly in the center of the country and
this is what the Sun the sunrise I was trying because I was very newbie taking
pictures and and I'm still new with taking pictures
and then you well there's some here nice
waves yeah the the coast of of province of Buenos
Aires is very flat and and it's it's uh
it's like maybe maybe you know called North Carolina Beach
yeah extensions extends extend this and see you know and it's called weather all
water cold weather and summer is hot but not the weather is is completely cold we
suffer uh but no we suffer maybe well we like to suffer because I don't know we
call it bleach for
but you know um yeah we like to freeze with the water of
our our sea yes
you turn you turn by on it when you and people say hold this with the water
great great come on we are
white in a big way yeah yeah you know [Laughter]
that was funny so well this is some uh that's of a dust
in the the lens but here's the the Sun
the smoke here was a almost uh two weeks you know I I was grabbed my
equipment my little equipment to have a take pictures one night but
uh every night it was very very smoke
so this is when the Sun goes out with you know with the smoke it continues to
shine in the Sun so that's why Adrian said they they have to to be careful
because this is very you know in this case I
don't know if I I was seeing in in the in the lens of the camera
so basically I was thinking pictures take pictures and that's it the sun goes
up and we start to come back to Chi we go and the holidays went out and
continue to their life so no that's it I I was want to show you
these pictures yes yeah I mean not too often you get the sunrise I guess
that was uh no it was you know here it's very difficult to take pictures with the
sound it goes down because we have the farm but uh you we still have some
altitude but we don't have any ocean like the Pacific because we have the
mountains so we can see in the East when the sun go comes up but
you have to wake up very early yeah no you're right
yep that's uh nice pictures love it thank you I love it that's the sunrise
wonderful well gentlemen I think it's uh some
people have already in the audience have already started to go to sleep okay but then we have other people watching
everywhere it's early you know so it's not late yeah it's Saturday in the United States too yes yeah we have we
are near to 3 A.M yeah yeah that's right what time do you have to
wake up Caesar to go to work uh I I wake up at uh
7 00 a.m because I I'm encourage my my kid to school
he's near to 15 years old but he liked to go with the father in the car you
know you are only that's cool yes I I really I I feel because my kids have 21
yeah sorry it's only 24 years old yeah 21 the the girl and I have my my kid a
real kid is a teenager too it's 14 years old and I'm I'm happy that he told me
papa telling me to the school you know okay yes yes those teenagers like hey uh yeah
parents around you know yes and it's a particular year and the new generations
like like uh look at my my my youngest kids is something they say come on well
okay no problem um I started with this and tomorrow I
need to talk we can because we are importing you know you remember the the
access 100 with the max that yes it will uh a sensation in Argentina
um we are trying to get more telescope for the end of the year
um yeah um and I know I know that but when it comes
sure yes yes was a a really different year this year yeah but uh yes and I
need to contact a lot of people that started with the ex's 100 uh the LA in the last week in the last
weeks and tomorrow I have a lot of works okay yeah
okay yeah I don't know how I can make this
but I don't know drink a lot of coffee is very strong sometimes mate maybe it's
the strongest of the coffee but come on you see yes it was pretty strong it was
strong yeah it is very well but but I come on I use a cup of of coffee
normally when I yeah tomorrow I'll bring coffee because I make a one liter coffee
put coffee with the sherwa come on yes
this is illegal
no no do it and you know it's very yes
another thing I I I I I drank this because in the University I use this
coffee coffee with the mate I know you when I studied something of in the
University
yes you can use uh um but I think that the mate actually the mate is a strong
stronger yes I I also feel that or or the same the
same because have the same I guess you could have really extra strong coffee but the the mate has uh it's definitely
stimulating that's for sure yes sure I I think that is equal because I I use
normally I'm starting uh with my cousin that is he's uh my cousin in love this
is ah yeah is
like a dry plant similar to the tea plant
is similar and when you put it with a hot water not a boiler so it is it has
to be hot because it's boiling the the Sherba it doesn't
taste yes enough and flavor and drinks so you're burning you're
burning the mate if you use um so and another people drink mate with
milk you know it is [Laughter]
horrible yes I don't like it I don't like it no some
people only only water without sugar only water I I have my my my in
law because my my um actually my English teacher is an
American that lived here okay he born in Texas and when he have a Randy is his
name when he had uh 20 years old he moved to New York and actually it's fun
