Global Star Party 109

Transcript:

6:00 p.m..Scott Roberts- Introduces David Levy
well not sure well see it she's just like
6:02 p.m..David Levy – Intro and Poetry
super excited now she wanted originally Brazil to win you know but there's really got knocked out very very soon
6:10 p.m..The Astronomical League with John Goss
and I said well now you have to root you have to root for at least one American team okay right
6:20 p.m..David Eicher - “Dave’s Exotic Deep Sky Objects”
exactly but also Brazil lost the game against Croatia in
penalties it was a really tough game I I saw it
but it's that is football
6:35 p.m..Maxi Falieres - Astrophotography to the Max
football you can strike to the to the to the gold
but the if the ball doesn't get in it doesn't go so it's it's like that but
6:50 p.m..Adrian Bradley - "Chasing Dark Skies"
and you have a 90 minutes and of course it's it's per day the more time but and
then the penalties and we we suffer uh last Friday with a Netherlands there was
7:05 p.m..Nicolas Arias - Hammertime with Nico
a a really Battlefield right I don't know if it's maybe you can sow
it but there was a it was a really tough game and we started to win two for zero
7:25 p.m..Dawn Davies - Astronomy Outreach in Chile
and then they pair the score two and two we go to them more
hey extended time and then to the penal season and then we pass so
I three hours of suffering three hours
7:40 p.m..Ten Minute Break
yeah all that suffering though Maxie I mean you would you know I mean you're
7:50 p.m..Feature 30 minutes
supposed to watch a game for the enjoyment of the sport right I mean of course of course but but we are we are
in the world cup so uh is I I can't even
imagine of course I'm in my home watching on TV they are in the another place on the planet but I can even
8:05 p.m..Marcelo Souza - Astronomy Outreach in Brazil
imagine that people that travel to there to get the tickets to get the place to
be oh yeah yeah all that that's a lot of money that's true exactly and you know
we are the Argentina we have some struggles with the economy but anyway they go there it doesn't matter right
8:25 p.m..Cesar Brollo - Cesar’s Universe
some people and that's I think some kind of passion and some kind of Madness but
anyway that's football that's why I love for that well
8:45 p.m..Apollo 17 50th
you know I knew that I would have to talk to you about football today um because uh you know certainly the
great win you know and Messi uh made a great uh goal but the the other guy uh
9:00 p.m..Franck Marchis, Unistellar’s co-founder and senior astronomer at SETI.
and I forget his name yeah yeah made two goals so that that's great you know yeah
that that that guy Juliana is we call it
here the spider because the spiders he catch the ball like a spider in the web
and he started to play in my favorite team here in Argentina in there plates
so now he's he's playing in I think in in Manchester City and now it's a really
good really really good player and also he's playing between
his kind of brother in the in the team because oh really not not brother in
blood but they started in River play playing together and they stunned each
other how to play so that's really really good and of course
brothers and Global World Cup and star party that's right
we had to do some kind of another social media talk about football
to the show but you know oh it wasn't easy you know
I hope maybe one day you know one day
I uh uh you know I am I'm I'm proud to say it I uh helped
um uh a family um with their issues of a young boy that
had gotten leukemia and he went to Spain and was able to get a bone marrow
transplant this whole story went on for a long time it's still going on now but uh the boy got his bone
marrow transplant and was cured of leukemia but before he got it nese came to yeah I
know this boy uh came to his hospital room and uh gave him encouragement so
that was really cool you know Messi some people they don't like how he said but I
I see it that he's very humble I would I would agree with that even with the
little boys because they
YouTube you can find where they are these little boys even they go into the
field that is not okay and they he's signed the the t-shirts and if it's a a
little more crime because he wants to see it uh and the security go it away
ER because no no come here I want to I want to do this yeah
Nobody Does that of course you have that security that's that's that's their job
but yeah yeah yeah even that yeah it's good it's a good guy
he's a good guy all right so um welcome to all of you that are uh
listening in and uh checking in for 109th Global star party uh this is our
final uh Star Party of the year uh we'll resume our schedule in 2023 but I wanted
to let you know that this is this is where we're at right now and um uh let's
get uh let's kick this thing off here we go foreign
ERS seem to have revealed a puzzling detail in the way Dark Matter behaves
they found small dense concentrations in dark matter that bend and magnify light
much more strongly than expected dark matter is a mysterious invisible
substance that makes up the bulk of a galaxy the gravitational pull exerted by
dark matter is thought to tie galaxies together throughout the Universe there is so much regular matter and dark
matter concentrated in massive Galaxy clusters that the gravity magnifies and
warps light from distant background objects we call this effect gravitational lensing we can map where
the dark matter is in Galaxy clusters by observing how the light bends gravitational lensing distorts the
appearance of background galaxies into deformed shapes and elongated arcs pictures of lensing Galaxy clusters are
filled with the smeared images of remote background galaxies the higher the concentration of dark
matter in a galaxy cluster the more dramatic is light bending power is smaller clumps of Dark Matter associated
with individual galaxies in the Galaxy cluster create more distortions
in some sense the Galaxy cluster acts as a large lens that has many smaller
lenses embedded inside of it but strangely a storm has found that
three Galaxy clusters used in their study had a concentrations of dark matter that are so massive that the
lensing effects they produce are 10 times stronger than originally expected
holes Crisp Images coupled with observations from the very large telescope in Chile helped astronomers
produce a more accurate Dark Matter map by measuring the lensing distortions
astronomers could trace out the amount and distribution of dark matter
this recent study could signal a gap in our current understanding of the nature of dark matter in its properties it
shows us that there's clearly a missing feature of the real universe that we simply are not capturing in our current
theoretical models with studies like this astronomers look forward to continuing to pin down the Intriguing
nature of dark matter to better understand the secrets of Our Mysterious Universe
foreign [Music]
foreign [Music]
this is the 109th Global star party thank you all for tuning in and watching
our program as I mentioned earlier if you're watching um this is the last Global Star Party of
the year we'll take a break through the holidays and then we're going to come back in January with a whole new series
of global star parties uh we have a incredible lineup of
speakers um and we will be introducing uh many
people that uh uh that have not been on global star party at all and and some of
them that I haven't been on for a while so uh it's it's great to uh it's great
to have you on of course the theme of this particular Global star party is gravitation and Harold Locke watching on
YouTube says this is a heavy topic Scott I can't argue Okay so
anyways I I do want to thank all of you who have watched and shared and uh
um you know told your friends about um a global star party uh since we
started Global star party uh we have this obviously is our 109th
episode um we uh um you know we've been able to
successfully bring this uh Star Party experience to people that were in lockdown over covid
um we learned over the years of course over the last couple of years how many people were unable to go to uh star
parties or the other amateur astronomers go to um you know because of various reasons
whether they were taking care of the parent at home or they were just unable
to get out or they were too remote uh that kind of thing and the program's
been seen around the world so it's been a real honor to share this time in this space with
with all the people who regularly contribute to Global star party and um
uh you know to uh just you know to be on with all of you and the audience some of
you in the audience have actually participated in global star party as well and so that makes it just doubly
cool I think um but uh I will get started uh with my
dear friend uh David Levy who uh uh who
will give us words of wisdom and uh we'll
share poetry with us as he always does on global Star Party David thanks very
much thank you thank you Scott and welcome everybody to the um
to the 109th Global start party and after that we'll have to hold our breaths till early 2023 please God let
that be a better year for me than his last one was but
um before I do my quotation I'd like to say the two of us here have come up with
um with books for children and since this is the holiday time it's time to buy
books for children David eicher and Mike buckets have come up with a book child's introduction to space travel and
going to the moon and going into orbit and going into space leaving the planet
and uh and then as Adrian is doing so beautifully there
showing a copy of the book that I have done called uh Clipper Cosmos and children finding
the Eureka moment here is the cover of the book and Scott I sent a picture of
it to you yesterday or the day before oh good good and um anyway it uh has original art by
Wendy's sister Joan Ellen Rosenthal and uh it's we've got the idea to do this
book when when I walked into uh the
um study one day and there was Wendy reading the original Clipper which I had
written when I was 10 years old and uh I looked at her and she really barely
looked up she knew I was coming in and she said this is adorable
this is the best book you've ever written I said that's the first book I ever wrote and she says yeah and all the
other books were downhill from there but anyway she said that I wanted to write a second edition of Clipper and
put some astronomy into it and so I called David eicher and he said
I don't know any way you can get a dog into astronomy and uh so that took care of that one but
anyway after several years the book is here if you'd like to order it it's not
yet on Amazonian Amazon but it is available from this email address Ron J
Kramer r-o-n-j-k-r-a-m-e-r Ron jcramer gmail.com
cost twenty dollars plus a little bit for shipping and uh
uh or you could wait till uh till I get to your town and do a book signing but I
don't know when that's going to be for my quotation tonight it's not really going to be a poem
but we're talking about gravitation and Mr gravitation himself was Albert
Einstein and he came up in 1905 with a special theory of relativity
and then he came out in 1917 with the general theory of relativity
and um he was really looking for ways to uh to
show that it really worked but his new theory of gravitation worked there was the eclipse of the Sun
and then there was before that uh evidence that the planet Mercury
at um the perihelion procession of Mercury's orbit could be explained through general
relativity when he realized and understood that I mean he was as excited as he's ever been
in his entire life so my quote is two sentences when Abraham passes beautiful
biography subtle is the Lord and on Einstein's discovery that the
perihelion procession of mercury is orbit could be explained through general relativity
hey Israel this discovery was I Believe by far the strongest emotional experience in
Einstein's scientific life perhaps in all his life
make sentences nature had spoken to him thank you Scott and back to you thank
you very much David that's great okay so um we will uh come back to
more astronomy here in a second but I do want to talk a little bit about
the people that are going to be on this program tonight aside from David
um and uh David I again I want to thank you for being on all these programs you've done
a Monumental job but I also want to take my hat off to you for all the other live streams that you've done all the other
meetings that you've attended uh there's uh I don't know of anyone more dedicated
to this kind of thing than than you are with all the stuff that you do I I would
believe that you probably do four or five uh such uh live streams for various
clubs and stuff like that probably every week you know so it's just uh it's really amazing and um you know the whole
Community owes a huge thank you thank you so much Scotty
um I have to say that officially I know nothing about astronomy I am a total
doofus when it comes to astronomy I've never taken a course in astronomy but if I could wave my hat just a little
bit I do not know of anyone in the world who is more passionate about observing the
night sky with I and with a telescope as I am I've tried to find people but I
can't yet and I'd like to find someone who is more so than I anyway back to you Scott and
thank you well you know what David I'm going to throw a name out there and if this gentleman ever watches
um from the University lobra astronomers a gentleman named Jim Forrester
um I may introduce you to him someday because he's passionate about visual
astronomy and um he and his friend Nathan Murphy that I go to Okie text
with every year um anyone turns on any light faint or
whatever they're on them like a hawk turn that light off
you know the Cry of the visual astronomer trying to night adapt turn
that light off so I'll let him know I just I told him I told them to you
um some visual astronomers some of the some of the old time clubs are long visual astronomers and they they would
go out with you in a heartbeat No cameras none of these flashlights they
they want to see the night sky with their eyes and the big old 30 inch
telescopes and that's that's how they operate so there are some we just have
to they're they're scattered about um all over the globe
okay all right so let's um let's talk a little bit about our uh speakers tonight
uh uh representing the astronomical legal be John Goss uh John uh has been
with the league for many many years uh you know I have a tough time remembering
being around the astronomical League and John not being there he's also a past president so we're very honored to have
him on tonight um David eicher also just incredible uh
contributions uh to amateur astronomy uh he's often here on global Star Party
um we got to learn about his Universe of minerals and crystals and uh we got to
learn um about uh many aspects uh galaxies and
now we're into his exotic deep Sky objects so we're really having a great time with David
being on this program uh you know and uh he is uh he's also heading up uh you
know what is considered to be you know maybe the Pinnacle of astronomy Outreach
programs which is the starmus event and uh so it was a real honor to be out with him in Yerevan this year uh Maxi
filari's uh is the can-do astrophotographer when we first met
Maxie uh he had told me torn apart a smartphone uh tore off a lens and just
used the sensor to make his astrophotos you know so this is a guy that made a
stunning deep sky astrophotography and planetary photography with the most modest of equipment so uh
there should be an Oscar for people like that and Maxine certainly deserves one he'll be on
Adrian Bradley has uh has evolved through this program
and has learned about the night sky through his uh nightscapes and he's
introducing a new name for his program called chasing Dark Skies
uh Nicholas Arias uh again another guy who uses modest equipment
um showed us how to make uh deep Sky Images using a dobsonian with no drives
okay if you can imagine that Don Davies who's from uh Texas uh has
been to many a Texas Star Party also very involved in astronomy Outreach
has now gone to Chile and she's going to broadcast live from one of the giant observatories at ctio so I'm really
excited to you know hopefully that all comes off okay but she says it will so I
believe her so and then we'll take a little break and then we're going to come back with Frasier Kane from
Universe today if you haven't been to universetoday.com you definitely need to go there and subscribe to that news
Outlet which is really fantastic uh Marcelo Souza from Brazil uh also
another giant uh in the Americas for astronomy Outreach is about to conduct
the 15th imaa event which attracts hundreds or thousands of people really
fantastic Cesar brolo from Optus Optical Sirocco is going to be sharing uh his
passion for southern Southern skies and then we'll have a you know this is the
50th this is the end of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions and
we're currently in uh what was 50 years ago uh you know in the Apollo 17 Mission
itself and so we've got a couple of very nice videos about that
um uh and then Frank marches is a Saudi astronomer and uh he is a unistellers
co-founder this is a telescope uh that um uh you know
is largely automatic and will find objects for you but it makes images it's
really a slick device and I'm proud to say that explore scientific is now the
U.S distributor for for this uh this product actually the distributor for the
Americas as well so anyways uh we've got a great lineup and we're going next to
John Goss from the astronomical League which is growing Leaps and Bounds
through uh the covid experience and um uh and now they are they're getting
ready for their next Alcon event which will happen down in Louisiana and this
Friday they're going to have their next astronomical League live here we go John oh okay thank you man it's Santa Claus
yeah well you'll see what I'm talking about here in a minute or two
um but yeah I think thank you for that introduction and Alcon is coming up and I see Mr ikers up there on my screen
right there and I I think he's supposed to be there if things work out okay great great and uh it it'll be a good time
it'll be in uh Baton Rouge in Baton Rouge in July
now I won't go I won't say everything that people have told me about this but it'll be an interesting event I I was
born not too far from there in July so I I know what it's like but anyway uh
enough of this I like I like to jump in something here and see what I can get going
um see what I can do
yes okay uh this Friday in two days from now
we'll have the next astronomical League live event with Bob King and he'll be talking a lot about
um the the current solar cycle in the upcoming solar Max I think it's gonna be
pretty exciting interesting talk I I've been looking at the sun a lot lately too right now over the past uh eight weeks
because I'm working on the astronomical League hydrogen Alpha program and that requires an a bunch of observing the sun
with a special hydrogen Alpha scope but this Friday night uh Bob King will be on
there talking about it and you'll be able to meet some of the officers of the astronomical League and see what what it's all about
let's start out by again talking about the um solar programs and how important it is
to make sure if you do look to the Sun to have the correct uh proper safe filters placed on the front part of your
telescope over the aperture um you know the sun is pretty darn bright people don't don't really think about
how bright the sun is to think oh the moon full Moon's pretty bright and the sun's just a bunch of times brighter
you'll go well yeah but the sun is like 400 000 times brighter than a full moon
so you know you can imagine if you look at through a telescope that's not properly filtered it would just take a
split second to do permanent damage to your eyes I I I I feel like a parent every other
week when I when I when I say this but it's all true okay what we like to do
the reason why I'm here is because we um we offer three questions and every
meeting uh for the chance to win a door prize and right now I'd like to discuss
reveal last meetings answers which was from June or June December 6th first
question uh who discovered the four main moons of Jupiter in 1610 well I think a lot of us
know it's just I think they're called the Galilean moons for a reason and uh answers uh Mr
Galileo himself uh second question
with stars closest to the Sun um you know I suppose you could say a few things on this but I think the
actual distance winner is a Proxima Centauri a little little over four four light years away then you got Alpha
Centauri and His companion as well after that number three
last year I think this last year or maybe it was the year before you know with all this this covid stuff and not meeting I lose
track of time pretty easily but I think last year was the first year the astronomically offered a new observing
award and that was uh um mainly direct or directed towards adult women and it's
called the um the williamina Fleming Imaging award so yeah you might want to
look into that and see what that offers for you correct answers from last uh last last
strawberry John Williams Joss uh Kovash Andrew corgio Daniel Higgins and Rich
kraling so thank thank you all for for participating on that and we'd like to
see uh some some new names on there because I do recognize a few of those names on there already
questions for this week do things differently Scott doesn't know this
I like surprises yeah yeah it's a it's kind of an interesting
surprise here but we're gonna do three questions again and if you know the answers uh write them down and send them
to secretary at astrowleague.org oh um so be sure to do that Secretariat
astrowleague.org so we're going to start here in just a moment uh I gotta go next slide
okay we're gonna do a little poem
cool and this and this was something that Genevieve and I put together a number of years ago
we've been making changes as time goes on to it but I like to to do something with that right now
uh called The Night of the solstice I can kind of imagine how this is going to go
