Global Star Party 14

[Music] uh we have um uh this part is guys from California you're welcome to be on but
um oh okay cool yeah how you doing yeah good you good
how are you finding the camera oh really good um I think the first nebula I did was um Iris nebula and I think everybody
said yeah you've done the wrong nebula for the monochrome camera you did elephant nebula elephant trunk nebula
last night um some of my colors are coming out a little bit funny with the
Stars but inherently it's a hell of a lot better I mean I still haven't got my final image
to look as good as the the five images it stretched in Astro toaster that I was
using um but it's hell of a lot better than what I've had before so I did tell
you it's it's that it's that well Factor when you just go boom it's like Revelation yeah even the first image I
was like Wow look you can see the whole outline of him and everything and you
know with my camera I was stuck in like 5 to 10 images and I was still thinking well I think he's there but I'll you
know put it in my head that he's there but here there's none of that if you look at it and you can see exactly the
outline of all the gas yeah totally yeah yeah so it's amazing yeah thanks for
that I did not want to do that how do I get back out of
this
is that the live clock um um Scott what's that have we really got three
minutes and 23 seconds yeah okay it's taking me longer than than 5 minutes to
eat a damn peanut butter sandwich you'll just have like the this
peanut butter you know uh cement uh at the roof of your mouth that you can't
get off basically what it is right now I have you logged in as uh I have you have
two logins with me so what you're seeing here is this here that's you see the
camera on it is the control there is a screen up there that is the secondary
control that OBS Loops through okay that's how I'm doing it I see so is
it making like a virtual camera into OBS um no because what I'm doing is I'm
capturing the screen through OBS and OBS kicks out to uh
YouTube I see so if you go to Woodland Hills Cameron telescope right now you'll actually see the live video playing
right now you won't hear us you'll just hear some music in the background
not from
here it's a hacker like
music oh I see it yeah oh very nice very
nice all right I'm going to transition to your um countdown clock when it hits
one minute okay
okay well one minute is rela for me for whatever your time to day
is well I'll do this I'll jump out for now and then I'll jump back in in what
half an hour 45 minutes that gives me a chance to set the telescope up properly oh yeah do do your thing yeah yeah cool
two hours cool BR it awesome cheers see you soon Che guys bye
CHS looks good on Zoom I mean on YouTube
YouTube oh my God the 5c countdown
yes
hello everybody this is Scott Roberts with explore scientific and uh you are
uh here at the global Star Party number 14 um we are blending uh broadcasts
today uh with Simon Tang who's with me um and Simon's got a lineup of speakers
it's going to be really amazing and it's all about visual astronomy is that right Simon so we're doing Visual and Outreach
for this particular programming and honestly I think this is the first time anybody's attempted to do something as
crazy as what we're doing today um so this this could either go really great
or horribly wrong um but I'm pretty confident this is going to be a lot of
fun so we have a lot of people who are already logging in um to the live stream
and of course if you guys are also logging in through the explore Alliance Network you're literally seeing the same
thing so it makes no difference what side you're going on um we're going to monitor both ends of the chat chat from
our side and the chat from um the Explorer lion side so you guys don't
have to pick which one you're going to watch so you can either just stay with us for the entire event or you can jump
over to um Explorer Alliance whatever you prefer that's the whole point of
this I still don't understand how it works so you know I'm I'm uh it's working it's working it's all because of
the magic of Simon Tang so there you go yes I give him all the credit so yeah
well great so um you've been planning this uh this program for a while Simon
yes um this has been planned for probably almost a week and a half now um the ne in fact we have blocks of um
programming that we do so we try to do at least two in a month unless there is a special event which you know seldom
happens from an astronomical standpoint um but the next one that we
have coming up we will have rahelio uh doing a talk on his his thing as well as
his new book that's coming out and then obviously I'll have guests built around that too and then uh an event probably
happening hopefully in November is it's going to be an all women cast um
unfortunately I will be hosting it and I'm you know not really a girl but you know we we'll get away with it I'll
probably dress up in drag or something that's up and yeah so then um we'll have
um just basically all girls it's an all girls night uh essentially because we want to bring emphasis on this hobby is
not just for one type of person it's for anybody of all ages and I couldn't care
if you're a male female or an alien from outter space in fact I'd like it if you're an alien from outter space
because you can take me with you yes well that would also be another first right yes that would be another world
first so hopefully um the program is going to go like this we are going to
have the first two hours um so we will do our regular scheduled talks we have
Daniel MSY who obviously works um at Woodland Hills Cameron telescope as a resident um telescope expert yes I do
have a barking dog in the background um and then we'll also have Kevin from Focus astronomy who is going to be
talking about visual as well as Outreach specifically and of course the way that
Outreach works now is it's not the same as it used to be we don't have physical
star parties at the moment because of um the current situation so this is why
Scott essentially created all of this and why we created the informational
side of things so you can kind of come to us for the the hardcore nitty-gritty St type stuff or you can join along with
the Explorer lions and have a virtual star party which you know even I actually involved in half the time and
my cat finally has joined us again right yeah it is it's a it's a
little bit different from us uh for us to uh for the global Star Party anyways to broadcast on a Saturday normally I
would have done this on a Friday uh but yesterday the I had a commitment with
the Austin Astronomical Society who was also broadcasting live and so you're
starting to see clubs uh embrace the technology um that we have available to
us today and um you know and to get greater reach than they ever had before
you know the Austin Astronomical Society has about 500 members uh their
reach their reach with a uh live broadcast has got to be into the thousands so oh probably without a doubt
right right and it's a great Club so if you live in the Texas area especially in
the Austin area you got to join this club they are all about educational Outreach and uh they have some brilliant
people in there so it's really uh it was a lot of fun last night you know it's
it's kind of a shame that a lot of the uh astronomy clubs have suffered um over
the past few months um because not not everybody has the access to that level
of technology and that there's been good things and bad things about the way that Co has kind of unfolded is I think we're
now truly thrusted into the 21st century in terms of integrating how technology
works and what it's done to help evolve uh um astronomy in so many ways because
this the phrase EAA electronic assisted astronomy was not really a thing up
until now and it's fantastic to see that there is now this this new bleed over um
coming out to create this Outreach and even though what we're technically doing
is not um electronic assisted it is to a certain extent because now we're able to show people
the things that you just simply can't see and introduce people into the world and we're going to have uh people
logging in all over the world at around about uh 2:00 our time that's going to be 4:00 your time and and God knows what
it is for the rest of the world but they will be showing um all sorts of different weird and wonderful things and
I'm actually happy that a guy called chock just logged in just a second ago just to pop in to say hi he's getting
set up now I sent him a camera um which will be his first monochrome camera
that's right and yep so we're gonna I'm gonna be I'm gonna be really excited to see his results I'm really looking
forward to this because it's that game Cher and I can tell he's already excited
sure all right has Daniel showed up yet uh I have not seen him show up yet no
okay let me let me poke him real fast in traffic or
something now he's sitting at home probably with his kid um pulling his pants down his ankles or something like
that and I've got my cat now who decided to sit my
lap you can you can tell it's getting cold now because usually in the Summer she
she generally leaves me alone but in in the colder days she's just all over me and just will not leave me
alone so who else have you got coming on um during your programming we have uh we
have some of our regulars that will be coming on uh uh certainly David Ley uh
will be on and he will give his uh know his uh talks which are always really
inspiring um and he always adds some poetry in there so he'll read some Robert Frost or something like that
he'll be on initially for you know 10 15 minutes and then we've got um uh Gary
Palmer who is co-hosting the show with me um you know and he's gathered up some
of his uh friends that do astrophotography in the UK uh so we got
Steve Collingwood is coming on he's got a guy named Gary vanney who I'm not familiar with but uh does uh some really
uh topnotch planetary Imaging so he's going to give a little uh tutorial on
how to image process um uh you know he's got a tutorial on Mars that we're going to show uh uh we have 10-year-old Libby
and the Stars she's gonna be on and she's gonna tell she's going to talk about her trip to Kennedy Space Center
so that's uh that that's actually something to look forward to actually yeah right so she's uh Libby has uh been
on several of our shows uh she loves doing them uh and she's learning how to
uh be a presenter you know and so it's a skill takes a while to learn it uh but
she seems to get better every time she does it so I think that's really cool um
and it's just cool to see a 10-year-old you know that interested in astronomy and space exploration
so um and who else [Music]
um there will be others uh you know shy lendra that was just on uh he'll be on
as well um and uh you know I hope to see um some cool live Imaging going on and
uh some live image processing and there'll be kind of an open Panel towards the end where people just share
uh different experiences if there is um if there is
uh uh you know someone shooting live stuff we may get into uh letting the audience uh make
requests to image different things so uh so you you know remember that of course
it's dark right now in Europe and and um uh or getting dark and uh so it's uh you
know this is really a global star party yeah I think this is just going to be brilliant um I'm actually excited
because I haven't done anything like quite like this I've done simultaneous castings um before but not on this scale
because like I said this is why it's called a global star party it's going to stretch from one side of the planet to the other speaking of planets Here Comes
one right now hey more like an asteroid can you hear us Daniel oh yeah I'm I'm
good I'm here I'm just renaming myself I got Benjamin's name on here how you guys doing we good we
good so uh I'm just I'm just going to run off with a couple of questions or uh
comments on our side of the chat uh chimp 6 says I'm a visual guide not a photo guy I prefer to be in the moment
rather than capture the moment uh thanks for this programming and then uh sensey
AJ says I bought a solar filter and I'm scared to view the sun um don't be scared to view the sun As Long as You
Follow all safety precautions when using the solar filter obviously do not look
at the Sun without a solar filter all right so Daniel solar you're
the solar man I'm telling you I know it feels like that's what I've turned into all of a sudden I
wasn't originally that's you do you're good you're good at it okay um so what
we're going to do let's let's get this program started um so Daniel give us an introduction about yourself and then the
floor is yours essentially yeah I know it's cool I like the interact with everybody I'm just
going to close the window real quick to stop the sound from coming in because I'm about to hear somebody start a truck
oh sorry that will that will alleviate the uh neighbors who decide to have uh a
party every every every second of this waking moment of the day so uh for those of you who don't know who Daniel is
again he works at the store Uh Wood Cameron telescope he is essentially our resident expert when it comes down to it
his Forte is visual specifically and uh when I first met Daniel I I kind of did
not know what to expect um in terms of you know is this guy just another salesperson or something like that but
in reality everything from a visual standpoint I've learned by pretty much
hanging out with this this this guy H and there are things that I've started
to see that I never would have noticed or paid attention to until I started
hanging around with a group and they and having them doing their thing so Daniel
um let's go into this ironic considering Scott Roberts is here because he's a
monument of history between Scott Scott Roberts and
Ellen Hill are like my the two guys man just like seen it all you know unbelievable to you guys yeah so I
started with this backyard astronomers guy oh yeah remember that s how I going on and on and on hold on hold on that's
still the Bible man it's still the Bible you
know Simon's probably got one
there where do you have I don't know where my copy of of the same book is
it's buried somewhere I'm sure it'll come up you know no you know actually Scott Roberts
um David Levy they the shoemakers and Levy David they were they discovered uh
Comet Shoemaker Levy n that was what started it you know it was actually on a news stand in a supermarket I was a box
boy I was bagging groceries back in the day I don't know what was that and then
I saw this magazine cover about these comments were going to hit Jupiter and I was like wow you only heard about that in science fiction movies you know so
that that really blew me away so that that image on that magazine was burned into my soul and at that time I think I
was just tinkering with a 6inch Newtonian and and then I was corresponding with jeffwood over at scope City in Sherman Oaks in
California and uh that's kind of how we started we were Jeff and I were doing
you know I was going in there as a customer and it back in that time in the early 90s there's a lot of visual stuff now
it's changed a lot in the sense that you have a big demographic of imagers like yourself and then you but you know we
still have a surprising amount of visual observers which is still kind of cool I don't know what would you Simon what
would you say it's about 5050 um you know what the funny thing is I would probably turn around and say
there are more visual observers still yeah than there are images uh only
because the transition hasn't fully happened yet yeah and the age group is
where the interesting side comes from so it tends to be the older generation that tends to do more of the visual aspect of
things and then it's the younger crowd that does the Imaging aspect but what
the interesting thing here that I found here is um images are discovering um
visual astronomy again and older visual astronomers who used to use film to do
imaging have rediscovered Imaging and this is my thing the way I look at it is
the reason why I do imaging is I make the invisible visible whereas looking
through an eyepiece is you are a part of what's happening and there is probably uh at
some point in time uh and I'm going to pick a slow Transit I actually want to
see the ISS Transit the sun through a night piece this time around so the plan
here is is I'm picking one specifically that has at least a two second Transit cord so I can see it two seconds through
be two seconds because I remember the live video you shot it was a fraction of a second it seems so um when it comes
down to trans Transit specifically yeah um there depending on the website that you're using you have
the apparent sizes of them that can vary from the size of say Jupiter not Jupiter um Venus all the way down to basically a
flea on a dog essentially right and the smaller it appears the the slower it
goes in front of the Sun so that's why I want to pick one of those particular
ones and you'd be surprised you can actually see it yeah I saw the live video that one time but it was just
instant you know right speed okay so you're gonna do it visual I I'm actually planning on visually seeing it and
unfortunately it's only an experience that is going to be for myself um and no
one else because you can't just say hey have quick come here and have a look it'll be gone by the time you do that
you got to plan it well we were you know we were fortunate you know when we were doing this we were in SoCal so we were
fortunate to be in Los Angeles uh where where the seeing is actually good and
people a lot of people that come into the store don't realize that Los Angeles has some of the most steady seeing in
the country oh yeah you know and you get the entro flow that's why that you know for those that are watching and uh
listening what we were doing is viewing at inos which was like the place everybody goes but the Vernon and the
guys were like you got to come over to tr Flats which is next to Mount Wilson now my understanding is that
apparently they were talking about plans of putting Palomar you know the Palomar you know the 200 inch up there at some
point I don't know if that story is actually true but that's what I heard anyway if you take Angeles Crest Highway
uh you're you got to go past Mount Wilson 10 more miles to get to Trum Flats which by the way I just went out
there but it was closed down I post posted on Facebook but it's shut down because of the fires right now right so
I don't know if it's open this week but I would went over there a couple of weeks ago but anyway the onore flow from
the uh the Los Angeles Basin is great but up there you're at about 5,000 feet so the elevation is really nice and it
gets you above that inversion layer and that's where the seam conditions are good and so for that reason we were able
you know to get beautiful views visually now I sympathize with imagers in the
sense that I know that some of the places in throughout United States the scene is just horrible and I don't think
you know Simon a lot of people you know when you mention seeing they always think you're talking about Darkness oh
yeah that's that's that's a big uh misconception because we have the way we measure stuff is there's seeing and
there's transparency um are the two critical factors in so many aspects of this and
when I say seeing people think well there's no clouds in the sky it's pitch black what are you talking about yeah
that's the that's the problem we've had so trying to get to spill that myth you
know and stuff um but for certain things it's great you know for planetary viewing the city light is actually what
I prefer and uh the the scene conditions here are Sensational so and May and uh
August are like the two really ideal months um and theoretically this is an interesting thing the 60 inch at Mount
Wilson is on the face near the face of the mountain the 100 inch is behind so in theory the 100 in scope loses
about2 to3 AR seconds because the air as it hits the face of the mountain Eddies over so they get what's left over from
it now charl Flats is further in but there we were getting compared to mount penos which is very seldom you got good
seeing you had good darkness and good transparency at penos but you didn't have good seeing you know so we went
over to Tron flats and that was when it really changed my whole life you know because we could view the planets and
everything was Rock stable in fact most of the time I you know nine times out of
10 in sing was just Sensational there was very rarely a night where the scene was not good I mean it was it was good
most of the time really good see it's funny it's funny that because um the the
solar stuff that I do relies heavily on seeing and it it's this is something
that you guys at home need to do it doesn't matter if you're a visual or an Imager
is learn weather patterns in your vicinity because at some points there
are key times for me I've discovered between the hours of 7 till around about 10 o'clock in the morning yeah um I get
my optimal seeing and the reason for that is I I'm literally on the edge of
the Los Angeles National Forest so if the forest's here I'm here and there's a
valley that runs through like a vshape and by knowing if the wind is Flowing
from say east to west or west to east I've got two mountains to block so the air can go up and then go back down and
I'll have this clear column that shoots out if it's South North or North or South forget it I'm in big trouble plus
I know how long did it how long did it take you to discover that you know because you know people they're not
familiar with the best time to view it's something they're still in the process I
mean I know this going you for a couple of years you know it took me um a good a
good six months to figure it out and admittedly I'm not exactly the best um
weather predictor on the planet or understand any of that stuff and to be
honest I had to really learn it so I started to look at things like onshore
flow I started to look at what's happening in La specifically to know what would happen in my area because if
we have like a micro climate here in Southern California it's like one minute at snow and the next minute it's like sunny and you're like hold on a minute I
just drove over a mountain and then um was the other thing that I used to well I still look at all
the time what's it called what's it called hold on I've got to open up the site it's the jet stream map transparency you mean yeah the jet
stream so I watch the jet stream very very carefully because that tells me
everything yeah it tells you a great deal did for me too I was always keeping an eye on that and that's how Vernon and
I plan those nights to go to Tron flats and you know another interesting thing is that you know when we're in the
Valley Woodland Hills at the store the temperatures as you know are can be 90 to 100 degrees Fahrenheit some yeah it's
crazy you drive over to the 405 freeway into the LA Basin and the temperature will literally drop 20 degrees
Fahrenheit it's huge Factor because you have that onshore air flow that comes
into the LA base and and at Mount Wilson and all that is above it that's why you know it's such a trade-off you know I
used to take my larger reflector Scopes to the to the star parties where we were in the valley and that was when the
reflectors were really having a hard time adjusting because there's nothing there's no ocean there it's all blocked
by the mountains so there's nothing there to control the the temperatures you know and I always think of the ocean
as an air conditioning you know it just keeps everything consistent and you get very subtle Deltas about you know 8 10
degrees Fahrenheit whereas you go into the valley and the temperature just swings like crazy and the scups can't
keep up with it and the other thing and one of the things I have learned you know I I like you I look at the the jet
stream Maps I keep an eye on that but the other thing I had learned is to look at the atmosphere like I can actually
stare at it and and look I can feel which way the air is Flowing I know if it's very transparent it's not a good
thing I know the scene's usually not good if I don't see an inversion layer I don't see any kind of water
vapor or some kind of haze then I know the air is been Zapped out by some kind
of dry santaana and I think these are important things if you want to get into the hobby of viewing double star s and
viewing the moon and the planets and by the way and and I you know I go into the cloudy nights Forum I discuss this and
people are just like can't believe what I'm telling them is that I actually like light pollution for the kind of viewing
that I do I prefer it and I have all these reasons why and um but the most
important thing is the scene conditions and I I'm into the hobby of viewing double Stars multiple stars and planets
and 90% of my viewing is doing that unless I go up to the mountains you know where I'm going to either like R Valley
you know in the Dark Skies or Lockwood Valley or chuch chupate MOS then obviously I'm going to look at things
that you can see better in the dark but I don't usually look at planets and double stars from those locations because they're not the best yeah I've
not I've noticed that because um you much further in land I mean again from
an Imaging standpoint I could care less about how much that star Wiggles but if I'm doing um outreaches um when I used
to do them in schools lot the first thing I would always ask is like where is it going to be and they go why does
that have any relevance I said it has a lot of re relevance because it tells me what I can and can't see
so it's kind of that the juggling Act of figuring out your local weather patterns
and and again there are numerous websites apps and all sorts that you can go into but be patient with it because
you do have to collect your data over a certain period of time you do have to look at what the the patterns are doing
and don't just look at your local look further out so if you have an area that
instinctively blows wind from east to west you need to look at what's
happening in the East and why it's doing that and is there somewhere you can go to where you can have an
advantage um we do have totally agree and I you know I tell people this to get to Dark Skies you have to leave the
coastline typically you have to go further Inland to get to dark skies and that's where you start losing your scene
conditions you gain the transparency but I have had some unusual weird situations
like where I went to Joshua Tree where which is one of my favorite places to view deep sky and I went there and it
was Rock stable it was just weird you know you get these freaky nights that end up being good but typically that's
not the case you know and rof you know you to get darts SK I'm G to compromise some of my scene but for dsos I can live
with it and most deep Sky observers know that the seeing isn't typically great in dark sky locations but you get
the transparency you need to look at you know extended objects you know the big extended objects in the galaxies and
stuff it's cool okay so let's just switch to a couple of questions real fast um Daniel is the 6inch eclipsed
Smart solar filter safe to observe the sun with the eclipse smart yeah it's
it's safe to observe I think they're talking about the polymer myar looking totally as as a safety
precaution I generally advise people anything over 8 in worth of aperture
when it comes down to solar filter should always use an off-axis mask it gets too big at that particular Point
completely agree and it's not that it's unsafe it's the intensity of the light
is quite dramatic um if you were doing Imaging obviously the bigger the better I do know some crazy people out there
that have used 11 Ines with an 11 in white light filter but they don't dare look through it and and they know
because they'll see the sensor temperature shoot up quite drastically
um I I I know you kind of answered this but how would you rate your La Mountain
seeeing uh view versus Joshua Tree National Park and an of bgo So Daniel
you can answer it from your end I'll answer it from my end yeah so it's it's pretty huge I mean if you go to Josh
tree you're you're I'm going there basically to first of all I got to say Josh tree is very like sacred special
place I go to jumbo Rock and it's a very spiritual experience that's the thing I
I I get a very peaceful uh enjoy I I actually enjoy just sitting quietly
there it's just so peaceful out there but it as far as sink conditions it's typically not is good and then for
imagers you know there's lots of planes that travel through that you know because they're coming into LAX so they travel a lot through those Skies so
imagers have complained but as far as uh for me uh the seeing I don't go there
for seeing conditions La just night and day better you know La is amazing people
just don't they they they misconstrue light pollution with with scene conditions and that's one of the big
myths that we always have to dispel at work you know explaining it this is like the worst place I'm like no no I
ironically this is a great place yeah so uh I'm gonna answer it in
regards to where I am um it it's like I said it's because I have that luck of
the onshore flow from LA and there is this interesting um Gap
that I have so think of it as there's the ocean that's down here so we're basically in what Tanga Malibu and all
that that hits that mountain sanon mountains I think they call it and the air basically gets pushed back up now
the problem here is as it gets pushed back up it goes over La it can come back down what I'm hoping for is the east to
west wind to knock it sideways and because I sit inside of a valley um when
it goes from east to west it'll go around block that point which gives me
the steady column that runs through where I live and like I said it always
happens between 7 and 10 o'clock in the morning my time um from a solar
standpoint it happens in the evening as well so as soon as 11 o'clock's um in the afternoon uh in the morning starts
it's like the wind just picks up it's it's like clockwork guaranteed right that's good you get familiar with
your location and the behavior of this and then you learn the seasons that are good I was mentored by few guys George
rackit Ed Gom and John ponds and I remember them doing all the solar viewing in the morning there's like all
these factors and you know it's funny you and I we're all having this discussion because these are the things
that are so fundamentally important before even getting to telescopes you know and and that's the thing you know
you can have all these great instruments and everything but if you don't have if you don't know you're doing you don't
know about your location and sometimes it can backfire and and disappointing results you know so I'm going to do a
couple of questions over from um the other chat here um I just missed the one
that you just sent me uh I found atmospherics to be also useful tracking oh not that one there was a question
that I just saw and there was um there was uh a question from uh someone says
say global warming yes there hemosphere
um yeah I don't you know for me personally if uh I I believe there's an issue with you know from the satellites
have shown that but as far as from an observational standpoint um I haven't had any issue with that uh from what I
can tell so far um at least from my from where I'm at you know as far as global warming is concerned maybe Simon maybe
you have thoughts on it but I for me personally no I haven't had that much of an issue um I'm not going to get too
much into the science because this turns into one of these crazy Arguments for a couple of people that
are n naysayers in some ways but I will say this um temperature changes will
affect how the jet stream works you have to understand that this entire planet Works off of um it's like a conveyor
belt you've got the one in the ocean and you've got the one in the sky if you disrupt either or those weather patterns
can actually shift and the the general concept ensus is that the the Earth over
the last 50 years has increased in temperature by 1° Celsius now that's not
measuring Fahrenheit we're talking Celsius here and how much of a dramatic change has that created well it has
actually had an impact does it impact seeing not really because we are always
chasing different locations to get that type of seeing if the weather pattern
changes on the other hand then that's a different story but unless the Ocean Suddenly moved somewhere like
charton Flats the chances are wouldn't really change drastically because you're so high up anyway the whole point is to
be above the inversion layer that's the idea behind it get the transparency too
but the good that can't change yeah yeah I um and the other thing too and this is
the the the funny thing is like the way I actually determine scene conditions is instinctively now I was talking to my
friend Mike forsand uh member Mike foron Y and he was talking about a guy that does fishing
and this guy is like the ultimate fisherman and they have these fishing contests and this guy in can tell
instinctively by the weather where the fish are going to be at it's the craziest thing but in a way astronomy is
the same thing where I you know I look at some sites but generally I'm I can tell by the way the atmosphere is
behaving and the other thing is I've seen situations where you'll have clouds moving One Direction one altitude and
moving another another is the trippiest thing so you're always I'm always looking at these these things I look at
the the the Smoke Stacks near the coast here at elsag gundo Manhattan Beach and they have these these you know these
stacks and I can look at which way the air is Flowing ideal scene for me is going to be where a prevailing wind
that's moving from the southwest to the Northeast that's when the scene is
typically really ideal if I don't have any jet stream it's really ideal I remember the month of May in 20 2011 I
think it was 2011 I was viewing I don't remember I think 25 nights out of that month every
one of those nights was amazing from my yard every one of them and I viewed like 25 nights that day I was I remember it
was being clear and it was you know it was very stable but you do get a lot of
moisture so when you see a lot of De on your telescope that's usually indicative of good scene that means you're getting
that onshore flow now if I get I've had situations where you get Marine layer come in and what the this is really a
trip when the Marine layer comes in it traps the heat in so you have heat rising from the ground it gets trapped
underneath that that that uh you know the uh those clouds you know that little
those little clouds there and it and actually the do gets disappears which is a trip you you know the funny the funny
thing is is though for us that are north of LA because that's technically where I am I pray for the Marine layer because
it makes such a difference from me because I can see the glow is so much
lessened oh yeah it's it's it's crazy I think that's why you hear these guys or they're getting these ridiculous meter
readings at Mount Pinos and Lockwood Valley sometimes you know Don penzak is always going on about that but sometimes
you do get those nights where it just lock it blocks it out but it it has been you know I'm just used to viewing here
I've been viewing here for 28 years now so I'm kind of familiar with my surroundings but I remember I posted a
picture of Jupiter in cloudy and I said pick the the image a b and c of Jupiter
that that best describes what you typically see and I was shocked it was really unfortunate I I sympathize with
people throughout the country who don't have good seeing conditions they were picking the worst image of Jupiter like they could just barely see two belts
which is just crazy you know I'm just like wow I feel I sympathize and I understand why people want to get into
planetary Imaging because they can you know get those fractions of a frame you know and funny you mentioned Planet
here's the funny thing um I'm not going to turn around and say I'm the best planetary imager not because I don't have the equipment or the patience for
it in some so many respects but there is to me a huge difference between seeing
it visually but seeing a picture of it and I'm G to tell you this now I what I
prefer to look at it through the eyepiece and people never we we did an
Outreach back in a long long time ago and there was a uh TW Moon Transit
occurring on that night and people couldn't understand why I was freaking out because you know from
The public's ey they didn't really see this and they didn't really understand what was going on but I'm just looking at it Go and we're in the middle of a
shopping center just so you know uh in Valencia so it's like lights everywhere and not surprise that place it was just
you know a nightmare at best but planets are just dead easy you can see them anywhere and the the funny part of it
