Transcript:
speech and what he said in that speech was we have to build back better
yes at which point joe biden called and said you stole my line hey my
inauguration speech and justin trudeau said and we steal from the best
and somewhere fdr's descendants are saying wait what about me you took it for me
it's gorgeous here but it was pouring rain today really the skies opened up there were
wonderful thunderstorm clouds just all over and now it seems to be lightening up so
i'm hoping i can take some pictures over the next couple of nights and see some northern constellations with some actual
deck i don't get to do that in montreal but kareem be very careful do not fall off
that uh your balcony there because that looks like it's a long way down have i ever
told you the story of when i fell off of a second floor balcony right before a debate and walked in still did the debate and
uh walked out and half the people there don't remember me saying anything because they were just in awe that i walked back
[Laughter]
i'll tell you the whole story sometime it was a very bizarre bizarre weekend that's awesome
connor how you doing oh wonderful how are you good are you ready
you're uh presenting at the uh alcon right this year yes that's right just in august
uh the 21st or the 22nd we're trying to nail down a date right now um i start uh classes at penn state the
23rd so i got to figure out the schedule first but i'm very excited about it so i grew
up in southern pennsylvania i'm so happy to hear a fellow nittany lion is coming in that's awesome
really yeah i didn't get to go to school there but i got to visit often everybody talks about it everybody says
they love it they say um your blood runs blue or something like that yeah your blood runs blue but i'll tell you their
their physics and their astronomy and astrophysics is fantastic the the profs
are so open to explaining and all they want these questions to be asked and they're they're more than open
to chatting it's fantastic that sounds wonderful i'm looking at
the astronomy club there and make some things happen i was reading their website i think they make some of their
own mirrors they said they had an uh 8 and two ten inch dobsonians they made and then the astrophysics department has
a 24 inch plane wave that they use for all kinds of stuff like photometry
that's gorgeous and i think uh i think it was enrique gomez who was
saying that the appalachian uh the appalachian song uh project they had
a couple of people from the poconos area that were participating in taking photometry curves for them so i don't
know if that's with penn state or not but you could always look to get involved with some of those inter-regional
groups i wanted to see what came out in the poconos
and you were up in the catskills all the time right david no uh
three summers in the adirondacks and then one around the coconuts and then back for another three summers
in the adirondacks
hi everyone good evening everyone how are you fine
so are you guys ready for some you guys have an amazing group you got amazing i
found some amazing videos about comets that's going to be in this program all through the program
so it's going to be it's going to be a lot of fun yeah absolutely
it's a pleasure today listen to david levy talking about come on their own comet
yes for me is i amaze it because it's
every week i am acid uh listen uh the poetry but today
is come on it's like wow
i i'm really exciting uh to to listen tonight uh and
talk about uh about this david you're
well my thank you except it's going to be more of a discussion when scotty and i were
planning this i kind of wanted it to be more discussion so that more people could participate
yeah yes yes of course we we will
uh talk all that week for me i i can
uh all that i remember from that comet
um especially was was it the the i think what that was the first
not only the of course the first time that people
can can take in the history i think that never
never um in in any observatory professional
observatory can take a picture of an image of
of uh impact of a comic over jupiter but
was the first time that the people amateur astronomers can do it too
was together because was in a time where the the the
planetary cameras starting to be able to to take this type of pictures
for me was amazing for when i started to to see the amateur uh my customers i say
okay i see i i see it i i have the the image and
was so strong that come on
the scale of the impact yeah what was so wonderful about it
caesar is that you know all the experts are telling us we were not going to see anything
you know and there we you know and then we saw the the aftermath of the impacts
the scarring that was across jupiter you know and i took i took to my home
because i was working at meat at the time we had bought a tasco 60 a 50 millimeter
refractor uh that we were just keeping in the in our sample room so we could compare
our brand versus their brand and so i took home the tasco 50 but i
also took home a mead 16-inch telescope okay yeah
no no side by side side by side and you could see the scarring on jupiter's surface
with the 50 millimeter toy telescope the 16 inch it was you know yes was
visible with that with a maybe without uh if you had a for
bigger telescope was more you needed a um i remember with my eight inches i
needed to see the filter i don't remember
because well when you put the i remember the i think that i thought i think that i used
the blue one because i was so um you know as my enzyme
anxiety they say you know i need to see this but i remember i don't remember
i i see something that i i have clouds later in buenos aires but
but for me was it's visible come on yeah
it's true yeah no no it's one of the most incredible things that i saw
at telescope i think a lot of people say that yeah
yeah absolutely and we have the the hero of the night tonight he's having our heroes here
right yeah yes absolutely
and it's i remember that the idea i don't know but i think that the the chapter of the simpson
i think that was inspired in the idea when you
the idea that that bart simpson found the telus fun by telescope
uh comet and the comet is going to springfield do you remember i think that
that was inspired in the history of of discover a comet that impact in jupiter
yeah because it's the from the same time i i'm sure about this but
i remember when they confirmed that this was going to happen i could still hardly believe it was going to happen
yeah this is what yeah yes i have a comment um i have
another thing more right it's incredible i i i don't know how was
the the the real history but i really really
uh uh amazing that hello adrian
hello adrian ambassador excited to listen to this
in the car driving yeah as usual but i am now i came around
oh you're driving hi thanks he's there are you here cameron how are you
good how are you all right yeah hey dude away oh adrian you got that you're on
the on the road wow yeah stay safe but i will be i will be at
home shortly so
yeah hey kareem hey how you doing good good hi karin how are you it's it's okay
the the weather the hot summer it's
the the the high temperatures uh uh
are finished it's okay now the is more down a little yeah i'll cool down a little but there's still some wildfires
in dc unfortunately but uh i was i was seeing the temperatures in other parts of the world
right now and in kuwait it's ridiculous i feel for them oh
yeah no yeah yes i i we are really very
worried by canada the temperatures were totally insane
yeah we've been lucky it hasn't been too bad most of the time here so yeah
yes it's for for not all people sometimes it's possible because it's
logical here i remember that maybe two years in summer in our in the south the south
part of argentina is ushuaia and usually have normally you know
the temperatures uh of maybe canada or um
they had 30 degrees only 30 degrees that centigrade in summer
um of course that they don't have the problems that that that for canada was
higher over 40 45 and 50 but only with 30
yes 50 degrees centigrade yes and in usual the people
was turn crazy because they don't have a air conditioner normally because they don't
need it um [Music] all people go into the fresh water
because they needed uh keep the their their because
the the body of the people in the south is not prepared to to
only 30 degrees i can imagine if you have 50 degrees because it's totally
unreal it's incredible
well we've got um uh people already logged in um
and chatting here we got book davies here says hello to everybody beatrice heinz hello everyone greetings from
belgium um book davies is on and uh
beatrice says hello scott caesar and david hello back
harold lock good evening comment watchers and
aaron thompson hello and good evening um
norm hughes good evening all you crazy star people
are crazy right why crazy wow that's right of course
of course the later it gets the more crazy we get high from oracle arizona just had a
severe thunderstorm that dropped half an inch 1.2 inches of rain in less than an hour got .7 in the first 30 minutes of
the storm that was from mike wiesner book davies has got his scope out and
warming up and andrew corkill's on with us um
let's see who else
to burn cameron gillis he'll be on the show
um
oh and chris larson wade frontie
in 1743 observers claimed to have seen a comet with six tails
little did they know that the streaks behind the comet could be related to the origins of the solar system
in time scientists theorized that the dust in a comet's tail had been combed out into bands known as striate
how the striae formed however was still a mystery how dust behaves in a comet's tail is
exciting because comets are the leftover building blocks of the solar system by watching the material clump and fragment
in the tail we can gain insights into the same process that forms dust into planets moons or asteroids
in 2007 researchers were able to capture images of comet mcnaught with nasa and
esa's soho and stereo spacecraft today researchers are introducing the latest
step in analyzing footage like this a new image mapping technique
when the technique is applied it seamlessly combines perspectives from multiple spacecraft giving us a clearer
picture of how the dust trail changes over time in the processed footage we see the new
striae form their alignment relative to the sun indicates that the star might play a
role in striae formation as well as fragmentation we can also see how the clean lines are
disrupted when the comet crosses the current sheet the boundary where the solar wind's magnetic field changes orientation
notice how the defined lines become broken this tells us that the dust is charged
and the characteristic lines of the magnetic field in the solar system are affecting it
scientists can use the new processing tool to study dust behavior in other comets
when it comes to learning how comets can teach us about our origins we've only just caught this by the tail
[Music]
[Music]
it's your turn scotty i think you're off back
here we go how are you guys doing anyways uh scott roberts here and this
is the 54th global star party and uh i was reading something sorry guys um
but uh this this uh this particular global star parties about the impact of comets and
you know i mean maybe very obviously we can think about comets smashing into things but
comets have been impacting humanity for thousands of years and um
it is something that um uh that a lot of amateur astronomers can point to as kind of like the inspiration
for why they go out and observe every chance that they can you know so
um you know i can't tell you how many people got started because of halley's comet or hill bop or
going back before hallie's comment like comet west or um you know ikea sikhi um
uh you know uh many comments that that have been uh
visible and observed and uh uh you know and there's more to come of course so uh they are incredible uh
incredibly beautiful when they're bright and make these uh huge tails but they're also very
interesting to watch even if they're small and you need some aperture to to
check them out because these things are moving across our solar system they're icebergs of primordial ice and dust you
know the leftovers are maybe the beginnings of our solar system and uh you know all frozen up and uh
in in those uh icebergs and so um you know and i remember also uh
giving lectures about hallie's comet and i kind of focused on how
people thought of halley's comet in 1910 there were people buying comet pills and they were buying gas
masks and they were because they had they had taken spectra of halley's comet and
found cyanogen gas in the tail and we were the comet came so close that
we were the orbit of the earth was supposed to pass through the tail and there were people thinking well
maybe we'll all die okay as the as the dust and gas
enters into our atmosphere but somehow we all made it and um
and you know i got to see it uh of course in 85 and 86 with a bunch of other people but i got to meet people
that remembered it from 1910 and that was really that was amazing so
um i am um uh i'm pleased to uh
present uh david levy i think all of us here are very excited you know we we
have david at every global star party but you know this is uh an opportunity for
david to really talk about comments something he's devoted most of his life to
and he's going to have a discussion group with us after we run through some talks
here so i will um i'll pass this over to david
well thanks scotty and it's a pleasure to be here tonight my reading of a discussion about comments
is going to happen a little bit later for now i'm just going to do the uh the weekly quotation
and because we are talking about comments i really had to look very hard for my magic book
to find a poem that doesn't have comments in it and i did and it's a very famous canadian poem
called the cremation of sam mcgee and i know that all the canadians in the
audience started laughing and smiling right now because they all know and a lot of the
others don't just what a wonderful story this is about um
about this person who um went up who was from um
who was going on this expedition and that's about sam mcgee who was of
course born in tennessee and he went up to uh to search for gold
but he couldn't handle the weather and he knew he was going to die and he made the
speaker of the poem promised that if he died that he must cremate
the remains of sam mcgee and uh the speaker agreed to do that the next day the cold was too much
and assembly passed away and there he's taking it and it's just a horrible
thing he's having the remains of sam mcgee in his uh on his sled
and they finally find a ship of a boat that was
sitting there crushed and destroyed in the ice but a place where he thought he could
build a crematorium and i'm going to pick up in the last couple of stanzas of this poem
i did not know how long in the snow i wrestled with grisly fear but the stars came out and they danced
about here again i ventured near i was sick with dread but i bravely said
i'll just take a look inside i guess he's cooked
but it's time i looked and the door i opened wide and there sat sandwiching cool and calm
in the heart of the furnace roar and he wore a smile you could see a mile and he said please close that door
it's fine in here but i greatly hear you let in the cold and storm since i left plum tree down in tennessee
it's the first time i've been born there are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who boil for
gold the arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run
cold the northern lights have seen queer sites but the queerest they ever did see
was that night on the marge of lac la barge i created sam thank you
back to you now scotty you know very cool very cool okay all right so um
uh we are uh we're going to move up our schedule a little bit here um our next
um person will be on will be uh john goss and uh john uh is uh with the
astronomical league he uh how many times have you been president john
ten times
uh no no i was president for two terms two terms okay yeah there's there's there's several two-term presidents i
think for the astronomical league so um so it's uh i i remember uh
uh being there with you on stage and uh um you know
announcing uh uh national young astronomers awards and um
uh john i think that you did a great job uh you were you're a uh certainly a leader of the uh of the league and uh
powerhouse and um uh you know driving force in amateur astronomy and uh so it was it was
it was an honor you know i i i've a couple of times i was a little nervous you know i'm sitting there in my suit
i have one time in particular in which we were at an alcon in um charlie bolden the uh nasa administrator
that the top guy announced was our speaker he was there right and i was pretty nervous and and and you
were saying no no just just calm down this guy is like everybody else
yeah he really was pretty he was he was i mean i mean you meet people that are brilliant and do these amazing things
but um uh you know and it's not easy sometimes when you're around some someone that you
admire so much to just be yourself but that's the way they want you to be you know
charlie and i had a really nice talk about uh why why we like ranch dressing on our salad so that kind of smooth
he was a very nice man he's like everybody else yeah yes he is yes he is
yeah except he ran nasa for a while so
all right so uh what will happen is um you know the astronomical league comes on every
week uh to do door prizes uh during the global star party um
and they uh they set up the questions and uh give out the
answers and they give you a chance to win some valuable door prizes they also
um you know touch on uh you know uh solar safety and uh what the league has
to offer you know for if if you were to join as a member so i'm going to turn this over to you john
and um thanks for uh taking on the role this week
already see if i can find it
is this uh being broadcast my uh slideshow yes it will be when you when you share
it well i thought i was sharing it okay let me try again then
ah there it is there we go okay okay so
not to outdo anybody here but this is my lame attempt at poetry
poetry about comets as you might remember last summer we had a very special one
last summer surprise a wispy snowball named neowise surprises
in mid and clear mid-summer skies morning in auriga evening below ursa a wonder in our
excited eyes um you know neowise wasn't a stunning comment but it
was certainly the best one we we had in quite a while so it captured a lot of people's imagination we were like very
very very lucky to have it um let me move along though and
talk to you a little bit about al khan this is just just going to take him a minute here uh some of the speakers on
tonight's show we are scheduled to be at our all khan convention in ark
david dyker and david levy evidently you have to be named david to be in it but that's the way it goes that's what i got
we have a whole a whole bunch of speakers
what's that but uh okay well you uh we have a number of
speakers uh spread throughout three days and in that time we'll have a lot of
door prizes a lot of awards uh if you've been to an alcon before you know know the routine it'll be a lot
like that so it should be pretty informative for us but uh some of our our major speakers if i can
see here uh uh dr jocelyn bell bernal who is somebody in is in my mind is is
the pulsar person she's the one who was at the very beginning who identified these things
understood them or tried to understand them and uh made a lot of advancements so we're very lucky to have her speak
all the way from the uk of course david eicher uh david levy uh we will also be
having uh kelly beatty so we don't want to have david eicher just out there by himself
we're going to bring in kelly beatty as well and and a number numbered
excuse me a number of other people um we hope to have a virtual tour of the very large array which is always a
pretty cool pretty cool place to go espec if you've been there in person you'll it's a place that you will never ever forget
but this is coming up in august august 19th to the 21st uh it's free but you do have to register
and registration is easy and i know because i registered today and it took like 30 seconds to register all we
really want is your name and email address and uh then you're in you're cool
so uh go ahead and think about attending oh and one more thing it'll be broadcast
um globally and there's gonna be a global star party that night
so on the saturday night of alcon uh grand prizes are
for our door prize will be the uh thanks to explorer scientific and scott thank you for uh max the top cast green 127.
uh we will be having binoculars uh we'll be having a whole lot of gift certificates and many things to do with
the astrophotography books sky guides a lot of discounts um
anyway it'll be worth your time tuning in and you might even learn a thing or two and i might learn a thing or two as
well well i'd like to start off this door price section here
for it for tonight uh we'd like to start out generally by reminding people on the hazards of looking at the sun
although none of our three questions really have much to do with the sun tonight but still uh we want to make
sure that people understand about the hazards of going uh looking at the sun through optical equipment got to have
the right type of equip uh filters got to make sure they're at the front end of the telescope not really fitted over the
eyepiece um pretty clear stuff that we we say all
the time um so and looking at the sun is is very very recording you know we do
have a solar eclipse coming up in another just under three years um so what we're going to be seeing are
a lot of solar glasses out there um but you don't want to use solar glasses when you're using a telescope that's
that's no no solar glasses are just meant for the united eye or you can wear your typical prescription glasses but
they're just essentially super sunglasses specially made to look at the sun
okay we like to go over the uh answers from the last star party which is a week ago
we had three questions question number one where does here am i saying we didn't talk about the sun this time but uh why does this
total solar eclipse not occur at each new moon well it turned out it can be answered
number one uh it's because the moon's orbit is tilted just over five degrees relative to the earth's orbit around the
sun so that means that at certain certain new moons the moon passes above
the sun along its path or below it once in a while though it occurs right
smack on the sun and that's when we have a solar eclipse total solar eclipse
question number two how close to earth is the aurora borealis
uh it's interesting i've never really thought of it like this but actually it's not far at all it's probably uh closer to you if it's
overhead it's closer to you than it is uh probably closer to your next major city from where you live
usually it appears about 50 miles above the earth's surface that's that's not that far right pretty close yeah you
know if you drove a car up there it just wouldn't even take an hour to get there to where these things occur
question number three um this is a good one this time of year when you're pointing things out to the
public to make sure that you know this because this is a great sky mark
to help people find themselves around uh find the way around the summer sky what are the three defining
stars of the summer triangle asterism okay well that would be the stars vega which
would be the brightest deneb which would be the farthest and alter which is the southernmost of the three
that's number three okay so we have the winners for this week which will be added to the door prize drawing
i'll read the names off quickly if i can pronounce them we'll see barbara harris josh kovach cameron gillis
israel monte on andrew corkill norm hughes adrian bradley who's
on our screen right over there ia adrian and uh conor richards which is also on
screen someplace so we have you guys here uh so those are the the winners who uh from last week it
will be uh entered into the next drawing questions for this week though i'll try
to make this not not too long or too painful uh please send your answers to the
secretary at astronomically.org don't send them to me don't send them to scott they go right
to our secretary at astrology.org and then uh you'll be entered into next week's hours
this week's drawing did i say that right scott i think i did you said it right yeah right all right
you're getting big trouble of ours question number one you know i i like uh pointing some
things out that um tonight
that's right tonight right now we are one week shy of two years after the 50th
anniversary of apollo 11. so we're pretty close to the 52nd anniversary of apollo 11. but at the end of this month
will be the the 50th anniversary of apollo 15.
so remember the moon landings just didn't end at apollo 11. they kept going for uh two to three years after that so
you know we're into the apollo 15 time so the question is uh which of these mission highlights was not part of
apollo 15. so you get your book out and started seeing what was going on back then a
establishing tranquility base okay b use of the first
lunar rover c the feather and hammer drop physics demonstration
so if if you want oh another thing if you want to really relive how the moon looked in the sky during those times at
the end of july observe it on the evening of july 18th and on the following two nights that would be the
approximate phase that the moon was in when apollo 15 touched down and while the astronauts were there for
a couple of days three or three days but if you want to telescopically observe the area that the best time the
best day to see it uh to see this region where apollo 15 was would be july 16th
at about 9 00 pm uh july 17th at work also so if you really want to take a good
look at the moon try one of those two nights and you'll be able to see the area in all the uh excuse me
geographic features that the moon that that they uh excuse me examined so that's question
number one which one of those those three was not part of apollo 15
question number two which i i always ask one because i like people to think about where we are in the actual solar system
right now things change which of these uh major bodies of the solar system is closest to earth tonight
so right now essentially and of course i got my lame drawing there of the earth off to the side but
you get the idea is it a is the sun the closest b mercury c
venus d morse it's always one of those four so which which one is it uh for tonight that the
earth is closest to question number three
okay on the evening of july 18th the moon hangs to the left of what wide
double star it will make an interesting site binoculars this star is a member of the astronomic
league's double star observing program it's it's worth your time to take a look at this
uh and to show your friends and neighbors because it's something that they can actually view through binoculars
is the name of the star antares uh is it b uh
that sounds right i've heard it pronounced before yes subanalysis
making kind of groovy okay trying to make fun of this
or our numbers or letter c uh spica one of those three antares zubanel janubi or
spica um well the question is is spica pronounced spica or spika
i think i've heard both it's kind of hard to say sometimes um now adrian i think you're up in michigan
i i don't i don't know how what the preference is up there but um
tomatoes and there's tomatoes yeah yeah speaking of spica so
uh that's it that's that's what i have and uh we won't be here next month simply
because we got alcon going on so all our people will be focused their efforts on getting that underway but we will be
back in september september 17th for the next global star party with the astronomical league live
um number nine okay yeah that's for number nine
astronomical league live nine that would be great wonderful thank you very much john
um uh we are um now going to
uh switch back uh to uh to david levy uh he
had a great idea about having a discussion about comets and
i love it and so who better you know it's it's like learning how to box with muhammad ali i
mean you know so this is this is uh it doesn't get any better than this
so you guys in the audience if you have questions about comments okay you want to
try to stay on topic about this but uh um you know i will ask your questions as
the discussion rolls along but i'm going to turn it over to david so david thank you so much for doing
this this is wonderful thanks scotty this is my pleasure
the most important moment of my professional life
took place at palomar observatory at the bottom floor of the 18-inch
telescope on march the 25th 1992
two nights earlier we had taken some pictures using the film that wasn't really very good
of an area of the sky near jupiter and on that afternoon i was
i was sitting at the at the desk in in the room there
carolyn was scanning uh with the stereo microscope and jean
shoemaker was sitting on a chair reading time magazine
when carolyn stopped looked up and said i don't know what i've got
but it looks like a squashed comet and whatever a squash comment looked
like gina and i wanted to see it and so carolyn got out of the chair and
jean went down and uh sat down and carolyn was near me and i said i
looked at her and i said you're joking aren't you and she looked at me and she said no no
and gene then looked towards me with an expression of unbelievable bafflement
that i'd never seen before and then i decided to take i i had to
take a look at it myself to see this line of comets each one with
the tail going up and the bar joining them all and extending off either side
that was the discovery of coming out to comet and later became known as shinai currently b9
i've made two two good decisions in my lifetime
the first one beyond the shadow of the doubt was meeting and marrying wendy
and since wendy is sitting over here she knows that i would say that
and i better say that because i can't wait to stay married to wendy and i'm very pleased about that
but the second most important decision i made in my life was a decision to start searching for
comments on december the 17th 1965
and i'm still doing that now i my last visual discovery
was on the 2nd of october and early in the morning 2006
and uh that's the most recent discovery i've made about
all 1200 hours of visual searching since then and uh it's been
it's been a real real pleasure when
one of all the comments that i've discovered by far the most important one has got to be shoemakerly
it was not that bright it was certainly was no hail but it was no halley's comet
but it was the first time that a comet actually gave humanity a
lesson on comet impacts on what happens when a comet collides
with a planet on what happens to the planet and what happens to the
comet when a comet collides with a planet this was really something with
everything going on in the world you can imagine right now we have an awful lot going on
in the world but there's always a lot there's always bad news good news mostly bad news
things happening in the world but on that one week
we paused for just a moment to witness the wonderful
story of two solar system objects colliding with each other
this has happened in the story of the history of the solar system this has
been commonplace if you want proof look at the moon
all more almost all the craters you see on the moon are impact craters
the results of mostly comets and occasional asteroid impacts
the earth has a lot of impact craters on it including a very large one
just off the coast of the yucatan peninsula and that was made in about 15 seconds
by the collision of a probable comet
with the earth 65 million years ago and the brontosaurus and the
tyrannosaurus rex were looking for their telescopes and they had their little laptops open trying to record everything
and take pictures and trying to connect their new telescopes to the computers and everything
well maybe they didn't i don't know if the dinosaurs knew how to use laptops but they sure
was were able to see that something really big was happening in the sky
and they must have known it was big because shortly after that they perished in fact
95 of all the species of life not the individuals but the species of
life then living on the earth were wiped out
as a result of that comet impact is that going to happen again
yes is there any doubt about it no what we don't know is when that is going
to happen we have no idea no clue as to when that'll happen
the odds that each of us right here
kareem adrian scotty me um
cybella all of us the chances that each of us might get
clobbered by an incoming comet during our lifetime or probably about
one in twenty thousand so it feels something to cause you to lose sleep on sleepovers
but if you sort of add all that up with all the people living in the earth on the earth
and if you add all that up and average it into the math and everything it comes down to approximately a 50 50 chance
that some sort of comet will collide with the earth sometime in the next
hundred thousand years which is a long time
but it's not forever now that hundred thousand years could be any time it could be in the next five
minutes or it could be a hundred thousand years from now and um
i think the most important contribution that comet shoemaker leaving i made
was that it alerted the people of the earth the civilizations of the earth
to this possibility to this danger and for just a few days we paused
and we thought about the awesome unpredictability of the universe
and of what could happen in our solar system that was an incredible week
we were in washington i got to meet president clinton very briefly
i got to meet vice president al gore not so briefly we had quite a discussion about that
and uh he wasn't at all interested in talking about politics he wanted to talk about comments
and he told me that he lives he told me something that i did know is
that he lives on the grounds of the naval observatory what i didn't know was that a couple of
nights ago he said uh i went outside and i went to the
to the observatory and knocked on the door the astronomer there
opened the door and met me and i asked if it would be okay if you
showed me the impact spots to the telescope
and it turned out that al gore got to see the impact spots before i did and i was really pretty
glad to hear that but just two nights later i was part of a large group of people that assembled
at the naval observatory i stood in line to look at the impact spots from smri
and i got to the back of the line and as i stood people were pushing me closer to the front of the line and i kept on
fighting them and i said you know i don't want to be the first one i want to take my place in line
and i got up to a lady who was there and she said david you're
going to wait with me and we'll see that you'll see the impacts together that woman
was the astronomer vera reuben she was the uh at the time is
the scientific advisor to the president and uh someone who later won the bruce
medal of the astronomical society of the pacific really a very very
special special astronomer after whom an observatory in the
southern hemisphere is now named as the barrier observatory named now in her memory
this was a really very special thing but i wanted this to be a discussion and
after this brief introduction and personal view i'm going to open this now to all of you
to ask questions and just share discussions pictures and stories about comments
wonderful that was beautiful that was beautiful w i i especially appreciate it and i love
the uh the humility that you and the grace that you've uh
you know in your whole journey um you know uh this is not about fame or
anything this is about this is about the journey of discovery and sharing that
and what you've contributed to uh humanity is is fantastic giving everyone a glimpse
of um the the significance of
comets and um and uh you know and and showing the the impact they've had on
on life as we know it well thanks cameron
i remember one thing that happened the discovery itself this was before we
um knew what was going to happen with this online but the discovery itself was something
really unusual and i remember the day after
we reported it at the time i was writing a column in sky and telescope magazine
and uh i called my editor steve o'meara
and i left a message on his phone i said hi steve this is david i'm
calling you from palomar i need to talk with you and the phone rang again about maybe
five minutes later and it was steve and he said whenever you call me from palomar it's
got to be important and i told him about the discovery described it
and i told him i'd like to write one of my columns about about this discovery and he said no
and i said what do you mean no it's like home i want to write about this comment that i have to discover
and he said this thing is for the front of the book not the back of the book
you're going to write an article about your discovery that'll be in the front of the magazine
and that's what i ended up doing but at the time that's not what we we
didn't have any idea what was going to happen it was just an interesting comment at the time
we didn't know that it would uh turn out to be as important and as
interesting as it eventually turned out to be you know cam mentioned humility and i
can't imagine having discovered the comet with gene and carolyn and
the impact and wanting to see the impact marks and waiting in line and not like
not telling them who you are not saying like just waiting at the back of the line waiting your turn that's that's who you are it's just it's
amazing i've one of my first experiences with david was at west mount uh at summit circle
where we were sharing the night sky with the people he grew up with in west mount
and he just stood in line at the back and waited his turn to come to the front to say he was there he
we had no idea he was there until he showed up at the front well that was kind of fun and i i
enjoyed that line of course that way most of the people did recognize me and
as soon as they did they pushed me further to the front of the line until i bumped into pure reuben
but uh that was an interesting week i gotta tell you it was the highlight of my professional life
beyond the shadow of the day certainly not the highlight of my whole
life wendy but it was a highlight of my profession
and wendy we can attest to the fact that he says this even when you're not listening
yeah we all can that's true yeah i've seen david give a few lectures and uh he always gives
tribute to wendy when wendy's uh you know far away you know
so it's it's uh you know um wendy's had a huge impact on david's
life one of the uh real advantages of the cold wood thing
and zoom is that wendy is about maybe 15 feet away from me right now
and for all of these sessions she usually is and that's a real pleasure so
this is one of the real advantages of doing it this way yes that's right and i think that's the
that's the uh the interesting twist of this whole thing is i think it's being brought people uh closer together um
certainly in this community uh with families i think um people are
forced to face the reality of of of nature
and uh it's it's uh it's it's i think it's a wonderful thing uh there's some challenges obviously clearly
um but it's it's all part of our growing and and experience and so um
i think it's uh it will it will all work out in the end
i hope so and you know like john mentioned our our whole experience with covet last summer
was i i guess relieved by the fact that common mealwise was there we got to
share it with each other share it with the world and right now i know i'm getting facebook popping up the memories
you know one year ago and i'm just seeing all the pictures of neo eyes and it's just it's
we we started last summer really diving into zoom talking comments so it's kind
of nice right now towards hopefully the end of the pandemic time to be returning
to talk about comments it's it's just it's a nice full circle there yeah we maybe this uh large comment that
has been detected and um will be the harbinger of the end
we had neowise as sort of uh a messenger during the height of the
pandemic and i remember imaging it and um
people would come out and ask do you see the comments do you see the comment and um it would be twilight and those of us
that were um visual inexperienced visual astronomers
would look up and see the light from the comet right away and the general public struggled
um there were some concerns with um some of the general public at the time
masking was recommended everywhere and there are many in the general public
that didn't so we had to fight some of the contention and the concerns about
people coming up to you right to your face and going do you see it do you see it and saying well i do
but you might not but um once it got dark enough and then you could see the comet hanging there
um it lots of people were out um i remember
the dark sky park that we live near and um there were more cars there
than at a basketball game during normal times not only did the comet bring people out
nature itself the nature centers had cars parked all
the way down the street of whatever um metro park that we were in
um i was thinking is there a basketball game here or something but no it was people were looking for something to do
and they were getting back to nature neo-wise was the one of the things that really brought
people out people began to pay attention to the outdoors
some maybe because there was less chance of catching covet there but most reconnected for that brief period
and as states have opened up and you go to the nature centers now you don't see as many people the cars
it's back to empty or lots as people have gone back to their the restaurants
to bars and the places that they would rather socialize but for that for that brief time nature
was on display um one more quick story about hale bop
the even brighter comment it's a shame i wasn't doing photography at the time because when hale bob was out i was
flying in a plane towards arizona on the window side and i got a perfect view of that comet
we see it in the sky naked eye kind of like we did kneel wise you could see some of the tail
i was up in the sky and where it was dark i saw the entire thing
stretched out across the sky and just remember observing how much bigger that
tail really was and how large the comet itself looked and thinking yeah if that hits the earth
we're done um the fact that it was further away i don't recall those of you that are on
this call was it how how much further was it away in terms of um
earth moon distance i thought it was like a few a couple of times it wasn't even close it was not even
clone yeah so but yet it's it's stretched out i think i was looking
south and it stretched out the entire length of the you know from the southeast southwest it was the entire
length of the sky and that far away you know it's it's kind of
chilling to think well if something like that comes and hits us um
you worry that it'll split the planet in half the planet itself probably survives
we probably um either fly to the moon or the moon gets
caught up in it um it was a really big comment and um i just remember thinking that as i was on
that plane so it was about 31 million miles long
okay one thing that i'd like to say about uh adrian while we've got him here
is that uh he knows part of his beautiful astrophotography inspiration
to a dreadful picture that i took year number of years ago when i was in
brazil i was at a conference in brazil and uh staying in a hotel it was really
very nice but as i'm walking through the parking lot of the hotel
i looked up over the parking lot light
and saw the sun and crossed just sitting there in the uh in the sky
and i said i gotta get a picture of that and i set up my camera
put it on a tripod and turned it up and i got this horrible picture that shows the light and the reflection
of the light and this and the light amount of the light but on top of it all is the southern cross
and adrian still says that that was his inspiration to get into astrophotography
i'm really very sorry to hear that adrian [Laughter] well you could look at it this way
so the reason it was is that despite it being a picture and it's actually on my phone i was just looking forward to see
if i could share with the audience just what this picture was and i'll keep looking
but um it was the fact that you captured the starlight you know there it was the
southern cross something that i to this day haven't seen and um you know
cesar uh gets to see it all the time he wants to see the big difference you know i
take pictures of the big dipper because those in the southern hemisphere
you know we we have parts of the sky that we don't get to see each other but
i guess what was profound about it is that these stars you know look at the back of a picture
these stars are you know millions of they're light years away some millions of light years away
and yet you captured them on camera i could see them it was something that like most folks that
don't know enough about photography to begin with you don't know can't capture stars how do we do it um everyone wants
to keep the iso at 100 or you know whatever you know they do but once i saw capturing stars as possible it just lit
a fuse and um you know it's led to um it's led to being able to do so
or to capture stars now it's what i go after all the time um at some point i'll find a photo we'll
we'll let others uh recollect things but i'm going to look for that photo and if i find it i will share it
with you yes i'll share it with everybody i think everyone here i mean each of us many of us anyways i would
say have observed comments before so why don't we take turns here and tell about
our most amazing comet experience yeah mine's already done because that
was mine seeing hill popping an airplane so everyone else pretty cool experience yeah
okay tell us about it um so my mom and i we found this really high hill where we live
um and we had a telescope i think we actually used my dad's telescope so we set it up and um we got an amazing view
of it and i think we were i forget if we were able to attach the phone to the telescope to take pictures but it was
really cool to see the trail yeah well that's that's very interesting
and i hope that will inspire you maybe to go find and look at other comics this time goes by
and especially since you're just at the start of your life now and you know what many many years ahead of you oh
yeah and enjoy the night
who's next here uh well i'll go ahead and share all
right um so i've i've seen three comments so far in my observing career i remember the
first was very exciting uh comet johnson in 2016 with my telescope
and it kept progressing it was a small comet only 10th magnitude or so uh two years later i found comet where
tannin and binoculars i remember i was looking at sky safari or something like that and saw it was bright enough
and i ran outside with my binoculars in a beach chair and that was a spectacular view but that was all in preparation for
my best memory like many of ours of comet neo-wise i was working as a lifeguard last summer
and i had an early shift that morning it was starting at 5 30 or something like that i was opening the pool and i
thought all right i'll get up just an hour earlier and see what this comet's all about i'll get some binoculars uh three months prior i gotten into
astrophotography and i thought well there's a lot of buzz about it i'll see what it is and i went down to the end of
the street and i was looking around auriga and you know it was maybe 30 minutes before the sun came up so of course it's
very bright in the sky and i finally centered it in the binoculars and and there was no mistaking it it was
stunning i had a five degree field of view and the tail filled it up i had to say it was about six degrees long
and uh if i can share some images here i remember i was looking down the street
and um oh there you go that's that's according yes this was the view i saw and i i had only
been starting starting in astrophotography so i finally got it it was just below the trees and it's one of my favorite
shots to this day i saw the nucleus of the comet and i got some later on if i can uh
proceed forward i was experimenting with the iso here i'm in the the folder of images
and then i get this one you can see there's still a little bit of noise in it but again this was looking down the street and the nucleus is there
and the the tail very delicately curls up into this
you know winding fan kind of shape and just barely dissipates out it's very hard to see where but it's very
gentle and subtle but that that was a little bit what it looked like in the binoculars but as as
many of us as observers know it never does it justice it was beautiful and i knew i had to share that
with everybody um i love the cloud cutting across the table yeah that adds
to it yeah thank you i got lucky with the perfect conditions you know you don't always want clouds or
trees or twilight but it worked out to create a beautiful image that i remember firing that off you know
before i got to work i might have even shown up late that day if i'm guilty but i fired that off in text messages and
emails and and all my friends and family just i knew they had to see it and i was like look at the comment look at the
comment and and i had to be glowing for a week after that as i kept observing it um truly a remarkable memory
corner conor i don't blame you i i know that feeling and the of all the comments
that i've seen in my life the one that gave me that feeling what they all do
was uh karma yakitaki yeah not hellbop um yakitaki which was
the year before hillbop and uh the night that it was at its best i could see the head right near
polaris and i followed the tail all the way across the sky into corvus in the
southern hemisphere yeah and you know i reported that and uh
professional astronomer jpl said impossible uh the comet's tale if it were to be
that long in the sky would have had to stretch all the way out to jupiter which is impossible
anyway a couple of years later there was a report that the ulysses space probe
not not far from the orbit of jupiter had recorded
that it went through the edges of the tail of karma yakitaki
and the fellow wrote me back and said guess i was wrong i guess you did see what you saw i thought you saw it
never forgotten kyle was great it's awesome it's a small digression but i i wish by
now we would stop saying impossible we know better by now
the cosmos always surprises us you know there's um there's always something i remember sharing my weird tannin story
and it was a small eighth magnitude comet but whatever i was doing just dropped and i became an observer of the
night sky and you know dr levy it was it was very humbling to hear your story about just
waiting in line and waiting to see what was at the telescope with everybody else
it does kind of give you some perspective which is a really nice aspect of comets
well i think so thank you um i i feel
i feel that the idea of um going out and just seeing
a comet just proves that the solar system that the night sky
isn't static things move through the sky shooting stars fly through the air
um comets gracefully move and um
i like to make the difference between a meteor and a comet when you see a meteor it's like having a bunch of mcdonald's
you see a comet it's like having tea with the queen but i did want to share one story about
uh about uh mealwise last year there were actually some three
comets that all threatened to become very bright the first one i think was
atlas that was going to be the great comet and it was getting brighter and i was watching it through the telescope and
getting all excited and then it went poop it just got fainter and never did anything
and the second one was another one the name escapes me right now but it did the same thing at brighton to about
third or fourth magnitude a little too close to the sun to see and uh then just never never got anybody
better than that and i didn't see that one at all then came realized i thought well free
for three but that morning when i went outside the full moon is setting in the west
the sun the dawn is coming up in the east i had this pair of binoculars and i
could see capella just coming out and i just put the binoculars on capella
and just moved them slowly down to the horizon and suddenly there's this
just like you saw with this lovely tail and i practically jumped out of my skin
oh no wonder what this goes we have some comments and questions here
uh what what can you say about uh the pot the uh
the idea of comets bringing water and creating oceans on earth david what is
there any thank you for asking that question
um the answer i have before one word answer four letters it's john
c h n john is the simple scientific alphabet of life
carbon hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen
in halley's comet in 1986 they discovered one of the most
important discoveries made by durham halley with the spacecraft was they detected these shawn particles in alley
and uh from that you can think when a comet
collides with a planet that comets have collided with the earth in the past
they bring with them these simple elements of carbon hydrogen oxygen and
nitrogen and they kind of just sit there and they do nothing on the earth for
eons and neons and then gradually they become amino acids
and proteins and then after a very long time they can become rna
and even longer time dna
so i think gene shoemaker said it best when uh he said that we are the progeny
of comics if it weren't for comments in the earth we would probably not be having this
conversation excellent okay
excellent so caesar you must have seen some great comets in the southern hemisphere
yes was my first comment uh my sorry was not my first comment the
holly comet was um was bright but but the tail was in an
opposite direction to the earth and don't have tail
was in my my time of my military service i was in
santa cruz uh um the harley the holly comet was in
the sky and um like of course i was uh in the
optical repair department of of the
of the my military um i
i had the opportunity to to use a binocular in my words my my
my nights watching the sky more that
the things is anybody coming to attack of course i don't know and um halley was amazing because it was
a time where i started to see with binoculars in a
very dark sky the sky and my second comic was amazing because
it was the magnol in 2007 and
was amazing was unexpected for me because i in the sunset
was a very nice color in the sky but a little fine detail
but when the night came over maybe the maybe the inaugural
the the center the the comet properly was maybe
um invisible because was over the under the horizon but the day was so
big in the night and night sky um
in uh going to the um starting i think that they started to the south uh west
going to the to the right and the size of the tail
was like maybe 50 degrees
you know it's something like it's really um
something that is where you felt i felt
really little because the size of the tail of the magno was really impressive unfortunately i
don't have in this time my digital camera i took a picture with my analogy camera
um [Music] but you know it's impossible to describe when you see something
in the camera i see the pictures many pictures from the magnol from argentina
but anyone describe the impressive that you feel when you see it's i i think that
was like to see and memorial um south northern lights because
uh turn really really impressive um brighter that i imagined
uh i i could imagine it was really really easy to see uh very impressive in the
sky incredible yes well that is a really interesting
story it reminds me of my best view of halley's comet
in april 1986 from cuzco peru wow and uh
seeing it there was just wonderful you may remember that that was the night before the great klusko earthquake
in 1986. i remember the next day just sort of laying down for a nap and suddenly
the whole building started to shape as if it was going to fall oh my god wow wow
comet earthquake come on david that's right
that's right i can't believe that it's so too much too much experience in two
days i had a i have a a very short story about hallie's comment um
uh it was during a time when i was getting more and more more involved in
what i would call serious amateur astronomy i had a 13-inch dobsonian telescope
and i was taking groups out to go observe hallie's comment but there was one particular night
where they were saying this would be the best night to see the comet and
this is in southern california and on that night it clouded up and it started to rain and
i i just go well no matter what no matter what
i'm going out to try to see this comet and so i put my telescope my 13 inch
dobsonian on top of my car with surf racks it's raining okay my telescope is
really wet okay and i'm driving out to where i figure okay
i i'm going to drive out as far as i can trying to go more eastward
but it's still raining it's still raining it's still raining and i go forget it i'm gonna get my telescope off
my my vehicle i'm gonna set it up i'm gonna throw in my eyepiece my eyepiece is dripping wet there's water going
inside the eyepiece there's water all over the mirror okay and i point the telescope and drain the
water off a little bit and the clouds part just enough for me to see hallie's
comment for about five minutes did the angels start singing and music
started to play there were two other people with me
they could not believe they could not believe this happened and uh
no matter what yeah you need to go out and observe and this is this is why i'm sorry and
this is why you design ips prove what wonderful if you're right yeah good ones
easier we understand now everything about the expression
that's more common very cloudy night and the forecast was
for cloudy unfortunately it wasn't to see a comet but something similar has happened
um twice going out to dark sky park nothing but clouds everywhere
and um what hap what tends to happen is for a brief period the clouds clear and all of
the stars come out and when you're the only one there or you've got a couple other people there
there with you you almost feel like the clouds were parted just for you i mean there's a dark side sky park i'd
been to where it happened three times and for me you know i've got my the
milky way um recollections later really that's a clear sky yeah i will the clear sky
and i could see the trail the milky way in that sky um i think there was actually a comet during the winter
we had another comment and imaging ryan i actually catch the light
caught the light from that comment and it was in one of my pictures and that's when i said i wish i had better precision in my photo
so after that night i had gone to order the tracker that i use now so that
the fact you were out there anyways and doing it yeah that's what's really that's that was the important thing i
did find the picture uh before we let maxey talk about his comment experience
uh i found the picture that um david uh showed us at the university of
michigan and um inspired me to take photos that is the picture
no comments oh that's the southern cross up there i see it yeah
so what i did what i've done with your picture is um
let's see if i can yeah i zoomed in on the southern cross and yeah i've called this one david's
cross this photo right here and then you can see the colors of the stars that's all yeah
you did a better job than you thought you did david the color of each of these