but uh we're gonna have three questions embedded in this and I want you all to pay attention because to get the answers
right you got to pay attention so let's start yeah oh before I start
I'm sorry I have been accused when I start reading this I sound like Bullwinkle moose so I'll try not I'll
try not to do it really yeah I love Bullwinkle yeah if you're lucky yeah it
was the night of the solstice but I'll try to do it sorry I'm trying to be serious sorry I
see you all laughing I see you all laughing okay here we go the night is
the night of the Soul it was the night of the solstice and all through the town stargazers kept looking
up none wearing a frown their stockings were hung by the chimneys with care in hopes that new telescopes soon would be
there their families were nestled at home and warm beds while visions of Starfield Skies danced in their hits
my friend Anna parka and I and my world cup knew an observing sight not shown on
any matter in the trunk of my car we made such a clatter of loading telescopes and
Technical chatter a way to darker Skies we flew like a flash avoiding small animals we made our Mad Dash
pay attention now pay attention to what I'm saying a moon low in the East shown two days
till noon and the crispy era gave us no hint of Dew but what in our finer scope should
clearly appear that a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer
I think this is all based on a true story too foreign
question one you have the scene
and I'm not I'm not going to describe it too closely because she should look at it so why is this scene incorrect
said a the moon should not be full but a warning Crescent instead
B A Reindeer is missing see it is simply silly to think that
Santa is authorized to Pilot the ISS as a slang now one of those is clearly correct that
the others okay so remember write this down
let's continue it carried a driver so Lively and jolly we thought for a moment so much for fall
we're wrapping the gym and it's just reindeer they came and he whistled and shouted and called him by name
now Draco not Virgo and illegal and Taurus on Lyra on Hydra on Libra and corvus to the top of the hill they
followed his call now dash away Dash away Dash away all ho ho ho
awesome Guided by a red light they passes over High while Sirius was shining far south
in the sky so onto the hilltop the reindeer they flew with a sleigh full of gadgets and
eyepieces too okay question two hope you've been paying attention
if you have been good and I mean really good this year Santa brought a low power wide
field super eyepiece of these three choices what was its most likely focal length
remember low power wide field super eyepiece and remember only if you've
been very very good a a 10 millimeter hoygens
a 4.5 millimeter orthoscopic with a two power Barlow
or a 25 millimeter nitrogen Purge waterproof super duper fully coated
eyepiece so which of those three babies would this be
remember you have to be very good let's move on
see if we can find question three and with purpose of mind he jumped to the ground then checked in the sleigh to
see what could be found out of his black bag came a very big dog and setting it up was a very big job
decked out and faux fur from his head to his toe he looked straight down his scope and aligned it just so wearing a
red hat black boots and one white glove he then peered up to see what was shining above
a bundle of worn charts he flung on his back he looked like a peddler just opening his pack
uh then went to the scope with a list in his hand to us from William William Herschel toughest of the land
question three final question but it's not the end here just final question
which astronomical League observing program was Santa working on you know he is an honorary member
a carbon Stars B lunar or lunar two
C Herschel 400 or possibly the Herschel 2. one of those three
Santa's a busy guy too he spoke out a word but went straight to
his word and turning with a jerk and raising his bare thumb he gave us a sign then he was
letting us know that the seeing was fine
his gear was all loaded with a wink of an eye and he sprang to the sleigh and flew off in the sky but we heard him
explain as he drove out of sight happy viewing to all and to all a clear
night so you got your three questions wonderful you had to pay attention to
get the answers thank you thank you that's awesome that is awesome thank you
so much John well one final note see the question is do is is not do I believe in Santa but
it is does Santa believe in me now let's talk about those why you feel
the eyepieces okay that's what I got wonderful for
putting it up with that that was wonderful nowhere else but Global star party so
this is great this is great thank you so much thank you thank you
um okay uh well it's uh it is time I wish I had a drum roll and I normally do
have a drum roll but instead I'm going to turn on uh turn it turn it over to a drummer and that is Mr David eicher from
astronomy magazine he's here with us tonight thank you for coming on David
thank you very much you know what's nice about being a drummer you get to hang around with musicians yes you do you
know what you do if you see a drummer on your porch no pizza
there there are a lot of drummer jokes I won't go home India anymore but uh I
will share my screen and share another interesting object um in surveying the sky
and I'm hoping you can see the right thing there and yes we can
we're not talking about cygnus X1 once again but I'll jump right ahead to
remember our old friend George a bell who at UCLA who was a great extra
Galactic astronomer and in 1958 he compiled one of his famous lists the
Abel cluster catalog of Galaxy clusters he also did a lot of work on planetary
nebulae as well it was extended by Abel and collaborators later on and eventually it
contained more than 4 000 clusters of galaxies so a lot of these of course
because bright clusters of galaxies were known uh much earlier for the most part
of course A lot of these are very faint and they're somewhat distant so now we're kind of working our way down from
the vicinity of the north galact of the of the north Celestial Pole here and we come to Abel 2256 which is
an interesting cluster uh it's a rich group of galaxies lying in Ursa Minor
there are more than 500 galaxies in this cluster and it's about 800 million light
years away so it's moderately distant not nearly as distant as a lot of Galaxy
clusters that are now known of course it's about 10 million light years across
so it's about the same diameter as our local group of galaxies which contains
about 55 galaxies and maybe as many as a hundred our local group because we don't
uh we can't maybe can't see all of the dwarfs that outnumber other types of
course in a galaxy cluster so you can see how rich this is it it contains from
5 to 10 times as many galaxies as we have in our little uh group The Local
group of galaxies as Edwin Hubble named it so cleverly so this is a Galaxy
cluster that is a challenge if you want you know if you're tired of shooting the Orion Nebula for the
312th time that there are a lot of objects out there like the like this
Abel cluster that you can go after um and it's a bit of a challenge because
the brightest Galaxy in this cluster is a magnitude 15 point four wow and the
second brightest member is ugc uh 10 7 26. which is considerably fainter as
well overall the cluster spans uh um about 140 arc minutes so it's fairly
large on the sky but most of those galaxies are are within a fairly
condensed Central core as is the case with a lot of such Galaxy clusters this one has been
studied a good bit in the X-ray part of the Spectrum by Chandra and and a number of other instruments like xmm and it's
notable because it has three x-ray emitting subclusters which is not unusual for a cluster like this aside
from the main cluster there's a remnant of an older merger um within this cluster and also a
brighter bullet-like system of in-falling gas that is somewhat puzzling to astronomers and is currently the
subject of some research going on with some groups so I've begun
excuse me I've begun to lift a few of these wonderful um
little pieces of star maps that you can see from Ron stoy one of the nicest
recent Star Maps star atlases that is out there that's not enormously huge but
it's incredibly detailed is this really really wonderful interstellarum deep Sky
Atlas that was published in 2015 by Ron stoyan in Germany and it's just a real
treasure aside from a couple of others the Millennium star Atlas and the great
star allies which are even larger and more detailed but this one is really fairly Compact and is fantastically
loaded with you know obscure deep Sky objects so I would recommend getting your hands on this
Atlas if you can but here you can see the Abel 2256 and how large it is and
and there are a number of other interesting deep Sky objects in the region here NGC 6217 is the brightest
one in the area here of Ursa Minor which is probably not necessarily a region of
the sky that you're looking at a whole lot but there's some interesting stuff here um and to jump ahead are PAL in Austria
Bernhard hubel um here's his shot of the sort of the central part and this is the majority of
Abel 2256 and you can see the two brightest uh which are CD galaxies in
the center of the cluster there the two that I mentioned and then a lot of fader galaxies around it many of the things in
this field are our galaxies aside from the bright Milky Way foreground stars of
course that have diffraction spikes so that you can see there are a lot of galaxies in this field even in a
relatively deep amateur Astro image of the field
there's also this finder chart that is out there on the internet for Abel 2256
this is by meno Jansen who is a Dutch Astro imager and can you imagine the
time to go in there and label all these galaxies wow holy cow that are in the central core of Abel 2256 so this is
just really a suggestion if you've never looked at this if you have a large telescope or imaged it if you have a
moderate or large telescope it's an interesting one of many dozens of
interesting Galaxy clusters that nobody really ever looks at or takes images of
very few people and you can see how many galaxies are in this field of a couple
of degrees across it's a very rich but overlooked cluster
so that's another suggestion of a weird and somewhat exotic deep Sky object and again I want to pay he I think he left
us here for the evening already but I'll pay uh homage again to Dr David Levy uh
for writing the introduction to the first issue of our uh 50th anniversary year is everything you want to know
about comets and David wrote a very nice introductory two-page spread to this
issue that's out there now that talks about uh all the major aspects about comets which we also like to observe
from time to time as well and thanks to David for mentioning our book Michael's
book and my book on on a child's introduction to space exploration which is out there as well from Black Dog and
Leventhal Publishers so that's it Scott from me tonight another tip to an
unusual kind of object and and a you know heads up that there are many many
faint and interesting and Galaxy clusters out there that basically nobody's looking at so there's a
challenge to the Astro imagers that's right that's right and it would be really cool to start to see a bunch of
astrophotographers take on that challenge and learn how to uh well a lot
of a lot of them already know how to shoot deep you know it's just uh you know going after something that's a
little bit more unusual and it would just be great to see it Grace the pages of astronomy magazine so it will be a
challenge because there are a lot of astrophotographers who gather their data under what they say or
portal 7 Skies their Skies may be actually worse if they were to pull this meter out but that intimidates them from
going after 15th magnitude objects but we know that the key to astrophotography
isn't necessarily uh uh your Sky quality so much is time we
get when you bring on Jason gwenzel or some of the other top astrophotographers Gary Palmer and the ones that you know
um David I almost called you David there's only one David here's David that's okay and you can include yourself
Adrian in that class of of really good Astro imagers too by the way I appreciate that like I said I keep not
sending you data and I got to send it to you but um the key is what we all know is that it's time that matters not so
much your Sky you need a clear sky but you have to accumulate this data over
time and that's when all of these smaller things show up and you know what we have
or you know what we do as astrophotographers we kind of constantly
shoot some of the same things because we see results after a couple of hours so
we keep going this is something you this is something we're not going to see much result until we get to that 30th hour
and then you're gonna start showing up so so hopefully uh other astrophotographers on
the um you know they're watching challenge accepted and you know I really like the series that you're putting on
it's um I try to take note send it to a few folks uh the visual
astronomers try to go after it in Dark Skies so I've sent the last one and
there were there were some uh discussion over it so it's uh so it's great definitely keep going
um I appreciate it and I know everyone watching um appreciates these Little Gems that
you're that you're sharing with us well thanks Adrian and thanks for the good words and and keep up the great Astro
Imaging work and and some of these will be not nearly as challenging as you know
the brightest thing in the scene is 15th magnitude either but you you may like this or you may be horrified by it but
I've put together a list of things to think about that are unusual and a little exotic this way that right now at
the moment amounts to 424 objects which I can share one one after the other so
that this may be a good thing or Scott may think oh God almighty um
Scott you know I'm down for it dude you're gonna catalog it and call it the
Iker 424. okay you're gonna put a book out and see you guys to the book and
we're going to call it the icreate of Mind numbing you know traveling yeah
424. oh hi yeah I'll go after one of those as long
as it's in the southern hemisphere well at least it wasn't the NGC right yeah all right okay so up next folks is Maxi
filari's uh Maxie uh we're really happy to have you on the program it's been a
little while uh since you've been on but uh uh you know and we know that you're
jumping up and down with excitement because Argentina won uh the uh FIFA uh event today and uh
uh so you know I can imagine that there's a lot of partying going on in Argentina right now
yeah the Jersey you've wore the jersey he's a player
he's he's actually on the team yeah I I supported him from here but I don't play
football anymore I I can't do it uh but I'm so I'm still supporting my team and
of course it was a really really good game today
Croatia was a a really tough rival but
that's that's a uh the game that you have to do to to
wait to win so now we are going to uh see if we go against a Morocco or France
so friends is really tough we lost in the
last World Cup they kick out Us in the eight final but well
anyway so I'm supporting my team with my teachers of the Air Canada selection so
but anyway I don't want to talk uh too much about football tonight uh
I want to to share what I've been doing in this couple days
but first of all I
I like to share um sorry
let me put this and
these pictures
well um sorry I I don't know if you see this picture
this this screen uh I want to start to to well in this past uh two weekends I
lost some of my really good really good friends uh I lost two dogs from in in my home
they die by natural cause one and another one it was really tough because
we didn't we couldn't save him at time uh but always I will remember them
support me to doing astrophoto in my backyard she was the the guardian of the
telescope because she Every Time I grabbed my equipment outside she was
there sleeping and doing company with me
and also she was she calls a Luna like
moon in English and she passed away last Sunday so for
me it's really tough and the last week weekend
80 days ago I lost this a particular friend he was called
black or negro because he he has a dark
hair on his body that he always he was with me every time
that I do pictures this is a picture of him so I I want to to take these minutes
to get memory for them because it was really really good friends in my life
so okay anyway I was doing some pictures and planetary
pictures in this couple days we have a meeting also in the park or the southern
Sky Park in Chicago a couple days ago uh so I want to
talk about this particularly landscape that we did some with some friends
we went almost a 14 mile 40 kilometers from the south uh actually I think the
screen you're sharing these wonderful pictures on oh sorry sorry
my bad uh yeah we're just seeing your yeah
here we go again okay so yeah if you want if you want to
really quickly bring up your two companions one more time oh sorry again
no yeah we'll get a better let's get a better look at them and then yeah he was
black he was really really fun guy and
you know you can see in his face he always want to give your love he wants
to be with you asking love in your leg every time and okay he he passed away
days 10 days ago and we could couldn't save him I was in
the veteran and in the doctor and we are going to do some surgery but we couldn't
make it because he he passed away and the the another person another dog
for me as a person because it was part of my family it was a
she she was Luna she was the the guardian of the telescope because every time I grabbed
my equipment outside in my backyard she was there to doing companion even if I don't be
there I go inside she was there she was sleeping I was there
you can see yeah and and also well she calls Luna like the
Moon in Spanish and she passed away
she has 13 years uh unfortunately she was really sick and
the the last Sunday she doesn't give too much so she passed
away so this is my little handle to to honor them because it was really
really good friends in my life so what uh continuing with the GSP sorry
uh if I get emotional um okay that's why I wanted you to do it again
because we wanted to make sure we gave your your companions their time
thank you for that thank you for that Journey thank you I appreciate it uh well uh days before these things uh I
went with my friend Ariel Rodriguez he's in the middle I'm here sitting in this literature so we could do this a selfie
that he puts his camera and still waiting for 13 seconds only at is I
think 12 000. and you can see here behind of us is the city of chirikoi and
this blob here is the the well when a size and great buenos size and other
cities but you can see here here the Pleiades a
Mars and Orion Bells Beetlejuice Rego and m42
and it was a really good night it doesn't it wasn't cold nights uh this is
pointing to the South this is the city of 20 single Marshall 25th of May
and this is saladicio but we have been doing observationally and
taking pictures with another cameras you can see hear me a little movement but
you can see some satellites crossing over the sky
and you know here's another one there's a lot and I
think it was a 2 A.M at that time so
and we we get a really good night to to do some pictures so
I did uh I pointed to too many places to to see with my equipment what I can do
so I put a couple pictures to the tarantula nebula in the a gray
magazine cloud and you can see here's the tarantula nebula and the rest of the new velocity
and star clusters there really there's a lot
there's a really good places to to capture it and also I've been doing
and this object let me stretch the screen
uh here this is the The Witcher the witch face like we call it uh this is the original
Star in Orion and you can see that
oh yeah the face of the witch yes
the eye nose the mouth and the laughing laughing at the sky yeah she was
laughing so also I been doing this subject
because I have it in almost four hours maybe three but I have the the light
pollution of chilikoi because it's really low at the North maybe you can reconnect this
oh yeah this is the Andromeda Galaxy
and I was I I really like the the picture and the and the field of view
but I have some gradients I think I wasn't really good with the focus
but anyway like I say I was practicing with this little equipment to do some
extra photo very light outside and
and see how the field of view was and the another object that I was
capturing it was M45 the player this
let me put it more yeah
I think it was almost one hour taking pictures to this place
I had to process this but I didn't like too much the the background you know
when you do astrophotography you start to do you start to be more precisely and when you
don't like something you say now okay it doesn't you you trash it it's a shame that uh
it's I I wasn't like this before but
um but now I I'm getting now that you're good yeah I I'm trying to be good but
that's what you make you good I think I I progress a lot but I had to progress
too much in my um so what I'd be doing also was
planetary pictures uh at the end of November I did this picture of Jupiter I I have a
really good night to do a what is taking I saw there was the gray
response there so I did almost I think very nice 40 minutes of videos to their
rotate them and I have these results also I pointed to Mars because it was
almost in a position and you can see it this is the North
Pole we have 30s machetes Place uh I
think it was a La planitia this place column and I don't remember this area today
so a couple days be more later I pointed to the to Mars again at the same time
and same hour I mean and you can see the this part is oh that's cool it's more a
and back maybe a more more later to be there again so that's how we call we
have the different hours uh with Mars in
the in our days right right um also well I did I like I say we met in
the a southern um a sky park with Armando sandanel to
do some a astronomy reach with everyone that