was on that same night um it was I think 4:00 4:30 the sun was like getting
caught up behind the buildings and I said to uh the guy cuz he bought his 12in dobsonian out and I said to him you want to see Jupiter right now he goes
4:30 you got to be out of your mind there's no way we can see it I said no we can because I know exactly where it
is right so I go to the moon and I start nudging to my left and I go okay so
however many movements in terms of degrees I'm I'm in the vicinity so I just got to move it up and down until I
see it floated into viw we got the higher magnification out and like quick quick quick it's over here and he
couldn't believe it he was seeing it at 4:30 um in the daytime anyway going back to the story of the transit so people
were freaking out uh sorry I was freaking out and people just didn't understand why I was going nuts yeah at
seeing this and recently we had a double Transit again and every imager that
those planets Under the Sun was out there trying to shoot it and I got to admit it was somewhat
disappointing because it was not what I remembered seeing and then I started to realize
there is that disconnect between Imaging versus visual oh yeah yeah when you see it visually it's totally different when
you do it by Imaging it's not the same not even remely the same serous about
this because you do a lot of the Imaging whereas I look at a lot of the planetary images that I see you know online and
I'm I there's a few world- class IM out there but I know a lot of people I can tell because I've seen so many views of
the planets that I have a very clear idea of my own perception of the color of them and the way you know things are
highlighted but I do notice that it's difficult I don't know if it's for people to process the image in the sense
that they kind of get the colors wrong they look a little bit too Stark and contrasty and I wonder if that's just
from their own inability to have that experience of seeing good views visually to have a frame of reference I think it
is I genuinely I think it is because yeah um I try to image planets using the
refractor not because it's you know whatever the size is it's because it gives me the closest idea of what I
physically saw yeah and I tried to color it based upon what I remember seeing in
in my mind's eye so to speak but at the same time what's irritating here is and
this is why I'm not a big planetary imager in general is what look at the picture and it's like that small you can
see the pixels and all that kind of stuff and you know you know in your head how you create that image and it just
has this false sense to it but then when I view through something like a nine and a quarter um we were over at um John
Hawk's Place and Darren had his um nine and a quarter there and I'm looking through it and I'm like this is just
crazy it doesn't look the same even though yeah um it was small in the
eyepiece I could see see everything oh yeah I see what you mean I I could pick
out the cloud band details even though the planet was just tiny and then I could see inside of the cloud bands I'm
like hold on a second my camera doesn't pick up anything close to this right absolutely yeah no I and I've had so
many of those nights you know and those evenings you know and and they Cher you cherish them when you when you have them
it's a very they call it a religious experience right you you you know and
and I've been you know I switched you know I have a couple of different Scopes I use and I typically you know uh I
remember going back just for a second though I remember you know you talked about daylight viewing the planets Venus
the best image of Venus I ever saw was in broad daylight here at home in my backyard in a 12 and a half inch
reflector and it was just rock stable in broad daylight you know that day the air was very stable broad daylight I saw
Venus and it just looked unbelievable you know how beautiful and how sharp and
crisp it looked it was really nice you know and that's what I find out and sometimes uh you know you have varying
variances of seeing conditions and then sometimes you just it's easy to just use the refractor because you don't have to
worry about cating anything you don't they're not affected by the cool down the same way as reflectors are there's
all these factors that go in to the just the the the mechanical physics of it
before you can even it there's a lot of misconceptions I can just say that there's you know
talk about telescopes and and you know the the physics of St ratios and oh yeah
we can go into me to get to there first you got to have a platform to view from it's like
when you look at an observatory they they do research before they put observatories in place right it's not
like you just take the scope out any place and you get good results I mean it's only as good as weakest l u I'm
just going to acknowledge somebody on um Scott Roberts's live chat um I just noticed C Playmate is um is watching um
hello Clyde um if you for those of you who don't know Clyde is um he did the
solo Extravaganza um I strongly recommend you see some of this guy's work I mean he
runs or he's going to be retiring soon uh he runs the big be solo Observatory
so it's good to see him actually on um making his couple of comments here
and there so you know hats off to that guy for sure you know he's he's so brilliant Daniel I wish you get a chance
to listen to some of his talks I'm gonna have to do a little followup with you afterwards about that because I'd like to see that i' be curious yeah no Clyde
Clyde is is somewhere else when it comes down to when it's doing solar and observational stuff it's just unreal got
some people chiming in Scott that was on your that was on yours that was on the explore scientific
uh comments yes uh that was Claude plymate he is like Chief astronomer over
there at Big Bear solar Observatory oh that's so cool God I think it joined aalana when I remember
the Big Bear solar Observatory thing you got they did remember that sure that was really something sure Ben this is why I
can't write on cloudy nights because I'm constantly interrupted by this little infant you know the funnest thing is I
remember when he was only two years old um and you just there's no peace and no
quiet you just can't concentrate on anything anymore that's what having a kid's about God so it's so hard now um
regardless of who the brand of the telescope is is you actually have quite a few telescopes um that you use for
visual and yeah there is no such thing as just one scope can do it all out the
Scopes that you use which one do you find you use the most um of and for what
particular subjects yeah I have a a six inch fluorite Takahashi that scope I use
a lot because it's consistent and it's a that's a fluorite doublet f8 uh scope
that I use and I have that attached to my tum out but later in the evening what
I'll do is I'll take the mulon 250 out and I'll set that up on a on a towel with a fan and I will leave that scope
from usually for planets I'll leave that scope uh say 7:30 8:00 p.m. with the fan for two to
three hours till I get to midnight and at that point that's when that scope will really perform to it's like extreme
like and I'm talking Tac sharp I'm not talking about like soft you know
scintilating images I'm talking about razor sharp images and that's what I want to see that's what makes it
exciting and fun to watch and it takes a time and I think that's the problem a lot of uh enthusiasts have is knowing
when it's cooled down there's techniques you can do uh I I encourage people to
Google schen photography which is a German word for streak do a streak test
and there's techniques to doing streak tests that you can do and that is one of the ways I learn about what's going on
inside the optical tube what's what what is seene conditions and what is like a
boundary layer there's all these things that you have to learn about and the best way to learn it is through saring
photography you can you can Google it on YouTube s c l i re n schen photography I
encourage people to do this because one of the difficulty difficulties I have is getting people to believe how much air
moves if you have just one slight you're even your hand anything will cause air
to move and all these things affect the images and that's why when people come over I'm like please stand over here
don't stand where the air is moving I'm like very particular about this stuff because it's the only I'm going to see
the image is really still and uh SCH photography is a is a really an amazing
thing being able to see that and one of the ways you can do that is you take just by coincidence where it matters
most when you're looking at planets you have the illumination of mars or Jupiter or Saturn they actually produce the
perfect amount of Illumination back illumination background illumination that you need to perform the test and
what you can do is you can get a sight tube with a pinhole drop it into your diagonal and if you get the right
distance in there what will happen if you don't have your head the right distance you won't see the illumination but what will happen is you will see a
crystal clear image of everything going on against a background and by you
there's ways of doing it with the Fel patterns of star test where you look through an eyepiece but that's not as clear as doing a real schin test where
you point the scope at a planet you put a a sight tube in there and you need that in there to keep your eye dead centered and get the right distance and
you'll see this beautiful Tac sharp illumination of light and you can see scene conditions you can see boundary
layers you can see the most subtle movement going on inside your tube and uh it's a real powerful tool and it
helps you learn what's going on inside the telescope and in the atmosphere as
well fny you mentioned that um um there's G I'm going to give you a little bit of a um funny story about sharing a
test and the sharing effect there is a great YouTube video um which you showed me originally Daniel of this guy he's
got his hair out he has a match and then he has and then he has like bottles of
nothing in them but there is actually a gas in there and he'll pour it out and you see the gas pour out and people just
say oh that's just it looks like hell and you see the real image there's nothing there it's complet yeah there's nothing there so um this is a bit of
this is a bit of a Sidetrack so when the guy discovered the sharing a test or the
scharinger effect yeah they thought it was a gateway to the par normal world
and seeing into it so when you see these stories about you know energy Aura
radiating off people and seeing all these weird things it's because they're
experiencing the sharing effect not realizing that's what it is uh this is actually true this is actually a true
story it's an invisible ocean an invisible ocean and doing right and
sometimes I do that on purpose when I'm doing um Imaging on planets as I de
focus and I will sit there and watch it to see what it does and if it ripples like a maniac I'm like oh forget it I'm
not even going to waste my time because it is a waste of time yeah it's very hard to have very
still air and that's the goal is like you know your environment Your Atmosphere the concrete the water heaters the hoods of cars you know when
I used to come home from work I would look on the hoods of the cars or the the windows to see if there was D on them and that was one of the you know the
signs that would tell me hey I might have a pretty still night here you know and there's all these are all factors
that affect the views so if I if I don't have that I can't get to the Optics you
know that's the next step is getting good celles Scopes good Optics and to get that performance and these are
things that pertain mostly to double Star viewing in planets which is what I
spend a majority of my time doing so if you're into deep Sky you know if you have good scene great but you know it's
just get to Dart skies and get some transparent for deep Sky you know Scott's been all over the country I mean
know better probably than anybody I mean Scott's been way more star parties I've ever been in my life so he could I'm
sure he could school me on that you know on the Deep Sky location that you guys are all the things you're bringing up uh
happen all over the country and actually all over the world you know there are microclimates that happen uh there are
places that are more conducive to good seeing conditions like uh you know the Florida are incredible very um you know
I was explaining uh about the laminer air flow effect over Mona you know um
yeah these kinds of things where uh you can have bad seeing almost anywhere but
um you know to uh sometimes it does take a a place that is geographically
conducive to have subarc second scene you know yeah and you've been going to the winter star party for long time
years Scott yeah ridiculous you know so if anybody's got experience I mean Scott's got a ton of experience with
this stuff too you know and it is true and and Scott you know the temperatures I've been you know I researched the
winter Star Party you just get those very subtle deltas and so you get these people with these open tube newtonians
with these mirrors that are you know thick mirrors and they're they're able to perform because they're the the
mirror is not chasing the climate you know chasing the temperatur is badly you know Daniel you probably remember Don
Parker who was a of course he was a mentor to everybody so he he had built
an eyepiece out of a microfish lens on his 16inch Newtonian he says I'm gonna he
said I'm gonna show you something that you should be able to see and we were looking at Mars at this time and he had
his 16inch telescope at something like two or thousand magnification right two or
three 50 power per inch or 60 power we're talking way over 100 power per
inch okay and Mars looked like it was punched out of the sky it was you know I
could see D Parker was the god is the god he was The Godfather man yeah that D
that dude did things that he was constantly being a you know of of breaking the rules
somehow but had great Optics in his Newtonian uh
look at Carlos Hernandez was talking so much about about him you know caros herandez is you know Don Parker was so
he was such an important influential you know person right that's
so cool I've experienced soar second seeing I don't
know 10 times in my life something like that you know um most of us get to you
know see the sky when you know in one or two Arc seconds where it's I mean and that's really fine you know that's
excellent uh what is one of the most memorable deep Sky places that you've observed I'm curious that you could
think of something that really spiritually moved you a dark sky location or something can you remember
something that stands out that would have to be a toss up between yosee and Bryce
Canyon yeah I was at uh I was at a very high mountain uh maybe over 12,000 feet
in in the yosee region and yeah that still seared in my brain uh of course
mon I I spent U three successive nights in a row at 14,000 feet and that was
just glowing um uh serot toolo uh seeing the large
and small maganic clouds there and the Milky Way oh I'm jealous already yeah
when you get down there they tell you right off the top oh you're from the Northern Hemisphere you guys don't have
a mil way we have the right the center of it too right it's kind of like NGC
891 just right above your head you know so hey Ben Daddy's on here sorry
guys so um we're gonna do two questions here from the live chat because we got about 15 minutes left and I don't know
how long it's going to take to answer these but um question number one best type of surfaces to set up on and then
give bad examples as well so that's question number one so let's start with that
am I answering or Scott you um Daniel well anybody can answer to be honest
yeah of course I me I'd be curious to have Scott shar's opinions but I will just say Hey Kevin I would just say this
that you know grass is an ideal you know it doesn't radiate the same way that
that concrete does so um so you know the atmosphere is radiating heat as you know
as the sun goes down so um definitely grass but if you have too much moisture
and you have Dew going all over the place that's one of the things you get you get more water vapor and stuff coming from it but typically I I I'm
viewing over concrete or grass but my sink conditions are are good so I can get away with some pretty good stuff
because I don't have these crazy Deltas of my uh you know temperature Deltas so
I'm good so what's the worst surface now well the concrete honestly in the valley
is like the worst I've dealt with uh we we were at Oak Park when we were at Oak
Park it was ridiculous I mean it was just like heat coming off the ground constantly so I didn't bother bringing
my Mulan 250 out there it just it couldn't do anything it was like looking at a Blobby Planet it was just like
people go through they're like hey I want to see through one of these and I bring it up there and it's like can't do anything with it and it's just like you
can see this boiling heat just coming off I think Oak Park's one of the worst places in the valley that's one of the worst places oh yeah ironically where
our star parties were you I think one of the worst surfaces that I've ever dealt with is sand specifically yeah and I
don't mean dirt it I mean sand if it's been baking out in the desert and then
you go and plunk a telescope on there yeah it it for some strange reason I get all sorts of weird and wonderful
problems from from being on top of it and what I end up having to do is is I actually if I go to like questionable
places that I have a lot of dust I will bring a big piece of carpet out with me that I roll over the sand or the dirt or
whatever it is and it it does genuinely help totally hold on one sec that's
right um the other question um is going to be when Daniel comes back is about
acclamation a lot of people don't actually understand what acclamation is
um I don't know if you caught what I just said there Daniel I did I think that is the huge thing one of the things
that we Kevin and I follow cloudy nights a lot so we Kevin and I are always you
know we Kevin and I talk a lot we talk like every few days Kevin and I will have very lengthy
conversations but I I think one of the biggest problems that we is dealing with
is getting people to realize that their scups are not acclimated the way they think they are there's there's ways of
detecting that and one of schin is one of the way you ways that you can tell and uh I go on about Schmid cig grains
and these heat spikes that emanate from the light baffle and that's why I tell people if they have a Schmid cassle grain you know remove the visual back
from it and let the let the the light baffle you know adjust because you get a
lot of heat in the tube and they store heat you know and that's that's that's
the biggest problem with scop so they're not cooled down and and it's another myth with refractors refractors I know
it's going to sound hard for for many to believe but refractors take just as long is schmit craines or newtonians to cool
if not longer but people will tell you refractor is cool fast but it's really not what's happening if I were to take
an infrared thermometer and I would have pointed it a baffle inside of a a refractor it'll be hot inside just like
it is inside of a a baffle of a Cass grain but it's because of the way that light is is traversed through the
refractor tube it light is being bent and brought to a single point and it's not disturbed because it's not being
bounced back and forth off reflective surfaces the way it is in a c or Newtonian reflector where you have body
you know Newtonian particular with dogs you you have your own body heat going through the life path so it's like you
know flying from LA to New York you know you fly more times you're more susceptible to experiencing turbulence
you know it's the odds and uh I I always Envision what's going on inside of a
tube if it's not acclimated it's not going to perform and people think they're acclimated but a lot of times
they're not you know so that's one of the things we battle on on cloudy nights is trying to get people to believe they
think their Scopes are cool and most times they're not and it's just very sensitive so okay so another question I
think I'm going to have Scott answer this one because uh the fact that he mentions I have a one2 refractor might
be a dead giveaway what he owns uh says he has a 17 in 17 mm PLO and a 2X bow
for planets I mainly Chase clusters and nebulas would I get better viewing with
a 32mm eyepiece oh okay well that I think has a
lot to do with uh how dark your sky is you know um some people do the
calculation of where they just look at Exit pupil coming out of the eyepiece and and do that little calculation but
something you have to remember is that um if you're doing deep Sky uh Imaging or observing that uh you need to find
that fine line of where contrast is now being pushed back and making that deep
Sky object pop out while keeping the uh largest exit pupil that
you can also you need to be in dark enough Skies where your eyes can actually dilate okay to except an exit
pupil so um it's really important to have uh lots of medium range uh medium
power eyepieces to get the best possible views you know so I can't you can't just
say oh yeah buy a 32 buy a buy a 10 get it Barlo you know those are standard
answers for for beginners because they don't know what to buy yet okay but you
get into it I don't know how many eyepieces do you have D Daniel in your collection
countless exactly so it's like for a visual Observer the way you know like a painter
you know you're going to have lots lots of colors and you're going to be experimenting with things constantly to
evoke the the best possible uh views through your telescope and uh so uh
there are no there's no magic ipce out there people think that there are there
performance eyepieces for sure uh you know manufacturers can make them as good
as that design can be but uh it's really still a combination of the sky your
scope and your eyes okay and so that's why are all these different brands all
these different models and uh so I I always use the golf club analogy you
know because we get that question Scott all the time you know I just say it's like saying there's one perfect golf
club there isn't you have different golf clubs for different distances and different you know a Putter and a driver
and a whatever you know well I mean you can get really complicated because one set of golf clubs may not be good for
say you but is great for me you know we can go it it it does entirely depend on
what you're going to be doing and how you utilize it um I'm just going to quickly um introduce Kevin legore so for
those of you though who don't know who Kevin is he does the Outreach astronomy program known as Focus astronomy um this
guy is I'm going to call him the king of Outreach he really really is there is nobody else out there that I know that
puts as much effort in as Kevin does so Kevin just a quick introduction about
yourself and then we'll carry on with the programming um so as Simon I guess boldly stated um I don't know if I'd
call myself the king of Outreach but Outreach is kind of my thing um some of you might know you the king yeah um some
of you probably know me from skywatcher I'm the product specialist That's the day job um and the night job and the
weekend job and the job um um but on the side I guess you could call my hobby is
Outreach that's what I'm passionate about I love sharing stuff with people um that is really my goal um so I
created my own program uh called focus a omy in 2011 um and that goes out to
public events uh anywhere I can get astronomy into the hands of people um
that's where I go to do it and likely most of the time it's not in particularly good locations but I have
to go where the people are at not where the skies are good so um that's who I am
you can always go to focus astro.org and check out all the other stuff that I do
over there so but thanks for having me on today yeah hello to Scott and Daniel
as well yeah you're in trouble now aren't you like crap that's explor
scientific and you got Kevin from skywatcher don't you and Scott Roberts fight Kevin on the phone you guys are
arguing with each other because he's Explorer scientific and you're skywatcher think of it more as sparring
I guess because at the end of the day we're all still friends too where it's like that was
great Spar we don't Spar they're good competive uh uh you know Sky
Watchers so and that's good we keep each other on our feet that's it moves the
hobby forward so that's very humble man the guy um we're gonna go back to one of
the questions and this is about uh acclamation again um or going back to acclamation uh just lost a question I
think you sent it to me on the chat right yeah you did um does keeping it keeping my rake in a non-heated
non-cooled garage is it helpful with temperature acclamation so in other
words am I better storing a telescope in a place that's similar to the outdoor temperature or is it a bad idea you want
it similar I always tell people like a Cellar or something where it's the temperature is cooler but it's really
just about having the scope be the same temperature as the atmosphere or the area you're viewing in that's what you
want you just don't want anything to have a different temp you want the temperatures to be the same at anytime you don't then you're having to cope
with these artifacts that we were discussing in scharen but um I I went to a friend's
house up in Tahachapi and I went down in his uh Down Below in a Celler and I went oh my God it's so cool in here and I
said you should have all your his Scopes weren't in there I said you should have your Scopes in here it's going to get cool at night so you know the ideal
thing in my opinion is check out what your expected temperature is going to be outdoors and put your scope in an air
conditioned room it makes a huge difference man oh totally huge it's not subtle it's huge all right
so Daniel I'm going to give you one last question and then we're going to carry on um this is actually a good one so we
probably this is why I want to spend a bit of time on this um so we got about five minutes to try and get through this one
um regardless if it's Imaging or visual okay because the guy's asking specifically for Imaging I will answer
that in a second um when I'm Imaging Mars I can never seem to get surface contrast or the
correct color of the polar ice caps the whole planet is washed out in red would a UV cut uh remedy something like this
so I'm going to answer this part for you the answer straight up is no a uvir cut
all it does is it reduces the amount of glow the planet actually has so it's not
too piercing if you're using a bow specifically I always tell people no you
do need to use a UV cut because it helps get rid of this hot spot when you're dead center on the bow
now how this transition to visual is a lot of people don't realize this Daniel
and I remember that we used to sell these things quite frequently is colored
filters yeah and how much of a difference a color filter can actually make in either both Visual and imaging I
think there's miscon I I agree and I think there's sometimes misconceptions Kevin Lor and I were having a discussion
about this about a month ago I always tell people this if you're like for Mars
for example because Mars is out it's ideal I always tell people you you need to you want to see the features to some
reasonable degree first before the filters can accentuate them you know and I always tell you know Light Blue for
the polar caps of mars or that you know a 21 rattin or a 23 which is like an
orange red you know is nice for Mars I think the biggest problem with filters is that the cers are so Stark you know
deep you know and it would be nice if companies Vernon scope did that they made subtle more the colors more subtle
so that when you looked at them you got the accentuated some of these features without making the planet look like you
were looking through a filter so I actually do have a bunch of very subtle filters that help enhance certain
features but I I I I'm a big believer in using filters I mean Bill P on cloudy
nights has got a big thread going on about filters right now and one of the my favorites for Mars is the BET
contrast booster and I think this I was watching a video that Kevin L Gore did because I was watching YouTube videos
and stuff and Kevin's video came up and he was talking about I think it was a neodymium filter Kevin from Bader and
then yeah yesterday we talked about Mars on our webcast at skywatcher and the two that I like to use the most are uh
neodymium Moon and Sky glow and the contrast booster and then if you have a large enough telescope visually a UHC
actually really pops the surface detail out you have to have a and Kevin actually had photographs I think through
through each of them I think if I recall correctly Kevin I think you had photographs through each of those filters really cool so those those are
helpful so going back to the Imaging aspect of this um this is ironic um when
you're doing planetary Imaging oddly enough it's still just as good to shoot monochrome but use RGB colors and when I
create the luminance layers I don't actually use a clear luminance layer I use the
filter that actually gives you the most amount of performance on the planet and ironically red happens to be the actual
one for Mars and if you have an issue with color balance and getting the polariz Caps to look right then I
strongly suggest is to look into doing monochrome image with RGB uh filters
you'll be able to you'll find you can control it a lot better my assumption here is is your polar caps come out
yellow uh which is what most people experience when they're doing Imaging of
um Mars is that's what tends to happen it's not because you're seeing yellow it's not because of that it's because
it's that's the light that gets refracted and filtered out remember the sky is blue for a reason so that blue light is being canceled out as it passes
through our atmosphere so we don't see as much of it as we would like to uh hence why it has this yellowish tinge to
it when you image it's not really a floor or a mistake if you shoot
RGB um in monochrome with uh show Imaging for planets it's way way better
than try to doing one shot color one shot color is just like quick and easy I pass filter is a good one to use
too if you're shooting monochrome because it cuts a lot of the extra Spectrum
out I use orange red filters sometimes on double Stars I have these very subtle
tones of orangey red colors that help kind of cancel out some of the seeing at least visually from a visual standpoint
filters can be used in that regard um you know to to help with some of the
scene conditions but it's a trade-off you know because if you get too deep in the colors you change everything the way
it looks yes that's right okay um so Kevin you have a
presentation um I do not we can just kind of talk oh oh excellent so we're
just gonna I I thought for some weird weird reason I thought you were going to have a presentation so thank God you don't because that usually turns
everyone off yeah it usually turns everyone off okay uh so um Kevin
um what the reason why I have you on this particular event uh is because I
know you do a lot of Outreach and there is a lot of people who watch our live stream both here on the Woodland Hills
camon telescope and possibly the explor a scientific side of things and the biggest problem they're facing here is
is their thing was Outreach and you can't do Outreach right now so what are
the things that you're doing um in terms of Outreach whether it be be either electronically done is there certain
things or procedures that you are going to implement in doing astronomy in the
public physically that you you you are going to put into it if that makes sense
procedures that's the word I was looking for yeah CO's made everything really interesting I normally see about 30,000
people a year um doing my events and that has basically tanked um because I
can't see anybody um so to get around that um I've started doing virtual star
parties so if you have cameras and stuff like that I can I've started to you know I'll go on my website and social media
and all announce hey on Friday blah blah blah um we're going to be doing a virtual event and basically how that
works is I hook a camera up to one of the Scopes in the library essentially
and uh I pick an observing list and usually about a dozen objects and kind
of through the hour and a half that I normally run it um we go through that
and I go through a lot of the details of those particular objects and I like to actually pick objects from you know
basic up to the advanced so that way um I don't believe Outreach stops at just
beginners um I've gone out to Star parties um with uh lists of uh objects
to look at and have shown even experienced observers targets that they might have missed or haven't bothered to
look at um so I I like to do that but virtual star parties have been something
I've been doing and that's that's worked pretty well um I haven't done any lately
because we've had smoke and I'm in Arizona so we're just finishing up monsoon season so between weather and um
all the other fun stuff that's been going on I haven't really been in the position to do my virtual events but
thought we were supposed to have all the smoke man well I don't know you're all about the jet stream it just all blew
over to you man pretty much so it's clear up north right well it's
clear right now yeah okay we're clear I think I don't think we have much smoke
now do you think that we're actually get gonna get back into a situation at least in 2021 certainly not the rest of this
year um that the precautions we're going to have to take for doing Outreach is
going to be completely different I mean just having somebody handle an
eyepiece is also going to become problematic yeah yeah it's it's going to be interesting because at first you know
everyone's like oh it's almost over we're going to get through it it's like it's not just like a light switch where it's on and off um we're going to have
to because everyone's going to be reserved about it um as well No One's Gonna want to rush into it I have
several large events that I'm a part of out here in Arizona like the Tucson Festival of books that takes place on
the University of Arizona campus we have 120,000 people at that event they've already canell it uh for next year um
they're doing it virtually so I'm already seeing uh casualties um for stuff like that um
moving into next year um there is one large event it's an air show that takes
place out here they're still going forward with it I don't have a lot of um hope that that one's going to
occur but I'm even kind of reserved that brings about 10 ,000 people I like doing
large events um because it brings a ton of people and you can hit a bunch of people real quick with Outreach um that
one's moving forward but it hasn't been canceled yet um then of course my personal favorite the Grand Canyon star
party which takes place in June that's the only one I think of as a higher
probability because we'll be in the summer at that point I think there'll be a better way of approaching and treating
Co hopefully by the time that comes comes around but I I'm not expecting any
major events to start occurring until mid next year and even then it's it's
GNA be kind of weird to segue into to doing events again especially in a large
uh format and I've been asked to do events uh already um and the funny part
about that is you know people who want to have us come out and do events they're like well we'll social distance it's like all of you will but I have to
stand next to it and tell you all about it so I'm next to everybody so um right
now it's just kind of it's it's not worth doing at the moment um right so
I'm gonna mention this um it's going to be interesting how we handle something
like an eyepiece uh I mean in general I I tell people please don't touch the scope anyway you shouldn't be messing
with it in the first place the most I would say is this is how you change the focus that's an easy one to solve you
know you could put a condom on the freaking knob for all like care and be done with it and then just take it off in the next person but it's the ipieces
that make me nervous and Scott I'm not trying to uh create a sales pitch here for you but the point being here is the
idea that you've created a waterproof eyepiece and you've demoed this countless times means that something
like um the ipieces from Explorer scientific I can actually just wipe down
and be safe cuz there are eyepieces that I own you cannot get those suckers wet well you ruin them you can submerge them
in a bath of alcohol okay uh you know so you could absolutely disinfect them uh