uh stars and so that is uh
after you sent it to me i um so i cropped it out made that picture
and so now i keep that picture until i can make my own um hoping to have the cross
in the exact same orientation but with the milky way running by it that's my goal and if i can get down to
argentina at the right time that's what i'm going to go for so i got cesar you
and maxie i'll be giving you a call as soon as they uh clean up international travel any time
something uh sorry just a minute your story reminds me of something that happened to me
i think it was january the 5th or 6th 1987 was a cloudy rainy night
and i was finishing my one of my books i booked on variable stars it was eventually published by cambridge press
anyway as i was finishing it i noticed this clouds were thinning clear sky was coming
i set up the telescope and i went outside and discovered a comet
i went back inside to confirm it and then the clouds came in again and
when i realized that it was probably a new comment that i just seen
i looked outside i saw the pouring rain and i thought
god did i just discover a comet from that and i'll never forget that story so
even on a bad cloudy night yeah i don't know what nature has in store you never know that's right
right that's right okay
okay maxie well hi everyone has god
hello cesar adrian connell hey cameron
everyone uh well first of all i want to give a big thanks to scott to
[Music] let me be here it's a privilege to
to uh here here to david levy because
today i was talking with cecil a little bit and that's remind me when i was a young boy
the little boy when i was watching every time this corrichan energy and everything
and when i i was watching uh documentaries of cosmos and
and space i i remember i saw that a
moment that the the comet shoemaker levy 9 impacts of jupiter and i was
blowing my mind and every time they say this guy found this
a little comet and goes directly to to should be there and
it was amazing and then once the the years goes by and
i thought that i never going to
know to david leave it and now i'm here talking to him right you know
i i'm [Music] almost 32 years old and that was when i
was 11 10 years only so
basically it was a long time ago and that's a
another part of astronomy it goes and now obviously the
the internet the connections the virtuality uh and obviously the the
the gsp uh give me this privilege to to be here with
david and every one of you basically my experience with comets was uh
at the end of december in 2018 with the
47pm uh comment and i remember
that was passing by through the playlist and i want to i wanted to capture and see it
and in my backyard it was a little uh with the the bourgeois six it was
almost impossible uh i had my maxotope telescope
but i remember uh and only and i i went with my brother uh
thank you 10 kilometers away from the city and we have our binoculars and only my cell
phone with a simple tripod to get uh to start taking pictures to
the to this sky and try to find it with the binoculars
so with all the stars that we receive we see
this little um a cloud very thin
but with the with the core and that was our first time that we saw this
comment and obviously i can take some pictures with the
with the orion and everything but and also with the comet
and so i decided to do some uh every
uh for almost four days i found the the progress of the comet uh passing by
through the i don't i don't remember the the the star the stars but
i did some animation in that time and then in in fourth in
14th of december um we
um we met with a small group of a amigo
a astro friends argentina is a is a
a page from facebook and we met in mercedes in the observatory to
to watch it uh with the um [Music]
the um i don't remember the telescope it was 30
inches [Music]
telescope i don't remember cesar if you know [Music] are you are you hear me
hello yeah we are yes yes hello
yes can you hear us hello
yes we are we are here
i have some bad connections for now but
like i say we met in mercedes and we i remember was a jose
sanchez and mario he said i remember this guy with a
[Music]
only with his eyes without a go go through and everything
and obviously i can take some pictures with my that time
with my cellphone the mac of the 47p a werthannon
and i was shocked because uh i i see how
in sometimes moves it was very very fast and
and i did some animation of that movement and that was my first time with a comet
maybe it's it wasn't the whoa the the new was from the last year and i couldn't see it
either because from my latitude it was very very small
uh like you saw with that shade and everything but
i hope in this december i think it was the love joy maybe not
er could see a properly
very good so this is a little short story and this is my experience i had some experience last
year with a lemon and
another was another comet that i took from my house i tried
to figure out how to stack images to get to give pictures without have star
trails and to give the the singularity
stars and the the comet with that movement so it's a very
difficult procedure but you can do it because
it's maybe tricking the images so
that was a little positive side of the uh
the this virus that they gave us to be in our house so i can
those pictures i remember i woke up 4 a.m of the morning put my telescope outside and
it wasn't may i remember very very cold and i have to work
8 a.m but i was in my house so no it doesn't matter
i would still wake up but now if i have to do now i don't think so but
so basically this is my little story and i want to share it with you it's a good story it's great
and again david thank you and uh it's a pleasure to hear you and
to and i and it's a privilege to me to be with you in this gsp
feelings mutual thank you so much and i'm really pleased with the
level of the discussion here with comic stories and things there's a there's so
much even without the pictures there's so much memories and lovely
stories to talk about it's really fun yeah this is the impact of comets upon
us anyways there's a question here uh uh robert uh with space time with robert is
on watching and he says during outreach was anyone did you ever if you did outreach with
you know showing the comment did anyone uh uh coming up to the eyepiece
think that the comet was in our sky or did they think it was out in space
you know did they so this this was i wonder if he if he's asking this because he had an
experience like this uh he said how can someone tell without knowing about comets
that's a very good question i'm really not sure how to answer it but i'll try
okay we know that comets are brothers and sisters in our solar system family
and they go through space we know that and they except for one
orbit the sun and uh are visible in in in our sky
but we know that the moon is in space the planets are in space just like
jupiter and saturn were last december and you can see them a lot further apart now
but they are at the same time in our sky so that we can see them
and the beautiful thing about our solar system is that as i mentioned before
it teaches us that the sky is not static things happen
the moon moves a lot from night to night in fact it moves its own diameter about
once an hour it uh the the planets move slowly
through the sky some faster than others and uh
i mean if we were living a lot longer than we do we would actually see some of the nearby stars creep along a little
bit but but that's that's the great thing about looking at things we're looking into
space and of course the ending of your answer is that the earth itself where we're standing where we're walking where
we are sleeping is in space and uh so yeah
everything we can think about is in space and the best thing we can do about space
is that it's nothing there's nothing there it's a total absence of everything
except for everything i hope that sort of helps answer your questions
wonderful okay all right how about uh kareem uh
what what what is how did how did comets or a comet impact your life
well i have to uh i have to give an embarrassing story where
i was in grad school at the time of uh the bright comments of the mid 90s and
so i spent all my time working late nights at the computer and never really stepped
out and i was out of astrophysics at the time and that's away from astronomy so i didn't even realize how bop had passed
i was so immersed in my little specialized world of grad school that uh i didn't know what i missed until years
later when i saw pictures in magazines that i picked up and i realized that i missed such an amazing comment and so
when neowise was happening i did not want to miss a moment so i went out with the family i went out by
myself but one of the really neat things we did is in the city at one point it was really hard to see
neowise to the north to the naked eye but you could see it if you took a couple of pictures so my wife and i went up we went with
the telescope i set it up so we could just figure out exactly where it was then she set up a camera and we had the
family come and in discrete family units we walked them up to the camera and they
pointed to that space in the sky and we took pictures so you could see their faces you could see them pointing and
then with a mask we could pull out the comment and so we have a bunch of the family who had never seen a comet look
through the telescope see it for themselves and then point to it and that was that was a lot of fun oh that's cool
a memory for everyone yeah yeah i uh a comment that i wish i had
seen was comet west you know i didn't i didn't i was certainly interested in
uh the stars in space at that time but i didn't have anyone knowledgeable knowledgeable
enough to say or or to take me out to go observe this comet so yeah um
but i certainly made it up with a bunch of other comments so you know i do want to mention that when
like in teaching one of the really neat things that we've been talking about in class the last couple of years is
pulling out stories of ancient astronomy observations of comets and of different phenomena like
the supernova the crab nebula and uh you know 1054. but david have you had a
chance to see the silk atlas from china and the number of observations of haley's comet that are in chinese
astronomy writings it's incredible
yes [Music] in fact the some of the ancient silk
um paintings and engravings that come out of china and in fact the very earliest comment
recorded in history i believe was seen in china from china
about uh 1200 bc or so and uh that is approximately the time of
king david and did you know that every year at the passover seder
there is a quotation from scripture
that deals with a census that king david ordered in jerusalem an illidan census
and specifically says and the angel of the lord
held us hung like a sword over jerusalem and i believe that he's referring to that comic
and it's not every year to pass over satan oh i was wondering actually molly has
joined us and i'm wondering if molly has any uh comment stories that she would like to share with us
yeah actually and i'm going to show some of my pictures during my uh my segment
tonight um but i so i know a lot of a lot of people got
into amateur astronomy by seeing a comet i hear that story over and over again
either comment or like a solar eclipse um that was not the case for me and the
first i mean i saw some of uh some comments uh after i got into
astronomy uh that i imaged and in the eyepiece but uh neo-wise is really my
first naked eye visible comment um hellbot came through
uh when i was quite young uh
not in 1997 i was i was six so sorry everyone
um so i uh didn't you know was not paying attention to those things at that time and neither were my family
but um so for for neo-wise as i was out in san francisco and
i was looking for a place for it because you know it's quite low in the north so i was looking for a place that would have good visibility
uh for uh for it so i actually kind of scouted out on google
earth a spot to go to on uh like uh in in pinol because i was living
in berkeley and i went out there but like the area that i was trying to get to was closed
and um so i went up i ended up like in somebody's backyard at like an
apartment complex
you know it's like one of those like communal backyards so it wasn't like an individual person's backyard but i ended
up in somebody's backyard and through the trees i was able to see it naked eye like write it right at sunrise i was out
very early in the morning to try and do this and um uh
managed to snag a picture of it and then later later on uh when it was a little bit
higher in the sky i actually i went home during the pandemic to go camping with my parents
up in uh northeastern washington and that was up at quite a high latitude
compared to where i usually am at i was up at um like 40 probably about 49 degrees north
latitude so it's a lot higher in the sky and we were camping out at a dark sky site more or less out in the middle of
the uh kavel national forest up by canada and had a really nice view of it from up
there and i got some really nice shots that that i've i'll show in my in my segment tonight
um so yeah that's that's my confidence story though one and only naked eye
comment i have witnessed thus far uh and about i think it's the fifth
comment i've imaged but certainly the the best comment i've imaged
there was mike over ackers says in chat i was fortunate enough to photograph comet neowise over a line of
thunderstorms of the dozens of comets i've seen in photograph that was the most memorable
and i was able to um to get both the dust tail and the ion tail which which
was really cool um yeah and you could see it visually from from the darker
skies you could see both tails and it was really incredible it looked like it was just plunging toward the horizon
yeah oh that's great that's great
anyone else before we uh transition to uh sabella uh a very small thing about
me watching the comet in my military service in my words is that like
i i couldn't see the tail of the holly cup they had a comet
i tried to use my binoculars night visions
for the repair store because i i made my military service in 1985
[Music] okay um you had night vision binoculars
yes because where like we had the the the fragment or marinas were
in uh in 1982 in this time in this place in
they had a lot of militar uh equipment for repair and of course that i say okay
i need a uh a pair of of the of night vision binoculars you know like
like a google's that you put imagine the size that the heavy
thing that was in 1985 a binoculars military uh
for for night vision put like a helmet and me i was like a alien watching the
sky and in my world that you think that they're
they're not for to see the sky you need to to be searching something because
you're in a world and i remember that that young ditinium came with another soldier to change the
world and uh watching to me watching the sky like an alien or a
robot and he's saying what are you doing soldier
come on what's it um yeah i i i haven't though works and i i receive of course
a big uh explanation about the be careful you know with the
guards but i'm i was crazy like today in this time watching the sky
because i needed to see the detail to the comet but only i went it wasn't i
watched a more brilliant sky um you know all in green
uh with the with the grain and the noise of the
electronic things in the 1980s but you saw it
yeah sure no no i use i was a little crazy in my
military service i i know that's cool one thing i would like to say before we
transition i know i know the time is moving along but i would like i think it would be
wrong if we let this conversation go without me quoting this and i cannot find it
anywhere in my book although it's there somewhere so i'm just going to quote it from memory
these are the most important words i've ever read about comics it's from leslie c peltier's starlight nights
if you haven't read starlight nights turn off your computer
go to a store or a library get it and read it
here's the quote time has not lessened the age-old allure of the comets
in some ways their mystery has only deepened with the years at each return a comet brings with it
the questions which were asked when it was here before and as it rounds the sun and backs away toward the long slow
night of its uphelion it leaves behind with us those questions
still unanswered to hunt a speck of moving haze may seem
a strange pursuit but even though we failed the search is still rewarding
for no better way than become face to face night after night with such a wealth of
riches as old cruces never dreamed of
wow wow beautiful that's good memories beautiful amazing memories and beautiful
wow i'm grateful to to be here david it's it's a pleasure really really
yeah that's right i can say again that is david levy is one of my heroes
it's incredible i need to touch it's real i'm here
yeah pinch pinch yourself yeah yeah yes okay well that was wonderful i i think we
could go all night talking about comets and stories that we've that we have to share about this um
you know i know that uh uh you know it's the magnitude of how important
comets have been to uh to david uh really can't
it hasn't really been touched on in this conversation but uh david and i are
are pretty good friends and um he said once during the conversation he thinks that comets had saved his life and and i
agree with him you know i know that he is if you've read his book you know that he's been through
many highs but also some very lows and i think
that it was comments that uh um you know it kept inspiring david to keep
searching and to keep looking and uh so i you know i just wanted to say that
david before uh before we wound this up because it's um
your story is a very very very special one it's not just the discoveries it's
it's uh it's it's about the you know uh what it did to turn your life around so
well thank you scotty and uh even now i do not expect in this age of
computerized searches to ever find another comment but i'm still searching
because it's what i love to do out there under the night sky with the telescope
and searching just to see what there is when you stand up in line at a telescope
to look at something and you want to see the moon and you want to see the planets that's a beautiful thing the sky will be
a very good servant and show you what you want to see the way i do it the sky is the master i
have the telescope and i just say i'm going to go from here to there and whatever you want to show me i want
to see it and i let the sky decide what it wants to show me
very very yeah yeah that's really nice wonderful well i don't know um
i i was going to share some stuff but um it's probably not appropriate at this point so i think i think we can uh we
can move on it's very we have more time in this show
all right okay so we will david thank you again this is a big honor thank you
um and we have more comments from our our uh our chat that i'll read later but uh
i do want to transition over to sabella she's she's been uh up late and
she's recently back from space camp i know she's excited she has a presentation to show us and um
you know i'm glad that uh her father reminded me that she was just recently back so i'm glad that we were able to
get her on and uh sabella i'm going to turn it over to you yay um
so yeah i went to space camp it was really really fun and i just
um let me share my screen so i can actually show
sure oh okay can you guys see this okay yep yes okay
can you see the little red thing yeah yeah we see it spinning around that red comet yes
okay just making sure or electronics whatever it is so this is um it has like a bunch of
pictures of what i did at space camp um and there is a lot more that we did but
there weren't like photographers around to take pictures of us so only on the simulators they took pictures of us and
then the rest my dad took um so yeah
so i was on expedition 39 um i don't really know why they
it starts in may and there's not really like 39 weeks between may and the end of june so i don't know where they get
their numbers but um the airport there was amazing
um they had like all this nasa stuff on the walls and um this is in huntsville by the way
um fairly small airport but it was amazing i definitely felt like i was in rocket
town and then so i was put in habitat one
um and then i was put on level four which is like an all girls floor
um and then room 19. um it was a really fun room i think all
the rooms are designed the same i am not sure um but yeah the we had lockers and it was
really cool um and the shapes were actually the shapes of the habitats were very interesting
they were like circular inside
um so here's me trying on some of the stuff um this picture to the left here is all
the stuff that we got um uh yeah they just had a lot of cool
stuff there and a lot of stuff i would need to use on the trip like their t-shirts and stuff
um and then there's my flight suit i was gonna wear my flight suit to graduation
but we got we got the size really big so after the graduation was over and it
was like our last day of space camp we went to go get me a new one that was actually
an extra size bigger because i plan to go next year and i want to wear it next year
and you'll certainly grow so yes um and then this is
kind of what the room looks like this is like half of the room um this is my bed back here where she's
sitting there's like a wall because there's a bench right here um so i put my head behind the wall and
then i put like some towels and some blankets on the sides and it was just my own
little room so and then i had three other roommates and
it was really really fun to talk with them so this is where we went into to get all
signed up and make sure that they had my picture just in case if anything happened
um i think that's the guy who took the picture i do not remember
and then so this is where we wait for our team leaders to come pick us up
so we're just all waiting there and this is at the bottom floor
and then here's some cool pictures this is the saturn one rocket i believe yeah
um it was really tall it's too scale it's not an actual
rocket um but it's just a model these things are huge though
um then there's this really cool sign in the museum that says rocket city
so i had to have dad take a picture of that because that's what it's called
and then this is the big shuttle it's pathfinder called pathfinder never
actually went into space it was just a simulator simula simulator
um of what the real things would be and then this is
um one of the missiles i believe um verner von braun made i think
i'm pretty sure it's like a v2 yes i think that's what it's called then
um i was put in a team with other kids my age um and i got cepheus let me adjust my
microphone there we go um and we had 12 kids in our group
uh four boys and eight girls surprisingly so um and the patch was really cool
and my mom's gonna help me sew it on to my um
uniform thing very cool and then so this is the chair where it
makes you feel like you're doing a space walk like with when the one of the jet packs
um i look really tired it was like eight or nine o'clock at night when we did this
um but it was really fun our someone like swung us around
and we had to lean forward in order to move forward and it just felt really fun and we got
to um fix things on like this metal bar thing here they
were like switches and um we have to use like a wrench to tighten things
and then so this thing i forget what it's called i'm sorry
uh this thing makes you feel like you're spinning out of control in space except with gravity this time
um i've been in one of those they're so much fun yeah
um so you go upside down all around that's logan
he is one of their team leaders so um and while we're while we were on the
ride they asked us questions like what did we have to eat what did we eat or
like what's your favorite color um just because so that way we would focus
more on the questions rather than having the thought of throwing up all right
thankfully if you put your hands in the right spot you actually won't throw up but
just in case they ask you questions and then
so this is the one-sixth gravity chair it makes you feel like you're walking on the moon this was really really fun
and it was very hard to move forward like it took us so long to get across
and back um and funny story they didn't actually take a
picture of me doing this this is not actually me it looks like me so just one of our one of my friends
um but you have to like jump forward try running across and then do like a side
side jump i don't know what you would call that but
and then so we were put on a mission wasn't a real mission obviously but it
was a fake mission and so i was um mission 18 commander there were two
missions for our team 18 and mission 18 in mission 19 i was assigned as commander for the
first mission um which was when we started it was we were already on the moon base this is
obviously not on the moon but it's like supposed to represent like a moon based
thing this is my desk and we had to do experiments um we had like a day of training
and all went well it was really difficult at times because i had to fly the command module back
home and like 15 million buttons and then this is actually a real saturn
v 363 feet tall in this case long because
they laid it on its side um and it shows it
in its stages and it's literally like a real saturn v
i don't know if there's things inside it but um this is it didn't go into space
but it was i honestly forget what this one was used for it was just like a practice with
like towing it and moving it around or if they simulated the inside
and then this was my graduation they had the flags behind us you can
only see the aviation challenge um but they have like the space camp flags
then here's my certificate i also got some like wings to pin on to my
um i'm forgetting the name of it i'm just gonna call it uniform because i keep
forgetting um but it was really fun the only time it was the only time that we got to take
our masks off inside so it felt good and then i was really sad to go back
home because i really wanted to stay in touch with a lot of the friends that i met
but sadly like almost none of them had phones so i only got contacts of two
other kids um but hopefully we can meet again one day
um and then the sun was seeping through the clouds beautiful that was a huge voice crack
but it's pretty yes very beautiful and then here's a bonus where is the
shuttle so this the shuttle was like this when we went it was not on top it was
actually removed for renovation and this red iron rusty cage that you see down here
is actually the shuttle it's a skeleton of the shuttle oh wow yeah they took the
um shuttle down earlier in the year i think it was january um
then this is these are just uh pictures of it being lifted off they had to get a crane and everything
i'm still curious on how they took the wings off because they lifted it off without the wings so
and yeah wonderful now i i'm
one of the things i want to point out uh we
are now living in a time where you know there are uh you know branson has just gone up
with uh you know virgin galactic uh you know again you know another another
indication that uh more and more of us will be going into space and and
sabella i think that you probably are living in a generation where you're going to know if if you don't do it
yourself okay you're going to know people you're going to have friends that have gone into space this is you know we
now live i've said it before but we have people in space 24 7
365 days a year uh we have spacecraft all over the solar
system you know we don't just live on earth we don't just explore you know our world a lot of people just
kind of think of ourselves as uh humans that inhabit that are inhabitants of the
earth but we inhabit we inhabit space and um um
so you are you are uh certainly going to be of that generation uh your kid
sabella will it i think it will become commonplace uh for for your friends your your kids your
grandkids will will have visited space and uh you know so i think that you've taken important first steps to
understand what it's going to be like in the space environment uh some of the challenges of space and uh but what are
your what are your long-term goals for for uh for doing this i know you had a
you had a great time at space camp and i know it was fun but um yeah what do you what do you hope to
accomplish in your adult life um yeah so i hope to
have like a job that has at least something involved with nasa um whether it's like helping design the
rockets um or even just like designing new spacesuits
um or even going into space that would be amazing but i know right now there's a lot of there's still a lot of risks to
it um but yeah i just want to have something to do
with nasa yeah or space in general there might be like a new space program when i
like in my 20s and 30s sure sure well so bella thank you for um
for coming on and uh congratulations on graduating from space camp
so um thanks again we will uh we're going to take about a 10 minute break
so you can stretch your legs and get a coffee get a sandwich um and then we'll
come back libby libby is not uh uh here with us today
but she did send me a video from her uh from space camp as well it's a it's a
short video so i'll be playing that in uh in a few minutes so but um
uh uh we'll be back in about 10. oh it's great
people have been hunting for sun grazing comets well over 100 years but up to 1979 we only knew of less than
a dozen as of 2020 we have seen around 4 000 sun grazers
why did the number increase the answer lies along the route most sun grazers follow
in the late 1800s heinrich kreutz observed that a few recent comets traveling near the sun appeared to
follow the same orbit on this kreutz sun grazer path as we've come to call it it takes the comet
several hundred years to complete one loop around the sun while there are other orbits of sun grazers kreutz comets are the most
common all of the comets in this orbit came from a single comet that fell apart near the sun thousands of years ago as the
comet moved closer to the sun the ice binding it together evaporated breaking it into smaller pieces that the sun's
gravity pulled apart every time a comet comes around the kreutz path this can happen again
resulting in a new generation of comets it might sound like this would clutter the solar system full of comets but
that's not the case most of the new comets are small enough that they become completely vaporized as
they approach the sun there are more comets observed in the last few decades not because there are
more in the solar system but because we have better ways to see them when they are close to the sun
spotting a sun grazer from the ground is almost impossible because of the blinding sunlight
now spacecraft uniquely designed to look at the sun can block the brightest sunlight making the job a lot easier
since the joint esa nasa mission soho launched in 1995 it has shown us
thousands more comets than any tool before it with soho we can now see the smaller
fainter comets close to the sun just long enough to add them to our list of sun grazers before they vaporize
the spacecraft's data is available online so now anyone can discover a comet roughly 95 of these comets have
been found by amateur astronomers soho isn't the only sun observing
spacecraft to have surprised us with beautiful images of comets nasa's solar dynamics observatory has
spotted sun grazers too though less frequently than soho now that we can observe comets better
than ever who knows maybe you will spot the next sungrazer
[Music]
in the interest of filling dead air space who else is still on and just turned off
their camera
hey molly i'm here how are you doing good good how are you got your uh
your scope set up uh yet uh not yet um the telescope room is the last room i
had uh to unpack because i had to make space in the rest of the house
to move the other stuff out of it that a lot of my boxes weren't labeled very
well unfortunately so several ended up in there that didn't belong in there but i had to make room to move those out of
that room before i could start to move around my telescope stuff so i've got some stuff staged in the house and in
the garage ready to move outside um but it's either been blazing hot or dumping
rain for the last two weeks so uh they have not gone up yet but i i have
all of the bits and pieces to put them together um i just need to
find time to do that and also yeah find time to do it when the weather is is supportive
yeah it's kind of like one of those jigsaw puzzle things where you kind of move things and you have only one
exactly what i'm having to do yeah it's like uh um uh gridlock like lock that game yeah
exactly slide things around but uh at least you've got everything there it's good yes and yeah it will take time yeah it
looks like i've got everything and i'm i'm more unpacked than it looks like i am
uh there's still a lot of boxes laying around but um it's kind of the last bits and pieces that i haven't figured out
where to put yet so uh we're getting there cool that's great
have you have you um you you you haven't traveled since then
all right you were you were saying um or or are you are you still on the go or
um no i haven't i haven't gone on any trips um i am planning on going to
[Music] let's see what's coming up uh black forest star party is on my list to go to
but that's not until september if i recall um
the nebraska one is is pretty close by where you are now right um
i mean i guess so yeah well i'm thinking it's around a 13-hour trip
oh thank you yeah it's 15 for me
yeah was considering going to that for at least if nothing else pick a good night go
overnight and see what these dark skies are about but as you know okitex is the uh ultimate goal and
i am i'm shooting for a uh
i don't know if it's as well known but it's uh it's definitely a lofty target i'm hoping to image einstein's cross oh
that's that's on my list as well yeah once i once i get my um my long focal length stuff stable
enough to well i think i have crossed the threshold to
be able to probably do that at a dark sky site because i one of the one of the uh last with some
time within the last year when i went out to the dark sky site and i got out there and set up my gear and everything worked right off the bat
so i've gotten my my procedure down well enough now
that i'm facing fewer and fewer issues when i actually get out to the field and a lot of that is from
moving my entire setups like i have all my wires all of my cables are bundled
and the each telescope rig has its own power box and the neck gets plugged into
the extension cable and then uh the cables the usb cables i'll get plugged into one hub into one
of my two computers and so what i set up at home is now perfectly repeatable when i go out to a
dark sky site so that really lessens the amount of setup time
when i go out to a dark skysite and so the next time i go to the texas
star party i'm well situated to be able to start imaging the first night instead of the second night as has been my tradition in the past
having nicer mounts is a big part of why that's working um as opposed to uh
some of my previous mounts not working as well um
oh yeah the mounts are the centerpiece of reliability you absolutely need to
make sure that mount is good yeah between that and a good controller i've had the uh g11 low spin d mount which
i guess is supposed to be legendary for what it can do i had its old
drivers on it and it drifted terribly i had a friend help me put new motors on
it and he had a new control computer for it and now the mount is great you know i
connect it with sky safari i put my finger on the screen if i of
course good polar a lot or good alignment um usually three stars or so
and then i say go here and it goes there yeah and then i can yep i can adjust it
i adjust it a little bit as i go say you know make this an alignment point so if i especially if i shoot a
particular part of the sky it's just tap the button that's how i intend to get the einstein's cross is to
make to do my star alignment in the area so that it's very accurate there
and then once i've tested a few objects if they show up in the center um nearby then i'm going to go for it
and then try and get it into the uh center and why not why not plates off
that the good i know i don't i don't even have a good alignment model i just plates off my way to the target
[Laughter] well i don't know if i've the old stuff that i've got i don't know if i've got a
plate solver thing in it i do have eos backyard the later version that
i'd be using with the um oh yeah i think they have a plate solver in backyard eos now i think i think okay if they have
one or if they don't if they don't you can set up sharpcap to folder monitor
so you can take dslr shots and then sharpcap can read in the shot saved to your computer and it has a plate solver
and sequence generator pro will also uh work with
uh icon and kennedy okay yeah we'll talk more later on
five days and um i'm so excited to be here after eight long hours in the car
with my mom um passing through memphis and all that stuff it was fun to be on the road and now i'm
finally here tomorrow morning i'll be checking in really bright and early i'm so glad to meet new people um sadly i
won't be able to make it on this third party because i've i don't have a computer with me i can't really bring a
computer to cam because um there is no wi-fi but i did make this video just so i could share with you
guys what space camp looks like and right behind me warm which is just supposed to look like the international space station so
inside it is supposed to look like the international space station and this is where i'll be staying with a couple of
friends and get to learn about space and right around me we have pathfinder which
is the wooden model to help measure and we also have some more rockets which i'm so excited to see over the next five
days here after traveling in the road but hopefully the um after i get back i'll be able to join back onto the star
party i'll get to see you guys soon um have fun i found a star party i'll see
you guys soon i'll make sure to share all the experience
well that was uh libby and the stars out and also in huntsville and uh at uh space
camp so um it's uh
great to uh it's great to have her uh make a quick video for for us she while
she was uh while she was there she called me over the weekend and uh showed me one of the
saturn five mocked up uh you know rockets that's uh that's in
the uh i guess maybe they call it the rocket park or the rocket yard or whatever but it is the city of rockets
huntsville is a place i have not been to a place that definitely hates parking rockets what's that
rocket garden i think it's called bucket garden that's right right
so yeah i would have been oh my goodness as as a boy uh attending something like that i definitely would have been in
heaven but um uh up next here is um
uh molly wakeling molly uh
yeah sorry i had to switch screens here a little bit um okay yeah okay uh let me go ahead and share
my screen here get started um yeah so since we're talking about comets
i figured i would make tonight's uh shauna molly's universe segment about comet neowise and talk about a little
more about what it is and i mean we've all a lot of us i got a chance to see it
and we know about comets in general but this would be a good opportunity to learn about neowise in particular
yeah okay so uh it is a long period comment so um
there are some comets that can come from closer parts of the solar system and
come by on a much higher frequency like within
a lifetime or maybe two lifetimes or something but um this comic comes around
a lot less often than that uh it's the brightest northern hemisphere comet since hellbop in 97.
there was a bright comet in the southern hemisphere i think uh since i started to do an astrophotography and i was sad to
miss that i don't remember which what the name of the comment was but our southern hemisphere friends got a nice show
and uh neo-wise is not the actual name of the comet comets are named for the
discoverer of the comet most of the time and sometimes as an individual
and sometimes that is a survey so in this case it was a survey by the wildfield infrared survey explorer which
is a space telescope and the actual name of the comet is uh comet c
2020 f3 neo-wise which indicates that it was observed in 2020 is when it was
discovered and they have some kind of incremental naming system that i didn't go research for this talk but um
yeah so neois is kind of the short name but neowise is really the the kind of particular mission of the
wise space telescope might that be near earth object um yeah probably
although in this one you know the the actual comet actually i did come within some distance
of earth but um yeah uh so where where was it when it swung by this
is a a map of the sky showing its orbit from earth's perspective so
the uh you can see that in this part of it it
kind of had this really high frequency that moved really rapidly and that's when it was closer to us so it's moving a lot faster
through the night sky and um and you can kind of you can see his path
overlaid over a map of the sky here and a map of the milky way so when it
was brighter unfortunately it was mostly up during the daytime since this is kind of our
our winter sky over in this region we have orion and the winter milky way and leo so when it
was really bright it was up during the daytime and none of us could see it because again this was in july if you recall
so the winter sky is up during the daytime and then uh when we saw it at night it
was a lot dimmer than it really got in uh in in magnitude but we just couldn't see
it so but it was still got plenty bright enough for us to be able to see even during the nighttime hours or the early
morning or early evening as it were it's uh i couldn't find a picture of its
full orbit but you can kind of get a sense for how highly elliptical
this orbit is uh it came in pretty close to the sun here inside of
the orbit of mercury and then made its way back out of the solar system
and as far as where is it now there's a website that tracks comets and
kind of shows a cool 3d viewer that you can tilt and move around it's actually
not as far out as you might think it is it's it's still not uh despite the fact that it was almost a year ago
now that we saw it here near the earth it's still only out between the orbit of mars and jupiter
um because i once it gets on the on the long side of this orbit it's traveling slower from our perspective
and i think slower in general because it's not um close to the sun here
um but you can see where it swung by the earth and is on its way back out into the outer
regions of the solar system these are numbers that i pulled last night it's currently 459
million miles away from us and is traveling the numbers are printed twice here they
messed up their website code a little bit it was traveling at 27 and a half miles per second which is the second
wow crazy fast but then again this is falling
despite traveling that fast it's only got out between the orbit of mars and jupiter a year ago from from a year ago
so space is big space is big
all right so some fast facts its orbital period is approximately 6700
years so that's roughly how long it will take to make a complete orbit and come
back around to earth or to at least to uh around the sun again
so that's why it's called a long period comet because it's going to be a real long time before we see it again
uh at its furthest distance from the sun aphelion to 710 astronomical units so
way out past the planet solar system and that perihelion
it's at .295 astronomical units because you're unfamiliar with the unit of astronomical units that's the distance
from the earth to the sun and we kind of use it as a standard unit for measuring distances within the solar system-ish
type area so it comes pretty close to the sun a fraction of the distance from the earth
to the sun it was discovered on march 27 2020 again
by the uh wise telescope out in space and its brightest it was observed at
least his brightest that we observed here from earth it was observed being magnitude plus one which is quite bright
and the actual physical size of the comet has been determined to be about three miles wide
so like that's very small on astronomical scale kind of large if you imagine a chunk of rocks three miles
wide hurdling through space at and a half miles per second get out of the way
yeah and a cool fact that i found was um so comets are they have a lot of water and
that's a lot of what is ablating off of them when they're swinging around the
sun and being being heated by the sun's energy in this case the water content of this
three mile wide comet is 13 million olympic swimming pools
which is a really difficult amount of water to imagine um i didn't have time to go through and
compare like how does that compare to like the pacific ocean it's probably still a fraction of that
but it's a lot of water and there's some there's some theory
that um maybe at least some of the water that's on earth was was kind of seeded
by being struck by asteroids or comets that have high water content
so uh what are the parts and pieces of a comet so at the center is the actual rock
which is the nucleus which um usually like you know especially with
our amateur gear you're not going to be able to see that from within the bright glowing uh
coma and kind of the overall section of it that's that's referred to as the head apparently this this kind of bright area
here so the coma as you can see in this illustration is actually a lot larger are typically a lot larger than the
actual rock itself um and then uh off that you have the
dust tail which is um kind of the uh so in so these comments they're getting close to
the sun and so they're getting a lot more energy on their surface than they receive out
way out in like the oort cloud or the kuiper belt and so the uh and and
the solar wind is is uh removing some of the surface
material which is this dust trail and then there's the ion trail which uh has to do with um
with atom with the gases on the comet that are being ionized by the sun's
energy and sometimes depending on where the comet is in relation to the sun the
dust tail and the ion tail are in the same place because the dust tail um let's see i'm
gonna get this backwards one of the tails is exactly uh perpendicular to the sun
probably the ion tail and then the dust tail i think has some angular momentum component to it so it can kind of curve
off and this is one of my photos that i took with the 200 millimeter camera lens
and you can see the the dust tail is a lot a lot brighter but you can see the ion tail up over here heading off in a
slightly different direction by the time this picture was taken
so i was like to include a slide on what things look like in other wavelengths because
we as amateur astronomers we're always thinking of optical wavelengths but a lot of things out in space
can sometimes glow even more prominently on wavelengths that we can't see such as infrared or x-ray or ultraviolet
um for the in the case of comets there's not really a lot of non-optical light
emitted because it's really just this energy of the sun that's applying
energy to the comet which is typically going to be in the optical range but here's a couple of of interesting uh
ways to look at the comment so the picture on the graph on the left is um
and i realized i have my mouse on the wrong screen for the whole last slide uh the the algorithm the image on the left
is showing uh light reflected and emitted at the
sodium uh the sodium d line so uh if you're familiar at all with like high
pressure sodium city lights for instance there's a particular wavelength that they glow at
and it's actually two very narrowly spaced wavelengths at 589 nanometers which is in the yellow
region and the left part of this image is
looking off band so not looking at those exact wavelengths we're looking at reflected
sodium wavelength light and the picture on the right is looking at
emitted sodium wavelength light so in this case the emitted light is the comet has some sodium in it and
that sodium is being energized by the sun's energy and emitting light on a particular wavelength that we can see
and this plot is kind of showing the different concentrations of that and it's just kind of cool so it's still optical but at a very particular thing
kind of like a narrow band imaging with hydrogen and sulfur or oxygen in this case we're looking at sodium
and the picture on the right is the discovery image that was uh taken by uh
by the neowise project so um uh there's actually three images across across
three uh i think it's all in the same night it's within a couple hours of each other um
and so they just overlaid it to show the comet is moving over the course of that but this is an
infrared image kind of showing its its glow here and it was magnitude 18 when it was
discovered by the telescope so of course this image is quite grainy because it was quite dim
but uh so magnitude 18 is a little bit outside of what most amateur equipment
can grab but there are still a number of comments that are discovered by by amateurs which
is uh evidenced by when you have a telescope when you have a comic come through that has the name of a person
then it was discovered by a person and not a not a big project so um amateurs
still do discover comments because surveys can't pick up quite everything
uh so of course uh comet neowise is long gone now it's uh currently
the at the distance that it's at from us and from the sun more importantly
it's at 24.57 magnitude which is uh it's definitely outside of what i can image
that's pretty far outside of what i think pretty much any amateur telescope can grab
i think some of the professional ones can grab uh magnitudes that dim hubble certainly can
but this is that shot here that i took from the backyard of an apartment complex in
the wee hours of the morning looking out uh north of the san francisco bay area and
that was my first glimpse of the comet which was so exciting to see it naked eye like that was
that was the first time i saw a comet naked eye it was extremely cool that's great
um but uh you know so that comment neo wise is long gone but pay attention for the next comment a lot of times they'll
hear a news article saying you know this comet may get right because a lot of times we don't know we know it's orbit
pretty decently but it depends uh how bright it is will depend on
whether it's whether it breaks up when it goes by the sun how much gas and dust it's emitting
there's a lot of different factors and we don't always know their orbits very precisely especially when they're first
coming into our to our view so sometimes a comment is promised to be bright and ends up being pretty dim
and then there's a bit of a disappointment but it's always worth kind of keeping an eye on the news so
that you can catch the next bright comment yes and so this is probably the best image
that i got of it this is on the camping trip that i went with my parents my grandparents up in northeastern
washington it was quite dark up there estimated about portal 2 um
and this was uh yes it's not uh it doesn't at that latitude up at 49 or 50
degrees north it doesn't get fully dark during the summertime
so uh this glow you're seeing in the background is largely just because twilight doesn't really end
it's kind of in astronomical twilight most of the night but you can you can see even even by this point which was a
couple of days after the preview image i showed the um and this is a much wider
field of view you can really see the ion tail being at a different angles in the dust tail which is kind of curving off
uh which is really cool and got a nice foreground of some trees and some red flashlight here reflecting off the trees
my uh my parents and my grandma grandpa had uh a very nice time being able to
see that naked eye from a nice dark sky site and uh we just kind of
thought it was fun that i was taking pictures and what a treat it was during the
pandemic you know yes yeah and uh that was that camping trip was um
kind of the first time i got out of town after the pandemic started i drove up to washington that's when i um bought my
uh my new camper um which is i guess almost a year old now but we went camping that
weekend and then i bought my camper so awesome i really like those pictures um all
because they really capture the feeling uh you know the moment of of actually seeing that in a
you know it nicely framed you got the comment neo-wise you know for the first time uh you know both both the ones in the
bay area and of course in washington seeing that between the trees it's uh
really nice yep i can imagine what it was like yeah i think seeing it with with trees
in the foreground kind of makes it it gives you a sense of scale of how far out
the tail goes and of course my my camera could could see a little more of that than my eye could cause i was taking a
couple second long exposures there but um you could still see it naked eye
and it gives you sense of scale for how large these things appear on the sky and how long their tails must be
for the distance they're at from us which is you know relatively close but still not in the actual sky right um
that tail is is some number of many miles long very cool
yeah beautiful thank you beautiful okay well dt katam is um is on with us from
nepal and uh um she will be uh her talk is
going to be about comets so dt you're on
let's go there hello everyone and today i'm talking about the commerce and uh first of all from the short
introduction i have introduction and accommodate is that i said it's one solar system body when passing close to
the sun warm or in uh being to release gases and a process that is called
outgassing and this produce of invisible atmosphere and coma
are frozen left over from the from the formation of the solar system couples of
dust rocks and ices and they range from few miles to 10 of tens of miles wide
but as they orbit closer to the sun the heats up and is few gases and dust into
a blowing head that can be larger than a planet but those particles combine to form icy
rocks that join together under the form of uh gravity force of gravity and high
speed collisions result in loosely bounded cooler collection of fuse rock and swing ice
and when a comet pass through the inner solar system is ice warms and uh releasing a trail of gas
and dust and coming being a mix of ice and dust and end of
losing their ice and gas each time they orbit around the sun and they come to the cooper field an earth cloud and
after around 500 passes or they'll lose most of their ice and gas content
and eventually turn into something close to an asteroid and comet also have a big influence when they
collide with earth why collisions between earth and comets are currently extremely rare
millions of years ago it was more common some scientists argue argued that equality comets early in our development
contributed most of earth's water and collision with comets and other
stuff from space have been responsible for use landmark in our planet history
and global citizen shifts in climate the creation of our moon and the resolving of our deepest
geology and experiences of spices etc and i have some
presentation let me see
[Music]
all right conversation here i'm sorry video clips sorry
uh i like snowy dirt balls
um
me
it's
okay
it's a pretty good presentation um and i have one i have found uh one
point poem that's uh from the robot longley in uh about the comments
and it started like a day twinkle after after a warning pride it's a source of
order standing right amidst the night we pay them them small attention for they
are always there we go about our business with what a single care
but then there are comments bright and raising fast everyone takes notice even
if they do not last if worse people remember the dramatic burning light they stand out on the lens
cap and brighten up the night thank you he's so sweaty very good
i hope david was still listening to that because that was a great poem thank you thank you very much deepti
well we look for it dt we look forward to you being back on the next global star party uh our our next event will be
on july 20th and of course that is the anniversary of the moon landing and it's also the
anniversary i think of the viking one lander on mars something like that so
so there's uh there's lots to talk about um and uh it's always great to get your
perspective so thanks for putting that on well up next um uh is uh jason gonzale
uh jason um uh is uh really one of the top astrophotographers
uh around today and uh i'm constantly blown away and amazed by his his images
and i have seen a lot of astrophotography uh over the years by amateur astronomers
uh um you know often uh studying uh you know the best images
possible uh uh from amateur astronomers for use in catalogs and and just uh for my
own inspiration you know uh but uh i i'm constantly
when i want to show some of the the best stuff done today i i i often turn to jason's work so jason thanks for coming
on again thanks for having me thanks for the compliments i don't know but i hope you see my common images
maybe we'll we'll talk to you again but comments are triggered there you're tricky to photograph yeah yeah
they are um but i didn't i was largely quiet during that or completely quiet during that first segment because i
figured i'd get my chance to talk here about my experiences with comets but um you know i have largely the same
experiences that a lot of people on the panel do probably a lot in the audience too and
of the age where the only bright visible comets that i've experienced are
were hail bop and then now neowise last year but there seemed to have been a long drought of
a period of time where there was not really any visible comments available to us so it's exciting to see finally
uh getting some action on that front so i have a series of images i'll show
here um of just comments i've i've taken over the years
i started astrophotography roughly a decade ago and really
tried a couple early on common shots never
got too great of uh initial result but over time i've gotten a little bit better at capturing them and processing
them and then uh neo wise i really jumped on that opportunity as most people did
to try to get the most they could out of it unfortunately you know the weather is
always a factor and um struggle with that a bit in the neo-wise time frame
but i will share my screen here and start um
make sure that this is the screen i want okay can you see a screen
yes see a bunch of thumbnails yes we can so um here we go i'm going to start in
chronological order and this is kind of a cool one um
because this one was not captured by me this was actually taken by my father um
this is hail bob in 1997 taken from
the shore of maui actually from a hotel balcony looking out over
the ocean and that's a hill bomb up there in the sky so he took
this um like i said with a film camera canon 8u1
and all these years later you know um over 20 years later i found the box of
negatives and i was looking through him and i i noticed that here he said that he had
some shots of this so i was looking specifically for these shots but i ended up having one of neo-wise so i took that
negative and i held it up against the uh an overcast sky and i took my
modern digital camera and i just snapped a picture of the negative that took it into photoshop and inverted
it and voila we have we have a picture of
comet hillbop that was taken
i believe in early or late march of 1997.