wants to go to see the sky to see the planet see the moon and it was a really good night because we started with
almost 36 37 Celsius degrees with heat so it
was a really tough afternoon maybe it will be almost uh
[Music] 65 Fahrenheit degrees
it was very warm so I pointed to in this case to the to
the sun with a solar filter I get this picture I was practicing to
to to share with with the social media and
remember to everyone to come with us and we have this is a screenshot from
the space world live you can see the the sunspots here's the same field of view there is
inverted and well he's a Armando sanalee he was
preparing his a refractor and so
the the night was really good because well this is on Focus because I I sent
this picture to a friend but they came to many people they saw the
the Moon the for the first time also it
should be there also Saturn so they went uh with a happy face to their home and
also I say okay if you want to wait you can take pictures of the Moon to to to
show with your friends and save it to you so no problem so they were really
really really happy and to the good news that I want to
share also it was a in the a couple days
ago I re um I received this a particular magazine he
called and because it was the a Percy move was
the the the the the the say of Galilei they say to the to the church
foreign
in the city of Buenos Aires and I'm glad to
participate with them because I I send them a picture that I did a couple
months ago because they want to do some a particularly of RM of the sculptural
constellation so they also put pictures of everyone
that I want to share it and do some articles and in the page 38
you can see well there's a lot of pictures and
this is a my pictures that I said took in adverty
and they send me a couple days ago I don't know if you can see me
uh I now I'm going to share the the link if you want to watch it of course it's
in Spanish and also it's a free magazine that you can see it but I have my
printed a magazine let me stop the blur
to cover the background this is C mover and in the page
38 we have now to see it
to see this in paper uh it's like it comes comes to
to live you know and I'm I'm event of these days it was
um it's my to my soul to to see this uh even what what's happened this couple
days ago so well I think this was everything
um uh I don't remember if I
no I think not well uh here's some something to say only that night that we
that we went to the to the park he came a I have a little visitor it was my I I
felt someone was touching my leg to to call on me and then when I goes to see
it it was my nephew of three years old he was oh Theo uncle
uncle and I'm really glad because he even that he
has three years old only he was the first time that he saw the
moon through a telescope because he always say oh look it's the Moon the Moon the Moon and then when he saw it
through a Tesco it was really really happy and I'm and I'm glad to be there for that moment so
uh well some something to to say it's okay that I think that's his that's
all for today uh I'm glad to be here and I hope you to have a really good
holidays uh be with your family with your friends and a really good happy New
Year uh and I hope that Argentina wins the World Cup
as well that's right well everybody in the Americas is rooting for you so of
course that's right okay so anyhow
uh all in good fun um so uh thanks again Maxie uh for
coming on and sharing your great work with us and uh uh next up is Adrian
Bradley uh who's uh who has morphed uh
into uh doing some extremely fine uh nightscape photography uh over the years
and a couple of those years have been with us and so we're really happy to have Adrian on in his uh new segment
called chasing Dark Skies so I'll turn it over to you Adrian thank you man all right yep as you hear my voice
interrupting and commenting on all of the uh other
um presentations so um you know I do love being a part of
this uh Scott and Maxie you know Maxi little quick story backseat came
um for um astronomy at the beach which is one of the things that we do in
Michigan every year um I call on Maxie and said hey we could
use a presentation on the southern skies and Maxie came and gave a presentation
and we thought it was very informative and it was just nice seeing you then when you came out there
later on throughout the next year Scott I think I'm gonna I'll start plugging
some of the the uh astronomy at the beach star party that we do in Michigan very Global audience that's watching
those that are in the states and those that are near Michigan um I think it'll be worth it to share
um we've gotten back to an in-person like you know other star parties we've gotten back to an in-person event
um doing astronomy at the beach so a few of you may be wondering why I'm dressed in this in this gear well this is the
gear that I wear during uh the northern winter which is the southern hemisphere
summer and um in my background I have Orion as
we see it rising in the northern hemisphere it's the exact opposite
um when you go to the Southern Hemisphere and this is not Aurora this is actually light globe that turned out
green I do have um some Aurora that shows up
um in the presentation and I'll go ahead and get started with it
um do this share screen and as Scott says chasing
Dark Skies that's basically what I do and when I'm dressed in the
gear that I'm wearing um you know it there's dark sky preserves
there's you know there's dark sky Parks there's places that you can go to see Dark Skies
but sometimes you go off the beaten path to see dark skies and bees
um let's see and I'll do this really quick like this place is off the beaten path it's a campground
but it's not it's not a dark sky Park it's a campground
that is under reasonably dark skies and so sometimes you go find places like
that and that's where you do your Imaging so you really have to map out
the place beforehand you have to be careful so so now let's get into the presentation
chasing dark skies and um you know I've begun putting my
affiliations in my um you know my opening slides there's Great Lakes uh Association of
astronomy clubs there's explore Alliance I'm extremely proud of having this up
here Scott taking me in under the wing with the uh both professional and amateur uh astronomers and
you know through them we're we're proud we're proud to be uh you know in cahoots
so thank you very much thanks for being part of it you're a great ambassador it
I appreciate it some of these images were taken with explore scientific equipment so there's University low brow
astronomers my first club that I joined there's the astronomical League I'm a
proud member proud member of Rask and a proud member of the Warren Astronomical
Society for which I am on the board um I'm currently the treasurer but I may
be promoted to first vice president because there's an opening and people
are saying you should do it as long as I get to go out to places like this and
Chase Dark Skies so let's run through this really quickly
why my segments are going to be called chasing dark skies because a lot of my images are going to come from places
where I believe the skies to be dark enough and so this is a term that I've
heard in my journey as an amateur astronomer you know what is a dark sky and you you hear different versions of
this and you know without trying to read exactly what I've got here
you can see that you may you may identify with it it's really dark we
hear this on a lot of places and it's been like that throughout the years one
disadvantage I have of being you know within five you know within the decade I
started on this journey so over time you know there are differences
and there have been differences in how dark certain places have been and so you know looking at some examples
here these are things that you hear you know we talk about astronomy has a
scientific component science seeks to get the answers
um we're not necessarily I do have an engineering background love science we
aren't necessarily saying you know science tells us so
science is the method by which we discover we take our observations and so one thing I wanted to do was
try and use some of that process to qualify well what is a dark sky you know
and you've some of these you know have been listed as true
you know reasons that do accompany places that are pretty dark but you know they're
they're sort of observations but then again there may be places if There Are Places I could take people and
if they're not used to seeing a lot of stars in the sky they'll be at a high
portal area saying you know I can't see my hands in front of my face so
I don't know that we can quantify those you know reasons for a dark sky it just
I think this is what happens it just seems really dark and if you notice the pictures that are interspersed this
slide in the last one were taken at a site that is considered
really dark it's Kent in Oklahoma where you know you're out in the middle of nowhere so
is some of this is visible um so I mentioned is there a way to tell
without meters because as we know there are there are meters you can get I
recently purchased one um but you can sample the darkness of a
sky for yourself and then you get an empirical answer but there may be Clues
we can look for in pictures or when we're at a location
and this is something I've picked up on over the the years that I've been doing
you've got four places and if you were to say okay which place
is the darkest of the places I made it tough because image two
was during the time it was really really cloudy there so you know you can't really compare
these two Milky Way shots and then this shot which there appears to be Sky glow
and over here I think almost no one would say that this was the darkest place because the Milky Way appears
brighter and all these other three panels but the key is it's the clouds that are
in the shot a lot of Milky Way Photography dead clear skies and oftentimes shooting
at the brightest part of the core one thing that I decided I would do
if I've got any kind of clarity in the sky maybe there's some clouds around
I'm going to still take those photos and what that enables me to do
study the clouds now this is the clear sky so the only thing you really have is
you know the Milky Way seems fainter and I used very similar processes to image
all four of these and um you know the appearance of Sky glow well
here you go you can't really see it here this background is greenish it could be
my processing but the trees all show up green so you know so you're not sure if it's dark
unless you realize that these clouds are Apache there's Apache you know light
color to the clouds over here they look a little bit darker come over here
you can see the undersides of these clouds darker still so you know that on
this road you know it's it's truly darker and then if you look at the darkness of these
clouds this turns out to be the one with the um
the highest uh number if I if I hit my meter
um I would ex well here we've had a 21.95 I haven't used the meter here I
expect a 21 but I don't expect the 21.95 this is the Upper Peninsula of Michigan
this is one of my favorite places to image but
it's it's it doesn't quite compare in darkness to these two this is another
favorite place to image but not so dark at all no clouds so you
have to look for Sky glow and you have to look for you know if there's no clouds you look
for Sky glow and if you don't see it you're probably in a lower portal Zone
and then as I mentioned here just looking at the images alone if you
don't know how they were processed I mean that's the you know the Astro Imaging you're stacking until you get
the bright type of brightness and the type of detail you want in your images so the key and something that I try to
do is shoot them all with a very similar process that will show the Milky Way in
any of these zones but show it in a way that projects just how bright or not so
bright it is in a particular Zone so that's
part of my observation but I felt like well that's still not really good enough because you know I can take an image I
could stack the images if I wanted to and fool people into thinking this is a really dark place
well enter the sqm and sqml meters and mine happens to be an sqml
um and I tried to match with this Shadow Of Me
I think I was working on my camera and I took the picture so we're the
my mouse pad right here and there's the sky quality meter this is an empirical
way for those who want to measure your Darkness a sky quality meter is one of the best
ways to do it um if you have a lot of experience going
to different sites and seeing it with your eyes seeing the sky color
um darker sights tend to emit more of a grayish tone whereas less darker sights wind up
having a kind of blue or a more Bluer tone when the white balance is set
to basically imitate what the eye sees um I've got a link here for the bortal
scale which even though it's Wikipedia we've heard on the program that Wikipedia is but one source that can be
um look that can be looked at when researching but they put a pretty good brutal scale and it includes readings
you get from the sky quality meter with portal zones and
um that can be found here at the if you look up portal scale in Wikipedia
there's there are some good descriptions of what visually a dark side looks like
versus what a not so dark side may look like and in all the way down to portal 5
the Milky Way is visible it decreases in brightness to the human eye
so we took a reading 21.95 this was an sqm reading and I
think I put sqm reading my readings were sqml
um gentlemen had an sqm meter and we pointed it at the Oaky Tech Sky Kenton Oklahoma and
these are some images now this is the
the Milky Way the core when it's Milky Way season what a lot of folks will
shoot um this dark nebula there's dark nebula here it shows up the rift
shows up to the naked eye you see the rift other things you see the zodiacal light
it tends to make an X with this part of the uh winter Milky Way near Orion
um now I've got my modified camera on most of these shots here's Orion again and this is the area above the
California the Pleiades the Heidi's um this region
these regions are easier to spot naked eye and for all of this detail you generally
get Sky glow as a part of the image when you're shooting at a site
21.95 portal one is 22 on up
21.95 is High bortal 2 the Milky Way appears this appears and you can see a
lot of this detail as the Sun is setting
um you're in nautical you're going from nautical to astronomical Twilight and already this part of the Milky Way is
bright um when the zodiacal light shows it shows up and it's easily visible
and um the Milky Way no matter what section is a horizon to Horizon object
so despite any of the processing you see in these pictures
the Milky Way makes it easy to process it because it is that bright
now when you get into the skies I shoot at in Michigan
it's not as easy to process you see this region from the northern bulge to cygnus
is fainer the reading is 20.9 so this is almost a full
you know number just a you know single digit down and the sky quality changes
you can see the glow from light pollution on the horizon you see
here's some glow over here and when you try and image the region where Orion Rises
it washes you can get some of it here there's the heart and the soul but you you wash out along the horizon the core
even on a cloudy Night Like This can still be imaged pretty brightly and
that is why a lot of Milky Way photographers stick with going for the core and then try and put something
below now I was standing here this the images I take I tend to shoot where I'm
standing so I was standing here this is what this beach looks like with the core
coming Rising to the southeast
over here and that's with a 20.9 that's a pretty good Sky you're looking up and you're
seeing a lot of stars but compared to 21.9
um there's a difference in contrast and how the sky looks and then
you only go down you know four tenths and you're on the edge of portal 4. this
is a dark sky Park that I'm showing you and these are different these are
actually the three different regions of that dark sky park the boat launch area and there were boats out there here's an
example of me processing an image the bright part of the Milky Way to where it still seems to shine brightly
but you can see I lose a lot of detail in the process
hear those dust Lanes from the Orion region Rising but they're not as clear
and all of this glow is from a nearby Town highlighting these trees this was
taken very recently and so is this here's Lake Hudson a beautiful Lake and
the thickness region shows up but nowhere near as
bright as it has in other darker regions so and you notice the sky has a more
metallic blue color depending on how I processed it I may have overdone some
Vibrance or you know how whatever whatever you do there's still an indication here that this isn't as dark
as sky and only at 20.5 and here's the danger that I want to
propose if we're not too careful this park
sits at 20.5 20.49 is the border for portal 5. so
this park is almost getting too bright to really be
considered a dark sight because that portal 5 you're sort of on that border of are you really a dart site now it's a
dark sky preserve so the goal is to preserve as much of the night sky as we can but the the amount of work in
astrophotographer must do to pull out data you know the more work you have to do
you know the less light you're getting from the heavens you know these objects that
shine quite easily at a portal 2 or Portal 3 zone are not
shining through as easily and you have to take more time just to get this sort
of data and then finally my last slide if it'll show
at least okay there we go future plans so
as I'll continue chasing all of these places that I'm showing you are places
that I've gone to image and if I were to go around
I would guess this to be about a 20.8 or 20.9 over this this is rather secluded
beach in the uh thumb of Michigan this is an observing site
um for one of my astronomy clubs University lobra astronomers this is the the roll-off roof Observatory and this
is essentially what the um area around it looks like
this is the place where I first saw the Milky Way and I'm curious to go back and
see what the uh what the numbers are this bright bright
um glow of light from a nearby town I wouldn't be surprised if the number
turned into a 19 point something but that would be interesting because you see I was able to get a decent image of
the core of the Milky Way here you can see it barely naked eye so I expect a
reading that puts this somewhere between four to five or so but that then that's
going to reset my expectation of how high a portal number can you image the
Milky Way here I this would have may have been a 21.0 it was an exceptionally clear night
when I imaged um this cygnus region this was a
reasonably clear night but I would expect a 20 .9 and then you've got some of the
lights from the lighthouse the distant Lighthouse here this is a dark sky Preserve in the thumb and I ended up
with a pretty detailed Rift here so again maybe 21 there's Sky glow here
this is the other side when I imaged the Milky Way in the upper peninsula and
there's Aurora that showed up in the camera along with the um Cassiopeia and
Perseus side the Milky Way so up here 21.5 and then in this I expect
maybe a 20.9 to 21 but I have to take it out here when it's clear like this and
hit the meter and see what happens and so I guess as I say here what I expect to
find is that dark sites may not average out to be as dark as they may have been remembered 15 10 or even five years ago
right that's absolutely right so you know that's that's why you hear about
fighting to save the night sky because oh and then I forgot to mention those
that are watching for the Warren Astronomical Society would kill me if I didn't mention Stargate Observatory with
this I think this is a 10 inch refractor in here um there's the Milky Way you can barely see
it so the number here may be lighter still but uh so
preserving the night sky has a direct impact on how much you can
see pictures can show you what really what is really there
but depending on the how clear the Knight is and how much processing is
done you you get an idea of how dark a site is but you really don't know until you
go there and you uh you see it for yourself naked eye and um and when evaluating pictures on
the internet it's a good thing one good thing you can do is notice where the
focus in processing tends to be and look for the sky color what sky color did
they choose or were they able to leave the sky color at a certain
you know color you see the dark you know metallic the dark blue here you
also see like the dark it's like a bluish gray so you know Sky color and
the type of Sky color you can get and how intense it is gives you an indication of how dark it really is out
there so if that's got that's my okay presentation and we're gonna keep going
with that as it can get I can put on this gear and I can get out to some of these sites with the meter right that's
right go thank you so much for you know showing us such an amazing work as you
always do um well it gives me great pleasure uh to take us down to uh Lucero tololo inner
American uh Observatory otherwise known as ctio and we are at the
um the blanco four meter telescope with Don Davies who's doing an outreach
program right now and uh don I'm going to bring you on and give you the spotlight I think you have a nice group
of people waiting to uh to say hello to our audience so thank you for coming on
and making this effort fantastic Scott no thank you so much for having us it's always a pleasure to be
on the global star party and very excited uh to call in today because yes we are calling in from the control
center of the four meter Victor Blanco telescope here at the top of Sierra to
Lolo um and I am here with about a little more than half of our team here uh this
is a group of folks we are here with the astronomy and Chile educator ambassador program this is a partnership that has
been going on with the associated universities Incorporated and the association of the universities for