soor when you say it that way it makes me think you dropped it in your beer
right no but um that that is something that I was approached several times this
year you know what do we do we have this Outreach CL planned and so one of the scenarios that I came up with was you
know still there has to be social distancing there has to be face masks there has to be all these things but um
uh we we have an inexpensive line of waterproof ey pieces in our 52 degree
line and I suggested that they buy 15 or 20 of them and because they
have serial numbers on they could assign the serial numbered ipce to that person
that ah keep that eyepiece all night okay he keeps that eyepiece and then
dumps it into a bath of uh of a you know sterilization bath at the end of the
observation session that's I never I never thought about that that's one way to do this
okay um someone else I was reading the chat here said that you know and there are these these handheld UV um uh things
so let's you don't have a waterproof ipce uh you could UV sterilize it okay
uh in a you know so uh that's that's another possibility U I still like the
idea of dunking alcohol but but uh UV L may be just as
effective I'm just answering somebody something
so comfortable cat sorry I've got my cat sitting on my lap she always does I just
have to I'm really impressed with the way that this this broadcast is working
out if you're watch if you're just coming in to watch the broadcast right now it looks like one broadcast but it's
not okay yeah it's actually two broadcasting with this system uh to a to
a YouTube channel okay uh we we are broadcasting a separate broadcast
platform okay Sim casting out to our channels uh Simon figured out how to
combine them okay which is really cool and it's it's working great so I was
wondering how you guys pulled this off the only thing everybody in America is becoming an expert at this because
that's pretty much how we all gotta live now you know that's true pretty much that's true um so somebody's asking and
I'm gonna ask this question to you Kevin because I know you leave a lot of stuff outside um is the T ismo covers a good
idea or not I would like to leave my rig all set up but leaving it outside in the elements during the day scares me I have
a Paramount MX with a c14 decked out with feather touch focusers it's been
outside for a month and a half the mount's been out there for three months I'm not going to tell you where I live
um because that's where I live um but I have the tel Gizmo 365 covers I've have
the tripod cover and then I have uh the larger cover for the scope on top and
it's been out there all monsoon season um I have a friend out here who lives by the 365 cover like religiously wait does
he live inside of it h he could um but he has a he used to have an ap100 and a
mulon 250 um that's under there um and he has no Observatory he just uses the
365 um so if you are going to get a cover the 365 is the way to go those are
awesome they are more expensive but they're the only cover I would get at this point because they're Kevin's motto
is Scopes are meant to be used and when I look at Kevin scopes at Star parties I'm like wow man Kevin takes it to the
next level you know hilarious I gotta admit I'm I'm I'm the same way because
you are yeah that's fine it's meant to be used right because when people get and see my stuff they go what the hell
have you done to it looks like you dragged it through a bush you know and I was like well no because I use a damn
thing you know yeah right there's a difference between use and abuse
yes people pay a lot of money for a you know Gibson 1970 that's been worn down
and stuff like that so I like telescopes that have have you know a you can get
them at a better price because they're not cosmetically sound but um they have a story to them if i' I've seen a lot of
people who have very high-end refractors that are immaculate and it's like I I've
never used it it's like right what it's like why why would you do such a thing
um put it outside use it all my Scopes live in the Arizona Sun for resale value
but I don't so the the interesting the interesting thing here is I've had the eqa RH Pro now for um almost a year now
and it has literally lived permanently outside under the 365 cover I've only
just bought it back in because I had to run out and use it which I forgot the damn counter way over which will another
story uh and I'm actually going to be disassembling it again to check how much
dirt or if any dirt has gotten inside of it um I did remove the dovetail saddle
and I was really stunned at there was no dust inside of the shaft bearing in mind
that this is one of the most exposed areas of the actual scope so now there
is a round metal um plate where the clutch pad is that's going to come off next and if I see any sign of dirt in
there I have a measurement or a gauge on that and I'm going to turn around and suspect that I'm not going to find anything in there if anything I'll
probably find a spider that figured out how to get in but you know the thing is don't be
afraid to leave this stuff out there and it's really funny that I watch people get super paranoid um with their
Scopes but you were just you just left it outside for six hours while you observing what's the difference you know
I mean you know if there's a big storm coming obviously it's like bring it in
but you know it it's if it's going to be now I'm in Arizona you know we don't
know what rain is out here so um at that point I'm trying to find a picture on my phone um of a particular piece of
equipment that I've got that's been outside for a very long time oh there is okay there is a customer um of ours who
he has never bought anything indoors just so you know his setup is probably close to $40 to $50,000 he has never
bought it inside he barely covers it uh and he's had it out there it's all faded
he had an eagle now the eagle if you know what it is is red his is pink now
mine mine everything still works that's the funny thing while um Kevin's looking
for that picture um Scott real quick um isopro alcohol is it safe to use on the
eye pieces because I think I know why he's asking this will it strip the Coatings
no no isopropyl is used all the time in
cleaning Optics and working with Optics and no I mean what I use the
most acetone also you know it's just that acetone is a little bit more uh
harsh isn't it you have pain but if you have no paint it's to worry about yeah
it it melts Plastics it you know dissolves paints uh you know silk
screening stuff like that um so you got to be careful with acetone but acetone
is really awesome in that uh leaves almost no streaks or you know so it's
it's a it is H in the Arsenal of uh uh you know professionals who work with
Optics and clean them all the time so um I would uh but uh isopropyl is a very uh
easy uh thing to work with um I do recommend 99% isopropyl uh and distilled
water you know to to uh clean up Optics with okay Scott uh do you want to just
introduce our new people that have just uh joined in yeah Steve's been there for
a little bit Steve's been quiet here I've been trying to privately chat with him but didn't see my chat so
how you sorry good good sorry about that yeah Scott I just uh I just replied actually um I uh uh was hoping to get on
earlier and to have a uh a solar scope set up and um you guys were talking
about the weather earlier on and weather patterns and how to predict the weather uh Simon I found it very interesting and
uh um having to live through some of that here too I've had um rain Sun
wind uh a lot of clouds um all day and it's been like that most of the week the only thing that's
missing is snow which I'm not upset about so um uh where I am up in the
Toronto area we have a good variety of weather throughout the week and that has to do a lot right now with what's
happening in the Gulf because as storms come in it kicks up a lot of that humidity and uh uh changes the weather
pattern that gets picked up by the jet stream and sucked straight up north um uh in a Northwest Direction and we get
covered um but uh I wanted to uh uh hopefully join in in some of the uh yeah intriguing
conversation that's been taking place I didn't want to interrupt and then I saw Kevin like come on and I love your him
in the background Kevin yeah it it kind of adds a nice backdrop since we upgraded it so the fish tank's cool I
told him to keep it okay when the weather sucks isn't that a bigger tank
Kevin I thought you said you were getting a bigger tank this is the big one I had a 75 this is 143 now so knock
on wood it never breaks yeah right that's right I also have uh we also have
Libby and the Stars here uh with us and Libby is uh later in our program is
going to talk about her experience at Kennedy Space Center so that's gonna be really cool that's cool that wow we are
about uh here central time it's it's 3:33 uh we will start uh the second part
of our progam program here in about 27 minutes um but uh where we'll have David
Levy joining us as well and um Gary Palmer will be uh checking in I think by
that time so uh but it's been a really it's been very very interesting uh you
know listening to all the recommendations for visual observation
and how to handle seeing conditions and stuff like that um eyepiece questions
these kinds of things uh by a show of hands you guys that uh
do visual astronomy would you prefer to do visual astronomy over astrophotography or astrophotography
over visual astronomy or or do you like equally like both I'm gonna start then so I would
turn around and say I like to do imaging more than I like to do visual not
because um of the typical objects that we all
see it's my thing is making the invisible visible the things that you just straight up cannot see are the
things that I tend to like to see the most um and then at the same time I look
at Imaging see some guys just going out for just straight up pretty pictures which is great in so many respects but
I'm trying to approach it with some level of scientific reasoning so there is a picture that I recently posted on
my Instagram um where I have the North American nebula and the Pelican nebula
and I tell this story countless times if you actually look at the nebula carefully it's actually the same PA it's
actually the same nebula and the only reason why you have the two shapes of the North America and the Pelican is is
because there is a cloud band that sits in front of it that creates that shape
and that's the science that I'm looking at so when I look at an image and I see
this huge patch of stars in fact um going see if I can screen share let
me just uh minimize all the silliness so you guys can't actually see what we're
doing here and then I'm just going to go to my Instagram real fast and then I'm
going to do a screen share so I'm just going to show you you guys this thing real quick so I'm going to share the
screen so the picture that's I'm going to show you
here is this one so what we're actually looking at here is that is the North
American nebula here on the left and the Pelican here is down to the right the wall of signis is just over here but
more importantly is you see this dark band that runs across from the top and
then Works its way through and then snakes its way back around again that's actually in the forr and I know that
because the darker the area appears the less Stars they're physically are and the lighter it is the more stars there
appear to be uh to be hence why I know why there is something in front and a lot of people the way they process their
images of the North American nebula just make it look like this Pitch Black Sea
when it really isn't it is far from the truth in fact there's so much going on there it's just
outrageous that's a it's it's a different it's a different way of looking at it and I found that
not a lot of images um like to see things like that they just want to see this strict black harsh Edge and
whatever it is of the subject but I'm looking for things like dark nebulas I'm
looking for what is in front what is behind good
Daniel well I I like the way you go about the Imaging and you you and I have
discussed that many times you know how I feel about it um I I like visual because I feel like
um I think a lot of that just comes from Robert bernham Jr because you know I once again and I always mention this
that you know um I it's like Alvin Huey faint fuzzies
decom you know you can go to it faint fuzzies decom it's that subtlety that
impacts me you know even if it's a very subtle thing so I don't see the for me
just personally um for me I'm okay seeing things faint and and subtle because I've read so much about them and
it makes me appreciate even the most subtle thing so I like to see things even if they're faint it just really
blows me away so but I but I get it I get it some people don't have that same
perspective or feeling and so they and for some people just prefer to
image to see things visually and then there's that the people like yourself where you you kind of have a mixture of
both where you appreciate the both aspects of it so that's good you know whatever makes I don't there's no right
way of doing it I think it's just a personal preference you know what people like I just always love visual it it
still moves me you know I keep a little plastic hammer in my case okay just in
case somebody looks at you know some really amazing deep Sky object and go and looks at me and says is that it like
that and then I just okay yeah exactly yeah what's your
thoughts on this Kevin um so I've more recently gotten into Imaging I use
Imaging as an extension of much like Simon does of visual there's a lot of
weird things I like to look at I'm not big on pretty pictures um I think they're great um it's just not my cup of
tea I like shooting in black and white um all the time because I really like the old school glass plates like e
Barnard and the dark nebulas I think those are really cool I think it's more about looking at the structure of the
object uh rather than you know all these exotic colors but that's just my take on
it and like Daniel said there's no wrong way of approaching it it's just that's how it
is um I think as I've gotten older I've
there was was a gentleman at a star party out here in Arizona several years ago explaining this really well um and
it's kind of of stuck with me and the experience between astrophotography and in visual is very different and what I
try to get people to really pin is the word experience um when you're out
shooting images um in the evening uh that's awesome um when I'm Imaging it's
generally remote I program it I go to bed I have two kids I don't have time to stay up all night um so I let it do the
work but it's not the same experience and uh visual is very cool
because um it you are actually you're kind of enveloped in the
experience it's not just oh I saw this it's like what was the temperature of the night um the crisp night air was
really nice you know what especially out here in the desert there's so many different uh sounds and feels and scents
that you get off just from the atmosphere and a lot of that U when I'm out observing I can flashback to some of
the most memorable events I've been out viewing and it's not just oh that object in that 30 in was like amazing it's like
I can remember the whole Ambiance of that moment as a experience altogether
so that was that's always fun but the way he this gentleman put it was it's a lot like going to the lou in France and
seeing the Mona Lisa we've all seen the picture of the Mona Lisa in a book or on the Internet thousands of times but it's
a whole different thing to make the Trek to France go to the lou and actually see it in person and that
experiences what that's all about so there's definitely room for both to
exist um but the experiences are very different from one another so I really
appreciate uh both of them simultaneously it's just different flavors on how you want to do it um and
they can complement one each other very nicely but um right now I'm more into a
an a visual aspect um it's just as Daniel and Simon and Scott and Steve can
all relate to things that work have been crazy um in the telescope world and I'm
doing a lot of problem solving for customers all day so at night the way I can disconnect from that you know is
just kind of go out and look at Mars and not have to worry about is the USB giving me trouble is the driver not
working um is the tracking off or whatever I can just kind of literally unplug and go to it at that
point so we've got about uh eight minutes left um of the uh wooden Hills
side of things before we switch over to the actual Global Star Party um going to
ask you a couple more questions Kevin before we let you run away from us um one of the biggest things
that from a visual standpoint that a lot of people have is and it's more for
outreach than anything else I guess that there so used to seeing planets and we tend to ignore everything else and when
we're in a true dark sky site the biggest problem that you know most of us have is doing nebulas and I'm not going
to talk about clusters just yet because that's going to be a separate thing I'm going to ask you but nebulas in general are just an absolute nightmare to to
view but I remember seeing you at a star party in um what was it Paramount Ranch
in California and I was looking through your scope and we were looking at the Swan and I was like
hold on a minute I can't believe I'm seeing this where I am and the Paramount Ranch it's a dark sky site but it's not
that dark it's probably a six on the scale if anything so it's not so
different for me but it was just mind-blowing seeing it I think a lot of
that really has to do with understanding the site and understanding your equipment and what's capable of doing
stuff um a lot of people I've been to plenty of events where people are like oh you can't see that here it's like you
could try and if it doesn't show up you could just change it instead of being
like it's not possible okay well I'm gonna do it anyway so um but yeah the the big thing
is really like really understanding the environment and how your equipment's
going to act so I Paramount Ranch was 5 minutes from my house when I lived in La
it was right across the highway so I observed out there several times I knew the site I knew the gear I was working
with I knew what was obtainable from that location and it's very similar to like a guitarist where you know you're G
to know certain things you know your instrument you know you can hit this and whatever and that's that just takes time
um but I know there's a lot of people out there that everything's kind of a rush and I I understand that you want to
see stuff and you want to play with all these different Scopes there's so many great options but there's something nice
about you know astronomy is all about time take a breath relax like really
hone in your gear you know get it's just like a musician hone in your ear where this time you're you're honing in on
your environment and your equipment and then that way it's like oh I know skies look good I can push the power on here
um or like when you looked at the swan it's like an' 03 would be great I understand this is an emission nebula um
it's in a good position in the dark portion of the sky I'm running a 6in refractor I could back it off to like 75
power and all that comes together as like a bunch of puzzle pieces to really give you that punch um where in other
locations it's just hey this isn't possible tonight we're not going to do it um and I've done that on different
locations it just I know the way all my Scopes act and which targets they shine
on at what it's but that just takes time an experience Kevin I was going to tell you
I think one of the most beautiful nebulas is the North American nebula you can see it so beautiful in an 80 M like
a small Widefield 80 millimeter refractor or something with a UHC filter
it's just mindblowing how clear you know what the funny thing here is is um a lot
of people don't expect that you can visually see the that
nebula you know we're it's incredible oh yeah you totally can and people just
don't realize it I mean nine times out of 10 they're out there with some gigantic refractor reflector and I'm
like dude wrong scope go small and it's that prime example that I'm trying to
give you can actually see it naked ey that's how crazy it is so if I remember
when I was out in some uh I was out in the dark sky site um and
I we you know we were setting everything up and I'm like explain to the guy there's the Milky we goes right over here cuz we're doing a photography thing
and I'm just looking at it and I kind of go silent because I'm doing this and he's like go what are you looking at and I was like you know what I've never
really paid any attention to that but it's the North American nebula because I hadn't seen it as as as Illuminating as
it was there so don't assume what yeah
when you get to some dark sky sites it's really impressive we did a viewing event up at kit Peak once we had the Mountain
to ourselves they let us bring our own equipment up there that was the first time I saw Uranus naked eye um it's like
oh crap it should be right and then we take the finder and put it on there it's like oh well that's Uranus then so um
but it's it's impressive but yeah give it a try don't just say it's impossible
like I can't does look good I think there was even discussions about seeing Barnard's loop with the naked eye using
filters in front of your eyes or something I don't know if that was uh I don't I think I think what I don't
think you can directly observe Barnard's loop I know you can see there was some discussion about it I've never tried it
so I don't know but there was some discuss about well I mean the only way I could turn around and say how I wouldn't
say you could directly observe it but you can make out some structural
elements because of where the dark and the light contrast can occur but can you see that no well I say there's no way
I've seen I have seen barnards loop with the unated eye under very very good
Sky I think David Levy has seen every freaking thing oh yeah DAV you can't you
can't argue with David ly no you can't yes you can but I did see that one I haven't seen everything but I did see
that one so I stand correct you know what it's a shame
Daniel that we didn't have Don penzak because he can see Bard Loop in the
daytime David Ley man I mean he's reason you know the shoemakers and David are
real I mean huge impact on my getting into this you know and uh that like I
said the Comets that was real amazing experience that whole thing hey guys all
right guys so um this about wraps up this portion of our um live stream we
will actually keep this running throughout the entire Global star party uh John Isaac will be joining us at uh
2:30 with uh his talk about eyepieces and star hopping is going to be a very
condensed version of it but hopefully he can stick around uh and we can just jump backwards and forwards with him like
we've been doing throughout this so we're probably going to take a 10-minute break uh from our side I will leave the
stream running for all of you guys who want to stay on our side of things if
not you can always go over to the explor alliance Network and view it through there it makes no difference we we're
going to keep on monitoring in this until I don't know the cows come home I guess yeah Simon it's been really great
though uh thanks for being the guru on on putting this uh what we is we think
this is the first ever uh uh one the people in chat called it a mosaic uh
broadcast and so it's a uh it's it's two separate broadcasts Blended together
it's pretty amazing that it's working so very very cool very cool
um okay so we are going to take about a 10-minute break uh and we're coming back
on with uh David Ley um Gary Palmer Libyan the stars and Terry man and uh we
have astronomers from around the world and we've got an incredible audience
watching from everywhere so it's really cool uh and uh we'll be
back
Okay so we've transitioned out of our side
beautiful wow we get to see all of Scott roberts'
stuff how's it going how is everyone to be here girl yeah pretty
good here in the dream sorry always sorry I interrupted about Barnard's Loop but I
do remember seeing it naked ey once on a very clear night absolutely stunning I I
was hoping somebody would B in and say something because in all honesty um for me I it's it's one of the hardest things
to see I know Don penzak has made mentions of what the
parts he sees I mean I I've only made out certain parts of it but that's it
it's as far as I've gone I was had a star party um in uh
Bolivia it was in on Lake CH Chaka and uh the sky was so dark and uh
it was so dark it was bright with stars and uh I was from there I had no
trouble making out Barnard's Loop but you need to have a really good Sky to do
that but I'm going to try it again from here I doubt I'll see it but I'll try it
again I'm gonna I I really got to go to the bathroom because otherwise I'm never gonna get to go so I I will be right
back guys no worries hey Gary hey how's it going yeah
good good um just as usual
that bad yeah that's it live living the dream as we say yeah
that's right mate yeah that is it dreaming to live is more like
it yeah it's um there's no dream at the moment over
this side I there you no yeah still oh come it it's just a
minute by minute swirling torrent of pain and misery populated the old Eddie of nonsense to lift everyone's Spirits
yeah that's it that's the one like to think of it as the big swirl
before the flush but yeah the only excitement is wondering
which direction the swirl is going to go depends what side of the Equator you're on right well anybody look at Libby we
have a new person here Libby and her cat his name is
Bowie oh is that bogy if I get Cosmo come
Boe I hope you'll introduce the cat to everyone today want to be on Cosmo want to be on
the live s Cosmo over here send
Cosmo put him on camera you're writing where you are Steve sorry
mate I said is it raining silly question is it mate
really is it raining course of course it's raining I'm only asking because it's
reasonably clear here there's a bit of cloud running through but um when I came out to the
office I looked up and I could I could see a couple of stars and I thought I might I might open the Dome just in case
and that was like I think the universe saw that as a challenge and it just it just Cloud
complete yeah but to be honest it's not a big deal I'm only I'm only going to be
on for half hour or so tonight so yeah no wores man no wor be raining here
today but it's just partly cloudy and about 90 degrees Fahrenheit Ty 90
degrees we we don't talk in that language yeah yeah ah the fall in South Florida ah
yeah we get cool weather we call that December yeah we we um we only talking
temperatures of uh below 15 degrees now yeah October onwards that's it that's
the end let had an A's perspective we're in that funny Zone in the UK where we
think it's really cold and wet but people in Norway and Sweden just laugh at us because we don't know what winter
is yeah yeah that's the one as a Canadian do you want me to explain what
winter is well you you measure snow in like feet rather than inches don't you no no
no no no no no no we we do it in centimeters in meters least at least your metric then which is
good hey Scott real quick are you sharing your screen for any particular
reason Scott dang it I can't cut back to that
otherwise everyone's going to see what he sees on his screen that's right mate that is the screen screen of a bathroom
break that's the screen of a lot of things going actually my screen is not any better mine's mine's just an Absolut
you know what I'm going to show you guys I'm just going to switch the camera so you see the disaster of my desk without
this is how many screens are involved in mine with everything going on so so you
can see it so yeah you thought Scott's screen
was crazy this m is even worse when I'm doing these live
streams Steve I grew up near Pittsburgh so I know Lake affects snow very well
but that's one reason why I live in South Florida I I understand I I I actually
spent a lot of time in Pittsburgh the past few years um so I'm very familiar with it as well whenever I would drive
down it was just a five hour drive of seeing the exact same thing
yeah we we get a light dusting of snow and the country comes to a
standstill well you saying that the year before last we had about seven feet of snow here it was over the tops of the
truck so if it does come through it comes
through you know the worst part of it here is is when I was living back at home is the London Underground would
just fall apart because of leaves on the line yeah now it falls apart because the
sadiki K yeah that that's uh now now it falls apart because it's
subject to Great British engineering oh yeah that too I I have a feeling that this
conversation is going to turn into a competition soon when it SS
here now Canada always wins because of Rush there you go simple as
that well I'm in California now so it's like snow is not a thing although it has snowed where I am
once or twice and it's like it's just weird you stand there and go it's snowing here in La it can't be it's not
possible what's going on yeah if there if there's less if there's less than three fit of snow you're still expected
to be on work on at time at work on time um is that a black cat oh my God she's
got a black cat as well name is Bowie where's my oh mine's
wandered off my I've got a black cat too she's usually sitting on my lap but she I just gave her something to eat so
she's eating like crazy right now Dave I was at the Hard Rock last night at least
I saw Getty one one of Getty Lee's guitars so at least I got that going ah well played I I've got his um his big
beautiful book of Base which is uh a fantastic coffee table book I bet I'm a long time guitar nerd
so my coffee table book is my Constantine's Apollo the Panorama so I'm a different kind of
geek I'm a guitar nerd sadly you go Libby that's my one oh nice
I don't think Cosmo wants to come in here he's afraid so so Simon you will uh you will stay on
with us right yes um we are still broadcasting on our Channel we're just I'm just going to leave this up and
running and like I said I will be staying for the entire thing because we've got it's overcast so even if I try
to set up my scope it just isn't going to happen for solar MH
I tried to get some Mars data last night but it just seeing was horrific I
see yeah that hurricane is up at the coast of Louisiana but we got some of the periphery effects so it was clear
but the sky was was turbulent so it was just fun to be
outside it's been rubbish here so haven't had a chance to do anything for a couple of days at
least ah now we're still it come here come here come
here trick him there's Cosmo he's eating a piece of
ham say Cosmo are you gonna have another cat called wand or a dog he got Cosmo and
wand this is Bowie are we are back um uh
we you've been watching the global Star Party number 14 and uh uh earlier today
we we started early uh earlier than planned because um we uh we're able to
blend broadcast which are you know our nickname for this is called Mosaic broadcasting uh where we have two
separate broadcasts going on that are Blended together through the uh through the uh you know the magic and skilled
technical expertise of Simon Tang who's with us right now and so uh it's been
really great uh you can see who we have on with us at this moment uh we have
Simon Tang out in Woodland Hills California Steve Malia out in Toronto
Canada from Ontario telescopes uh David Ley out in Vale Arizona um uh which is
really great um uh Libyan the star she's here with me not in the building but uh
here in the same area as me in in Arkansas Steve Collingwood in the UK um
Andreas neelsen in Sweden is that right that's
correct swen Stockholm yes correct okay Gary Palmer in the UK up in Wales uh
Gary vanney you're in h Florida somewhere yeah PMG Pines Southeast Florida PG Pines okay there we go and
then we got sh Shandra Sharma uh also in the UK and Terry man in Ohio so uh we've
had a uh PE you know again we have a a great collection of astronomers and um
astrophotographers from around the world uh and we expect some others to be joining us later in the show so um but
uh I am going to uh give the uh the spotlight to uh dve David Levy uh David
has been on every Global star party that we have produced um and uh you know I I
am at once very proud to have him on our show but uh it's uh it's awesome for for
uh him to be on the program because he's one of my dear friends and uh so I love
it um uh as I've said before there's no one that sets the stage better than ly
to give people the feeling of what it's like to be at a star party um he uh
quotes from uh uh you know Robert Frost and other poets he's an expert on
Shakespeare um and uh you know we all love him so David I'll give you the
stage and uh thank you thank you Scotty and it's wonderful
to be here hello hello darkness my old friend I've come to talk with you again
I think everyone here knows that song that is from Simon and Garfunkle it's
the Sounds of Silence and uh it's Mark there there's a lot of poetry and song in literature
about darkness and it's all negative it's all extremely negative except
except for me and it is not negative for me for the simple reason that when it gets
dark that means the stars come out as they did last night it was a beautiful
beautiful night a little bit Breezy at first but then the breeze the breeze let
up and I set up my telescope and I was able to have a wonderful
wonderful brief evening Under the Stars searching for
comets how long have I been searching for comets I've been searching for comets since
December the 17th 1965 I wanted so
badly I didn't start searching for comments because I wanted to find a comet although I did but I wanted to do
that because I thought this would be the best way for me to learn the sky and I see the sky as a teacher as a
wonderful teacher as I recommend all of you do as well when I take the telescope
my telescope right here and I point it up at the night sky and I look through the
eyepiece and uh there are star patterns then I move to another
field and there are more star patterns and then another and another and another
and there's star pattern after star pattern and then a fuzzy spot comes in oh I know that that's Messier 13 one of
my favorite objects wait a minute in another part of
the Year I'll be looking and I'll think why is the sky just a wee bit brighter a
shade brighter over there turns out I'm looking in Orion at Barnard's Loop and
uh even with a telescope I cannot see the whole thing but I see a brightening
that I can see as barner's Loop Barnard was one of the great observers of all
time he actually got his start doing
photography with uh with an employer and he spent a lot of his time in the dark
room but at night he would spend his time looking at the stars and uh he discovered his first
comet and then uh someone announced an award that would be given of $200 which
was quite a bit in the 19th century for the discovery of a of a new
comet and uh eventually he was able to make enough money from his discovery of
comets to build a house that he and his wife could live in and it was really a
very exciting time for him he eventually got a a position at y Key's
Observatory and really did enjoy uh doing the double stars that he
did and all the other observing he's one of the greatest visual observers of all
time one of Barnard's uh colleagues might want to say living
at the same time he was was the poet Alfred Lord Tennyson and Tennison also was an
astronomer he loved to look at the night sky he loved to take his telescope which
was a small refractor take it up to the roof is of his home and on the a of white in
England and look at the night sky with it he didn't get to use it all that much
because whenever he really wanted to observe he would go to nearby London and
he would use one of the large telescopes there at one of the observatories mostly
at the Royal Greenwich Observatory but in between looking at the night sky Alfred Lord Tennison was a
poet and a great one he wrote a poem in 1850 called IM
memorian and it was an analogy towards his best friend Arthur halum who had
passed away from a stroke at the age of about 22 and uh in memorium was this poem that
really studied nature it studied the world it studied the
sky and uh and it's kind of interesting how he structures that it's based around
three years that pass since the death of his friend and he talks about the
discoveries and the progress in science that has happened over those three years
until at the very end he goes back to his uh he goes back to his friend's
death that friend of mine who lives in God that God whichever lives and loves
one God one law one element and one far Divine event to which the whole creation
moves that far off Divine event really was not understood in the