so it's kind of a collaboration with my dad kinda cool beautiful
all right and then um i got an sct's telescope in
2013 and within a couple months i was already trying to take pictures off the back of
it so i knew of this comment in the sky it was comet ison
it's nomenclatures was the c-slash 2012 s1 icon
this comment i don't know if if anybody remembers this but this was one that um flew close too close to the sun
and uh ended up breaking up um in its past
you know around the sun and came out the other side in a million pieces and it was no more but it was uh
promised to be a pretty bright comet if it had survived this shot i took before it rounded the sun
and it just took a short string of exposures through my 8 inch sct and stack them up
and then it's tracked on the head of the cabinet so you can begin to see the tail behind
it and the stars stretch out in the streaks once you do that
was kind of my first comment attempt you know that was a nice green um
uh you know comet there i'm reading about it now it says if if a coma contains carbon nitrogen and
carbon-carbon bonds the sun's ultraviolet light will excite the electrons inside of it causing them to
emit a green glow when they drop down in energy yeah so you can tell a lot about a comet
you know by its its color signature and you know many times and this is the case
most often when they get close to the sun they will start to grow they will start to glow green around the
nucleus specifically and that's that um that carbon emission that's that you
talked about scott i don't i don't know the exact chemical properties that give rise to it but it's
pretty common thing to see in comments and
that's a great segue into my next image which is a wide field shot now this spans all the
way between the pleiades which is on the left and the california nebula on the right this was taken with a dslr
and this budge here is actually a kind of
you can see my mouse wow but what's unique about this comet
it's very small in this field of view because the field of view is is pretty big huge oh yeah but
this comet was growing a bright blue tail and there were a lot of
shots of this taken during this time frame i took this picture in 2018
and this kind of nucleus was rotating
very fast and creating a spiral in the tail so if you look at detailed
you know longer focal length images of this this kind of specifically it was a
really structured and complex almost helical tail coming off the back of this and it was bright blue because of the
presence of carbon monoxide like i said before you know those those different elements give rise to different colors
within the within the comet but this one was pretty unique you don't often see a bright blue
blue tail and i thought it framed nicely against the you know the blue of the pleiades here
yes probably one of the better wide field
comet images i've seen so yeah thanks
so we didn't talk too much in this whole comment discussion about um our interstellar visitors so we've had
two within the last few years discovered and those are the first two that we have known about i don't think
there's been one uh since this one i have pictured and this is um
was discovered in 2019 um the name borisov and this is an
infinite period comet which means it originated outside our solar system passed through the plane of our solar
system and went back out into the interstellar space and ever to be seen again unlike aluminum which was the first one
uh which didn't sport much of a tail this one did emit a tail um so they were able to research a
little bit more about the composition and um
i was working really hard to capture this it was extraordinarily dim
in the telescope and i didn't see anything in my single pictures or anything and after careful stacking and
i pulled some tricks on and um centering the comet in the in the
in the stacking routine i was able to at least show a fuzzy blob but that is uh my only picture of a
interstellar comet it was very rare
i don't think many people tried this because it never reached uh you know a brightness that was very accessible to amateur
telescopes but i i wanted it bad enough where i went through the steps to make it
happen all right and this is a um
this is a time lapse video now we're stepping forward to um 2019 uh comet atlas which i actually
captured in april of last year 2020 um but this comment was discovered in
2019 and this time lapse just shows the movement of the comet over a
[Music] couple hour time period see if this will play for you
oh this is cool i've got the field rotating too but this gives you an idea of the movement of a comet through the
sky over a period of time so again this is all um sequential
sub-exposures and then placed together in video format
so that's awesome
yeah how fast those things move through the sky so if you sit there and um you know you take a picture and then you
take a picture two hours later it's going to be a significant distance away from where
it started and that that's what presents the challenge to um comet photography and taking these
images because you've got not only the stars moving across the sky
but you've also got this comet moving relative to the stars so you need to handle them separately if you want to stack them to increase
the signal to noise and make the the tail more visible yeah that's what i did on this next shot
which is the same comment you can see that once you stack the image
separately for the stars and for the comet to keep everything um
the stacking in the right place geometrically on top of each other yeah it looks too light
it's really you begin to see them you can see the detail the nucleus the the
colors and you can see the tail extending extending away this one just had that dust tail uh not
not an ion tail like the um kind of near-wise hand
i believe now i'll step into oh no this is a so i took a few pictures of that
kind of atlas here's just another one
all right so we stepped forward now three months into uh
this exact day one year ago um this is comet neowise up here in the sky
and again i set a camera up on a fixed tripod and just time lapse this
i'll let this play
wow so this is as the sun is setting i've got the exposures rolling and as the sky
darkens then you you know the tail the comet begins to bloom you can see it and i'm
just playing it forward and backwards here boomeranging it a bit and then zooming in just so you can see
that very cool ah well done well done that's
really i like that really captured it nice well i think um
adrian might be the only person that knows this location but this was at kensington metro park yep
yeah this metro park is known more for wildlife and uh
birds but uh yeah this was the first time i saw a well-done image i think at the time i
only saw the image not the um the time lapse that you have but uh
but yeah it's uh yeah you tell them they allowed you to stay a little later because normally
they close the park get dark but um you were giving me uh i didn't tell them
i just stayed too much luck with the clothes
it was an experience you know i brought my daughter out there with me and um you know we got to watch this thing kind of
just appear out of the out of the dusk and um what was your daughter's reaction to
this oh yeah she she like i mean you know at first i'm like do you see it you see it i don't see anything you know but
but yeah i mean after uh once you saw it it was it was a good experience for her someone's glad to be able to do that and
um you know this kind of hooked me on it up until this point it was a morning
comet if you remember um actually if you're far enough north it was circumpolar which means it never
set but i was right um far enough north to where it just kind of kissed the horizon and then begins to
rise again in the dawn and um but it moves through the sky you know
over time and before these dates before
you know mid-july it was better to view it in the morning and then as it became later in july it
became more visible in the evening and so once i got this shot and and
got a little bit of practice in i got bounded and turned to get a better shot of it so
um this was three days later
i set up again with a little bit longer focal length trying to get
a view of this thing and lo and behold i ran it right into the roof of the house
so i um well
replay on this one and got out there in a different position and a little bit earlier
and um holy smokes look at that shot this this sequence now this was on the 17th
so a few days later and now you can actually even in the still you can see the ion tail right
that kind of sprouted within those last few days
and the um thing for me now as i was shooting
through all these thin clouds gives a cool look to the video but when you try to stack the images after it
turns into a nightmare
but i think this this shot or this is my favorite sequence from the the neowise
time frame just because you get this good view of the ion tail almost looks like real time right
because you're seeing the time lapse yeah just in these single frames
yeah it's so hard to imagine when you're observing these things through a telescope or photographing them that
the actual comet is tiny compared to what you are
photographing you know and you think that oh yeah i've got the head of the comet or but no the
the brightest part of it is still this gas and dust and and uh you probably
couldn't even resolve the actual comet itself you know because they're just a
few miles stay tuned stay tuned
this i'm backing up one but this is the stack of that video i just showed where i stacked the
comet and the stars separately this line here is the roof of the house which
got into the field of view a little bit but um sorry
but i had a lot of problems in post-processing this because of the clouds as i said
uh you know created streaking and color issues through the whole
image but at least you get a sense of the detail that's available once you stack these images
you can see you know striations in the in the dust tail itself and also in the in the ion tail
so as molly was saying the ion tail are it's a it's a stream of charged
particles that always points away from the sun whereas the dust tail follows the orbital motion
of the comet itself and kind of blooms out so you get these two different
directions that depending on the way the comet's moving it can be completely opposite in direction which is
strange
yeah so this is now with my eight-inch sct zoomed in on the head just the head
of the comet super you know 1500 millimeter focal length
shot of the head and you can start to see the beginnings of the ion tail
and the uh the striations and the dust coming off the the nucleus of the
comet that's one of the finest comet shots i've seen very nice
i i did this um long focal length thing a couple times trying to get
more detail um that was a hard endeavor and as time went by it got lower and lower
in the dust and ended up pretty much losing it in the dusk i can just show
the sequence i have here yeah because if there's enough motion in
that ion trail and the dust trail that is going to blur pretty quickly right so
you know that if you could yeah is this another animation yes this
is an animation of what you're looking at this is a longer photo shot
awesome so right cameron if you were to get good enough detail
you have a fast enough scope and a long enough focal length to really zoom in on the core of this thing
you'd be able to see actually streamers moving within the ion tail that's kind of what i was going for but i just
barely can't get it here oh that's so cool i think it's just you know like my
telescope isn't that fast it's shooting at f75
you know you really need you know quicker exposures get a lot of signal within a single exposure
these i was taking 30 second exposures on this and this looks like over the span
of a half hour of movement
impressive but this gives you an idea what the telescope sees
you know through the camera at long focal length these are what the single uh images look like and i'm
shooting with a monochrome camera which is why it's black and white
well jason you you come at a good time with the technology you're pushing the envelope and uh this
stuff would have been impossible to do before so this is uh this is really cool you're
you're pulling it together and this is this is really nifty well this this whole topic that
scott and you know david set up really got me in gear to go back and reprocess
these or at least look at these neo-wise shots again all right a lot of the stuff i sat on
especially like the ones where the clouds are moving through i was like oh you know it didn't really work out then i put that time lapse together and
i just put that time lapse together with that video literally 20 minutes ago it was the
first time i saw it and um i'm going to go back to it because i
like the way it turned out yeah i do too well that's what these shoes shows do
right i mean what what scott has done is he created a great forum and then like you say you
start to dust off the cobway webs and see what you can yeah
yeah so that's all i have for today and hope you enjoyed it you really enjoyed it it's great yeah
it's great right you comment outside right now i go look at it so
yeah you know one of the things i was considering doing for today
if the weather would have allowed it which it's not here but i wanted to um
you know get my scope set up and show how to find a comet
you know with a telescope if it's not visible to the to the naked eye
you know as far as getting the coordinates of it where to find those and then where to tell the telescope to point and
how to uh center it on the comet i think that would be a good demonstration but
couldn't make it work for today it's it's as usual it's cloudy
but um yeah it turns out this is a tuesday night it kind of reminds us
i have recently joined a group of really wonderful astrophotographers that
jason's a part of the plymouth astrophotography group and we all sit around and you know we
see we share each other's images and it's a really
it's a tight-knit community and we help you know we help each other out a lot
and one thing i've always admired about jason's work you know jason you do both the wide angle and the deep sky
astrophotos and do them pretty well i've settled on wide angle for the most
part but um at times deep sky astra photos have been something that i've always been
interested in and when it came to the comet i remember that we we were kind of
collectively learning um all of us in the group are kind of collectively learning how to shoot the
comet and try and present it in a few different ways and it was it was a fun adventure for us
all it took our minds off of uh what was going on with that pandemic and got us outdoors
using our equipment so it was uh it brought back memories of a fun time
of everyone um and i remember that last deep image of the comment we had a
couple of people who imaged the comet and got that sweeping tail
um there were a couple of uh there were a couple of uh i'll call them celebrity
astrophotographers that you know they're well known for doing their work and they were kind of the first to come out
with some of those larger those larger uh shots of the comet and
you know then all then most of us figured it out and and we watched as
that comet nucleus went from the color you've got it there to a br that bright
green from the carbon emission it's like it as it passed by us the nucleus changed
so it was um it was a fun comet and yeah your images and the same thing we say during the
plymouth fashion photography club the the images are spectacular but it's also evident how much time you
put in to go out and get them and that's uh to me is just as important
getting good data like this and then being able to process it
yeah well unfortunately you know processing it into a single image is pretty impossible when you have this
many clouds moving through but looking at this and i don't know if it's coming through on the video but you
can actually see the the comet moving you know if i put my mouse pointer over the uh the head of
the comet you can actually see it moving
yeah the the stars are stationary if i put my mouse over a star
the stars don't move because they're all registered together so yeah so this that you can actually see the
comment then moving away from the head of my pointer yeah well the strangest comments i've
seen was uh called iris iraqi alcott and it made
i guess our view of it was it was kind of like coming head on uh
towards us because it just had like this it was like the cloud was like the size of
maybe like the full moon it was huge and just in an hour you could see that it moved
significantly across the sky you know it's just really a beautiful a beautiful comet
very strange though did that one show up right before hale bop scott because
yeah i remember seeing something 80s yeah i remember seeing it and seeing
something in the sky and thinking ooh that's the comet but it i've always
wondered if i was just seeing a blocked full moon or not and yeah iris
was um designation was uh comet 1983 h1
uh in 1983 it made its closest known approach to earth of any comet in 200
years so it got really really close
it was uh about this is 0.0312 astronomical units
okay i may have been thinking of a different comet that i wasn't sure if i saw comet hyatt i think came
in or hitachi if that's how kataki oh yeah that was yeah yeah that's the one that came prior
to hail by but yeah huge tail and
yeah yeah like 96 or something you had higher take and then and then
out came hail bop with the huge tail and it was visible in the sky and
and then out came the movies armageddon and deep impact and um those two comments hillbop and
hayakataki i mean it was just uh it was just amazing to have two
incredibly bright comets you know like that uh just uh right next to each other it was
um i you know i remember seeing hill bop and seeing uh
you know i've seen illustrations where you know the the uh
technical artist or whatever made like what looked like shells inside of a comet head and i
thought that that was artistic license but it's not so i mean hillbop exhibited
that feature really well especially when you observed it through a telescope and the reason why is
because it had jets coming off and the comet was spinning so as the comet spun
these jets and material are coming up but then the solar wind would push it back and it would create these
shockwave type layers within the comet it was just beautiful
to look at uh high kataki probably i mean very special to me
because i took my two young daughters out and they still remember it to this day with the tail stretching halfway
across the sky you know it was beautiful yeah i made him get up in the middle of
the night and i said get up we got to see this you know so yeah it's gonna only to be out
outshined by a hail bop a few months later it would have been the it would have
been the comet up until neo wise here um but then you know hail bob for those
that saw it you know just how bright it was neo-wise did remind me of seeing hale bop but it
i remember somehow that hail bob just seemed a lot bigger
um in size but this was this was a wonderful reminder of it yeah um
i saw hill bob from the city of taipei taiwan which was incredibly light
polluted but you could see it yeah and i'm trying to remember another
comment maybe it was comet austin but i remember seeing uh the the bright head of the comet uh
you know just after sunset you know and uh so it's still daylight outside yeah
that's a very impressive picture borisov that's uh you know that yeah that yeah there's the
the hillbop uh there's hail bop right there i think that's what he was looking for yeah it
it just hung in the sky like that but like you're saying there there have been some bright comments you you you
were talking about the one you just saw i think you saw another one in taipei
um i saw him okay the hail bottle was the one you saw in taipei okay
yeah of course i said i saw it from california too and
so it was it was amazing it wasn't it was it wasn't hard to miss
so long too it was great yeah not even dark in that picture yeah
yeah that it reminds it reminded me of how when the comet finally became a night comet
you could spot it as twilight was leaving and then you had if you had a
low horizon you had maybe an hour to image it as it drifted below began to drift to the
horizon um to the north i thought that the uh that neo-wise was visible in the
southern hemisphere cesar and maxie but it wasn't it didn't get spectacular
until it crossed over the equator and showed up in the northern skies
where it was close enough for all these images yes normally lost a lot of bright um
but in the north of the country he was able to see it yes many many people take
pictures in the area of because argentina have the the
northeast uh latitude and i think that this
20 23 passing by the tree the tropic of capricorn oh
capricorn yes yes but from buenos aires you know when i said this is 35
very low um the bride was was uh
particularly fine not like like the worst part is when
we are watching and especially now with the social nets
is that we starting to to watch the pictures from from the north hemisphere
and we start to wait i'm trying to have something
come on don't don't use everything the comment yes don't take all the pictures
because yes it's like that whole comment for ourselves i mean that yeah yes
yes people from argentina new zealand chile and and australia
every time we we suffer that is come on let us something
for us yeah then we've seen it and then we go back to you and say you have the southern cross and ada karina
so we yeah we throw it back into yeah we throw it back into your faces
uh you you've got the centaurus a and omega centaur even though that rises
high enough yeah yes northern hemisphere yeah tonight i have some pictures of of
one star party in particular of 2013 that i remember that um
we we take some pictures singles picture of 30 seconds of the midi weights unfortunately i
don't have more than experience because i have pictures
[Music] i have very bad pictures for for comets
but i had more more strongest experience at the naked eyes
about comets but i i was amazed with the pictures of jason because at the end the time lapse
uh really i enjoyed and showed this this presentation yeah me too yeah please you
want to take the screenshot yeah i think that that it's okay you can use
all comment um because you you enjoy if the comment coming to southwest
fur and write less no problem because you enjoy and use
the comet life in a great way
yes this is this is uh thank you man thank you yeah
yes right very inspiring jason yeah
beautiful stuff i think we could just have a show of nothing but just image after image after
image of comments you know maybe i'll we'll do that sometime i'm tapped out now
[Laughter] very cool very cool
well uh let's see up next is um connell richards uh
connell uh as i recall you're 16 years old is that right i'm 18. 18. sorry okay sorry
that's a big difference between 16.
when you're 16 you think the guys that are 18 are really pretty old okay so yeah
and when you're 18 16 years like a kid right so yeah that's right yeah and uh yeah
when you're old guys like us you know that it seems different but never too old to
forget um the uh favorites when you're in college you
always have a favorite thing and for you you're learning the words we are penn state
oh yes yeah big ten big ten goes deep um i
still don't i'm still not sure i forgive you guys for coming into the league and kicking both our butts me and ours
and ohio state i graduated from michigan in 97. the first year penn state joined
a little bit of sports trivia penn state joined the league and then in 96. around the time of um
hail bob penn state was a powerhouse and uh flipping the big ten football scene beat everybody said we're in the big 10
now then things changed a little bit but we'll we won't go into that um
but uh but yeah that an iconic football team and
thanks to conal obviously an iconic school with um
with an iconic astronomy program so yeah that's my little wonderful my
little personal introduction big ten introduction to uh mcdonald's
thank you they do say uh well historically comets have been said to um
be harbingers of great things um both good and bad but i'm going to move us out into um
interstellar space actually can everyone see the presentation all right yes yes looks good let's put that up here
so we were talking earlier many of us tonight have mentioned uh comet
as a favorite observationally and you know a favorite comet that we photographed and shared with many others
but there are some interesting mysteries surrounding that comet so here's a beautiful image of it here
this was from one of nasa's a pods and it's got that bright green head
and then there's the streaming tail behind it it looks like there's a bit of an ion tail going straight back it's kind of
hard to you know pull them apart and then the dust tail uh pulling away slightly
but again it's a beautiful car look at the piece that's up at the top top left it looks like it's uh swooping in and uh
i'm just wondering if it's a piece of the comet that broke off or a section of the tail that's different
somehow i mean it looks different than a dust tail i do wonder it looks like ion tail
yeah in the upper left so like i said it is a bit of a
mysterious comet and we we start to to kind of look at this thing by looking at the orbit here
so we can see the earth is moving along in in this graphic here this was back from when the comet was flying along so
it's moving to the right here from our perspective but then the comet is moving around this way in fact comet hayakitaki
was in a retrograde orbit and you can also see it's highly inclined above the plane of the solar system so we have the
plane of the solar system stretching out and all the planets are there you know only
um differing by a couple of degrees from that point and then they're also orbiting all in
the same direction but not hayakataki it's coming around this way the opposite direction and at this very inclined
orbit now we do understand from many other comets that if you go beyond the kuiper
belt and into the oort cloud it becomes less of a disk and more of a sphere of
this original material from the solar system's formation all this ice and gas and dust
so it's not uncommon when you're so far away from the sun and the gravity is much weaker for collisions to bump
comets and put them in these really strange orbits to have them come around
now last i read comet hayakitaki's current period is about 70 000 years 10
times what we know for for neo-wise but anyway
like i said it's coming out of this orc cloud with this really strange orbit and it made this spectacular display in
our night sky but that wasn't the only thing it taught us so around that time in 1996 when it was
coming around there were some astronomers from jpl who took a look at the chemistry of it and they found that
methane or excuse me ethane was a compound commonly found in many comets but not in hayakataki it was
depleted or it was gone or it was never there and this led them to conclude that the comet may have been in fact in
an interstellar comet uh almost similar to amumua or borisov
now they recognize that many comets that we see in the night sky are many comets passing around from the kuiper belt
did have ethane and methane but the reason they said that hayakitaki did not
have these is that formed much farther out potentially in interstellar space where there was some greater concentration of material or from
another solar system where it could come by and become captured now the evidence for this comet being
interstellar is not as strong as something like borisov or or uh
where we saw it coming in on a hyperbolic trajectory way faster than any collision could have
bumped it towards the inner solar system but it is really compelling to think that there could be comets in our solar
system right now that have come from other stars and that have actually come to stay
so our next interesting target is the famous umua the great interstellar comet that came by and it
was the first we'd ever seen now as this was happening in 2017 and 18
we we commonly saw this cigar shape type of artist concept we were trying to look at the brightness
of the object and how it changed over time and how it rotated and it was sort of this pencil or cigar shape that we
came up with as a as a likely form for the comet
now also while observing this comet we noticed it was accelerating out of the solar system like some comets do with um
gases emitting and jets and things like that but we didn't pick up anything expect uh spectroscopically
you know a couple years went guy and uh we come to the modern day now uh just three years later and we've made a
number of interesting observations about this in addition to what we saw in the first place so now we suspect that comet
omuamua may have been not a comet at all actually something more like this pancake shaped chunk of nitrogen ice
from what we could call an exopluto now i have an image of pluto on the next
slide that we could go into a little bit more but the suggestion that this was more of a
pancake shape rather than a cigar shape came from looking at the object we realized it
could have been spinning edge on like we see some galaxies or some objects in the night sky and that it could have actually had this
format and that would have led us to conclude that it was made of nitrogen ice
much like some of these oceans on pluto so if you remember from 2015 when new horizons came and made its flyby we
found these vast and i call them oceans even though they are frozen these vast sort of chunks of liquid nitrogen that
had frozen on pluto's surface into the shapes like the famous heart or sputnik
planim down here and it is very possible that an object like pluto could have existed around
another star and that some impact we know these are common in the kuiper belt came and struck this dwarf planet
similar to pluto and blasted off this chunk of nitrogen ice now of course it would have gotten much
different in its composition as you would go deeper into the planet's crust so you would have a thin sheet that's
very wide and very long something like a pancake shape that could have represented what we saw with a muammua
now a lot of these observations you know we were trying to look at this comet from another solar system we were wondering
do comets change as they pass through interstellar space are other solar systems different and are we somehow
unique but it turns out with the passage of borisov we saw some beautiful images earlier of that comet coming by
that comet looked a lot like the ones we see from our solar system so we can make some really interesting
conclusions coming from uh borisov and hayakataki as i spoke about earlier
so first with borisov we can see that that comet was a lot like some of the ones that we find in
our own solar system so we can conclude that comets are common in the outer regions of other solar systems and i say
the outer region specifically because they are cold they haven't broken up they are still in that icy loose gravel
kind of form that we've that we've observed with many comets in fact that's why they break up so easily like uh
for something like shoemaker levy9 and we can also conclude based on the first inner interstellar asteroid that
we found is that these exoplutoes these dwarf planets orbiting other stars with these large seas of nitrogen ice
also exist and what that teaches us is that other solar systems as we've found have
planets and that they may also have dwarf planets similar to our own so as we're trying to pick apart these pieces
of the interstellar puzzle and figure out what other solar systems are like we're comparing and contrasting how ours
is unique and different so this is one commonality which is really interesting
to find is that you might call them the kuiper belts of other stars actually have their own
dwarf planets and their own comets and maybe even their own oort clouds so perhaps we're not so
unique as we may have thought before now also what hayakataki teaches us is
that comments do fly between interstellar space and if we found three of them as long as
we've been searching which you might call a couple decades or a couple of hundreds of years if you count the
visual comets that other observers picked up that's a very short time on the astronomical
span of things so if three comets have come in the time we've been searching the night sky then perhaps it's much
more common than we think and that comets do pass between stars and maybe some of them even come and stay like
hayakitaki does in this highly inclined retrograde orbit where it's moving very fast close to the
sun and very slow out towards it's it's uh apogee from the sun
so again these comets gives us give us a great sense of perspective and i'd like to close with some some images of my own
of neo-wise which is a much more typical comet nothing special nothing interstellar but beautiful nonetheless
now something interesting i learned about this is that the tail was about six degrees i saw that in my own
observations and heard that from many others i was using binoculars with a five degree field of view so they that
took me from maybe the nucleus at the bottom and some way up the tail perhaps the
pictures don't reveal all of it but that corresponds to a tail of about seven and a half million miles long
which is absolutely huge so it's really strange to think of these comets being huge structures
taking up significant portions of the solar system uh david levy said hikitaki's
dust particles spread from its the lowest point in its orbit near the sun and the earth all the way out to
jupiter but as huge as these structures are they are also very tenuous and thin
only the evaporated bits that come off of jets and come off of the ice as the comet sublimates
and as much as we like to observe these as much as we like to appreciate their beauty they do move out towards the
outer edges of the solar system and long period comets like neo-wise that come around every 7 000 years
they do get smaller so this next image here i took from a uh a state park nearby in pennsylvania
it's a beautiful one up in the northeast nice so we had a campfire glow down here and there's neois again
looking much smaller compared to the earlier image these are on about the same scale and it's kind of receding into the
summer sky there the first image you saw was taken on july 15th in the morning and this is when it swung around
into uh the evening skies ursa major and i can't pick out the
stars too well from here is kind of dangling up here i remember finding it just under the
um handle of the dipper or the the tail of the bear if you prefer
so the interstellar comets they are really fun to learn about but just like the comets in our own solar system they they
come and go uh quite quickly so we might as well stay and appreciate uh what we can learn
from them and what we can see wonderful i almost feel like i'm out camping right
there you know i can i can hear the uh i can hear the nocturnal sounds in that
uh photograph it's beautiful and they do say one of the great things about astrophotos is that um you know
anybody can look up a picture of what the comment looks like but um you know i remember the story with when
i was taking the image there's a campfire down here that's actually my cousin there in the bottom right i said you know wave your arms or make a pose
or something and we had some fun with it but but that was a really fun night and it and it's fun
to capture those images and share them with people along with the story that comes with them
yeah that's right that's right excellent excellent job connell thank you very much scott thank you
thank you okay all right um up next is uh adrian bradley adrian do
you have it do you have more to share with us tonight i do [Music]
um i was going to say for connell you have to end all of your presentations with we
are penn state oh everything's a penn state advertisement now
yeah it'll be it'll come that way give it like six months once i'm there yeah it you
you might um but no excellent presentation beautiful picture so
in uh in line with um jason gunzel's pictures and your pictures
my presentation is basically going to be just to share a few of the uh images that
um i always go back to this image images that you can take with a camera
um you can take pictures of blackbirds in flight and freeze them or you can find your
comet neowise photos and just kind of go through
the history of my the title of the presentation was milky way reflections so there will be
some milky way shots in the middle of these um the morning i decided to get up
and go see comet neo wise here um i do believe this was venus and then
the pleiades rising and i'm not a morning riser um the moon was out but then as uh
as morning began the rise i began to take some pictures
and there was the streak in the sky right here um
as dawn was beginning this is auriga over here
and there's that streak and i looked at it with my um binoculars
that i had and i took a few photos figured out some settings and
and then what you've got here my first there you go view of neo-wise from the dark sky
park so these things if it evolved as it as it uh
came out this is one of the yeah yeah this is one of the clear pictures yep
that was before neo-wise rounded the sun and i tried to take some close-ups
um there was a pinkish glow from the sun rising this is gonna it should focus here
anytime soon um if it doesn't we'll just move on but um
yeah it uh let's look at that one too yeah just trying to just trying to experiment and get some close-ups so
that was on the 9th and then in the light polluted skies of
my backyard well backyard area
i took a big camera 150 to 600 millimeter camera and pulled neo eyes out and these images
will probably not do it too much justice um
but yeah there we go trying to capture it in a light polluted zone and
this was what i got so those were
um images and then four days later i see neo eyes and this was my first
shot i'm leaving it the way that i saw it unfocused i was going oh man i don't i
thought i had it in focus but i gotta do a better job of that so i took a few more shots and i'm like
oh man everything's moving i got star trails the yeah the comet it looks like a
pancake with a tail on it i got to fix that too and so i worked at it and
finally began to get some roundness in the stars this was this is
essentially what my naked eye view was of the comet um that's what it looked like and at this
and at this time you're starting to see an iron tail already so i processed the
couple of them uh try to make them look really cool um as the and this is the comet
shrinking and falling um this image turns out to be
there you go that's nice there's a turns out to be decent and then i experimented with some fishermen
that were there didn't know so i took a long exposure and had them stand as still as they could
and then shine a flashlight so that they would be illuminated near the end of the exposure with the comet coming towards
her head it was i may try and reprocess this to smooth
it out and sharpen them out it's an interesting it's an interesting thing when you're shooting night sky images you rarely get
round stars and reasonably sharp people because they're forced to stand there
for 20 seconds they were nice enough to do that i was i was pretty happy about that
i kept shooting until it got really low to the horizon and that so these are
your pictures you saw jason shoot a picture
similar to this where it was loaded horizon at kensington park um
that's probably as clean a picture as i could make um and this was at lake hudson dark sky
park now i'm looking to see yeah don't worry the milky way was uh i
turned around to the south and there was this really clear night sky with the milky way a meteor that came through
this particular image um portal 4 is the portal
rating of lake hudson dark sky park i started i used the tracker to image this
and ended up with a pretty good with a pretty reasonable shot here um there's uh jupiter there's saturn and
i see the notes that my internet connection is unstable so you may or may not be seeing these images
but um so yeah here here's what the milky way was like
after neil y sank and i said okay i'll take some shots of it and i even got some
rising moon pictures too this is uh the moon right when the moon is rising
late you've got the uh your past third quarter and you've got this crescent
right here um so
i need i named this called check your rig because i took a bunch of
fuzzy shots on the night of the 18th i missed a
golden opportunity um and i think i'll there may be
yeah i'll just show this kind of fuzzy shot but i missed the golden opportunity as i was setting up a meteor bright
green meteor shot this way right above where the comet was in the
in the plane you imagine having a dual shot with a meteor
and a comet in the same frame i missed the opportunity to have that i
might have submitted it for apod i would have i would have tried i don't know if i'd have gotten much but i did get this
cool shot right here when i finally got things in focus or mostly focus it was very cloudy and hazy but the
light of the comet with the uh ever growth
it's amazing this picture yeah yes i like it and i almost didn't show it just now i was uh i was gonna skip this part
because it was all clouds and fuzzy but i did remember getting a pretty good shot out of it even the color of the
stars look at it yeah it's beautiful yeah you got the ion tail there too you can
see yep there it is so it was yeah a lot of those features
are visible this was a 200 millimeter camera um that i used with my canon 6d
and my tracker these two stars are important for the neck the next picture and what
are this is what a uh this is when you don't have your tracking working and this is what a raw frame looked like so it took a little
bit of processing and a clean i got a cleaner shot
did some processing and all this data came out again if there had been a meteor shooting through here too
i would have been beyond happy but i'll take what i got so broward nature preserve
i went there um the next night to do some imaging um
a poor the owl cluster i tried i said deep you know deep sky
shooting isn't mine you're seeing uh something that i'm going to put into a time lapse and then there came the comet
and i took some images of it let's see there are those two stars that i pointed out the comet had moved
to be over those two stars i think they're part of ursa major um the common
is below the dipper i took a few shots tried to stack them but i ended up
processing one image and i ended up oh this shot
this was probably the best of the shots that i could took you can actually see that sweeping
remnants of this sweeping dust tail here you see the iron tail with the tank
pulling directly and i was able to yep i was able to darken
the back of the night sky i think this was a two minute this was a two minute
exposure and there go those two stars i used to know the names of them
but this is a lot of the better comet images came on this night 7 19.
um that's when most of the good images came out and i will go ahead and end my segment
with this shot which yeah once it this was this was a shout out from my
artistic side i thought was um you know you have the comet here it's
just the part of the scene with all the bright stars in it the dippers above you know those stars were
missing here but you have all the fireflies it looks the way that i ended up taking
the shot it probably looks like a painting and that's that was kind of the intent i ended up having this printed
out as a canvas and for those watching if you would like a copy of this print it is available
um beautiful but last but not least the comet sinks so what do we do we turn south and see
what kind of milky way we can get this was bortles this is a bordeaux 5 zone
somewhere between um 405 and portal 60 because it's near ann
arbor michigan which uh my yeah i can tell my internet
connection because you guys all free so i know it's me but you're all back um
this is what portal five skies are or bortle between five and six guys the
milky way imaging you can get outside of ann arbor michigan uh home to one of colonel's rivalries of
wolverines where i graduated in 97. um we've had hard luck with our football
team unlike mcconnell and his uh his soon-to-be a school you can
see the scorpion here and you can see sagittarius here jupiter is now way over here and saturn
has moved to about here next to the milky way so
it is it is a little bit different now but um
comet chasing was a lot of fun and it always is
but there's never anything like quite like milky way chasing which
you can do all the time and i will end
my final image with a recent shot because chasing the milky way is what i like to
do i think i showed pictures of it in smoke but um
somewhere in here is
the latest image that i've taken now if i had this if i had come to the
thumb and done comet imaging um
out here in the thumb i might have had the comet against the
backdrop and let's see if it where did that go
yeah my comment might have been against a backdrop like this you've got andromeda
i might have moved i might have shot north had the milky way
um cassiopeia image of the cassiopeia region of the milky way over here
and the comet over there when it's darker this is more around portal 3.
when it's darker you can do that but when you are
let's see this was 7 24. when you're at a site that um
it's hard to and this this wasn't the uh i think this is it right here
where i did sunset and i tried hard
to get and this is going to be the final shot similar to kona's the winter milky way is over here
somewhere if this ever loads yeah the winter milky way is over here
it's hard to see because the way i imaged this i didn't do a good job of pulling
out any of the milky way detail but there's a comet
and these are the stars of the big dipper right here right
these stars are kind of buried in because all the stars and there's the comet i highlighted the tail a little
bit expose the tail a little more to make it a little more visible that's the comet sinking below the horizon this was the
last shot that i took there's a little bit of nebulosity here you can see it that's from the winter milky way the
cassiopeia region i'm not sure if andromeda is visible in
fact i don't see it here this was one of the last shots that i took
my farewell to the comet this is the
looks like i tried to process it a bit get some data out
oh that there you can see the light on the fan shape of the comet in this shot people were out there
yeah you can see it you can see the van there's folks imaging that night too there's a dipper
little dipper just disappears in the uh all of the stars that are out there
so as always i always tell everybody even if you don't have
all of this stuff stuff was done with a camera and anywhere between a wide angle 14 millimeter lens and a
200 millimeter lens all f28 fast lenses are always good for
getting a good deep sky images and if you use
you can use a stock camera and get good images
if you turn around and shoot the milky way a stock camera will still give you good images
if you turn around and use a camera that um
if nothing else shoot the sunset and if you have a modified camera you
get even more detail the milky way from those same sights you start to get more
interesting things that are in the milky way if you use a modified camera
so that's it for my presentation um
it was fun shooting at the comet whether i got a good shot or a fuzzy shot it's just always nice to see what you
are seeing where you are then take the image if you don't get a good image you at
least have a good memory so with that that's the end of my presentation
all right okay excellent okay
um adrian thank you very much uh you know i just i i feel like i'm
just immersed here with uh with uh you know the comments and and thoughts
of where they come from and and uh you know just um
especially the interstellar comets it's just uh to think about them
maybe going around one one sun and then hanging out and going around another sun
and and being flung out again so it's just uh it's amazing um
our next uh speaker is uh maxi filares from argentina
uh maxie thank you guys for uh hanging in there with us um beautiful
image of the leo triplet back there yeah this was from from la pampa this year
yeah beautiful
thank you so well i'm a little tired because today i have
my first vaccine and so oh yeah you are a brave guy
[Laughter] so i try to be in the after party so
yeah okay basically what i want to show you is a little short of my
pictures of my comments that i took from when i started
in 2018 uh today when i i was talking with you and david uh
i was talking about when i went to mercedes so let me show you my screen so
okay okay you you see yes
okay so basically uh like i say in
in december to a second sorry of 2018 uh this was my first shot
of the comet uh 46 p e we're tannen
this is from my house i was taking my 30 seconds without a
motorized mount only the tripod and then the next day
uh obviously it has a light pollution in here because it is in the city
this is the same triangle of stars but the the comet
pass here from here then the other and the other day
i went to outside of the town you can see the the triangle and here's the comet
and then indiana another day i went again and
is here so basically you can see the movement in only four days
then for
uh 14 of december i went to mercedes
and this is a a little stuck picture put in my cell phone above the
25 eyepiece and the max photo and a little bit process i i didn't know
how to brush process these images but this is
the word channel comet it is
it's a variety core and a few you can see the the coma but it
doesn't have a tail so unfortunately we never see the change of
this comment uh then well this is the that night the group of
amateur astronomers that we went this is me my brother this is our two
friends from here from chiricoy jose luis allen
his fiancee mario goreli sebastian and this is a friend from him
you know this guy is he says hell no some kind
you're mute you're mute
yes one let me see one two
well you three yeah yes yes i think that the most of
of them i i know them yeah yes oh okay
okay well uh this is from the last year
i started to to put in my bag here the the telescope this is the the f5
a150 this is my sherman shepherd luna moon
she's she's always when i put my telescope
besides of the amount every time but she's still there so
she don't have any problem so
this is my first time i tried to take pictures with the dcr camera from the comet c 2020 f8 s1
the friday 17th of april uh but
it doesn't have a lot of information it has a little tiny tail and the coma and the core was private
but i didn't like it so this is i remember i thought oh this is what i
told this is very okay that's posted and
away from another days so i spent from
a 2 of may the 2nd of may only 15 days
so the pictures and the comment changed a lot uh here's the
the core the coma and start to be the tail and the
and everything so ah that's why i really like it and this comet has a huge promise from here
because uh it may be it was have to be like neo-wise but
unfortunately a few days later it turns apart and dissolves and that's
it we have no more comment so
then i well this is a a little animation of all the pictures
that i take the orange is for the the
the light pollution and also you can see a tree passing by from my neighbor that
he never cuts it and well that's why
that's a lot of movement but you can see how it's still moving from here from here
right yeah and i think this was only in one
hour maybe so basically i have a lot of information to
work but unfortunately that tree
doesn't want to to take it yeah yes
don't cut the tree no it's from my neighbor that he's he's never in there but
the the tree is very huge in only a pointing to the east
so everything i have to the east is the tree that's it
so well in a few days i think was
at the end of may uh the common lemon they see
2019 u6 appears to be growing the the to be
shiny and well i punched it to there so this one goes by we have lemon let's go to
lemon and i was starting to practice in processing
stacking and you can see here it was only to
god start trails because i was stuck in the only the
the the comet and there was there wasn't a
tale on anything but a few days later i try again
so i have the again the the core the
the coma and a tiny tail
basically this is was in may 28th
here's my equipment that time so i'm trying
maybe the huge promise it was the end of the year maybe i hope so
so let's see what we can take and this is
from the comet c2020 atlas and three this is what this was
the last a comment that i took pictures this is that reminds me like we're done
because it doesn't have a tail on the coma and the core and obviously a huge
bright a green light so i remember when i point i pointed with
the telescope and i put my eye to the visual of the camera because i don't
have a live view to get focused and
when i see i i see the the very brightening cloud
of that in the in the image and that was amazing
i remember that so uh basically that was my ex little experience with comets
to try to get these pictures of pointy stars and
point a comment it's a huge
huge process try to
because when you stack the you have to stack only the start from one side and
stack the comment on the other side and then grab it together but when you put it together
you have a in the pointed stars and the comment but you only
also you have this the stereotrace and you have to try to
to move it away so basically get pointed start with the pointed a
comma it's very difficult but with practice and practice and adrien i see
you're going to try to fix inside prepare yeah i
maybe i'll put it off for another month but uh i i assume there are routines and
pics in sight that help you do that sort of thing yes yes maybe there are many tutorials in youtube but
maybe it can help you but it's so easy yeah yeah come on
it's only for your generation maxi nah nah come on well yeah that's why you
that's why i take a two minute exposure and hope that i can get enough good data
to have a good picture in two minutes as opposed to yes separate stacking because it's it just
gets more complicated but it's the way to do it it's the way to do those faint cabinets if they're big
you two-minute exposure and you have it but uh yes yeah with these faint
comments you have to do that almost no no the work that that
you maxi make with pigs inside come on you're crazy
but no yes it's the same normally when i
start to make my son agustin is here and
when i when he watched me starting to process with siren or another thing
say come on stop to make this give me the the lights the the darks
the everything and let me let me take something something serious
no yes he he bring he left me stuck he
he's confident with with my stacking process but normally you say
it's not the case i prefer use the pixel sign normally i use more siren
or something more easy because maybe i am really old school
but i am i'm really i really
think that that it's a it's a great great software and
make really uh an excellent show with your rights but it's like you
tell that if you have a lot of information maybe 200 pictures um i think that for for uh when
we have small information or like sometimes i have small information from the city
um sometimes i say okay i i i tried with uh free software's like
serial or another ones and i know that maybe this guy stacker
is too today is too basic maybe but
uh yeah it works out works yeah it i know it's just uh
it's basically a learning curve yeah pick it up and the curve is like
this and the free falls are like this but then once yeah yes once you pick it up
like we have a we have an astrophotographer in that group i talked about um
who has a 15 minute process he doesn't go he goes for accuracy in the images he
doesn't worry about them being the prettiest but he's learned pixen sighted enough
to take his data from his he's got good data from his observation sure
yeah he runs it through a 15-minute process like he does things to it
um he also uses topaz denoise which i like using as well it's really good
and it's gotten better and within 15 minutes he has an image that
he's fine with it's accurate it's reasonable focus
and you know it's got data um and he's like yeah i'm good with that we
we also have like jason you saw how he's able to get his images get real
deep images and you know we're all we all have a style of how we
do it and sometimes we just want to get good data and throw it through a filter or
something present other times you have the time to go through step by step so it's uh
yeah it's all it all becomes preference after a while so
today you you you give us a great surprise with the
comment pictures because uh we never suspect so great comet pictures
with landscape and really for me was a surprise because you
know yes a beautiful beautiful landscape with the comets
really really we was wow come on this guy norton likes
uh many ways and now comments beautiful comments
yeah it it because sometimes the focus was on the comet itself
um when i was at the uh nature the nature preserve where you had the tree
and you had the comet's just this sort of little thing off in the distance sometimes you just
you're taking a point in time and you you have the whole scene to look
at i wish i had been going to the thumb because it the comet would be near it would be
on top of the lighthouse or near the lighthouse there'd be something going on there um and the milky way's brighter so
there would have been this combination but you that's for the next one
you three guys cameron maxi and adrian you don't you don't need to be
encouraging encourage it because you make something with a okay i'm using my cell phone to make this galaxy cameron
say okay yeah i said what do you see a reference hammer no my cell phone maxi
you you know you with uh any landscape you make only you you maybe the next
thing was uh your picture adrian with a comet a lighting ball with a storm uh
northern lights all in the same picture because well that's that's what you you hope for
two or more the things that happen with the same time yeah there's
the first place with the with the comet come on yeah a reflection in the lake with the comet yeah
come on i see yeah there's actually yeah one of the shots i took actually has a reflection of jupiter in
the lake it was that bright and i i don't think i shared it with this one but future star party i'll have to
share some of the uh some of those and um
you know i gotta go out and get more images come on guys come on
so
[Laughter] watching cameron just sort of slide back
into the picture that's nice yeah come on come on come on
come on that that is our word for the night comments
um speaking of i can just imagine what the uh the night
will be like when we get down to argentina and we have uh some pizza and a couple of drinks
yes of course that's gonna be i look forward to that i
gotta i gotta get that it's coming to be real yes yeah absolutely you'll see me imaging with the cell
phone on a tracker yeah yeah yeah you gotta you gotta be there so
yeah well it's one o'clock eastern time
to those that are hanging on uh thank you all for hanging on um yeah i am going to drop so that i can
i can be sort of awake for work tomorrow um so cesar and cameron um i will probably
be watching your presentations from the recording yes tomorrow looking forward to seeing those
and uh thank you all for watching and david levy leaves early but
just as a reminder it's comet night he's probably out looking at comments right here he's out
looking at comments right now probably you're looking for there are uh that was uh something i want to show
just before we go over to the caesar here when to show um this page
uh this is a this is a comment page i've been looking at for a long time um
yoshida i believe is the guy that puts us together now these are he calls these weekly
information about bright comets okay so we start off with comet 2020 t2 palomar
it's in the 10th magnitude range that's
from spain from barcelona yes carlos yeah
and but look at this i'm just going to scroll through this really quick there's like almost 70 comments that uh
people are keeping track of right now no yes it's it's crazy
it's a7 though it's not the not the
excellent excellent excellent truck yeah yes yeah
uh some of them getting down to 16th magnitude now you know certainly
in in the early days uh that was pretty much out of reach by amateur
astronomers but with you know cameras today cooled cameras uh yeah you
can definitely get down into these ranges and uh start to image and and uh
submit um data to a site like this so
i mean it's quite a bit yeah the the old neil the neo-wise comment we took all
the pictures of it looks like it i guess it's 24 magnitude molly told us that
so it's not on this list anymore they do have another needlewise comet
right there yeah discovered yeah it is not observable in the northern
hemisphere right and it will be unobservable soon in the southern hemisphere
but when the comet is incredible is sea to naked it
is visible to naked [Music]
eye is in the northern before well we'll be here together
for you alrighty it's always a joy to be a part of these global star
parties even if thank you very much yeah i'm staying here
um we'll uh talk with you all next week okay okay see you then all right yep
next week we'll uh our next global star party we'll have um kaitlyn erins from
goddard space flight center she will be the host of the uh of the the show and of course
it's a lot of this is going to have to do with the anniversary of the apollo moon landing
on you know july 20th so yeah so i'm excited
yeah but caesar it's all yours here we are champion
very fast because i'm more interested in to see the the pictures and galaxies of
camera tonight or comets especially yes but i don't have comments i i
i'll share my screen to show something very
very common like uh i choose an star party from manny's
yes 2013 to 2013
serpari all are in medosa raphael um for me it was an idea to watch one's third
party choose this uh yes the typical things where we started preparing
preparing the things you know this is our party we choose
going to san rafael mendoza by plane uh take a flight and you know send
things by we normally we use or or the same plane
or to send to send the telescope and all the material or a
is is safer because they
they keep keep much better with things to deliver
by bus and we take the plane
and we deliver all cases and telescope by bus
we take a plane in buenos aires airport this is a local airport only for for
domestic flights and this is one of the place near to the
star party one of the lakes that is in the area you know that is the the myoma is very
very dry it's have a really clear clear skies
this is another part of the of the lake with them
this is um the hotel actually we are we are in
we are renting a hotel without this these walls
uh with more a clear horizon but it's it's a wonderful the sky is the
same because only we move uh five kilometers from this whole the the
last hotel that we use well this is uh the head of scorpio this is antares
all are single pictures with no more that 30 seconds
with maybe 1 600 eso
it's s-i-s-o sorry and
milky way in the place yes single other single
single pictures beautiful yes the the southern cross is over the
so that grows is over your hair here
because you can see the the trees and here here is a
picture this is the first night um before the star party
uh when the people coming and are going
to the hotel preparing and we normally we play with pictures with like this
touching the milky way you know it's
a little of fun this uh this is the magellanic
lmc a big magellanic cloud
over the trees here you can see again the magellanic
cloud and this is the the night the first night of the star party
fully of telescopes
maxi you never came to i next that i think that the next year
we are awaiting you for everyone a live bridge telescope 14 inches
sorry 14 uh 16 inches this is m7
in in scorpio
another view of of the third party
you got the set you've got the setup and the settings just right so you can do this anytime it
looked like i mean really nice nice system very reliable good good quality nice
dark yes dark sky and then a really good foreground beautiful yes um
it is something that you know this is only this is eight
um eight years ago and the quality of the pictures is not the same
today it's more easy to make something better than this but
we we had a lot of fun making pictures uh
under the milky way you know come on come on it's really good yeah yes
yes very nice uh a single shot of milky way
in san rafael mendoza yeah no more than 30 seconds
very bright color of milky way yes it's a place where you have maybe 25
25 of of uh humid is is really darkness like arizona
united states that is nice here with friends you
know uh sometimes i remember that the second night we
start uh uh later um before just to start to start
to see the sky and take pictures we say okay we can we can do it we can
make a a picture with flash of course nevermore
after this and we needed half hour to recover you
know the the ice from the from the darkness
and this is really really we make uh like a small scenario uh with music and this of
course this quantity of light is really low is
we use only the the the quantity that that the musicians need to to see the
the party tool i don't know the name in english
we call it partitura but i don't know the name whether musicians read
the music okay okay only the quantity of life
um jaime garcia and me you can see a younger sister
not today we are in the end of the
star party talking with the people and making pra and
deliver prizes for for the people you know
contest or maybe with numbers with the people that are
lucky the telescope the price and
a lot of people in in our sort of parish working with the people the final
talking and every every star party is is an amazing
an amazing experience really every year we make two or three
and we enjoy it when is your next when is the next star
party caesar um awareness extra party is uh
we are praying to to start in april 2022
yes yes we actually we have uh reserved for us the hotel
and we are awaiting that we have we have all results of about vaccines or
you know actually have
a low quantity of people with two vaccines
and doses and of course that that uh
we think that it's okay for april next year i know this year we think that this year
and we had an [Music] opportunity to to get the hotel for
october but we think that we prefer make another one
virtual or you know um starting
in a safe way next year in april that that is this is benus
from the same year in another third party venus plantation 2013
yes this was in near december same year yeah
this is all comments sorry yeah you gave us the whole universe and you said that's all
yeah yeah this is all that i have tonight
yes before the old presentation that maxi well adrian everyone
yeah every every presenter brings something special to the global star party and i i
do love to see um and maxie i'm glad you also showed the you know the star party
activity you know because uh it's the people uh and
together with all this experience and the amazing um you know uh imagery and
uh um stories uh that that make it all special you know so
well in that time uh when we put in facebook where
this weekend we're going to be in this place maybe who's going to come
that was in that time now it's very difficult because the pandemic situation and everything but
sometimes when you invite some other people that can
come travel from where you going to be is
it's amazing because i remember in august 29
we meet together again in navarro in a
camping area besides of the of the lagoon
and that was a pretty good night i have some issues with my finger because i
smash it three times and i haven't smashed it before in my house it was a very cold night
oh the fingers the smashing and the
cold weather is the worst combination it's the words you know i have a cut from my
for a of a knife that when i was doing a
in a kitchen and okay i um cure it but when i went there i
smashed it three times you know putting the tripod and then i don't know
when it was and the other time was the ceremony the tribal at 4 00
am freezing and i remember i smashed it with
all that force that i still remember the pain
it's a dangerous hobby astronomy
it's for everyone but this is the the very
bad part sometimes and obviously
you know what the good parts are [Laughter]
okay all right cameron cameron we are awaiting you
yes hey come on come on cameron cameron all right
that's great i love it it's it's the variety it's so nice it's a wonderful uh
every every global star party is a wonderful journey and uh i really love the team here uh
great great great group and uh it will be nice it's i already feel a really good friendship with all of you and uh
and uh look forward to the in person uh in the future i hope you all yes well we don't
we don't need presentation when we yeah what we see we're going to see hey come on man
let's talk to me like this yeah yeah it's really nice it's it's it's really uh it's really a really good
connection so um yeah so yeah i know i really appreciate it i love the pictures they're wonderful and the stories uh
just really really really cool and um great topic again uh uh scott uh really liked
uh you know uh david david's um
poetry and his his his stories and of course your story uh or i love that one
about the dobsonian um right the ring the the what have sony and i love that you know i was really no
no no this is something that i said survived
you know we had to be with scott in another eclipse a solar eclipse or an
everything because he has lucky a very huge lucky
that's what it takes oh yeah yeah yeah so you have to come to texas you have to cut texas in uh 2024.