research and astronomy also known as Aura and there are 10 of us that actually the vast majority of us have
been waiting two and a half years for this Expedition we were all selected back in 2020 right before kovid so this
project and this Expedition has been postponed almost I think a half a dozen times we are on day five of our
Expedition and we've been here in Seattle for the last two and a half days prior to that we were in Santiago and La
Serena and tomorrow we have a couple of flights and some long drives to head to
the Atacama Desert oh boy yes and to head up to Alma so I'm going to go ahead
and just sort of go around the group and let them introduce themselves real quick and uh yeah I'll let you meet some of
these amazing ambassadors okay thank you so I'll start yeah great to see you all
thanks for that great introduction Dawn uh greetings from what feels like the top of the world here for almost 6 000
feet up so greetings the rest of the world on this call my name is Michael O'Shea and I'm here with popscope short
for pop-up telescope and we are a urban community-based astronomy movement so
great to see you all awesome and this has been one of our our fearless leaders
for our time here at Sierra it's a little low oh yeah hi everybody my name
is Juan Segel I'm education and public Outreach um
um especially for noise left um I'm glad to receive this ambassadors
here in our facility of knowledge lab in cerotololo at 2200 meter high yeah very
high altitude yes Jason hi everyone my name is Jason Schreiner I'm the planetarium
coordinator at the Museum of Arts and Sciences in Daytona Beach Florida and I'm happy to be an instap ambassador to
everybody I'm also a NASA solar system Ambassador as well
I'm very very happy to be among this group of very bright uh intelligent
people who have the same passion as I do for astronomy and they have all
discovered that I have a habit of wandering off and they have to chase me
down so that's been my roles it's funny to see you on the other side
of the screen here so that's great good to see you
so I'm Alan Strauss I'm the Director of Education uh for the Department of
astronomy Stuart observatory in Tucson Arizona so I lead the public Outreach programs at our Mountaintop Observatory
and the K-12 the STEM Science school and uh this is definitely the uh experience
of a lifetime and Incredibly educational so I hope that after Don tells you all about it that you will flood them with
applications for future Expeditions so sure yeah great
yeah hello everyone uh thank you for done uh for this uh good introduction I
am a person a member of the Charlotte Ahmed astronomers and also informal science
educator and Cyrus Academy in Charlotte and I'm glad to be here is one of is
actually first and one of the most darkest skies in the entire world and very
amazed to see the dark sky and Saratoga and a lot of objects that in the
Southern Hemisphere and many galaxies like magellanic imaginary clouds large
and small and we they bring the group of the people in acap and the neurolab and
also Aurora and aui and I'm very very happy to be within this talented and the
smart and the enthusiastic people in Australia oh that's wonderful
hi everyone my name is Catalina Valencia I'm Jillian and I work at Environmental
Education with children youth and adults too and one of my hobbies and past
questions has been astronomy so I'm very glad to be sharing with these very
marvelous people and I'm learning a lot from them and I'm so
happy to see that people from other countries that is in Chile are
interested in our skies in our existence and are willing to tell you to share it
with the world how important and how beautiful they are so thank you all in advance
and this is definitely one of our fearless leaders instead
Director of Education and public engagement at aui and I am just here
facilitating the program and having lots and lots of good food oh
that's great that's absolutely correct they they are feeding us very well here yeah so you guys are eating in the
cafeteria that's there and yes yes they do have great food there yeah and staying on site
um so we are the sixth group of ambassadors that has come through this program so uh we are you know who's
joining a huge family of ambassadors from all over the world already and uh learning a lot about what it takes to
run these observatories the types of science they're doing getting an opportunity to meet The Operators the scientists the folks that manage things
behind the scenes um so it's been a tremendous amount of information download a lot of
photographs have already been taken and so the expectation and the plan and the excitement for for myself and this whole
group is we get to take everything that we learned here in the last five days and in the next four or five days uh
back home with us so part of this is to continue to bring educational Outreach
of astronomy especially the work that's being done here in Chile back home to our communities and to fellow
astronomers and to the general public so I thank you so much again Scott for letting us know oh wonderful
and uh it's it's a program that is open to all to apply so I definitely
encourage anyone who has any interest in public Outreach and astronomy and in having this kind of amazing experience
to submit an application because it is a once in a lifetime opportunity what is the uh what is the URL for this program
uh Astro ambassadors and is it.com or dot
dot organs astroambassadors.com
astroambassadors.com okay and you can follow both the program and all of us on
social media as well so don what do you what do you expect people will be taking back with them
from this experience a tremendous amount of pictures that we will be calling through per week I think
a a tremendous understanding um you know I was mentioning it to to my
fellow cohort here today that when we were in the process of watching them open up the Victor Blanco fully open the
Dome and the windows and move the telescope into position you know it's one thing to see these telescopes but it's another to get to meet the
scientists and the folks that are running them and know the type of science that's coming from them that's being developed specifically the Victor
Blanco is being used for Dark Energy Research we met one of the scientists today who's working on using it to
discover satellite dwarf galaxies that are attached to our own Milky Way so I
think an understanding of the fundamentals behind why these telescopes are in these locations the tremendous
benefit they have to the scientific Community to education and just how we may better be able to explain this and
articulate this and deliver this message to to our folks back home and to those that we interact with that's fantastic I
know that these kinds of things are life-changing I love the idea that you guys are doing this I've been down there
as well I've been inside the Victor Blanco four meter um you know it we should say who Victor
Blanco was uh it was a Puerto Rican astronomer but uh and did I think he
discovered a galactic group but he was also I think the second
um uh you know director of the ctio and at the time it was the largest telescope
in the southern hemisphere uh if I'm correct with that um but uh I think the other thing that
is really cool about being down there is just the culture of astronomy I mean
you've got it feels like when you're down there the you know chili is really
turned on as a country to a astronomy right it's nothing that I've I've really
got a chance to witness on the same level um they are heavily invested on you know
astronomy research and in the telescope building I mean it is it is part of their culture it is part of their
Heritage and it's it's no surprise the skies that they have here are are brilliant and dark and it's it's a very
rich astrotourism economy as well yes um so you know I think even though it's
further down south and it may be hard to get to there's a lot that we can learn from what Chile has been doing for the
astronomical Community you know for decades upon decades I I would agree with you well that's fantastic well uh
thanks a lot for coming on and making this effort uh the connection's great uh
so Chili's internet connection up there and
um uh you guys have a great time and uh I'll catch up with you when you return
to the states so that's great thank you so much Scott thank you so much okay all
right take care guys thank you okay all right so that was that was a
real treat um you know uh you know to be able to connect like that to the ctio uh inside
of that uh amazing instrument I have to highly recommend that if you can get
down to Chile um and get uh you know to Cerro tallolo uh they have they do have Astro tourism
tours but the small there's like a small town the name of this town is escaping
me right now but there are space murals on the walls of this town uh and it's
where many of the astronomers live and so you know you're going to get a triple dose of astronomy culture when you go
down there um of course the industry of astronomy and research astronomy is huge in that
region and uh you know uh when you go there you'll be among some of the darkest Skies there is on the planet so
uh something really great also is uh you know just the the everyday people that
are there uh you know very very uh friendly people and the food's great so
you're going to have a great time if you go to Chile um we are going to take a 10 minute
break here um and then we're going to come back with uh uh uh more speakers including
Frasier Kane from Universe today Marcelo Souza from Brazil
um uh Caesar brolo from Argentina uh we're going to see some footage of the
Apollo 17 launch and what they've done in researching the soil and rocks from
that particular Mission and then Frank marches from unicellar and seti so stay
tuned
if I can only find my way around here we go
a little uh freezer I've listened to a lot of your podcasts
and uh you know watch some things on YouTube it's uh it's an honor to be able to see
you live on this thing I'm gonna have to follow along um when you make your presentation sure
thanks for uh thanks for all that thanks for the views yeah you definitely I I've been
listening to astronomy cast with you and uh Dr Pamela gay for I think a couple
years now that's awesome so yeah we grew up to episode 660 ish
so we've been yeah we've been at for a while people don't complain that we don't make enough episodes anymore that never happens
well it's not like you both have nothing else to do there are some things you
have to you've got a number uh shows I think that you're a number of
things that you're doing yeah which I'm assuming we'll get into shortly on the on this
Yeah well yeah I was about to step away I've I've done a presentation on uh
night night sky photography which uh that's awesome this uh this forum has
basically helped me grow in my passion to doing it and um that's amazing yeah
it's uh I ended up I'm at the point where I have one of these now a little Sky meter so
when I go to a site rather than look around and say oh this is really really dark yeah press the button and see what
I got and uh sometimes I'm surprised so what's your setup what do you use for
taking photos so for taking photos all I do I have a Tracker uh move shoot move
tracker got the old Canon 6D sometimes I use my other daytime camera if I'm
shooting during like the moon so you just use a Tracker and then you just shoot on your DSLR I shoot on my DSLR so
I'm doing nightscapes how do you like that yeah and so I've gotten to the point
where I'll do two minutes for the sky because that'll bring the Milky Way Out even in a portal five
maybe even portal six area I'll do two minutes to capture the you know whatever
foreground on that and I usually like shooting over Lakes toward Canada I shoot at uh in Michigan so I go to Lake
uh Huron a lot and then um if there's something special going on like the
lunar eclipse is happening at the same time I'll do a quick frame for the uh so that I get the moon you know exposed and
um do a combination of them and you'll probably get auroras from that perspective too right you got a nice
view to the north if it's if there's activity I there are plenty of auroras and um
I've taken a few I've stumbled on them we when we had a decent we've had some decent storms and all the way as far
down as the thumb of Michigan I've been able to capture auroras I've captured an aurora when I didn't know what was going
on um yeah my presentation we've had that too yeah yeah you're like wait a minute
there's some green in there what yeah it is like is this a mistake then you shoot
again oh no it's not a mistake the camera picked up some faint distant Aurora on the horizon yeah totally yeah
so yeah I'll tell people want to go see the aurora and I'll tell them it's like
you can sometimes tell if it's distant you can kind of see the sky move but a
lot of the times you may not see it you you just kind of have to have a camera to know that it's even out there yeah
yeah it's a I mean I really like this technique for doing Astro because a lot
of people already have a DSLR they're doing birding they're doing macro they're just you know they're shooting like whatever and then they want to get
into Astro once you get that tracking Mount then you can put on like uh you
know like 100 millimeter 200 millimeter lens on top and start taking some
pictures that rival what people would be gathering with the telescope and it's just a much easier way you know if
you've already got the camera it's a way cheaper setup to go that way I like that a lot yeah and it's uh you know we were
talking about it it's a matter of time you know with Astro how much you know how long an exposure
yeah do you take so if your skies aren't as dark it'll take a longer exposure but
you can do it yeah yeah you just clean up the noise like the more the more you stack it the more you can pull it out yeah so now you've got clear signal yeah
you know whatever your data is a little clearer so that works for um it works for landscape astrophotography as we
call it but the caveat is this we're also composing so the Milky Way is here
if I go two hours the Milky Way is there and my composition might be shot so
either either I have to do creative imagineering or
accept a much smaller time when right now two minutes if I could go up to five
minutes I probably would and um if I managed to most times if you're not
guiding I think you can get up to five minutes that's just something I have to try it gets a little blurry when you go
longer than two minutes on your right so yeah so you have to do two because your your sky like I have a sky in the
background here your Sky will look great if it if it tracks it but then your
everything's blurry so you have to take another photo without tracking and it's
just easiest to do it for the you know same amount of time same settings so
that it's a natural looking like it's like you took it in one shot and it's
really what's there but you do have to do a composite of the two yeah so that is so would you like make this the
switch over to a to a telescope setup are you pretty happy with this direction so for pictures like the one that's
behind me and I'll move out of the way that's amazing yeah yep that's the Orion region right there and you see that
bridge so I did two there there I go I did two images one for that Orion region
of the Milky Way and then another one without it tracking so that I could get
that bridge right solid and then and that's yeah so it's taking a lot of
time as in classic um I wouldn't use a telescope because I want that landscape with that white so
yeah and so you for you it's like if you don't have like some ground underneath
it's not interesting to you like it still is it always is that Pleiades up
there yeah I did a wide field of those two with that Rift going through it yeah
the interesting thing is we'll talk to an astrophotographer who takes it and says there's a whole lot of gas and
there's a whole lot of stuff around those too and I'll say well of course you're still in the Milky Way and then I
show them the big picture and they go oh wow that's why because you know so I've
always kind of preferred the wide angle but that shot's amazing like I can see the air glow I can see the light
pollution from the city um and it all adds to the composition which is which is really nice yeah
that's a great picture it's almost like like kind of like even like the composition like on
the one side you've got the one color the yellowish on the on the right hand side and then it sort of Shifting over
to the pinks on the other side it's really neat yeah yeah it was an
unintended effect but I thought it was really neat that you had so you know that there's a larger City over there an
interesting enough razor that is Canada because we're shooting across Lake here here on yeah yeah we're at this location
so yeah it's great right like that kind of stuff like you embrace it like that's just part of the absolutely it can add
to the composition of the picture like so many people are always just trying to fight light pollution but in fact like
pollution can be part of the picture if you can constrain it and keep it into its own little spot like I really like
shots of the Moon with some cloud like once you've seen a thousand shots of the Moon you're like okay fine but the cloud
often often Adrian also mixes in clouds bringing them in or anything but but uh
they just happened he's shooting through clouds or you know
with the Milky Way and and clouds together and uh he's going after the composition and it really is yeah that's
wonderful His Image is often really sing and so I I really enjoy having this work
on the show but uh but we are uh we're back and um uh we have phrase Fraser
Kane from Universe today and uh the astronomy cast is in the house and uh so
it's really great I Frazier I'm a fan of of your of your work and uh have been
watching uh Universe today for a long time and I I get a lot of information from it wow I have no idea I think it's
fantastic and um uh so I I wanted maybe
I doubt it but maybe there are some people watching this show today that haven't heard of universe today
you know I know that you have a tremendous audience and you know I've
got a little bio on you that you you know you're the co-host of astronomy cast which is a podcast I believe and um
uh co-creator of the guide to Space video series on YouTube so maybe you can
bring us up to speed of uh your background and sure yeah so I found it
yeah I founded Universe today as a space astronomy News website in 1999 and did
that as like a like a side project while I was working at my regular job in a tech company and
I just fell in love with just both like I always I'd always been a fan of space in astronomy but I really fell in love
with communicating it being a journalist and just started to maintain the site and after a couple of years I'm like okay this is all I want to do for the
rest of my life now I just got to figure out how to how to get out of the old gig and into doing this and in the beginning
I wrote all the work you know everything that was being reported on the website
and then over time more and more people jumped on board and so now we've got a pretty big crew probably got about 15
writers at various stages of full and and part-time freelance goodness and
then as as you mentioned I'm the co-host of the astronomy cast podcast and we're
up to like 660 episodes of of that we started out about 15 years ago and then
about 10 years ago I started doing these videos on on YouTube mostly just to get practice on on how to
foreign educate and explain things um in that format and again you know
doing that for 10 years we put out several videos every week and have uh
you know pretty gigantic followings across all of these platforms which is a total honor so so that's what I do you
made your dream come true you know exactly yeah that's that is the Great American uh story right there so yeah
um but uh Frasier what what do you think have been the highlights of you know I
mean things that you just uh you know if you had to count on two hands what uh uh
have been the most amazing highlights of doing all this work what would you say well I mean the greatest privilege is
being able to talk to people who you are Star Struck for the even the fact that
you're talking I've had a chance to interview and talk with many Nobel laureates astronomers the principal investigators
of many of the missions that you're familiar with the heads of various space agencies
people in orbit it's amazing oh wow you just gotta you picture and now it's
funny because people are like is there anyone that you really wish you could talk to but you haven't had a chance to and I'm like no like
I'm at the point now which is amazing that that when it occurs to me that I
would like to talk to somebody I am able to if I'm persistent enough I can get to them and
convince them to talk to me so that's like that is the first five sections on
on my on my favorite list it's just disability and then the other part of it is of course just
I love being able to share my enthusiasm for space astronomy with with other
people and when you get that feedback and I'm sure you get that as well when you get that feedback from someone it's like I had no idea that I like this
stuff yeah it's the juice it is yeah and then out you know I saw you were live streaming this picture of Saturn or you
were uh you were interviewing this person or whatever and I got really into it and then I watched more and more of the videos and and now I'm just
finishing up getting my PhD in as an astronomer and wow that's great that's
amazing right yeah that is amazing do you uh do you uh see yourself doing um I
mean will you teach at a university or will you continue doing uh the work that you're doing do you see it evolving to
something else no I I people always ask me like what's your goal I I have no
goals I mean that's exactly right yeah you know so yeah
um and so like all I want to do is get better at what I do I want to do a
better job with the kinds of stories that we cover with Universe today get