time of Tennyson although Tennyson actually predated by by but half a
century Edwin Hubble's measuring of the origin of the
universe and it opened the great question as to whether the universe will end in a big crunch
in which the universe is condensed into a single point as it existed 13.7
billion years ago or would it continue to expand forever we now suspect because if dark
matter and dark energy are correct that there is more than enough matter and energy so that the universe will indeed
expand forever but Tennison Tennison really was
brilliant and uh he he really understood he really understood the
night sky and so did his children and so did his grandchildren and so did his
great-grandchildren and so did his great great grandchild Jonathan Tennyson who I know
and I've met him at the University College London it was while I was doing
my thesis my doctoral thesis and I just looked up Tennyson to see if there were
any living relatives and turned turns out there was Jonathan Tennyson and I wrote to him he wrote back immediately
he said I know who you are and I've done research on one of your comments W which
was really exciting so it was wonderful to get to meet him and to get to meet
the great great grandson of the man who wrote these words which Inspire us not to mourn the
darkness but to go out and celebrate it to go out and then
celebrate the Stars celebrate the night sky and to learn as much about it and
them as we can this is from ulyses the lights begin to twinkle from
the Rocks the long day wanes the slow Moon climbs the Deep moans around with
many voices come my friends it is not too late to seek a newer World push off
and sitting well in order Smite the sound ing furrows for my purpose holds
to sail Beyond The Sunset and the baths of all the Western Stars until I die it
may be that the gules will wash us down it may be that we shall touch the happy
aisles and see the great Achilles whom we knew though much is taken much abides
and though we are not now that strength which in all days moved Earth and Heaven
that which we are we are one equal temper of heroic Hearts made Weak by
time and fate but strong in will to strive to seek to find and not to yield
back to you Scotty oh thank you much thank you that's great that's great well
um the uh the European Edition as as we have called it uh of the global Star
Party although we just I guess we just have to call it Global star party because it's uh astronomers all over the
world uh but a big part of this is uh uh made possible by Gary Palmer who has
worked with me to build up uh uh attendance for um and speakers and
astronomers astrophotographers for uh the uh people that are observing uh
through Europe and uh and even down south we'll have to try to get some uh astronomers Down in Africa because it's
dark down there too right now um but Gary I'm going to give you the stage for a little bit and then we're going to uh
uh bring on liby and the Stars hi everyone thanks Scott thanks
David for opening the uh the star party from this side um it's always a pleasure
and always gives us something to think about yeah um I can never come up with
words uh anywhere close to what you seem to come up with on these shows I can come up with lots of other
things but words uh is not a big thing with me um although I enjoy listening to
them um thanks to all the other guests for coming on uh this evening or tonight
now as it is over here um and I'm looking forward to um seeing what
everybody's got and also say to people that they are welcome to join us you know we we sort of mention this halfway
through a show but if people are out doing something or they' got a passion in this yeah you're welcome to come on
the show and join us um on any of these events uh that's what this is all about
is bringing everybody together from whatever field of astronomy they're in uh and what they enjoy doing so I will
uh hand you back over to Scott and Scott is probably going to bring on uh Libby now which is nice to um have you on this
show as well Libby yes that's great Libby are you all set
to go okay I think you're still sorry okay
uh Libby uh is um still in fifth grade is that right you're you're a fifth
grader 10 years old and uh she is uh someone that absolutely loves all things
to do with space exploration and U and astronomy she has a couple of telescopes and um she uh uh
you've been observing Mars recently I know um and uh uh what's been you wanted
to talk about your experience at Kennedy Space Center uh so that's very cool and
do you have any presentation you wanted to give you want to share your screen so I can't share my screen um I worked on
the presentation on my iPad and I could could not share it to my mom's computer because I was using her work email and
that's the only email she has so I'll try and show like the pictures to my
iPad like that um that's cool because uh technical difficulties the only email
that she has is her business um and I can't use it because of her domain and I
need to contact her administrator or something to use her uh email so I'll be showing it for my iPad that's
very sounds bluring um so last year I went to
Kennedy Space Center in Florida and that was probably the best experience or
almost closest experience I've had with a spaceship and here I have a picture I
went to go see a rocket launch while I was at Kennedy Space Center and I was about a time year and I was looking and
I didn't think that was going to happen and that was just a fake timer for the uh for the launch and you could see
clouds in the background uh we did not think it would go uh the sto like storms
are coming in pretty bad um so here's a picture I took of um
how bad the storms were getting over the O
well and how how did you feel about being at Kennedy Space Center lby I thought I was
like oh my gosh I'm so excited I was running around everywhere and as um
living here in like Bensonville kind of being close to Tornado Alley um I like
love storms and everything but uh apparently if there's something that can
be cancelled that I really want to go see like if there's a space shuttle on Space Shuttle there's like a launch
going on and I want to see it and it's being cancelled I will like scream I'm
like no it didn't want to be cancelled so I started take a picture in front of
the Atlantis again and it started raining on me so you could currently see me running in the
picture so after that we have moved inside and I moved to the uh space
shuttle exibit around Atlantis and there's a picture I was just POS it in
front of a little picture while everyone was trying to get inside there's a
line and sometimes when I ever whenever I'm in a museum and there's something huge I kind of like trip a little bit
like I'm looking at so much I kind of trip a little bit that's how I felt being around a the
Atlantis just I was like oh my gosh I feel like I'm going to
trip and uh we have a picture of astronaut food
um it's the real astronaut food um my friend at space camp they had
these little freeze dried ice cream sandwiches and I quickly learned that
you can't actually take that up in space because of the crumbs and then I had another moment
where I was about to trip cuz I was looking up so much um here are the
boosters one of the biggest Parts they have to be one of the strongest parts of
the rocket or the space shuttle um because if you don't then there's no way
that your Rocket's going to get to space um they had a little Museum part where
you could walk in and like play with like a little fake cockpit for um kids
to you know go play in and so I went in and then Mom took this
picture I was looking at her like crazy I was like don't take
pictures of me she found it was crazy she was like you're looking in there
she's like that's for babies don't you want to be in the real thing out all of the controls Libby what
do you think so inspirational about a place like Kennedy Space Center
what what what is well um what do you think inspires kids about Kennedy Space Center I I
think uh the part is that kids my age we didn't grow up in generation of um
people launching people to the moon like NASA launching and you know we don't
really think of that being a great job anymore and I think me being one of the
kids to think that NASA is going to start again and it's start starting again it's fun because kids will know
like oh well like oh hey we're going to have a museum about this generation of
NASA launching and I thought it was obviously cool because I wanted to be an
astronaut ever since I was little and seeing the stuff that astronauts get to experience and do was kind of crazy and
like well they get to do this and that and kind of having that stuff out there for kids to walk in and play in it's
kind of like oh my gosh we're real astronauts um and one thing that we also
talked about was the mqf mobile quarantine facility and
that's when they quarantined the astronauts before they went to the moon because they did not know if they had a
disease so here is Kennedy's mobile poing
facility and I have one of those at space base camp and they let us actually walk through it had like little glass
barriers around I'm like oh my gosh we're like in our own mobile
quarantine facility um here is H Mars exploration
Rover I obviously don't think that's a real one but it is a model of which would be close to um a real
Rover and and we were about to get on the bus to go to um
Kennedy launch where they launch the astronauts and satellites and um we
were like we're not going to make it we're not going to make it the storm's too bad so it started raining really bad
and it stopped so it was kind of like a little bit sofy outside and they took us on the bus and we were like we're not
going to see it like oh my gosh we're not going to be able to see it but um
once we got there they were like okay the launch will go on so I saw the launch and it was
gorgeous um we uh had to have someone send photos to us because we did not
realize how close the timing was to us so the lady right next to us s miss her
photos um I don't have them I don't know if my mom has them on her phone but um
it was definitely beautiful it was a satellite for communication for
Israel and I thought that was amazing it was Falcon 9 I think sending it up there
and it was glowing um it was kind of the like 7 o'clock when it launched and it
was glowing like it looked amazing in the sky cuz it's so pretty against the
blue sky and after that we uh got got some pictures around the Rocket Garden
when it was kind of getting later into the day and so I have this picture of
me during the uh during after the
um our um rocket launch and I was way more excited after that because during
in the museum I was like we're not going to make it we're not going to make it but um after that it was beautiful I got
to visit the Rocket Garden and they had a really pretty it was really pretty outside here's a gorgeous picture that
we got of the Rock Gardens and there's a moon in Star at least in the picture not
very bright because of all the clouds covering the storm and then here we have
a rocket
and I thought that was another moment where I almost tripped because it was so big
big you're just kind of looking out to like take it all in it's kind of like if the kid goes to aquarium and sees a
giant whale you're gonna kind of trip and be like Wella that's too big
right I thought that was another part that's my favorite because along with the new rockets that NASA was building
they had a they their original design was just like that and now the um then
they went to the space shuttles which the design of that was extremely different and now they're going back to
kind of their own rocket design that they had back launching um the Apollo 11
and they're just adding some new safety features because um we did have lots of
fails and we kind of learned from them during the Apollo time and trying to put
they put too much much um of this chemical in there and it burnt a fire
that was tragic and now they learned from that and they're putting more of
another chemical in there and now they're building more safety so I was
kind of thinking about that when I was walking in the Rock Rocket Garden because the new space shuttle not space
shuttle space rocket was um SLS has on the capsule where it carries the
astronauts has a tiny little tiny missile on on top of the um capsule so
if there was any uh problems they would start the missile and then head
them back to Earth because the astronauts are the most important of the mission it doesn't care about making it
it cares about the astronauts because if we can send them up there we have to get
them back safely and I think that was one of the things I was thinking about
when walking through the garden but my experience after all was
amazing and um I felt like that was the closest experience I've ever had um but
that was amazing for me to be able to go there and we were first planning to just
go to the museum and my grandma actually said oh hey there's a rocket launch that
day and we were super excited so we were lucky enough to get um a trip book to go
see the rocket launch and that was one of the best parts to um seeing it um I
was extremely happy and I'm so glad that the weather didn't ruin
everything and I feel like that is like a lifelong experience and we like to
brag to my dad because he has done like almost everything in the world and I
said I have seen a rocket launch before you Libby that's a that's a great um
wrap up of your talk um I was reading some of the chats uh here and uh someone
asked me if you uh uh wanted to be an astronaut and I wrote back that you were
planning to be an astronaut in your in yourh future here uh one of the comments
was uh it would be amazing to see in a few more years with my children watching the night sky and seeing the broadcast
of Libby's first Eva as an ason do you do you um uh with with the
danger of flying in space because it is there is a danger of it uh are you are
you afraid of that do you I mean as you walked through that rocket Park and we're reflecting on on the uh you know
the survival of astronauts and the care that they give to survival in the astronauts uh what are your thoughts on
that um so my whole entire life I have
uh never never ever been afraid of anything
like I love going on roller coasters and I just it's like amazing for me to go on
roller coasters I'm like oh my gosh it's so much fun dangle me upside down I'm having fun no matter where I am I'm
having fun um even if it's dangerous um I will be like I'm happy that I can do
it and I always have um looked on like the bright side I'm like hey at least we
tried and at least we learned from this lesson so let's say I got on a roller
coaster and it broke down hey alast you tried we learned from this lesson I've never been like fearful of
anything but um I am aware that some astronauts have had some issues while
I'm board and every astronaut will have issues on board so hey we'll learn from
that all right well thank lby it was a great program thank you very much and uh
we will uh we will go to our next speaker here um Gary why don't you uh
help me out a little bit uh and introduce some of the people here
okay so uh we have Steve colud from PSAR
observatories um here in the UK Andreas is in uh Sweden and I've really enjoyed
some of his uh informative Imaging uh ways and and problems that he
comes around uh from his um we have Gary on who um we we
talked about this on the um last St party when we asked people about image
processing what they would like to see and everybody was Hing we see some image processing on Miles and the issue I have
here is really not getting good clear skies uh to image the planets so we we
really do struggle do get it now and then but just not on a regular basis and Gary produces some excellent uh videos
and images of the planets also runs his own uh group on uh anything to do with
Luna uh anything to do with the moon so I thought it'd be nice to get Gary on and and run us through that sort of
thing right um Cho is in London um he's um just getting into the
Imaging and just getting into um all of the pitfalls and the good bits and the
bad bits and what whatever um uh comes along in that area uh
Simon um we've had Simon on before normally he brings us the Sun from California this time he's been working
on other parts of the show in the background and broadcasting some other bits earlier on unfortunately I didn't
get to see all of that I watched some of that on catchup um I was busy rushing around trying to get everything ready to
go out live on here oh always so um just so you guys know uh John ISAC is on uh
sand by right now so as soon as you're done with your intros uh we'll go over
to John yeah fine um and most of the other people on here we we've already
sort of run through got introduced those um we've got Terry man on from the astronomical League again it's always
nice to have Terry on um and we need Terry to show more of those fantastic
Aurora images because I was really impressed with those the last time um they're really enjoyable yes she's
excellent yeah um and the same uh with uh Steve
Steve's always um they're supporting us in one way or another from Canada um
it's always good to have you on so uh whenever you're ready Simon if you want to go over to John um and we s work from
there okay so uh this brings our last part to the telescopes umnet live
broadcast section with John Isaac um John Isaac was bought to by attention through Daniel um who is a Avid
supporter of cloudy nights um you can always find John there and John specializes obviously in visual
astronomy that's what our event was about today is Visual and Outreach and the Outreach part is essentially the
global Star Party of the entire thing so um John we've got about 15 minutes
roughly to go through this uh and I don't want to try and overly cram this so I'm going to launch into the first
part which is the types of I pieces and you mentioned um when choosing an
eyepiece you're looking at things like eye relief uh uh exit people and things like that give us a good uh brief
rundown of what we're looking for when we're choosing an i piece well this is
kind of a interesting question um I'm a believer that most any ipce you
can buy will give you a good sharp image on axis in the center of the field um
what you're paying for when you buy eyepieces are things like the how wide
the parent field is how big it seems um how much eye relief the eyepiece has so
when the eye relief is the distance behind the eyepiece you can see the
image and some eyepieces particularly short focal length High pieces like
fossils you're very close and it's quite uncomfortable and you have a difficult time seeing the image um having maybe 15
mm of ey relief just makes for a more pleasant pleasing
image um the field of view uh you know
ey Pieces come in anywhere from 40 degrees that would be an ortho to 100
degrees or more um I think for me I mean I have 100
degree eye pieces and I use them a lot but I find that anything about 50 60
degrees and above seems comfortable and feel like I'm seeing as much as I need
to see so so if I was doing Outreach uh you
mentioned something very critical here and and I get I used to get this constantly is you get somebody come up
to the eyepiece and they look through it and they go I can't see a damn thing it's pitch black and they're not just say saying that because they can't see
anything it it's it's that it's just that the eye relief um it's that distance I mean in your experience what
have you found to be the best type of eyepiece for outreach well now this I I'm a lot of
people use inexpensive eyepieces because they're afraid they'll get damage or
there somebody will put their fingerprint on them or that they're um I they you know someone's I um from their
eye eye makeup but I I use my good eye pieces I have a set of telie ey pieces
and I use them because I think that anyone who tries is willing to look
through my telescope deserves the best possible view I can provide and I think
those are the eyepieces that I choose for myself so excellent so
um the other thing here is uh uh and we spoke about this very briefly is looking
for things and I've mentioned this before the actual skill of star hopping
has slowly been lost over time and this is not really a dig at any Astro images
out there we we kind of rely too heavily on software uh plate solving apps and
all that kind of stuff but you know the the actual skill of star hopping has
slowly come kind of just disappeared so what are some of the tips
that you have um when you're doing things like that cuz I know that you're an avid star Hopper right I mean I when
I started I realized that it was important to me to understand where in
the sky whatever I was looking at was I mean it wasn't just finding looking at
the object in the eyepiece it was kind of knowing where that object was and and
this is something that was important to me it's not important to everyone or but I think it's a valuable thing um I look
at the sky I think of it as like a treasure map and so you have all these Hidden Treasures out there and if if I
can find them I can walk out at the night I can spend a couple days just looking at different things you know a
couple nights actually that I know um I'm I'm not you know I wouldn't say I'm
a pure leite in this regard I I Rely heavily on Sky Safari you know this app
Sky Safari Pro it goes on a tablet or a smartphone and it provides you with the
with the image of the sky at the very time you're looking and in the exact
orientation it is and you can zoom in and out you can see what the sky looks
like what you should be seeing you can custom it so the Stars you see are there
so it's it's it's uh almost like cheating in my way of thinking because
right I mean the thing is though I mean um I mean Daniel was telling me that you know in in Star hopping yeah you don't
just start with a narrow eyepiece just go straight for it right I mean so I
mean but you have a chart you have something you want to find
um uh I mean I think basically it depends
on the telescope you're using but the the three tools that I use would be a
red dot finder or a t rad which is I need you use to point to the general
area of the sky so you want to get within four or five degrees so you know
where you're starting then I'll use a a right angle correct image finder which
magnifies the view8 to 10 times and provides a field the view of five to
seven degrees and so now you you're zoomed in under Urban Skies you're now
able to see a lot more stars where you might only see magnitude four or four
and a half from a backyard with a magnifying finder you can actually see
probably magnet seven or eight where you can actually see enough to guide yourself with and so with this with the
chart knowing you identify say what I call a the initial alignment guide star
I would point the scope at that star using the Red Dot finder and then I know
I have a path that I've developed in my mind going from
identifiable stars in the field from the original Star to the object now the
object will probably not be visible in the finder so it's all these is relative
so you're you have like way points and okay I see this pair of stars that means
I'm three degrees from the original Star now I want to go up to the left and find
this other pair eventually you find what you want the area you want and then I
would put in a low power wide field eyepiece in the main telescope and so
depending on the telescope some telescopes that might be five degrees that would be a a short focal length
refractor some telescopes like my 22 in it would be maybe 3/4 of a degree or
less and so I need to be much more precise in my star hopping but I I think it's the that you
know I started out as a young as a child actually I was a hunter fisherman and so
what really appeals to me about star hopping is it's the same thing I'm
hunting my stars and you know I'm finding these gems hidden
gems um I've got one quick question here for you uh and then I know you got to go because uh you drove all the way from
San Diego up to LA because you're actually here for an event so I don't want to keep you forever but just for
you guys at home we will be having John back to do an in-depth uh discussion with Daniel um because these two guys
are just going to B backwards of voice it' be so awesome listening to these guys um one question that I did get from
somebody is um what is your thoughts on very focal
eyepieces on what on very focal so variable focal length uh zoom eyepieces
zooms yes okay I mean yeah it's a frequent topic I I think they have like
a there's a a good place in astronomy amateur astronomy for zooms they have
the advance one of the things is with a i with the image is that there's a
tradeoff between the brightness of the image the magnification and so you have op to
optimize The View you have to swap eye pieces and so say if I'm hunting down a
magnitude 15 Galaxy I may only be able to see that at
a very narrow range of magnifications and brightnesses ex but with a zoomi
piece I can go in there and I can tweak the magnification to get it exactly right
whereas when you're changing eyepieces number one it takes time and number two
you may not have the right right eyepiece so a zoom covers a lot it's very useful um they have their
limitations but a lot I mean it's a frequent topic of discussion um and but
yeah they I think they have a lot of value and for viewing the planets for example if you have the right
magnification with your Zoom then you know the the atmospheric seeing the
stability the atmosphere really sets the limit of the magnification you can use so with a zoom
you can in real time optimize the magnification so
excellent okay um so this is about closes it up for our uh
the telescopes.net live stream broadcast we will continue to run the stream um
throughout the global uh star party so again it doesn't matter which side you watch it from you'll still catch
everything uh John thank you very much for coming in I really do hope that you can come back uh and then we can do an
in-depth one uh CU I know that you've got a lot of experience that would just be invaluable to some of the people um
that watch this program yes well thank you Simon and I I would definitely do
that so yeah well don't worry we'll drag you back I mean I wish we could actually have been all together me you and Daniel
because I think between all three of us we could have had an excellent discussion so hope
I I getting Daniel's not a problem so we will definitely come back and revisit this one yeah well I'm a retired so I
usually have plenty of time so awesome all right John thank you very much for your time thank you all right um Scott
um I'm gonna do a giveaway now okay all right well let's uh so staying in the
theme of doing visual astronomy um we are going to give away two planispheres
um if if you are not familiar of what a planisphere is I highly suggest that you look it up we're not going to go through
it today since there are two streams running simultaneously I'm going to give away two one on each live stream so okay
one for the for our one for the telescopes.net and one during actually on the global star party so for the
telescopes.net here is the question and I'm going to write the email um in the
chat so I want to give your answers just email me so that's my side you guys
won't get to see it on that side but we'll do that one separately so it's that's the email address and I'm not
going to shout it out because I don't want to anybody cheating the question is who were the two people that were on the
live stream earlier I only need their first names so who were the two people that were doing my live stream
earlier okay it's very very easy so those are only for the people that
are on the telescopes.net live stream right now uh you don't need to type in
the answer into the um the chat just email me um the names of the two people
that were in the live stream at the beginning and no Scott Roberts does not count
no and now for the guys who are on the Global Alliance Network
Gary thanks Simon um I I would like you to create a question that's uh for the
global and I will say this now I will ship this anywhere in the world okay so
do not be afraid if you live in Antarctica I will still ship it to you Gary I want you to come up with a very
odd question a very odd question yes and then Scott if you can post my email
address on your network so they know who to email all right we'll do that
so go for your odd question then Gary um what's the uh Imaging spot circle on FCD
102 explore
scientific that's an odd question there you go okay say that say that again nice
and clear for the guys who are watching on the uh Explorer Alliance Network okay
what is the Imaging spot Circle on an explore scientific FCD 102 and
that's the inner Imaging spot Circle not the external spot
Circle so so Richard Grace is saying unvetted or not
oh or not yeah not no I'm V supp basically un vignetted the inner spot
Circle yeah would be close as unineed that's what that means inner spot Circle
yeah an unvetted spot Circle yeah so so those guys you will answer uh you will
send me an email so I have two clear definitions and then I will randomly pick a winner um and I will let you guys
know via email so you just give me your names and addresses and I will get those out to you so there'll be I'm giving
away two planispheres again if you don't know what they are um I highly suggest you do some research about them because
they are actually very very useful for doing visual uh astronomy
all right Scott okay it's all you now it's all me huh I am now just a guest I
want to thank you Simon for uh uh you know being a a very very important part
of this program uh and for doing the uh the so-called Mosaic broadcasting
technique uh you should patent that and I definitely want to learn how to do
it myself so that's it's very cool that you're you're able to do it and um uh we
will uh we'll try it again in the future okay oh yeah totally totally right I will say I will say this um at some
point when we get to chalks so for so for those of you who probably uh have been watching and following us I did say
I would ship him a monochrome camera as the lifechanging moment and he recently
received it and he did image with it um and I'm looking forward to him listening
to his experience and for you guys to have the experience to see the difference on the level progression and
and in all honesty I I am going to say this chock we've kind of accelerated
your level of uh learning a little bit more than most people should so just
keep that in mind if you find that you're struggling somewhere we are throwing you in the deep end here okay
just be aware of that right yeah very good very good right the
chair's back to you now Scott thanks s take care man no I'm gonna stay I'm staying here remember okay all right
it's kind of you're staying good yes uh all right
Gary um we have uh we do have more door prizes uh with uh from the uh the
astronomical League they are our official sponsor okay of the global star party and the explor alliance for door
prizes and Terry man is is a two-time former president she is still on the
executive staff of the uh of the astronomical league and uh so I'm going
to bring her on and we'll let her uh uh read off the former or not the the prior
winners okay and the uh and the questions for uh this week's um Global
star party and before before we uh go any further we actually do have a new
email uh for door prizes but we'll use that next time uh this time this will be
the last time we use Kent's email uh for door prizes but it's Kent at explor
scientific.com and um our prize partners for this uh
for the global Star Party include Gary Palmer astronomy uh where Gary will um
uh give you a hour of his expertise so you can choose from a wide variety of uh
of uh things that you might need help with from Imaging to telescope setup to image
processing um and then we have the mark slave remote Observatory uh where you
could operate uh a uh Ed 165
f53 Appo and learn how to do everything from just taking a image to doing
photometry they they do science that they also do spectroscopy so if you want to learn how to do science this is a
great step and they are offering u a session on on that telescope um and you
you access this remotely so from anywhere in the world you can participate also we have uh prizes from
explore scientific of course and uh and then we have prizes from uh the vacuum
of space where they have custom gifts custom uh Space theme type gifts so um
and uh so we will I'm going to give you the stage Terry how you today I'm good
how are you good good I'm gonna share my screen or share my screen if I can
absolutely it's a beautiful uh before you share your screen that that a behind
you uh I think you've shown it before but it's spectacular oh thank you that's up on the Dalton
Highway yeah okay and thanks for taking time of your out
of your busy Saturday to do this no problem glad to be
here okay I want to start off with the answers from last star party okay and
the first question was there are 88 constellations in the sky and only one of them split into two separate parts
what constellation that was serpents and the winner I've got this
right in of it is um Matt Walsh I think I've got my pictures
covering it up but I believe it's Matt Walsh the Walsh okay thank you the next
question was what planets has moons whose names mean fear and panic and
that's Mars with Phobos and damos and the winner is Dave
Ing and the last question was what is the name of the unmanned space mission
that took this photo and that would be New Horizon and uh let me see if I can't
there we go and that winner is Jason gunzel yeah Jason gonel yes gelle thank
you yes and then here we go with the new questions uh what comet is the source of
the perad meteor shower okay and that's the first
question the next question is this year NASA determined that this meteor crater is
the oldest known meteor crater on Earth where is it located and what is the name
of the crater wow okay looks devastating yeah it does and
the last question is what percent of the illuminated moon appears half as bright
as a full moon okay and that is
it awesome is that a question that a lot of people get wrong Terry it's sure
question I had to look up that's it really surprised me and I I
had a hard time even figuring that one out so I found it um and I'll when when
Chuck Allen will be here next week okay yeah and he will give the answer and I've put a link in the answer to the
place where I found this information because it was kind of surprising the answer is
surprising that's very interesting uh before you go Terry uh uh tell us about
the U our viewers about the astronomical league and how they can get
involved uh the astronomical league is like an umbrella of um International
clubs now and Gary Palmer I'm very glad to see that you joined as an malal it's great to have somebody outside the US
say that we can contact and we actually recognize their face it's nice to know for all the people that are here uh
please let me know when you do join I'd love to connect and maybe get some ideas
uh and throw some ideas back and forth but we are an umbrella of astronomy clubs so we have 10 different regions
that are in the US and my region is the Great Lakes I'm around Dayton Ohio so
I'm the Great Lakes region which has uh four states it has Kentucky Indiana
lower Michigan and Ohio and I think in our region we've got somewhere around
1500 members between those four states and we have as you've heard many times
observe programs we have all kinds of awards um we do a lot of Outreach a lot
of Outreach one of the clubs is an Outreach club that is a very popular one
uh this year has been kind of tough but it's a very popular uh club that was started by Mike Reynolds uh he was one
of the founders one of the people that got this started um and so we have so
many different things that we do we have a yearly conference we would have been in Albuquerque this year but it has been
shoved to next year the first week of August hopefully we will be there in August and the next year I believe it's
going to come to Cincinnati Ohio here where it's local for our group so we'll
see how that works out but we have a lot of different things going on in the league it's just kind of a tough year as
I think it has been for a lot of clubs and a lot of people we've all moved online we've all learned new things uh
and it's really I think you know we can find some good to come out of some of this because I have sure learned a lot
more about being online yes and reaching out to more clubs and actually we talk to a lot more people this way so we've
got a lot going on please join us uh let me know we'll get in contact and see if
we can come up some with some ideas from the other parts of the world and that website is uh
www.ast.org right right okay I'm putting it in the chat
thank you Scott thank you very much Terry thank you you too A okay uh back