okay yeah yeah yes that's for me for me it's business
because i am explore scientific dealer yeah you gotta come
yes and you need a you need an assistant of course to go with you so of course
right every every star party is a business trip yeah that's right that's quiet it is
yeah that's right that's that's why we get into this business so every star party can be a
business trip yeah [Music] no it's sad
i will say this a lot of people that get into this business uh lose the feeling of the magic of yeah
yeah feeling that you have being out under the stars and stuff they just go ah you
know i've done too much of it i don't want to think about telescopes anymore
but i tell you i love it i really do yeah yes
yeah it's i am the same yes right
yeah when i see i don't know a pipe tube or a
a very huge tube i imagine a newtonian or a dobsonian well
but it doesn't have anything maybe it's a tube of gas or something like that
it's like god that could be a big telescope yeah this is out there
you never see a truck with big pipes and you say i remember when i i started to
make my own telescopes yeah yes bbc plastic i i can use this
yes yeah i can use this big kind of mirror yeah
sorry cameron use your presentation
we are argentinian sorry we'd like to talk remember that no no
apology necessary i i love it it's great so um i'm just putting together a couple
things so okay let me you know this is usual with the global starving i kind of like to do things off the cuff um it's
not fully prepared i've tried to put it into some preparation but let me
let me just share my screen here and there's two different things i want
to talk about let me just share my screen
first let's obviously oops or sorry is the comments uh you know for um
i want to talk about my experience with comets uh in in i've
had three different um uh good experiences in my astronomy uh
time uh with with with different comments and then uh and then i want to give an
update on astronomy including um for tomorrow's show uh and
then also the great progress i've made with flats as
you recall last week i was sharing my my new technique for uh taking flats
well i'm very happy to say that the fruits of labor have come out and uh
i'm very happy with the results so i i'll show some i'll share some uh results of that so so
let's uh let's dive in um so the first halley's comet um i just
took these snippets uh you know i just wanted to share this is a piece of nostalgia you know uh back after scan
2001. and this was in 1985. i remember that yes yeah
yeah yeah i didn't have this one but i i was drooling over it i was like oh it's so nice i i just had a uh
i didn't have anything actually i had some binoculars i had 11 by 80 binoculars which is pretty darn good
actually uh especially for comets so um i got my 11 by 80s and uh the comet was
in the south uh actually it's interesting it was just to the south here um and i
remember as suns with sun was setting in the spring of 1986
i never forget that this was i was just a teenager and uh i had joined the royal
astronomical society in vancouver chapter in british columbia and uh and we went out to campbell river
valley park and uh and i never forget i had my uh
i had my let me share my uh my screen uh see if i can do this properly here
i'm going to share my so you can see uh okay i have a t-shirt actually wow
i have a t-shirt and uh the the christmas before in 1985
this is actually uh honolulu uh my my parents i actually went to hawaii
and uh and this is a you know a good old uh what do you call it um tourist shirt
right but they would they had we were selling lots of these but that was kind of a reminder to me it was like i was
trying to recall when did i actually go and when did i see and when did i get this shirt but um but that was that's
what happened so i actually got this shirt in december it was i think we were going to hawaii in december
and uh and then uh but i couldn't see halley's comment it
was still not bright enough um somehow with the naked eye and i didn't have any equipment and of course i was in light
polluted uh waikiki so it was like there was no chance but i
uh i remember getting excited about it and then of course when i went back home uh in the
spring i went out to uh to this campbell ribbon by then the tail had gotten quite a bit
longer and that was i'll tell you a very big impression i never forget in the evening sky uh this huge tail
must have been about 20 degrees long um uh you know to across the sky
so that was my that was my halley's comet experience and um it's very very memorable and then uh yeah and then the
next memory i had was i you know i again i can't claim i've seen comic shoemaker laughing level 9 but i can claim that
i've seen the impact on jupiter so i never saw the comet but i saw the
results of it crashing into the jupiter and i never forget i just put the snippet here it was actually july uh
july um what was it let me just zoom into the uh
this look like a part of july 1992 yeah july 1992
yeah july 16th to the 22nd and uh and so
i i saw it over sorry about that i apologize
so i actually went to um uh i saw this in my backyard my my um
my yard uh had a very limited view of the sky but the jupiter was very high
in the sky so you know at that time i was older uh so i actually had a six-inch uh reflector
and uh f5 and a six-inch it's pretty darn good it gives you really good resolution and
with steady steam and i never forget i was following this and they they predicted when they would corrupt uh
crash into jupiter and i actually saw i never forget those nights i saw these
bruises coming out as they were coming around and it was like it was
that was amazing to be able to have is predicted and planned and be able to to
go and set it up and say and i had a clear night and it was like wow you know
this was this was awesome and uh so yeah that was extremely and then of course i followed that every night and i was
watching these uh these impacts as they danced across the uh the belt here and rotated that that
was that was incredible um so that was my super shoemaker levy nine and then um
and then last one uh last year i uh i got
an 8080 uh regular uh ed80 and i i got uh super i
got the neowise and um and this is through an eyepiece through with my
smartphone and and i was able to get uh a couple of these snapshots uh which which i was
very very thrilled and you could see it really nicely even though i have bordeal six looking out west uh i could actually
see the comet in the northwestern sky uh again also in in july
uh so another july uh comet um and and uh that was really and i have a quick
picture here uh this is the uh through my eight inch i just got my eight inch a year ago and
i just did this quick snapshot of uh and you can see the greenish color just similar to the other pictures so yeah
that was that's that's what aperture does for you so uh you get a really good uh good uh
view of that so that was that was really neat but of course um so those were my uh experiences and and
i never forget those uh let me just uh suppose that so um so
very memorable and and now with today's technology i just loved the animations that jason uh
shared that was awesome and adrian's pictures oh man just love those
those shots really really really nice to be able to be experienced and have
uh the equipment and and the knowledge and techniques together so that you can
capture that moment um and and really be able to share it that's that's really nice because these
experiences you can have for yourself but to be able to capture that feeling right and to be
able to share it that's that's what's becoming more and more possible uh which which is which is
wonderful so um so anyhow uh now let's switch over to um
to cam astronomy just a quick update on camstrom site survey
oh i don't have in there that's weird too much comets security
exactly so yeah yeah
so we are now gonna move into the sagittarius um so
i've been holding off in downtown going through ophiuchus um and then that's with sputum
and now we're gonna dive into uh sagittarius there's lots of juicy stuff in here my challenge you know it's
obviously in the southern hemisphere it's gorgeous it's directly overhead it's beautiful for me i have it's in the i really it's
really hard i'm very lucky where i'm living i actually have a view of sagittarius which is only just barely
above the horizon um so so capturing these objects visually
is uh is very difficult and so i was very pleased though with the with the um
imager and with a filter uhc filter you can really eke out a lot of good
stuff um but keep in mind that all these objects that i've highlighted here are
i've already done visually okay so these are the ones that made the cut that are still visible even with portal sticks
skies uh on the horizon so so now when i take images they are even more
uh impressive so we are now uh we're gonna do 15 more objects uh
tomorrow uh we're moving a little bit because there's so many objects i decided to split sagittarius into two
days uh so this week we're going to do northern sagittarius with it with the with the wonderful you know lagoon
nebula uh the um the triffid nebula omega nebula and all that good stuff there and
then then we're going to continue with the globular clusters and the rest of the eastern sagittarius the
following weeks but um but basically uh what i wanted to share
is now okay i as you know i was doing smartphone photography very good i like
it but i've got my bugs ironed out a lot of them in
my imaging for my smart camera and i've created
a catalog i'm starting to create a catalog of constellation of all my images and i just wanted to show you a
little bit of the progression here um so let me just put this in presentation mode this is a smartphone
picture of the crescent level that's in sagittarius not to be confused with the
crescent nebula that everyone knows yes this is the planetarium
or sagittarius exactly sagittarius exactly exactly so the the
the smartphone you can just start to see the structure here this is only eight
seconds uh or ten second exposure so the limitation this is the magnitude of the camera
maybe it's pretty bright yeah like if we go in here uh if i go there it's right over here
as i zoom in so i press in that villa is right here
so if i click on it oh this is that block just let me just
move down here the uh screen is just walking just right
yes there we go so let's click on it again
magnitude seven point six seven that's a double star wait wait a minute okay that's a double star eight a ten point
nine no it's actually no it's actually fine it's three things yeah
it's pretty faint but but it's pretty intense uh it's it's a pretty good surface brightness it's pretty small
so it's only uh half an arc minutes square or rectangular so you know almost uh but so
planet planetary nebula in fact every night that i start my visual observing i
especially in the summer skies i i do a survey of the planetary nebula first because
they they come out really nice they have a good contrast and then they start you know as the night gets darker uh and the
twilight goes away you can start to go fainter and fainter but uh but these there there's some nice planetary nebula
that i i'll be highlighting as we go through the survey uh but this is a good one um
this uh this is the image i took with the first time this was back in june june 20th uh
you can see the the cur field curvature you can see the um you know the the the graininess
and the and the brightness but you can see the square shape of the crescent that blends some color but i want to
show you now this is what i can do now um so this is what i took with my flats
what i've discovered is you can get color you can get that you have a much better dynamic range instead
of spreading your uh your signal to noise across this this wide range when
you do the histogram it's way easier with sorry camera is with the
this one is it's a flat for for a smartphone or for the camera this is all with uh this is with camera
yeah this is not with camera with us with the astro camera yeah this is with yes but the flats are amazing because
you resolve the entire field very very very very
producing very flat very flat very even right so now you see it's nice and even
and then the real benefit that you get is you get a much more you're able to eat out the signal to
noise much much better right so this is this is a very good thing that i've learned and so i'm very happy with the
structure you can see within this um and then this is what i took initially and again in june when i when i didn't
have the flats figured out you can see the corners are are big netted uh or darker
and you know it looks nice it looks pretty good but it's still and this is this is even worse uh i i
thought okay what happened here is uh i actually got a longer
my extension tube so my back focus was properly was proper but what happened is it made the the
field curvature much even worse but just as around 8 inches
considering they're all with eight inch yeah uh eight inches of green eight inches okay yes we have a huge
yes with the extension tooth have a a a a big netting very hard
yes yes but uh it's it's it's the big netting can be a completely remote move because look at
this yes this is this is now with the mega very great flats yeah it's
a real really huge really well you have you just now pick up all this painter nebulosity even over here right and this
is uh this is a not not even what i've done is i've done live stacking with all this so it's kind of
pre-processed if you will so i'm not i'm not taking this offline and doing any image processing this is just uh the
live using the asir pros algorithm to to load the flats on top automatically the
system of the screen work properly the the white screen
yes yes so now here here's an example of the tripod nebula again you can see the
nebula that's what i showed before you can see the there's curvature this is what it looks like oh yeah so
another another thing is another thing yeah yeah and then finally lagoon nebula yeah you can see you can
see you know and then look at this wow oh so yeah huge by doing the flats
i i'm so happy when the flats work properly yeah and you gotta get the flash
yeah you got it i i i can tell you that that is the the wow factor i mean when you get the class you can say reliably
you can get reasonable shots you know uh that that the biggest thing it gives is you can see the dynamic
range all this nebulosity that's it gets gets lost over here you you can see it
but it doesn't have a good signal to noise yes whereas here you really pick it out
an aim a a or lagoon nebula is is a whale
shape that we have because stop um how do you say is my
i'm sorry with my englishes limited
limited it's limited yes very very strongly and
sometimes you when you process you don't know exactly where it's finished and
start and if you don't if you don't have a great flat
it's a nightmare to to s to know where is dark and where is
the light of the name exactly exactly and to be able to discover this uh
myself and then for everyone else who's out there when you discover this yourself i can highly encourage you
make sure you get those flats yeah yes you know
the flats are really really important and they're going to make your enjoyment so much better because you're
going to get much more predictable and reliable results um and and that's and that's extremely
important for me uh doing the sky survey now i feel that i can start to take you know
all the pictures and they're reasonable they're good enough quality i can obviously refine it right there's more
tweaking to be done but but at least for the sky survey purposes i can get decent
pictures and have really good uh resolution and and and clear results right so it will
be uh with with not as much post-processing effort right that's
that's my goal is to try to do as much pre-process processing and get all the setup so that when i do take the
picture i'm getting good stuff um and then and then and then that way
um it makes it a lot easier to handle all the data afterwards
yeah yes absolutely yes yeah i can feel your your happiness
yeah i know i i i it's like you've gone like this whole new level you know so it's really yeah
yes when the things works and when you show us last week the the system that
you choose that i think that is perfect the screen and the blanket
yeah come on yeah here's another here's a here's another one here's m22 when we are adapting this system wow
yeah so this is m22 and then now look at look at how m22 looks
right wow this is isn't it isn't that nicer but but you'll notice there's a new
problem i'm having you see this dark line here yeah i'm having i'm having some banding issues so uh some other
uh noise is coming through so i have to figure that out but that's uh that's that's
are you using a bias frame here or not i am i'm using 100 but i've been trying different things at different
temperatures uh scott and and uh somehow there's still these bands showing up so
i i need to do some figuring out here but it only shows up now because i found
out that you cannot just apply bias frame or sorry uh flat links without using bias you have to have bias in in
the asi live stacking uh it mandate it mandatory that you have a bias with the
flat yes so so so i i select both i've got 100 biases and i've done several sets to try
to get rid of this noise but uh unfortunately i don't know what's causing that and i'll
it's it's something i can work on but uh [Music] yeah that's that's the next thing but at
least i'm just happy that i got to this stage where where we got a nice uh flat
picture yeah yes it's it's a great and again the side bonus like i say oh and
you know since i'm just having so much fun uh this is uh okay let me let me just show
you i took the drum of the galaxy okay last night so this is this is uh andromeda galaxy this core
so wow so so i i was able to get the dust here you know and just because the
flat makes it you can really see now the difference between where the galaxy is and where the uh where the background is
so i took a couple of pictures of uh including the outer arms obviously i have a limited field of view with uh
with the eight inch micasa green but uh but you you get it
sorry cameron who is the size of the of the sensor it's a 294 so it's uh i'm i'm using the
6.3 um vocal reducer so the focal length is around 1280 and uh and the the
the sensor pixel size is four point something microns four point something
yes yes you need three pictures for for andromeda galaxy
yeah exactly but i just wanna i just i just wanted to see because i wanted to see the these
multiple uh dust lanes because uh visually in a larger telescope you start to pick out this first dust flame and if
you're in a dark skies you can start to pick out the second dust line so it's it's nice to be able to image
that in my own backyard um with with uh you know
with polluted light polluted skies and still get reasonable and here's the other thing i learned yeah now that we're talking about this i
change field i have two different filters so let me just uh
since we're talking about it anyhow uh let me go to my
uh it's probably it's probably here no no no let's see
this one here there's some nice comments here um
harold lock uh i'm bino scanning tonight hazy
you got people doing astronomy while they're listening to the global star party
yeah cameron is not cool at the camera it's not even cool yeah exactly no no
you're crazy like maxi you're crazy that's a compliment i think that's great
oh my god how i can i can oh
can i can i solve tomorrow a cool camera no harold herrlock said that's awesome even
better than the sky safari images yeah it's nice uh
harold said can you just adjust the black slightly and blend the black
together just a touch you know so yes no i i played with it and i actually
intentionally uh lightened the sky background so if we go to one of the i i'll actually like to have it a little
bit light because it is already light polluted uh but it's uh but let's go to
that that this one here uh the lagoon nebula
it's a it's a great camera really pretty dark i i i can play with it and
make it darker i i've done some stretching so what i i do do when i do
these snaps is i actually if i go to the raw data
so here's how i could find out so i know this is i took it on 7 11 at
1 30 in the morning or sorry 12 30 in the morning so 7 11 this would be this
night and then i can go i can find out which so i had a couple of snaps
so here here's two different stretches of the of the lagoon so one
this is where i left it bright and then and then the next one is i
made it darker but you see even this what i do is i call it it's sharper
and uh but you kind of play and there's another little technique i want to show you guys uh now we're on the topic is if i go
and i paste it let's say let's just make a new new picture here
so i'm going to paste this uh so this is what it looks like but there's a little technique in in
powerpoint it's called corrections so this is my cheap pixel sight
um so so what you can do is you can play around with these and this is a combination of contrast
and brightness you can actually you can either brighten the image or you can darken it
and you can you can you can play with that so i just do this to give me a quick and dirty
you know reasonably good picture that takes my so i do my stretch uh and then i do my screenshot
and uh i don't play with uh at this point i don't play with tiffs or individual stacks or or darks or
frames or any post processing right now that's going to be saved for later when i have time and i choose some objects
that i really want to dig into but for now to be able to do this and do some quick
um you know image processing on the fly
is really really good for the workflow and and and then be able to enjoy it get
some good pictures and then like say with my sky survey continue to uh to go in and then give a broad brush i i guess
the analogy i'd make is it's like a painter right you're painting i'm painting the sky i'm painting the sky
with a broad brush and there are certain areas that i'm coming back to and working some details
on and then i might pick some areas and say maybe this particular planetary nebula i
realize i need to use a smartphone because it has a better image sensor and i can zoom in with an eyepiece
to get a better resolution because it's too stellar in this uh in this one or
there might be a galaxy that i don't want to use a uhc filter i want to use my
my ir cut filter and then take a broadband picture and then do some stretching on it so i'm
learning a lot of different things along the way uh painting techniques i guess you could say and then i
then i can always fine tune it and as i get more tools in my in my
easel uh i can start to refine it but i'm just really loving
this uh yeah look at you can see you can start to see the the nebulosity and all these
little nodules and uh are really good i'm really really
pleased with uh being able to pick out some of these some of these uh these little uh
uh i guess i ionized uh sections that are do you have a good collimator in your mind
yeah yeah so it's really it's very very uh enjoyable and uh you can even see when i
did this stretch you can even see a little bit of the greens coming out it's it's uh it's not pure
red so you're gonna actually see a little bit of uh different color in the lagoon
so um yeah so that's uh that's uh my my little update for today so a lot of
a big part of this is you know i i have a lot of data but i'm trying to organize it
in to a logical way so that you know we when we get into this uh this catalog
that i'm building for the canstronomy catalog it's uh it's to start to look
like you're going to have a hit i'm going to have a history of all the different images
and uh and the progression and then i'm going to choose the best one out of each of those objects and then
you'll have per constellation you're going to have every single object that is in the uh
in the uh astronomy sky survey so in this case this is sagittarius and these are all the objects in sagittarius and
then i'll have images for each of those but i have to admit um i am now
becoming immersed because of this flat technology that i just applied i'm becoming very much
immersed in focusing more on astro camera dedicated
astronomy camera at this point um for my imaging um but i do realize
that there are certain objects as i'm going through that i will actually go back and use a
smartphone as i mentioned especially the very small planetary nebulae that need a
better um pixel size i'm going to use i'm going to go back
and read those because you remember that picture of the cat's eye nebula that i took for example um
with the smartphone uh back that that that really uh you know if i if i go to that one i
don't know if it's it's probably not in here yeah sorry i don't have it handy but but basically that that one um
uh that one really benefits so what i'll do is i'll do the broad brush with the dedicated astronomy camera
and then uh and then refine the techniques i want to say one
more thing uh sorry filters so going back to
here so i have two filters i don't have a filter wheel but i do i go outside and it's
like okay i'm going to oops sorry um i manually say i'm going to go to the
galaxy s if i'm in galaxy more what i discovered i tried galaxies with the uhc filter and it tends to make them a
little bit more yellowish uh tinge which is an interesting byproduct because it takes out the green
um because galaxies are broadband right there they're across the spectrum so so
i found that you you can pick out the galaxies with the uhd filter
it reduces the noise but uh it's a more pleasing picture if you
can do it with a broadband uh this this so i tend to now
in my sky survey pictures i'm gonna i go back and i'm using just the ir cut filter for all my galaxy
images and and and a globular cluster any stellar uh or stars star clusters and any
nebulosity yeah you got to use the uac uhc like for the
veil the cocoon and all any of those guys as you saw with the lagoon it just pops
it just the uac just really makes it so when you do this stretch uh all all the details come out so
very very good so um anyhow i've kind of rambled on but
thanks very much guys it's uh it's really cool to to be able to share and um
i hope uh yeah i mean i hope that
we have uh more and more people that are going to be able to um
you know yeah follow this journey right right right
really we enjoyed your work because your progress is is amazing
from one week to another we are trying this and this
week we have the results and yeah that's good yeah you've taken a very careful
approach and really executed it very well so yeah
something that is so difficult uh have a great flood with the schmidt
caster and telescope i work at 30 30 years uh with a casserole
telescope and really know that in any anything that
you put in like uh extension tube or or any
thing that only the the size of the image when you use a larger um
adapter you have a bigger size of the image because
the secondary mirror is like a barlow when you
have a a longer distance
the size of the things are do you have an effective focal focal
length larger than the the the native focal length oh yes yes
because barlow is different than a tele extender right yes for example
yeah yeah i don't remember where i i have my my
sky and telescope with that with a work of a guy for to calculate um i need to
to find this because it's very very uh great to to have a
formula to calculate from the rear side to the distance where you point the
your your your sensor and you have a how many times
do you you are using a larger focal lens because it's not the same your your
customer is f10 right when you use a larger a larger um
accessory for after photography or visual but you are going with a longer distance
you have a magnification bigger
than if you use a shorter or low profile tail adapter
not not everybody knows this and it's it's of course that it's not a great
difference but it's something that that is another thing of the schmidt caster and
telescopes that is different because you're focusing moving
the yes the primary mirror yeah it's not like
like uh sorry the richie gretier telescope where use only
you're moving the the sensor to put in the focus this is a real distant fault in cassegrain
you are changing all time yes
you have a you have an f2 primary but then that's aimed at a five power
secondary and then when you move the when you move that mirror you know you're you're changing that
back focus a lot you know so um
that's what makes it so versatile you know is that you can do that uh it does have its challenges though if
you have a a mirror that's moving because you can get image shift or mirror flop these kinds
of things these are some of the things that gas grains have to deal with but
there is no technically no perfect tell us about there you just learn how
to use the tool get the best results out of it you know and and and and apply it towards
you know imaging within the best way you know so you know the other thing i learned this
the other night a couple of other tips when you do live stacking
um let's say of 10 seconds or 30 second subs
uh what happens is if you have a gust of wind like in
we've had some fairly hot days uh here in seattle lately and then in the
evening it changes and then that creates a bit of gusts uh that come
that will shake i put a i put it i still put a douche shield on on my
scope that creates a little bit of vibration so what happens is it's very frustrating there's some
nights where there's uh you know if you do live stacking what will happen is you'll see
it will start to blur the shots you'll have a really good like ninth stack and it's like oh the tenth one it just it
jiggled that's like oh you know so you have to start it all over again whereas if you take individual right and you
process it offline you can manually take those out and say okay i don't need that i used to throw them away right
um so you can save the individual ones so that's you know i'm learning about those
limitations as well i like the advantage of live stacking because you do all the pre-processing there
however it's risky if you have a windy uh or gusty time because all of a sudden
one frame comes in you ruined your whole livestock so uh
that's that's an interesting little nuance for anyone so you you could try different
techniques with that um to be able to filter out the bad data
anyhow yeah so uh and then the other thing one
another thing i discovered is my wi-fi was dropping out on my um
i was really frustrated every time and i i i can tell you this now
every time i would track an object at 60 degrees as of altitude 60 degrees
60 degrees yeah 6-0 as soon as it's above 6-0
it drops out and i i didn't know that until i started seeing this because i was taking
pictures of cygnus the the veil and and uh and and all those that are just
moving up from the east and guess what as soon as it tracks past 60 degrees
it drops out and then i'm wondering there could be i you know i'm just sharing this with you guys this is fresh off the press i know
i know now that this is always happening it happens reliable because i'd be out
there and i'd be really really frustrated to have to do a realignment at one o'clock in the morning right so
sorry cameron do you use you're talking about the the ac
altitude ic mount of of the evolution yeah this is the evolution mate yeah yes
yeah yes you either have no more that if you're lucky 25 minutes of tracking for
a single shot oh oh no i can't track any more than 30 seconds because of the field rotation
right how many how many times do you use in in a single shots
so what i do is it's a real thing yes i know yeah so what i can do is i can do
like you can start to see depending on where you are with relation to the uh
rotation if you're facing the horizon to the south you're not going to have much field rotation but if you if you're facing to
the southeast that's the maximum field rotation right uh because because now you're you have to move both alpha alt
and azimuth to compensate for the earth's rotation so what happens is uh
when you remove it it does a lot of so i found that you can't even take 30 second shots
sometimes at certain uh because you'll see a jag it will do an adjustment
periodic periodic correction if you will um but but what i can get away with
generally if i'm in the either facing east or in general directions i've been
lucky i'm limited to pretty much 30 seconds but to your point i can stack
because what it does is it does the rotation it does the adjustments in between
and the stacking algorithm can do the uh the plate solve this and then what it
does it rotates uh the image and you'll see the corners are actually black
so it starts you'll start to see the the as i take multiple i've taken up to 20
30 second so what is that 10 minutes right 10 minutes of data
um in in that's the maximum i've taken and then you start to see you know uh some some clipping on the
side but it's the center of the image and the the surrounding now that i have flats it's still okay no
because i used a lot of time uh evolution nine point
two five yeah i took a lot of pictures of galaxies thorium
and a lot of things and when i started to use uh equatorial mode
i say never more i'm not going to go back actually for me i'm preparing a very
well very well combination because explore scientific
send us to our company of course for selling and
we choose we choose something that is the the
the ota the optical different assembly it's a maxi top of uh six um sorry five inches maxo top
but it's f 15 yes yes exactly very planetary
yes and explore scientific choose chose sorry chose the
the this um very very large uh um
focal length because many many brands chosen for for the manufacturers uh
maybe f10 f8 but for if you like to have a
great max of casa running telescope you need to to choose a larger a larger
focal relation because you have a flat field first of all you have a very very low
comma if you have a 15 f relation a 15
f number second one is that you don't have a many people think that oh
15 relation is is is very large is very
low for photography and this is not real because all that you need is aperture in
yes yes well you me and maxie we think in in in in in of course scott uh we
think in in in numbers for astronomy that light gathering is everything in
australia and resolution people say or 15 come on it's but have a appetizer you
get higher resolution yeah higher resolution or like gathering contrast
yes you know what you do with the uh focal length is uh a matter of um image
scale you know yes yes well honestly being a galaxy lover myself
uh you know everyone talks about max thoughts killers oh they're they're awesome for
planet for galaxies i mean you you put a you could put a long focal length eyepiece and a maxitos right
um you know which which will still give you higher power but you don't need a barlow right you you still get you get
excellent contrast it's it's gorgeous i mean uh i've i discovered that i have a
little four inch mac 102 and uh i'll tell you what what a what a
workhorse i mean it's a great little uh little scope it's very small very portable and uh but but the biggest
thing it is it is it's not as you have to be experienced because
you need to have something because it has such a limited field of view finding objects is the issue
uh now so if you have a go-to if you put it on a go-to now they have these small go-to's
like an ixos you know 100 uh or you know that then basically
uh you can um now you've solved the problem and these macs are you know are really awesome
uh yes you you you you choose the the
the facility of use a sky map
to to drive the telescope over the another another system to
to found objects is understandable yes and maybe because
your objective is not only astrophotography if not make a catalogue and an al altus remote moan for this is
is a great offer a great solution i i understand you need both i mean you need
you cannot replace a wide field i'm i want you know like an 8080 type uh
irreplaceable yes you can scan the skies it's so enjoyable and and your your photos are great i
can't wait to start imaging with an 8080. i'm really excited for that one but but uh but then
you you you throw it to me it's like another eyepiece right you know you get a mac so you don't have
to have a barlow right yeah and then and then you just you have another eyepiece you it's another tool right so you you
you can now have both you you can have the the long focal length and and uh
and portable and then you also have the short focal length white field so really good compliment really good
complementary scopes yeah yeah it's something that when
i actually i am in a time of my life like telescope dealer is fun because i
am in a time of my life where i'm really before 30 years to solve to solve telescopes to
the people to offer people to to to make a
i'm a thing more in this is the ota
this is the mount this is your software or your system this is the eyepiece
i um it's impossible to sell one telescope like a one piece
because the the technology well the cameras you have and it is
any more um only for for kids for starter kids for
kids or for people that know but always just in the second the second
stage of your hobby you need to to to
to choose a mount a telescope
sorry ota or only the optical tube a camera all from different
manufacturers or from the same manufacturer but in the same the different models
yeah this is for example actually i prepare we are preparing a telescope that
starting to choose um oh sorry i scott who is that the video of the mac uh
i forget the the the i forget the the name of uh
one of the support uh technical support that make the video and say i'm gonna show the
the mac over the nexus 100. okay is it good
you're talking about one of our customer service representatives yes yes um
there's uh there's chuck ross tyler uh
maybe yeah yes um i started to see this and say okay first of all it's a great
combination of size and weight between the mount and the and the
[Music] and the ota first of all you think
between size and weight the first thing that you you think when you we choose the mount yeah the amount and the and
the ota but second one when i say how who is the the focal length of this
tube and say okay it's near to what two meters
and say is is it is the focal length of a gas around eight inches and maybe do you have some
some advantage in this because do you have a more stable
uh opticals in of course a smaller diameter but
i think that that have for example you have a
native focal length longer and
today do you have for example something that something that in the past was
impossible to make in a light way uh in like way
wow i forget that the words are in english and in spanish this hour it's terrible
the the cameras are really small and you can make you can start to use for a
small um mount and quattro hormone go to your mode
and two with large focal length with a system of with a guider
and maybe i think that i i think that can have
something like you know an expected results
of course that i'll i'll try it and i i started to make pictures in two
weeks i think the otas are coming to miami i need to
prepare okay you leave over to buenos aires and when i start to talk with
people when you with all people that make astronomy with many many from many
years i say oh okay oh who is the focus one
two matters near okay well it will be very interesting to
yes yes you know i recall uh astrophotography
jack newton and um he started using uh barlow lenses
to photograph galaxies okay so he's got he's got he had his 16 inch
f10 okay 160 inches of focal length
yes a two times barlow to photograph galaxies and
the image scale was fantastic it looked it looked like uh galaxies taken with uh some
large professional telescope you know because uh he would photograph this side of it
in that side of the galaxy and he's making he's mosaicing them and it was um it was really amazing a lot of
work okay but still um you know that larger focal length uh
gives you the kind of image scale especially if you're matching you got the right sensor and you're matching that uh yes
um absolutely absolutely yes
well
i was looking at those 16 inches uh when i was younger too and i those were always the show telescope in in
yeah i remember i remember uh drooling over it in anacortes uh telescope uh you know there was a big
beautiful 16-inch white mead yeah because the green sitting there
it weighed 400 pounds but yeah i think it's 400 pounds right it's 200 pounds for the amount 200 pounds for the
the tube assembly with the with the deck bearings was about 125 pounds
work arms were followed so that was about a 40 pound piece and then you had about a 75 pound drive base and then uh and then
you had the tripod or a pier yeah here the pier was usually filled with sand so there's
probably over 500 pounds oh yeah it's
say if you can do it the mount is you know it doesn't matter then you can
throw in on just the caesar's point you can throw on any telescope uh you get a
good mount you can piggyback them and and i i i cannot say enough about how you know how
even good mountain even without a motorized mount you know uh
you did the crescent nebula the planetary nebula and reminds me that nicolas take it
he did some observations without a uhc filter and with a uhc
filter and also take pictures with the planetary
camera using uhc filter and rgb filters
let me show you a little bit the screen this is the draw that he did uh the
observation without the filter you see the stars and the uh
yes and his with the uhc filter it pops
a lot and this uh let me
here this is the picture that he did of the planetary
manually and the qh y5 monochrome camera no no yeah because
nicole the hammer is it's a crazy man yeah yes he's a crazy
man he's from bayern field he's in the the south of buenos aires
yes from here the great buenos aires you know
hey guys scott i would think i like
the after party because she he's starting to listen to listen and say
he couldn't [Music] be outside [Laughter]
did you scream the the ghost the goal the saturday yes
yes oh yeah yeah oh come on i'm not mad that was
awesome powder for celebrator but yeah [Laughter]
yeah that was a big big one yeah when was the last time it was like 15 years or what was it like a it was a
milestone right for argentina versus brazil no there was too many matches against
brazil but i remember in 2004 the finale of the
copa america america cop we lost then again in the finally if in the
chile in copa america and every time and every
of course in 2004 remember me this yeah
he asked yes i'm sorry okay now but that's
passive it's all the hassle yeah exactly that's great that's i'm really happy for you guys when i saw that i was thinking
about you guys i was like yeah that's really cool that's really cool yeah you know
gentlemen i think it's that time i think yeah
uh i have there's a few videos that i did uh uh i didn't run yet that i'm going to
run um about comets uh so if you're still watching
out there in the audience um you know uh i think there's a couple of comments
here harold locke says here i've been playing using binoculars lately and last time was using my celestron 5 inch
maxitoff castle grain 1500 millimeters and i was so bummed
uh that that i was not gathering enough light to view through the haze and pollution you
are now letting me know that it's my ability not to be able to find the target because of my narrow field of
view even though my finder scope was centered perfectly well i usually use
point and go to to make the go to i usually use point
and go and not the go-to ability so i i don't have to take a hammer
i guess he realizes he doesn't have to destroy his telescope music
okay yeah you do have to point it very carefully yeah yeah because there's all
the links eyepiece or for yeah yeah and use the longest focal
length eyepiece you can to get started with and uh um
you know sometimes i mean it is easy to miss at when you're up at those higher magnifications
three type of lengths for the finder yeah actually if i reflect on all my
middle one and almost closer to the name that is code yeah yes yeah yeah no
it's either that or you or you do a perfect alignment yeah i mean
if i if i summarize all my frustrations in all my experience using equipment has
to be because of not a good mount and and not a good mount
and and too narrow a field of view for the mount yeah it's a deadly combination you know
yeah it's a deadly car you can get away with a bad mount with a wide field telescope and it's fine right it's very
forgiving yeah but you you have a narrow field telescope and uh it's it goes back
to it's like you know the the the old department store telescope like you're you're you're wondering i'm in the corner there really long focal long
focal length and very bad mount the worst that is the number one if you summarize it then finally if you
have a you know a short forklift with a bad mount it's okay but the mount will still bug you if you have
really good if you have a really awesome mount and a crappy telescope guess what it doesn't matter you the mount will
make the good the bad telescope actually really perform well because you know you put you can you can
have a better experience because you'll point it you it will move nicely uh i
can i i cannot it's a hardware a lot of people goes totally against what they're thinking or what they're watching you
know because they want this there is an amazing big telescope and they then they'll go and put it on a
small amount you know and and and this forces manufacturers
also because this is what they this is what is you know the forces of
driving therefore desire you know so this assembly um
i i give to augustine one unit of the exodus 100 the mac
and black guy they're of course all complete and we are awaiting
how quality of pictures he can do
[Laughter] okay you waited all night long to give your presentation and uh
you know okay you had a lot to say so that's very cool and it's i mean
and we have these guys from argentina to hang out with us and i know i know the sun is coming up down there
so let me ask you caesar and maxie you know i i remember going to spain
okay and uh the uh you know for for us in the
usa we want to eat dinner like it's six or seven o'clock you know and uh maybe
maybe we'll stay up till and uh twelve and then we go to sleep right yeah
no they they go to work at eight they get off at 12. they're at home till four o'clock in
the afternoon and then they go back to work until eight o'clock and then they go home again and then
good night midnight they go out and eat right yeah is it like that in argentina
in here in chile it has the the the commercial
uh yeah in the shops and commercial
stores they have the uh the town time you know start eight am to twelve then goes to
your house you sleep a nap maybe and then you return maybe a three
or four p.m to seven or eight
p.m then when you come here to your house uh
give something to it but maybe 11 and 12 you're going to dinner and then you
maybe but here i'm going to start to editing or see some
some a little of tv and then i'm going to rest to wake up again to 7 00 yeah
actually you know it's interesting you know my first experience of that when i
really i was in uh traveling to malaga spain yeah um in the southern part of the you
know the um mediterranean and um and i remember when we were going out like oh it was like it was like 7 30
8 o'clock we were going hey let's go grab a bite to eat where it's it's late it's late to eat you know let's go and
we walk by it's like there's all the restaurants they look like they're restaurants but they had all the doors were closed and it was like everything
was shut it's like what's going on and so we just kept on walking and uh
we watched the uh you know the we walked along the beach and then we we went back and it was around 9 30 10 o'clock
everything was open now everything was really like totally and everything's
everywhere it's like okay that was their starting started it's like okay it's like it fully came alive it was completely dead and then now all of a
sudden it's like they're open for business it's like wow so that's that's already and they told me all the all the
local spanish guys were saying yeah yeah this is we just have dinner at nine o'clock yeah
like in spain or in the south of italy here in buenos aires for example
no this year last year was totally different but normally the the the
very very pubs or they close when the people go
out in the week not in the weekend maybe the week on the weekly it's wednesday what's
going on it is 2 a.m the the i think
the world the most is thursdays which is all though this is crazy
not crazy not crazy yeah but i i did enjoy my time in in
madrid and uh you know i have been down i have not been to argentina but i've been to
uruguay oh it's the same ah uruguay yeah i love
it i love my time in europe is one of the place where my kids grow
in in our vacations is okay there's a beautiful there's a old high
school it was a science high school and they have in there a beautiful
zeiss refractor wow zeiss refractor i think it's like a
eight inch something like that um i can show you especially in argentina
why do you have a lot of cyber fractures that that that the same that i'm restoring
the the yeah this one 18 centimeters maybe they have the same
model in uruguay i i think that yes you know in lucan there was a
a the castle is a property a private property that has an observatory
and i thought and i heard that he has a
uh monthly video video national high school
sure yes the national school of montevideo have a size similar the same
model that i'm restoring now okay you know it doesn't start with the
the aquamatic objective that i disassemble it for the san miguel observatory is the
same that they have in montevideo
approved private yeah i mean it is so
so perfectly maintained wow brand-new look at you
that that is me [Laughter] that was beautiful though this is uh
i think i think that is the same thing that we are yes it's the same telescope
it's got it's the same technical because it's a model of maybe for 1920s
and it is an achromatic refractor um ponte video and in san miguel they
involve the same model and uh the the it's impressive i i i show you
the in a presentation the the cell with the objective because we needed
in an entire entire um evening four hours to remove because any
screw was unable to to to remove without broken um
yeah it was very rusty yeah absolutely
i'm my my next step with this is first of all i don't touch
the the something that is is very important is we are awaiting the
signature of the state of of the government to give to to the
municipal i don't know who is the majority maybe when you have a small city like san
miguel give to the major to have the property of the observatory it's very important
to start to restoring to move to repair because we disassemble it
only to keep in a safe place because like um they are making a street in this
moment the the observatory can be more vandalized like
i i the first thing that i say okay we remove
so fast so fast as possible yeah objective to keep in a place
in a safe in a safe place the cell
because the the entire uh focus system that you show the same because i have the same
picture yeah was totally still still
[Music] if somebody in the united states have
the same or or because uh really we are and searching for donation in the future
you need to uh cesar you need to talk to john briggs john breaks yes
he's on our show a lot and uh he he has the um astronomical
lyceum in new mexico yes and he has many many telescopes and
has and you know where to find um yes you know maybe we can
yeah we can uh we don't have problem in adapting because maybe the diameter is a
little different you know but i think that he show a a similar part of of a site
telescope because in many places it's very important to be connected because many many people have the
parts that maybe we have two parts that another in another part of the world
they have one you know um they are
and my idea it's a
you can see it's got that the picture that you are with the size we have the same the same
equatorial amount that was vandalized too and
i we are we are thinking in make with two strong step motors
um adapting a p a m c a m c yeah yeah
down that path we will help you yeah yes the idea i told with the people that the
system is very flexible and very very adapting for a lot of different software
and it's open source that is very important for that is
like the idea is very educated center of education
if we have opens opens uh software we can do this for for for uh
students to to collaborate and make uh code
right all you know it's very important i would love to uh see that project
uh yeah get started that would be cool right the um to control larger uh stepper
motors we can do it uh there may be some additional electronics to to drive a big
motor okay but uh um but yeah we were we were looking at uh
the possibility of driving uh the 40-inch yurkies refractor
which is a giant okay here's the side telescope huge yeah i had i had jerry already thinking about
it how we would use the pmc8 electronics to drive that telescope and uh he said
yeah it's possible you know so you know at eight inch or ten inch
refractor yeah sure yes i i i know because i know that you
made this for for the jerk is a refractor um this is why i think that
you can help us with this yes we can yes we would be happy to
we'd be happy to yeah thank you that's cool
an excellent sir party really thank you thank you well you guys made it an excellent star party thank you it was
awesome um uh yeah and uh for again for all the of
you that are watching uh you know our next global star party will be on july 20th uh our our host is caitlin aarons
from goddard space flight center and uh you know it is the anniversary of
the apollo 11 moon landing and uh so we will have a number of people on that are
uh experts about the moon and um uh it'll be an exciting time so
thanks for watching and uh again i have a few videos uh some comment videos i thought that you would
find interesting that i'm gonna run next and and you guys uh cesar maxie and
cameron thank you very much um and for anyone else that's watching
uh that was a presenter for the show um thanks again and um
you guys have a good night or good morning as it might be
see you guys bye bye bye you maxis your cameron yes here
thank you
every 5.4 years comet 41p swings around the sun and puts on a show for observers
on earth between march and april 2017 as the comet made its closest approach to earth
astronomers caught it doing something never before seen [Music] 41p is an icy body from the kuiper belt
the cold storage zone beyond neptune neptune's gravity first sent it hurtling
toward the sun and jupiter trapped it in its current orbit as it nears the sun the comet's icy
areas warm up and turn to gas this forms jets that blast gas and dust
into space this material becomes an extended atmosphere around the comet and makes up
its tail to better understand how comets work astronomers study how these jets change
as a comet approaches and departs the inner solar system from this astronomers can measure how fast the
comet rotates [Music] when 41p approached in march 2017
astronomers found it to be rotating about once every 20 hours but when nasa's swift studied the comet
in may 41p's rotation period had more than doubled this is the largest most abrupt
rotational change ever seen on a comet comet 41p is a small object
smaller than most of the so-called jupiter family comets and very active
astronomers think a particularly strong active area produced jets that lined up in just the right way to suddenly put
the brakes on the comet's spin extrapolating from the swift
measurements 41p could have continued to slow in the following months
spinning less than once every four days by summer this spin is too slow to keep the comet
stable so even small jets can set it wobbling like a top or tumbling
and ultimately rotating around a different axis such changes affect which parts of
the comet are exposed to sunlight perhaps this will drive new levels of activity that will further change the
comet's spin scientists have never before observed this phase of comet evolution and they
look forward to 41p's next visit in 2022
[Music]
last summer an amateur astronomer discovered the first interstellar comet zipping through our solar system
2i borisov it was clear from its path that the comet would dim from view within months
so scientists were quick to turn their telescopes towards the alien comet for review among them was an international
team led by nasa goddard they used the alma telescope array in northern chile to probe to iborsoft while it was close
by inside the halo of gas around the comet they detected something peculiar
to iborosov was releasing a higher concentration of carbon monoxide than any comet observed at a similar distance
from the sun nasa's hubble space telescope later confirmed this too scientists wondered
could this be our first glimpse of the chemistry of another planetary system or are we learning that there's more
chemical diversity among comets than we knew of carbon monoxide is one of the most
abundant molecules in space scientists expect to see it inside all comets yet
there's a huge variation which is puzzling regardless 2i borosov is off the charts to preserve
its carbon monoxide the comet likely formed very far away from its star in one of the coldest
environments known in our solar system this would have been in the vicinity of neptune when comets were forming
temperatures there could have reached negative 420 degrees fahrenheit scientists think that gravitational
disturbances from young jostling planets may have thrown to iborosov out of its home star system and onto a cold lonely
voyage our solar system is tiny compared to the distances between star systems it's
incredibly rare for an interstellar comet to pass within observable range however big sophisticated telescopes are coming
online so scientists expect to see more alien comments like 2i bars
will they all be similarly exotic
[Music]
[Music]
hi i am carl battams i am a computational scientist and
astrophysicist from the naval research lab everything that you're seeing in this movie is based on actual data so
actually every single dot that you see in this movie is a real comet that has
been discovered or observed by soho soho is the solon heliospheric
observatory so it's a joint mission between nasa and the european space agency
and soho's mission was to study and understand the sun
and the region of space surrounding the sun and all of the cool awesome
explosive stuff that the sun does there was never any intention for soho to be a comet discoverer the reason
that soho has been so successful at finding these comets is because it's got this
wonderful instrument on the spacecraft that offers us a view of the inner solar
system that we just cannot get from any telescope on earth the different colors
in this movie represent different families or populations of comets that soho is
observing so the the red comets these are kreutz sun grazers the green comets are what we
call maya group comets the only exception is the yellow ones that you see these are what
we call non-group comets these do not belong to any family you see as these
objects are flying in towards the sun they're not really going in a straight line it's they're following a curve and
that curve is because of the sun's gravity and the closer a comet gets to the sun
the faster it goes and then they slow down again as they move away from the sun one of the really awesome facts that i
love about the the sun grazers in particular the kreutz comets that
you're seeing in red they are the fastest objects in our solar system
that that aren't particles they get so close to the sun
that they're traveling over 600 kilometers per second that's 0.2 percent
of the speed of light which is just it is an inconceivable
velocity for pretty much anything that's not a particle but for a big house size chunk