them faster get them more comprehensive dig deeper and provide a really kind of
authentic voice to the people who are interested in this in this topic and that is a never-ending
task to get to the point that that the reality matches my ambitions for how
good it can be for what we do that's great that's great I and um uh your your
you know your personal um interest in astronomy aside from the
journalism and stuff what what is it that turns you on about uh about exploring the sky well I've always been
a giant space nerd like as a little kid um I had books about space I would watch
Star Trek and science fiction my my dad woke me up in the morning in 1981 to
watch the first launch of the Space Shuttle um I I would organize star parties on
this little Canadian Island that I grew up on um I would when I was in high school I
joined the journalism program there and I would report on what you could see in
the night sky I bought my own telescope and and would set up at my parents parties and sort of you know do
something that walk astronomy that's awesome yeah yeah yeah absolutely and so it's weird to me that I didn't start out
in this as a career it had never occurred to me that the thing that I love doing in high school
would also could also be my career and so I had this weird side John through
the tech industry which was really helpful because you know running I'm sure you're aware you know you run a business it's very
Tech heavy to manage the servers and all of the technology that's involved and I
believe that other people right and so I didn't have the money yeah I didn't have the money to have other people do that I
had to do it myself and so sure it was it was very useful that I was both technically competent and had this
passion for doing the communication and and so that was you know now but but
back then it was it was tough so yeah I know it's been it's been this sort of single it's it's yeah again it's super
weird to me that I didn't fall into this as a career right away but but I found my way back to it and even the times
when I every now and then I I get I had an amazing opportunity a couple of years ago to go and work with the X prize
to help them build a version of their platform um where people could start their own
projects and all I wanted to do was get back to Universe today like it was I had
a great team I was able to work on projects that were interesting and yet all I could do was just like I just want
to get back to doing work Universe today because that's what you love yeah now I saw something also in in this bio and
this might be an older bio uh but it talks about hero X yeah that's the
heroes that was the that was the the offshoot of the X prize I see yeah I see
yeah and so sort of like it's it's still there you it's a lot of NASA's
um competitions are run on the hero X platform so you can
um like they want to know how to deal with poop on the moon or they want to know how to recycle water on long
duration missions and so they they put this project on the hero X platform then
people around the world come up with ideas and then the best idea wins a prize so it's like a mini version of the
X prize all right no that's great that's fantastic um well gosh uh Frasier I was blown away
that you accepted uh my invitation to come on to the program today
um uh I uh you know I always admire uh people that do astronomy Outreach in a
big way um uh a lot of us uh that are in the Outreach Community I know that you get
this um you know it's a gateway to all of science um you know uh we have
um when I when I talk about this now to the eclipse Community I'm starting to
get more involved in the eclipse Community because we got two great eclipses coming in yeah one in 2020 2023
an annular and a total in 2024 uh you know they say well you know it the the
larger group uh the bigger opportunity for us in astronomy Outreach is getting
people to see something like lips and they're saying that something on the
order of like double or triple the number of people that saw the 2017
eclipse in the United States which was you know NASA was calling it the world's
greatest science event now this will be uh this will this will go beyond that
um you know I think that we're we're going to see another big surge in people
getting involved in astronomy or being in uh you know exposed to it and uh you
know I think that programs like Universe today and your podcasts are incredibly important to
um ushering in people to take that on as part of their life you know maybe make it a lifestyle type of choice but I also
the other thing I I I'm glad to hear about your your story about uh how you
found uh uh you know something to do that to make your life dream come true because there are a lot of people that
are into astronomy amateur astronomy and stuff and they have a job that they hate
they just absolutely hate and astronomy might be an escape for them or something like that yeah uh you know I would
encourage any of those people that want to make that break and make their dreams come true to just go and do it yeah one
of the my favorite projects that we did was this thing I don't know if you've heard of it the virtual star party we did this a couple of years back where we
would live stream views from telescopes from around the world yeah yeah sure you
yeah and so we had like 10 telescopes posted by various amateurs in their
backyard and and in different parts around the world one guy was in New Zealand showing us the sun while other
people were in in Canada or whatever it was it was great and and people just couldn't get enough of it
they couldn't believe how amazing it was that they were able to actually see a view of the night sky and you're like a
DJ taking requests like oh I've heard there's a comment in this guy right now can we try and see that you're like let's try you know and then then one of
the astronomers like I got it I got a picture of it and and you can just see that that that that connection with the
night sky is something that is universal like nobody hates space everybody loves it no
that's true and and so no matter where people come from they'll come and take a
look through the telescope eyepiece at Saturn or whatever and 50 of the time you blow their minds which is such a
really great experience so so yeah I know I couldn't have have ended up in a more rewarding and entertaining uh
career right I'm reading some of the comments here that are coming through uh
Chris Larson I'm watching on YouTube says you know Frasier is the real deal in an all-around nice guy oh
um so you've got some great fans out there I would count myself among them and uh you know love what you do and um
well we should work on some projects together ah that would be an honor for sure yeah yeah I can think of some ideas
yeah okay yeah all right well you guys have some tech you guys have some gear I have some problems so maybe we can help
bring us yeah exactly wonderful awesome Frazier that's that's uh that's great thanks for
spending a little bit of time with us in your busy schedule and uh problem um you know thanks for having me yeah
thank you and uh so you guys uh watching uh make sure that you tune in to
um uh universetoday.com and uh you know subscribe to his programs and uh listen
to astronomy cast you know Wonderful a lot so you did it did it better than I could so thank you so much yeah good
luck with the rest of your of your program thanks Fraser take great talking to you Frazier all right thanks Adrian bye-bye
okay that was great um so uh uh now we're going to go from
uh North America down to South America and meet up with Marcelo Souza in Brazil
uh Marcelo uh great to have you on the program I know that we're working on the
next issue of Skies Up Magazine I still have to write my little column
which I'm going to do but soon we'll have a new magazine that you can download for free so you just go to
explore scientific.com forward slash sky's up and get your copies there's
back issues right now and this is a truly Global astronomy magazine absolutely free of charge so
um but Marcelo thanks for coming on to Global star party as I mentioned to the
audience earlier this is our last uh Global Star Party of the year and uh we
will start again in January for uh you know starting with the 110th global star
party but it's uh it's great to have you on so many of these things uh Marcelo
you've you've been very uh consistent and uh always been bringing us great news from Brazil I'll hand it over to
you it's a great pleasure to be here thank you very much for invitation but
unfortunately our Brazilian Brazilian team it's out of the World Cup but today
Argentina uh won the game and it will be in the
the final of the World Cup and I'm shooting for Argentina now because they
have a fantastic player that is messy for me he's the best player that you
have in the world that is mess yeah that's great it's great well it's going to be a very interesting game because uh
we have um you know a team that's never been uh
you know uh you know a champion of the world cup and uh you know going up
against uh formidable you know team which is in Argentina so
um you know it was sad for me to see Brazil get knocked down um uh but not really knock down you know
you guys have five championships yeah so it's pretty awesome that too
it's to see but tomorrow I'm feeling for Morocco okay it would be fantastic for
having the final Morocco the vessel is Argentina yes it would be sunny
unexpected yes today as it is the last
program I will talk about the what happens in Brazil in the spirits
you know because it is a special period for us here like abdv in other places in
the world yeah and let me see if he okay here I'll contact and the here is
our country here there's a big country in South America but we the our country
is located between the equator line and the Tropic of Capricorn
then for us next week we will begin the summer
and the also is a special period because you had a Christmas here you know as the
United States you have obviously celebration for Christmas we have here but something that is different from
other countries I will show now what happened in this period in other culture you like United States in the country in
the north hemisphere you have the seasons well-defined you know when you
you have winter when you have the summer but in Brazil we have a part of Brazil
that you don't have four seasons as you have another places in the world
I I here in our states and the we are located here
270 kilometers far from here and this is our spirit here not today
because it's raining a lot here in between you know he's in Brazil you have
a floods here and they have many problems because of the rains but it
generally in the spirit is very hot today it's very hot here very very hot
and many people goes to the beach yeah here's a beach of Copacabana that is
very famous and in this period we organize events like this we go near to the the beach
and organize exhibitions we
use our Solar telescope to allow people to look to the
Sun and you have a nice many activities like in this in the spirit in January
but you you need to go where the people are here that most of the people go to
the beach in the spirit so yeah activities near the beach
and we are planning to do this in January that is the holiday here in Brazil well it began here from Christmas
until February is a period of heart they see in Brazil and the most of the people
here in our states goes to the beach then this active that you organize
uh in a beach located in our city here in Brazil
but again I will talk about this that I think that's something different that
you have here uh here you see the Equator the Tropic
of capcoin here and you have roads here in Brazil that indicates that you are
crossing the line of the top of Capricorn I don't know I believe that yeah they found to have the same I don't
know United States all of you also you don't cross the traffic in United
States you don't have lines like this but here in Brazil we have in many
places you see here here you have here you are crossing the line of the
Tropic of Capricorn here also tropical Capcom and then we have many roads in
Brazil if it signals like this in the roads and they show what is the drop of cat
funny Egypt in the country moisture is located in the southeast of
Brazilian South Asia of Brazil and that's it where the you have the line of
the process.com but to have part of Brazil in North Africa for Brazil that you have to line
of the Equator Crossing in the country here is a monument That's Heavy in the
United States that's called amapa and in what you see in the floor is the part
that you have the South Hemisphere and the north hemisphere in one side of the
line in the South Emeryville in the outer Southern Northern Hemisphere and you have your Sundial here Equinox
they you know they have here did during the Equinox you see here this sun
yeah I'm just gonna be like the biggest sundials in the world yes it's a very
big sunlight but it is to is to show what's happening to economics and they
are also here you have the the line of the Equator here with the name of this
state is located in the capital that's makapa we're International of Brazil it's a big
Monument to celebrate where the liner for the equator Crossing Brazil
but what you have different from other countries because you have here this the
uh now in December you'll know that it is sun will be in the tropical Cap Fund
when they uh next month next week then it's very hard for us here in the
southeast of Brazil but here is the Amazon in the Amazon part of drama is always
near no most of the Amazon is near the equator
then we have different seasons there we have only two seasons not Four Seasons
that the first season begins in December now and goes until May
Andy is really in the rights
because you have raised every day and I was there and they say prefer you up I
think that's 4 pm and near 4pm you have a delay then they add out the Shadows is
that goes into range before in the afternoon they say no we need to go because we begin to rain every day you
have a range and it is hot and the summer is from June to November
is dry but to have it also raised them because I have clouds a house and you need to
have more clouds than it's rain and it is then
all the periods of the year is hot but one period is warmer than the other
appearance but is hot every day yeah but to have a period of a race he appearance
love to Grace he told for them for patch of Brazil we don't see uh we
can't talk about these Seasons like you you're talking United States in Europe
because you don't have this season so yeah as you have well it's a different
kind than the equator is a region different from the other
parts of viewers that's really and Brazil is a tropical country because
it's located between the Equator and the tropical Capcom most of the ground and
is something that is different from the other parts of the world
and this time where near Christmas we have it as in many countries in the
world we have a big trees there with lights well this is our city you have in
many places of Brazil this kind of Lights yeah a lot of celebrations the
Christmas many places here in Brazil like this
many cultures in the world do this in the spirit yeah but something that as it is a Christian
celebration one of the most important
moments is the born of Jesus Christ that we are celebrating next week in December
friends fifth but the followers as astronomer
was something that he ever we try to understand what it means is the star of
a better leg I don't know if my pronunciation is correct in English but definitely and I think that is correct
yep that's exactly yeah we say Star of Bethlehem oh thank you you got it you got it
in Portuguese this is
but uh you have many astronomers that try to
find a natural event that can be associated with this Tower of a
Bethlehem they try they ask they try to
find the Comets in the spirit of them at other possibilities
triple conjunction of planets have many conditions that they analyze and to find
a way to understand what is in the Bible this is a Patcher in the gospel
organisms they where they talk about the Star of
Bethlehem now when Jesus was born in Bethlehem
in the days of Herod the king behold you wise men from the East came to Jerusalem
saying where is he that is born a king of the Jews foreign
and another passage of the Gospel called Saint Matthew they call we can consider
that this tower has appeared in a specific time and there was need of some pride of
knowledge to be able to recognize it in the sky there having many other passages that
after the the gospel or the Bible and they
generally they talked about that she they saw in the East and then moved to
the south from Jerusalem to Bethlehem then many many astronomers that
Christians analyzed this and try to find first you have the doubts about the
the year of the born of Jesus Christ we have a different interpretations in the
Bible and in many of the research consider that
60 and to two years before the year that
we considered the born of Jesus Christ but we don't have any specificity that you can Define for this then in this
their possibilities they analyze events in the sky that can represent the start
of that line the first possibility is that it might be a comet
the other possibility suggested by maybe an explosion of a supreme normal
and from Kepler you have your article possibility to analyzing too today that
the conjunction of planets we have a triple conjunction between Jupiter and hagulus and six months is later have a
conjunction with jobs there with Venus and Jupiter Auto Parts
the image that this can be a possibility but it is a way that we are trying to
understand the suggestions that you have in the Bible Well ever you have this
discussion about the faith and reason Augustine the appearance of this Tower
of Bethlehem was a miracle but if you consider the Bible of a science
book uh it's very difficult to understand some passage that you have in the Bible
then you have a Galileo that he said
something that is what you consider is science for this right and you have it
Faith inside it result again walk together
with no promise if you consider as you suggest the Bible shows you way to go to
the heaven but not the way the heavens will say the science that says how what we
see in the sky or what the models that you can meet predictions about what you
see in the future in the sky is the science that motivated the earth and the
show to us possibilities in the future
and the honestly also I will finish with this a quote from Iceland that there are only
two ways to live your life one only started nothing is a miracle and the other is about is I thought everything
is a miracle then we don't know what is in the Bible he had the religious books
that you have people and different televisions in your words but we expect
algae religions and the science have no problems with animal region is a
way that you find to understand the universe Andrew if it is knowledge
we built our society and we have here out today everything
that you use and the what we are doing now that you use a vehicle system
how that you use uh Chromecast made by Humanity by the human being
during this short time that you have a civilization in the history of the Earth
and it was possible to bring so many technology to us and make people to live
more and in a better way thank you very much
very much it's nice to part with some words of wisdom from Einstein so thank
you very much yes thank you well great uh marchella I hope you have a great uh
Christmas well I will be talking to you um uh before uh you know before we get
to the Christmas season here um you know we have a magazine to put out and um
um but uh I I personally want to thank you for all the contributions that you've made uh not only to the magazine
but to Global star party and we hope to see you back next year so thank you very
much but all your support and help exactly to be here without the review
well the friends here and I would like to restore everybody happy Christmas and
a Happy New Year thank you so much thank you okay well we're we're going to go a little bit
further south in uh in South America back again to Argentina
where I think Caesar might be happy about the FIFA situation as well
just a little bit yes are those all the people that are in your living room that
we're watching the game absolutely yes yes the typical Argentinian guys
clients quiet let's say they are called people
yes they don't they don't suffer anything about football oh no
please please I wonder how many people had heart attacks
actually yeah over the game yeah
yeah I think uh I think Cesar you've gained a an entire country of followers
that want you to see this through so uh you know Brazil and uh I tell
everyone in the states Argentina is the team oh yeah
the craziness is about the the Argentina team is incredible
um something that we in Bangladesh Bangladesh is something that that if you
if you find an internet the Bangladesh funds of the Argentina team is totally
insane totally crazy yes but they are too
it's a country with 200 uh is it because it's Indonesia is
250 million people and they have a huge number of funds more than the
argentinians more than Argentina and if you found if you if you search an
internet today even for the Bangladesh or funds the streets and they said come on
this is so crazy today was a totally crazy day in in our world because we
stopped at 4 00 pm to Swatch the because
we we have a big stream in the store of course and we stop
um go to go to to watch the game
we don't suffer but every time we suffer but in the last
game uh maybe you can saw Marcelo with a nightmare
with a with a Netherlands was a nightmare was totally insane
um today of course that we are we were sprying as I said okay one okay one goal
okay two goals okay but this guy
yes three goals and we really we was preaching to say uh okay no preaching
there um another thing pray pray to say okay
we need to stop this yes yes because uh it is something like like it's magic and
this the people here enjoy a lot of course the Brazilians
really we we were sad about Brazil because it in Brazil they like the
football like us um really we enjoy a lot and when we