to you Gary um uh you are you have uh uh
astronomers here uh in Europe and in Florida um uh how do you wanna how do
you w to get started Scot thanks Terry um always good
to listen to the uh door prize winners uh and the questions that next come out
the next lot of questions um what I was going to do um very quickly because I
know it's going to go cloudy so I will share the screen here we are actually Imaging live while the event on so
hopefully you can see that M31 at the moment um coming in live their three
minute images and we'll get on to stack these change a camera on this one again still
on the FCD 102 um so U we're just leaving it there
it's a little bit of High Cloud I can watch it coming through on the guide monitor at the moment so uh just really
going to leave it on that uh probably so that in the next half an hour to an hour we lose it if I can get on to another
Target I will uh in the meantime but what I was going to do was switch over
to Steve Collingwood um because he's not actually going to be on that long so I
thought we'd jump over to Steve and then he can go off and have a beer and do whatever he likes to likes to do after
the show Jin and tonic mate J in the morning so I'm crashing out
fairly early today so uh and Gary said what are you going to talk on and I
thought oh I don't know so I thought I'd throw a few things out there and see how it goes firstly of course Libby should
absolutely you live in an era where you can be an astronaut sadly I always wanted to be an
astronaut but NASA stopped sending monkeys into space some time ago oh that's uh you'll have to do it
for us you can always buy a ticket on the next SpaceX rocket going up that's true
you don't work in the astronomy tra do you buying tickets so I thought actually I would
possibly bait some debate I don't know but it was mentioned earlier perhaps on
this podcast perhaps on the early one about there's a question of um do you prefer Imaging or do you prefer visual
as if they are sort of uh different or or whatever um and I am an old-fashioned
Old School Visual astronomer I'm quite now my color to the MK and to me I would
say that Imaging is more data acquisition and the thrill of the chase
um and you know I think we were talking about Outreach at the time and
um I do I used to do a fair bit of Outreach not so much now because of the pandemic Etc but there's that wonderful
thing where as seasoned in inverted commas astronomers observers images
whatever we sort of have a tendency to disappear up our own backsides with uh with the
gear and the and the stuff because the people we talk to about it are mainly other amateur astronomers and you know
it sort of it generally Spirals and actually when we're out doing Outreach
it's so easy to overlook the fact that you can still turn what you can't see into an inspiring
discussion you know um we we forget you know we you want to see this well we can
show you this but actually the fact is the reason we can't see it is the numbers involved or or whatever and
actually a lot of a lot of people get into astronomy through the host of an Outreach event or the host of a
telescope on the sidewalk it doesn't really matter about what scope they've
got and we we always sort of try and go for bigger and better or computerized or not or whatever but we also forget what
you can do with uh a very basic little telescope and I like small refractors
and how many people started with a 60 mil SE refractor or Tasco refractor s
there you go 50 mil that's probably f13 this is uh here let me uh let me
show I'll come on with you here this is my first telescope it still has the tag
on it this is from 1970 and uh it is um it's a 40
millimeter with a straight through eyepiece a tube for sighting scope with
no adjustments and and a and a just a metal tripod you know which is actually quite
wobbly but it's this little telescope that propelled me into a life of astronomy and so I think their little
telescope is very important yeah and we we sort of forget I I like 60 mil long
Focus refractors for instance and I think most of us go through a phase in our lives in this business
where you sort of almost sneer at them because you can have 80 Ms and you can have whatever but they're fantastic
especially like me if you are a fan of the moon and the Moon is my is my preferred
it's easy to find simple as that um Gary's pointing his pictures there
the moon so you know I suppose anything doesn't matter what scope you have have a look at the Moon and uh
basic so this very dusty bit of brass here that for a bit of lunar history
that Gary might like that is the finderscope from Sir
Patrick Moore's brass telescope that he mapped the moon with wow that is cool
and it's basically wait wait wait hold on he knows you oh he knows that you
have it right you didn't just like grab it oh you okay backstory Patrick and I
were very good friends and I restored his telescopes and um we took this off to
replace it for a modern one because he wasn't precious about his stuff he wanted it to be usable and this
is one of the worst finder Scopes I've ever encounted but this is basically two bits of clear glass just to stop the
rain getting in and a nail in a brass tube it's not lensed not lensed okay not lensed at all
um but it you know basic kit but like Scott's tube it
works you know and um he mapped he mapped the moon with a what 73 mil
f13 refractor with 75 year old glass in it without coatings on had a shell break
in the lens you know um and it didn't matter he could have had
any anything but you know we should really um really encourage people to to
get hold of you know whatever they can and start looking up and it's it's more about the way we do that than the
equipment we use to do it you know there's one thing I should really say um for people getting into doing um
astronomy in general is it's better to try and look through a telescope first than it is to flick
through a book or look on the internet because I think one of the biggest problems here is you see too many NASA
photos and instantly in your head that's what your vision of whatever it is and
you look through the eyepiece for the first time thinking oh great I get to see the Orion Nebula and they go is that
it and I tell you now when I used to do my Outreach it would break me sometimes
when they say is that it and I'm like going what do you mean is that it you're looking at some think that is Thousands
if not hundreds of millions of light years away and is older than you and I and it's up there and you can see it and
you say is that it and then they show you this picture on their iPhone goes I was expecting to see
this and to me that is kind of the wrong way of getting into astronomy in in so
many facets I mean it's great that Libby gets into it from the rocket science standpoint uh and is fascinated by Mann
missions going up there I mean that's another way to get into it the Practical aspect so for most people um who are
watching this who are not into astronomy and have some kind of interest you really have to start by doing visual
first do not just jump into doing Imaging it's it's a whole different
thing oh agreed to a point um but I don't I don't think you even need a telescope to get into astronomy no you
don't that's the but there is a caveat to the reading the book thing
if you if you take good advice on the book and uh I I have a thing for old
books I I like so some of the books that I I enjoy are 18th
century introductions to astronomy this is a book for kids by Peter parlay it's tales about the sun moon and stars
there's actually a chapter in this book about the freezing properties of
moonlight is that a little for kids you know what you'd be amazed at the stuff
in this book we've dumbed down over the decades I have to tell you but um I love that sort of thing because you you read
stuff in there and we laugh at the idea of the freezing properties of moonlight do you think about it though
there was there's usually on a good crisp clear full moon Atlas to the Moon I'm going to come
to that Gary full moon right you get a frost they haven't really worked out
anything else well you get a frost when it's a clear night of the Moon and and when you read the chapter
on it you can almost believe it it's only that we know different now but it's perfectly believable but there are also
books from the war so JB sedwick's introduction to astronomy this was written for air raid wardens during
World War II to make use of the blackouts and the you know it's not like
books you get today it's very nice and basic but it it in the language of it inspires you to to get out and look up
and uh one for Gary I don't know if you've got this one this is just a blue cover but this is the Moon by HP Wilkins
and Patrick Moore which is one of the archetypal books on the moon because there was a big Scandal
about the uh the detail of the drawings in this book huge a huge
Scandal because he saw things that weren't there but um I think it's just really
to to enthuse people to astronomy it's really easy to get tied up in what they can and can't see in the equipment they
you know you do it but actually someone with some enthusiasm and a laser pen or someone
with enthusiasm and a cup of coffee on the on the street can actually engage someone to to be drawn into astronomy
without any equipment whatsoever and it's really easy to forget that when we you know I mean I build and sell
observatories you know remote observatories quite a long way removed from visual astronomy in in many
respects you know the same as Scott and same as Gary and and you we do we do technical stuff same you know same as
you guys really but it's what we do but you know actually it's really nice I learned the Sky by sitting on a kid's
trampoline with a glass of scotch and a moon map and a and a star chart it brilliant didn't need a
telescope no you think the you think of the enjoyment somebody gets out of looking
at the sun with a basic pair of solar sunglasses yeah yeah for the first time
uh that's just a proof of the level of equipment you can use to you know
promote astronomy or or bring it across to other people um it really doesn't have to be technical in any way no and
the the thing about that is and very much like your first view of the Moon through a telescope or Saturn is another
prime example all of a sudden it's real as as long as you have a filter on
there and don't take your corer out at the same time yeah well you two eyes you got a
spare I'll let you do the safety caveat chaps when you do your first view of the
Moon um the sun through white light and you see a sun spot that's the same as the moon uh
looking through you know just maybe like a 8 in reflector you don't actually realize how bright it is and until you
look through that telescope at the Moon Yeah and uh then you're trying to get your eyesight back for the next hour and
a half without tripping over the N or something yeah the green with the green blobs but the the the thing is the Sun
and the Moon I suspect I would class as the two most dynamic objects you can view in the night sky don't else but the
Moon is a I mean the sun's a bit flatter them minute but the Moon it you never see it the same
twice yeah yeah it's not just a a ball of dust yeah Rock of dust it is a
wonderfully Dynamic changing surface because you never view it in the same conditions
twice so you you get different details not just things like the lunar X and and things like that but you know it's a
it's a magical Target yeah yeah it's like you know it's the same with the sun
I never lose interest in it uh it doesn't matter whether it's white light whether it's uh ho whatever I'm looking at uh it
still holds that there and it's great to get out and uh not look at everything
yeah that's online about and and see what's there that challenge of the chase again you know you see a prominence
there and it's like I'm going to have that today you know I want to image that or even visually you know sometimes
pulling the camera out and going back to the visual on it it's really nice to do that did that a couple of days
back don't find it great the best some of the best type of astrophotography in my book is where you've seen something
and think I've got to record that somehow yeah that that that's the Chas
Factor yeah yeah you know because you've been sparked because you've seen it it
but it's it becomes between you and the objects then and I think that happens a lot in astrophotography in general you
know you might you could take an image like this tonight of M31 you know I've imaged it a thousand times and you know
5% of those will come out a lot better than a lot of the others because it will be dependent on the camera the the
seeing conditions all any number of factors even errors I might put in yeah
that I didn't you know the last time so it will be a different image uh there will be other structures in there that I
might see because of you know those changes of equipment so it doesn't get
boring but also doing lots and lots and lots of these that technology now allows
me at the end of the season to put them all together so while I can put out one image of say an hour I can now get 40 50
60 hours of this target from all different cameras and all different equipment and put that together and
create a really good image and of course it's very rare for you to photograph M31
I'm quite quite pleased but it's that season thre at the
moment and here I will lose that I'm on the side of a mountain so you know for me to collect that data I try each time
I come out to get an hour's worth of data on it before I move on um other
targets like M45 this High Cloud we're getting at the moment it's being a real pain to get it you keep getting the
expanded Stars I can get the NEPA lovely but to actually get the Stars nice with
the equipment with the High Cloud running through is really really hard um
and last that's why you need um like an FC D 102 mate yeah yeah that's
it I think that's the telescope um you know and that's why
you're you're playing around with a lot of the different equipment but I think technology does uh make life so easy these days it
really does uh but you you lose something there I do think there's a magical Edge that you lose um do you
find I mean in one respects you could argue that Scott had one of the best start S instrumentation wise because a a
40 mil refractor is not prone to seeing conditions no no all really you know
it's perfectly stable it's portable you can put it on your window sill or you
can put it on the car Bonnet or you know you can take it out and about with you
and you can grab those few moments between the clouds or you know and you're not waiting for it to
cool down to settle you're not checking the colation on it you're not aligning a mount
no nothing VI it's it's a visceral tatile experience yeah yeah I I think as
well with the price of equipment it's come down so much now hasn't it you know when you look at the average price of a
um even a standard sat it's so cheap now compared to what it used to be that it's
made it accessible to everybody and then everybody sort of jump jumping past those basic areas of
having telescopes like what Scott had I had you had and and other people have um
so you miss that experience there and you you you can quite often jump into a
big pool of problems by going too far too quick um or what we call aperture
fever going and get your 11 or 12 in me you know or celestone or whatever um
getting it out of the box and you know the first problem going to get hit with his colation that's without actually
lifting it onto his tripod um you know and that's the thing see you you're
already in a whole host of of different issues there that you know colation for
some people is going to take them forever to learn it's something that they will never ever learn other people
get it straight away other people are just not interested and that's where the refractor kicks in you know because we
like refractors yeah then you think it's thing with imaging isn't it it's a bit
of a wormhole I'm sure Simon you know would have found as well certainly I have you start getting into Imaging so
you get a camera and then you get a camera you think well the P I'm I'm having real trouble tracking accurately
oh you need to auto guide oh okay so then you get an auto guer and then you got to learn PhD and then you get to the
point where well yeah I'm I'm I'm not really getting the results so someone says you need a mono camera so then you
get a mono camera and then someone says well what you need with a mono camera is some filters well then you need a filter
wheel and before you know it you're down the rabbit hole Yeah that's it I'm there
can I can I make a comment can I make a comment to that yeah go for as a dealer I I don't see a problem with any of that
argument agree no but but you know what no but as a as a dealer I want to uh
weigh in here because I deal with customers on a regular basis I'm sure Simon you know you probably um H have
similar conversations with customers and people as well it is that um they get that wow factor from seeing other
people's images and they want wanting to jump right into it and there isn't really isn't any issue with telling
someone hey modest equipment can get you some really really good results right just by
trying out and it's something it's as simple as even taking your there somewhere there's your phone
right and and and just pointing it and taking a picture and you know it assment to your point earlier in your broadcast
saying um uh just what seeing what you can't see sometimes that that what that
is just enough to to to satisfy someone's curiosity or
um uh what's the word I'm looking for um I don't want to sound like I'm
regurgitating stuff but it it's a yeah Gary that's a great picture it it it's just the the equipment that's available
now is so low cost and the result you can get out of it right and to be able to see what you can't see is a big thing
and and and sure you can you can go right down that rabbit hole and you can spend a ton of money if you really
wanted to you know the thing is I see my Observatory you'll see a ton of money
but and and and my pictures really aren't any better than they were when I
started out um uh getting more serious into it uh so it it it's it's a very
it's a it's it's something that gets missed a lot that it you can say almost with any hobby too I know some fantastic
Woodworkers that have tools that are been handed down to them that shouldn't be working anymore that have chisels
that have been sharpened um a million times right it it
it's taking that that equipment you have in and really taking it to the next level and and making a craft out of it
and I think that's a part that gets missed a lot is making that craft out of what you
have it's interesting from a Retailer's perspective um that when somebody does
come into the store uh at least for me I have to understand one major factor when
it comes down to astronomy uh because we obviously sell cameras as in like regular photographic cameras versus um
telescopes but usually when a customer comes in and they say I want to do X Y
and Z I try to lead them you know in such a fashion where I say look don't
blow your money right off the bat and buy the biggest thing off you know off the shelf because what they do is they
miss and don't absorb the uh um the
learning curve in the correct way so you know from your point Steve if somebody
comes in and says I want a full-on Imaging system and I want to be able to do blah blah blah blah blah and then here you go selling off access guiders
filter wheels and this that and the other this poor guy now has to learn every facet of the technical side of
things in one foul swoop whereas I tell everybody you're you're AB you're
absolutely right and the biggest fear with doing that and and you can tell
right almost tell right away when somebody's coming in uh with that big budget of mind I've got $5,000 as a
budget great well we're only going to use like a third of that because you
know from what you're telling me if that it for what you're telling me you want to do you don't need to spend that money
and and and you can get some hey look look at all the great work at there the the image you had of of the Pelican in
North America that you shared earlier right that's with a small scope that's not even with a scope it's done with a
camera lens it's done with a camera lens yeah and and what you can do with just a camera lens right or and a small scope
right and most of the objects out there are so big that you need the small scope in order to to to to capture it so so it
it it it it's it it's a funny hobby where you don't have where you think you
need to spend a lot of money and you don't right not when you start off with
I mean I can't keep saying this anymore I mean at the end of the day for um retailers we are here because we're
making money but as astronomers I'm not here to make you spend your money I'm here to make sure that your progression
is a nice natural one see the way I got into it is I'm looking up um and by the
way at this point I wasn't unemployed I wasn't working at Woodland Hills I I didn't have any in you know interest in
astronomy per se at that point and it was over Christmas and I would watch Orion come up and I'm like like staring
at it going I can see something but I don't know what it is so off I run back into the house get my tripod out get my
camera out and I start taking pictures and I just get this long streaking mess and for most people it'll be an
off-putting thing but I was getting like oh W there's like there's like pinks there's all sorts of wonderful colors
and I said to myself how do I track the apparent movement of the sky in order to
to to to do a longer exposure and that's how I discovered equatorial mounts was
in my head was I need to build something on my tripod that could move with the
sky and the first thing I thought of was a clock and lo and behold I had invented
an equatorial um mount for then somebody to tell me you could just go buy one in the store a and that's the part that
really got me into it was the technological engineering standpoint and
then having to understand all of that and that's how I progress because then once I got into it somebody said oh
you're going to have to start doing guiding and I'm like oh great what on Earth is guiding and it because I
approach that it from a technical standpoint and an engineering standpoint when somebody explained it but Paul my I
add I kind of got it tried it and I thought now I understand what this is
really doing I can't necessarily set up this Mount telescope and everything to track perfectly I need something to
cheat and go with it but can you imagine if let's just say we get Libby because
she'd be a prime example let's just say we all gave her all of our equipment to her tomorrow she just literally her
head's going to blow up because she's not going to know what end of the stick to grab because there's just going to be so much stuff I don't know if you've
done any Imaging yet before Libby but um you know based upon what you're doing in
she just turned in an iPhone image of uh it was Saturn so oh great yeah she is uh
she's starting to uh take some of the first steps in astrophotography and the
smartphone's a great way to go yeah yep the problem here is is like it
would be overwhelming for somebody to have all of these things that we deal
with on a regular basis and it's not uh and to me it's what puts everybody off
the misinformation that a sales standpoint can give and a lot of
misinformation on the internet if there's anything I can say and for anybody who's watching out there to take home on this do not just run out and buy
a telescope and think that you're going to take pictures like we do uh in day
one I was just going to say this di me you you cannot buy yourself magazine cover no yeah there is no way that you
you can do that you can spend you know five $6,000 on the equipment you can
spend a fortune on a week with me um you know and be no
wiser and um you're still you know you're still going to be needing that
learning process to run through this you know to get that and yeah with a bit of
luck you know in a few Mon's time or whatever you will get your aod but it's not going to come easy and you're going
to have to put so much work into that um and I think one of the biggest things as well is is why I love YouTube it's
really good for looking up information there's a video on nearly every aspect of astronomy now um there's also a lot
of misleading information there um and you follow down some of these parts with the you know the processing and there's
bits missing or settings not shown there or different other things um and that
can put people off some people can't watch it on the video they like to read it out of books so you're going to be
there buying all these different books in and you know um and sort of working
from there but it is one thing that um a lot of money doesn't buy you that that image or that magazine cover you really
got to put a little bit of effort and time into it I think there's uh I so so
Simon and see I I worked in telescope retail for many years a company called telescope house in London and um
actually there's a there's um there's one there's one other reason why you
don't sell you know if someone comes in with 5,000 as a budget you don't load them up
which is a bit heartless in one respect but it's not in a Retailer's interest if you're really into it to actually um
sell them that stuff and have them yeah don't tell my boss that because you know she'll disagree with you every step of
away it is it is about good customer service because it's not in our interest to load
someone up with equipment they can't use so that sets them up for a disappointment on the first night and a learning curve that brings them back
into the shop with problems for weeks and weeks and weeks and they end up this illusioned yeah um if you s them the
right thing as we have said many a time I wonder how many telescopes around the
world are in the closet or underneath the bed because within the first you know couple of weeks people got
disillusioned with you know trying to set them up them not working this that
Gary there were times in my professional career Which Scott will understand but I won't repeat or think but we hoped that
was the case yeah there were certain certain products would arrive and you
think my that stays under the bed um that's just the reality of it isn't it yeah anyway I really appreciate your
your talk tonight Steve but uh we're coming up on the half hour and as um Scott said we're going to need to go to
a break very soon so 10 minute break um I've got tardy grades that are aching to
be seen to the to our audience here so so uh we'll take we'll take 10
minutes uh we'll come back um and uh Gary uh you can uh bring up I think you
you were gonna bring on Gary vanney uh uh we have a a video I've got queued up
for him and um then we'll get to uh uh
to everyone else here too including Andreas and um uh shendra and um who
else is with us here I think that's it so Steve I I find your knowledge of uh
you know antique telescopes and antique astronomy books very interesting and I hope that we can probably we can uh
think about having you on uh to do like a little five or 10 minute segment on
something really cool that you know about in astronomical history you know so uh with the books that you have or
maybe some antique equipment that you own so might have to do some more reading for that because that that 10
minutes is going to be a long time there to fill that se yeah and to be honest I've got to find books with pictures and
large print you know what Steve I might actually drag you into one of our live
streams um to talk about some of the books because that's actually one of the top ICS that I do want to cover is
astronomy books so I will probably drag you into that yeah I don't know a great
deal about I just buy them when I find them and that's the whole thing you're one of these guys that have those cool
things Daniel you and Daniel would probably have a field day together I just I like the language of
him Steve Collingwood speaking of books I happen to know I have the only 21st
century lunar Atlas that is signed by both author the only one on the planet well
played that's pretty cool trying to think if I can match that yeah I think you already beat
everybody with Patrick Mo's finder scope oh typically Iceberg
mate I've got I've got an original original 1969 moonmap from the original
parchment presses before they copied them oh no way yeah he gave it to me
years and years ago it's framed in my hallway and I wouldn't let him sign it cuz I wasn't bought up to let people scribble on nice
things what's the um the it's the Clark scope that's over here isn't it Steve that came over from yours what's that
the Clark scope I think it is isn't it the brass one the brass ones are broad us Clarks and and Fuller I can't
remember what it is I know it's up in one of the rooms standing up there oh what in my place no over here the one
that came came over when we did the one that the one when when we did that road trip with Alan TR and Ste
yeah uh that was just one that I don't know what it is I just I think found it
and restored it and then passed I know it's about 200 years old anyway I looked it up
it's yeah um yeah was I didn't really think that much of it no we have to get
it up and running one night and get a camera on the back of it yeah still work it works nice visually on the moon so
well I've got um I've got a I've got a 3-in F16 3in f-13 brass one that is you
know one that I the last one I did and I've also got um a 4 in F16
brass refractor on a 7 foot tripod and yeah this must be I think this is six
foot tripod must be um yeah I know I have to kneel down to actually look up
at the you know the the best the best view of satin I ever had through anything
Patrick Moore had a 5 in cook yeah and he was convinced it was a d a triplet
but it was a doubl it um and it was about F15 um and it had seven bubbles in the
glass but this thing was the sharpest view of Saturn I've ever seen
yeah I I remember years ago I had some prototype and they did sell them in
Japan I never saw them anywhere else but I had some prototype uh nickon eyepieces coming
yeah and they were they were very large they they're very tall wide and absolute ton and I can remember putting them on
the 11 in Edge when it first came out and looking at satin and these ey pieces
absolutely blew you away there was nothing I'd ever looked at uh that had
come close to them at the time yeah and so never launched them over here I had
about um eight or nine of them yeah that were on Prototype over here to try out
and and look at and use for different things and I will never forget that view of Saturn through those eyepieces on
that particular um telescope that's what a good view does doesn't it yeah it it
just it's imprinted there forever I mean the cini division was just like nothing
I've seen before and also being stable yeah I'm an orthoscopic man
1970s Circle T Japanese orthoscopics all the
time cool field of view the size of a match stick right I'm G to grab a quick drink
while we're on this break and I will be back to you right well I'm off I'll catch you later all right thanks for
that Steve really appreciate that Steve always good fun enjoy yeah
do all the best Steve cheers mate I'll see you what you're watching right now is a live
view through my microscope that sits on my desk and uh this is just one of many
tardy grades that are in the uh in a drop of water right now so um I thought
maybe you had a film of the dust bunnies on my camera no this is a live Dust Bunny
right here yeah that's pretty cool there's some work you can
see that's awesome you know I love I I know
I said this last time I love how they're so oblivious to us that we don't exist
these things yes maybe we're maybe we're
of grades in somebody else's uh petri dish you never know that's right be a scary thought
that's for sure
all right time to get something to eat I think I'll be right back as well drink
water be back uh in a
minute
sh
for
excuse
me
[Music]
how's it going there Scott I'm fine how you doing Gary good good so the little
video said earlier was uh yeah I came out pretty good perfect yeah I threw it
threw that together earlier oh great it helps helps the show you know
instead of taking an hour like I did on NASA TV the other day to go over lunar
processing I convin this down to six minutes yeah so you'll have to talk a
little bit about your interaction with NASA that's really cool you know yeah yeah I became friends um with Brian
dayve from NASA Ames and it's just a number of things that happened since
then thanks to him it's it's awesome unbelievable yeah we he came down to
Miami late last year for the Mercury Transit and uh he asked me he said we'd
like for you to be on the roof with us at the frost Museum in Miami Beach for the Mercury Transit and I was like huh
so um yeah that was U that was an honor to be there and I probably had 5 600
people come up and look through my scope preco uh at the transit and that was
that was most rewarding experience to see the look on people's faces just going that's Mercury
right was F and then there's Gary Palmer then there's Gary Palmer
that's that's right going on buddy I mate we've known each other quite a long
time online never met in person but almost too long it seems
[Laughter] like yeah I I so got to come out there
where it's warmer yeah yeah I mean if you're over in uh South Florida man we got to go out
and tip a few back yeah yeah it's uh definitely one of those things that needs to be done we're uh entering
winter rather rapidly here I think they're threatening the first snow Scotland oh over the weekend
so um yeah uh snow is why I live in
South Florida I got tired of it 1984 I says I'm done and I'm I've
been here ever since yeah I actually moved what seven years ago now um out of London down this
way um more for the Dark Skies than anything else that that was the main reason um but the weather is a challenge
I must say yeah so it's summer here I mean we got that hurricane it went right
underneath us thankfully yeah and that's kind of why the skies were a little iffy
last night but oh well it's funny because you drop into hurricane season but then we get the remnants of those
normally about 10 days later so they they skip up the coast to the US quite
often yeah I a my fans in your direction make sure go and as soon as they jump on the jet
scam that's the conveyor belt over and yeah they're here um and a couple of
years when you've had sort of two three four come in on the trop we've had you know the the remnants of the storms come
through um but the last few that have been floating around have shut straight
up they've gone up above us sort of through Iceland and and out that way but
it looks like we got the remnants something at the moment yeah I mean uh my latitude here
is is is good for most of the year but there there is a period which we're in
right now which is kind of iffy but uh I'm I'm joning for some clear skies I really want to drop my 3x Barlo and go
after you know something planetary or or lunar yeah I've had a couple of look at
couple of looks at Miles um but usually the large equipment has just not been a
go you know um and that actually been Imaging with refractors and and getting
some reasonable results for their stist you know you just make do with what you you
can y but yeah um a couple of times I've set
up the big Scopes and you know the the high stuff's come in and you have a quick look on the refractor first and
then all of a sudden um it's uh it's not there you know so
goes over the falls pretty quick yeah the the solar has been exactly the same this year not only has it been quiet on
the sun we're having the problems of actually getting the that's the the key
well everybody we're back uh at this point and uh U Gary I'm gonna let you
introduce Gary okay um uh we have a video here but I
thought it would be nice to um uh have um a little
first um you know a little bit of background about uh Gary vanney and um
what he is uh what's he he's all about I've seen some this video I have has
some amazing uh imagery of Mars and so it's gonna be really cool thank you yeah
all yeah um after our last St party we were talking about planetary Imaging um
I I've known Gary online for years and years now we go back quite a long way
always trading different um pieces of information and different things about Imaging and uh all sorts of things um
and over the years I've watched Gary's Imaging very similar like mine get better and better and then worse for a
bit and then better then everybody else does um and
I've also seen you know quite a few of the videos that Gary's put together so I thought it would be ideal to get Gary on
the show um and uh also Gary's a massive