of rock and ice it's just truly insane that these objects are going that fast unfortunately they're getting completely
fried in the process but it's really awesome that they're doing that the comets in this movie that are flying
around the sun and disappearing out of the movie again they have survived past the sun they're not
getting completely vaporized by the the intense solar radiation
any comet that you see in this movie that does not have a label it means it was discovered by soho i really love
that this mission that was designed to do something completely different just by
luck and by chance has completely rewritten the history books with
more than well over half of all the comets that we have on official record now carry
soho's name and it was never even intended to do that i just love that fact [Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
[Music]
well well well i'm saying good night it is time to say
look maxie like disappeared he
[Music] [Laughter]
all right guys good night good night thank you and good night to the audience
good night everyone all right good night
okay bye guys bye
yes at which point joe biden called and said you stole my line hey my
inauguration speech and justin trudeau said and we steal from the best
and somewhere fdr's descendants are saying wait what about me you took it for me
it's gorgeous here but it was pouring rain today really the skies opened up there were
wonderful thunderstorm clouds just all over and now it seems to be lightening up so
i'm hoping i can take some pictures over the next couple of nights and see some northern constellations with some actual
deck i don't get to do that in montreal but kareem be very careful do not fall off
that uh your balcony there because that looks like it's a long way down have i ever
told you the story of when i fell off of a second floor balcony right before a debate and walked in still did the debate and
uh walked out and half the people there don't remember me saying anything because they were just in awe that i walked back
[Laughter]
i'll tell you the whole story sometime it was a very bizarre bizarre weekend that's awesome
connor how you doing oh wonderful how are you good are you ready
you're uh presenting at the uh alcon right this year yes that's right just in august
uh the 21st or the 22nd we're trying to nail down a date right now um i start uh classes at penn state the
23rd so i got to figure out the schedule first but i'm very excited about it so i grew
up in southern pennsylvania i'm so happy to hear a fellow nittany lion is coming in that's awesome
really yeah i didn't get to go to school there but i got to visit often everybody talks about it everybody says
they love it they say um your blood runs blue or something like that yeah your blood runs blue but i'll tell you their
their physics and their astronomy and astrophysics is fantastic the the profs
are so open to explaining and all they want these questions to be asked and they're they're more than open
to chatting it's fantastic that sounds wonderful i'm looking at
the astronomy club there and make some things happen i was reading their website i think they make some of their
own mirrors they said they had an uh 8 and two ten inch dobsonians they made and then the astrophysics department has
a 24 inch plane wave that they use for all kinds of stuff like photometry
that's gorgeous and i think uh i think it was enrique gomez who was
saying that the appalachian uh the appalachian song uh project they had
a couple of people from the poconos area that were participating in taking photometry curves for them so i don't
know if that's with penn state or not but you could always look to get involved with some of those inter-regional
groups i wanted to see what came out in the poconos
and you were up in the catskills all the time right david no uh
three summers in the adirondacks and then one around the coconuts and then back for another three summers
in the adirondacks
hi everyone good evening everyone how are you fine
so are you guys ready for some you guys have an amazing group you got amazing i
found some amazing videos about comets that's going to be in this program all through the program
so it's going to be it's going to be a lot of fun yeah absolutely
it's a pleasure today listen to david levy talking about come on their own comet
yes for me is i amaze it because it's
every week i am acid uh listen uh the poetry but today
is come on it's like wow
i i'm really exciting uh to to listen tonight uh and
talk about uh about this david you're
well my thank you except it's going to be more of a discussion when scotty and i were
planning this i kind of wanted it to be more discussion so that more people could participate
yeah yes yes of course we we will
uh talk all that week for me i i can
uh all that i remember from that comet
um especially was was it the the i think what that was the first
not only the of course the first time that people
can can take in the history i think that never
never um in in any observatory professional
observatory can take a picture of an image of
of uh impact of a comic over jupiter but
was the first time that the people amateur astronomers can do it too
was together because was in a time where the the the
planetary cameras starting to be able to to take this type of pictures
for me was amazing for when i started to to see the amateur uh my customers i say
okay i see i i see it i i have the the image and
was so strong that come on
the scale of the impact yeah what was so wonderful about it
caesar is that you know all the experts are telling us we were not going to see anything
you know and there we you know and then we saw the the aftermath of the impacts
the scarring that was across jupiter you know and i took i took to my home
because i was working at meat at the time we had bought a tasco 60 a 50 millimeter
refractor uh that we were just keeping in the in our sample room so we could compare
our brand versus their brand and so i took home the tasco 50 but i
also took home a mead 16-inch telescope okay yeah
no no side by side side by side and you could see the scarring on jupiter's surface
with the 50 millimeter toy telescope the 16 inch it was you know yes was
visible with that with a maybe without uh if you had a for
bigger telescope was more you needed a um i remember with my eight inches i
needed to see the filter i don't remember
because well when you put the i remember the i think that i thought i think that i used
the blue one because i was so um you know as my enzyme
anxiety they say you know i need to see this but i remember i don't remember
i i see something that i i have clouds later in buenos aires but
but for me was it's visible come on yeah
it's true yeah no no it's one of the most incredible things that i saw
at telescope i think a lot of people say that yeah
yeah absolutely and we have the the hero of the night tonight he's having our heroes here
right yeah yes absolutely
and it's i remember that the idea i don't know but i think that the the chapter of the simpson
i think that was inspired in the idea when you
the idea that that bart simpson found the telus fun by telescope
uh comet and the comet is going to springfield do you remember i think that
that was inspired in the history of of discover a comet that impact in jupiter
yeah because it's the from the same time i i'm sure about this but
i remember when they confirmed that this was going to happen i could still hardly believe it was going to happen
yeah this is what yeah yes i have a comment um i have
another thing more right it's incredible i i i don't know how was
the the the real history but i really really
uh uh amazing that hello adrian
hello adrian ambassador excited to listen to this
in the car driving yeah as usual but i am now i came around
oh you're driving hi thanks he's there are you here cameron how are you
good how are you all right yeah hey dude away oh adrian you got that you're on
the on the road wow yeah stay safe but i will be i will be at
home shortly so
yeah hey kareem hey how you doing good good hi karin how are you it's it's okay
the the weather the hot summer it's
the the the high temperatures uh uh
are finished it's okay now the is more down a little yeah i'll cool down a little but there's still some wildfires
in dc unfortunately but uh i was i was seeing the temperatures in other parts of the world
right now and in kuwait it's ridiculous i feel for them oh
yeah no yeah yes i i we are really very
worried by canada the temperatures were totally insane
yeah we've been lucky it hasn't been too bad most of the time here so yeah
yes it's for for not all people sometimes it's possible because it's
logical here i remember that maybe two years in summer in our in the south the south
part of argentina is ushuaia and usually have normally you know
the temperatures uh of maybe canada or um
they had 30 degrees only 30 degrees that centigrade in summer
um of course that they don't have the problems that that that for canada was
higher over 40 45 and 50 but only with 30
yes 50 degrees centigrade yes and in usual the people
was turn crazy because they don't have a air conditioner normally because they don't
need it um [Music] all people go into the fresh water
because they needed uh keep the their their because
the the body of the people in the south is not prepared to to
only 30 degrees i can imagine if you have 50 degrees because it's totally
unreal it's incredible
well we've got um uh people already logged in um
and chatting here we got book davies here says hello to everybody beatrice heinz hello everyone greetings from
belgium um book davies is on and uh
beatrice says hello scott caesar and david hello back
harold lock good evening comment watchers and
aaron thompson hello and good evening um
norm hughes good evening all you crazy star people
are crazy right why crazy wow that's right of course
of course the later it gets the more crazy we get high from oracle arizona just had a
severe thunderstorm that dropped half an inch 1.2 inches of rain in less than an hour got .7 in the first 30 minutes of
the storm that was from mike wiesner book davies has got his scope out and
warming up and andrew corkill's on with us um
let's see who else
to burn cameron gillis he'll be on the show
um
oh and chris larson wade frontie
in 1743 observers claimed to have seen a comet with six tails
little did they know that the streaks behind the comet could be related to the origins of the solar system
in time scientists theorized that the dust in a comet's tail had been combed out into bands known as striate
how the striae formed however was still a mystery how dust behaves in a comet's tail is
exciting because comets are the leftover building blocks of the solar system by watching the material clump and fragment
in the tail we can gain insights into the same process that forms dust into planets moons or asteroids
in 2007 researchers were able to capture images of comet mcnaught with nasa and
esa's soho and stereo spacecraft today researchers are introducing the latest
step in analyzing footage like this a new image mapping technique
when the technique is applied it seamlessly combines perspectives from multiple spacecraft giving us a clearer
picture of how the dust trail changes over time in the processed footage we see the new
striae form their alignment relative to the sun indicates that the star might play a
role in striae formation as well as fragmentation we can also see how the clean lines are
disrupted when the comet crosses the current sheet the boundary where the solar wind's magnetic field changes orientation
notice how the defined lines become broken this tells us that the dust is charged
and the characteristic lines of the magnetic field in the solar system are affecting it
scientists can use the new processing tool to study dust behavior in other comets
when it comes to learning how comets can teach us about our origins we've only just caught this by the tail
[Music]
[Music]
it's your turn scotty i think you're off back
here we go how are you guys doing anyways uh scott roberts here and this
is the 54th global star party and uh i was reading something sorry guys um
but uh this this uh this particular global star parties about the impact of comets and
you know i mean maybe very obviously we can think about comets smashing into things but
comets have been impacting humanity for thousands of years and um
it is something that um uh that a lot of amateur astronomers can point to as kind of like the inspiration
for why they go out and observe every chance that they can you know so
um you know i can't tell you how many people got started because of halley's comet or hill bop or
going back before hallie's comment like comet west or um you know ikea sikhi um
uh you know uh many comments that that have been uh
visible and observed and uh uh you know and there's more to come of course so uh they are incredible uh
incredibly beautiful when they're bright and make these uh huge tails but they're also very
interesting to watch even if they're small and you need some aperture to to
check them out because these things are moving across our solar system they're icebergs of primordial ice and dust you
know the leftovers are maybe the beginnings of our solar system and uh you know all frozen up and uh
in in those uh icebergs and so um you know and i remember also uh
giving lectures about hallie's comet and i kind of focused on how
people thought of halley's comet in 1910 there were people buying comet pills and they were buying gas
masks and they were because they had they had taken spectra of halley's comet and
found cyanogen gas in the tail and we were the comet came so close that
we were the orbit of the earth was supposed to pass through the tail and there were people thinking well
maybe we'll all die okay as the as the dust and gas
enters into our atmosphere but somehow we all made it and um
and you know i got to see it uh of course in 85 and 86 with a bunch of other people but i got to meet people
that remembered it from 1910 and that was really that was amazing so
um i am um uh i'm pleased to uh
present uh david levy i think all of us here are very excited you know we we
have david at every global star party but you know this is uh an opportunity for
david to really talk about comments something he's devoted most of his life to
and he's going to have a discussion group with us after we run through some talks
here so i will um i'll pass this over to david
well thanks scotty and it's a pleasure to be here tonight my reading of a discussion about comments
is going to happen a little bit later for now i'm just going to do the uh the weekly quotation
and because we are talking about comments i really had to look very hard for my magic book
to find a poem that doesn't have comments in it and i did and it's a very famous canadian poem
called the cremation of sam mcgee and i know that all the canadians in the
audience started laughing and smiling right now because they all know and a lot of the
others don't just what a wonderful story this is about um
about this person who um went up who was from um
who was going on this expedition and that's about sam mcgee who was of
course born in tennessee and he went up to uh to search for gold
but he couldn't handle the weather and he knew he was going to die and he made the
speaker of the poem promised that if he died that he must cremate
the remains of sam mcgee and uh the speaker agreed to do that the next day the cold was too much
and assembly passed away and there he's taking it and it's just a horrible
thing he's having the remains of sam mcgee in his uh on his sled
and they finally find a ship of a boat that was
sitting there crushed and destroyed in the ice but a place where he thought he could
build a crematorium and i'm going to pick up in the last couple of stanzas of this poem
i did not know how long in the snow i wrestled with grisly fear but the stars came out and they danced
about here again i ventured near i was sick with dread but i bravely said
i'll just take a look inside i guess he's cooked
but it's time i looked and the door i opened wide and there sat sandwiching cool and calm
in the heart of the furnace roar and he wore a smile you could see a mile and he said please close that door
it's fine in here but i greatly hear you let in the cold and storm since i left plum tree down in tennessee
it's the first time i've been born there are strange things done in the midnight sun by the men who boil for
gold the arctic trails have their secret tales that would make your blood run
cold the northern lights have seen queer sites but the queerest they ever did see
was that night on the marge of lac la barge i created sam thank you
back to you now scotty you know very cool very cool okay all right so um
uh we are uh we're going to move up our schedule a little bit here um our next
um person will be on will be uh john goss and uh john uh is uh with the
astronomical league he uh how many times have you been president john
ten times
uh no no i was president for two terms two terms okay yeah there's there's there's several two-term presidents i
think for the astronomical league so um so it's uh i i remember uh
uh being there with you on stage and uh um you know
announcing uh uh national young astronomers awards and um
uh john i think that you did a great job uh you were you're a uh certainly a leader of the uh of the league and uh
powerhouse and um uh you know driving force in amateur astronomy and uh so it was it was
it was an honor you know i i i've a couple of times i was a little nervous you know i'm sitting there in my suit
i have one time in particular in which we were at an alcon in um charlie bolden the uh nasa administrator
that the top guy announced was our speaker he was there right and i was pretty nervous and and and you
were saying no no just just calm down this guy is like everybody else
yeah he really was pretty he was he was i mean i mean you meet people that are brilliant and do these amazing things
but um uh you know and it's not easy sometimes when you're around some someone that you
admire so much to just be yourself but that's the way they want you to be you know
charlie and i had a really nice talk about uh why why we like ranch dressing on our salad so that kind of smooth
he was a very nice man he's like everybody else yeah yes he is yes he is
yeah except he ran nasa for a while so
all right so uh what will happen is um you know the astronomical league comes on every
week uh to do door prizes uh during the global star party um
and they uh they set up the questions and uh give out the
answers and they give you a chance to win some valuable door prizes they also
um you know touch on uh you know uh solar safety and uh what the league has
to offer you know for if if you were to join as a member so i'm going to turn this over to you john
and um thanks for uh taking on the role this week
already see if i can find it
is this uh being broadcast my uh slideshow yes it will be when you when you share
it well i thought i was sharing it okay let me try again then
ah there it is there we go okay okay so
not to outdo anybody here but this is my lame attempt at poetry
poetry about comets as you might remember last summer we had a very special one
last summer surprise a wispy snowball named neowise surprises
in mid and clear mid-summer skies morning in auriga evening below ursa a wonder in our
excited eyes um you know neowise wasn't a stunning comment but it
was certainly the best one we we had in quite a while so it captured a lot of people's imagination we were like very
very very lucky to have it um let me move along though and
talk to you a little bit about al khan this is just just going to take him a minute here uh some of the speakers on
tonight's show we are scheduled to be at our all khan convention in ark
david dyker and david levy evidently you have to be named david to be in it but that's the way it goes that's what i got
we have a whole a whole bunch of speakers
what's that but uh okay well you uh we have a number of
speakers uh spread throughout three days and in that time we'll have a lot of
door prizes a lot of awards uh if you've been to an alcon before you know know the routine it'll be a lot
like that so it should be pretty informative for us but uh some of our our major speakers if i can
see here uh uh dr jocelyn bell bernal who is somebody in is in my mind is is
the pulsar person she's the one who was at the very beginning who identified these things
understood them or tried to understand them and uh made a lot of advancements so we're very lucky to have her speak
all the way from the uk of course david eicher uh david levy uh we will also be
having uh kelly beatty so we don't want to have david eicher just out there by himself
we're going to bring in kelly beatty as well and and a number numbered
excuse me a number of other people um we hope to have a virtual tour of the very large array which is always a
pretty cool pretty cool place to go espec if you've been there in person you'll it's a place that you will never ever forget
but this is coming up in august august 19th to the 21st uh it's free but you do have to register
and registration is easy and i know because i registered today and it took like 30 seconds to register all we
really want is your name and email address and uh then you're in you're cool
so uh go ahead and think about attending oh and one more thing it'll be broadcast
um globally and there's gonna be a global star party that night
so on the saturday night of alcon uh grand prizes are
for our door prize will be the uh thanks to explorer scientific and scott thank you for uh max the top cast green 127.
uh we will be having binoculars uh we'll be having a whole lot of gift certificates and many things to do with
the astrophotography books sky guides a lot of discounts um
anyway it'll be worth your time tuning in and you might even learn a thing or two and i might learn a thing or two as
well well i'd like to start off this door price section here
for it for tonight uh we'd like to start out generally by reminding people on the hazards of looking at the sun
although none of our three questions really have much to do with the sun tonight but still uh we want to make
sure that people understand about the hazards of going uh looking at the sun through optical equipment got to have
the right type of equip uh filters got to make sure they're at the front end of the telescope not really fitted over the
eyepiece um pretty clear stuff that we we say all
the time um so and looking at the sun is is very very recording you know we do
have a solar eclipse coming up in another just under three years um so what we're going to be seeing are
a lot of solar glasses out there um but you don't want to use solar glasses when you're using a telescope that's
that's no no solar glasses are just meant for the united eye or you can wear your typical prescription glasses but
they're just essentially super sunglasses specially made to look at the sun
okay we like to go over the uh answers from the last star party which is a week ago
we had three questions question number one where does here am i saying we didn't talk about the sun this time but uh why does this
total solar eclipse not occur at each new moon well it turned out it can be answered
number one uh it's because the moon's orbit is tilted just over five degrees relative to the earth's orbit around the
sun so that means that at certain certain new moons the moon passes above
the sun along its path or below it once in a while though it occurs right
smack on the sun and that's when we have a solar eclipse total solar eclipse
question number two how close to earth is the aurora borealis
uh it's interesting i've never really thought of it like this but actually it's not far at all it's probably uh closer to you if it's
overhead it's closer to you than it is uh probably closer to your next major city from where you live
usually it appears about 50 miles above the earth's surface that's that's not that far right pretty close yeah you
know if you drove a car up there it just wouldn't even take an hour to get there to where these things occur
question number three um this is a good one this time of year when you're pointing things out to the
public to make sure that you know this because this is a great sky mark
to help people find themselves around uh find the way around the summer sky what are the three defining
stars of the summer triangle asterism okay well that would be the stars vega which
would be the brightest deneb which would be the farthest and alter which is the southernmost of the three
that's number three okay so we have the winners for this week which will be added to the door prize drawing
i'll read the names off quickly if i can pronounce them we'll see barbara harris josh kovach cameron gillis
israel monte on andrew corkill norm hughes adrian bradley who's
on our screen right over there ia adrian and uh conor richards which is also on
screen someplace so we have you guys here uh so those are the the winners who uh from last week it
will be uh entered into the next drawing questions for this week though i'll try
to make this not not too long or too painful uh please send your answers to the
secretary at astronomically.org don't send them to me don't send them to scott they go right
to our secretary at astrology.org and then uh you'll be entered into next week's hours
this week's drawing did i say that right scott i think i did you said it right yeah right all right
you're getting big trouble of ours question number one you know i i like uh pointing some
things out that um tonight
that's right tonight right now we are one week shy of two years after the 50th
anniversary of apollo 11. so we're pretty close to the 52nd anniversary of apollo 11. but at the end of this month
will be the the 50th anniversary of apollo 15.
so remember the moon landings just didn't end at apollo 11. they kept going for uh two to three years after that so
you know we're into the apollo 15 time so the question is uh which of these mission highlights was not part of
apollo 15. so you get your book out and started seeing what was going on back then a
establishing tranquility base okay b use of the first
lunar rover c the feather and hammer drop physics demonstration
so if if you want oh another thing if you want to really relive how the moon looked in the sky during those times at
the end of july observe it on the evening of july 18th and on the following two nights that would be the
approximate phase that the moon was in when apollo 15 touched down and while the astronauts were there for
a couple of days three or three days but if you want to telescopically observe the area that the best time the
best day to see it uh to see this region where apollo 15 was would be july 16th
at about 9 00 pm uh july 17th at work also so if you really want to take a good
look at the moon try one of those two nights and you'll be able to see the area in all the uh excuse me
geographic features that the moon that that they uh excuse me examined so that's question
number one which one of those those three was not part of apollo 15
question number two which i i always ask one because i like people to think about where we are in the actual solar system
right now things change which of these uh major bodies of the solar system is closest to earth tonight
so right now essentially and of course i got my lame drawing there of the earth off to the side but
you get the idea is it a is the sun the closest b mercury c
venus d morse it's always one of those four so which which one is it uh for tonight that the
earth is closest to question number three
okay on the evening of july 18th the moon hangs to the left of what wide
double star it will make an interesting site binoculars this star is a member of the astronomic
league's double star observing program it's it's worth your time to take a look at this
uh and to show your friends and neighbors because it's something that they can actually view through binoculars
is the name of the star antares uh is it b uh
that sounds right i've heard it pronounced before yes subanalysis
making kind of groovy okay trying to make fun of this
or our numbers or letter c uh spica one of those three antares zubanel janubi or
spica um well the question is is spica pronounced spica or spika
i think i've heard both it's kind of hard to say sometimes um now adrian i think you're up in michigan
i i don't i don't know how what the preference is up there but um
tomatoes and there's tomatoes yeah yeah speaking of spica so
uh that's it that's that's what i have and uh we won't be here next month simply
because we got alcon going on so all our people will be focused their efforts on getting that underway but we will be
back in september september 17th for the next global star party with the astronomical league live
um number nine okay yeah that's for number nine
astronomical league live nine that would be great wonderful thank you very much john
um uh we are um now going to
uh switch back uh to uh to david levy uh he
had a great idea about having a discussion about comets and
i love it and so who better you know it's it's like learning how to box with muhammad ali i
mean you know so this is this is uh it doesn't get any better than this
so you guys in the audience if you have questions about comments okay you want to
try to stay on topic about this but uh um you know i will ask your questions as
the discussion rolls along but i'm going to turn it over to david so david thank you so much for doing
this this is wonderful thanks scotty this is my pleasure
the most important moment of my professional life
took place at palomar observatory at the bottom floor of the 18-inch
telescope on march the 25th 1992
two nights earlier we had taken some pictures using the film that wasn't really very good
of an area of the sky near jupiter and on that afternoon i was
i was sitting at the at the desk in in the room there
carolyn was scanning uh with the stereo microscope and jean
shoemaker was sitting on a chair reading time magazine
when carolyn stopped looked up and said i don't know what i've got
but it looks like a squashed comet and whatever a squash comment looked
like gina and i wanted to see it and so carolyn got out of the chair and
jean went down and uh sat down and carolyn was near me and i said i
looked at her and i said you're joking aren't you and she looked at me and she said no no
and gene then looked towards me with an expression of unbelievable bafflement
that i'd never seen before and then i decided to take i i had to
take a look at it myself to see this line of comets each one with
the tail going up and the bar joining them all and extending off either side
that was the discovery of coming out to comet and later became known as shinai currently b9
i've made two two good decisions in my lifetime
the first one beyond the shadow of the doubt was meeting and marrying wendy
and since wendy is sitting over here she knows that i would say that
and i better say that because i can't wait to stay married to wendy and i'm very pleased about that
but the second most important decision i made in my life was a decision to start searching for
comments on december the 17th 1965
and i'm still doing that now i my last visual discovery
was on the 2nd of october and early in the morning 2006
and uh that's the most recent discovery i've made about
all 1200 hours of visual searching since then and uh it's been
it's been a real real pleasure when
one of all the comments that i've discovered by far the most important one has got to be shoemakerly
it was not that bright it was certainly was no hail but it was no halley's comet
but it was the first time that a comet actually gave humanity a
lesson on comet impacts on what happens when a comet collides
with a planet on what happens to the planet and what happens to the
comet when a comet collides with a planet this was really something with
everything going on in the world you can imagine right now we have an awful lot going on
in the world but there's always a lot there's always bad news good news mostly bad news
things happening in the world but on that one week
we paused for just a moment to witness the wonderful
story of two solar system objects colliding with each other
this has happened in the story of the history of the solar system this has
been commonplace if you want proof look at the moon
all more almost all the craters you see on the moon are impact craters
the results of mostly comets and occasional asteroid impacts
the earth has a lot of impact craters on it including a very large one
just off the coast of the yucatan peninsula and that was made in about 15 seconds
by the collision of a probable comet
with the earth 65 million years ago and the brontosaurus and the
tyrannosaurus rex were looking for their telescopes and they had their little laptops open trying to record everything
and take pictures and trying to connect their new telescopes to the computers and everything
well maybe they didn't i don't know if the dinosaurs knew how to use laptops but they sure
was were able to see that something really big was happening in the sky
and they must have known it was big because shortly after that they perished in fact
95 of all the species of life not the individuals but the species of
life then living on the earth were wiped out
as a result of that comet impact is that going to happen again
yes is there any doubt about it no what we don't know is when that is going
to happen we have no idea no clue as to when that'll happen
the odds that each of us right here
kareem adrian scotty me um
cybella all of us the chances that each of us might get
clobbered by an incoming comet during our lifetime or probably about
one in twenty thousand so it feels something to cause you to lose sleep on sleepovers
but if you sort of add all that up with all the people living in the earth on the earth
and if you add all that up and average it into the math and everything it comes down to approximately a 50 50 chance
that some sort of comet will collide with the earth sometime in the next
hundred thousand years which is a long time
but it's not forever now that hundred thousand years could be any time it could be in the next five
minutes or it could be a hundred thousand years from now and um
i think the most important contribution that comet shoemaker leaving i made
was that it alerted the people of the earth the civilizations of the earth
to this possibility to this danger and for just a few days we paused
and we thought about the awesome unpredictability of the universe
and of what could happen in our solar system that was an incredible week
we were in washington i got to meet president clinton very briefly
i got to meet vice president al gore not so briefly we had quite a discussion about that
and uh he wasn't at all interested in talking about politics he wanted to talk about comments
and he told me that he lives he told me something that i did know is
that he lives on the grounds of the naval observatory what i didn't know was that a couple of
nights ago he said uh i went outside and i went to the
to the observatory and knocked on the door the astronomer there
opened the door and met me and i asked if it would be okay if you
showed me the impact spots to the telescope
and it turned out that al gore got to see the impact spots before i did and i was really pretty
glad to hear that but just two nights later i was part of a large group of people that assembled
at the naval observatory i stood in line to look at the impact spots from smri
and i got to the back of the line and as i stood people were pushing me closer to the front of the line and i kept on
fighting them and i said you know i don't want to be the first one i want to take my place in line
and i got up to a lady who was there and she said david you're
going to wait with me and we'll see that you'll see the impacts together that woman
was the astronomer vera reuben she was the uh at the time is
the scientific advisor to the president and uh someone who later won the bruce
medal of the astronomical society of the pacific really a very very
special special astronomer after whom an observatory in the
southern hemisphere is now named as the barrier observatory named now in her memory
this was a really very special thing but i wanted this to be a discussion and
after this brief introduction and personal view i'm going to open this now to all of you
to ask questions and just share discussions pictures and stories about comments
wonderful that was beautiful that was beautiful w i i especially appreciate it and i love
the uh the humility that you and the grace that you've uh
you know in your whole journey um you know uh this is not about fame or
anything this is about this is about the journey of discovery and sharing that
and what you've contributed to uh humanity is is fantastic giving everyone a glimpse
of um the the significance of
comets and um and uh you know and and showing the the impact they've had on
on life as we know it well thanks cameron
i remember one thing that happened the discovery itself this was before we
um knew what was going to happen with this online but the discovery itself was something
really unusual and i remember the day after
we reported it at the time i was writing a column in sky and telescope magazine
and uh i called my editor steve o'meara
and i left a message on his phone i said hi steve this is david i'm
calling you from palomar i need to talk with you and the phone rang again about maybe
five minutes later and it was steve and he said whenever you call me from palomar it's
got to be important and i told him about the discovery described it
and i told him i'd like to write one of my columns about about this discovery and he said no
and i said what do you mean no it's like home i want to write about this comment that i have to discover
and he said this thing is for the front of the book not the back of the book
you're going to write an article about your discovery that'll be in the front of the magazine
and that's what i ended up doing but at the time that's not what we we
didn't have any idea what was going to happen it was just an interesting comment at the time
we didn't know that it would uh turn out to be as important and as
interesting as it eventually turned out to be you know cam mentioned humility and i
can't imagine having discovered the comet with gene and carolyn and
the impact and wanting to see the impact marks and waiting in line and not like
not telling them who you are not saying like just waiting at the back of the line waiting your turn that's that's who you are it's just it's
amazing i've one of my first experiences with david was at west mount uh at summit circle
where we were sharing the night sky with the people he grew up with in west mount
and he just stood in line at the back and waited his turn to come to the front to say he was there he
we had no idea he was there until he showed up at the front well that was kind of fun and i i
enjoyed that line of course that way most of the people did recognize me and
as soon as they did they pushed me further to the front of the line until i bumped into pure reuben
but uh that was an interesting week i gotta tell you it was the highlight of my professional life
beyond the shadow of the day certainly not the highlight of my whole
life wendy but it was a highlight of my profession
and wendy we can attest to the fact that he says this even when you're not listening
yeah we all can that's true yeah i've seen david give a few lectures and uh he always gives
tribute to wendy when wendy's uh you know far away you know
so it's it's uh you know um wendy's had a huge impact on david's
life one of the uh real advantages of the cold wood thing
and zoom is that wendy is about maybe 15 feet away from me right now
and for all of these sessions she usually is and that's a real pleasure so
this is one of the real advantages of doing it this way yes that's right and i think that's the
that's the uh the interesting twist of this whole thing is i think it's being brought people uh closer together um
certainly in this community uh with families i think um people are
forced to face the reality of of of nature
and uh it's it's uh it's it's i think it's a wonderful thing uh there's some challenges obviously clearly
um but it's it's all part of our growing and and experience and so um
i think it's uh it will it will all work out in the end
i hope so and you know like john mentioned our our whole experience with covet last summer
was i i guess relieved by the fact that common mealwise was there we got to
share it with each other share it with the world and right now i know i'm getting facebook popping up the memories
you know one year ago and i'm just seeing all the pictures of neo eyes and it's just it's
we we started last summer really diving into zoom talking comments so it's kind
of nice right now towards hopefully the end of the pandemic time to be returning
to talk about comments it's it's just it's a nice full circle there yeah we maybe this uh large comment that
has been detected and um will be the harbinger of the end
we had neowise as sort of uh a messenger during the height of the
pandemic and i remember imaging it and um
people would come out and ask do you see the comments do you see the comment and um it would be twilight and those of us
that were um visual inexperienced visual astronomers
would look up and see the light from the comet right away and the general public struggled
um there were some concerns with um some of the general public at the time
masking was recommended everywhere and there are many in the general public
that didn't so we had to fight some of the contention and the concerns about
people coming up to you right to your face and going do you see it do you see it and saying well i do
but you might not but um once it got dark enough and then you could see the comet hanging there
um it lots of people were out um i remember
the dark sky park that we live near and um there were more cars there
than at a basketball game during normal times not only did the comet bring people out
nature itself the nature centers had cars parked all
the way down the street of whatever um metro park that we were in
um i was thinking is there a basketball game here or something but no it was people were looking for something to do
and they were getting back to nature neo-wise was the one of the things that really brought
people out people began to pay attention to the outdoors
some maybe because there was less chance of catching covet there but most reconnected for that brief period
and as states have opened up and you go to the nature centers now you don't see as many people the cars
it's back to empty or lots as people have gone back to their the restaurants
to bars and the places that they would rather socialize but for that for that brief time nature
was on display um one more quick story about hale bop
the even brighter comment it's a shame i wasn't doing photography at the time because when hale bob was out i was
flying in a plane towards arizona on the window side and i got a perfect view of that comet
we see it in the sky naked eye kind of like we did kneel wise you could see some of the tail
i was up in the sky and where it was dark i saw the entire thing
stretched out across the sky and just remember observing how much bigger that
tail really was and how large the comet itself looked and thinking yeah if that hits the earth
we're done um the fact that it was further away i don't recall those of you that are on
this call was it how how much further was it away in terms of um
earth moon distance i thought it was like a few a couple of times it wasn't even close it was not even
clone yeah so but yet it's it's stretched out i think i was looking
south and it stretched out the entire length of the you know from the southeast southwest it was the entire
length of the sky and that far away you know it's it's kind of
chilling to think well if something like that comes and hits us um
you worry that it'll split the planet in half the planet itself probably survives
we probably um either fly to the moon or the moon gets
caught up in it um it was a really big comment and um i just remember thinking that as i was on
that plane so it was about 31 million miles long
okay one thing that i'd like to say about uh adrian while we've got him here
is that uh he knows part of his beautiful astrophotography inspiration
to a dreadful picture that i took year number of years ago when i was in
brazil i was at a conference in brazil and uh staying in a hotel it was really
very nice but as i'm walking through the parking lot of the hotel
i looked up over the parking lot light
and saw the sun and crossed just sitting there in the uh in the sky
and i said i gotta get a picture of that and i set up my camera
put it on a tripod and turned it up and i got this horrible picture that shows the light and the reflection
of the light and this and the light amount of the light but on top of it all is the southern cross
and adrian still says that that was his inspiration to get into astrophotography
i'm really very sorry to hear that adrian [Laughter] well you could look at it this way
so the reason it was is that despite it being a picture and it's actually on my phone i was just looking forward to see
if i could share with the audience just what this picture was and i'll keep looking
but um it was the fact that you captured the starlight you know there it was the
southern cross something that i to this day haven't seen and um you know
cesar uh gets to see it all the time he wants to see the big difference you know i
take pictures of the big dipper because those in the southern hemisphere
you know we we have parts of the sky that we don't get to see each other but
i guess what was profound about it is that these stars you know look at the back of a picture
these stars are you know millions of they're light years away some millions of light years away
and yet you captured them on camera i could see them it was something that like most folks that
don't know enough about photography to begin with you don't know can't capture stars how do we do it um everyone wants
to keep the iso at 100 or you know whatever you know they do but once i saw capturing stars as possible it just lit
a fuse and um you know it's led to um it's led to being able to do so
or to capture stars now it's what i go after all the time um at some point i'll find a photo we'll
we'll let others uh recollect things but i'm going to look for that photo and if i find it i will share it
with you yes i'll share it with everybody i think everyone here i mean each of us many of us anyways i would
say have observed comments before so why don't we take turns here and tell about
our most amazing comet experience yeah mine's already done because that
was mine seeing hill popping an airplane so everyone else pretty cool experience yeah
okay tell us about it um so my mom and i we found this really high hill where we live
um and we had a telescope i think we actually used my dad's telescope so we set it up and um we got an amazing view
of it and i think we were i forget if we were able to attach the phone to the telescope to take pictures but it was
really cool to see the trail yeah well that's that's very interesting
and i hope that will inspire you maybe to go find and look at other comics this time goes by
and especially since you're just at the start of your life now and you know what many many years ahead of you oh
yeah and enjoy the night
who's next here uh well i'll go ahead and share all
right um so i've i've seen three comments so far in my observing career i remember the
first was very exciting uh comet johnson in 2016 with my telescope
and it kept progressing it was a small comet only 10th magnitude or so uh two years later i found comet where
tannin and binoculars i remember i was looking at sky safari or something like that and saw it was bright enough
and i ran outside with my binoculars in a beach chair and that was a spectacular view but that was all in preparation for
my best memory like many of ours of comet neo-wise i was working as a lifeguard last summer
and i had an early shift that morning it was starting at 5 30 or something like that i was opening the pool and i
thought all right i'll get up just an hour earlier and see what this comet's all about i'll get some binoculars uh three months prior i gotten into
astrophotography and i thought well there's a lot of buzz about it i'll see what it is and i went down to the end of
the street and i was looking around auriga and you know it was maybe 30 minutes before the sun came up so of course it's
very bright in the sky and i finally centered it in the binoculars and and there was no mistaking it it was
stunning i had a five degree field of view and the tail filled it up i had to say it was about six degrees long
and uh if i can share some images here i remember i was looking down the street
and um oh there you go that's that's according yes this was the view i saw and i i had only
been starting starting in astrophotography so i finally got it it was just below the trees and it's one of my favorite
shots to this day i saw the nucleus of the comet and i got some later on if i can uh
proceed forward i was experimenting with the iso here i'm in the the folder of images
and then i get this one you can see there's still a little bit of noise in it but again this was looking down the street and the nucleus is there
and the the tail very delicately curls up into this
you know winding fan kind of shape and just barely dissipates out it's very hard to see where but it's very
gentle and subtle but that that was a little bit what it looked like in the binoculars but as as
many of us as observers know it never does it justice it was beautiful and i knew i had to share that
with everybody um i love the cloud cutting across the table yeah that adds
to it yeah thank you i got lucky with the perfect conditions you know you don't always want clouds or
trees or twilight but it worked out to create a beautiful image that i remember firing that off you know
before i got to work i might have even shown up late that day if i'm guilty but i fired that off in text messages and
emails and and all my friends and family just i knew they had to see it and i was like look at the comment look at the
comment and and i had to be glowing for a week after that as i kept observing it um truly a remarkable memory
corner conor i don't blame you i i know that feeling and the of all the comments
that i've seen in my life the one that gave me that feeling what they all do
was uh karma yakitaki yeah not hellbop um yakitaki which was
the year before hillbop and uh the night that it was at its best i could see the head right near
polaris and i followed the tail all the way across the sky into corvus in the
southern hemisphere yeah and you know i reported that and uh
professional astronomer jpl said impossible uh the comet's tale if it were to be
that long in the sky would have had to stretch all the way out to jupiter which is impossible
anyway a couple of years later there was a report that the ulysses space probe
not not far from the orbit of jupiter had recorded
that it went through the edges of the tail of karma yakitaki
and the fellow wrote me back and said guess i was wrong i guess you did see what you saw i thought you saw it
never forgotten kyle was great it's awesome it's a small digression but i i wish by
now we would stop saying impossible we know better by now
the cosmos always surprises us you know there's um there's always something i remember sharing my weird tannin story
and it was a small eighth magnitude comet but whatever i was doing just dropped and i became an observer of the
night sky and you know dr levy it was it was very humbling to hear your story about just
waiting in line and waiting to see what was at the telescope with everybody else
it does kind of give you some perspective which is a really nice aspect of comets
well i think so thank you um i i feel
i feel that the idea of um going out and just seeing
a comet just proves that the solar system that the night sky
isn't static things move through the sky shooting stars fly through the air
um comets gracefully move and um
i like to make the difference between a meteor and a comet when you see a meteor it's like having a bunch of mcdonald's
you see a comet it's like having tea with the queen but i did want to share one story about
uh about uh mealwise last year there were actually some three
comets that all threatened to become very bright the first one i think was
atlas that was going to be the great comet and it was getting brighter and i was watching it through the telescope and
getting all excited and then it went poop it just got fainter and never did anything
and the second one was another one the name escapes me right now but it did the same thing at brighton to about
third or fourth magnitude a little too close to the sun to see and uh then just never never got anybody
better than that and i didn't see that one at all then came realized i thought well free
for three but that morning when i went outside the full moon is setting in the west
the sun the dawn is coming up in the east i had this pair of binoculars and i
could see capella just coming out and i just put the binoculars on capella
and just moved them slowly down to the horizon and suddenly there's this
just like you saw with this lovely tail and i practically jumped out of my skin
oh no wonder what this goes we have some comments and questions here
uh what what can you say about uh the pot the uh
the idea of comets bringing water and creating oceans on earth david what is
there any thank you for asking that question
um the answer i have before one word answer four letters it's john
c h n john is the simple scientific alphabet of life
carbon hydrogen oxygen and nitrogen
in halley's comet in 1986 they discovered one of the most
important discoveries made by durham halley with the spacecraft was they detected these shawn particles in alley
and uh from that you can think when a comet
collides with a planet that comets have collided with the earth in the past
they bring with them these simple elements of carbon hydrogen oxygen and
nitrogen and they kind of just sit there and they do nothing on the earth for
eons and neons and then gradually they become amino acids
and proteins and then after a very long time they can become rna
and even longer time dna
so i think gene shoemaker said it best when uh he said that we are the progeny
of comics if it weren't for comments in the earth we would probably not be having this
conversation excellent okay
excellent so caesar you must have seen some great comets in the southern hemisphere
yes was my first comment uh my sorry was not my first comment the
holly comet was um was bright but but the tail was in an
opposite direction to the earth and don't have tail
was in my my time of my military service i was in
santa cruz uh um the harley the holly comet was in
the sky and um like of course i was uh in the
optical repair department of of the
of the my military um i
i had the opportunity to to use a binocular in my words my my
my nights watching the sky more that
the things is anybody coming to attack of course i don't know and um halley was amazing because it was
a time where i started to see with binoculars in a
very dark sky the sky and my second comic was amazing because
it was the magnol in 2007 and
was amazing was unexpected for me because i in the sunset
was a very nice color in the sky but a little fine detail
but when the night came over maybe the maybe the inaugural
the the center the the comet properly was maybe
um invisible because was over the under the horizon but the day was so
big in the night and night sky um
in uh going to the um starting i think that they started to the south uh west
going to the to the right and the size of the tail
was like maybe 50 degrees
you know it's something like it's really um
something that is where you felt i felt
really little because the size of the tail of the magno was really impressive unfortunately i
don't have in this time my digital camera i took a picture with my analogy camera
um [Music] but you know it's impossible to describe when you see something
in the camera i see the pictures many pictures from the magnol from argentina
but anyone describe the impressive that you feel when you see it's i i think that
was like to see and memorial um south northern lights because
uh turn really really impressive um brighter that i imagined
uh i i could imagine it was really really easy to see uh very impressive in the
sky incredible yes well that is a really interesting
story it reminds me of my best view of halley's comet
in april 1986 from cuzco peru wow and uh
seeing it there was just wonderful you may remember that that was the night before the great klusko earthquake
in 1986. i remember the next day just sort of laying down for a nap and suddenly
the whole building started to shape as if it was going to fall oh my god wow wow
comet earthquake come on david that's right
that's right i can't believe that it's so too much too much experience in two
days i had a i have a a very short story about hallie's comment um
uh it was during a time when i was getting more and more more involved in
what i would call serious amateur astronomy i had a 13-inch dobsonian telescope
and i was taking groups out to go observe hallie's comment but there was one particular night
where they were saying this would be the best night to see the comet and
this is in southern california and on that night it clouded up and it started to rain and
i i just go well no matter what no matter what
i'm going out to try to see this comet and so i put my telescope my 13 inch
dobsonian on top of my car with surf racks it's raining okay my telescope is
really wet okay and i'm driving out to where i figure okay
i i'm going to drive out as far as i can trying to go more eastward
but it's still raining it's still raining it's still raining and i go forget it i'm gonna get my telescope off
my my vehicle i'm gonna set it up i'm gonna throw in my eyepiece my eyepiece is dripping wet there's water going
inside the eyepiece there's water all over the mirror okay and i point the telescope and drain the
water off a little bit and the clouds part just enough for me to see hallie's
comment for about five minutes did the angels start singing and music
started to play there were two other people with me
they could not believe they could not believe this happened and uh
no matter what yeah you need to go out and observe and this is this is why i'm sorry and
this is why you design ips prove what wonderful if you're right yeah good ones
easier we understand now everything about the expression
that's more common very cloudy night and the forecast was
for cloudy unfortunately it wasn't to see a comet but something similar has happened
um twice going out to dark sky park nothing but clouds everywhere
and um what hap what tends to happen is for a brief period the clouds clear and all of
the stars come out and when you're the only one there or you've got a couple other people there
there with you you almost feel like the clouds were parted just for you i mean there's a dark side sky park i'd
been to where it happened three times and for me you know i've got my the
milky way um recollections later really that's a clear sky yeah i will the clear sky
and i could see the trail the milky way in that sky um i think there was actually a comet during the winter
we had another comment and imaging ryan i actually catch the light
caught the light from that comment and it was in one of my pictures and that's when i said i wish i had better precision in my photo
so after that night i had gone to order the tracker that i use now so that
the fact you were out there anyways and doing it yeah that's what's really that's that was the important thing i
did find the picture uh before we let maxey talk about his comment experience