have our teams um in South America we have a huge uh
Championship where we have a lot of different uh different themes from
the countries from South America or another one is a Copa Copa America is
for for Nations but Copa libertadores it's for all South America teams not not
selections things in other countries it's not the um this is when this star everywhere we
have teams from Brazil and Argentina the the bigger numbers of teams and they
play very very well uh well this Sunday I don't know okay but yes you have yeah
but you have a fantastic player that is messy
yeah this is one of them he gets all the attention but uh there's there's other
great players there yes she's responsible foreign
yes yes it's something that that it's not only messy it's uh
um well a lot of different players and
something that is crazy that they are very very young their kids are 20 22
years old 23 24 the same age of my my my boys and kids I say this is incredible
because they are thinking that they are in a final in his uh first uh World Cup
and it's something like that that but if adults it's impossible
no I think that no I think that I think that but
I'm sorry that we are talking about football I know we connect the universe to all of
this I'm a cosmologist and a telescope maker
mace is a great start about stars but but I think that in many
Taylor you maybe you can see a lot of different uh situations in Argentinian
selection but was uh with Messi was was not a gray a
gray players but now is the difference between the technician is different the
kid the the young Team without only the only stars is messy but the
another ones are people that say okay is it like we do you have maybe a huge
massive stars but do you have a constellation no concentration cluster
of less mass stars where they are thinking in in the future and I think
that that that it's a it's a great and maybe maybe
another Morocco Morocco don't have a good a great star
and but really they work like a huge
selection team and of course that that uh the both things
tomorrow for boats are a terrible it's something
that I can't imagine it's really or it is it will be very very stressing
for this guys congratulations thank you thank you well thank you we
have to you know we have to resume back to astronomy um
yes but I I will say this okay and Global Star Party one of the really cool
things about it is that you do get to learn about the culture of other countries
yeah well that's that's that's really great yes because when you come to
Brazil or or Argentina you can have more expectation about how is the people yeah
you know that that's right we I invite like like Barcelo say to to visit Brazil
Argentina Chile because it's it's incredible incredible Peru well but why
Uruguay it's full full of of amazing
amazing landscape people the culture is really huge and
we have um uh people in the south of Brazil in the
south of Brazil is different to the north here in Argentina is the same the west or the Northeast and of course
Chile or do you have a expect you know different different colors of totally
something that for example um it's something about that we we
read in the near Time magazine or the
newspaper about why and journalists say why
Argentinian selection don't have a black people let's say come on you need to
come here to understood what which is Brazil which is Argentina really we we
think like a color people come on you are watching us really we
um we uh um we feel himself like a taller people
absolutely we are not why because it's impossible for us yes
absolutely we encounter people and the most important thing is who make
the barbecue no they're not at home made an apartment yes yes
if I go yes yes I know sure
in English word of course that is
in Brazil something that I know from basilis is
the kind of uh in the some part of Brazil maybe but it's about the children
the quality of it um um well I'll take I took uh I took some
things about astronomy about gravity you like you have let's see you have yes
how many minutes left yeah is one minute we got uh okay you got eight minutes yeah really oh yes eight minutes go I
enjoy I enjoy all that you you
prefer really um let me check what again
[Music] um
well do you remember the picture of of uh what it is
you can you can see uh in your screen I think that I am I'm sharing the screen
of the pics inside program yes it looks great yes yes here do you have
the picture processor of the of the two weeks ago and currently City according
to see this sorry 47 took a night 47 to Kanai is a very interesting cluster and
the cluster is no you can see in the direction of the small myelinic Cloud
but the cluster is not inside the small bag lady Cloud if not that it's a it's a
cluster in the same line of of vision
um if it is very interesting because it's not so massive like
Omega Centauri but it's uh it's interesting because it's
um have something it's huge and it's the
kind of cluster that have the typical mass the mass segregate station
typically in in huge uh in big clusters
where do you have uh the the biggest Mass the high mass starts going to the
center and the lower must starts going outside
um it's very interesting because that today we are talking about gravity is
like a laboratory of gravity a cluster wow this telescope looks wonderful
and it's uh something that
that have um
um black hole inside uh this is very interesting because
in many many as many many clusters uh is
the second one in the sky in their bride their magnitude is four
and it's very very interesting uh because have a central uh black hole or
the people think that have a central black hole something incredible when you
when you watch this this kind of uh global
global cluster or it's something very very interesting
in another way and this was my picture of the week
from the city from the city here in Buenos Aires and you know it's it's not
easy and take this kind of picture of the city but Global clusters it's a kind
of Target for the people that live in the cities that is easy to have a great picture
um maybe with conditions uh light conditions like pollution conditions
that are not the best um like here in my Skies where I have
nine bottle nine it's great to to take this kind of pictures
absolutely yes and in another way
um I I showed you something that I received this week
um about uh about a new place to enjoy the sky that it's
um uh it's a huge National Park much better to
explain that the name is is a
huge a huge water uh you know it's like a Wetlands
pantanos Wetlands but huge huge size [Music]
um the government of the province of corrientes
um took the the idea to to choose
like a a special place to activities in
astronomy is great because it's a place where um where you can take picture we're
watching uh you know um you can you can see a lot of
different animals and in the night to have a great place and let me show you
again
okay you can see the the light pollution map
okay we're starting from Buenos Aires this terrible place here is where I took
the picture here in in in my my area my town
Palermo you can see this is my light pollution
area very polluted bottle 9.3
and maybe more
here is maxi but here in this area it's me and Nico
and the last star particamarca was
let me show you let me show you what's here
especially this area this place
this was the place where where was our last
third party it was dark there absolutely yes absolutely dark
is between Argentina it's of course but very near to the to the area
to the area of of
here here was the place where we make the the last surviving
Captain America
and another place let me show you totally dark absolutely
next year we are watching uh a place
with less altitude uh but with the same like pollution area
very very maybe level two or one
in this area and I'll show you I'll show you
where is another part of the country with this
area of wetlands here look that
oh yeah yes it's very very dark yes yes and this is very interesting
because we will talking with people of the the city of Mercedes in corientes
Province um we're starting to talk where or when we are going to make a star party maybe
it's the best place uh because it's it's not so cold in Winter and it's a great a
great place to go in Winter and middle of the winter um because the north it's the same like
you do you have the weather in south southern states in the United States and
uh do you have a a gray and very dark place
um the skies are very clear in Winter because uh do you have a low condition
of humidity uh despite that they are wetlands
um I maybe I can show you some pictures of the place comparing this is the
katamarca area where we was in the last Star Palace and in
the same this is in the in the center North West but or in the west going to the Corby
Shera with the frontal line with Chile
and in the same are in the more to the North and the
Northeast do you have these Wetlands that are the status of ibera they are
very interesting to go to to visit um to have a great place
this is a a picture to show to to
um to to and to say some to the people it's very very nice place but it's a
huge Place full of of uh you know alligators or where we call it shakaris
um beards you know at least the typical the typical Milky
Way very bright over over uh our heads our our heads and this is a new place to
to try to to enjoy really and this is
um a new place and it's very interesting that the government are concerned to keep the light
pollution very very a wide the place it's very interesting
um it's something that we are going to to prepare a new place for Star
parties uh in in this area that maybe we have more uh you know
um dark areas in Patagonia but sometimes the wind the time the the weather the
wind can be very high there you do you remember yes
the reason why they call you 100 mile per hour Caesar absolutely absolutely
and this is something that that for 2023 we are going to to to to
we are going to have our um basic radical party in in Middle
April uh in October we are going again to katamarca
about maybe in July we can start uh to have the in corinthus Province
uh maybe we can have our first star party in the
Pharaohs of Iberia um well uh this next year we'll we have
a partial eclipse um we will have a lot a lot of of
uh activities in Argentina and this is my presentation about about
the all things and as is the the last
um the last uh show of the year I said to the people to my friends of global
sir party to have a great a great new year uh uh Merry Christmas
um I I sure that we will start the 2000
to be three amazing thank you so much Caesar it's a pleasure
it's good that's great okay all right so we are we
are going to um uh pay a little tribute to the 50th
anniversary of Apollo 17 uh which is actually we're in the midst of it right
now um uh you know so uh for those of you
that were old enough to remember this uh I think that uh you'll
um be a little uh um interested in some of the new things
that's going on with Apollo 17 with the unboxing of some of the samples that have been in deep freeze for a long time
and also just to kind of relive that whole experience of what Apollo 17 was
um I uh you know one of the things that I would like to uh
um say again about the astronomical League of some of the the great speakers that they have at the Alcon events and
this last Alcon they had Harrison Schmidt who was uh you know really I
guess the first scientist to join the Apollo crew and he was a geologist I got to
meet him at Alcon talk to him he did a book signing it was really really great
and he also did an interview with us that is uh you can still watch it on
YouTube but for right now let's go back to Apollo 17 and of December of of 72 I
believe ten nine eight seven ignition sequence
started all engines are started we have ignition two one zero we have a lift dog
we have a liftoff and it's lighting up the area it's just like daylight here at
Kennedy Space Center the Saturn V is moving off the pad it is now cleared the tower NASA is now celebrating the
50-year anniversary of Apollo 17. this was the final mission of the Apollo program and most notably the last time
humans set foot on the moon's surface The Landing site in the Taurus litro Valley was selected so that astronauts
could collect samples of the lunar Highlands and investigate the volcanic history of the area
so what was it like to actually be there and how does this Mission connect with NASA's current exploration of the Moon
and our future plans to return humans to the surface these questions are best answered by the
lunar module pilot for Apollo 17 Jack Schmidt whose background as a geologist offers unique insight about studying the
lunar Terrain for Jack being on the moon was an unparalleled experience and
future astronauts should expect the same the experience is going to be more than you ever anticipated and and it was that
way for me to get onto the moon that uh seeing this Valley of tarsh latro which
is deeper than the Grand Canyon as a matter of fact mountains to six and seven thousand feet above you on either
side of the valley of all silhouetted against a a black sky with brilliantly illuminated
Mountain slopes and the Earth of course in one spot above the southern part of
the message that all was a new experience of course and you can't you
can hear people talk about it but you you can't absorb it until you're there being there is the essential human
ingredient in any kind of experience of mankind
17 to all those who made it possible Schmidt and Commander Gene cerning
completed three Moonwalks on the surface taking Rock samples and deploying scientific instruments difficult work
considering the surface gravity is only about 1 6 that of Earth Jack I'm taking a bath very good I'm
coming right now I bet you a dollar to Donut that you don't get to tte reading yeah I've seen
if you're uh if it's easy enough to take it off why don't you take it off the uh Rover and we'll try and try and level it
in the stuff oh come on I'm not sure there's any
place to put it on the ground level [Applause] no
that's a digger Place yeah I'll do it [Applause]
okay it's coming off [Applause]
well I'll set it right up here it's gonna fall down the hill you better stomp off a good place yeah
the conditions on the moon however were also ripe for the astronauts to have a little fun on the surface as well
one day
may may that's right
let me throw the hammer okay let me throw the hammer please it's all yours you got this you
deserve it I have her throw her a huge yellow you ready go ahead you ready for
this ready for this yeah don't hit the lamp or the out depth
look at that look at that look at that beautiful
looked like it was going a million miles but it already dipped didn't it the crew managed to gather around 245
pounds of moon rocks and dust samples during their Evas it was an impressive collection for
scientific analysis back on Earth get that contact the quality and
diversity of the Apollo sample collection is just remarkable absolutely remarkable and it's a gift that keeps on
giving the researchers continue to go back to these samples new analytical technology comes along where you can
apply new techniques get more higher resolution information and that'll be going on indefinitely I don't think the
lunar sample collection from Apollo will ever be out of date over three decades after Apollo 17. NASA
launched the lunar reconnaissance Orbiter in 2009. the scientific instruments aboard this
robotic spacecraft collect a wide variety of scientific data on the moon's environment including surface and
subsurface properties and since lro has now been in operation for over 13 years it has provided a
treasure Trove of new information about the moon as well as the capacity to help scientists reinterpret older data and
answer scientific questions that had been lingering from the days of Apollo 17. one such case involved the debate over
the origins of a light-colored mantle seen at the base of the South Massif in Taurus litro
lro imagery provided a key discovery that enabled scientists to put together the many pieces of the puzzle
one of the highest Sun angle lro photographs I made it very clear that
there was an older slightly darker Avalanche underlying partially
underlined the light colored light mantle Avalanche and that immediately brought into question whether or not the
light mantle Avalanche people had thought it was triggered by secondary
material thrown from a the crater Tycho some 2000 kilometers to the Southwest
it would seem not impossible but it would seem to be very coincidental to
have two Avalanches one of which was triggered by those impacts and that in
turn took us to looking at what might be an alternative triggering mechanism and the more we
begin to understand the Lee Lincoln scarf and that it was indeed as a result
of other lro analyzes Elsewhere on the moon that it was indeed a thrust fall
scarp then you start to think well maybe these are being triggered by seismic activity moonquakes and so it just it's
sort of snowballs you see one thing and then you start to explain that and it leads you to a number of other analyzes
clearly lro imagery and other sensor data has made a great difference in our
ability to augment the interpretation of the geology of the valley of tarsely
true as the lro mission continues enhancing our ability to interpret Apollo era data
while also collecting new information about the lunar terrain Jack sees a clear road map for the future
exploration of the Moon and where we should go next it's apparent to me that based on
just general considerations as well as the magnificent imagery coming from the
Illinois reconnaissance Orbiter camera that South Pole vacant is clearly the
place you'd like to have an extended human presence for exploration with this all
this new knowledge I think South Pole Lincoln becomes a much higher priority for the next human mission to the Moon
sure enough NASA has recently announced that the Artemis missions which will eventually have humans returning to the
lunar surface will focus on the moon's South Pole in fact the 13 Landing sites
currently under consideration sit within the South Pole Aitkin Basin or on its rim
data shows the presence of water ice and some of the permanently shadowed regions a discovery that is crucial for
understanding the geologic history of the Moon as well as helping establish a sustained human presence there in the
future overall the 50th anniversary of Apollo 17 reminds us that this mission was a
crucial stepping stone in the history of lunar science laying the groundwork for Missions like lro which in turn help
open the door on a new era of human Exploration with Artemis and while these missions may be
separated by Decades of time they all interconnect with the central premise and understanding of how the Moon is the
Cornerstone to understanding our universe the main reason the Moon is important in
the general understanding of the solar system is that it has no atmosphere it's never had any water erosion it has no
Dynamic plates being formed and and eaten up as as the Earth does and it
tells us what the uh the early solar system was like up to about three and a
half billion years ago and that's information we can't really get from any other accessible Planet the Apollo 17
anniversary allows us to reflect on all the moments big and small that led to the success of that historic mission
for Jack it's the time to reflect on those days months and years spent out in the field preparing for the duties of an
astronaut and it was during this time training that Jack learned the invaluable scientific lesson that not everything
goes exactly as planned well those field insurgents had all of their
uh their interesting aspects one time I believe it was in Nevada where getting
off the Rover even without a suit I had slipped on something and fell onto this
surface and my good friend the late Gordon Swann set over the communication
system well Schmidt just hit the fan it was by the way an alluvial fan
[Laughter] I don't think he used that
that's great thank you very much yeah thank you
well that was a great um presentation with uh Harrison Schmidt
uh you know and we want to wish him uh you know a great 50th celebration which
they're currently undergoing right now um we are
um uh ready to turn this over to Frank marches
um I I hope I'm pronouncing your last name correctly Frank but uh we did meet
at the um we did meet at the USS Hornet
um uh that's now been a couple of years ago and uh it was fantastic you know I
got to see the unicellar and action uh as you were demonstrating it to uh to a
star party that we had going on up there on on the deck of that historic uh ship
and um so that was that was totally cool I uh you know I'm very happy to you know
we made an announcement that we are a distributor for unicellar at this point
I did bring a couple here I know that you're at a scientific Symposium right now and
uh so but uh it's like you don't have scopes with you
um but I thought that I could you know certainly bring one with me here and you know so I've
I've got uh we've got both models here uh but uh you're you're the one to give
this presentation but before you do Frank um maybe you could give us a little bit of background more background about
yourself I know that you work at seti I know that you're uh you know one of the lead astronomers there maybe the senior
astronomer at study uh um you know my my uh association with
steady goes uh back maybe I don't know 15 20 years something like that where I
got to meet uh Seth shostak and Frank Drake a couple of occasions
um and uh so it's just a uh you know an incredible organization and um you know
I know that the fight for money there and and to keep on doing the research the important research that you guys do
at seti is is uh uh always uh something you know that is a uh a bit of a
struggle but I think that you have some good endowments and stuff now that are keeping uh seti alive and well and I'm
very impressed with uh the interstellar product uh I've used it myself
um made some nice Astra photographs with it our team here at explore scientific
is you know they're all like lined up you know wanting to take turns in using
