Global Star Party 57

Transcript:

7:00 p.m..Scott Roberts: Welcome and Intro
the other day um was saying something about level level five ai
7:05 p.m..David J. Eicher - Chemicals
to be able to um make uh fully autonomous um driving
7:15 p.m..Terry Mann Astronomical League Door Prizes
and uh and and i think that's going to be really interesting uh to see if they can
you know some of some of the there's some companies like zuke's i don't know if you've heard of them uh that are trying to do this self
7:25 p.m..David Levy
driving taxi cabs and stuff kind of an uber but self-automated
it's going to be pretty pretty nifty i mean you can imagine what's going to happen to our traffic congestion and all that when you have
7:40 p.m..Libby in the Stars
you know it's all done by computer instead of random humans right yeah
you're not kind of tailgating causing you know yeah causing traffic okay
exactly the traffic is just when you look at it it's like there's no reason why this traffic couldn't move faster
7:55 p.m..Conal Richards
it's just because people kind of stopping and going and randomness and causing a lot of uh you know congestion
no reason except for the human factor but as soon as you add you know
it's going to take a long time but but imagine in the future maybe 30 40 years when they can put ai in in
8:15 p.m..Adrian Bradley
the cars and then you're going to have much smoother uh traffic flow much more efficient
yeah i look forward to it i look forward to pulling my airstream and i can go to sleep as i go from the coast
8:30 p.m..Ten Minute Break
yep yep i think it's going to be interesting and i'm all for it but it's it's going to be
a key moment when we have the first mishaps accidents and lawsuits
8:40 p.m..Molly Wakeling - Astronomolly's Universe
from automated cars things may take a few steps back then oh that's true
there was a fatality already i know but such things are always coded
in a sort of a utopian naivete when it comes to the practical world i think you know
9:00 p.m..Jerry Hubbell - The MSRO
probably that's probably true for the humans i won't go to sleep while we're going coast to coast but you know right
now there's a there's a whole human factor the emotional part because like even with this vaccine
9:15 p.m..Maxi Falieres – Astrophotography in Argentina
you know with a johnson and johnson if you just look at the statistics it's like okay 0.001 percent of people have
died but the fact that there's any deaths gets blown out because they have to be perfect yeah exactly so it's the
9:30 p.m.."Nico The Hammer" - Astrophotographer Nicolas Arias
same thing with this i think you're right david is is there's going to be some mishaps and it's going to be blown out of proportion
statistically but it still matters right because as a human
exactly even if it's a tiny tiny number of problems
9:45 p.m..Cameron Gillis - Camstronomy
we'll just compare that that little tiny graph to the graph we have now
yep so but you know there are lawyers will need
10:00 p.m..Ten Minute Break - After Party
something to do you know yeah
as always yeah we have to make sure that we make the ai
10:10 p.m..Pekka Hautala - Connections with the Universe
to our benefit not to its own benefit yeah yeah we'll see how that works out
but
but humans left to their own devices have done some pretty crazy things oh yeah
but now bringing it to astronomy you know i'm really looking forward to you know a lot of this uh this golden
age of astronomy kind of with chipsets and all that getting into smarter telescopes you know smarter
smarter eaa a lot of cool stuff happening right now i mean you're getting all the bits and
pieces and um yeah like i i would give it the analogy it's kind of like the 90s
with pcs home pcs where you plug in plug-in pcr card card slots hard drives
and and then they didn't they just started to have usb so you can but but now
imagine in the future we're going to have more and more integrated um
telescope systems that you'll be able to instead of an image train you know getting all those
uh you know spacers and everything you're going to be able to have you know a calibrated
um kind of ocular ip slash imager combined
that will be matched and you can just plug that in and then it will be a lot easier and more
accessible for people i think and and the costs will be going down as well
we just need to make sure that elon while he's making uh still more money doesn't uh rob us of a dark night sky
oh you know i've been up and down on that one david it's interesting that you mentioned that that's that's a fascinating topic because
initially it's like oh he's certainly you know zero for professional astronomers right now with
the starlings no that's the thing because it's like okay you know and then i was thinking oh well
with stacking and you know all the capabilities of that you can filter it out but like you said that's a key point
especially professionals time is of the essence so if you rob yourself
that imaging time and you have to take out that frame it's like great you can take it out but
you've lost that time that data for that time that you use that telescope and that and that's what i'm seeing with
live stacking is like okay i'm going there and i i do 10 live stacks of 30