uh i found the picture that um david uh showed us at the university of
michigan and um inspired me to take photos that is the picture
no comments oh that's the southern cross up there i see it yeah
so what i did what i've done with your picture is um
let's see if i can yeah i zoomed in on the southern cross and yeah i've called this one david's
cross this photo right here and then you can see the colors of the stars that's all yeah
you did a better job than you thought you did david the color of each of these
uh stars and so that is uh
after you sent it to me i um so i cropped it out made that picture
and so now i keep that picture until i can make my own um hoping to have the cross
in the exact same orientation but with the milky way running by it that's my goal and if i can get down to
argentina at the right time that's what i'm going to go for so i got cesar you
and maxie i'll be giving you a call as soon as they uh clean up international travel any time
something uh sorry just a minute your story reminds me of something that happened to me
i think it was january the 5th or 6th 1987 was a cloudy rainy night
and i was finishing my one of my books i booked on variable stars it was eventually published by cambridge press
anyway as i was finishing it i noticed this clouds were thinning clear sky was coming
i set up the telescope and i went outside and discovered a comet
i went back inside to confirm it and then the clouds came in again and
when i realized that it was probably a new comment that i just seen
i looked outside i saw the pouring rain and i thought
god did i just discover a comet from that and i'll never forget that story so
even on a bad cloudy night yeah i don't know what nature has in store you never know that's right
right that's right okay
okay maxie well hi everyone has god
hello cesar adrian connell hey cameron
everyone uh well first of all i want to give a big thanks to scott to
[Music] let me be here it's a privilege to
to uh here here to david levy because
today i was talking with cecil a little bit and that's remind me when i was a young boy
the little boy when i was watching every time this corrichan energy and everything
and when i i was watching uh documentaries of cosmos and
and space i i remember i saw that a
moment that the the comet shoemaker levy 9 impacts of jupiter and i was
blowing my mind and every time they say this guy found this
a little comet and goes directly to to should be there and
it was amazing and then once the the years goes by and
i thought that i never going to
know to david leave it and now i'm here talking to him right you know
i i'm [Music] almost 32 years old and that was when i
was 11 10 years only so
basically it was a long time ago and that's a
another part of astronomy it goes and now obviously the
the internet the connections the virtuality uh and obviously the the
the gsp uh give me this privilege to to be here with
david and every one of you basically my experience with comets was uh
at the end of december in 2018 with the
47pm uh comment and i remember
that was passing by through the playlist and i want to i wanted to capture and see it
and in my backyard it was a little uh with the the bourgeois six it was
almost impossible uh i had my maxotope telescope
but i remember uh and only and i i went with my brother uh
thank you 10 kilometers away from the city and we have our binoculars and only my cell
phone with a simple tripod to get uh to start taking pictures to
the to this sky and try to find it with the binoculars
so with all the stars that we receive we see
this little um a cloud very thin
but with the with the core and that was our first time that we saw this
comment and obviously i can take some pictures with the
with the orion and everything but and also with the comet
and so i decided to do some uh every
uh for almost four days i found the the progress of the comet uh passing by
through the i don't i don't remember the the the star the stars but
i did some animation in that time and then in in fourth in
14th of december um we
um we met with a small group of a amigo
a astro friends argentina is a is a
a page from facebook and we met in mercedes in the observatory to
to watch it uh with the um [Music]
the um i don't remember the telescope it was 30
inches [Music]
telescope i don't remember cesar if you know [Music] are you are you hear me
hello yeah we are yes yes hello
yes can you hear us hello
yes we are we are here
i have some bad connections for now but
like i say we met in mercedes and we i remember was a jose
sanchez and mario he said i remember this guy with a
[Music]
only with his eyes without a go go through and everything
and obviously i can take some pictures with my that time
with my cellphone the mac of the 47p a werthannon
and i was shocked because uh i i see how
in sometimes moves it was very very fast and
and i did some animation of that movement and that was my first time with a comet
maybe it's it wasn't the whoa the the new was from the last year and i couldn't see it
either because from my latitude it was very very small
uh like you saw with that shade and everything but
i hope in this december i think it was the love joy maybe not
er could see a properly
very good so this is a little short story and this is my experience i had some experience last
year with a lemon and
another was another comet that i took from my house i tried
to figure out how to stack images to get to give pictures without have star
trails and to give the the singularity
stars and the the comet with that movement so it's a very
difficult procedure but you can do it because
it's maybe tricking the images so
that was a little positive side of the uh
the this virus that they gave us to be in our house so i can
those pictures i remember i woke up 4 a.m of the morning put my telescope outside and
it wasn't may i remember very very cold and i have to work
8 a.m but i was in my house so no it doesn't matter
i would still wake up but now if i have to do now i don't think so but
so basically this is my little story and i want to share it with you it's a good story it's great
and again david thank you and uh it's a pleasure to hear you and
to and i and it's a privilege to me to be with you in this gsp
feelings mutual thank you so much and i'm really pleased with the
level of the discussion here with comic stories and things there's a there's so
much even without the pictures there's so much memories and lovely
stories to talk about it's really fun yeah this is the impact of comets upon
us anyways there's a question here uh uh robert uh with space time with robert is
on watching and he says during outreach was anyone did you ever if you did outreach with
you know showing the comment did anyone uh uh coming up to the eyepiece
think that the comet was in our sky or did they think it was out in space
you know did they so this this was i wonder if he if he's asking this because he had an
experience like this uh he said how can someone tell without knowing about comets
that's a very good question i'm really not sure how to answer it but i'll try
okay we know that comets are brothers and sisters in our solar system family
and they go through space we know that and they except for one
orbit the sun and uh are visible in in in our sky
but we know that the moon is in space the planets are in space just like
jupiter and saturn were last december and you can see them a lot further apart now
but they are at the same time in our sky so that we can see them
and the beautiful thing about our solar system is that as i mentioned before
it teaches us that the sky is not static things happen
the moon moves a lot from night to night in fact it moves its own diameter about
once an hour it uh the the planets move slowly
through the sky some faster than others and uh
i mean if we were living a lot longer than we do we would actually see some of the nearby stars creep along a little
bit but but that's that's the great thing about looking at things we're looking into
space and of course the ending of your answer is that the earth itself where we're standing where we're walking where
we are sleeping is in space and uh so yeah
everything we can think about is in space and the best thing we can do about space
is that it's nothing there's nothing there it's a total absence of everything
except for everything i hope that sort of helps answer your questions
wonderful okay all right how about uh kareem uh
what what what is how did how did comets or a comet impact your life
well i have to uh i have to give an embarrassing story where
i was in grad school at the time of uh the bright comments of the mid 90s and
so i spent all my time working late nights at the computer and never really stepped
out and i was out of astrophysics at the time and that's away from astronomy so i didn't even realize how bop had passed
i was so immersed in my little specialized world of grad school that uh i didn't know what i missed until years
later when i saw pictures in magazines that i picked up and i realized that i missed such an amazing comment and so
when neowise was happening i did not want to miss a moment so i went out with the family i went out by
myself but one of the really neat things we did is in the city at one point it was really hard to see
neowise to the north to the naked eye but you could see it if you took a couple of pictures so my wife and i went up we went with
the telescope i set it up so we could just figure out exactly where it was then she set up a camera and we had the
family come and in discrete family units we walked them up to the camera and they
pointed to that space in the sky and we took pictures so you could see their faces you could see them pointing and
then with a mask we could pull out the comment and so we have a bunch of the family who had never seen a comet look
through the telescope see it for themselves and then point to it and that was that was a lot of fun oh that's cool
a memory for everyone yeah yeah i uh a comment that i wish i had
seen was comet west you know i didn't i didn't i was certainly interested in
uh the stars in space at that time but i didn't have anyone knowledgeable knowledgeable
enough to say or or to take me out to go observe this comet so yeah um
but i certainly made it up with a bunch of other comments so you know i do want to mention that when
like in teaching one of the really neat things that we've been talking about in class the last couple of years is
pulling out stories of ancient astronomy observations of comets and of different phenomena like
the supernova the crab nebula and uh you know 1054. but david have you had a
chance to see the silk atlas from china and the number of observations of haley's comet that are in chinese
astronomy writings it's incredible
yes [Music] in fact the some of the ancient silk
um paintings and engravings that come out of china and in fact the very earliest comment
recorded in history i believe was seen in china from china
about uh 1200 bc or so and uh that is approximately the time of
king david and did you know that every year at the passover seder
there is a quotation from scripture
that deals with a census that king david ordered in jerusalem an illidan census
and specifically says and the angel of the lord
held us hung like a sword over jerusalem and i believe that he's referring to that comic
and it's not every year to pass over satan oh i was wondering actually molly has
joined us and i'm wondering if molly has any uh comment stories that she would like to share with us
yeah actually and i'm going to show some of my pictures during my uh my segment
tonight um but i so i know a lot of a lot of people got
into amateur astronomy by seeing a comet i hear that story over and over again
either comment or like a solar eclipse um that was not the case for me and the
first i mean i saw some of uh some comments uh after i got into
astronomy uh that i imaged and in the eyepiece but uh neo-wise is really my
first naked eye visible comment um hellbot came through
uh when i was quite young uh
not in 1997 i was i was six so sorry everyone
um so i uh didn't you know was not paying attention to those things at that time and neither were my family
but um so for for neo-wise as i was out in san francisco and
i was looking for a place for it because you know it's quite low in the north so i was looking for a place that would have good visibility
uh for uh for it so i actually kind of scouted out on google
earth a spot to go to on uh like uh in in pinol because i was living
in berkeley and i went out there but like the area that i was trying to get to was closed
and um so i went up i ended up like in somebody's backyard at like an
apartment complex
you know it's like one of those like communal backyards so it wasn't like an individual person's backyard but i ended
up in somebody's backyard and through the trees i was able to see it naked eye like write it right at sunrise i was out
very early in the morning to try and do this and um uh
managed to snag a picture of it and then later later on uh when it was a little bit
higher in the sky i actually i went home during the pandemic to go camping with my parents
up in uh northeastern washington and that was up at quite a high latitude
compared to where i usually am at i was up at um like 40 probably about 49 degrees north
latitude so it's a lot higher in the sky and we were camping out at a dark sky site more or less out in the middle of
the uh kavel national forest up by canada and had a really nice view of it from up
there and i got some really nice shots that that i've i'll show in my in my segment tonight
um so yeah that's that's my confidence story though one and only naked eye
comment i have witnessed thus far uh and about i think it's the fifth
comment i've imaged but certainly the the best comment i've imaged
there was mike over ackers says in chat i was fortunate enough to photograph comet neowise over a line of
thunderstorms of the dozens of comets i've seen in photograph that was the most memorable
and i was able to um to get both the dust tail and the ion tail which which
was really cool um yeah and you could see it visually from from the darker
skies you could see both tails and it was really incredible it looked like it was just plunging toward the horizon
yeah oh that's great that's great
anyone else before we uh transition to uh sabella uh a very small thing about
me watching the comet in my military service in my words is that like
i i couldn't see the tail of the holly cup they had a comet
i tried to use my binoculars night visions
for the repair store because i i made my military service in 1985
[Music] okay um you had night vision binoculars
yes because where like we had the the the fragment or marinas were
in uh in 1982 in this time in this place in
they had a lot of militar uh equipment for repair and of course that i say okay
i need a uh a pair of of the of night vision binoculars you know like
like a google's that you put imagine the size that the heavy
thing that was in 1985 a binoculars military uh
for for night vision put like a helmet and me i was like a alien watching the
sky and in my world that you think that they're
they're not for to see the sky you need to to be searching something because
you're in a world and i remember that that young ditinium came with another soldier to change the
world and uh watching to me watching the sky like an alien or a
robot and he's saying what are you doing soldier
come on what's it um yeah i i i haven't though works and i i receive of course
a big uh explanation about the be careful you know with the
guards but i'm i was crazy like today in this time watching the sky
because i needed to see the detail to the comet but only i went it wasn't i
watched a more brilliant sky um you know all in green
uh with the with the grain and the noise of the
electronic things in the 1980s but you saw it
yeah sure no no i use i was a little crazy in my
military service i i know that's cool one thing i would like to say before we
transition i know i know the time is moving along but i would like i think it would be
wrong if we let this conversation go without me quoting this and i cannot find it
anywhere in my book although it's there somewhere so i'm just going to quote it from memory
these are the most important words i've ever read about comics it's from leslie c peltier's starlight nights
if you haven't read starlight nights turn off your computer
go to a store or a library get it and read it
here's the quote time has not lessened the age-old allure of the comets
in some ways their mystery has only deepened with the years at each return a comet brings with it
the questions which were asked when it was here before and as it rounds the sun and backs away toward the long slow
night of its uphelion it leaves behind with us those questions
still unanswered to hunt a speck of moving haze may seem
a strange pursuit but even though we failed the search is still rewarding
for no better way than become face to face night after night with such a wealth of
riches as old cruces never dreamed of
wow wow beautiful that's good memories beautiful amazing memories and beautiful
wow i'm grateful to to be here david it's it's a pleasure really really
yeah that's right i can say again that is david levy is one of my heroes
it's incredible i need to touch it's real i'm here
yeah pinch pinch yourself yeah yeah yes okay well that was wonderful i i think we
could go all night talking about comets and stories that we've that we have to share about this um
you know i know that uh uh you know it's the magnitude of how important
comets have been to uh to david uh really can't
it hasn't really been touched on in this conversation but uh david and i are
are pretty good friends and um he said once during the conversation he thinks that comets had saved his life and and i
agree with him you know i know that he is if you've read his book you know that he's been through
many highs but also some very lows and i think
that it was comments that uh um you know it kept inspiring david to keep
searching and to keep looking and uh so i you know i just wanted to say that
david before uh before we wound this up because it's um
your story is a very very very special one it's not just the discoveries it's
it's uh it's it's about the you know uh what it did to turn your life around so
well thank you scotty and uh even now i do not expect in this age of
computerized searches to ever find another comment but i'm still searching
because it's what i love to do out there under the night sky with the telescope
and searching just to see what there is when you stand up in line at a telescope
to look at something and you want to see the moon and you want to see the planets that's a beautiful thing the sky will be
a very good servant and show you what you want to see the way i do it the sky is the master i
have the telescope and i just say i'm going to go from here to there and whatever you want to show me i want
to see it and i let the sky decide what it wants to show me
very very yeah yeah that's really nice wonderful well i don't know um
i i was going to share some stuff but um it's probably not appropriate at this point so i think i think we can uh we
can move on it's very we have more time in this show
all right okay so we will david thank you again this is a big honor thank you
um and we have more comments from our our uh our chat that i'll read later but uh
i do want to transition over to sabella she's she's been uh up late and
she's recently back from space camp i know she's excited she has a presentation to show us and um
you know i'm glad that uh her father reminded me that she was just recently back so i'm glad that we were able to
get her on and uh sabella i'm going to turn it over to you yay um
so yeah i went to space camp it was really really fun and i just
um let me share my screen so i can actually show
sure oh okay can you guys see this okay yep yes okay
can you see the little red thing yeah yeah we see it spinning around that red comet yes
okay just making sure or electronics whatever it is so this is um it has like a bunch of
pictures of what i did at space camp um and there is a lot more that we did but
there weren't like photographers around to take pictures of us so only on the simulators they took pictures of us and
then the rest my dad took um so yeah
so i was on expedition 39 um i don't really know why they
it starts in may and there's not really like 39 weeks between may and the end of june so i don't know where they get
their numbers but um the airport there was amazing
um they had like all this nasa stuff on the walls and um this is in huntsville by the way
um fairly small airport but it was amazing i definitely felt like i was in rocket
town and then so i was put in habitat one
um and then i was put on level four which is like an all girls floor
um and then room 19. um it was a really fun room i think all
the rooms are designed the same i am not sure um but yeah the we had lockers and it was
really cool um and the shapes were actually the shapes of the habitats were very interesting
they were like circular inside
um so here's me trying on some of the stuff um this picture to the left here is all
the stuff that we got um uh yeah they just had a lot of cool
stuff there and a lot of stuff i would need to use on the trip like their t-shirts and stuff
um and then there's my flight suit i was gonna wear my flight suit to graduation
but we got we got the size really big so after the graduation was over and it
was like our last day of space camp we went to go get me a new one that was actually
an extra size bigger because i plan to go next year and i want to wear it next year
and you'll certainly grow so yes um and then this is
kind of what the room looks like this is like half of the room um this is my bed back here where she's
sitting there's like a wall because there's a bench right here um so i put my head behind the wall and
then i put like some towels and some blankets on the sides and it was just my own
little room so and then i had three other roommates and
it was really really fun to talk with them so this is where we went into to get all
signed up and make sure that they had my picture just in case if anything happened
um i think that's the guy who took the picture i do not remember
and then so this is where we wait for our team leaders to come pick us up
so we're just all waiting there and this is at the bottom floor
and then here's some cool pictures this is the saturn one rocket i believe yeah
um it was really tall it's too scale it's not an actual
rocket um but it's just a model these things are huge though
um then there's this really cool sign in the museum that says rocket city
so i had to have dad take a picture of that because that's what it's called
and then this is the big shuttle it's pathfinder called pathfinder never
actually went into space it was just a simulator simula simulator
um of what the real things would be and then this is
um one of the missiles i believe um verner von braun made i think
i'm pretty sure it's like a v2 yes i think that's what it's called then
um i was put in a team with other kids my age um and i got cepheus let me adjust my
microphone there we go um and we had 12 kids in our group
uh four boys and eight girls surprisingly so um and the patch was really cool
and my mom's gonna help me sew it on to my um
uniform thing very cool and then so this is the chair where it
makes you feel like you're doing a space walk like with when the one of the jet packs
um i look really tired it was like eight or nine o'clock at night when we did this
um but it was really fun our someone like swung us around
and we had to lean forward in order to move forward and it just felt really fun and we got
to um fix things on like this metal bar thing here they
were like switches and um we have to use like a wrench to tighten things
and then so this thing i forget what it's called i'm sorry
uh this thing makes you feel like you're spinning out of control in space except with gravity this time
um i've been in one of those they're so much fun yeah
um so you go upside down all around that's logan
he is one of their team leaders so um and while we're while we were on the
ride they asked us questions like what did we have to eat what did we eat or
like what's your favorite color um just because so that way we would focus
more on the questions rather than having the thought of throwing up all right
thankfully if you put your hands in the right spot you actually won't throw up but
just in case they ask you questions and then
so this is the one-sixth gravity chair it makes you feel like you're walking on the moon this was really really fun
and it was very hard to move forward like it took us so long to get across
and back um and funny story they didn't actually take a
picture of me doing this this is not actually me it looks like me so just one of our one of my friends
um but you have to like jump forward try running across and then do like a side
side jump i don't know what you would call that but
and then so we were put on a mission wasn't a real mission obviously but it
was a fake mission and so i was um mission 18 commander there were two
missions for our team 18 and mission 18 in mission 19 i was assigned as commander for the
first mission um which was when we started it was we were already on the moon base this is
obviously not on the moon but it's like supposed to represent like a moon based
thing this is my desk and we had to do experiments um we had like a day of training
and all went well it was really difficult at times because i had to fly the command module back
home and like 15 million buttons and then this is actually a real saturn
v 363 feet tall in this case long because
they laid it on its side um and it shows it
in its stages and it's literally like a real saturn v
i don't know if there's things inside it but um this is it didn't go into space
but it was i honestly forget what this one was used for it was just like a practice with
like towing it and moving it around or if they simulated the inside
and then this was my graduation they had the flags behind us you can
only see the aviation challenge um but they have like the space camp flags
then here's my certificate i also got some like wings to pin on to my
um i'm forgetting the name of it i'm just gonna call it uniform because i keep
forgetting um but it was really fun the only time it was the only time that we got to take
our masks off inside so it felt good and then i was really sad to go back
home because i really wanted to stay in touch with a lot of the friends that i met
but sadly like almost none of them had phones so i only got contacts of two
other kids um but hopefully we can meet again one day
um and then the sun was seeping through the clouds beautiful that was a huge voice crack
but it's pretty yes very beautiful and then here's a bonus where is the
shuttle so this the shuttle was like this when we went it was not on top it was
actually removed for renovation and this red iron rusty cage that you see down here
is actually the shuttle it's a skeleton of the shuttle oh wow yeah they took the
um shuttle down earlier in the year i think it was january um
then this is these are just uh pictures of it being lifted off they had to get a crane and everything
i'm still curious on how they took the wings off because they lifted it off without the wings so
and yeah wonderful now i i'm
one of the things i want to point out uh we
are now living in a time where you know there are uh you know branson has just gone up
with uh you know virgin galactic uh you know again you know another another
indication that uh more and more of us will be going into space and and
sabella i think that you probably are living in a generation where you're going to know if if you don't do it
yourself okay you're going to know people you're going to have friends that have gone into space this is you know we
now live i've said it before but we have people in space 24 7
365 days a year uh we have spacecraft all over the solar
system you know we don't just live on earth we don't just explore you know our world a lot of people just
kind of think of ourselves as uh humans that inhabit that are inhabitants of the
earth but we inhabit we inhabit space and um um
so you are you are uh certainly going to be of that generation uh your kid
sabella will it i think it will become commonplace uh for for your friends your your kids your
grandkids will will have visited space and uh you know so i think that you've taken important first steps to
understand what it's going to be like in the space environment uh some of the challenges of space and uh but what are
your what are your long-term goals for for uh for doing this i know you had a
you had a great time at space camp and i know it was fun but um yeah what do you what do you hope to
accomplish in your adult life um yeah so i hope to
have like a job that has at least something involved with nasa um whether it's like helping design the
rockets um or even just like designing new spacesuits
um or even going into space that would be amazing but i know right now there's a lot of there's still a lot of risks to
it um but yeah i just want to have something to do
with nasa yeah or space in general there might be like a new space program when i
like in my 20s and 30s sure sure well so bella thank you for um
for coming on and uh congratulations on graduating from space camp
so um thanks again we will uh we're going to take about a 10 minute break
so you can stretch your legs and get a coffee get a sandwich um and then we'll
come back libby libby is not uh uh here with us today
but she did send me a video from her uh from space camp as well it's a it's a
short video so i'll be playing that in uh in a few minutes so but um
uh uh we'll be back in about 10. oh it's great
people have been hunting for sun grazing comets well over 100 years but up to 1979 we only knew of less than
a dozen as of 2020 we have seen around 4 000 sun grazers
why did the number increase the answer lies along the route most sun grazers follow
in the late 1800s heinrich kreutz observed that a few recent comets traveling near the sun appeared to
follow the same orbit on this kreutz sun grazer path as we've come to call it it takes the comet
several hundred years to complete one loop around the sun while there are other orbits of sun grazers kreutz comets are the most
common all of the comets in this orbit came from a single comet that fell apart near the sun thousands of years ago as the
comet moved closer to the sun the ice binding it together evaporated breaking it into smaller pieces that the sun's
gravity pulled apart every time a comet comes around the kreutz path this can happen again
resulting in a new generation of comets it might sound like this would clutter the solar system full of comets but
that's not the case most of the new comets are small enough that they become completely vaporized as
they approach the sun there are more comets observed in the last few decades not because there are
more in the solar system but because we have better ways to see them when they are close to the sun
spotting a sun grazer from the ground is almost impossible because of the blinding sunlight
now spacecraft uniquely designed to look at the sun can block the brightest sunlight making the job a lot easier
since the joint esa nasa mission soho launched in 1995 it has shown us
thousands more comets than any tool before it with soho we can now see the smaller
fainter comets close to the sun just long enough to add them to our list of sun grazers before they vaporize
the spacecraft's data is available online so now anyone can discover a comet roughly 95 of these comets have
been found by amateur astronomers soho isn't the only sun observing
spacecraft to have surprised us with beautiful images of comets nasa's solar dynamics observatory has
spotted sun grazers too though less frequently than soho now that we can observe comets better
than ever who knows maybe you will spot the next sungrazer
[Music]
in the interest of filling dead air space who else is still on and just turned off
their camera
hey molly i'm here how are you doing good good how are you got your uh
your scope set up uh yet uh not yet um the telescope room is the last room i
had uh to unpack because i had to make space in the rest of the house
to move the other stuff out of it that a lot of my boxes weren't labeled very
well unfortunately so several ended up in there that didn't belong in there but i had to make room to move those out of
that room before i could start to move around my telescope stuff so i've got some stuff staged in the house and in
the garage ready to move outside um but it's either been blazing hot or dumping
rain for the last two weeks so uh they have not gone up yet but i i have
all of the bits and pieces to put them together um i just need to
find time to do that and also yeah find time to do it when the weather is is supportive
yeah it's kind of like one of those jigsaw puzzle things where you kind of move things and you have only one
exactly what i'm having to do yeah it's like uh um uh gridlock like lock that game yeah
exactly slide things around but uh at least you've got everything there it's good yes and yeah it will take time yeah it
looks like i've got everything and i'm i'm more unpacked than it looks like i am
uh there's still a lot of boxes laying around but um it's kind of the last bits and pieces that i haven't figured out
where to put yet so uh we're getting there cool that's great
have you have you um you you you haven't traveled since then
all right you were you were saying um or or are you are you still on the go or
um no i haven't i haven't gone on any trips um i am planning on going to
[Music] let's see what's coming up uh black forest star party is on my list to go to
but that's not until september if i recall um
the nebraska one is is pretty close by where you are now right um
i mean i guess so yeah well i'm thinking it's around a 13-hour trip
oh thank you yeah it's 15 for me
yeah was considering going to that for at least if nothing else pick a good night go
overnight and see what these dark skies are about but as you know okitex is the uh ultimate goal and
i am i'm shooting for a uh
i don't know if it's as well known but it's uh it's definitely a lofty target i'm hoping to image einstein's cross oh
that's that's on my list as well yeah once i once i get my um my long focal length stuff stable
enough to well i think i have crossed the threshold to
be able to probably do that at a dark sky site because i one of the one of the uh last with some
time within the last year when i went out to the dark sky site and i got out there and set up my gear and everything worked right off the bat
so i've gotten my my procedure down well enough now
that i'm facing fewer and fewer issues when i actually get out to the field and a lot of that is from
moving my entire setups like i have all my wires all of my cables are bundled
and the each telescope rig has its own power box and the neck gets plugged into
the extension cable and then uh the cables the usb cables i'll get plugged into one hub into one
of my two computers and so what i set up at home is now perfectly repeatable when i go out to a
dark sky site so that really lessens the amount of setup time
when i go out to a dark skysite and so the next time i go to the texas
star party i'm well situated to be able to start imaging the first night instead of the second night as has been my tradition in the past
having nicer mounts is a big part of why that's working um as opposed to uh
some of my previous mounts not working as well um
oh yeah the mounts are the centerpiece of reliability you absolutely need to
make sure that mount is good yeah between that and a good controller i've had the uh g11 low spin d mount which
i guess is supposed to be legendary for what it can do i had its old
drivers on it and it drifted terribly i had a friend help me put new motors on
it and he had a new control computer for it and now the mount is great you know i
connect it with sky safari i put my finger on the screen if i of
course good polar a lot or good alignment um usually three stars or so
and then i say go here and it goes there yeah and then i can yep i can adjust it
i adjust it a little bit as i go say you know make this an alignment point so if i especially if i shoot a
particular part of the sky it's just tap the button that's how i intend to get the einstein's cross is to
make to do my star alignment in the area so that it's very accurate there
and then once i've tested a few objects if they show up in the center um nearby then i'm going to go for it
and then try and get it into the uh center and why not why not plates off
that the good i know i don't i don't even have a good alignment model i just plates off my way to the target
[Laughter] well i don't know if i've the old stuff that i've got i don't know if i've got a
plate solver thing in it i do have eos backyard the later version that
i'd be using with the um oh yeah i think they have a plate solver in backyard eos now i think i think okay if they have
one or if they don't if they don't you can set up sharpcap to folder monitor
so you can take dslr shots and then sharpcap can read in the shot saved to your computer and it has a plate solver
and sequence generator pro will also uh work with
uh icon and kennedy okay yeah we'll talk more later on
five days and um i'm so excited to be here after eight long hours in the car
with my mom um passing through memphis and all that stuff it was fun to be on the road and now i'm
finally here tomorrow morning i'll be checking in really bright and early i'm so glad to meet new people um sadly i
won't be able to make it on this third party because i've i don't have a computer with me i can't really bring a
computer to cam because um there is no wi-fi but i did make this video just so i could share with you
guys what space camp looks like and right behind me warm which is just supposed to look like the international space station so
inside it is supposed to look like the international space station and this is where i'll be staying with a couple of
friends and get to learn about space and right around me we have pathfinder which
is the wooden model to help measure and we also have some more rockets which i'm so excited to see over the next five
days here after traveling in the road but hopefully the um after i get back i'll be able to join back onto the star
party i'll get to see you guys soon um have fun i found a star party i'll see
you guys soon i'll make sure to share all the experience
well that was uh libby and the stars out and also in huntsville and uh at uh space
camp so um it's uh
great to uh it's great to have her uh make a quick video for for us she while
she was uh while she was there she called me over the weekend and uh showed me one of the
saturn five mocked up uh you know rockets that's uh that's in
the uh i guess maybe they call it the rocket park or the rocket yard or whatever but it is the city of rockets
huntsville is a place i have not been to a place that definitely hates parking rockets what's that
rocket garden i think it's called bucket garden that's right right
so yeah i would have been oh my goodness as as a boy uh attending something like that i definitely would have been in
heaven but um uh up next here is um
uh molly wakeling molly uh
yeah sorry i had to switch screens here a little bit um okay yeah okay uh let me go ahead and share
my screen here get started um yeah so since we're talking about comets
i figured i would make tonight's uh shauna molly's universe segment about comet neowise and talk about a little
more about what it is and i mean we've all a lot of us i got a chance to see it
and we know about comets in general but this would be a good opportunity to learn about neowise in particular
yeah okay so uh it is a long period comment so um
there are some comets that can come from closer parts of the solar system and
come by on a much higher frequency like within
a lifetime or maybe two lifetimes or something but um this comic comes around
a lot less often than that uh it's the brightest northern hemisphere comet since hellbop in 97.
there was a bright comet in the southern hemisphere i think uh since i started to do an astrophotography and i was sad to
miss that i don't remember which what the name of the comment was but our southern hemisphere friends got a nice show
and uh neo-wise is not the actual name of the comet comets are named for the
discoverer of the comet most of the time and sometimes as an individual
and sometimes that is a survey so in this case it was a survey by the wildfield infrared survey explorer which
is a space telescope and the actual name of the comet is uh comet c
2020 f3 neo-wise which indicates that it was observed in 2020 is when it was
discovered and they have some kind of incremental naming system that i didn't go research for this talk but um
yeah so neois is kind of the short name but neowise is really the the kind of particular mission of the
wise space telescope might that be near earth object um yeah probably
although in this one you know the the actual comet actually i did come within some distance
of earth but um yeah uh so where where was it when it swung by this
is a a map of the sky showing its orbit from earth's perspective so
the uh you can see that in this part of it it
kind of had this really high frequency that moved really rapidly and that's when it was closer to us so it's moving a lot faster
through the night sky and um and you can kind of you can see his path
overlaid over a map of the sky here and a map of the milky way so when it
was brighter unfortunately it was mostly up during the daytime since this is kind of our
our winter sky over in this region we have orion and the winter milky way and leo so when it
was really bright it was up during the daytime and none of us could see it because again this was in july if you recall
so the winter sky is up during the daytime and then uh when we saw it at night it
was a lot dimmer than it really got in uh in in magnitude but we just couldn't see
it so but it was still got plenty bright enough for us to be able to see even during the nighttime hours or the early
morning or early evening as it were it's uh i couldn't find a picture of its
full orbit but you can kind of get a sense for how highly elliptical
this orbit is uh it came in pretty close to the sun here inside of
the orbit of mercury and then made its way back out of the solar system
and as far as where is it now there's a website that tracks comets and
kind of shows a cool 3d viewer that you can tilt and move around it's actually
not as far out as you might think it is it's it's still not uh despite the fact that it was almost a year ago
now that we saw it here near the earth it's still only out between the orbit of mars and jupiter
um because i once it gets on the on the long side of this orbit it's traveling slower from our perspective
and i think slower in general because it's not um close to the sun here
um but you can see where it swung by the earth and is on its way back out into the outer
regions of the solar system these are numbers that i pulled last night it's currently 459
million miles away from us and is traveling the numbers are printed twice here they
messed up their website code a little bit it was traveling at 27 and a half miles per second which is the second
wow crazy fast but then again this is falling
despite traveling that fast it's only got out between the orbit of mars and jupiter a year ago from from a year ago
so space is big space is big
all right so some fast facts its orbital period is approximately 6700
years so that's roughly how long it will take to make a complete orbit and come
back around to earth or to at least to uh around the sun again
so that's why it's called a long period comet because it's going to be a real long time before we see it again
uh at its furthest distance from the sun aphelion to 710 astronomical units so
way out past the planet solar system and that perihelion
it's at .295 astronomical units because you're unfamiliar with the unit of astronomical units that's the distance
from the earth to the sun and we kind of use it as a standard unit for measuring distances within the solar system-ish
type area so it comes pretty close to the sun a fraction of the distance from the earth
to the sun it was discovered on march 27 2020 again
by the uh wise telescope out in space and its brightest it was observed at
least his brightest that we observed here from earth it was observed being magnitude plus one which is quite bright
and the actual physical size of the comet has been determined to be about three miles wide
so like that's very small on astronomical scale kind of large if you imagine a chunk of rocks three miles
wide hurdling through space at and a half miles per second get out of the way
yeah and a cool fact that i found was um so comets are they have a lot of water and
that's a lot of what is ablating off of them when they're swinging around the
sun and being being heated by the sun's energy in this case the water content of this
three mile wide comet is 13 million olympic swimming pools
which is a really difficult amount of water to imagine um i didn't have time to go through and
compare like how does that compare to like the pacific ocean it's probably still a fraction of that
but it's a lot of water and there's some there's some theory
that um maybe at least some of the water that's on earth was was kind of seeded
by being struck by asteroids or comets that have high water content
so uh what are the parts and pieces of a comet so at the center is the actual rock
which is the nucleus which um usually like you know especially with
our amateur gear you're not going to be able to see that from within the bright glowing uh
coma and kind of the overall section of it that's that's referred to as the head apparently this this kind of bright area
here so the coma as you can see in this illustration is actually a lot larger are typically a lot larger than the
actual rock itself um and then uh off that you have the
dust tail which is um kind of the uh so in so these comments they're getting close to
the sun and so they're getting a lot more energy on their surface than they receive out
way out in like the oort cloud or the kuiper belt and so the uh and and
the solar wind is is uh removing some of the surface
material which is this dust trail and then there's the ion trail which uh has to do with um
with atom with the gases on the comet that are being ionized by the sun's
energy and sometimes depending on where the comet is in relation to the sun the
dust tail and the ion tail are in the same place because the dust tail um let's see i'm
gonna get this backwards one of the tails is exactly uh perpendicular to the sun
probably the ion tail and then the dust tail i think has some angular momentum component to it so it can kind of curve
off and this is one of my photos that i took with the 200 millimeter camera lens
and you can see the the dust tail is a lot a lot brighter but you can see the ion tail up over here heading off in a
slightly different direction by the time this picture was taken
so i was like to include a slide on what things look like in other wavelengths because
we as amateur astronomers we're always thinking of optical wavelengths but a lot of things out in space
can sometimes glow even more prominently on wavelengths that we can't see such as infrared or x-ray or ultraviolet
um for the in the case of comets there's not really a lot of non-optical light
emitted because it's really just this energy of the sun that's applying
energy to the comet which is typically going to be in the optical range but here's a couple of of interesting uh
ways to look at the comment so the picture on the graph on the left is um
and i realized i have my mouse on the wrong screen for the whole last slide uh the the algorithm the image on the left
is showing uh light reflected and emitted at the
sodium uh the sodium d line so uh if you're familiar at all with like high
pressure sodium city lights for instance there's a particular wavelength that they glow at
and it's actually two very narrowly spaced wavelengths at 589 nanometers which is in the yellow
region and the left part of this image is
looking off band so not looking at those exact wavelengths we're looking at reflected
sodium wavelength light and the picture on the right is looking at
emitted sodium wavelength light so in this case the emitted light is the comet has some sodium in it and
that sodium is being energized by the sun's energy and emitting light on a particular wavelength that we can see
and this plot is kind of showing the different concentrations of that and it's just kind of cool so it's still optical but at a very particular thing
kind of like a narrow band imaging with hydrogen and sulfur or oxygen in this case we're looking at sodium
and the picture on the right is the discovery image that was uh taken by uh
by the neowise project so um uh there's actually three images across across
three uh i think it's all in the same night it's within a couple hours of each other um
and so they just overlaid it to show the comet is moving over the course of that but this is an
infrared image kind of showing its its glow here and it was magnitude 18 when it was
discovered by the telescope so of course this image is quite grainy because it was quite dim
but uh so magnitude 18 is a little bit outside of what most amateur equipment
can grab but there are still a number of comments that are discovered by by amateurs which
is uh evidenced by when you have a telescope when you have a comic come through that has the name of a person
then it was discovered by a person and not a not a big project so um amateurs
still do discover comments because surveys can't pick up quite everything
uh so of course uh comet neowise is long gone now it's uh currently
the at the distance that it's at from us and from the sun more importantly
it's at 24.57 magnitude which is uh it's definitely outside of what i can image
that's pretty far outside of what i think pretty much any amateur telescope can grab
i think some of the professional ones can grab uh magnitudes that dim hubble certainly can
but this is that shot here that i took from the backyard of an apartment complex in
the wee hours of the morning looking out uh north of the san francisco bay area and
that was my first glimpse of the comet which was so exciting to see it naked eye like that was
that was the first time i saw a comet naked eye it was extremely cool that's great
um but uh you know so that comment neo wise is long gone but pay attention for the next comment a lot of times they'll
hear a news article saying you know this comet may get right because a lot of times we don't know we know it's orbit
pretty decently but it depends uh how bright it is will depend on
whether it's whether it breaks up when it goes by the sun how much gas and dust it's emitting
there's a lot of different factors and we don't always know their orbits very precisely especially when they're first
coming into our to our view so sometimes a comment is promised to be bright and ends up being pretty dim
and then there's a bit of a disappointment but it's always worth kind of keeping an eye on the news so
that you can catch the next bright comment yes and so this is probably the best image
that i got of it this is on the camping trip that i went with my parents my grandparents up in northeastern
washington it was quite dark up there estimated about portal 2 um
and this was uh yes it's not uh it doesn't at that latitude up at 49 or 50
degrees north it doesn't get fully dark during the summertime
so uh this glow you're seeing in the background is largely just because twilight doesn't really end
it's kind of in astronomical twilight most of the night but you can you can see even even by this point which was a
couple of days after the preview image i showed the um and this is a much wider
field of view you can really see the ion tail being at a different angles in the dust tail which is kind of curving off
uh which is really cool and got a nice foreground of some trees and some red flashlight here reflecting off the trees
my uh my parents and my grandma grandpa had uh a very nice time being able to
see that naked eye from a nice dark sky site and uh we just kind of
thought it was fun that i was taking pictures and what a treat it was during the
pandemic you know yes yeah and uh that was that camping trip was um
kind of the first time i got out of town after the pandemic started i drove up to washington that's when i um bought my
uh my new camper um which is i guess almost a year old now but we went camping that
weekend and then i bought my camper so awesome i really like those pictures um all
because they really capture the feeling uh you know the moment of of actually seeing that in a
you know it nicely framed you got the comment neo-wise you know for the first time uh you know both both the ones in the
bay area and of course in washington seeing that between the trees it's uh
really nice yep i can imagine what it was like yeah i think seeing it with with trees
in the foreground kind of makes it it gives you a sense of scale of how far out
the tail goes and of course my my camera could could see a little more of that than my eye could cause i was taking a
couple second long exposures there but um you could still see it naked eye
and it gives you sense of scale for how large these things appear on the sky and how long their tails must be
for the distance they're at from us which is you know relatively close but still not in the actual sky right um
that tail is is some number of many miles long very cool
yeah beautiful thank you beautiful okay well dt katam is um is on with us from
nepal and uh um she will be uh her talk is
going to be about comets so dt you're on
let's go there hello everyone and today i'm talking about the commerce and uh first of all from the short
introduction i have introduction and accommodate is that i said it's one solar system body when passing close to
the sun warm or in uh being to release gases and a process that is called
outgassing and this produce of invisible atmosphere and coma
are frozen left over from the from the formation of the solar system couples of
dust rocks and ices and they range from few miles to 10 of tens of miles wide
but as they orbit closer to the sun the heats up and is few gases and dust into
a blowing head that can be larger than a planet but those particles combine to form icy
rocks that join together under the form of uh gravity force of gravity and high
speed collisions result in loosely bounded cooler collection of fuse rock and swing ice
and when a comet pass through the inner solar system is ice warms and uh releasing a trail of gas
and dust and coming being a mix of ice and dust and end of
losing their ice and gas each time they orbit around the sun and they come to the cooper field an earth cloud and
after around 500 passes or they'll lose most of their ice and gas content
and eventually turn into something close to an asteroid and comet also have a big influence when they
collide with earth why collisions between earth and comets are currently extremely rare
millions of years ago it was more common some scientists argue argued that equality comets early in our development
contributed most of earth's water and collision with comets and other
stuff from space have been responsible for use landmark in our planet history
and global citizen shifts in climate the creation of our moon and the resolving of our deepest
geology and experiences of spices etc and i have some
presentation let me see
[Music]
all right conversation here i'm sorry video clips sorry
uh i like snowy dirt balls
um
me
it's
okay
it's a pretty good presentation um and i have one i have found uh one
point poem that's uh from the robot longley in uh about the comments
and it started like a day twinkle after after a warning pride it's a source of
order standing right amidst the night we pay them them small attention for they
are always there we go about our business with what a single care
but then there are comments bright and raising fast everyone takes notice even
if they do not last if worse people remember the dramatic burning light they stand out on the lens
cap and brighten up the night thank you he's so sweaty very good
i hope david was still listening to that because that was a great poem thank you thank you very much deepti
well we look for it dt we look forward to you being back on the next global star party uh our our next event will be
on july 20th and of course that is the anniversary of the moon landing and it's also the
anniversary i think of the viking one lander on mars something like that so
so there's uh there's lots to talk about um and uh it's always great to get your
perspective so thanks for putting that on well up next um uh is uh jason gonzale
uh jason um uh is uh really one of the top astrophotographers
uh around today and uh i'm constantly blown away and amazed by his his images
and i have seen a lot of astrophotography uh over the years by amateur astronomers
uh um you know often uh studying uh you know the best images
possible uh uh from amateur astronomers for use in catalogs and and just uh for my
own inspiration you know uh but uh i i'm constantly
when i want to show some of the the best stuff done today i i i often turn to jason's work so jason thanks for coming
on again thanks for having me thanks for the compliments i don't know but i hope you see my common images
maybe we'll we'll talk to you again but comments are triggered there you're tricky to photograph yeah yeah
they are um but i didn't i was largely quiet during that or completely quiet during that first segment because i
figured i'd get my chance to talk here about my experiences with comets but um you know i have largely the same
experiences that a lot of people on the panel do probably a lot in the audience too and
of the age where the only bright visible comets that i've experienced are
were hail bop and then now neowise last year but there seemed to have been a long drought of
a period of time where there was not really any visible comments available to us so it's exciting to see finally
uh getting some action on that front so i have a series of images i'll show
here um of just comments i've i've taken over the years
i started astrophotography roughly a decade ago and really
tried a couple early on common shots never
got too great of uh initial result but over time i've gotten a little bit better at capturing them and processing
them and then uh neo wise i really jumped on that opportunity as most people did
to try to get the most they could out of it unfortunately you know the weather is
always a factor and um struggle with that a bit in the neo-wise time frame
but i will share my screen here and start um
make sure that this is the screen i want okay can you see a screen
yes see a bunch of thumbnails yes we can so um here we go i'm going to start in
chronological order and this is kind of a cool one um
because this one was not captured by me this was actually taken by my father um
this is hail bob in 1997 taken from
the shore of maui actually from a hotel balcony looking out over
the ocean and that's a hill bomb up there in the sky so he took
this um like i said with a film camera canon 8u1
and all these years later you know um over 20 years later i found the box of
negatives and i was looking through him and i i noticed that here he said that he had
some shots of this so i was looking specifically for these shots but i ended up having one of neo-wise so i took that
negative and i held it up against the uh an overcast sky and i took my
modern digital camera and i just snapped a picture of the negative that took it into photoshop and inverted
it and voila we have we have a picture of
comet hillbop that was taken
i believe in early or late march of 1997.