fan of uh anything to do with the moon um so any form of uh lunar visual lunar
Imaging and so on so it it seemed quite fitting to have you on so if you want to
tell us a little bit about yourself please Gary that'd be really good thank you thank you it's uh it's an honor to
be here um especially with David levier earlier I'm I'm still pinching myself on
that one but um yeah I've uh I I've been interested in in night sky since I was
very young uh the moon as Gary had just mentioned yeah I mean it's so bright and intense it cuts through uh a lot of
seeing that uh the planets you know just won't cooperate with but um uh earlier
too I was mentioning was showing the picture of my my 21st atlas of the Moon
and uh I happen to have the only one on the planet that's been signed uh by both
authors which is very special to me I met with them both in person and they were more than
happy uh to to sign this book um and actually when I met with chuck wood it
was when he retired uh the lp series and I said Chuck I'd like to kind of carry
the torch on the lunar in some fashion and that's when I put together the
amateur astronomy selenology project on Facebook so um there are a few other
groups that do you know similar things U but we're we're torch bearers for uh for the master uh Chuck Chuck's a really
great guy man I enjoyed my brothers and I had lunch with them and uh they were
even both impressed it's like man this this was really fun and and Chuck had a good time too he enjoyed uh chatting
with us but uh uh yeah I've as Gary has mentioned yeah I mean I I look at some
of my my earlier images and I laugh but I use those as leverage to keep raising
my bar um that's what it's all about yeah
that that's the I think every image certainly when you do as photography is a challenge to try and uh rise above the
last image that you took um and come up in new ways to doing that yeah the
learning curve it starts out as a brick wall but it eventually flattens a little but it's enjoyable uh it it's fun to
learn things uh related to Imaging whether it's uh solar I mean you you
Excel I'm amazed at some of your solar images I know you stare at the Sun a lot too but we won't go
there but uh uh to to share an image uh with somebody I mean you know I did a
lot of visual when I first started and it's like these are amazing views I I need to be able to share this with
people so I stuck my toe in the water of uh astrophotography and I fell into the
deep end and uh it it's been an experience an enjoyable
experience do that yeah so we we'll get Scott to line up the video you prepared for us which I'm really looking forward
to I did watch some of it earlier and I want to watch it again yeah uh it's kind
of like a if you remember the Evelyn wood speed reading this is uh going to be a very abbreviated uh look at how I
do planetary Imaging uh but it's an art form you know like I mentioned um I was
live during the international moon event observe the moon event on NASA TV and I
said you know astrophotography is in art form just like you could have the same
Vista and two artists you know with canvas painting the same view and you're
going to get two very different uh results astrophotography is the same way each person has their own uh eye for for
what they're looking at so you know some people will maybe over sharpen an image some will unders sharpen uh but that's
you know they they have their own preference so there's no one set way to do this um and you know this Mars image
that you're going to see that I I processed quickly I I've done better but this was my most recent one uh that I
actually didn't throw in the in the trash bin so Scott if you want to KCK that off um go ahead all right well let
me just uh start sharing my screen a little bit here and uh I've got this video queued up so here we
go universal time see I had pretty decent scene this
evening you may need to talk over this Gary the the audio is pretty low yeah uh
that's a live view this was back on uh September 5th that was with my qhy
462 St okay uh Auto stacker here uh Center
gravity set the lassan noise robust setting uh I set it at 6 um I go a
little lower if seeing's really good I had already done the uh analyze process here so you could see the um the
reorganization of frames I typically don't keep anything
below 50% so that's what I'm doing here I'm adjusting the slider you do a control click on the graph and it
automatically fills in the percentage of frames to stack for you which is a nice little uh shortcut feature so learned
that from Emil on one of these uh seminars recently for
stacking the best frames is that right yes yeah the it re the analyze process
rearranges all the frames uh from best to worst then you just keep the percentage
that want to put in the stack so I think I had 26,000 frames or something in this
capture wow so I placed the alignment points uh did multiscale uh let it stack
and then now I go into regular stacks and do wavelet sharpening
SCH um I have a uh pre pre-loaded schema
for the wavelets uh 40% on on wavel one and
two I bump up um the noise to about 0.15
noise reduction I click sharpen I raise that one click on layer one layers three four five and six uh at
20 and this is just kind of a generic setting that I look at sometimes when I'm actually Imaging I'll stack
something quickly and look to see what I have an RGB balance I auto balance but else I tweak that RGB balance Auto
balance I know the audio is a little low I think what happened when I previously did a video I had some settings down but
uh Auto balance that blue is usually a little low Red's a little high I mean
blue is a little low so I tweak those all do a do all and it uh updates the
entire field of view then I jump into uh Photoshop to do
a little bit of cosmetic tweaks there's other software that may do the same thing and some people tell
me why do you pay for Photoshop I says because I like it um I go into levels and do a little
bit of a cleanup uh raise uh raise the intensity and then filter out some of this uh
excessive uh this high-end
noise which is what I'm doing in Photoshop levels there pushing that first slider up to about five six uh go
back down to 100 bring up the the dark setting to uh increase the histogram a
little bit do visually I do it visually uh you know some people might say it's under exposed
it's Overexposed um but that's up to their own eye you
know right uh then I go into camer ra filter um the texture uh adjustments
you'll see kind of brings out some of the darker uh surface features a little
more clarity uh the clarity level also helps uh with
that it's so easy to overdo it on some of these settings so you just kind of gr
you know less is more is a good rule of thumb little bit of dehaze to get some rid of some of the the fuzziness that
you might see in there black levels bring those up which gives you a little
more Vivid picture a little bump and contrast um sometimes you can uh do
exposure so there was the the camer ra
portion I do a little noise reduction sometimes
um uh very very uh strength strength level of one remove jpeg artifact is a
very nice feature it pulls out some some artifacts from stacking and sharpening just a hint of color noise
reduction don't want to degrade the image too much smart sharpen uh and then
I'll do a very fine uh sharpen in Photoshop using smart SM sharpen it's
almost uh just like a a cleanup of the sharpening and you can toggle back and
forth between the gosine blur and the lens blur just to see the differences
different algorithm that it applies you know to the sharpening of the image some some look better all depends on your
stack you're seeing it you know so just fiddle around a little bit and I go back to uh uh exposure and
just fiddle slightly with the gamma that helps a little bit just what looks good
visually to uh sometimes you might have a dark Terminator or Overexposed you just little little nuances to to update
that offset I'll bump down a click or two just to get rid of some of the periphery noise and the
Blackness of space gamma down depending how much you adjust the gamma here to
you can raise or lower the exposure just to just to do a visual check on it and
and that's pretty much it and there's the final image um beautiful I've done better but uh that was uh that was back
on September 5th I tried to image some stuff last night but no my recycle bin is nice and cool so and in a nutshell
that's uh that's how I would attack doing planetary um processing Jupiter
and Saturn are both Dynamic and wonderful targets but right now Mars is you know closest approach just happened
and now we have opposition just right around the corner if I think yeah it's coming up in the next uh in a couple
days I believe so what is your take on um the recent news of U you know these
under underground Lakes um that they have found on Mars that's very interesting you know I'm
always uh are you are you on the skeptic side of this or are you on the uh no no
I I to me I mean we're here everything here came from out there um um we're
proof that life is abundant within the Universe I mean it's very possible we
have life uh on the moons of Jupiter and Saturn uh and now recently there's some
uh the materials in in the atmosphere of Venus which you know go figure you can cook a pizza outside in about eight
seconds on the surface of Venus so now there's possibly life in the upper atmosphere or you know traces of life so
it's it's very intriguing to me I'm I'm fascinated buy it
immensely yes me too me too um okay well
let's uh um what do you say Gary should we move
on at this point or yeah I mean that that was really really interesting thanks very much for sharing that yeah
and coming on tonight um as uh Andreas is up um later than what I am
um coming coming from a bit further north up there um I I think we should
move over to uh Andreas and have a listen to what what he has to say which
is normally always interesting so welcome on the show Andreas thank you for having me and the
invite Gary it's always Pleasant to be invited into this
shows and I started astronomy back back 25 years ago
with the a telescope telescope like uh like visually and I
progressed after that so I've seen the long journey of the just as Visual and
uh just recently in um 2018 I started do some simple uh Moon photography and then
I progress with some planetarian also deep space photography so I have seen
the all from the beginning with a small telescope and even a solar telescope
back in 28 years or so so so I have U I
have uh seen the sky as as a visual Observer and
then I have learned and progressed and learned
how to the sky works and also learn equipment and also understanding what
I'm doing all after that so tonight I'm going to share you with some latest
picture some I think you are interested how I do some tweaking with
my pictures so I'm going to share some pictures and some tweaking some of my
latest Moon photography and also uh some uh recent picture I used the
narrow bound filter with my hyperstar system so that is one I'm going to
share so I'm going to share my screen
now so I think hopefully I'm sharing the right
screen yep that all looks good yes good look good yeah we starting with
the the California NE nebula NG youc 1499 I shot
from a week ago so this is just one hour
and 15 10 minutes with the hypar and I showed this with the set set 2,600 and
the the new elex filter they said it can't be used with a hyperstore system
they said it get shifted in red and you will probably see anything and yeah well
it works for me and other people that use like the rasa so I'm going to sh
share how some of the data on my struggle with
u with as phot this is raw data that I got out from
from my telescope so it's you probably see anything a little red and you see a
bit of blur in the middle you call light lotion that's always destroy my pictures
and I always tweak it to uh take out the colors and then uh I
see the processing in multiple layers so I so I do one layer with the the Reds
and the the background I Twix and then I blend it in photoc cop I have saw seen
the bringing out the core in am Orion and I thought well can I do this to
Orion why can't you use it to a whole image so I so I tweak the colors I like
and also I bring out the black brown the background and then I merge it together
and then you get the clean noise and then I flip it over and tweak
it and tweak get the whole detail so this is um my my approach to get a very
clean image with a very high level of high light pollution here in
Stockholm this is one of my to do things
to do this same with I shoot when I shoot on ROM and I always get called the
light pollution around it so I take one image I I noticed that light pollution
and the fine details um goes hand in hand so I do one
image with the that uh I concentrated
on the outer bands and then I do one color with the background and then I uh
use Photoshop and just uh feather it out and I get a clean image so this is uh
how I do call she and photography but this is how I do it to get a clean image yeah
beautiful image very nice and then U later I have done some
uh um some Mars no no I doing some Moon
photography my latest this is shot a week ago or so this is my take of
the mineral move I saw a when they get some picture from U from
Pluto they color it and it looked very cool so I I stretch the colors the the
blue is Rich of titanium oxide and the brown is iron so I tweaked it a little for my
personal taste so this is a very high resolution image so
um so uh the Moon is actually no when you
shoot it is all black and white almost and then you you you only have to bring
out the colors so first I bring out the colors and then I clean up the image to
uh look it more clean and then I go to a third state process and I got the the
final result so this is how I do uh some my
lunar and when you do uh in all asop photography the sampling is the most
important I think in as to photography that you combine the with a small
refractor like the explor SCT 80 and the right camera then you get the perfect
sampling so you get the most of the equipment that's possible so this is uh
how I uh oh I I learn to get the most of
my equipment as possible and uh yesterday it was a very
clear night and I did some Mars photography so uh I can probably sh this
is um some raw data from Mars This is the red channel so this is uh like oh
this is the raw data coming out from Mars When I shoot with the red filter
and then I do each filter so each filter should look all the same
red uh green and blue the blue only shows the the clouds and the the S stuff
on on the Mars then you combine it to a color image and then I process them and then I
bring out a colorful image you can also see the called lium mon is a little
volcano it's only you you only know if you're looking
for it's there so this is my latest the closest I best Mars photograph I think
think I got and all my photography I do with um
I tweak it with the Lightroom so with a only with
a so the raw stacked uh data from like a sun image com in to Lightroom like this
it's doesn't look really disappoint look and then I just tweak it and like and
then I got the sun image and I sh store
all this to presets so I I come back so I can just uh press the button and get
all the results again so I don't have to reinvented so I have all different
presets for different targets different equipments so this is how I um do some
of my astr photography and then when I set up when I started as photography I I write down
in a book with the settings how I put how I should point my legs with a
tripod with balancing so I everything is measured so I can very easily set up the
system with almost precise polar alignment with the and then uh I'm done
for Imaging the session so um I shoot from one balcony to the house the most
of the time is bort late if I pointed the scope to my North is bort nine so
this over the city core so I have two sit different settings with my
tripods and uh I have only different settings uh what equipment I'm using if
I'm using the ax or the CDX I have different settings and all the equipment
I have measurements so I can just put it on the scope and then uh oh I'm ready to
go so this is uh little how I do as Photography in
Stockholm and then uh oh it's very possible to uh in the spring I um also
shot the Maran Shan is the M 89 and this
is a oh this you can see small galaxies is shooting to have a light pollution so
this is my first done done that so I also measured that I shot one target
it's called IC 3382 it's 349 million light years away
so you can uh do astrop photography and get really great results even in the
city so this is uh oh how I do it how I learn how I
progressed and always progressing I reinvented I rethink and I'm still
learning so I'm just doing deep deep as photography from beginning
2019 and and started with just uh oh
just figure back on the my seston and bought an AVX and then a CDX and then a
seston HD and a hyperstar system and I I
figure out what filter that uh works best and all still progressing how how I
should uh improve myself all the time what can I do better so uh oh this is uh little me
doing astrophotography in Stockholm it's very good very very very good um
some nice images there can and I also look at you know those Bon n
Skies um I used to live in London so it was very very similar light pollution
everywhere and and all sorts of other problems even air pollution causing lots of problems with Distortion in images
but you work ways around those problems yeah that that's the
key yeah there's the key is always to to how can I prove it how can I get rid of
the the light pollution how can I improve myself so so this is my new take
to uh clean up the image with all all the light pollution around it that I
use dual exposures and then I blend it in together and use the the the stars
and then I use different takes to uh different kind of obious you can
probably do this to every so I have tried this to some image and it has
worked out really great yeah is just a
learning experience I think for each person every person is learning it
doesn't matter how long you've been doing it you'll see something new something in equipment or software comes
along and also when you get new equipment it's another learning process and it's actually you quite a bit time
to get used to that piece of equipment and then start to produce
images yeah it's always a learning card to uh with every equipment so I started
out with just just big back and let the telescope just out unguided and then I
Pro progressed and um put them buying an ovx and put my little refractor on and
figure out oh what I'm doing I probably do everything wrong I have made every
mistake astrop photographer do but this is the best way to learn as photography
do everything wrong because then you learn something when you're progressing
and U I can see myself improving all the
time so um this is uh how I learn from
my mistakes we call them School byy errors here School children's errors
school boy errors yeah that we make while we we're actually Imaging or capturing or different things like that
um you know and they everybody does these things at some time they take a
load of images with a mask on the front of the telescope or they you know set something up wrong and we've all done it
we've all been there you know um maybe not check the focus halfway through the
night and the images go out of focus uh all of those sorts of things and you end up throwing all of this uh data in the
bin really um and you know it's like a lot of the Imaging I do I say to people
you know there's far better images around than what I am or or the images that I put up online but they're all
test images they're all images with new equipment that's coming in and you know it's got an hour or two hours on
something and then it's off to the next piece of equipment so um it stays on
their long up if you're trying to um work out a problem with it but in general you you're only using it for a
short amount of time before you off on to the next product other people have lots and lots
of time to spend on the processing uh and that's one thing I don't
have yes I always limited sky so I use my but I use my stellium with and
calculate how much time I had each night if it's going to be a clear night and
and I calculate how much uh integration time I can have with that Target and
then I set up my equipment and uh this is how uh I learned it from from a
YouTube video guy in the in the Canada
so he's had a great video about how to do a custom stellarium and then it was
very useful to me to uh to uh to know my
surroundings and know where where I'm point in the scope and so this
is always always learning something new and the best thing I have bought in um
in what is um B no mask for my hyp star system and it's made it very easy to uh
focus with my Len alextreme filter because it doesn't let let any light in
almost so it's very hard to focus with without any bat mask so it really helps when
you're using uh seven nanometers somebody say you can't use
that kind of equipment that you go call the shift in the Spectrum but uh I seen
people use like Rosas and hyperstar WID just up the long extrem and get they get
good results and U there's a lot of debate on if you can use this equipment
and apparently I can use it and it's same as the Ellen HS filter and when you
have a limited sky like me I I stick to a one shot color camera and I shoot some
n band some Broadband I try different type of filter of of often I shoot with
opong opong Filter when I shoot planeter I shoot
like better RGB filter so I I try out
different kind and what's works best for me it's really nice when somebody says that
shouldn't work and you actually get it working that's one of the best things in
astronomy I get that caught off the different things this camera shouldn't work on that and you know you're
producing images out of it I think if if you look at the California NE is all ha
and if I shouldn't get the new result this was purely black I got one minute
exposure I could see the California the California NE are getting results
and they also debate how much data you're getting through but in my SK
moral eight nce SK every data is good data so even oh when you stack like one
hour and 10 minutes opong um reach back to me about what this is incredible so
um oh yeah SE and then uh this was shoot between clouds and the clouds come in
before so so I had only one and a half hour and it was so it's always limited
to my bad weather like in the UK I I presume yeah you know you know Gary um
it's interesting how he's mentioning about um any of these Broadband filters that things aren't possible um a lot of
people don't seem to understand what a filter actually does and why it does what it does for somebody to turn around and say
shooting with a rasa or something like the l-enhance filter um I've looked at so many different graphs and
transmission transmission light charts and I see that it lets in this band of
light and for somebody to say something as odd as that is kind of like mindblowing I I think a lot of this is
down to the optical systems and and a lot of people and we see it certainly
with some of the lat cameras that are coming out at the moment um where you're getting things like off they create off
axis light because the intensity of the light coming through at say F2 uh in the
F2 area and that's quite common so you know things like the uh California
nebula is quite a dark area uh to image you know the filter will bring that out
quite well but maybe if that filter went on to say um Orion m42 that area where
you got some really bright stars you might start to see the problem with that off aaxis light coming into the images
where that it's so intense it's bouncing around um in the actual uh chamber
between the camera and the filter itself right yeah and I've I've witnessed that countless times yeah we've got that at
the moment we've got an issue with one of the latest cameras where we're getting off AIS light even on a refractor so that that is a coating
issue between um and a spacing issue between the actual filter and the uh camera sensor
itself or the camera's front window um that's on you know quite a simple Target
like uh M45 yeah PES so these things happen and
then it it just takes a lot of work to come up with the Cure um for it so
sometimes manufacturers don't really know how it's going to perform and here on the side a caution and just say well
it shouldn't really work on that bearing those sorts of things in mind yeah again
that's why I like to look at some of these transmission charts and what I hate is when they advertise
simulated uh like transmission it drives me crazy especially when the filters are
four or 500 pound of filter yeah yeah like give me some real numbers
please speaking of which um uh sorry to trans trans transition for you like this
but so a while ago I said I was going to get Chu a camera and I finally shipped
it to him and I believe you got some uh filters as well for it so I'm actually
like itching to see what he's done uh I did see the iris nebula because you did send me that previously and you
obviously there's a story for that so I'll let you tell the story chocks H yeah cheers um yeah so Simon sent me a
camera which was really really nice of him um and then I finally managed to get some filters in stock in the UK so I managed
to get the zwo filter set of the sh n7n
I think um and the electronic filter wheel mini um so what I did do so far
is uh let me know when you can see my screen here we sit right so this was a
stuck of six I
think yeah six so this is six a stack of six on the ha filter that was taken
um and this is an individual image that I've just taken and now the clouds have
come in as you can see M of sad yeah seder seder there we go um again it's a
little bit streaky but the guiding kept dropping because the clouds kept coming in right
so but you know you can already see that level of detail that I've never seen in
a individual image that I've had from a normal DSLR so there's the
kit that I've got sitting outside at the moment which is trying to image it's explore
scientific Dr uh closer look
with a 50 mm guide scope and there's the camera with the FI
wheel then the power down the bottom so how how does this compare to
um your DSLR shots if we go to which one's it gone
to not that one could that
one no I've got too many windows open give
me a minute story of our lives right so yeah so there's
M51 through the standard DSLR and that was M27 you saw on the
screen a second ago and I don't know why
it's uh this is what I've got from the mon Chrome so
far uh this is nine ha at 5
minutes 5 03s at five minutes and four
essay at five minutes because that's all that sort of came out um and then I've
just been playing with it because I still don't really know how to edit and I've swapped PCS so I haven't got any of
my software um but this is just levels and
curves so now have you tried to shoot individual image have you tried to shoot the elephant trunk on DSLR before yes so
let me get let's let's I want to see this because this is the part where like I said the the change and the dramatic
difference again I know we've put you under accelerated learning here uh but I
really really wanted you to see the big difference oh jeez so so
there the difference so that's from the DSLR that was about 2 hours worth of data
um same process is used but just about see the elephant trunk there yeah and
this is with a lot less and and look at the detail especially in this one that
I've managed to get the detail in the middle just looks really nice and it
so much punchier word I think I mean obviously uh when it comes
down to processing the techniques that you're going to end up learning for processing is there's going to be so many um you're essentially doing what is
known as Sho which is the Hubble pallette so it's um sulfur 2 hydrogen Alpha and oxygen 3 you don't have to
follow that method um you could do whatever version you want but yeah so that's what um I've I've been looking at
different nebulas now um because as you said I sent you the iris nebula and it it didn't really come
out very well um it was the wrong type of nebula to shoot I now know so I've
been looking up the right types of nebula I was hoping to get M27 but it's just not at the right place for me to so
there is so there is a difference between reflection uh nebulas and the
other one I just uh I've just forgotten the name of already now help me out there Gary what's the other name for the
types of neb emission that was the word yeah so there is a difference between a reflection and an emission
nebula so you're looking for emission nebulas in general and it's good that you started with um with Seda um I mean
it should be almost straight up for you for where you are that is what we refer
to as the hydrogen Alpha playground uh when you get longer than 5 minute exposures I mean you've really got to
dial in your system at this point when you dial it in you start doing 10 minutes and you start really upping um
some of the settings and then like stretching that histogram the stuff that you see up there is just
mindboggling yeah so we even with the settings um so I've gone without the Box
settings at the moment that come with the zwr I just pick the high dynamic range for now um and then I'll tweak
that as I go along and see how it goes really
um I've read up a few articles and they've sort of suggested to turn the game down to zero when you've got a lot
of light pollution but if I'm honest if you look at those elephant trunk ones that was with my neighbor with his
two flood lights on in his garden M and didn't make a blind bit difference to
the image right so that's the beautiful thing about the hydrogen Alpha filters
so the one that you're using as a 7 nanometer filter um they're not as strict as say a five or a three but it's
kind of neither here nor there so what's really happening here is is even though your neighbor has a flood light
regardless of what the flood is if it doesn't actually have uh any Transmission in the hydrogen Alpha line
it won't be seen that's why this works so incredibly well in fact even in a full moon you can image with hydrogen
Alpha um I mean obviously don't get too close to the Moon because that light will penetrate through the filter at
some point but you'll be so shocked that you can do this almost whenever you want now full moon or not yeah I mean I
didn't realize he had the lights on um cuz I was in the front room and then sudden when I went to the kitchen I
thought what the hell is that light um and I went out and I thought oh no he's got his lights on and I looked at my
image and I thought oh I'm pretty sure it hasn't made any difference to it so I went back and checked and then he turned
his lights off um and then I checked the images and there was no difference between any of them so so c yeah certain
filters are more susceptible um oxygen 3 you're going to find is probably one of the hardest ones to image through um
sulfur 2 you literally see nothing um half the time just purely because sulur 2 is one of those uh bands that just
doesn't have a lot in them anyway uh there are a couple of um objects that come up brilliantly with S2 again you
will learn that over time oh yeah because initially I assumed that
you do an hour of each and you know show you and then when I saw the output I
thought did I do something wrong on the oxygen and the sulfur ones cuz like there's nothing but stars in the picture
and as much as I stretched it it didn't get me anything looking like that you know um you roughly need two and a half
times sulf for 2 to yeah so you need two and a half times
more data yeah to equal the same um that it maybe a little bit less on
the 7 NM filter but as a general rule to see detail there are some targets that
you you generally see a little bit more in sulfa 2 but the the other thing that
uh what affect it is game and you know there's a a multitude
of uh information out there um from everybody everybody has a different idea
on what you should do and what you shouldn't do and and this that and the other but using zero gain on it um is
going to turn that to four times the amount of data that you're going to need
um you know there is a an issue against
noise when using game but that depending on what software you use to process that
you can process out nearly any amount of noise in an image now that's not an issue um but I would certainly have the
gain up at around a minimum of 100 to 120 if I was Imaging in narab band that
might drop down to 80 uh when using the RGB filters but you would still have
gain there and certainly on the 1600 camera some of these latest ones that are coming out you can reduce the gain a
little bit more um but I think it's also confusing companies like um zwo you know they
bring their own software out and they've removed the game settings on it now it's just um you know
uh zero medium and High Gain settings with no real relevance to what's going
on in the actual image and that's a bit misleading for people um you know you
know what the funny thing is though Gary it is misleading because we are more um we're into the settings aspect the
reason why they I don't want to say the reason is the part of the reason why they took it out was they just got so
fed up with the constant questioning of what should my gain setting be set to I
don't understand stand and again this is spawn through misinformation um I don't
know if anybody's interested on why zwo set their gain to 139 but I actually know the answer to that oddly enough
just like every other camera company why they have what is called Unity
gain yeah but a lot of the companies don't actually understand true Unity gain that is that is the real problem
with this right the problem is is if you set 99% of the cameras to Unity gain and
you put them onto um a star field you end up you know coloring your stars because you're actually over going to
overexpose them so Unity gain as a setting really is irrelevant although
with the Advent of see must cameras moving along everybody's gone oh what's the unity game for this camera and and
oh no you shouldn't use that you must use that game setting um you know M31
you would get no core detailing if you g on on nearly all cameras um and you end
up with your Styles looking what we call Donuts yeah so they're white in the center nothing in the center and that
they've got a shadow of cover around them it is very different using maybe um
narrow band filters you know you're going to need that gain there to um pull
out the detail in the object but I certainly think that it's really misleading and maybe a lot of the camera
companies don't understand this we we certainly see on you know the SDK that comes through for a camera and the
camera company hasn't got a clue you know and also in um third party software
so if you go on to one of the camera sites there' be you know a list of of software to use Nina sh cap and so on
you know the list is never ending but every one of those pieces of software will control the camera slightly
differently yes and that's the next sort of problem so
um you know I used ASI capture the other night we had a 462 in couldn't get it working on half of the software put it
into ASI capture set the histogram to 80 and all of the images are dark so the
histogram in the software means absolutely nothing might all just turn it off because you know time and time
again I've said to companies the histogram is one of the most important parts of you capture software you know
we need that as a reference to ignore our screen intensity of what we're
actually watching on yeah and then when like CHS and other people are coming
into this they're sort of looking at this information and it's just such a mindfield out there now as to yeah
without a shadow of a doubt what is correct you know or what is you know a good guide on this um but I I'll say it
and I I'll repeat it you know a histogram is the most important piece of
um you know the this actual capture software itself and there are very very
few companies who've got a correct histogram at the moment I you know you could go through 10 camera companies and
all their proprietary software the histogram is wrong you know the the the problem here is uh and I'm not digging
at camera manufacturers here so you know for those guys out there you know understand this these guys produce uh
product at the end of the day they're not users uh we are the end users and they really do lean on us heavily to
create the results and give that information and the big thing here is is there's nobody out there that gives that
definitive answer and this is where the uh photography realm uh and I'm talking
mirrorless cameras DSLR camera companies Canon Nikon Fuji whoever these companies
um go out of their way to set what is up what is down whether it's right or wrong is irrelevant but they have a set
standard that they generally follow uh their color Sciences will differ but