the unicellar um but uh perhaps uh perhaps you can
give us a little bit more uh you know of your inspiration to get involved into astronomy what's your and to tell us
your story of your involvement with uniceller and then maybe give a little presentation so thanks for coming on on
your busy schedule why thank you yeah I mean Baltimore right now and the stsci
can you hear me well because yes I can Excuse me yes um wonderful yeah I'm uh I'm at the
first uh science result conference with jwst and I'm telling you it's extraordinary why jwst can do and there
is a lot of things we cannot talk about unfortunately but you're gonna see there is some amazing results that's gonna be
going to come out in the next two three months with this uh Space Telescope but
yeah uh so I'm an I'm an astronomer that's really my my brand my my passion
has been always in a professional astronomer working on Adaptive Optics with ground-based telescopes initially
uh using a 10 meter class telescope developing instruments uh to
characterize asteroids find moons around asteroids study atmosphere Jupiter and
um as well uh search for exoplanets by direct Imaging so I'm being involved in
projects like GPI the gym identity major in the southern hemisphere using the Gemini cell stethoscope and yeah I've
been working a lot on Outreach at the city Institute because as you mentioned uh City Institute is a non-profit
organization and we are more than just doing astronomy or
searching for aliens which is people know us for we also connecting with the
with people and we're trying to bring the page the passion and the fun of astronomy to people as a kind of a
father Carlos Carl Sagan did we're trying to renew this astronomy regularly
bring the bring the astronomy and planetary science to the to your use in
particular so in 2017 I met this team of
Three French people scientists as well who had this idea of
creating a telescope for everybody and that's the unistara telescope that you
have behind you it became from a fun idea in 2017 to a demonstrator that I I
show around and we met this one you probably remember this one
I do I did it well I have both I have both models here I didn't didn't have room to
uh set it up by my desk but you know I certainly have the unit that has the
eyepiece right and this is an Nikon eyepiece very nice
um and uh you know the gosh the design of the telescope is really just
extraordinary uh you know I've been working on telescopes for a long time myself but it's like you thought of
everything you know even built into the lens Gap is a nice Batten off mask for focusing you know focusing is done from
the back of the instrument all the parts are very precision
uh which is you know nice to uh really nice to see so just a a great job in the
idea of it the engineering of it and the execution of it which is really really
important uh you know and the this is not uh you know when you when you hold
the installer you know you know that it's it's uh it's definitely made from
the right materials and all the rest of it so you know just a but a very elegant
and the whole experience of using it is also very elegant you know so
yeah the idea is really to make a tsunami accessible uh by building an
instrument that people want to use want to show around uh kind of connect with
it like an iPhone you use your phone all the time it's Sleek design it's simple if you have
cables around you want your phone and you have it you turn it on it works that's what we wanted to do with the
unicella eviscope and I hope we succeed it so that's 2017 2019 we did a
Kickstarter that probably people have heard about and we are very we were very impressed by the
the amount of people who went to 2017 we did a Kickstarter so end of 2017. a lot
of people basically purchase a telescope that did not exist on Kickstarter in 2019 we deliver the first one and now we
have them in stores everywhere it's uh it's the largest network of telescope in
the world and that's what I'm gonna talk about in fact in my presentation okay and it's a I just want to mention again
it's more than a telescope it's a network it's a community of people working together to do science it's a
community of people who share share The Wonder of the universe and want to uh to
participate to scientific investigation so if you want I can show a few slides
to prepare please yes uh you know and I I will I will also add that you know to
get involved in uh uh you know the science part of astronomy was not always
easy to do um uh there there have been you know since I've been an amateur astronomer
I've seen I've started to see more and more Pro-Am you know professional slash amateur efforts and stuff like that but
it's nice to see something where you know if you want to jump in and you want to be part of the you know the
scientific Community uh you can do it with um you know really what would for many
be their first telescope and that that is amazing that that is unprecedented in
our industry good so yeah I get basically the introduction I just want to mention that
this is not a work I Do by myself we have a team uh we have a 50-ish people
working in France on the telescope itself the the manufacturing the development of the technology and so on
and in the US in San Francisco I have a team of 10 people astronomers
professional astronomers as well working together on using this network to do a
meaningful scientific investigation so those are the name of the Thomas posito Lawrence grow Ryan Lambert
et cetera so those are very they are the one who are doing working days and
nights to make sure that people get the data when they observe quickly developing Cutting Edge algorithm to
increase the the scientific Return of the telescope so you mentioned the
telescope I'm just going to say again that we have this is the we have three type of telescope we're starting with
the viscope one in 2019 then we have the Equinox which is the one you have on this on the on the mount right now
behind you and then we have Ronald Davis Cup 2 which is the telescope we develop
in partnership with Nikon which has an eyepiece a very high quality icon Nikon
eyepiece so it's a cool consumer product it's a product that we want people to use okay it's also a telescope that is
used in education um because it helps you to find stars to
find information about the object you're observing so if you're an educator you can share with your students the use of
the telescope multiple people can be connected around the telescope and watch their their phone what the telescope is
doing so that's really to create this education Community as well and then
that's what I want to talk about today it's this useful telescope for scientific investigation
and that's something that we started right at the beginning in 2017 we were
already talking about doing scientific investigation with the telescope so those are the characteristic of the
viscope one and the Equinox uh you have one behind you I'm not gonna go through
the details but the goal here is to make a system which is a digital smart
robotic telescope capable of collecting photons so you can see in
color or Galaxy and nebulase we have an algorithm behind that process the data
remove the atmospheric turbulance remove the um the atmospheric pollution for
instance uh increase the image quality so you can see the Navigator and galaxies or comets in color
and then we have a telescope which is portable and that's very important for
us to have a telescope that you can carry around in the backpack so if you want to do scientific Expedition if you
want to if you want to take it with you when you go for in the outdoor camping
with your friends or family it takes five seconds you put in the backpack it's ready you can go and it works on
the battery so you don't need Powers Etc it's self-autonomous you don't need internet to use this telescope
so people collect data observations of whatever they want but we can also send
them alerts to obser Scientific in scientific project be part of scientific
project the data then uploaded into the uni Stellar Cloud Server through the Wi-Fi and the city Institute
the scientific partner have access to this data and we do that analysis in real time of the data coming from those
telescopes so people have seen picture but I'm going to show some of them those are
real observations taken by observers around the world
um you see the Triangular Galaxy the neo-wise Comet here uh you can you can
observe as I mentioned in color can you hear me because my yes yeah all
right for some reason my screens froze okay now you're fine I'm fine yeah
yeah so this is Alex nebula Etc so we have seen those pictures I'm not gonna go through that in details but you can
see the quality of the observation you get with the telescope in a few minutes um yes it's 34 minutes for the elix for
instance here and 30 minutes for this one so the goal is really to make a tsunami
accessible so people can observe and enjoy the dark sky from their home
so it did work and we can I can say that because now we have 10 000 telescopes around the world and this map is not
complete in fact there is women now uh we started in of course in Europe United States and Japan we extended in in the
Australia New Zealand last year and now we have Distributors everywhere in the world in India in China uh in South
America um and we have telescope in Africa in various places in Africa
so among these 10 000 eviscope users 1200 of them sign up to become citizen
astronomers so it means that they participate to our citizen science and
they get access to the slack that's the way we communicate with them so they
know what to observe by looking at the slack or by simply looking at the website we have a website that we update
almost on a daily basis so they know if something happened in the sky
so those people those cities as numbers are very Broad
and diverse group of people so we have people living in cities that like want to show styles to their kids
uh schools we have amateur Cinemas we have telescope in the past and choose
our digital technology because it's simpler for them we are people who love the outdoor and take the telescope with
them and they go hiking or camping we have techies just the beauty of using a
telescope which is a robotic telescope and we have scientists A lot of my
colleagues in fact who bought a telescope and I will I will confess that I've been using I've been observing more
since I haven't even used myself done that when I was only a professional
astronomist that is my telescope almost three times a week now when it's nice in
San Francisco to just observe a fan or to do some tests but I do take my telescope out
when I was a professional at Cinemas and I had actually I had to request time on the cake or the VLT I was observing
twice per year Max yeah I'm talking about observing often and I know the constellations now
because that's when you do it that you finally learn the constellation that you've recognize them
um and then we have VIPs people like our famous two work from from Star Trek Tim
Russ as one of our telescope and use it a lot so the Wonder the idea here is really
that unicella developed a telescope and the technology City Institute is the
non-profit organization which is partner and we develop scientific projects for
the unicellular eviscope with Partners so we have the minor planet center we
have NASA tests uh We've we become officially a partner of NASA a few
months ago to do follow-up of tests the mission that that search for
exoplanets of NASA to do follow-up of those observations you have other
partners such as AVS emission and in in Europe the observable
Paris Central University so we um
we have multiple scientific campaigns or themes that we've developed I'm not
going to talk about all of them uh we have defense which is consist basically ascending an alert every time
an asteroid pass nearby our planet and we want to refine the orbit of this
asteroid by doing uh continuous observation so we use the rotation of
our planet and the fact we have a network all around the world to continuously observe an asteroid so to
refine its orbit we send the data to MVC and the orbit is regularly every hours of the updated
so we have done that for multiple near Earth's asteroid and we have developed
this algorithm that also create the 3D Shape model of the asteroid from the light curve from the variation of light
that's what you have here 1999 AP 10 was the first attempt we did last year and
now we have much more of them we do applications so those are these I
love the I love this project because we call the our citizens remember doing this the shadow enters so what they do
they travel in different places to look for a star we predict when the star will
be occulted by the passage of an asteroid between us and the star so if
you're located underneath the shadow of this asteroid you will see the studies
appearing for a few seconds and from that by combining multiple observations we derive the shape of the
asteroid so we have done this for thousands of reputation last year and I
think this year probably reached 2000 and we have significance of a result as
well that I'm going to show briefly and then something that's really interests people and I'm I'm still
amazed when I say that we can do that from with this tiny telescope right we
can now it's a four and a half inch telescope but it's it it is really uh
you know it is really what um you know the application of using something like
this and having you know an extremely sensitive sensor um
you know and being able to work all that to produce Sciences
I think most people would not think that this is possible but in fact uh there
this is definitely within the range of this aperture and uh
um you know I think that people that get involved with uh you know and do science like this will feel a great amount of
satisfaction and gratification yeah yes so I'm going to show a few more detailed
examples like for quotations of for instance we have like every month we we
calculate all the application observable on our planet and we select some of them
not all of them and those are the path of the occupation okay around the world and so if you're a user even if you
don't have a unicella telescope you can basically go on our website to find what computation is visible from your area
and you can observe it if you have a uni state or telescope you find a path and we also give you a link you click on the
link and this will basically send the telescope to the right location and you can start the observing the
accreditation when it's when when you are ready so we're really trying to make this extremely simple you don't need to
know anything about right Ascension declination you don't need to know much
more than what we tell you to do and of course you can change those parameters you can do your own science later on but
it's good for the people to start with something very simple and they understand through the apps and through
our website what's happening in real time so those are some occupation we've done in 2021 I'm not gonna go through
them all of them I think I have a slide showing some some of the missions
we have been focusing on the children asteroid which are this kind of population which has been forgotten
because we discovered equipable objects in the 90s so we went from the main belt
the Cooper belt and forgot about the Trojan which are those are stereo locating at the same distance than
Jupiter and orbiting in front and behind Jupiter orbit basically
they are interesting population and NASA is really interesting in them now because we think they are kind of the
the most primitive bodies in our solar system clothes accessible to us so we do
the occupation we focus our accreditation program on those Trojans because they we don't know anything
about them and here are some picture we took over the past six months of some
missions that we did I love a quotation because there is always a story in you like in the case of Colorado here uh I
met those citizens and I never met them before we basically sent them a message like there is an occupation by the
asteroididymos observable north of Denver and seven of them and so to me and say
hey we want to do that so we met in the middle of the night in um uh abandoned
airport parking lot and discuss and show them how it works and we all scattered
along the road to do the observation and um we did not catch this occupation but
people were located 400 meter further in the East so it using the I uh from the
Iota Network so this is a kind of things we do as well it's like as I say it's
not only in telescope it's a community of fun people who wants to do meaningful
science and and participate to uh do this um
we um we we also did motion like this outside United States so we have multiple
Mission this is one of the most successful one that we did very early in 2019 we were the first one to detect an
application by um by this asteroid of of the Lucy Mission
um always and you can see disappearing here it's very small so we send in this
at this location our CEO at the time Lauren and our president
Arnold who is here and uh and they observed your quotation
that succeeded the succeed in observing it and here we have Alexi uh engineer at
nistela who tried to observe it with uh some local people as well and he did not see it so this is a very it's an
adventure again we send he is in Oman a country uh that you don't have you don't
often go give you a reason to go to visit some kind of interesting places in the world if you are the shadow enters
with the United States um yes so the second part is really the
I just want to briefly mention that exoplanet transits as I say is really like the revolution we can now
detect with this telescope Jupiter size exoplanet transiting uh solar sun-like
Stars and uh in fact we found a lot of those tests found I think the last number I
see I saw is like 460 exoplanet like that that need to be confirmed by the by
additional techniques because when Nas test detect an occupation a Transit
sorry the test cannot go back to the to the Target often to observe it this move
and observe another field of view so we rely on other instruments to confirm
this of this Transit so that's what we do with the unistail network we calculate when those Transit will be
visible from different area and we send maps to our observers and they
participate to that and we got I think last time I looked there was one thousand
opportunity exoplanet detected with your unistral network it's enormous and with that we refine the orbit where
we first we confirm the existence of this exoplanet and then we conf we refine the orbit of this exoplanet and
now we're really trying to do some very cool things like we combine the data coming from multiple
telescopes like you can see here and with this we have a much better light curve much much better quality in
terms of signal to noise so better estimate of the timing of the transit or
we also combine observation from multiple locations like here we have two Observer Bruno income and Justice in
Georgia and United States the Bruno who observed at the beginning then sent a
message to Justice and Justice took over and you have a you have a profile of an
occupation if we didn't have these two observers located apart this will not
have been possible and now we do even more fun stuff like we are we observe computation uh transit
for which we have an uncertainty of 12 24 hours so we observe continuously for 36 hours
and we analyze the data and we detected recently uh Transit that lasted 12 hours
the longest transiting exoplanet ever seen from the ground was detected with
the unistail network and this is because of the power of the community and the fact that we are
distributed all around the planet we are capable of doing this kind of observations that is not possible with
professional telescopes so
and now we also do we also try to connect to people to what's going on in
space so we've when they launched jwst in December last year
we basically have an observer that observed jwst on its way to the LaGrange
point so we saw the Separation by the booster we saw some Flair due to some
exchange of orientation of the of the spacecraft we saw the opening of this
the spacecraft I don't think I have this but we still like we have a light curve we clearly show that the the brightness
the increase of brightness of the spacecraft due to the fact that it was opening his primary and essential and we
have this data being published and those citizen swimmers who observe it with like 50 50 of them roughly they
basically uh Accord of this paper and that's an important point that I want to
mention the if you are big if you pass a part of
a network you're part of the network as an observer but also if you want you can
also participate in the data processing the analysis and the writing of the paper we trans we do that transparently
we give the opportunity to our uh citizen astronomers to participate to the pros entire process to be part of
the scientific process as well and then when the paper is published they call Author like any astronomer professional
amateur citizen Sonoma it doesn't matter to us you are astronomer you spend some
night observing you took some data you process them some of them maybe you're
part of the of the paper and I think it's important that we not only using the time of people
we involving ours of our community in the scientific process this is what they
learn and then they start doing their own thing in fact we have now astronomers citizen astronomers who are
developing their own program just use go by himself to the list of test objects
of interest and by yourself decide what you will observe uh overnight and
sometimes send this requests to observers around the world so they're doing their own science right that's
really good for us we don't need to be involved in everything there is enough bodies to observe in the solar system
and elsewhere so I'm glad that to see that they learn and they're now doing their own
so fantastic we need a cake too I just wanted to show that people
we basically order a cake in the shape of JW and steer this was kind of a token