so it's kind of a collaboration with my dad kinda cool beautiful
all right and then um i got an sct's telescope in
2013 and within a couple months i was already trying to take pictures off the back of
it so i knew of this comment in the sky it was comet ison
it's nomenclatures was the c-slash 2012 s1 icon
this comment i don't know if if anybody remembers this but this was one that um flew close too close to the sun
and uh ended up breaking up um in its past
you know around the sun and came out the other side in a million pieces and it was no more but it was uh
promised to be a pretty bright comet if it had survived this shot i took before it rounded the sun
and it just took a short string of exposures through my 8 inch sct and stack them up
and then it's tracked on the head of the cabinet so you can begin to see the tail behind
it and the stars stretch out in the streaks once you do that
was kind of my first comment attempt you know that was a nice green um
uh you know comet there i'm reading about it now it says if if a coma contains carbon nitrogen and
carbon-carbon bonds the sun's ultraviolet light will excite the electrons inside of it causing them to
emit a green glow when they drop down in energy yeah so you can tell a lot about a comet
you know by its its color signature and you know many times and this is the case
most often when they get close to the sun they will start to grow they will start to glow green around the
nucleus specifically and that's that um that carbon emission that's that you
talked about scott i don't i don't know the exact chemical properties that give rise to it but it's
pretty common thing to see in comments and
that's a great segue into my next image which is a wide field shot now this spans all the
way between the pleiades which is on the left and the california nebula on the right this was taken with a dslr
and this budge here is actually a kind of
you can see my mouse wow but what's unique about this comet
it's very small in this field of view because the field of view is is pretty big huge oh yeah but
this comet was growing a bright blue tail and there were a lot of
shots of this taken during this time frame i took this picture in 2018
and this kind of nucleus was rotating
very fast and creating a spiral in the tail so if you look at detailed
you know longer focal length images of this this kind of specifically it was a
really structured and complex almost helical tail coming off the back of this and it was bright blue because of the
presence of carbon monoxide like i said before you know those those different elements give rise to different colors
within the within the comet but this one was pretty unique you don't often see a bright blue
blue tail and i thought it framed nicely against the you know the blue of the pleiades here
yes probably one of the better wide field
comet images i've seen so yeah thanks
so we didn't talk too much in this whole comment discussion about um our interstellar visitors so we've had
two within the last few years discovered and those are the first two that we have known about i don't think
there's been one uh since this one i have pictured and this is um
was discovered in 2019 um the name borisov and this is an
infinite period comet which means it originated outside our solar system passed through the plane of our solar
system and went back out into the interstellar space and ever to be seen again unlike aluminum which was the first one
uh which didn't sport much of a tail this one did emit a tail um so they were able to research a
little bit more about the composition and um
i was working really hard to capture this it was extraordinarily dim
in the telescope and i didn't see anything in my single pictures or anything and after careful stacking and
i pulled some tricks on and um centering the comet in the in the
in the stacking routine i was able to at least show a fuzzy blob but that is uh my only picture of a
interstellar comet it was very rare
i don't think many people tried this because it never reached uh you know a brightness that was very accessible to amateur
telescopes but i i wanted it bad enough where i went through the steps to make it
happen all right and this is a um
this is a time lapse video now we're stepping forward to um 2019 uh comet atlas which i actually
captured in april of last year 2020 um but this comment was discovered in
2019 and this time lapse just shows the movement of the comet over a
[Music] couple hour time period see if this will play for you
oh this is cool i've got the field rotating too but this gives you an idea of the movement of a comet through the
sky over a period of time so again this is all um sequential
sub-exposures and then placed together in video format
so that's awesome
yeah how fast those things move through the sky so if you sit there and um you know you take a picture and then you
take a picture two hours later it's going to be a significant distance away from where
it started and that that's what presents the challenge to um comet photography and taking these
images because you've got not only the stars moving across the sky
but you've also got this comet moving relative to the stars so you need to handle them separately if you want to stack them to increase
the signal to noise and make the the tail more visible yeah that's what i did on this next shot
which is the same comment you can see that once you stack the image
separately for the stars and for the comet to keep everything um
the stacking in the right place geometrically on top of each other yeah it looks too light
it's really you begin to see them you can see the detail the nucleus the the
colors and you can see the tail extending extending away this one just had that dust tail uh not
not an ion tail like the um kind of near-wise hand
i believe now i'll step into oh no this is a so i took a few pictures of that
kind of atlas here's just another one
all right so we stepped forward now three months into uh
this exact day one year ago um this is comet neowise up here in the sky
and again i set a camera up on a fixed tripod and just time lapse this
i'll let this play
wow so this is as the sun is setting i've got the exposures rolling and as the sky
darkens then you you know the tail the comet begins to bloom you can see it and i'm
just playing it forward and backwards here boomeranging it a bit and then zooming in just so you can see
that very cool ah well done well done that's
really i like that really captured it nice well i think um
adrian might be the only person that knows this location but this was at kensington metro park yep
yeah this metro park is known more for wildlife and uh
birds but uh yeah this was the first time i saw a well-done image i think at the time i
only saw the image not the um the time lapse that you have but uh
but yeah it's uh yeah you tell them they allowed you to stay a little later because normally
they close the park get dark but um you were giving me uh i didn't tell them
i just stayed too much luck with the clothes
it was an experience you know i brought my daughter out there with me and um you know we got to watch this thing kind of
just appear out of the out of the dusk and um what was your daughter's reaction to
this oh yeah she she like i mean you know at first i'm like do you see it you see it i don't see anything you know but
but yeah i mean after uh once you saw it it was it was a good experience for her someone's glad to be able to do that and
um you know this kind of hooked me on it up until this point it was a morning
comet if you remember um actually if you're far enough north it was circumpolar which means it never
set but i was right um far enough north to where it just kind of kissed the horizon and then begins to
rise again in the dawn and um but it moves through the sky you know
over time and before these dates before
you know mid-july it was better to view it in the morning and then as it became later in july it
became more visible in the evening and so once i got this shot and and
got a little bit of practice in i got bounded and turned to get a better shot of it so
um this was three days later
i set up again with a little bit longer focal length trying to get
a view of this thing and lo and behold i ran it right into the roof of the house
so i um well
replay on this one and got out there in a different position and a little bit earlier
and um holy smokes look at that shot this this sequence now this was on the 17th
so a few days later and now you can actually even in the still you can see the ion tail right
that kind of sprouted within those last few days
and the um thing for me now as i was shooting
through all these thin clouds gives a cool look to the video but when you try to stack the images after it
turns into a nightmare
but i think this this shot or this is my favorite sequence from the the neowise
time frame just because you get this good view of the ion tail almost looks like real time right
because you're seeing the time lapse yeah just in these single frames
yeah it's so hard to imagine when you're observing these things through a telescope or photographing them that
the actual comet is tiny compared to what you are
photographing you know and you think that oh yeah i've got the head of the comet or but no the
the brightest part of it is still this gas and dust and and uh you probably
couldn't even resolve the actual comet itself you know because they're just a
few miles stay tuned stay tuned
this i'm backing up one but this is the stack of that video i just showed where i stacked the
comet and the stars separately this line here is the roof of the house which
got into the field of view a little bit but um sorry
but i had a lot of problems in post-processing this because of the clouds as i said
uh you know created streaking and color issues through the whole
image but at least you get a sense of the detail that's available once you stack these images
you can see you know striations in the in the dust tail itself and also in the in the ion tail
so as molly was saying the ion tail are it's a it's a stream of charged
particles that always points away from the sun whereas the dust tail follows the orbital motion
of the comet itself and kind of blooms out so you get these two different
directions that depending on the way the comet's moving it can be completely opposite in direction which is
strange
yeah so this is now with my eight-inch sct zoomed in on the head just the head
of the comet super you know 1500 millimeter focal length
shot of the head and you can start to see the beginnings of the ion tail
and the uh the striations and the dust coming off the the nucleus of the
comet that's one of the finest comet shots i've seen very nice
i i did this um long focal length thing a couple times trying to get
more detail um that was a hard endeavor and as time went by it got lower and lower
in the dust and ended up pretty much losing it in the dusk i can just show
the sequence i have here yeah because if there's enough motion in
that ion trail and the dust trail that is going to blur pretty quickly right so
you know that if you could yeah is this another animation yes this
is an animation of what you're looking at this is a longer photo shot
awesome so right cameron if you were to get good enough detail
you have a fast enough scope and a long enough focal length to really zoom in on the core of this thing
you'd be able to see actually streamers moving within the ion tail that's kind of what i was going for but i just
barely can't get it here oh that's so cool i think it's just you know like my
telescope isn't that fast it's shooting at f75
you know you really need you know quicker exposures get a lot of signal within a single exposure
these i was taking 30 second exposures on this and this looks like over the span
of a half hour of movement
impressive but this gives you an idea what the telescope sees
you know through the camera at long focal length these are what the single uh images look like and i'm
shooting with a monochrome camera which is why it's black and white
well jason you you come at a good time with the technology you're pushing the envelope and uh this
stuff would have been impossible to do before so this is uh this is really cool you're
you're pulling it together and this is this is really nifty well this this whole topic that
scott and you know david set up really got me in gear to go back and reprocess
these or at least look at these neo-wise shots again all right a lot of the stuff i sat on
especially like the ones where the clouds are moving through i was like oh you know it didn't really work out then i put that time lapse together and
i just put that time lapse together with that video literally 20 minutes ago it was the
first time i saw it and um i'm going to go back to it because i
like the way it turned out yeah i do too well that's what these shoes shows do
right i mean what what scott has done is he created a great forum and then like you say you
start to dust off the cobway webs and see what you can yeah
yeah so that's all i have for today and hope you enjoyed it you really enjoyed it it's great yeah
it's great right you comment outside right now i go look at it so
yeah you know one of the things i was considering doing for today
if the weather would have allowed it which it's not here but i wanted to um
you know get my scope set up and show how to find a comet
you know with a telescope if it's not visible to the to the naked eye
you know as far as getting the coordinates of it where to find those and then where to tell the telescope to point and
how to uh center it on the comet i think that would be a good demonstration but
couldn't make it work for today it's it's as usual it's cloudy
but um yeah it turns out this is a tuesday night it kind of reminds us
i have recently joined a group of really wonderful astrophotographers that
jason's a part of the plymouth astrophotography group and we all sit around and you know we
see we share each other's images and it's a really
it's a tight-knit community and we help you know we help each other out a lot
and one thing i've always admired about jason's work you know jason you do both the wide angle and the deep sky
astrophotos and do them pretty well i've settled on wide angle for the most
part but um at times deep sky astra photos have been something that i've always been
interested in and when it came to the comet i remember that we we were kind of
collectively learning um all of us in the group are kind of collectively learning how to shoot the
comet and try and present it in a few different ways and it was it was a fun adventure for us
all it took our minds off of uh what was going on with that pandemic and got us outdoors
using our equipment so it was uh it brought back memories of a fun time
of everyone um and i remember that last deep image of the comment we had a
couple of people who imaged the comet and got that sweeping tail
um there were a couple of uh there were a couple of uh i'll call them celebrity
astrophotographers that you know they're well known for doing their work and they were kind of the first to come out
with some of those larger those larger uh shots of the comet and
you know then all then most of us figured it out and and we watched as
that comet nucleus went from the color you've got it there to a br that bright
green from the carbon emission it's like it as it passed by us the nucleus changed
so it was um it was a fun comet and yeah your images and the same thing we say during the
plymouth fashion photography club the the images are spectacular but it's also evident how much time you
put in to go out and get them and that's uh to me is just as important
getting good data like this and then being able to process it
yeah well unfortunately you know processing it into a single image is pretty impossible when you have this
many clouds moving through but looking at this and i don't know if it's coming through on the video but you
can actually see the the comet moving you know if i put my mouse pointer over the uh the head of
the comet you can actually see it moving
yeah the the stars are stationary if i put my mouse over a star
the stars don't move because they're all registered together so yeah so this that you can actually see the
comment then moving away from the head of my pointer yeah well the strangest comments i've
seen was uh called iris iraqi alcott and it made
i guess our view of it was it was kind of like coming head on uh
towards us because it just had like this it was like the cloud was like the size of
maybe like the full moon it was huge and just in an hour you could see that it moved
significantly across the sky you know it's just really a beautiful a beautiful comet
very strange though did that one show up right before hale bop scott because
yeah i remember seeing something 80s yeah i remember seeing it and seeing
something in the sky and thinking ooh that's the comet but it i've always
wondered if i was just seeing a blocked full moon or not and yeah iris
was um designation was uh comet 1983 h1
uh in 1983 it made its closest known approach to earth of any comet in 200
years so it got really really close
it was uh about this is 0.0312 astronomical units
okay i may have been thinking of a different comet that i wasn't sure if i saw comet hyatt i think came
in or hitachi if that's how kataki oh yeah that was yeah yeah that's the one that came prior
to hail by but yeah huge tail and
yeah yeah like 96 or something you had higher take and then and then
out came hail bop with the huge tail and it was visible in the sky and
and then out came the movies armageddon and deep impact and um those two comments hillbop and
hayakataki i mean it was just uh it was just amazing to have two
incredibly bright comets you know like that uh just uh right next to each other it was
um i you know i remember seeing hill bop and seeing uh
you know i've seen illustrations where you know the the uh
technical artist or whatever made like what looked like shells inside of a comet head and i
thought that that was artistic license but it's not so i mean hillbop exhibited
that feature really well especially when you observed it through a telescope and the reason why is
because it had jets coming off and the comet was spinning so as the comet spun
these jets and material are coming up but then the solar wind would push it back and it would create these
shockwave type layers within the comet it was just beautiful
to look at uh high kataki probably i mean very special to me
because i took my two young daughters out and they still remember it to this day with the tail stretching halfway
across the sky you know it was beautiful yeah i made him get up in the middle of
the night and i said get up we got to see this you know so yeah it's gonna only to be out
outshined by a hail bop a few months later it would have been the it would have
been the comet up until neo wise here um but then you know hail bob for those
that saw it you know just how bright it was neo-wise did remind me of seeing hale bop but it
i remember somehow that hail bob just seemed a lot bigger
um in size but this was this was a wonderful reminder of it yeah um
i saw hill bob from the city of taipei taiwan which was incredibly light
polluted but you could see it yeah and i'm trying to remember another
comment maybe it was comet austin but i remember seeing uh the the bright head of the comet uh
you know just after sunset you know and uh so it's still daylight outside yeah
that's a very impressive picture borisov that's uh you know that yeah that yeah there's the
the hillbop uh there's hail bop right there i think that's what he was looking for yeah it
it just hung in the sky like that but like you're saying there there have been some bright comments you you you
were talking about the one you just saw i think you saw another one in taipei
um i saw him okay the hail bottle was the one you saw in taipei okay
yeah of course i said i saw it from california too and
so it was it was amazing it wasn't it was it wasn't hard to miss
so long too it was great yeah not even dark in that picture yeah
yeah that it reminds it reminded me of how when the comet finally became a night comet
you could spot it as twilight was leaving and then you had if you had a
low horizon you had maybe an hour to image it as it drifted below began to drift to the
horizon um to the north i thought that the uh that neo-wise was visible in the
southern hemisphere cesar and maxie but it wasn't it didn't get spectacular
until it crossed over the equator and showed up in the northern skies
where it was close enough for all these images yes normally lost a lot of bright um
but in the north of the country he was able to see it yes many many people take
pictures in the area of because argentina have the the
northeast uh latitude and i think that this
20 23 passing by the tree the tropic of capricorn oh
capricorn yes yes but from buenos aires you know when i said this is 35
very low um the bride was was uh
particularly fine not like like the worst part is when
we are watching and especially now with the social nets
is that we starting to to watch the pictures from from the north hemisphere
and we start to wait i'm trying to have something
come on don't don't use everything the comment yes don't take all the pictures
because yes it's like that whole comment for ourselves i mean that yeah yes
yes people from argentina new zealand chile and and australia
every time we we suffer that is come on let us something
for us yeah then we've seen it and then we go back to you and say you have the southern cross and ada karina
so we yeah we throw it back into yeah we throw it back into your faces
uh you you've got the centaurus a and omega centaur even though that rises
high enough yeah yes northern hemisphere yeah tonight i have some pictures of of
one star party in particular of 2013 that i remember that um
we we take some pictures singles picture of 30 seconds of the midi weights unfortunately i
don't have more than experience because i have pictures
[Music] i have very bad pictures for for comets
but i had more more strongest experience at the naked eyes
about comets but i i was amazed with the pictures of jason because at the end the time lapse
uh really i enjoyed and showed this this presentation yeah me too yeah please you
want to take the screenshot yeah i think that that it's okay you can use
all comment um because you you enjoy if the comment coming to southwest
fur and write less no problem because you enjoy and use
the comet life in a great way
yes this is this is uh thank you man thank you yeah
yes right very inspiring jason yeah
beautiful stuff i think we could just have a show of nothing but just image after image after
image of comments you know maybe i'll we'll do that sometime i'm tapped out now
[Laughter] very cool very cool
well uh let's see up next is um connell richards uh
connell uh as i recall you're 16 years old is that right i'm 18. 18. sorry okay sorry
that's a big difference between 16.
when you're 16 you think the guys that are 18 are really pretty old okay so yeah
and when you're 18 16 years like a kid right so yeah that's right yeah and uh yeah
when you're old guys like us you know that it seems different but never too old to
forget um the uh favorites when you're in college you
always have a favorite thing and for you you're learning the words we are penn state
oh yes yeah big ten big ten goes deep um i
still don't i'm still not sure i forgive you guys for coming into the league and kicking both our butts me and ours
and ohio state i graduated from michigan in 97. the first year penn state joined
a little bit of sports trivia penn state joined the league and then in 96. around the time of um
hail bob penn state was a powerhouse and uh flipping the big ten football scene beat everybody said we're in the big 10
now then things changed a little bit but we'll we won't go into that um
but uh but yeah that an iconic football team and
thanks to conal obviously an iconic school with um
with an iconic astronomy program so yeah that's my little wonderful my
little personal introduction big ten introduction to uh mcdonald's
thank you they do say uh well historically comets have been said to um
be harbingers of great things um both good and bad but i'm going to move us out into um
interstellar space actually can everyone see the presentation all right yes yes looks good let's put that up here
so we were talking earlier many of us tonight have mentioned uh comet
as a favorite observationally and you know a favorite comet that we photographed and shared with many others
but there are some interesting mysteries surrounding that comet so here's a beautiful image of it here
this was from one of nasa's a pods and it's got that bright green head
and then there's the streaming tail behind it it looks like there's a bit of an ion tail going straight back it's kind of
hard to you know pull them apart and then the dust tail uh pulling away slightly
but again it's a beautiful car look at the piece that's up at the top top left it looks like it's uh swooping in and uh
i'm just wondering if it's a piece of the comet that broke off or a section of the tail that's different
somehow i mean it looks different than a dust tail i do wonder it looks like ion tail
yeah in the upper left so like i said it is a bit of a
mysterious comet and we we start to to kind of look at this thing by looking at the orbit here
so we can see the earth is moving along in in this graphic here this was back from when the comet was flying along so
it's moving to the right here from our perspective but then the comet is moving around this way in fact comet hayakitaki
was in a retrograde orbit and you can also see it's highly inclined above the plane of the solar system so we have the
plane of the solar system stretching out and all the planets are there you know only
um differing by a couple of degrees from that point and then they're also orbiting all in
the same direction but not hayakataki it's coming around this way the opposite direction and at this very inclined
orbit now we do understand from many other comets that if you go beyond the kuiper
belt and into the oort cloud it becomes less of a disk and more of a sphere of
this original material from the solar system's formation all this ice and gas and dust
so it's not uncommon when you're so far away from the sun and the gravity is much weaker for collisions to bump
comets and put them in these really strange orbits to have them come around
now last i read comet hayakitaki's current period is about 70 000 years 10
times what we know for for neo-wise but anyway
like i said it's coming out of this orc cloud with this really strange orbit and it made this spectacular display in
our night sky but that wasn't the only thing it taught us so around that time in 1996 when it was
coming around there were some astronomers from jpl who took a look at the chemistry of it and they found that
methane or excuse me ethane was a compound commonly found in many comets but not in hayakataki it was
depleted or it was gone or it was never there and this led them to conclude that the comet may have been in fact in
an interstellar comet uh almost similar to amumua or borisov
now they recognize that many comets that we see in the night sky are many comets passing around from the kuiper belt
did have ethane and methane but the reason they said that hayakitaki did not
have these is that formed much farther out potentially in interstellar space where there was some greater concentration of material or from
another solar system where it could come by and become captured now the evidence for this comet being
interstellar is not as strong as something like borisov or or uh
where we saw it coming in on a hyperbolic trajectory way faster than any collision could have
bumped it towards the inner solar system but it is really compelling to think that there could be comets in our solar
system right now that have come from other stars and that have actually come to stay
so our next interesting target is the famous umua the great interstellar comet that came by and it
was the first we'd ever seen now as this was happening in 2017 and 18
we we commonly saw this cigar shape type of artist concept we were trying to look at the brightness
of the object and how it changed over time and how it rotated and it was sort of this pencil or cigar shape that we
came up with as a as a likely form for the comet
now also while observing this comet we noticed it was accelerating out of the solar system like some comets do with um
gases emitting and jets and things like that but we didn't pick up anything expect uh spectroscopically
you know a couple years went guy and uh we come to the modern day now uh just three years later and we've made a
number of interesting observations about this in addition to what we saw in the first place so now we suspect that comet
omuamua may have been not a comet at all actually something more like this pancake shaped chunk of nitrogen ice
from what we could call an exopluto now i have an image of pluto on the next
slide that we could go into a little bit more but the suggestion that this was more of a
pancake shape rather than a cigar shape came from looking at the object we realized it
could have been spinning edge on like we see some galaxies or some objects in the night sky and that it could have actually had this
format and that would have led us to conclude that it was made of nitrogen ice
much like some of these oceans on pluto so if you remember from 2015 when new horizons came and made its flyby we
found these vast and i call them oceans even though they are frozen these vast sort of chunks of liquid nitrogen that
had frozen on pluto's surface into the shapes like the famous heart or sputnik
planim down here and it is very possible that an object like pluto could have existed around
another star and that some impact we know these are common in the kuiper belt came and struck this dwarf planet
similar to pluto and blasted off this chunk of nitrogen ice now of course it would have gotten much
different in its composition as you would go deeper into the planet's crust so you would have a thin sheet that's
very wide and very long something like a pancake shape that could have represented what we saw with a muammua
now a lot of these observations you know we were trying to look at this comet from another solar system we were wondering
do comets change as they pass through interstellar space are other solar systems different and are we somehow
unique but it turns out with the passage of borisov we saw some beautiful images earlier of that comet coming by
that comet looked a lot like the ones we see from our solar system so we can make some really interesting
conclusions coming from uh borisov and hayakataki as i spoke about earlier
so first with borisov we can see that that comet was a lot like some of the ones that we find in
our own solar system so we can conclude that comets are common in the outer regions of other solar systems and i say
the outer region specifically because they are cold they haven't broken up they are still in that icy loose gravel
kind of form that we've that we've observed with many comets in fact that's why they break up so easily like uh
for something like shoemaker levy9 and we can also conclude based on the first inner interstellar asteroid that
we found is that these exoplutoes these dwarf planets orbiting other stars with these large seas of nitrogen ice
also exist and what that teaches us is that other solar systems as we've found have
planets and that they may also have dwarf planets similar to our own so as we're trying to pick apart these pieces
of the interstellar puzzle and figure out what other solar systems are like we're comparing and contrasting how ours
is unique and different so this is one commonality which is really interesting
to find is that you might call them the kuiper belts of other stars actually have their own
dwarf planets and their own comets and maybe even their own oort clouds so perhaps we're not so
unique as we may have thought before now also what hayakataki teaches us is
that comments do fly between interstellar space and if we found three of them as long as
we've been searching which you might call a couple decades or a couple of hundreds of years if you count the
visual comets that other observers picked up that's a very short time on the astronomical
span of things so if three comets have come in the time we've been searching the night sky then perhaps it's much
more common than we think and that comets do pass between stars and maybe some of them even come and stay like
hayakitaki does in this highly inclined retrograde orbit where it's moving very fast close to the
sun and very slow out towards it's it's uh apogee from the sun
so again these comets gives us give us a great sense of perspective and i'd like to close with some some images of my own
of neo-wise which is a much more typical comet nothing special nothing interstellar but beautiful nonetheless
now something interesting i learned about this is that the tail was about six degrees i saw that in my own
observations and heard that from many others i was using binoculars with a five degree field of view so they that
took me from maybe the nucleus at the bottom and some way up the tail perhaps the
pictures don't reveal all of it but that corresponds to a tail of about seven and a half million miles long
which is absolutely huge so it's really strange to think of these comets being huge structures
taking up significant portions of the solar system uh david levy said hikitaki's
dust particles spread from its the lowest point in its orbit near the sun and the earth all the way out to
jupiter but as huge as these structures are they are also very tenuous and thin
only the evaporated bits that come off of jets and come off of the ice as the comet sublimates
and as much as we like to observe these as much as we like to appreciate their beauty they do move out towards the
outer edges of the solar system and long period comets like neo-wise that come around every 7 000 years
they do get smaller so this next image here i took from a uh a state park nearby in pennsylvania
it's a beautiful one up in the northeast nice so we had a campfire glow down here and there's neois again
looking much smaller compared to the earlier image these are on about the same scale and it's kind of receding into the
summer sky there the first image you saw was taken on july 15th in the morning and this is when it swung around
into uh the evening skies ursa major and i can't pick out the
stars too well from here is kind of dangling up here i remember finding it just under the
um handle of the dipper or the the tail of the bear if you prefer
so the interstellar comets they are really fun to learn about but just like the comets in our own solar system they they
come and go uh quite quickly so we might as well stay and appreciate uh what we can learn
from them and what we can see wonderful i almost feel like i'm out camping right
there you know i can i can hear the uh i can hear the nocturnal sounds in that
uh photograph it's beautiful and they do say one of the great things about astrophotos is that um you know
anybody can look up a picture of what the comment looks like but um you know i remember the story with when
i was taking the image there's a campfire down here that's actually my cousin there in the bottom right i said you know wave your arms or make a pose
or something and we had some fun with it but but that was a really fun night and it and it's fun
to capture those images and share them with people along with the story that comes with them
yeah that's right that's right excellent excellent job connell thank you very much scott thank you
thank you okay all right um up next is uh adrian bradley adrian do
you have it do you have more to share with us tonight i do [Music]
um i was going to say for connell you have to end all of your presentations with we
are penn state oh everything's a penn state advertisement now
yeah it'll be it'll come that way give it like six months once i'm there yeah it you
you might um but no excellent presentation beautiful picture so
in uh in line with um jason gunzel's pictures and your pictures
my presentation is basically going to be just to share a few of the uh images that
um i always go back to this image images that you can take with a camera
um you can take pictures of blackbirds in flight and freeze them or you can find your
comet neowise photos and just kind of go through
the history of my the title of the presentation was milky way reflections so there will be
some milky way shots in the middle of these um the morning i decided to get up
and go see comet neo wise here um i do believe this was venus and then
the pleiades rising and i'm not a morning riser um the moon was out but then as uh
as morning began the rise i began to take some pictures
and there was the streak in the sky right here um
as dawn was beginning this is auriga over here
and there's that streak and i looked at it with my um binoculars
that i had and i took a few photos figured out some settings and
and then what you've got here my first there you go view of neo-wise from the dark sky
park so these things if it evolved as it as it uh
came out this is one of the yeah yeah this is one of the clear pictures yep
that was before neo-wise rounded the sun and i tried to take some close-ups
um there was a pinkish glow from the sun rising this is gonna it should focus here
anytime soon um if it doesn't we'll just move on but um
yeah it uh let's look at that one too yeah just trying to just trying to experiment and get some close-ups so
that was on the 9th and then in the light polluted skies of
my backyard well backyard area
i took a big camera 150 to 600 millimeter camera and pulled neo eyes out and these images
will probably not do it too much justice um
but yeah there we go trying to capture it in a light polluted zone and
this was what i got so those were
um images and then four days later i see neo eyes and this was my first
shot i'm leaving it the way that i saw it unfocused i was going oh man i don't i
thought i had it in focus but i gotta do a better job of that so i took a few more shots and i'm like
oh man everything's moving i got star trails the yeah the comet it looks like a
pancake with a tail on it i got to fix that too and so i worked at it and
finally began to get some roundness in the stars this was this is
essentially what my naked eye view was of the comet um that's what it looked like and at this
and at this time you're starting to see an iron tail already so i processed the
couple of them uh try to make them look really cool um as the and this is the comet
shrinking and falling um this image turns out to be
there you go that's nice there's a turns out to be decent and then i experimented with some fishermen
that were there didn't know so i took a long exposure and had them stand as still as they could
and then shine a flashlight so that they would be illuminated near the end of the exposure with the comet coming towards
her head it was i may try and reprocess this to smooth
it out and sharpen them out it's an interesting it's an interesting thing when you're shooting night sky images you rarely get
round stars and reasonably sharp people because they're forced to stand there
for 20 seconds they were nice enough to do that i was i was pretty happy about that
i kept shooting until it got really low to the horizon and that so these are
your pictures you saw jason shoot a picture
similar to this where it was loaded horizon at kensington park um
that's probably as clean a picture as i could make um and this was at lake hudson dark sky
park now i'm looking to see yeah don't worry the milky way was uh i
turned around to the south and there was this really clear night sky with the milky way a meteor that came through
this particular image um portal 4 is the portal
rating of lake hudson dark sky park i started i used the tracker to image this
and ended up with a pretty good with a pretty reasonable shot here um there's uh jupiter there's saturn and
i see the notes that my internet connection is unstable so you may or may not be seeing these images
but um so yeah here here's what the milky way was like
after neil y sank and i said okay i'll take some shots of it and i even got some
rising moon pictures too this is uh the moon right when the moon is rising
late you've got the uh your past third quarter and you've got this crescent
right here um so
i need i named this called check your rig because i took a bunch of
fuzzy shots on the night of the 18th i missed a
golden opportunity um and i think i'll there may be
yeah i'll just show this kind of fuzzy shot but i missed the golden opportunity as i was setting up a meteor bright
green meteor shot this way right above where the comet was in the
in the plane you imagine having a dual shot with a meteor
and a comet in the same frame i missed the opportunity to have that i
might have submitted it for apod i would have i would have tried i don't know if i'd have gotten much but i did get this
cool shot right here when i finally got things in focus or mostly focus it was very cloudy and hazy but the
light of the comet with the uh ever growth
it's amazing this picture yeah yes i like it and i almost didn't show it just now i was uh i was gonna skip this part
because it was all clouds and fuzzy but i did remember getting a pretty good shot out of it even the color of the
stars look at it yeah it's beautiful yeah you got the ion tail there too you can
see yep there it is so it was yeah a lot of those features
are visible this was a 200 millimeter camera um that i used with my canon 6d
and my tracker these two stars are important for the neck the next picture and what
are this is what a uh this is when you don't have your tracking working and this is what a raw frame looked like so it took a little
bit of processing and a clean i got a cleaner shot
did some processing and all this data came out again if there had been a meteor shooting through here too
i would have been beyond happy but i'll take what i got so broward nature preserve
i went there um the next night to do some imaging um
a poor the owl cluster i tried i said deep you know deep sky
shooting isn't mine you're seeing uh something that i'm going to put into a time lapse and then there came the comet
and i took some images of it let's see there are those two stars that i pointed out the comet had moved
to be over those two stars i think they're part of ursa major um the common
is below the dipper i took a few shots tried to stack them but i ended up
processing one image and i ended up oh this shot
this was probably the best of the shots that i could took you can actually see that sweeping
remnants of this sweeping dust tail here you see the iron tail with the tank
pulling directly and i was able to yep i was able to darken
the back of the night sky i think this was a two minute this was a two minute
exposure and there go those two stars i used to know the names of them
but this is a lot of the better comet images came on this night 7 19.
um that's when most of the good images came out and i will go ahead and end my segment
with this shot which yeah once it this was this was a shout out from my
artistic side i thought was um you know you have the comet here it's
just the part of the scene with all the bright stars in it the dippers above you know those stars were
missing here but you have all the fireflies it looks the way that i ended up taking
the shot it probably looks like a painting and that's that was kind of the intent i ended up having this printed
out as a canvas and for those watching if you would like a copy of this print it is available
um beautiful but last but not least the comet sinks so what do we do we turn south and see
what kind of milky way we can get this was bortles this is a bordeaux 5 zone
somewhere between um 405 and portal 60 because it's near ann
arbor michigan which uh my yeah i can tell my internet
connection because you guys all free so i know it's me but you're all back um
this is what portal five skies are or bortle between five and six guys the
milky way imaging you can get outside of ann arbor michigan uh home to one of colonel's rivalries of
wolverines where i graduated in 97. um we've had hard luck with our football
team unlike mcconnell and his uh his soon-to-be a school you can
see the scorpion here and you can see sagittarius here jupiter is now way over here and saturn
has moved to about here next to the milky way so
it is it is a little bit different now but um
comet chasing was a lot of fun and it always is
but there's never anything like quite like milky way chasing which
you can do all the time and i will end
my final image with a recent shot because chasing the milky way is what i like to
do i think i showed pictures of it in smoke but um
somewhere in here is
the latest image that i've taken now if i had this if i had come to the
thumb and done comet imaging um
out here in the thumb i might have had the comet against the
backdrop and let's see if it where did that go
yeah my comment might have been against a backdrop like this you've got andromeda
i might have moved i might have shot north had the milky way
um cassiopeia image of the cassiopeia region of the milky way over here
and the comet over there when it's darker this is more around portal 3.
when it's darker you can do that but when you are
let's see this was 7 24. when you're at a site that um
it's hard to and this this wasn't the uh i think this is it right here
where i did sunset and i tried hard
to get and this is going to be the final shot similar to kona's the winter milky way is over here
somewhere if this ever loads yeah the winter milky way is over here
it's hard to see because the way i imaged this i didn't do a good job of pulling
out any of the milky way detail but there's a comet
and these are the stars of the big dipper right here right
these stars are kind of buried in because all the stars and there's the comet i highlighted the tail a little
bit expose the tail a little more to make it a little more visible that's the comet sinking below the horizon this was the
last shot that i took there's a little bit of nebulosity here you can see it that's from the winter milky way the
cassiopeia region i'm not sure if andromeda is visible in
fact i don't see it here this was one of the last shots that i took
my farewell to the comet this is the
looks like i tried to process it a bit get some data out
oh that there you can see the light on the fan shape of the comet in this shot people were out there
yeah you can see it you can see the van there's folks imaging that night too there's a dipper
little dipper just disappears in the uh all of the stars that are out there
so as always i always tell everybody even if you don't have
all of this stuff stuff was done with a camera and anywhere between a wide angle 14 millimeter lens and a
200 millimeter lens all f28 fast lenses are always good for
getting a good deep sky images and if you use
you can use a stock camera and get good images
if you turn around and shoot the milky way a stock camera will still give you good images
if you turn around and use a camera that um
if nothing else shoot the sunset and if you have a modified camera you
get even more detail the milky way from those same sights you start to get more
interesting things that are in the milky way if you use a modified camera
so that's it for my presentation um
it was fun shooting at the comet whether i got a good shot or a fuzzy shot it's just always nice to see what you
are seeing where you are then take the image if you don't get a good image you at
least have a good memory so with that that's the end of my presentation
all right okay excellent okay
um adrian thank you very much uh you know i just i i feel like i'm
just immersed here with uh with uh you know the comments and and thoughts
of where they come from and and uh you know just um
especially the interstellar comets it's just uh to think about them
maybe going around one one sun and then hanging out and going around another sun
and and being flung out again so it's just uh it's amazing um
our next uh speaker is uh maxi filares from argentina
uh maxie thank you guys for uh hanging in there with us um beautiful
image of the leo triplet back there yeah this was from from la pampa this year
yeah beautiful
thank you so well i'm a little tired because today i have
my first vaccine and so oh yeah you are a brave guy
[Laughter] so i try to be in the after party so
yeah okay basically what i want to show you is a little short of my
pictures of my comments that i took from when i started
in 2018 uh today when i i was talking with you and david uh
i was talking about when i went to mercedes so let me show you my screen so
okay okay you you see yes
okay so basically uh like i say in
in december to a second sorry of 2018 uh this was my first shot
of the comet uh 46 p e we're tannen
this is from my house i was taking my 30 seconds without a
motorized mount only the tripod and then the next day
uh obviously it has a light pollution in here because it is in the city
this is the same triangle of stars but the the comet
pass here from here then the other and the other day
i went to outside of the town you can see the the triangle and here's the comet
and then indiana another day i went again and
is here so basically you can see the movement in only four days
then for
uh 14 of december i went to mercedes
and this is a a little stuck picture put in my cell phone above the
25 eyepiece and the max photo and a little bit process i i didn't know
how to brush process these images but this is
the word channel comet it is
it's a variety core and a few you can see the the coma but it
doesn't have a tail so unfortunately we never see the change of
this comment uh then well this is the that night the group of
amateur astronomers that we went this is me my brother this is our two
friends from here from chiricoy jose luis allen
his fiancee mario goreli sebastian and this is a friend from him
you know this guy is he says hell no some kind
you're mute you're mute
yes one let me see one two
well you three yeah yes yes i think that the most of
of them i i know them yeah yes oh okay
okay well uh this is from the last year
i started to to put in my bag here the the telescope this is the the f5
a150 this is my sherman shepherd luna moon
she's she's always when i put my telescope
besides of the amount every time but she's still there so
she don't have any problem so
this is my first time i tried to take pictures with the dcr camera from the comet c 2020 f8 s1
the friday 17th of april uh but
it doesn't have a lot of information it has a little tiny tail and the coma and the core was private
but i didn't like it so this is i remember i thought oh this is what i
told this is very okay that's posted and
away from another days so i spent from
a 2 of may the 2nd of may only 15 days
so the pictures and the comment changed a lot uh here's the
the core the coma and start to be the tail and the
and everything so ah that's why i really like it and this comet has a huge promise from here
because uh it may be it was have to be like neo-wise but
unfortunately a few days later it turns apart and dissolves and that's
it we have no more comment so
then i well this is a a little animation of all the pictures
that i take the orange is for the the
the light pollution and also you can see a tree passing by from my neighbor that
he never cuts it and well that's why
that's a lot of movement but you can see how it's still moving from here from here
right yeah and i think this was only in one
hour maybe so basically i have a lot of information to
work but unfortunately that tree
doesn't want to to take it yeah yes
don't cut the tree no it's from my neighbor that he's he's never in there but
the the tree is very huge in only a pointing to the east
so everything i have to the east is the tree that's it
so well in a few days i think was
at the end of may uh the common lemon they see
2019 u6 appears to be growing the the to be
shiny and well i punched it to there so this one goes by we have lemon let's go to
lemon and i was starting to practice in processing
stacking and you can see here it was only to
god start trails because i was stuck in the only the
the the comet and there was there wasn't a
tale on anything but a few days later i try again
so i have the again the the core the
the coma and a tiny tail
basically this is was in may 28th
here's my equipment that time so i'm trying
maybe the huge promise it was the end of the year maybe i hope so
so let's see what we can take and this is
from the comet c2020 atlas and three this is what this was
the last a comment that i took pictures this is that reminds me like we're done
because it doesn't have a tail on the coma and the core and obviously a huge
bright a green light so i remember when i point i pointed with
the telescope and i put my eye to the visual of the camera because i don't
have a live view to get focused and
when i see i i see the the very brightening cloud
of that in the in the image and that was amazing
i remember that so uh basically that was my ex little experience with comets
to try to get these pictures of pointy stars and
point a comment it's a huge
huge process try to
because when you stack the you have to stack only the start from one side and
stack the comment on the other side and then grab it together but when you put it together
you have a in the pointed stars and the comment but you only
also you have this the stereotrace and you have to try to
to move it away so basically get pointed start with the pointed a
comma it's very difficult but with practice and practice and adrien i see
you're going to try to fix inside prepare yeah i
maybe i'll put it off for another month but uh i i assume there are routines and
pics in sight that help you do that sort of thing yes yes maybe there are many tutorials in youtube but
maybe it can help you but it's so easy yeah yeah come on
it's only for your generation maxi nah nah come on well yeah that's why you
that's why i take a two minute exposure and hope that i can get enough good data
to have a good picture in two minutes as opposed to yes separate stacking because it's it just
gets more complicated but it's the way to do it it's the way to do those faint cabinets if they're big
you two-minute exposure and you have it but uh yes yeah with these faint
comments you have to do that almost no no the work that that
you maxi make with pigs inside come on you're crazy
but no yes it's the same normally when i
start to make my son agustin is here and
when i when he watched me starting to process with siren or another thing
say come on stop to make this give me the the lights the the darks
the everything and let me let me take something something serious
no yes he he bring he left me stuck he
he's confident with with my stacking process but normally you say
it's not the case i prefer use the pixel sign normally i use more siren
or something more easy because maybe i am really old school
but i am i'm really i really
think that that it's a it's a great great software and
make really uh an excellent show with your rights but it's like you
tell that if you have a lot of information maybe 200 pictures um i think that for for uh when
we have small information or like sometimes i have small information from the city
um sometimes i say okay i i i tried with uh free software's like
serial or another ones and i know that maybe this guy stacker
is too today is too basic maybe but
uh yeah it works out works yeah it i know it's just uh
it's basically a learning curve yeah pick it up and the curve is like
this and the free falls are like this but then once yeah yes once you pick it up
like we have a we have an astrophotographer in that group i talked about um
who has a 15 minute process he doesn't go he goes for accuracy in the images he
doesn't worry about them being the prettiest but he's learned pixen sighted enough
to take his data from his he's got good data from his observation sure
yeah he runs it through a 15-minute process like he does things to it
um he also uses topaz denoise which i like using as well it's really good
and it's gotten better and within 15 minutes he has an image that
he's fine with it's accurate it's reasonable focus
and you know it's got data um and he's like yeah i'm good with that we
we also have like jason you saw how he's able to get his images get real
deep images and you know we're all we all have a style of how we
do it and sometimes we just want to get good data and throw it through a filter or
something present other times you have the time to go through step by step so it's uh
yeah it's all it all becomes preference after a while so
today you you you give us a great surprise with the
comment pictures because uh we never suspect so great comet pictures
with landscape and really for me was a surprise because you
know yes a beautiful beautiful landscape with the comets
really really we was wow come on this guy norton likes
uh many ways and now comments beautiful comments
yeah it it because sometimes the focus was on the comet itself
um when i was at the uh nature the nature preserve where you had the tree
and you had the comet's just this sort of little thing off in the distance sometimes you just
you're taking a point in time and you you have the whole scene to look
at i wish i had been going to the thumb because it the comet would be near it would be
on top of the lighthouse or near the lighthouse there'd be something going on there um and the milky way's brighter so
there would have been this combination but you that's for the next one
you three guys cameron maxi and adrian you don't you don't need to be
encouraging encourage it because you make something with a okay i'm using my cell phone to make this galaxy cameron
say okay yeah i said what do you see a reference hammer no my cell phone maxi
you you know you with uh any landscape you make only you you maybe the next
thing was uh your picture adrian with a comet a lighting ball with a storm uh
northern lights all in the same picture because well that's that's what you you hope for
two or more the things that happen with the same time yeah there's
the first place with the with the comet come on yeah a reflection in the lake with the comet yeah
come on i see yeah there's actually yeah one of the shots i took actually has a reflection of jupiter in
the lake it was that bright and i i don't think i shared it with this one but future star party i'll have to
share some of the uh some of those and um
you know i gotta go out and get more images come on guys come on
so
[Laughter] watching cameron just sort of slide back
into the picture that's nice yeah come on come on come on
come on that that is our word for the night comments
um speaking of i can just imagine what the uh the night
will be like when we get down to argentina and we have uh some pizza and a couple of drinks
yes of course that's gonna be i look forward to that i
gotta i gotta get that it's coming to be real yes yeah absolutely you'll see me imaging with the cell
phone on a tracker yeah yeah yeah you gotta you gotta be there so
yeah well it's one o'clock eastern time
to those that are hanging on uh thank you all for hanging on um yeah i am going to drop so that i can
i can be sort of awake for work tomorrow um so cesar and cameron um i will probably
be watching your presentations from the recording yes tomorrow looking forward to seeing those
and uh thank you all for watching and david levy leaves early but
just as a reminder it's comet night he's probably out looking at comments right here he's out
looking at comments right now probably you're looking for there are uh that was uh something i want to show
just before we go over to the caesar here when to show um this page
uh this is a this is a comment page i've been looking at for a long time um
yoshida i believe is the guy that puts us together now these are he calls these weekly
information about bright comets okay so we start off with comet 2020 t2 palomar
it's in the 10th magnitude range that's
from spain from barcelona yes carlos yeah
and but look at this i'm just going to scroll through this really quick there's like almost 70 comments that uh
people are keeping track of right now no yes it's it's crazy
it's a7 though it's not the not the
excellent excellent excellent truck yeah yes yeah
uh some of them getting down to 16th magnitude now you know certainly
in in the early days uh that was pretty much out of reach by amateur
astronomers but with you know cameras today cooled cameras uh yeah you
can definitely get down into these ranges and uh start to image and and uh
submit um data to a site like this so
i mean it's quite a bit yeah the the old neil the neo-wise comment we took all
the pictures of it looks like it i guess it's 24 magnitude molly told us that
so it's not on this list anymore they do have another needlewise comet
right there yeah discovered yeah it is not observable in the northern
hemisphere right and it will be unobservable soon in the southern hemisphere
but when the comet is incredible is sea to naked it
is visible to naked [Music]
eye is in the northern before well we'll be here together
for you alrighty it's always a joy to be a part of these global star
parties even if thank you very much yeah i'm staying here
um we'll uh talk with you all next week okay okay see you then all right yep
next week we'll uh our next global star party we'll have um kaitlyn erins from
goddard space flight center she will be the host of the uh of the the show and of course
it's a lot of this is going to have to do with the anniversary of the apollo moon landing
on you know july 20th so yeah so i'm excited
yeah but caesar it's all yours here we are champion
very fast because i'm more interested in to see the the pictures and galaxies of
camera tonight or comets especially yes but i don't have comments i i
i'll share my screen to show something very
very common like uh i choose an star party from manny's
yes 2013 to 2013
serpari all are in medosa raphael um for me it was an idea to watch one's third
party choose this uh yes the typical things where we started preparing
preparing the things you know this is our party we choose
going to san rafael mendoza by plane uh take a flight and you know send
things by we normally we use or or the same plane
or to send to send the telescope and all the material or a
is is safer because they
they keep keep much better with things to deliver
by bus and we take the plane
and we deliver all cases and telescope by bus
we take a plane in buenos aires airport this is a local airport only for for
domestic flights and this is one of the place near to the
star party one of the lakes that is in the area you know that is the the myoma is very
very dry it's have a really clear clear skies
this is another part of the of the lake with them
this is um the hotel actually we are we are in
we are renting a hotel without this these walls
uh with more a clear horizon but it's it's a wonderful the sky is the
same because only we move uh five kilometers from this whole the the
last hotel that we use well this is uh the head of scorpio this is antares
all are single pictures with no more that 30 seconds
with maybe 1 600 eso
it's s-i-s-o sorry and
milky way in the place yes single other single
single pictures beautiful yes the the southern cross is over the
so that grows is over your hair here
because you can see the the trees and here here is a
picture this is the first night um before the star party
uh when the people coming and are going
to the hotel preparing and we normally we play with pictures with like this
touching the milky way you know it's
a little of fun this uh this is the magellanic
lmc a big magellanic cloud
over the trees here you can see again the magellanic
cloud and this is the the night the first night of the star party
fully of telescopes
maxi you never came to i next that i think that the next year
we are awaiting you for everyone a live bridge telescope 14 inches
sorry 14 uh 16 inches this is m7
in in scorpio
another view of of the third party
you got the set you've got the setup and the settings just right so you can do this anytime it
looked like i mean really nice nice system very reliable good good quality nice
dark yes dark sky and then a really good foreground beautiful yes um
it is something that you know this is only this is eight
um eight years ago and the quality of the pictures is not the same
today it's more easy to make something better than this but
we we had a lot of fun making pictures uh
under the milky way you know come on come on it's really good yeah yes
yes very nice uh a single shot of milky way
in san rafael mendoza yeah no more than 30 seconds
very bright color of milky way yes it's a place where you have maybe 25
25 of of uh humid is is really darkness like arizona
united states that is nice here with friends you
know uh sometimes i remember that the second night we
start uh uh later um before just to start to start
to see the sky and take pictures we say okay we can we can do it we can
make a a picture with flash of course nevermore
after this and we needed half hour to recover you
know the the ice from the from the darkness
and this is really really we make uh like a small scenario uh with music and this of
course this quantity of light is really low is
we use only the the the quantity that that the musicians need to to see the
the party tool i don't know the name in english
we call it partitura but i don't know the name whether musicians read
the music okay okay only the quantity of life
um jaime garcia and me you can see a younger sister
not today we are in the end of the
star party talking with the people and making pra and
deliver prizes for for the people you know
contest or maybe with numbers with the people that are
lucky the telescope the price and
a lot of people in in our sort of parish working with the people the final
talking and every every star party is is an amazing
an amazing experience really every year we make two or three
and we enjoy it when is your next when is the next star
party caesar um awareness extra party is uh
we are praying to to start in april 2022
yes yes we actually we have uh reserved for us the hotel
and we are awaiting that we have we have all results of about vaccines or
you know actually have
a low quantity of people with two vaccines
and doses and of course that that uh
we think that it's okay for april next year i know this year we think that this year
and we had an [Music] opportunity to to get the hotel for
october but we think that we prefer make another one
virtual or you know um starting
in a safe way next year in april that that is this is benus
from the same year in another third party venus plantation 2013
yes this was in near december same year yeah
this is all comments sorry yeah you gave us the whole universe and you said that's all
yeah yeah this is all that i have tonight
yes before the old presentation that maxi well adrian everyone
yeah every every presenter brings something special to the global star party and i i
do love to see um and maxie i'm glad you also showed the you know the star party
activity you know because uh it's the people uh and
together with all this experience and the amazing um you know uh imagery and
uh um stories uh that that make it all special you know so
well in that time uh when we put in facebook where
this weekend we're going to be in this place maybe who's going to come
that was in that time now it's very difficult because the pandemic situation and everything but
sometimes when you invite some other people that can
come travel from where you going to be is
it's amazing because i remember in august 29
we meet together again in navarro in a
camping area besides of the of the lagoon
and that was a pretty good night i have some issues with my finger because i
smash it three times and i haven't smashed it before in my house it was a very cold night
oh the fingers the smashing and the
cold weather is the worst combination it's the words you know i have a cut from my
for a of a knife that when i was doing a
in a kitchen and okay i um cure it but when i went there i
smashed it three times you know putting the tripod and then i don't know
when it was and the other time was the ceremony the tribal at 4 00
am freezing and i remember i smashed it with
all that force that i still remember the pain
it's a dangerous hobby astronomy
it's for everyone but this is the the very
bad part sometimes and obviously
you know what the good parts are [Laughter]
okay all right cameron cameron we are awaiting you
yes hey come on come on cameron cameron all right
that's great i love it it's it's the variety it's so nice it's a wonderful uh
every every global star party is a wonderful journey and uh i really love the team here uh
great great great group and uh it will be nice it's i already feel a really good friendship with all of you and uh
and uh look forward to the in person uh in the future i hope you all yes well we don't
we don't need presentation when we yeah what we see we're going to see hey come on man
let's talk to me like this yeah yeah it's really nice it's it's it's really uh it's really a really good
connection so um yeah so yeah i know i really appreciate it i love the pictures they're wonderful and the stories uh
just really really really cool and um great topic again uh uh scott uh really liked
uh you know uh david david's um
poetry and his his his stories and of course your story uh or i love that one
about the dobsonian um right the ring the the what have sony and i love that you know i was really no
no no this is something that i said survived
you know we had to be with scott in another eclipse a solar eclipse or an
everything because he has lucky a very huge lucky
that's what it takes oh yeah yeah yeah so you have to come to texas you have to cut texas in uh 2024.