because of course that we we make the lessons uh one lesson a week
um both drinking mate and he is more um my my cousin Valeria uh he she ring
it's his her wife my cousin malaria he
told me um Randy told me that
yes I know in my family there yes um he's more uh perfectionist he's a
he really make a better matters than me and he's American and he's a it's a fan
of of uh this is I say it's yeah it's it's real yeah
and look at it online right now it is uh it was Dr they were drinking it in
pre-columbian times this is yeah absolutely it is ancient because this is
an ancient drink an ancient drink yes yes this is yeah and then uh maybe maybe
too many people things is from the the Gaucho culture okay
before uh our independence and that time the middle of the 29th Century but uh
it's a from all the the region from Argentina Uruguay yes yes
um in everywhere they take
um you know with different types and and
also there is a drink like
and here is in the summer it's good for
the Summer Sun School no thank you
for me so if I come down to Argentina you guys
will show me how to drink mate yes of course you know you prepare it
you know great it's like in the British area they drink tea we drink mate
at the afternoon at the morning no we drink nothing but but we we drink the
same the the three things coffee tea and mate for me yeah yes
maybe at five o'clock like English people argentinians bring tea normally
we bring tea coffee I matter of course that that is the more thing that is we prepare is
ECC and it's nice to it's more social and also it's like when you are alone
you prepare a mate you know it's like a company but in sorry with another person yes
I feel weak you know Caesar and Maxie here it's it's after 3 A.M for these
guys okay so and I've been from the uh well 11 p.m
and maybe the 8 00 p.m and well with all of you and
I can continue but yes I need to go to sleep yeah it's one
o'clock in the morning here Cameron it's it's earliest for him he's yeah 11
o'clock I think right you know I saw the 11 o'clock yeah you will send the the
20th of July in the anniversary of the yes yeah it will be the the GSP
um we like to talk uh about that day but here in Argentina
we call in the in this day the Friendship Day is
we maybe we said that we can talk about that history absolutely and some yeah
kind of things because something Maxi that is great that the
the guy that that create the the Friendship Day in Argentina
and and this he made the the Friendship
Day about the moon land because he think he thought in the how
friendship had they they have in the in the in the
Landing you know for all the humanity exactly and and something that is is
great that this guy was a friend of my father-in-law you know really wow
yes because he was a rotary club member ah yes yes in my in my family in law we
we asked me too all members of the different rotary clubs and Buenos Aires
actually I'm not because but I was a rotarak member for this for young people
not me actually um and this guy was a rotary Rotary Club
member you know that rotary rotary is it's from United is this him uh Enrique
Ernesto yes okay yes Argentinian dentist
s yes
yeah he was from the same Club from my uh my father-in-law jorgeous yeah
the same for the same Rotary Club yeah oh wow you wrote a thousand letters
every year every year the the 20th of July
yeah obviously for the astronomers and the amateurs we remember obviously the
the moon landing but also we remember this day and we well because
of the pandemic the last year we couldn't but every 20th of July we
[Music] um um yes it's impossible to get a chair in a
restaurant because everywhere is like oh absolutely yes International is it it's
like it's impossible because friendship in Argentina is like uh
it's a big deal it's a really serious thing yes it's incredible yeah well that's great it should be it should be a
serious thing yeah right okay well that's gotta make uh the friendliest
countries in the world that's great yeah it's wonderful it's right all right well
um I think we're going to wrap it up folks I want to say to the audience thank you very much thanks for watching
from around the world and uh I want to thank you uh yeah the uh the uh we're
kind of like the late night crew here so and and Caesar and Maxie of course the latest night but Cameron's always there
with us too so um our next uh events uh actually uh
tomorrow we have um uh you know Annie Scarborough from uh
explore Alliance she's going to talk a little bit about uh explore Alliance membership and uh you know things going
on with uh ambassadors and such uh we've got uh Kent Martz and first light
Chronicles episode 44 and then cam astronomy uh his eighth episode so
um Cameron thank you very much uh and um we'll see everybody
in a few hours I guess yes yes have a good rest you guys have a good
day thank you very much Caesar and Max
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thank you [Music]
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well okay yeah good night good night good night good night Cameroon
we'll see you guys thanks guys thanks a lot excellent tsp excellent I love it
yeah excellent really really like sounds like see what I know it is
all right thanks guys bye-bye