present for the the team in Marseille who help uh significantly in developing
I love it project that's great uh there are a couple of questions
um uh go ahead yeah yeah yeah uh we've got uh uh uh Central nagapan watching on
YouTube and um uh he
he lives in very light polluted Skies now I know that you're in the Bay Area so you also have light polluted Skies
too he is in bortle eight Skies uh he he says
um uh that he is getting uh he said I can barely I can barely see anything
looking up at the sky but it still picks up and does an amazing job
um uh but he's wondering is uh is it possible to put a light pollution filter
or some sort of filter onto the interstellar uh yes
yes I did I release a video it's on my personal YouTube page of
explaining how you can set up filters in front of your telescope so if you want
to reduce license the light pollution to get uh to see nebulae uh in color faster
so that's possible you can um it's also on the unicella page but
it's I can send you the link but by Google simply unistella filter and my name and you will probably get right
away with my YouTube video with all the references to explaining how to do that all right great great
um he said he was hesitant to get a filter because he didn't want to cause any damage to the equipment
I will tell you I mean honest with you Frank we have dropped
one of these telescopes twice and it's still working okay once it fell out of my truck because
somebody pushed a bunch of equipment uh and um and then one of our customer
service reps uh accidentally dropped she she was devastated she was super scared
because uh that she had dropped one of these instruments but in fact uh there was really nothing wrong with the
instrument at all um and so that that is uh if you're worried
about uh working with the telescope uh you know I would just make sure uh you
know before you attach a filter uh watch watch Frank's video okay uh get whatever
adapter that you might need and then um you know I imagine it takes the inch and a quarter size filters that would screw
in front of the uh in front of the sensor and uh you're not going to damage
it so it's I would be uh I would not uh be so uh you know scared about working
with with that telescope um I have a personal question too uh
I've worked with um uh our own team uh that does you know photometry and
exoplanet work and they use a diffuser a mounted in a one and a quarter inch
filter cell is do you think it will be possible to to use the diffuser method with a unisteller I tried that in fact
that's one of the things I tried a long time ago I think a year ago with some professional astronomers and we didn't
get such a good result in comparison to not having a diffuser because he killed the scintillation
that's true but then it's also increased the shape of the I increase
the the the the the profile in size yeah so at the end we don't get we don't we
we didn't win that much plus the issue is that we could not find a diffuser that will allow us to be able to do the
alignment at the time ah right she's always either too big so we could not see any any Star so we have to set up
the telescope and it was already aligned and that's not something I really like doing because then yeah
so it's possible but we didn't find yet the best diffuser for for the Unice
telescope I see okay great um
I just gonna finish by showing some cool things we have done with uh okay Danielle like this is like observing the
International Space Station passing in front of the of the moon transiting the Moon
and we also went to uh in California to Vandenberg and we uh we watched the
takeoff of the of the SpaceX was SpaceX rocket from five miles away because
that's cool that's great yeah that's we can do stuff like that with this
telescope as well I mean there is an infinite amount of possibilities of things you can observe
if it's like 10 000 objects observable on the scope in the sky but you can also
observe some cool things like a rocket taking off and then the separation of this rocket and even the satellite
beings uh ejected from the affair from the from the top of the rocket we have
done we have people observing the uh the International Space Station and the Dragon capsule together
Etc so they there is some very cool things we can do now there's so much happening in the sky in this in space in
Orbiter on Earth and beyond that uh you will use a telescope every day
um last last well not last week this week I'm confused because I've been traveling but
last week uh our citizen astronomers observed Artemis coming back we have
like videos of our team oh wow on the way back and observing we do observe Artemis and we refine the orbit for
instance we can even see the the change of trajectory uh due to some Maneuvers
just before Artemis reached the atmosphere of our planet so this is one
of the one of the things that's very the the portability of this instrument to be able to go and set up quickly and get
something like this done is is um you know is great because this these
kinds of projects that you're talking about usually could only be done by someone that's extremely experienced
right and uh and and you know they have like almost muscle memory with their
telescope equipment and stuff and uh the the uh the uniceller takes that load off
their shoulders you know and makes it possible to Dive Right In and start doing this stuff
yeah being able to I mean it happens to me a lot that I'm watching something on
TV and then I look outside and say oh it's clear you know San Francisco yeah not having fog it's already right okay
so I I go I basically go out and just set up my telescope and observe in five
minutes I'm ready I know it's not a big production it's really an object which
is now in my house that I use as I mentioned multiple times because it's easy to use and right and
that's really that was the key part we have people who have done competition on how quickly they observe they can set up
the telescope and put it on the sky and I think it was two minutes and 30 seconds that's fast yeah that is fast
yeah Frank I have another question for you uh you know the small size and
really I mean when you you know I always admire great build in a telescope and
this does have great build it really does uh the tripod itself when I first
looked at it I go gosh you know it's the tripod any good this this was a question I had and you know as soon as I started
separating out the legs I could feel that this was extremely well made I knew it was going to be really really steady
you know the the capture of the mount inside the tripod also very nice this is
this is something that uh that you see in the movie industry to put heavy cameras on right and so this is a quick
release quick assembly um you know uh really you know Top Notch
all the way around um but I I the question I have for you Frank is how does it perform in the Wind
uh we're doing long exposure and then vision and there is no way you can
basically compensate for the win if you do long exposure so the win is a is an issue if you want
to do beautiful pictures if you want to do science such as occupations and so on
yes not such a big deal so we always recommend I mean the telescope behind
behind behind me with the installer I've got this dobsonian uh it's like a wind
sale you know I mean when there's wind you can forget it you know um if it's very windy I would think that
the smaller installer and its sturdiness actually would be an advantage in the
wind yeah we uh I mean I hope they have multiple time with wind in windy
condition and I just put this the tripod quite low yeah park my car in such a way
that it protects the block from the weed right yes it's not like it's not a
windsor it's it's not working when it's exposed full in the wind whether any
telescopes like that of course I don't have very much point of preference to to talk about small telescope in fact
because I don't I did not really use telescopes in the windy condition what I know is that I can always find a way to
make my telescope work if I just protect it from in from the wind through an object uh using a wall you oriented the
telescope in the right way yes I'm just gonna finish by saying that we
have tons of other things coming the telescope is one part the software
is another part we update the software regularly every three months we release a major uh major feature we release this
month last month for instance observation of planets it Jupiter saturation
Venus and Mars using a different type of technology is still DNS Vision but we
use what we call lucky Imaging to do very short exposure and we analyze these
those exposure and we keep Only the Good image freezing the seeing and we get an
image of of Jupiter which is below the resolution of the theoretical resolution
of the telescope and the atmosphere and that's allow people to see band belts the red giant Spot on Jupiter for
instance so we improve that every the software every three months we add new
features we improve the image quality we have we have an official release it's
already in the app but it's kind of hidden of the transients mode in science
so this is a mode we we have developed an algorithm at the science team in California here where we analyze all
these alerts coming from the ztf survey and other surveys and if something
happens something interesting happen like a supernova that could be observable with the unistral network
you're gonna get an alert on your phone telling you that there is something come definitely something interesting to
observe the goal is to get that 30 seconds after the discovery of the object oh wow okay You observe it and
maybe you will be the first person to see a supernovate yeah that's cool that's that's good yeah that's good and
and then we're doing the community commentary activity is Gonna Come uh probably next year uh we for do
follow-up of comets activity over time we get the shape the the structure the
light curve uh detection of jets Etc we can we're gonna be also able to
alert our users if comet is disintegrating for instance boom we send
an earlier to you you're observing to this night you will know right away that is this comment is integrating and you
may be the first person to observe it with the unistail network wow Etc we're gonna do like we're gonna do fun science
uh in the next uh six months a year we got the ground from the Moon and got
Gordon Betty Moore Foundation for that I'm gonna do easy science make it even easier for people to participate to a
scientific investigation and we have tunnel for the project partnership with space agencies Around the World Private
companies as well to part to do some follow-up of satellites activity
constellations for instance so yeah if you if people watching us right now
isn't interesting they can join our own just visit our website our social media and to find out what we do and maybe one
day purchase a unicella telescopes or enjoy the network everybody's welcome fantastic fantastic
uh you know it really it's a Brave New World that uh you're taking on uh to you
know massively bring in people into science in this way and um you know you
too can be involved in this uh and uh you know uh I know with Frank and the
science team there uh backing all this that you'll have a very positive experience
um uh thank you the young the centil is also asking how good is this to be
carried in an airplane I and it's so rugged uh it fits in the backpack
um have you carried his uh uh carry-on luggage before Frank oh did they all the
time so babies that values Babies values way of doing it okay so
I'm gonna I'm gonna say the way I do it if I go with an airline that I like and they know me because I travel a lot with
them yeah I come with my backpack and I say this is an instrument
okay a musical instrument and a telescope a company has to let you go in
the airplane with it some company will do it I'm not gonna say the names but uh it starts with a d
they will always let me let me take my airplane my telescope
great and then um and if if I travel the company I
don't I'm not sure it's International there is more restriction international flight then I I bought this Pelican case
you can give you a reference here right and uh and it's perfect if it's
perfectly you can put the telescope the demand close it you put the
a few flyers or description of the telescope so because I will open it they
always open Pelican case sure and it's good I flew with this in Australia in
Namibia in Japan in I took plenty of flights with my telescope that's great
they know me for from my telescope at the airport right right oh wonderful
well thank you thank you for being a part of our this is our final Global
Star Party event of this year we'll start again uh in January and I'll check
in with you regularly Frank on uh the science front there and if there's anything that we can do uh here at
explore scientific to increase that you know be really interested to talk to you
about that so okay yeah we'll be we'll come back one day to give maybe when we have a very cool result I will show you
some of the very cool results we get it tell us tell us I look forward to it Frank thank you so much thank you
bye-bye
okay um well I hope that all of you enjoyed the 109th Global star party uh again uh
you know I wanted to thank all the presenters that were on tonight we had
of course David Levy uh John Goss from the astronomical League
um uh David icker editor-in-chief of astronomy magazine uh Maxi filari's down
in Argentina uh showing us his astrophotography work Adrian Bradley
chasing uh dark skies and his nightscaped images uh don Davies from
the ctio live from Chile um uh you know so that was uh uh from the
four meter Blanco telescope control room uh very interesting uh Fraser Kane from
Universe today was on we want to thank him Marcelo Souza uh editor of Skies Up
Magazine and uh you know uh he did not I I don't
think that he had much time to talk about the 15th uh uh event that he'll be
putting on but it is the astronomical and aeronautical uh event and so you'll
be hearing more about that Cesar Brello was on with Caesar's universe and uh you
know congratulations again to Harrison Schmidt uh and uh you know the all the
people that are still around for that put together the Apollo 17
um you know uh launch to the Moon um and Lastly lastly Frank marches uh
for uh uh you know talking to us about unicellar and the science behind it and
so that was so cool uh I've got like a couple of more videos to show you and
then we're going to call it a night but uh again thank you very much and we will
be encouraging you encouraging you to keep looking up so take care
[Music]
so we received samples from the Apollo 17 mission which will return to Earth in December
of 1972 so nearly 50 years ago basically collected on the moon brought back
then they were frozen within about a month of being returned so no one's ever looked at them since it's very exciting
[Music] foreign
[Music] curation facility at NASA Johnson Space
Center sent us the samples and they did have to do some special efforts to keep them cold because we wanted them to stay
frozen so they had a special cold shipping box with panels that were frozen in a very cold freezer and a
chunk of dry ice we picked it up from the receiving office here at Goddard
opened it up pulled the samples out and stuck them straight in our freezer and locked them up safely [Music]
so these Frozen samples were actually collected from a region on the moon that was in Shadow from the Sun so it was
basically a large Boulder in the near future we're going back to the moon and hopefully going to the polar regions of the Moon where some of these regions are
in permanent Shadow and they don't see the sun you know they're cold these particular samples are really great
analogues for what we might expect to see in the polar regions when we go back
so we actually started last week to process the sample so the samples we got are basically dirt lunar dirt and we
basically made Moon tea out of them so Moon tea is what we call it when we pull out the soluble compounds from the soil
and so we basically take the lunar sample seal it up with a torch and a little glass test tube full of water
stick it in the oven overnight and boil it and we're just pulling out those soluble compounds that we care about the
same way you'd make tea with boiling water at home what we're trying to do is answer some
questions about the history this sample experience that the surface of the Moon the surface of the Moon is a really
hostile environment you know it's not like here on Earth where we have this beautiful atmosphere that protects us
from the nasties of space so we have particles from the Sun that are continuously hitting the surface of the
Moon and we've got Galactic cosmic rays that are coming in and penetrating into the surface as well they actually create
noble gases in these particles so you can imagine that there's none to begin
with and then as they get exposed to this space environment they kind of get
more a more buildup of noble gases and our technique is to actually unlock
those noble gases from the sample and measure them so we can come up with what we call a cosmic ray exposure age so
it's basically how long this sample has been set at the surface being exposed so basically getting a space tan
say 50 years ago this same technique which is called a noble gas mask electrometry would probably need
anywhere you know tens to hundreds of milligrams to do the same thing that we now do with a couple milligrams
it's really special to be part of this and particularly because I can look back at the papers and the the process is
that the creation office and the scientists in the 1970s thought about and they put so much care into
preserving these samples for future science to making sure that they're going to be at their you know the best
condition so that as we develop new techniques we're able to go and look at these samples and get new answers to the
science questions that were being asked you know I'm still studying these samples 50 years later for the from the
Apollo Mission the original Apollo missions and you know you don't know what's going to be in over 50 years but
I'm still a part of the Apollo dream of going to the moon and bringing samples back so the fact that we have Artemis
now is amazing like having our own not miss generation it's really exciting I just can't wait to see people go back to
the Moon
hi everybody it's Mike catch with explore scientific today we're going to show you exactly how to collimate your
refractor telescope what you're going to need is a Cheshire eyepiece
a hex wrench and a flashlight
so collimation is the alignment of the lens cell on the end of your telescope
the lens cell is what's holding those Optics in so you want to make sure those are aligned and centered to give you the
best performance out of your telescope now looking at our board here we've got
two examples one of a collimated telescope and one that is out of collimation
by looking through your Cheshire eyepiece you're going to be able to see crosshairs or circles depending on the
design of your Cheshire a collimated telescope is going to have one solid Crosshair
right in the middle of that length cell an out of collimation telescope you're
going to see multiple crosshairs that are out of the center your goal is to
bring those Crosshairs into the center to create one bold Crosshair so this is
our Cheshire eyepiece and you can find these across the web and order one at
any range of price now you will install this into the back of your telescope into the focuser
you're then going to Snug your tensioned collar to hold this in place and you
want to make sure that it's nice and flush against the end of that focuser to ensure an accurate collimation reading
once it's installed in the back of the focuser you're going to take your flashlight and shine it right through
the top of that opening like so there's then going to be a people in the
back of the Cheshire and that's how you will view the position of your collimation now to understand the front
of your telescope a little bit better you will see three to four groupings of
two screws around the front of your lens cell one is your adjusting screw and one is
your locking screw the one on the right is your locking screw and you'll see that it's sticking out a little bit
farther than the adjusting screw now to start your collimation process you're going to loosen this locking
screw very slightly anywhere from a quarter to half a turn then you will then be able to adjust
your adjusting screw to achieve perfect collimation
here we have two examples one of a collimated lens cell and one that is out
of columnation the collimated lens cell you can see there's one solid Crosshair
in the center of the Optics the out of collimation you will see anywhere from two to three crosshairs
that are out of place not in the center so our goal is to bring those in and
stack them on top of each other to create that one solid Crosshair
now after you've loosened your locking screw slightly you are then going to
evaluate the position of the out-of-place crosshairs you are then going to find the
adjustment point that is opposite of those out of place crosshairs you will
then adjust your adjusting screw snug up all the Locking screws around
the lens cell go back to your Cheshire eyepiece and evaluate your collimation if it's still
out of place you'll go back to the front of the lens cell you'll loosen up those locking screws do your adjustment on
your adjusting screw and go back to the Cheshire and repeat the process as
necessary and don't forget to lock it that will ensure that your collimation
will stay in place after it's been achieved thanks for watching guys that
is exactly how you collimate a refractor telescope so if you run into any problems or have any questions go ahead
and call our 800 number or reach out to our customer service through email and they'll be able to help you with any of
your needs [Music]
foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music]
[Music]
foreign [Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music] thank you
foreign
[Music]
[Music]