seconds but then invariably a satellite comes through and does a photo bomb
and then i've lost my you know a couple minutes of my nice image that's right
supernova that you would have captured yeah you you got it right on scott so it
is actually rather annoying and it's going to get worse that's for sure it's a major problem for professional
astronomy a huge problem in fact jeff wall at lowell observatory is is on the he's he's essentially the
when it comes to writing about this the leader of the double as committee on this it's a major problem right now
yeah so they're trying that's to be a little more sensitive to what
he's doing to to professional research so if we were i mean if if elon was listening right
now okay uh
what would we say to him because he's not the only guy that's going to put up constellations of satellites
right let me ask you one question first do you really think that he's more
interested in that than he is in making money
he is a billionaire you know i can't say well you know it's
interesting dave one thing that's a pattern as as people get older uh and billionaires you know
they start to become more philanthropic right uh so so they have
their money now they've you know they were all nasty people when they were young to get their you know their
billions and and then they start to say well you know i want to do something else and uh you know more more than just making
money i've made my money but you know what the aspirations are pretty high for somebody like uh you know both of these
guys so you're right they but they are still mortals they're still human beings and they can only do so
much in their lifestyle so the question is when are they going to reach that pivot point to say i'm not you know this as
much as this as far as i can take the baton with my billions i now i've done my earnings now i'm
going to switch to you know like bill gates or whatever even though he has some personal
problems right now but you know um but or are they gonna just keep on going to the grave and just be
you know fight to the right to the edge uh and just keep on wanting more uh to get
to really realize an unreasonable realizable dream in their lifetime that's that is the question
i think that if you look at um if you look at musk he's still pretty
young um he has big aspirations he wants to even go to mars himself so you're right
i think you're right david he at this point he's not gonna really care but what we can ask you know answer scott's uh
question we can say hey come on musk help us put a some observatories in space some more
telescopes in space to kind of offset this disruption and and then also put some on the moon
right let's put it a couple of observatories on the moon with the instrumentation that we you know to replace our earthbound telescopes that
would be a great great thing what do you guys think i admire your idealism immensely
yeah thanks thank you bless for that cameron and i hope you're right
something i do wonder about if i may add are the uh preventative measures they suggested for the starlink satellites
because there was an article in sky and telescope a couple of months ago i can't remember who wrote it unfortunately
but they were saying they had that first generation of satellites just to test out the technology and they were very
bright and then uh they re-entered the atmosphere and burned up and then they
started launching the new constellation where they would um basically paint the satellites black
and make them a little bit darker so the author of this article did um some kind
of mag a magnitude estimate on the different generations of satellites and what they were doing and found that the
ones with the preventative measures came in at about eighth magnitude and while that wouldn't really matter to
us using the naked eye even at a dark sky site i do wonder what that says for the professional amateur astronomers or the
excuse me the professional astronomers and the amateur photographers because eighth magnitude can be bright you will
see that across your image if you're going in deep enough you're right on connell
if you're taking wide field spectra of multiple galaxies with a keck 10 meter telescope
there's really no difference between magnitude and first magnitude you know
it's it's a wash you know so it may not matter as much for us as
amateurs but for professional astronomy it's a disaster still
yeah that we have a word for that it's called putting lipstick on a
pig uh it's it's it's it's just a pr thing and um it's not it doesn't matter
where it really matters which is the professional yeah
that's that's the unfortunate part so it's um money is all about money but but again i i want to be idealistic and say
hey come on mosque build us some some earth orbiting observatories
and and and put some on the moon base let's subsidize some of the um
some of the buildings and then and change or build some you know radio telescopes uh optical
telescopes all different types of scopes on on in on the dark in some i guess they would have to be in uh kind
of shadow areas of the moon they wouldn't be able to take any direct sunlight so you'd have to put them in
kind of uh maybe the south pole of the um the moon something like that in the north pole