when it comes down to these astronomy cameras uh and when somebody says to me oh should I buy this company or that
company I just usually turn around and say to them buy whichever one you can actually afford and use it and this is
the curve learning curve for you chocks is even though you're coming across the buzzword as I like to call them you know
like Unity gain the reality here is my I told you nothing and my expectation is
for you to just to play with settings to see what they do and I think you've proved the point is you've T tried the
default and now you started to ask those questions should I pull the game back should I pump it up the thing here is
though the next thing for you to do is uh you can see Orion the Orion Nebula
right uh not till about 2 3 o' in the morning okay so you can see it so I
almost to invite you to look at the Orion Nebula and the first thing you're going to do is do a 5 minute exposure
and go oh my God something's wrong um because you
know like Gary says every single nebula has its own emission type just like andr shows the California nebula um with the
F2 system with these narrow band filters again every setting is unique for every
individual object and this is where you're going to learn the balance between this so when you see this gain
scale don't matter which camera it is ignore the number I want you to S literally play and see what happens when
you do this that and the other and it will tell you ah this requires a five minute exposure oh this only needs one
minute exposure and then you can start messing with it from there oh right
because I did I did try 200 gain um and it didn't seem to make much difference
the image that was on screen on the setup camera I would I would be around
the 80 to 100 on your Optical system yeah yeah go any higher most of the
filters oh okay anyway yeah I P it to 200 and it
wasn't yeah hugely different to 139 so I thought right it will be when you run them through the processing software
that that will be the key thing when you get through software you you'll see the difference ah brilliant oh yeah cheers
thanks for the advice guys no problem thank thanks for that and um we're going
to move over to Steve now who's out in Canada um always good to see you on the
show Steve oh uh thanks Gary um I'll admit I don't really have a whole lot to
uh contribute for uh tonight's evening I came to hang out and be part of the discussion uh as uh as I came up um the
weather here has been horrible so I haven't had a chance to do much uh astronomy um at all in the past couple
weeks but I'm hoping that the weekend um next weekend uh clears up as as a new
moon comes in um and yeah I I really feel like I'm being
put on the spot you know I gotta ask you this Steve how the hell do you guys deal
with the jet stream I mean I I monitor that thing like a hawk and it is
constantly over you I I I ignore it um no it no okay so to I shouldn't say
that um yeah the jet stream is over us quite a bit um I think it's over us now
to be honest with you because the high winds uh that were experiencing but it it contributes a lot to to how we uh uh
to our weather pattern altogether so in the Toronto area Southern Ontario Southern Ontario area um you know when
the jet stream is us it it is typically much cooler um and that actually helps
us a lot for astronomy because it brings out brings down a lot of cool air from from the north um which really gives us
a good clear sky and very still when the jet stream moves above us though um and
it starts drawing in a lot of that more humid air up from the Gulf um then you know it's very hot very humid um do
heater Sals usually do pretty good around that time and um
uh um the none yeah the the the sky is very um uh
very Mucky uh at that point the seeing is actually horrible
um uh so you know yeah the J team does play uh quite an important role uh for
us you know uh about three weeks ago like when the F the fires in California were at well I don't want to say at the
worst but they when they were bad and every was under that blanket of smoke including us right we were it was really
bad for us uh it be forecasted for clear but it was just a white Sky altoe you can smell it you can you can feel it in
your lungs in some point especially if you're sensitive to um uh smoke uh like
I am and and my wife um uh but that following weekend the new
moon weekend we had this Ridge of of low pressure come in because the dreet stream did drop below us and it got very
cold was I was waking up to frost uh in the field uh I was out uh camping and
and imaging uh that weekend but it cleared everything up it pushed it pushed everything down so you know the
jet stream can be your friend uh sometimes um but not today I I can tell
you that for sure it's been bad exactly the same here I mean I'm literally just
across the other side of the pond to you so that the jet stream either comes racing straight across I think think at
the moment it's doing a sharp drop down just off the uh North Sea so it's sort
of running down and um through um but you you can soon pick it up when it's
there you soon know when it's about yeah I'm just looking at it right now and um
yeah it's it's right over you um and it but it but it it goes back up and pulls
it back down so that's why you don't have the same um you don't get the same humidity levels that we do
we we get really bad humidity here normally the the DU heaters are running on at late August yeah so yeah um you
know you you walk out and within an hour of it being dark you can run your hands on anything outside and there's due on
everything sure sure and then you know a couple of nights later all of a sudden
it's absolutely bone dry everything out there is bone dry all night so it really
does go up and down the humidity here yeah makes a massive difference to to you know any type of Imaging and I
remember I remember from uh one of the first star parties that we did uh with Scott back uh uh I think it was the
second one um uh my the night before when I was pra uh making sure everything
was working and nothing worked uh because the humidity was very very high and I left my equipment off and it just
um the moisture got into everything and that was it I I was done for the night nothing would work I was actually quite
quite concerned but uh um the following night it was it was bone dry like like
you saying we we get lots of problems with the the cool cameras depending on
models of them condensating on the front it's a real problem here um and
that is when you get that humidity uh kick in and you're roughly
around sort of 13° C you start dropping the the camera is cooler once it gets
down over minus 10 it's uh it's causing all sorts of problems and there's no
real good cure to that you know um that is a problem if you go near a filter if
you you know if you swap a filter over and you breathe near it you can't actually see the film that you're putting on that filter right and at
those humidity levels once you put the filter back in yeah that's in there for the night that that's not going away um
unless you got some form of heater around uh any of the filters or around that area
yeah and that goes to the part of of of the the craft if you will right of of
astrography and and chock you you'll find this too you'll find out what works and what doesn't work for you and and
you get to know your own equipment um and just the the the feel of it um same thing when you start getting into the
guiding and your guide settings and and you'll know on certain nights when seeing isn't very good you have to make
some changes and and so on um I I think uh um I think Simon you mentioned
earlier uh it's not a one-size fits-all type of uh hobby where you're constantly
going to be make making adjustments and that's part of it too right um that's part of the fun there there was a
presentation that I did um on one of Scott's other programs uh earlier in the
summer and I called it uh ask photography what you don't need and and it really comes down to what you don't
need is to create a headache for yourself right and and and sometimes
it's as simple as taking your camera on a tripod pointing it and hitting a button and seeing what you get because
you don't know what's out there because you don't you can't see it and you'd be amazed that it's just there and
sometimes that's enough to impress the guys at work right and and get yourself a free drink at the bar let me show you something kind of
cool right and and that that's all that's all part of the uh the Hobby in making it making it fun you know we we
can we can talk about um you know on the Outreach side and how important is it and that's very important but then it's
people getting out there on their own even using there it is my green screen is not cooperating
using just a phone on their own right and and getting a an IM simple image of it even if it's just the moon even if
it's just a plees and you get the the five stars in there to to show what um
that that that that small constellation that small cluster of stars and what it really is um is quite quite impressive
uh um and it it it could be enough to launch someone into into further down
how else can I take this a little bit farther right and I could take my DSLR and push it a little bit more play with
some of the settings and get something out of it so that that I think that's um a pretty important theme that I think
gets lost right in in the hobby right we spoke about this earlier about going out
and buying the equipment it's so I I I think of my cousin in fishing right when he starts spending $500 on a fishing rod
and he doesn't even have the Reel yet right and I ask him so if he caught any more fish he usually come with a good
whack across my head so um you should see the the fish finder he
has it's like a foot wide but he's still but I still he hasn't caught any more than I have but in any case um uh yeah
it it's a lot of it's learning learning that equipment and and and understanding
what it what it's capable of doing um just just quickly before we move on that
is one thing that uh gets lost on everybody this time of year because they've been thinking about taking out
their cameras you know a basic telescope something like that and the one thing
that's going to hit them is the due and you know on a standard camera with a a
50 mm lens that Jew is going to be in in 20 minutes starting to cover the front
of the lens right and is one of those things that you know people that go away
on holiday uh take their equipment away take a camera away tripod away and think right I'm going to have a good go at
this and the one thing they forget is some form of Jew control and if you as
you know if you wipe a camera lens you can clear the Jew off of it it's going to be back there again with within five
minutes you know once it's first on there um it is is a big problem this time yeah s take in yeah and there
there's some basic things you can you could use to to figure that out right as to where are you going to need to do
control for your equipment and when you're going to have to turn it on um looking at some of the weather data
determining what that D point is right there's uh some easy calculations on how to do that you can look that up online a
lot of weather websites will provide that information too and I think it you know just seeing what the ra what the
the temperature is and where the D point is and then where the temperature is going throughout the night especially in
August especially in the spring uh where I am right because the temperature can drop like a rock really really quick
right um and and that's when do becomes a a factor right if if it's a 25 degree
25 degrees outside and then Celsius mind you um and and then you uh have a due
point of of five it's typically not going to be an issue right but if you
have a d point of 20 right and the temperature is going to get down to 12 then yeah you're going to have a problem
right the quickest fix for a camera lens is um on the way to your location get
yourself a large Starbucks coffee because when you finish with a cup you can cut the bottom of the cup off yeah
take your lens off and slide it over the lens and put the lens back on and there's your instant ju Shield
you know you know the funniest thing is is um I I know a fair amount of do about do and things like that just purely
because of the products that we sell do I have do problems no and I have no idea
and this is the part that scares me is one day I'm going to go out I'm going to have a doing issue and I'm not actually going to realize what the hell it is
because I don't get do out here at all it's just a Mist that that forms on the
front of the equipment or in the actual equipment is no I I understand principle behind it and I have experienced it in
other places per se but for me when I have a problem with the camera or the
lens or the you know my image comes out like what the hell's going it the first thing that comes into my mind is not do
it never is you know what a lot of that is though Simon too is because you know you
mentioned you you don't have the humidity where you are no we have none you have none we and we have a lot we we
have humidity all year right into the winter time um uh it could be uh snowing
outside and you know that humidity is still going to be very high right um uh
and D comes down to the relative humidity in the atmosphere of your of your location if your relative humidity
is really low your D Point's going to be really low as well so then do is not going to be a problem right so you know
you can have that even if you have that that temperature fluctuation right if the humidity is low then then you don't
have to really be concerned about it you might have other things you need to worry about though if it's that dry then
from a mechanical side going to make sure that everything is uh operating correctly and not
collecting uh not Gathering up dust and oh yeah we yeah I I will admit we have a
different issue that I have to um deal with a lot of time is the sheer amount of dust and electrostatic is one of the
worst things because if you end up um positively charging your scope uh Dust
In general is negatively charged it's just going to go and just stick Like Glue yeah and it drives me nuts but
there is just zero I can do about that and you know short off of not sweeping the floor um you got to deal with it a
lot of that is actual camera manufacturers I don't know whether you know that the the glass on the camera
actually varies phenomenal from Manu manufacturer to manufacturer of course
yeah yeah and you you know the luminary used to be fantastic cameras but well with a dust magnets it was like somebody
statically charged the the actual camera window um so as soon as you you took a
cover off of it it's just covered oh yeah go yeah that's it so anyway thanks
thanks on that what we're going to do now is we're going to um move over to
Terry um from the astronomical League um I'm going to put on the spot
and hopefully see whether she's got any of her fantastic Aurora images to
share thanks Gary I'm kind of going to come at this from a different way from
what I have done as a beginner and starting out um as you guys have seen I
do I'm gon to share my screen um you guys do a lot of deep sky that is
absolutely beautiful and that is definitely somewhere I want to go to um
but I started out basically with a camera and tripod and I'll be honest I
still I will never give up the camera and tripod because it is so easy to take
everywhere drag around and do imaging a lot of the problems that I do run into
is you know some of my stuff is a one shot I'm working with nature on the move
I can't put the shot together a lot of times I've got to take what is there and so finding images to stack some
sometimes doesn't work sometimes it does but so far I'm shooting with Canon um
with a 60 and a 5D Mark III and most of mine I'm shooting um Fast Glass I've got
usually F1 814 sometimes I do have the Nikon I
shoot with a camera a Canon camera but I've adapted the Nikon 14 to 24 I love
that lens but anyway um this is the way I started because because one of the very first important things I was taught
is you need to learn the sky what if you got to go to and you know nothing about the sky you need to at least have a good
idea of the sky so I over you know every time the seasons change I refresh my
mind a little bit but usually I can find my way around the sky if I was lost I
could find the North Star I could find my directions you know and I think that's very important that's something
especially when I'm working with kids I tell them you don't need the big fancy telescope grab some binoculars check out
the sky and learn something about it and so I've kind of started back what I
would say is at the beginning and uh let me get
to um see if that there we go okay so that
was at arches climbed up the side of double Arch and to take images there was a
beautiful night and I I think that's another thing especially because Ohio is
not the best kind of weather you travel a lot I have to head out of Ohio I'm
getting ready to take off for three days out of Ohio to try to do some Imaging over the next couple of weeks that's
spectac yeah yeah you remember you remember everything when you take this picture I could tell you all about that
night it brings back so much enjoyment that you have it's just like when you
guys have a great image you sit back and say wow you know I sit back and say oh my gosh I remember climbing up the sight
of that thing thinking I was gonna die I you know you you do things to get that
shot when was this taken sorry oh that was taken at Arches National
Park it's double arch in Arches and this is one I was talking
about um Devil's Tower this is my percan meteor and oh my gosh you know you've
got one shot you can't stack it you can't do a whole lot with it um and I have to learn more about noise reduction
and I use Lightroom I use Photoshop I use different software but as you guys
have said there is a learning curve with everything you do no matter what software what cameras what you are doing
there is a learning curve and and I do enjoy it but yeah it does take time but
again and I I've watched the perced meteor shower at Devil's Tower a couple
times and that it's an amazing place and and you know again I look at this and I
remember the story that goes with it uh Monument Valley the first time I
ever caught the sun set to the right the moon rise to the left and the Stars up
above and I I've never that was the first time I actually caught that I couldn't see the stars quite like that
and it was amazing to me so my whole point is this is where I'm starting out but I've liked it so much I'll never
give this up um and this is my Sunset whoops uh and that night was the first
time I caught the Green Flash and I've actually got it on an image and all it is it's a tiny Green Flash but it was an
amazing time with a simple camera and a tripod that kids can set up and do and
start learning at a young age um and that when I work with them that's what I try to tell them about the motion of the
Earth how everything changes in the sky of the seasons and it can be done with
something maybe Mom and Dad have already got and they can help you learn how to learn the sky and learn how to take
pictures at the very simplest beginning and again a sun pillar out my
backyard um gorgeous sunset and first first time I've caught
the zodial light and the Milky Way
um like I said I'll never give up the tripod but with that being said since we
have been home all year I have taught myself to auto guide I now have all of
my the mounts that I have I have um uh one is an to go I've got a small
observatory in the backyard that mount is not goto and I kind of had to figure out how to get everything working for
autog guiding and then I've got a go-to mount that can go on the road and I've got that working so I've learned I've
taught myself how to auto guide and that's my last one
um so I think one of the important things that I kind I listen to you guys
you guys have got so much good information and I listen to that and I
learned from what you are saying I listen to what chocks is doing um Simon with the sun I love the sun I've got a h
alphos scope that I've done some Imaging with but I am just now stepping into
your world um I so I listen a lot to what you guys are saying and what you're looking
at and I'm trying to stop sharing my screen but it's not working if actually I was hoping that before you stop
sharing go back to the picture with the sunset for a second okay sure will since I figure out I'd get back
um if you can that is there we go no I should coming
back
okay I can un share you and you can go back there we go got it there you go yeah yeah I I'm gonna ask you this
question here is is so I I I've taken a lot of sunset shots before and the
interesting thing here is is either you got lucky with atmospheric dis uh dispersion or you had a specific setting
or there was some processing going on how did you get the sun to stop flaring out like so much and that you've
actually got a disc um if I did anything I took down
the brightness some but I'm not I don't think I did that because I still have the blue in the water I'm I'm going to
guess I was doing some fairly short exposures and then I brought up the Shadows would be my guest ah okay all
right yeah because it's it's very rare to be able to take a shot like that
naturally because the sun can be over powering and it's it's just really weird
because I don't get to see the sun look like that very often and it's great to see the size comparison because people
um who do astronomy quickly forget the physical sizes of everything uh and
there's this fantastic optical illusion that when the sun is low to the horizon or the moon for that matter and you've
got a object to compare against and in this case the lighthouse you suddenly realize how big the sun actually is but
when it's higher in the sky in your mind's eye it's this tiny little ball
just like the moon appears to be this tiny little thing in the sky yeah yeah
yeah I'm pretty sure that is what I did and that you know you're right it's just like distance try to explain the
distance to a kid for that matter even an adult the distance in astronomy how
far away something is and yet we can still see it the Andromeda galaxy you
can see this with your naked eye and how far away it is I mean when I work with kids that just kind of blows their minds
a little bit because they can't believe they can see this and yet it is that far away so with this one um that yeah I
think I got lucky but I was doing short shots because honestly I was after the green flesh that night and I'm not sure
if that was a sunset I caught the green flesh with but one of them I did and um
I and actually a shark was swimming through the water there's no way you could see it thin but a shark was SW
swimming through there um when I took that picture but anyway my whole point
is I really enjoy my camera and tripod and it's simple to take and that's what
I'll be taking on my next shoot I've got a sky guider Pro and as you guys saw in the very beginning I've hooked up the
autoguider to the sky guider Pro and I will be taking a 100 to 400 Canon lens
with me when I leave this time and using the counterweight setting up that Sky guider Pro to hold a heavier weight to
see how it will do but even here at home using that lens I can get up to a f
minute exposure so depending it'll probably rain since I'm wanting to image
yeah of course yeah never fails so you know I'm only going to be gone for three
days but I'm hoping to catch some fall leaves and some cedy that way but I'm
definitely hoping to do some night sky and I'm starting to get into the deep sky Imaging and you know that's another
thing I'll be looking at cameras um how I want to do that um my dog's having a
fit here um so I'm kind of looking at all that and so it's my stepping stone
to get to where you guys already are so listening to you helps me understand
more of what what I need to do and the routes I need to take and what I need to consider because I have a lot to
consider as I move forward the thing is though I mean when you showed your um Aurora Pictures the the
irony is now switched here is it's what we wish we could do and the funny thing here is I think I if I tried to shoot
the Aurora now with literally zero experience I probably wouldn't get
anywhere near what you're getting because in my mind I'll be I'll be overly technical um and that's kind of
the point or the problem that we have when we do astrop photography is we're over technical about the whole damn
thing and we lose the U the artistic or the fun part behind it and in my mind
I'll be too busy thinking okay well shut a speed I'm going to do this I'm going to do do I track am I going to do this
what happens if that happens and you you're just snapping you don't care oh yeah yeah when I am shooting the Aurora
all I'm trying to do is hoping I can catch up when it does the coronal the video that I showed you guys when it
goes coronal like that it moves so fast if you you are not prepared for it you can miss it very easily and I've watched
the aor I usually I don't catch it in Ohio hardly ever and sometimes I can catch it in Minnesota and Michigan but
very honestly most of my images that you're going to see there are really good Aurora from Alaska and I've watched
in enough there you kind of learn a little bit of how to tell if it's going to go straight up or if it's going to
stay low and I'm not always right but it's just like you guys when you you've done it so much every time you look at
it you kind of know what to set your cameras at or how to set them up uh it's
the same thing with a camera and tripod it's I do the same thing and yes I am T
it is nothing for me to come home with a few thousand pictures when I come back from Alaska because every night I've got
Aurora I shoot well over a thousand a night if it's good Aurora easily just out of Interest have you actually ever
tried to uh do a stack combine of these Aurora images or does it just straight up not work again I don't know I've
never done it before I've never combined Aurora because it's always moving yeah I
have stacked it one time I was very curious because I loved the way the trees look and the Aurora was moving so
fast and so active and I was sitting with the tripod stationary I did Stack that one picture and it it looks
impressive but you can tell I mean I can tell probably because I know that the Aurora was there but not as much as what
it was but it was incredible doing that and that's what I'm working on now is um
compositing trying to take you know when you look at a setting or Rising Moon and it's that gorgeous either the Earth
shine or you see that beautiful orange moon but yet you can't exposed to get
your landscape and your moon at the same time and get the same what you saw and
so I have been working on compositing a moon picture that I saw Rising that was
beautiful orange over a farm um to get it to look exactly like what I saw so
I'm working more and more with software but my next move honestly is going to be a zwo camera is what I'm thinking so I'm
not quite ready for that yet but that's probably in the next couple of months what I'll be looking at cool that's
awesome that is awesome really cool really nice images thank you thank you I
know it's different than you know at a different level than what you guys are at but as I sit and listen to you I
learn from all of you and then I can kind of apply it and learn more about
how I'm doing things and how I want to move what direction I want to move it the um the whole ethos of the
shows is to have people from all different types of um astronomy you know
so it's not really a a levels thing um it it's really what you like doing and
where you are you you know um and some people like what they you know that
particular point that they're doing that that's why they're there some people love the scenery and you know Widefield
stuff and and having uh Earth objects in their images and and all of those sorts
of things that that they add a different spice to the image yeah and I think it helps you learn the sky if you really
want to have the androm Galaxy or you want a constellation you have to have an
idea you know of where you're aiming your camera at and what you have to know your camera and I think for a lot of
people like I can operate my camera in the dark very easily I know how to move everything I shoot everything manual um
and that takes a while to learn and like you were saying when you buy new equipment it's a new learning curve you
have to learn everything all over again and uh so yeah cool here's the here's
the ultimate question Gary if we turn the lights off in that room because you spend so much time in that room would you still be able to find your way
around I do have to take a torure out of here
and the reason is is it is actually really dark it's about Bal 3 here Bal 2
Bal 3 so having all of these lights on if I step out the door I am literally blind I cannot see anything and we'll
trip over everything on the way back to the house
so but I really appreciate that Terry that that was really interesting thank
you um well I've closed the observatory yeah because uh we're threatened with a
bit of rain coming through by the looks of it but um if we've got time I have
been asked to run back through some of the noise control that I was doing in some of the software the other day so I
was going to screen share that up for a few minutes let me just um switch this
screen share and go straight into here so hopefully we can see that is that
sharing okay yes yeah cool just wanted to check after the last time I was
sharing the wrong screen for about 10 minutes and talking so um this has already been um
pre-processed it was imaged the other night when we were on one of the open goto shows so I thought we'd use that
um and it's already been uh Dynamic background and color calibrated so if we
go back before yeah um just readjust the lighting on that there we go um so it's
had the color calibration applied through um photometric color calibration um that's been applied to it
and the next step would be now to apply some noise control so if we start to
look in the image you can see the background noise there so we're just going to clean up the screen a little
bit move a couple of these boxes around that we don't need
and then we're going to make a simple mask just using the uh luminance button
at the top there and we'll make a simple mask of the image in luminance this now needs to be stretched
that's the one of the main key things on this you can't use unstretched masks at this point because the image is not
stretched um but the actual masks to protect the back uh the actual objects there um while we deal with the
background noise needs to be stretched and it is really easy to do all we need to do is just select that mask in the
histogram and we apply a full stretch to it and then we drag the Triangular icon
across at the bottom into the Bottom bar of the histogram and that will automatically apply that
setting then if we reset the image apply that to the
image uh or the mask and then we Drag The Mask over onto the name bar on the left hand side
and that's the mask attached what we now need to do is invert it so it's actually covering the stars and covering the the
main object in the image so we just invert the mask like that and then we
can turn it off if we want so it's still active if the bar on the leftand side's orange you've got mask active in the
area and then what we need to do is set up yeah our noise control so I'm going
to use multiscale linear transform some people use a truce wavelet transform
they're very very similar to be honest um and the way that I use them is very very similar so we're going to bring
this over um we got four boxes there that we're going to use we do a real
simple setting on this select the noise control first box is going to read
3.0 and then we're going to move the percentage to 50% so always remember
that these uh amounts need to be gentle to start with if you feel that it's not
enough you can go in here and you can play with all of these settings but I generally do quite a simple one on
something like this the next box noise control we're going to move to
2,000 there we go same again
50% doesn't have to be exactly 50 50% but somewhere around there the next box
we're going to move to 1,000 50%
there we go and the last box 500 you can change these you can turn these layers
off if you got an image with more noise in you can attack it a bit harder you can be a lot softer it really depends on
you so this box here uh down to 500 and then same thing again
50% and then we apply it to the image with the mask
on give it a couple of seconds to wear away and then we do forwards and
backwards this is the easiest way to do noise control in the background um so if
you've accidentally set the gain a little bit high or you know any number of other reasons um that you might have
noise in the background you can use this process real quick Gary can you um
explain what the layer scales are uh don't go too much in detail just just a
brief gloss over there is a simple way of doing this I if you imagine that we are um we use wavelets generally for
sharpening on say planets on um uh solar Imaging yeah lunar Imaging all of those
sorts of things we can reverse that and we can actually use them for noise control so a wavelet system is is a way
of looking at each um or set amounts of layers in the image um so that we're not
attacking the image as a whole so uh the easiest way of explaining the
wavelet layers simply is if you have four pieces of paper and you drew on
each piece of paper and then stack them on top of each other yeah you would actually be able to draw detail out from
the fourth piece of paper through to the the first piece of paper well we're actually using the same process now to
attack the noise so that we don't just go in as a blanket on the image if you if you go in with a harsh noise control
you're going to remove all sorts of detail that you might actually want in the background there there might be soft
nebular in there or or any sorts of uh amounts of data so by using the wavelets
we can dictate where we're coming in on these layers and and how we do this and
then if we look at that image so if we go back on that image now yeah you'll see there the changes in the noise level
and then we go forwards you'll see that it's flattened the background down and it's taken the game noise out
and that means the image is ready for stretching them so we can set that up we can stretch it with a histogram we can
do a m stretch there's lots of different ways that you could do this um other
people might go into other um bits of processing before they do the their
stretch but I always do it at the point where I'm about ready to stretch the image and if we look in here bearing in
mind this is a one shot color with no filters on you're only talking 153
minute shots here so there's quite a lot of detail you can see the back sides of the nebula there there's no filters
there um if we had a hydren alpha filter even on the color camera you would start
to pick out a lot of these outer areas and you can also see the star field that
it's in so there's nothing to stop us um losing a lot of these stars and cropping
this image and coming right in close to it and and that would be our final image what an image like this always
makes me think is if we're looking at um like Jerry's field exoplanets then technically every one of
these Stars could have a planet around it and in a field like this yeah there's
a few planets that are possibly visible there you know I'm glad you showed that Gary because um I think it's a common
mistake that everybody does is they stretch before they do noise reduction it's actually the other way around you
should do noise reduction before you stretch yeah that's it and and it just makes it so much easier um when you're
doing that so yeah um there we go now i' got to find how I come out
of yeah no it's uh it's hidden itself oh there it is it's over there soor I jumps onto the other screen there we go um I
got a question for you Gary from my live chat um let me just switch the view so it's not just on me because why you want
to see me I don't know um got to ask what is the most common mistake
Observatory owners make when starting up and I know that you've had your hand
involved in a lot of setting UPS of Observatory so you're probably better off to answer this than I am because I've never seen up before um there are a
few there um and it depends on the type of Observatory so first thing would be
if you're going to use a pier in there is actually getting the peer level I know that sounds really stupid but I've
been to some that have been bolted to the floor or the floor is very very soft
so the the floor um is maybe like a slabs um you know like a um a slab