okay yeah yeah yes that's for me for me it's business
because i am explore scientific dealer yeah you gotta come
yes and you need a you need an assistant of course to go with you so of course
right every every star party is a business trip yeah that's right that's quiet it is
yeah that's right that's that's why we get into this business so every star party can be a
business trip yeah [Music] no it's sad
i will say this a lot of people that get into this business uh lose the feeling of the magic of yeah
yeah feeling that you have being out under the stars and stuff they just go ah you
know i've done too much of it i don't want to think about telescopes anymore
but i tell you i love it i really do yeah yes
yeah it's i am the same yes right
yeah when i see i don't know a pipe tube or a
a very huge tube i imagine a newtonian or a dobsonian well
but it doesn't have anything maybe it's a tube of gas or something like that
it's like god that could be a big telescope yeah this is out there
you never see a truck with big pipes and you say i remember when i i started to
make my own telescopes yeah yes bbc plastic i i can use this
yes yeah i can use this big kind of mirror yeah
sorry cameron use your presentation
we are argentinian sorry we'd like to talk remember that no no
apology necessary i i love it it's great so um i'm just putting together a couple
things so okay let me you know this is usual with the global starving i kind of like to do things off the cuff um it's
not fully prepared i've tried to put it into some preparation but let me
let me just share my screen here and there's two different things i want
to talk about let me just share my screen
first let's obviously oops or sorry is the comments uh you know for um
i want to talk about my experience with comets uh in in i've
had three different um uh good experiences in my astronomy uh
time uh with with with different comments and then uh and then i want to give an
update on astronomy including um for tomorrow's show uh and
then also the great progress i've made with flats as
you recall last week i was sharing my my new technique for uh taking flats
well i'm very happy to say that the fruits of labor have come out and uh
i'm very happy with the results so i i'll show some i'll share some uh results of that so so
let's uh let's dive in um so the first halley's comet um i just
took these snippets uh you know i just wanted to share this is a piece of nostalgia you know uh back after scan
2001. and this was in 1985. i remember that yes yeah
yeah yeah i didn't have this one but i i was drooling over it i was like oh it's so nice i i just had a uh
i didn't have anything actually i had some binoculars i had 11 by 80 binoculars which is pretty darn good
actually uh especially for comets so um i got my 11 by 80s and uh the comet was
in the south uh actually it's interesting it was just to the south here um and i
remember as suns with sun was setting in the spring of 1986
i never forget that this was i was just a teenager and uh i had joined the royal
astronomical society in vancouver chapter in british columbia and uh and we went out to campbell river
valley park and uh and i never forget i had my uh
i had my let me share my uh my screen uh see if i can do this properly here
i'm going to share my so you can see uh okay i have a t-shirt actually wow
i have a t-shirt and uh the the christmas before in 1985
this is actually uh honolulu uh my my parents i actually went to hawaii
and uh and this is a you know a good old uh what do you call it um tourist shirt
right but they would they had we were selling lots of these but that was kind of a reminder to me it was like i was
trying to recall when did i actually go and when did i see and when did i get this shirt but um but that was that's
what happened so i actually got this shirt in december it was i think we were going to hawaii in december
and uh and then uh but i couldn't see halley's comment it
was still not bright enough um somehow with the naked eye and i didn't have any equipment and of course i was in light
polluted uh waikiki so it was like there was no chance but i
uh i remember getting excited about it and then of course when i went back home uh in the
spring i went out to uh to this campbell ribbon by then the tail had gotten quite a bit
longer and that was i'll tell you a very big impression i never forget in the evening sky uh this huge tail
must have been about 20 degrees long um uh you know to across the sky
so that was my that was my halley's comet experience and um it's very very memorable and then uh yeah and then the
next memory i had was i you know i again i can't claim i've seen comic shoemaker laughing level 9 but i can claim that
i've seen the impact on jupiter so i never saw the comet but i saw the
results of it crashing into the jupiter and i never forget i just put the snippet here it was actually july uh
july um what was it let me just zoom into the uh
this look like a part of july 1992 yeah july 1992
yeah july 16th to the 22nd and uh and so
i i saw it over sorry about that i apologize
so i actually went to um uh i saw this in my backyard my my um
my yard uh had a very limited view of the sky but the jupiter was very high
in the sky so you know at that time i was older uh so i actually had a six-inch uh reflector
and uh f5 and a six-inch it's pretty darn good it gives you really good resolution and
with steady steam and i never forget i was following this and they they predicted when they would corrupt uh
crash into jupiter and i actually saw i never forget those nights i saw these
bruises coming out as they were coming around and it was like it was
that was amazing to be able to have is predicted and planned and be able to to
go and set it up and say and i had a clear night and it was like wow you know
this was this was awesome and uh so yeah that was extremely and then of course i followed that every night and i was
watching these uh these impacts as they danced across the uh the belt here and rotated that that
was that was incredible um so that was my super shoemaker levy nine and then um
and then last one uh last year i uh i got
an 8080 uh regular uh ed80 and i i got uh super i
got the neowise and um and this is through an eyepiece through with my
smartphone and and i was able to get uh a couple of these snapshots uh which which i was
very very thrilled and you could see it really nicely even though i have bordeal six looking out west uh i could actually
see the comet in the northwestern sky uh again also in in july
uh so another july uh comet um and and uh that was really and i have a quick
picture here uh this is the uh through my eight inch i just got my eight inch a year ago and
i just did this quick snapshot of uh and you can see the greenish color just similar to the other pictures so yeah
that was that's that's what aperture does for you so uh you get a really good uh good uh
view of that so that was that was really neat but of course um so those were my uh experiences and and
i never forget those uh let me just uh suppose that so um so
very memorable and and now with today's technology i just loved the animations that jason uh
shared that was awesome and adrian's pictures oh man just love those
those shots really really really nice to be able to be experienced and have
uh the equipment and and the knowledge and techniques together so that you can
capture that moment um and and really be able to share it that's that's really nice because these
experiences you can have for yourself but to be able to capture that feeling right and to be
able to share it that's that's what's becoming more and more possible uh which which is which is
wonderful so um so anyhow uh now let's switch over to um
to cam astronomy just a quick update on camstrom site survey
oh i don't have in there that's weird too much comets security
exactly so yeah yeah
so we are now gonna move into the sagittarius um so
i've been holding off in downtown going through ophiuchus um and then that's with sputum
and now we're gonna dive into uh sagittarius there's lots of juicy stuff in here my challenge you know it's
obviously in the southern hemisphere it's gorgeous it's directly overhead it's beautiful for me i have it's in the i really it's
really hard i'm very lucky where i'm living i actually have a view of sagittarius which is only just barely
above the horizon um so so capturing these objects visually
is uh is very difficult and so i was very pleased though with the with the um
imager and with a filter uhc filter you can really eke out a lot of good
stuff um but keep in mind that all these objects that i've highlighted here are
i've already done visually okay so these are the ones that made the cut that are still visible even with portal sticks
skies uh on the horizon so so now when i take images they are even more
uh impressive so we are now uh we're gonna do 15 more objects uh
tomorrow uh we're moving a little bit because there's so many objects i decided to split sagittarius into two
days uh so this week we're going to do northern sagittarius with it with the with the wonderful you know lagoon
nebula uh the um the triffid nebula omega nebula and all that good stuff there and
then then we're going to continue with the globular clusters and the rest of the eastern sagittarius the
following weeks but um but basically uh what i wanted to share
is now okay i as you know i was doing smartphone photography very good i like
it but i've got my bugs ironed out a lot of them in
my imaging for my smart camera and i've created
a catalog i'm starting to create a catalog of constellation of all my images and i just wanted to show you a
little bit of the progression here um so let me just put this in presentation mode this is a smartphone
picture of the crescent level that's in sagittarius not to be confused with the
crescent nebula that everyone knows yes this is the planetarium
or sagittarius exactly sagittarius exactly exactly so the the
the smartphone you can just start to see the structure here this is only eight
seconds uh or ten second exposure so the limitation this is the magnitude of the camera
maybe it's pretty bright yeah like if we go in here uh if i go there it's right over here
as i zoom in so i press in that villa is right here
so if i click on it oh this is that block just let me just
move down here the uh screen is just walking just right
yes there we go so let's click on it again
magnitude seven point six seven that's a double star wait wait a minute okay that's a double star eight a ten point
nine no it's actually no it's actually fine it's three things yeah
it's pretty faint but but it's pretty intense uh it's it's a pretty good surface brightness it's pretty small
so it's only uh half an arc minutes square or rectangular so you know almost uh but so
planet planetary nebula in fact every night that i start my visual observing i
especially in the summer skies i i do a survey of the planetary nebula first because
they they come out really nice they have a good contrast and then they start you know as the night gets darker uh and the
twilight goes away you can start to go fainter and fainter but uh but these there there's some nice planetary nebula
that i i'll be highlighting as we go through the survey uh but this is a good one um
this uh this is the image i took with the first time this was back in june june 20th uh
you can see the the cur field curvature you can see the um you know the the the graininess
and the and the brightness but you can see the square shape of the crescent that blends some color but i want to
show you now this is what i can do now um so this is what i took with my flats
what i've discovered is you can get color you can get that you have a much better dynamic range instead
of spreading your uh your signal to noise across this this wide range when
you do the histogram it's way easier with sorry camera is with the
this one is it's a flat for for a smartphone or for the camera this is all with uh this is with camera
yeah this is not with camera with us with the astro camera yeah this is with yes but the flats are amazing because
you resolve the entire field very very very very
producing very flat very flat very even right so now you see it's nice and even
and then the real benefit that you get is you get a much more you're able to eat out the signal to
noise much much better right so this is this is a very good thing that i've learned and so i'm very happy with the
structure you can see within this um and then this is what i took initially and again in june when i when i didn't
have the flats figured out you can see the corners are are big netted uh or darker
and you know it looks nice it looks pretty good but it's still and this is this is even worse uh i i
thought okay what happened here is uh i actually got a longer
my extension tube so my back focus was properly was proper but what happened is it made the the
field curvature much even worse but just as around 8 inches
considering they're all with eight inch yeah uh eight inches of green eight inches okay yes we have a huge
yes with the extension tooth have a a a a big netting very hard
yes yes but uh it's it's it's the big netting can be a completely remote move because look at
this yes this is this is now with the mega very great flats yeah it's
a real really huge really well you have you just now pick up all this painter nebulosity even over here right and this
is uh this is a not not even what i've done is i've done live stacking with all this so it's kind of
pre-processed if you will so i'm not i'm not taking this offline and doing any image processing this is just uh the
live using the asir pros algorithm to to load the flats on top automatically the
system of the screen work properly the the white screen
yes yes so now here here's an example of the tripod nebula again you can see the
nebula that's what i showed before you can see the there's curvature this is what it looks like oh yeah so
another another thing is another thing yeah yeah and then finally lagoon nebula yeah you can see you can
see you know and then look at this wow oh so yeah huge by doing the flats
i i'm so happy when the flats work properly yeah and you gotta get the flash
yeah you got it i i i can tell you that that is the the wow factor i mean when you get the class you can say reliably
you can get reasonable shots you know uh that that the biggest thing it gives is you can see the dynamic
range all this nebulosity that's it gets gets lost over here you you can see it
but it doesn't have a good signal to noise yes whereas here you really pick it out
an aim a a or lagoon nebula is is a whale
shape that we have because stop um how do you say is my
i'm sorry with my englishes limited
limited it's limited yes very very strongly and
sometimes you when you process you don't know exactly where it's finished and
start and if you don't if you don't have a great flat
it's a nightmare to to s to know where is dark and where is
the light of the name exactly exactly and to be able to discover this uh
myself and then for everyone else who's out there when you discover this yourself i can highly encourage you
make sure you get those flats yeah yes you know
the flats are really really important and they're going to make your enjoyment so much better because you're
going to get much more predictable and reliable results um and and that's and that's extremely
important for me uh doing the sky survey now i feel that i can start to take you know
all the pictures and they're reasonable they're good enough quality i can obviously refine it right there's more
tweaking to be done but but at least for the sky survey purposes i can get decent
pictures and have really good uh resolution and and and clear results right so it will
be uh with with not as much post-processing effort right that's
that's my goal is to try to do as much pre-process processing and get all the setup so that when i do take the
picture i'm getting good stuff um and then and then and then that way
um it makes it a lot easier to handle all the data afterwards
yeah yes absolutely yes yeah i can feel your your happiness
yeah i know i i i it's like you've gone like this whole new level you know so it's really yeah
yes when the things works and when you show us last week the the system that
you choose that i think that is perfect the screen and the blanket
yeah come on yeah here's another here's a here's another one here's m22 when we are adapting this system wow
yeah so this is m22 and then now look at look at how m22 looks
right wow this is isn't it isn't that nicer but but you'll notice there's a new
problem i'm having you see this dark line here yeah i'm having i'm having some banding issues so uh some other
uh noise is coming through so i have to figure that out but that's uh that's that's
are you using a bias frame here or not i am i'm using 100 but i've been trying different things at different
temperatures uh scott and and uh somehow there's still these bands showing up so
i i need to do some figuring out here but it only shows up now because i found
out that you cannot just apply bias frame or sorry uh flat links without using bias you have to have bias in in
the asi live stacking uh it mandate it mandatory that you have a bias with the
flat yes so so so i i select both i've got 100 biases and i've done several sets to try
to get rid of this noise but uh unfortunately i don't know what's causing that and i'll
it's it's something i can work on but uh [Music] yeah that's that's the next thing but at
least i'm just happy that i got to this stage where where we got a nice uh flat
picture yeah yes it's it's a great and again the side bonus like i say oh and
you know since i'm just having so much fun uh this is uh okay let me let me just show
you i took the drum of the galaxy okay last night so this is this is uh andromeda galaxy this core
so wow so so i i was able to get the dust here you know and just because the
flat makes it you can really see now the difference between where the galaxy is and where the uh where the background is
so i took a couple of pictures of uh including the outer arms obviously i have a limited field of view with uh
with the eight inch micasa green but uh but you you get it
sorry cameron who is the size of the of the sensor it's a 294 so it's uh i'm i'm using the
6.3 um vocal reducer so the focal length is around 1280 and uh and the the
the sensor pixel size is four point something microns four point something
yes yes you need three pictures for for andromeda galaxy
yeah exactly but i just wanna i just i just wanted to see because i wanted to see the these
multiple uh dust lanes because uh visually in a larger telescope you start to pick out this first dust flame and if
you're in a dark skies you can start to pick out the second dust line so it's it's nice to be able to image
that in my own backyard um with with uh you know
with polluted light polluted skies and still get reasonable and here's the other thing i learned yeah now that we're talking about this i
change field i have two different filters so let me just uh
since we're talking about it anyhow uh let me go to my
uh it's probably it's probably here no no no let's see
this one here there's some nice comments here um
harold lock uh i'm bino scanning tonight hazy
you got people doing astronomy while they're listening to the global star party
yeah cameron is not cool at the camera it's not even cool yeah exactly no no
you're crazy like maxi you're crazy that's a compliment i think that's great
oh my god how i can i can oh
can i can i solve tomorrow a cool camera no harold herrlock said that's awesome even
better than the sky safari images yeah it's nice uh
harold said can you just adjust the black slightly and blend the black
together just a touch you know so yes no i i played with it and i actually
intentionally uh lightened the sky background so if we go to one of the i i'll actually like to have it a little
bit light because it is already light polluted uh but it's uh but let's go to
that that this one here uh the lagoon nebula
it's a it's a great camera really pretty dark i i i can play with it and
make it darker i i've done some stretching so what i i do do when i do
these snaps is i actually if i go to the raw data
so here's how i could find out so i know this is i took it on 7 11 at
1 30 in the morning or sorry 12 30 in the morning so 7 11 this would be this
night and then i can go i can find out which so i had a couple of snaps
so here here's two different stretches of the of the lagoon so one
this is where i left it bright and then and then the next one is i
made it darker but you see even this what i do is i call it it's sharper
and uh but you kind of play and there's another little technique i want to show you guys uh now we're on the topic is if i go
and i paste it let's say let's just make a new new picture here
so i'm going to paste this uh so this is what it looks like but there's a little technique in in
powerpoint it's called corrections so this is my cheap pixel sight
um so so what you can do is you can play around with these and this is a combination of contrast
and brightness you can actually you can either brighten the image or you can darken it
and you can you can you can play with that so i just do this to give me a quick and dirty
you know reasonably good picture that takes my so i do my stretch uh and then i do my screenshot
and uh i don't play with uh at this point i don't play with tiffs or individual stacks or or darks or
frames or any post processing right now that's going to be saved for later when i have time and i choose some objects
that i really want to dig into but for now to be able to do this and do some quick
um you know image processing on the fly
is really really good for the workflow and and and then be able to enjoy it get
some good pictures and then like say with my sky survey continue to uh to go in and then give a broad brush i i guess
the analogy i'd make is it's like a painter right you're painting i'm painting the sky i'm painting the sky
with a broad brush and there are certain areas that i'm coming back to and working some details
on and then i might pick some areas and say maybe this particular planetary nebula i
realize i need to use a smartphone because it has a better image sensor and i can zoom in with an eyepiece
to get a better resolution because it's too stellar in this uh in this one or
there might be a galaxy that i don't want to use a uhc filter i want to use my
my ir cut filter and then take a broadband picture and then do some stretching on it so i'm
learning a lot of different things along the way uh painting techniques i guess you could say and then i
then i can always fine tune it and as i get more tools in my in my
easel uh i can start to refine it but i'm just really loving
this uh yeah look at you can see you can start to see the the nebulosity and all these
little nodules and uh are really good i'm really really
pleased with uh being able to pick out some of these some of these uh these little uh
uh i guess i ionized uh sections that are do you have a good collimator in your mind
yeah yeah so it's really it's very very uh enjoyable and uh you can even see when i
did this stretch you can even see a little bit of the greens coming out it's it's uh it's not pure
red so you're gonna actually see a little bit of uh different color in the lagoon
so um yeah so that's uh that's uh my my little update for today so a lot of
a big part of this is you know i i have a lot of data but i'm trying to organize it
in to a logical way so that you know we when we get into this uh this catalog
that i'm building for the canstronomy catalog it's uh it's to start to look
like you're going to have a hit i'm going to have a history of all the different images
and uh and the progression and then i'm going to choose the best one out of each of those objects and then
you'll have per constellation you're going to have every single object that is in the uh
in the uh astronomy sky survey so in this case this is sagittarius and these are all the objects in sagittarius and
then i'll have images for each of those but i have to admit um i am now
becoming immersed because of this flat technology that i just applied i'm becoming very much
immersed in focusing more on astro camera dedicated
astronomy camera at this point um for my imaging um but i do realize
that there are certain objects as i'm going through that i will actually go back and use a
smartphone as i mentioned especially the very small planetary nebulae that need a
better um pixel size i'm going to use i'm going to go back
and read those because you remember that picture of the cat's eye nebula that i took for example um
with the smartphone uh back that that that really uh you know if i if i go to that one i
don't know if it's it's probably not in here yeah sorry i don't have it handy but but basically that that one um
uh that one really benefits so what i'll do is i'll do the broad brush with the dedicated astronomy camera
and then uh and then refine the techniques i want to say one
more thing uh sorry filters so going back to
here so i have two filters i don't have a filter wheel but i do i go outside and it's
like okay i'm going to oops sorry um i manually say i'm going to go to the
galaxy s if i'm in galaxy more what i discovered i tried galaxies with the uhc filter and it tends to make them a
little bit more yellowish uh tinge which is an interesting byproduct because it takes out the green
um because galaxies are broadband right there they're across the spectrum so so
i found that you you can pick out the galaxies with the uhd filter
it reduces the noise but uh it's a more pleasing picture if you
can do it with a broadband uh this this so i tend to now
in my sky survey pictures i'm gonna i go back and i'm using just the ir cut filter for all my galaxy
images and and and a globular cluster any stellar uh or stars star clusters and any
nebulosity yeah you got to use the uac uhc like for the
veil the cocoon and all any of those guys as you saw with the lagoon it just pops
it just the uac just really makes it so when you do this stretch uh all all the details come out so
very very good so um anyhow i've kind of rambled on but
thanks very much guys it's uh it's really cool to to be able to share and um
i hope uh yeah i mean i hope that
we have uh more and more people that are going to be able to um
you know yeah follow this journey right right right
really we enjoyed your work because your progress is is amazing
from one week to another we are trying this and this
week we have the results and yeah that's good yeah you've taken a very careful
approach and really executed it very well so yeah
something that is so difficult uh have a great flood with the schmidt
caster and telescope i work at 30 30 years uh with a casserole
telescope and really know that in any anything that
you put in like uh extension tube or or any
thing that only the the size of the image when you use a larger um
adapter you have a bigger size of the image because
the secondary mirror is like a barlow when you
have a a longer distance
the size of the things are do you have an effective focal focal
length larger than the the the native focal length oh yes yes
because barlow is different than a tele extender right yes for example
yeah yeah i don't remember where i i have my my
sky and telescope with that with a work of a guy for to calculate um i need to
to find this because it's very very uh great to to have a
formula to calculate from the rear side to the distance where you point the
your your your sensor and you have a how many times
do you you are using a larger focal lens because it's not the same your your
customer is f10 right when you use a larger a larger um
accessory for after photography or visual but you are going with a longer distance
you have a magnification bigger
than if you use a shorter or low profile tail adapter
not not everybody knows this and it's it's of course that it's not a great
difference but it's something that that is another thing of the schmidt caster and
telescopes that is different because you're focusing moving
the yes the primary mirror yeah it's not like
like uh sorry the richie gretier telescope where use only
you're moving the the sensor to put in the focus this is a real distant fault in cassegrain
you are changing all time yes
you have a you have an f2 primary but then that's aimed at a five power
secondary and then when you move the when you move that mirror you know you're you're changing that
back focus a lot you know so um
that's what makes it so versatile you know is that you can do that uh it does have its challenges though if
you have a a mirror that's moving because you can get image shift or mirror flop these kinds
of things these are some of the things that gas grains have to deal with but
there is no technically no perfect tell us about there you just learn how
to use the tool get the best results out of it you know and and and and apply it towards
you know imaging within the best way you know so you know the other thing i learned this
the other night a couple of other tips when you do live stacking
um let's say of 10 seconds or 30 second subs
uh what happens is if you have a gust of wind like in
we've had some fairly hot days uh here in seattle lately and then in the
evening it changes and then that creates a bit of gusts uh that come
that will shake i put a i put it i still put a douche shield on on my
scope that creates a little bit of vibration so what happens is it's very frustrating there's some
nights where there's uh you know if you do live stacking what will happen is you'll see
it will start to blur the shots you'll have a really good like ninth stack and it's like oh the tenth one it just it
jiggled that's like oh you know so you have to start it all over again whereas if you take individual right and you
process it offline you can manually take those out and say okay i don't need that i used to throw them away right
um so you can save the individual ones so that's you know i'm learning about those
limitations as well i like the advantage of live stacking because you do all the pre-processing there
however it's risky if you have a windy uh or gusty time because all of a sudden
one frame comes in you ruined your whole livestock so uh
that's that's an interesting little nuance for anyone so you you could try different
techniques with that um to be able to filter out the bad data
anyhow yeah so uh and then the other thing one
another thing i discovered is my wi-fi was dropping out on my um
i was really frustrated every time and i i i can tell you this now
every time i would track an object at 60 degrees as of altitude 60 degrees
60 degrees yeah 6-0 as soon as it's above 6-0
it drops out and i i didn't know that until i started seeing this because i was taking
pictures of cygnus the the veil and and uh and and all those that are just
moving up from the east and guess what as soon as it tracks past 60 degrees
it drops out and then i'm wondering there could be i you know i'm just sharing this with you guys this is fresh off the press i know
i know now that this is always happening it happens reliable because i'd be out
there and i'd be really really frustrated to have to do a realignment at one o'clock in the morning right so
sorry cameron do you use you're talking about the the ac
altitude ic mount of of the evolution yeah this is the evolution mate yeah yes
yeah yes you either have no more that if you're lucky 25 minutes of tracking for
a single shot oh oh no i can't track any more than 30 seconds because of the field rotation
right how many how many times do you use in in a single shots
so what i do is it's a real thing yes i know yeah so what i can do is i can do
like you can start to see depending on where you are with relation to the uh
rotation if you're facing the horizon to the south you're not going to have much field rotation but if you if you're facing to
the southeast that's the maximum field rotation right uh because because now you're you have to move both alpha alt
and azimuth to compensate for the earth's rotation so what happens is uh
when you remove it it does a lot of so i found that you can't even take 30 second shots
sometimes at certain uh because you'll see a jag it will do an adjustment
periodic periodic correction if you will um but but what i can get away with
generally if i'm in the either facing east or in general directions i've been
lucky i'm limited to pretty much 30 seconds but to your point i can stack
because what it does is it does the rotation it does the adjustments in between
and the stacking algorithm can do the uh the plate solve this and then what it
does it rotates uh the image and you'll see the corners are actually black
so it starts you'll start to see the the as i take multiple i've taken up to 20
30 second so what is that 10 minutes right 10 minutes of data
um in in that's the maximum i've taken and then you start to see you know uh some some clipping on the
side but it's the center of the image and the the surrounding now that i have flats it's still okay no
because i used a lot of time uh evolution nine point
two five yeah i took a lot of pictures of galaxies thorium
and a lot of things and when i started to use uh equatorial mode
i say never more i'm not going to go back actually for me i'm preparing a very
well very well combination because explore scientific
send us to our company of course for selling and
we choose we choose something that is the the
the ota the optical different assembly it's a maxi top of uh six um sorry five inches maxo top
but it's f 15 yes yes exactly very planetary
yes and explore scientific choose chose sorry chose the
the this um very very large uh um
focal length because many many brands chosen for for the manufacturers uh
maybe f10 f8 but for if you like to have a
great max of casa running telescope you need to to choose a larger a larger
focal relation because you have a flat field first of all you have a very very low
comma if you have a 15 f relation a 15
f number second one is that you don't have a many people think that oh
15 relation is is is very large is very
low for photography and this is not real because all that you need is aperture in
yes yes well you me and maxie we think in in in in in of course scott uh we
think in in in numbers for astronomy that light gathering is everything in
australia and resolution people say or 15 come on it's but have a appetizer you
get higher resolution yeah higher resolution or like gathering contrast
yes you know what you do with the uh focal length is uh a matter of um image
scale you know yes yes well honestly being a galaxy lover myself
uh you know everyone talks about max thoughts killers oh they're they're awesome for
planet for galaxies i mean you you put a you could put a long focal length eyepiece and a maxitos right
um you know which which will still give you higher power but you don't need a barlow right you you still get you get
excellent contrast it's it's gorgeous i mean uh i've i discovered that i have a
little four inch mac 102 and uh i'll tell you what what a what a
workhorse i mean it's a great little uh little scope it's very small very portable and uh but but the biggest
thing it is it is it's not as you have to be experienced because
you need to have something because it has such a limited field of view finding objects is the issue
uh now so if you have a go-to if you put it on a go-to now they have these small go-to's
like an ixos you know 100 uh or you know that then basically
uh you can um now you've solved the problem and these macs are you know are really awesome
uh yes you you you you choose the the
the facility of use a sky map
to to drive the telescope over the another another system to
to found objects is understandable yes and maybe because
your objective is not only astrophotography if not make a catalogue and an al altus remote moan for this is
is a great offer a great solution i i understand you need both i mean you need
you cannot replace a wide field i'm i want you know like an 8080 type uh
irreplaceable yes you can scan the skies it's so enjoyable and and your your photos are great i
can't wait to start imaging with an 8080. i'm really excited for that one but but uh but then
you you you throw it to me it's like another eyepiece right you know you get a mac so you don't have
to have a barlow right yeah and then and then you just you have another eyepiece you it's another tool right so you you
you can now have both you you can have the the long focal length and and uh
and portable and then you also have the short focal length white field so really good compliment really good
complementary scopes yeah yeah it's something that when
i actually i am in a time of my life like telescope dealer is fun because i
am in a time of my life where i'm really before 30 years to solve to solve telescopes to
the people to offer people to to to make a
i'm a thing more in this is the ota
this is the mount this is your software or your system this is the eyepiece
i um it's impossible to sell one telescope like a one piece
because the the technology well the cameras you have and it is
any more um only for for kids for starter kids for
kids or for people that know but always just in the second the second
stage of your hobby you need to to to
to choose a mount a telescope
sorry ota or only the optical tube a camera all from different
manufacturers or from the same manufacturer but in the same the different models
yeah this is for example actually i prepare we are preparing a telescope that
starting to choose um oh sorry i scott who is that the video of the mac uh
i forget the the the i forget the the name of uh
one of the support uh technical support that make the video and say i'm gonna show the
the mac over the nexus 100. okay is it good
you're talking about one of our customer service representatives yes yes um
there's uh there's chuck ross tyler uh
maybe yeah yes um i started to see this and say okay first of all it's a great
combination of size and weight between the mount and the and the
[Music] and the ota first of all you think
between size and weight the first thing that you you think when you we choose the mount yeah the amount and the and
the ota but second one when i say how who is the the focal length of this
tube and say okay it's near to what two meters
and say is is it is the focal length of a gas around eight inches and maybe do you have some
some advantage in this because do you have a more stable
uh opticals in of course a smaller diameter but
i think that that have for example you have a
native focal length longer and
today do you have for example something that something that in the past was
impossible to make in a light way uh in like way
wow i forget that the words are in english and in spanish this hour it's terrible
the the cameras are really small and you can make you can start to use for a
small um mount and quattro hormone go to your mode
and two with large focal length with a system of with a guider
and maybe i think that i i think that can have
something like you know an expected results
of course that i'll i'll try it and i i started to make pictures in two
weeks i think the otas are coming to miami i need to
prepare okay you leave over to buenos aires and when i start to talk with
people when you with all people that make astronomy with many many from many
years i say oh okay oh who is the focus one
two matters near okay well it will be very interesting to
yes yes you know i recall uh astrophotography
jack newton and um he started using uh barlow lenses
to photograph galaxies okay so he's got he's got he had his 16 inch
f10 okay 160 inches of focal length
yes a two times barlow to photograph galaxies and
the image scale was fantastic it looked it looked like uh galaxies taken with uh some
large professional telescope you know because uh he would photograph this side of it
in that side of the galaxy and he's making he's mosaicing them and it was um it was really amazing a lot of
work okay but still um you know that larger focal length uh
gives you the kind of image scale especially if you're matching you got the right sensor and you're matching that uh yes
um absolutely absolutely yes
well
i was looking at those 16 inches uh when i was younger too and i those were always the show telescope in in
yeah i remember i remember uh drooling over it in anacortes uh telescope uh you know there was a big
beautiful 16-inch white mead yeah because the green sitting there
it weighed 400 pounds but yeah i think it's 400 pounds right it's 200 pounds for the amount 200 pounds for the
the tube assembly with the with the deck bearings was about 125 pounds
work arms were followed so that was about a 40 pound piece and then you had about a 75 pound drive base and then uh and then
you had the tripod or a pier yeah here the pier was usually filled with sand so there's
probably over 500 pounds oh yeah it's
say if you can do it the mount is you know it doesn't matter then you can
throw in on just the caesar's point you can throw on any telescope uh you get a
good mount you can piggyback them and and i i i cannot say enough about how you know how
even good mountain even without a motorized mount you know uh
you did the crescent nebula the planetary nebula and reminds me that nicolas take it
he did some observations without a uhc filter and with a uhc
filter and also take pictures with the planetary
camera using uhc filter and rgb filters
let me show you a little bit the screen this is the draw that he did uh the
observation without the filter you see the stars and the uh
yes and his with the uhc filter it pops
a lot and this uh let me
here this is the picture that he did of the planetary
manually and the qh y5 monochrome camera no no yeah because
nicole the hammer is it's a crazy man yeah yes he's a crazy
man he's from bayern field he's in the the south of buenos aires
yes from here the great buenos aires you know
hey guys scott i would think i like
the after party because she he's starting to listen to listen and say
he couldn't [Music] be outside [Laughter]
did you scream the the ghost the goal the saturday yes
yes oh yeah yeah oh come on i'm not mad that was
awesome powder for celebrator but yeah [Laughter]
yeah that was a big big one yeah when was the last time it was like 15 years or what was it like a it was a
milestone right for argentina versus brazil no there was too many matches against
brazil but i remember in 2004 the finale of the
copa america america cop we lost then again in the finally if in the
chile in copa america and every time and every
of course in 2004 remember me this yeah
he asked yes i'm sorry okay now but that's
passive it's all the hassle yeah exactly that's great that's i'm really happy for you guys when i saw that i was thinking
about you guys i was like yeah that's really cool that's really cool yeah you know
gentlemen i think it's that time i think yeah
uh i have there's a few videos that i did uh uh i didn't run yet that i'm going to
run um about comets uh so if you're still watching
out there in the audience um you know uh i think there's a couple of comments
here harold locke says here i've been playing using binoculars lately and last time was using my celestron 5 inch
maxitoff castle grain 1500 millimeters and i was so bummed
uh that that i was not gathering enough light to view through the haze and pollution you
are now letting me know that it's my ability not to be able to find the target because of my narrow field of
view even though my finder scope was centered perfectly well i usually use
point and go to to make the go to i usually use point
and go and not the go-to ability so i i don't have to take a hammer
i guess he realizes he doesn't have to destroy his telescope music
okay yeah you do have to point it very carefully yeah yeah because there's all
the links eyepiece or for yeah yeah and use the longest focal
length eyepiece you can to get started with and uh um
you know sometimes i mean it is easy to miss at when you're up at those higher magnifications
three type of lengths for the finder yeah actually if i reflect on all my
middle one and almost closer to the name that is code yeah yes yeah yeah no
it's either that or you or you do a perfect alignment yeah i mean
if i if i summarize all my frustrations in all my experience using equipment has
to be because of not a good mount and and not a good mount
and and too narrow a field of view for the mount yeah it's a deadly combination you know
yeah it's a deadly car you can get away with a bad mount with a wide field telescope and it's fine right it's very
forgiving yeah but you you have a narrow field telescope and uh it's it goes back
to it's like you know the the the old department store telescope like you're you're you're wondering i'm in the corner there really long focal long
focal length and very bad mount the worst that is the number one if you summarize it then finally if you
have a you know a short forklift with a bad mount it's okay but the mount will still bug you if you have
really good if you have a really awesome mount and a crappy telescope guess what it doesn't matter you the mount will
make the good the bad telescope actually really perform well because you know you put you can you can
have a better experience because you'll point it you it will move nicely uh i
can i i cannot it's a hardware a lot of people goes totally against what they're thinking or what they're watching you
know because they want this there is an amazing big telescope and they then they'll go and put it on a
small amount you know and and and this forces manufacturers
also because this is what they this is what is you know the forces of
driving therefore desire you know so this assembly um
i i give to augustine one unit of the exodus 100 the mac
and black guy they're of course all complete and we are awaiting
how quality of pictures he can do
[Laughter] okay you waited all night long to give your presentation and uh
you know okay you had a lot to say so that's very cool and it's i mean
and we have these guys from argentina to hang out with us and i know i know the sun is coming up down there
so let me ask you caesar and maxie you know i i remember going to spain
okay and uh the uh you know for for us in the
usa we want to eat dinner like it's six or seven o'clock you know and uh maybe
maybe we'll stay up till and uh twelve and then we go to sleep right yeah
no they they go to work at eight they get off at 12. they're at home till four o'clock in
the afternoon and then they go back to work until eight o'clock and then they go home again and then
good night midnight they go out and eat right yeah is it like that in argentina
in here in chile it has the the the commercial
uh yeah in the shops and commercial
stores they have the uh the town time you know start eight am to twelve then goes to
your house you sleep a nap maybe and then you return maybe a three
or four p.m to seven or eight
p.m then when you come here to your house uh
give something to it but maybe 11 and 12 you're going to dinner and then you
maybe but here i'm going to start to editing or see some
some a little of tv and then i'm going to rest to wake up again to 7 00 yeah
actually you know it's interesting you know my first experience of that when i
really i was in uh traveling to malaga spain yeah um in the southern part of the you
know the um mediterranean and um and i remember when we were going out like oh it was like it was like 7 30
8 o'clock we were going hey let's go grab a bite to eat where it's it's late it's late to eat you know let's go and
we walk by it's like there's all the restaurants they look like they're restaurants but they had all the doors were closed and it was like everything
was shut it's like what's going on and so we just kept on walking and uh
we watched the uh you know the we walked along the beach and then we we went back and it was around 9 30 10 o'clock
everything was open now everything was really like totally and everything's
everywhere it's like okay that was their starting started it's like okay it's like it fully came alive it was completely dead and then now all of a
sudden it's like they're open for business it's like wow so that's that's already and they told me all the all the
local spanish guys were saying yeah yeah this is we just have dinner at nine o'clock yeah
like in spain or in the south of italy here in buenos aires for example
no this year last year was totally different but normally the the the
very very pubs or they close when the people go
out in the week not in the weekend maybe the week on the weekly it's wednesday what's
going on it is 2 a.m the the i think
the world the most is thursdays which is all though this is crazy
not crazy not crazy yeah but i i did enjoy my time in in
madrid and uh you know i have been down i have not been to argentina but i've been to
uruguay oh it's the same ah uruguay yeah i love
it i love my time in europe is one of the place where my kids grow
in in our vacations is okay there's a beautiful there's a old high
school it was a science high school and they have in there a beautiful
zeiss refractor wow zeiss refractor i think it's like a
eight inch something like that um i can show you especially in argentina
why do you have a lot of cyber fractures that that that the same that i'm restoring
the the yeah this one 18 centimeters maybe they have the same
model in uruguay i i think that yes you know in lucan there was a
a the castle is a property a private property that has an observatory
and i thought and i heard that he has a
uh monthly video video national high school
sure yes the national school of montevideo have a size similar the same
model that i'm restoring now okay you know it doesn't start with the
the aquamatic objective that i disassemble it for the san miguel observatory is the
same that they have in montevideo
approved private yeah i mean it is so
so perfectly maintained wow brand-new look at you
that that is me [Laughter] that was beautiful though this is uh
i think i think that is the same thing that we are yes it's the same telescope
it's got it's the same technical because it's a model of maybe for 1920s
and it is an achromatic refractor um ponte video and in san miguel they
involve the same model and uh the the it's impressive i i i show you
the in a presentation the the cell with the objective because we needed
in an entire entire um evening four hours to remove because any
screw was unable to to to remove without broken um
yeah it was very rusty yeah absolutely
i'm my my next step with this is first of all i don't touch
the the something that is is very important is we are awaiting the
signature of the state of of the government to give to to the
municipal i don't know who is the majority maybe when you have a small city like san
miguel give to the major to have the property of the observatory it's very important
to start to restoring to move to repair because we disassemble it
only to keep in a safe place because like um they are making a street in this
moment the the observatory can be more vandalized like
i i the first thing that i say okay we remove
so fast so fast as possible yeah objective to keep in a place
in a safe in a safe place the cell
because the the entire uh focus system that you show the same because i have the same
picture yeah was totally still still
[Music] if somebody in the united states have
the same or or because uh really we are and searching for donation in the future
you need to uh cesar you need to talk to john briggs john breaks yes
he's on our show a lot and uh he he has the um astronomical
lyceum in new mexico yes and he has many many telescopes and
has and you know where to find um yes you know maybe we can
yeah we can uh we don't have problem in adapting because maybe the diameter is a
little different you know but i think that he show a a similar part of of a site
telescope because in many places it's very important to be connected because many many people have the
parts that maybe we have two parts that another in another part of the world
they have one you know um they are
and my idea it's a
you can see it's got that the picture that you are with the size we have the same the same
equatorial amount that was vandalized too and
i we are we are thinking in make with two strong step motors
um adapting a p a m c a m c yeah yeah
down that path we will help you yeah yes the idea i told with the people that the
system is very flexible and very very adapting for a lot of different software
and it's open source that is very important for that is
like the idea is very educated center of education
if we have opens opens uh software we can do this for for for uh
students to to collaborate and make uh code
right all you know it's very important i would love to uh see that project
uh yeah get started that would be cool right the um to control larger uh stepper
motors we can do it uh there may be some additional electronics to to drive a big
motor okay but uh um but yeah we were we were looking at uh
the possibility of driving uh the 40-inch yurkies refractor
which is a giant okay here's the side telescope huge yeah i had i had jerry already thinking about
it how we would use the pmc8 electronics to drive that telescope and uh he said
yeah it's possible you know so you know at eight inch or ten inch
refractor yeah sure yes i i i know because i know that you
made this for for the jerk is a refractor um this is why i think that
you can help us with this yes we can yes we would be happy to
we'd be happy to yeah thank you that's cool
an excellent sir party really thank you thank you well you guys made it an excellent star party thank you it was
awesome um uh yeah and uh for again for all the of
you that are watching uh you know our next global star party will be on july 20th uh our our host is caitlin aarons
from goddard space flight center and uh you know it is the anniversary of
the apollo 11 moon landing and uh so we will have a number of people on that are
uh experts about the moon and um uh it'll be an exciting time so
thanks for watching and uh again i have a few videos uh some comment videos i thought that you would
find interesting that i'm gonna run next and and you guys uh cesar maxie and
cameron thank you very much um and for anyone else that's watching
uh that was a presenter for the show um thanks again and um
you guys have a good night or good morning as it might be
see you guys bye bye bye you maxis your cameron yes here
thank you
every 5.4 years comet 41p swings around the sun and puts on a show for observers
on earth between march and april 2017 as the comet made its closest approach to earth
astronomers caught it doing something never before seen [Music] 41p is an icy body from the kuiper belt
the cold storage zone beyond neptune neptune's gravity first sent it hurtling
toward the sun and jupiter trapped it in its current orbit as it nears the sun the comet's icy
areas warm up and turn to gas this forms jets that blast gas and dust
into space this material becomes an extended atmosphere around the comet and makes up
its tail to better understand how comets work astronomers study how these jets change
as a comet approaches and departs the inner solar system from this astronomers can measure how fast the
comet rotates [Music] when 41p approached in march 2017
astronomers found it to be rotating about once every 20 hours but when nasa's swift studied the comet
in may 41p's rotation period had more than doubled this is the largest most abrupt
rotational change ever seen on a comet comet 41p is a small object
smaller than most of the so-called jupiter family comets and very active
astronomers think a particularly strong active area produced jets that lined up in just the right way to suddenly put
the brakes on the comet's spin extrapolating from the swift
measurements 41p could have continued to slow in the following months
spinning less than once every four days by summer this spin is too slow to keep the comet
stable so even small jets can set it wobbling like a top or tumbling
and ultimately rotating around a different axis such changes affect which parts of
the comet are exposed to sunlight perhaps this will drive new levels of activity that will further change the
comet's spin scientists have never before observed this phase of comet evolution and they
look forward to 41p's next visit in 2022
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last summer an amateur astronomer discovered the first interstellar comet zipping through our solar system
2i borisov it was clear from its path that the comet would dim from view within months
so scientists were quick to turn their telescopes towards the alien comet for review among them was an international
team led by nasa goddard they used the alma telescope array in northern chile to probe to iborsoft while it was close
by inside the halo of gas around the comet they detected something peculiar
to iborosov was releasing a higher concentration of carbon monoxide than any comet observed at a similar distance
from the sun nasa's hubble space telescope later confirmed this too scientists wondered
could this be our first glimpse of the chemistry of another planetary system or are we learning that there's more
chemical diversity among comets than we knew of carbon monoxide is one of the most
abundant molecules in space scientists expect to see it inside all comets yet
there's a huge variation which is puzzling regardless 2i borosov is off the charts to preserve
its carbon monoxide the comet likely formed very far away from its star in one of the coldest
environments known in our solar system this would have been in the vicinity of neptune when comets were forming
temperatures there could have reached negative 420 degrees fahrenheit scientists think that gravitational
disturbances from young jostling planets may have thrown to iborosov out of its home star system and onto a cold lonely
voyage our solar system is tiny compared to the distances between star systems it's
incredibly rare for an interstellar comet to pass within observable range however big sophisticated telescopes are coming
online so scientists expect to see more alien comments like 2i bars
will they all be similarly exotic
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hi i am carl battams i am a computational scientist and
astrophysicist from the naval research lab everything that you're seeing in this movie is based on actual data so
actually every single dot that you see in this movie is a real comet that has
been discovered or observed by soho soho is the solon heliospheric
observatory so it's a joint mission between nasa and the european space agency
and soho's mission was to study and understand the sun
and the region of space surrounding the sun and all of the cool awesome
explosive stuff that the sun does there was never any intention for soho to be a comet discoverer the reason
that soho has been so successful at finding these comets is because it's got this
wonderful instrument on the spacecraft that offers us a view of the inner solar
system that we just cannot get from any telescope on earth the different colors
in this movie represent different families or populations of comets that soho is
observing so the the red comets these are kreutz sun grazers the green comets are what we
call maya group comets the only exception is the yellow ones that you see these are what
we call non-group comets these do not belong to any family you see as these
objects are flying in towards the sun they're not really going in a straight line it's they're following a curve and
that curve is because of the sun's gravity and the closer a comet gets to the sun
the faster it goes and then they slow down again as they move away from the sun one of the really awesome facts that i
love about the the sun grazers in particular the kreutz comets that
you're seeing in red they are the fastest objects in our solar system
that that aren't particles they get so close to the sun
that they're traveling over 600 kilometers per second that's 0.2 percent
of the speed of light which is just it is an inconceivable
velocity for pretty much anything that's not a particle but for a big house size chunk
of rock and ice it's just truly insane that these objects are going that fast unfortunately they're getting completely
fried in the process but it's really awesome that they're doing that the comets in this movie that are flying
around the sun and disappearing out of the movie again they have survived past the sun they're not
getting completely vaporized by the the intense solar radiation
any comet that you see in this movie that does not have a label it means it was discovered by soho i really love
that this mission that was designed to do something completely different just by
luck and by chance has completely rewritten the history books with
more than well over half of all the comets that we have on official record now carry
soho's name and it was never even intended to do that i just love that fact [Music]
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well well well i'm saying good night it is time to say
look maxie like disappeared he
[Music] [Laughter]
all right guys good night good night thank you and good night to the audience
good night everyone all right good night
okay bye guys bye