effect and as you walk on those you can actually watch the image moving um so it's always a good idea to have the um
Pier in a sense another layer floor separated by hole in it for the pier to
come through um rollof roof observatories one of the most common
problems is people building the framework at the top that holds Runners out of soft wood so soft wood actually
expands and contracts and and so on in the different weathers so you'll find that um at certain points of the night
you can't actually close your roof properly um and that becomes a big problem when it's raining so or um not
allowing enough room for cabling to come through I know we're moving into an age now where everything's be starting to
become Wireless or become controlled but there are still a lot of cables needed
on this and depending on what you're going to use your Observatory for whether it's going to be a mix of all
types of imagine you might well want you know half a dozen cables running up to
the bottom of a pier ready you know to connect on different equipment in the future and somebody puts in you know
something like a an inch and 3/4 pipe and finds they can only get two or three cables down there with the connectors on
because you got to remember that the connectors are the key to this it's not the the thickness of the cable is the
thickness of the connector going down the cable with others in there maybe yeah I I'm going to tell you now if
somebody got came up to me and said I need yourself theator I would probably screw it up and Bolt the telescope in
upside down or something a question for you Gary um
Kanan Lucas wants to know how much RAM memory and processing rate does your computer
have this one here is quite a large computer it's a um a
Alienware Area 51 computer I've actually got two of these the one in this office
and one in the house office that used for processing you don't have to go this
far um I'll be quite straightforward on it most of the high specs normally come
with cameras these days so if we were doing highspeed usb3 recording that
would be one of the um one of the main um things that you need a slightly
higher spec computer for in general processing anything
I5 um upwards is pretty good for your processing but you know Jerry and I
share the same things and you hear Jerry say on the show all the time yeah time your time is your money you know so if
you spend a little bit on the computer um then you're going to be processing um pretty fast but you know I
I have to do this this for a living and I have you know these screens running live processing to all sorts of
different people and then we're switching out of that equipment and going over to others the biggest problem
if you do decide to do um any form of sort of Outreach like this is when
you're processing on the computer it stops the video chat and that is all
down to ram in the computer so if the the computer's only got like 8 gig RAM and we were doing one of these it will
literally freeze your screens and I I'm wondering whether we're still connected or what's going on while the computer is
working sorry I I was just getting text messages from people um I do actually
get constant bombardments of people asking me questions even offline um even though he's not going to
hear the answer to this um this is actually quite a good one um Scott you're probably going to be more geared
to answer this because this is in regards to an ed102 um How do I figure out backspace
limit on an ed102 with a flattener does the flattener count against the total backspacing distance or the
otaa does that make sense to you when whenever you use a a um a flattener
reducer generally it pulls it in on back focus yeah so um for those of you who
probably wondering what on Earth we're just banging on about is most uh telescopes uh when you use for Imaging
require some type of field flattener because they're initially designed for the curvature of your eye especially with the eyepiece and the last thing you
want is a curved image hitting a sensor because the sensor is flat essentially so what the flattener does is it creates
that curved surface and flattens it out so it hits that and this is a constant question I get um all the time and I'm
sure Steve probably gets phone calls on this is what is my back focus distance
um for the camera and the field flattener nine times out of 10 is 55
mimet it is we we did cover this very very slightly didn't we on one of the shows in the week um the the problem is
is the mating surfaces um and I can use exactly what I used the other day to demonstrate that
just got it here um from the other day when we did this yeah the the problem is
is when you're measuring these you're measuring from the flat surface there
yeah and depending on what adapters you've got not all of these adapters
screw in correctly so they will leave one or two mil out so that will sit out
very very slightly yeah from the the maate in surface depending on what types of connectors you're using and the
quality of the threads and your problem there is is if that sits out one or 2 mm
and something else goes in 1 or 2 mm your 55 mm of back space is now wrong
yeah and it's a real critical thing to to look at on cameras um if you moved
over let's say an APM uh 107 their fi flatten on they need something like I
think it was around 79 mil of back focus on it from the field
flattener yeah or from the reducer so it will also depend on the the length of
the telescope as to the the actual um back focus from the
um from the actual unit also just on a quick note swapping things around as well so if you got things like filter
holders yeah some cameras they fit on yeah some cameras you'll need to get the correct adapters and if you don't get
the correct adapters you adding space now so the um like a zwo filter holder
would be 21 mm roughly um without the correct adapters it's not going to go
onto the fullframe camera so if you put it in front of that adapter you you're
now adding on um for 3.5 mm and that
again just going to put your spacing out straight away so we should also mention that filters have an optical thickness
and this is another thing that drives me nuts is people don't remember this do you add or do you subtract so for
example we'll use a cwo filter with an optical thickness of say 1.5 millimeters we'll say 2 millimeters to keep the
number simple people don't seem to understand is it add or subtract yeah but what I'm also going to
say to you on some of these measurements once you once you've got your fuel flattener or your um reducer correct on
its spacing you have to think that a lot of these other measurements that
everybody gets so hung up on are are irrelevant and they're irrelevant
because you're limited by your seeing conditions so that distance there won't
make any difference what will make a difference is how uh um how flat the
fils are between each filter so you know the focal distance between the um so the
ha and the S2 filter both in the red they're going to be closer than maybe if
you got luminance filter there that's going to be shot right out of of focus as soon as you switch to it so that then
goes down to the filter manufacturer is to actually how matched a set of filters
are and to get matched filters you're going to pay a lot of money yeah that initial measurement of the thickness of
the filter won't really make a lot of difference because generally people buy them in a set so if they go for antia B
you know the list is endless of filters they're generally all cut out the same
class unless they're really cheap and they're they're just um uh what we call Quality Street wrappers in a in a
plastic box uh no no comment on that one for a second I hate to say this but Chu you
look very confused there um any reason why
well um as as I spoke to you before um I'm looking at getting a fied flatness
stroke focuser um because I'm not using one at a minute um
and yeah I keep hearing a lot of this stuff about back focus um and even when you
said to me you'll need 55 millimeters back focus I just sort of screwed it all
together put it on and tried to get focused and when I got focus it was okay what
you have to let's just say you got 100 100 Mill
back focus by putting a a reducer on there that b back focus will now shrink
massively you you'll probably come in by about 60 mm yeah on the back focus there you will
have your your distance in between your sensor um and different manufacturers
have different uh spacing for their sensors so you know if you swap cameras that 55 mil is not going to be the same
even if you got the the adapters on there um it will be different for most modeler cameras um some of them try and
keep them uniform go and see I can't hear you yeah the red
flashing light on my microphone um I wasn't want paying attention I was going to say though that that that that back
focus distance right is important to Main M for the entire illuminated field
yeah so if you have a smaller sensor right I if it it's still crit
that distance is still critical but you're not going to get the same issues you would on a on a larger
sensor saying that right am I making sense right yeah yeah so so so that 55
millimeter back focus what's really keep in mind is that it it it's um uh the way
I've always explained it to to people is that 55 millimeters um is important uh
because dslrs typically have a 45 millimeter flange back to the sensor right um and then when you add your
t-ring that g that adds the 55 millimeter back focus so for a DSLR that
that is that or that 55 millimet standard typ quickly comes from when you start getting into higher end Scopes so
Gary you're saying that having a s was it 77 it depends on what what telescope
it's actually attached to but yeah rough roughly on the 107 right so those those
higher end Scopes are going to have have that larger back focus as well because you can have other pieces of equipment
in there maybe a rotator you're going to have a filter wheel Adaptive Optics
right like we're talking the higher end of equipment spectrum and you need that back focus distance there in order to
get in order to maintain that that flatness across that entire field for
the for the sensor right when you start getting into smaller sensors like a 43s like you'd have on a 1600 based uh
camera or a 294 based camera right you you're in a smaller area of that of that
image Circle um uh uh and I like again not wanting to
over complicate things I that 55 millimeters if you're off by a millimeter or or so coming in and out
right it's not going to make the biggest of of of differences right so so it's
something not to really stress on yeah one of the one of the things there is is
most manufacturers will give a tolerance on their actual reducer to plus or minus
say one or two millimeters yeah but what you have to bear in mind is this sort of
size sensor has been standard for about the last if we're going to see in it let
me just get me phone a second and put a torch light into it um this sort of
uh sensor there we go yeah is about the average sort of
size that's been on the market you know in the seos area it's that that would be your average size sensor in
there this is the sort of stuff we're working with now it's almost four or
five times the size of it so this is where the importance of that spacing
really kicks in now um as we're moving into these larger sensors everything has
to be a lot more accurate because as you were saying you know the smaller sensor is only going to show a certain amount
of the field of view whereas in natural facts the larger sensor is going to go outside really the field of view and
you're going to get vignetting on a lot of the telescopes now yeah so Cho real quick um I'm going to explain it in the
lay person's way it's the fastest way to do it there's a test at the end yeah um
if you look at your pictures uh every single one of them what I want you to do is look in the corners now um I'm pretty
sure you play computer games so you're familiar with a game called Quake right yeah okay um if you start seeing the
Quake symbol showing up in the corners of your stars then it tells me that your back focus on your flattener is off okay
and the shape of it changes if you're too close or too far so so the idea behind it this game
that we're going to play here and why it's 55 millimeters is we're trying to find the point of when this symbol
disappears in the corner so the closer it gets the shape changes and that's
what we refer to as coma so you'll come across this phrase now if you're getting coma right so if you're getting coma
you're too close if you start getting the Quake symbol you're too far out okay that's how it works right okay because I
was wondering what is the impact of it so am I going to get extra light on the side or what but I did notice the minute
I switched to to the monochrome one that's practically disappeared right so
probably by chance you just hit the back focus dead on oh and then on top of that
because I know you just you just screwed everything in and on top of that um just like Steve says it is a smaller sensor
so you're not competing against an apsc or fullframe camera any longer your
field of view has now shrunk down so those um problem areas those Quake
symbols or that coma which looks like a comet hence the name is outside of the field of view because you're only
looking at this part here so the chances are the smaller your sensor the more
forgiving back focus distance from a field flx have becomes the bigger the sensor the more critical you have to hit
it there's always a plus and a minus to everything though on the smaller center
you're closer to the Stars so your guiding has got to be better yeah that's don't don't confuse
him God don't confuse to be honest The Guiding is fine I mean it's always around the 50 and you
will notice the difference that you've got to be more accurate on your setup the closer you're getting yeah to an
object yeah so yeah where the dslrs more forgiving you got that wider field of
view yeah now everything's going to have to be a little bit more precise each time when you set up yeah okay cool oh
bear that in mind I haven't had that much chance yet only got a couple of hours last night and now before but
yeah I didn't mean to put you on the spot there CHS I just saw you
yeah yeah no it was CU I was because I've been as I've been reading and investigating these things it all these
things have come up and I still don't get what it is it's like you know when Scott started talking about rotation the
other week I asked him about rotation and sent him a few pictures and and he confirmed it wasn't rotation and then I
was like oh is it coma so he said be coma and then I is differ in and
yeah sorry yeah if you get your um your spacing too far out yeah then you can
create a circular pattern of stars yeah so the actual pattern of
stars will run around yeah the image yeah it's the Quake symbol by the way
yeah um what you have to think um if you've got no flattener on there you you're going to get poed stars coming
out around from the center yeah yeah when you get your your feel flattener on
there and your space incorrect the Stars will be round in the corners round in
the center at the sides and round at the bottom corners and that's what you're
looking at is to get those Stars round on the outer edges and sometimes you'll
just have to play with it that that's the same here there's no magical number it's just the case of playing around
with it for your particular system yeah no I I'll get there I mean you know I've
only just got past the stage of does it get into the center of the field does the guiding work and your best thing is
to take a few shots stop look at the shots blow the shots up lighten the
shots up yeah have a look up in the corners if it's not working then change it otherwise you just go through a whole
night and you keep wasting the nights whereas you actually want one of those nights to progress and that means you're
not necessarily going to get images right the way through the night you will if you're quick on it yeah but you you
know you're using that as an experience and those nights that you got clouds coming through with the gaps on yeah
they're ideal nights to get those shots where you can you can test for um you
know correction on the field of view right yeah no gives me some stuff to test then yeah cheers yeah I was
reading about it all and even even when we were talking about the gain you know um there's a million of one settings
that people tell you and you see the graphs and everyone's like you download this and you check this graph and I'm
thinking what I I've been shut down so complicated so many times in the early
days of of CC seos where people are saying oh no you got to use the unity
game that's what x manufacturer said yeah and what I'm saying is is that no
the X manufacturer is is picking a nice sh Target for their catalog yeah and
those settings will work fine for that Target but when you move to another one those T those settings are all out the
window and this is the the key thing it's the same as capture software just
because a company recommends it doesn't mean to say they use it so it's because somebody's offered the software with
their drivers built in or whatever and it's easy um people will go ahead and
use it but that manufacturer doesn't know whether there's a problem with their camera in it for instance they
actually care half the time no and you know I I had a problem with an IM the
other day uh on a new camera sent it to the manufacturer and got told to take some flats and that would subtract it
out like I don't know what I'm doing yeah yeah um what I'm getting out there
is is the you know it doesn't matter um you know at the moment lots of companies
are are really busy and they really don't care this is the issue so finding
the advice is a bit of a mindfield you can't just expect manufacturers to know every single thing about a product
because they can't test it on every single thing and in every single environment that's really what you're
there for yeah that's that's what I you know I'll verify that because uh you
know there are so many parameters so many ways so many combinations it's impossible it's
impossible to test test it in every possible way so I mean as a manufacturer
Scott you probably come across that more than any body else out there and I can
just imagine how stressful it can be from a support stand you just uh uh you have to take
things one at a time when there there are issues uh somebody's trying to work their way through it um you know I try
to have people on my team that can really go through the details sometimes
part of that team is a volunteer you know and they'll they'll figure it out
uh you know so so you know we work closely with beta testers and um you
know but I have a good Core Group a very very experienced people and uh some some
of some of these problems are old problems that we saw uh with other products you know and other experiences
from you know a decade or two ago so some of the problems do come
round and round again you'll see this and you see it with a different manufacturer certainly the camera Market
we would have seen a problem two years ago and then a new camera will come on and it's oh yeah we saw that on such and
such here's the fix for it it's that simple you know um that they do go round
and round and round as equipment evolves it could be even a existing product um
uh you know with the continual manufacturing sometimes uh there are things that happen like uh the company
that is manufacturing your board for example they will choose a component
that should be identical to a component that is no longer made has all the same
you know specs and everything that you can read into it but somehow it changes
uh the function of of your board and so these are these are the kind of things that are a little bit maddening you know
when it comes to Optics though it's uh it's pretty stable you know um you know
there's not there's not a lot of changes that do happen there sometimes there's coding issues these kinds of things that
you're chasing down but there's uh manufacturers keep a pair to list and
that pair to list is a running uh list of all kinds of problems and all kinds
of things that you're constantly chasing down you know and uh when I first got
into the manufacturing world of telescopes I just thought oh it's very static you know you fix a problem it
stays fixed fixed but that's not true it is a constantly moving constantly
changing uh animal and so um it drives it drives some Engineers
just absolutely crazy I think that's uh now even more so with more Electronics
coming on board with everything you know everybody wants an automated Society um and in a sense that that you
know creates more problems as the equipment gets more technical I mean if you actually think what we're
hanging on the back of a telescope now compared to what we were hanging on the back of a telescope you know even three
years ago you know you got eight position filter Wheels you got rotators you got all of this um other stuff then
you've got the actual electronic focuses now and um you know everybody wants a
guide scope of some form and camera on there and they want the smallest one possible keep the we down so that's all
going on the back of the telescope so there's any number of parameters there now that can go wrong that's right
that's right but it makes it exciting so yeah you know and uh so I I I'm never
discouraged by it uh it's frustrating sometimes when you're chasing something down uh We've run into a problem uh
recently with uh Windows 10 where they stopped supporting a certain type you
know a a network connection that they used to support and uh so it's it is U
it's something we're still working through right now so uh it doesn't put us dead in the water but it makes life
uh for some users you know a little bit more difficult when they're trying to do
um Wi-Fi connections with Windows we had it last week there was an update and all
of my messaging system is is my ASI cameras have stopped working my ASI
guide camera won't connect with the main camera and basically you've just got to
reinstall the software you got reinstall the the um SDK for the camera and you re
got reinstall the ascom driver but all of a sudden a change will come along in the background and it will affect you know
stuff for everybody um whose computers are updating those people whose computers are not updating on maybe
another platform you've not got that problem right I have my own conspiracy
theories on um all of this stuff I mean this is probably not the ideal platform to share it with but I will say this uh
change brings forth innovation without getting into too much
detail it it does I mean you know everything really these days is
about change isn't it nothing nothing is static anymore nothing stays still so um
you know whether it's just somebody wants something to look different the actual object itself is
still the same it's still working the same but it's got you know many essal
upgrades to it um you know people want their telescopes now to look like a
Ferrari or to look like this or do whatever you know but theoretically it's
still the same object is still the same thing um and you don't noticed that that
this has become the thing and maybe it's because it's a younger generation of people getting into the hobby is it's
got to look cool therefore it's going to perform 10 times better and it's amazing
the the length and you're laughing at this trucks because I know you're probably just as guilty for doing this but people go out of their way for color
coordination down to the types of rings the dogtails it's just Insanity
sometimes th this came in about oh it must be 10 years ago came in with a a couple of companies like
um uh a am yeah they brought out their carbon fiber telescopes that were all
color coordinated you know in bronze and um bronze tube rings and they were
really expensive then you know they were serious money into 67,000 for the
average telescope and that's gradually filtered down now to you know the most basic of
telescopes the most basic dublet is now coming out with you know uh bright red tube rings on it you know bright silver
tube Rings whatever color coordination but that's LED on from an innovation in
technology anodizing has got so easy now that you can basically produce whatever
color you want it's not a a real expensive hobby I think the thing is
though from a retail standpoint Aesthetics is a critical Factor um I I
don't want people to be misled uh in this industry when it comes down
to Optics not a great deal has actually changed what's really changed is the Aesthetics of everything and I think in
so many ways is it's become a good thing uh for younger kids is they don't see
this guy with a Dusty old wooden telescope or some really ancient looking brass telescope they see some cool
composite um fibers like carbon fiber rolled steel or brushed balloon inum or
aluminium if you're from the UK uh and using these different type of materials
to create a product that is actually exciting and I think that's been a big
thing for all of us I mean I I didn't get into this hobby because I wanted to have cool looking stuff and who looks
pretty I got into it because I wanted to do astronomy people s now get into this
hobby oddly enough and say well do you bu any chance to have that in red or black because you know I want it to
match my scheme I'm like going really are you serious yeah I mean there companies
making lots of money out of you know the anodized um add-ons you know that you
can buy now to to make all of your stuff matching but there there are some things that have changed in the Optics and
Scott will sort of say you know glass has changed a lot in the last 10 years yeah what you can do with a doublet
telescope now that you couldn't do a decade ago oh yeah that's right and the
of filter uh and also in the field of uh Ed glass
becoming more available from other manufacturers you know that the I would
like to learn more myself about the history of the Ed glass because it was originally uh created for
microscopes to help eliminate chromatic aberration to make Ed glass back then uh
you know when when it was first invented I mean they could only make them in little tiny diameters you know to make
make a big chunk of Ed glass now it's like a miracle
so just oh sorry real quick just out of Interest Scott um I know you've got so
many different types of Scopes in your range and I'm going to refer to refractor specifically without going too
broad is the type of glass that you guys use and pick out I mean what determines
if you're going to use FPL 51 FPL 53 FCD 100 fcd1 frankly uh you know right now the I
think the two best uh Ed glass types are made by O'Hara which is the FPL 53 glass
and then um Hoya's FCD 100 those two
glasses are like neck and neck okay now what you combine those glasses with okay
and whether you're airs spacing them or you're going for a doublet or triplet or
you know quad uh this this also attenuates uh how these the Ed glass can
perform you know so um there were um Ed
doublets that were thrown out there with FPL 53 glass okay that people enjoyed
because relatively low cost because only two elements okay but some of this is
kind of uh you know telescope makers use this as kind of a marketing Edge too
okay throwing in just FPL 53 sounds like magic okay double it okay so does it
perform really well is a doublet maybe the best is it a doublet can perform yeah okay but does it perform like a
triplet no okay so that these are these are the little things uh that um that
don't immediately occur to someone that's in the market for our Ed Appo for example okay um the other thing that's
really important is uh the lens cells and how the Optics are held in there and
this is an area where uh you know manufacturers can do a really good job
or they can do a really marginal job okay and so that's these are and and
they also change greatly the cost of a telescope so it's it's um uh you know
it's always best to uh you know have a uh a lens cell that's fully adjustable
um you know you know just so that you can get the best alignment best performance out of these Optics that
you're throwing in there um but just like any business there's all kinds of
buzzwords and marketing things that you can do uh that may or may not make a
real material difference in the ultimate performance uh we still get uh people
that turn in stunning work with our fcd1 line which is not near as good of glass
as our FCD 100 line for example you know so uh and with narrow band Imaging we're
getting people that are turning in mindblowing um images with our AR
doublets which are just crown and Flint no Ed glass at all you know so uh that's
the thing it's like some of the best solar images I've seen are taken with the AR series Scopes right so you get
into a monochromatic light or you start working with uh narrow band or line filters uh this kind of thing you can
really um you know do some amazing stuff with just a an acromat so the filters
are are real you know that that was a huge game Cher in astrophotography and
um and the image processing tools but also the techniques you know so uh as
these tools to um uh image process process this this data uh become
available um you know as they get better you need gurus like Gary
Palmer and frankly like yourself Simon uh to show people the way to make the
best use of these things because now now you got a bazillion controls okay and
how do you how do you use those and and follow through these steps correctly you know so think we're going to have to say
goodbye to Steve here because I keep seeing the chat thing popping up saying he's leaving he's leaving and he's still hanging in there so let's let's wave
goodbye to him oh I'm not expecting that at all but have a good evening everyone thanks for having me and putting up with
me that's fine it's good to have you on Steve thanks for coming on I'll talk to
you all soon and everyone who uh who who watched thank you for uh for tuning in
and Scott thanks for putting this on yeah thank you for participating Steve have a good night everyone care bye bye
good night take care yeah okay so we're now at the part of our show uh where it's it's it is late
for you know a lot of people here so um uh and uh you know we should probably
start to wrap it up if there's any last things that people want to share talk about by all means um but uh if if uh if
we've come to the towards the end I'll to close it down yeah I'm I'm really
done with everything I don't know about Andreas oh it's uh it's exciting times
when we have U like the Nobel Prize for uh um oh for it was
uh oh you call it uh black holes so it
was very exciting that as on B was rewarded and with all the detection of
asteroids and now flying by the Earth and uh last
year I remember large asteroid that was around 8 met when we saw just one day just flew
by the Earth and we didn't even know about it so we live exciting times also
with the detection of maybe some form of life from Venus so there's much much
inter interesting discovering are made now I think it's a good time to be in
astronomy it's a great time it is a time it's the Golden
Age it really is I think it's definitely from a
technological mixture uh again for for the theme that we had today Visual and
Outreach it's it's definitely a situation where the two have Blended together and not one is beating one out
over the other I mean I'm going to say this it's going to be a very very sad day um in the near future if we keep
going down the way that we're going with global warming the pollution and God knows what else that we are going to
lose the night sky for a vast majority of us and I was watching this great
program with David atur uh and how he talks about how the World changes and he
addresses light pollution and I was shocked I was like why is this guy talking about you know and he's like a
nature guy but he actually pulled out light pollution as being one of the things that is just dominating this
planet and when he showed the uh ISS um video shots looking back at Earth and
it's fascinating it's so pretty and everything but the more I stare at it
the more I start to go every time somebody turns turns on a light someone like myself is literally
screaming because we see less and less of the sky and at some point in time I I can see this happening all of us um who
are all over the world are going to end up in this one little tiny patch on the planet because it's the only dark sky
we've got left I don't know I think I I'm more
optimistic myself I think that we are yeah certainly we're going under very
rough time there's but there's been no time in human history when it wasn't rough okay
no there was course was always there was always some sort of huge problem some
major disease some time where we felt
that it was the end of humanity and humans have you know thrived in this and
they are so creative and um so you know I think that I think that while uh you
know it it is uh you know we can maybe be mortified or scared and stiff in our
tracks okay uh you know the there's also every
possibility uh to solve our problems and to move forward you know so I I think I
I I'm an optimistic kind of guy and uh you know some people think I'm not realistic but uh I would say that the
pessimists are also very unrealist unrealistic because um you know thinking
that it's all doom and gloom all the time is just not true you know it's not reality I think social media has given
people a voice um whether it's good or bad that's and that oh yeah that part that's the
that's good as well so yeah um so that you know there there are a lot of
negative things there's a lot more reading material for people to uh go
through these days and that doesn't matter what what subject it's on whether it's astronomy politics you know
whatever um there's positive and negatives but you do seem to go through
stages where there's a lot of negatives all stacking up against each other um to
uh run through the r miss a yes Terry is there any last words
you'd like to say from the astronomical league with
the you're you're muted you are
muted you are muted Terry here let me see hold
on let's get you unmuted here never mind everything I just
said probably better left alone the astronomical League thank you
very much Scott for having us thank you for everything you're doing and everybody else thanks for all the
information you guys are helping all of us learn so thank you all thank you thanks for coming on thanks pleasure
yeah Simon thank you very much for all of your uh skills and uh for producing
the uh what we think is the first ever uh Blended uh yeah joint thing streaming
history yeah that's very cool I'm sure somebody's going to come back and say oh no we did it with you know 10 broadcast
or whatever I don't know I'm not sure of that uh Andreas thank you very much uh I
know it's super late there but uh uh it was great to have you on and um you know
always pleasure to be on yeah and as when I go off when I go from
concert like Iron Man and they always sing and always look on the bright side of life and that's what I think also
absolutely shendra thank you very much you're you're becoming a uh you'll be
one of the astrophotography gurus pretty soon so um you know and uh it's exciting
to see your work increase so it's it's awesome yeah cheers thanks for everyone
for all the uh tips and assistance it's really helping yeah all right and Gary what can I say
thank you again it's awesome thank you thank you for hosting it yeah it's um
it's always good fun uh thanks to all the guests that have come on and thanks to the people watching they're what make
the show at the end of the day that that's the the real sort of key um it's
nice to see the questions coming in even though lots of them I don't see until after the show and and read back through
them um it is nice to see a lot of the stuff that comes in and the comments and and other things so yeah thanks to
everybody for coming on and for the people watching it awesome yeah thank you very much and we'll say good night
so let me see all right so for the guys who are watching my stream thank you very much for watching uh you guys have
been great so don't forget if you wanted um win a planisphere the question on my
stream uh the telescopes.net stream is who were the first two people that were on the stream um email me the answer
it's Simon telescopes.net that's only for the people that are on the Woodland Hills Cameron telescopes live stream and
on that note we will see you in about two weeks um and hey who knows we're
probably going to have another one of these group discussions and another joint effort yeah we'll figure it out
right see you guys soon very thank you all righty so all right
so I've ended my stream now that was probably very weird and jarring for the people that are watching
your
stream
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cool Che guys see you later take
care
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w
okay