but but that would be really good some moon bases
well knowing how ground-based telescopes work with space-based telescopes you still need the ground-based stuff
you know you need it well just the volume you can't put you
know 500 observatories on the moon you know the volume of astronomy that's going on
on earth is you know astronomical in a word compared
to what you could from orbit or from another you know which is a little
unrealistic given time and money to immediately go and build things on the moon
you know so yeah i know you're right and it does you know you think our usb connection is a limitation
you still have to tether to the moon and bring all that data and analyze it yeah it's true david yeah no you're right
but you know maybe he'll become more sensitive as time goes on here to to what astronomers are doing
we already had a major problem before this and that is that in the united states essentially light pollution has
ruined everything east of the mississippi river you know light pollution was a pretty big problem
to begin with yep still is yep still is
all kinds of pollution yeah we need to
find a way to be opportunistic so you know as as we um
and we're already this is the fact that we're having this conversation as part of it is just kind of thinking uh about
how can we take advantage of the billionaires spend
and see you know and and the way things are going um to be able to kind of maximize so for
example there's an opportunity with light pollution to uh with led there was an opportunity
but we kind of missed it where we could you know change the the uh the spectrum of the leds for
example so they wouldn't be emitting white light on all across the whole
thing right the whole spectrum energy companies who are driving this want as much energy to be used as
possible absolutely yeah that's nice tire manufacturers ripping up all these
so true that's in l.a if the economy is stupid yeah no it's it's the economy no it's always the economy it's true it's
true you've got to find a way knowing how humans behave with the economy and they strive to continuously make money
um how do we you know try to get some uh
some of that funneled into the right you know to a more productive and future a more sustainable
uh future we need to do many many more global star parties and have millions of people see
them that's right all the answers are right here
[Music]
it's early morning on february 15 2013.
a meteor weighing 10 000 metric tons is about to explode nearly 23 kilometers
above chelebinsk shortly after local sunrise
a blinding site for the stunned spectators on the ground
[Music] a massive explosion equivalent to 440 kilotons of tnt
hundreds of tons of debris released and quickly moved up into the atmosphere
the highly sensitive amps instrument onboard the sumi mpp satellite made its first observation of the plume nearly
three and a half hours later an entire 1 100 kilometers east of the explosion and
already at 40 kilometers altitude well into the earth's stratosphere
a surprising observation since the stratosphere usually acts as a bumper that caps aerosols trying to rise up
from the lower atmosphere by inserting a column of data from the
first plume observation into two nasa models scientists were able to project the
plume's trajectory the model showed that the plume at higher altitudes shown in red would move
ahead of the lower layer shown in yellow the reason would be the difference in
wind velocity at the lower and higher altitudes
also illustrated here is how accurately the satellite observations coincided with the projected path of the plume
when ops made its second observation back at chelevinsk nearly five hours
after the bolide there was still evidence of the plume at a lower 30 kilometer altitude
on february 16th one day after the bowline the amps instrument detected the
far end of the plume even further at 1 700 to 4 300 kilometers eastward from
the explosion by february 19th
days after the explosion the satellite observation showed that the meteor debris had circumnavigated
the entire globe and returned to chelabinsk forming a complete global belt
the clean shape of the belt was another surprising prediction considering that northern hemisphere winds during the
winter are usually rather inconsistent in direction a further look into the model simulation
showed that evidence of the plume would persist for a long time which also coincided with the satellite
observations we have now seen how accurately the
models were able to project the plume's trajectory this is critical since the
same models are used to study climate and ozone depletion the unprecedented sensitivity of the ops
instrument and its ability to see vertical profile of the atmosphere helped scientists track and study the
meteor plume for months revealing a much better picture of what the aftermath on the atmosphere could be
from potential future and even bigger events
[Music]
[Music] well hello everybody this is scott roberts from explore scientific and the
explore alliance and welcome to the 57th global global star party um
it's uh the theme of the our program today is um
you know falling stars and fireballs but uh you know that could take us almost in
any direction in uh people's experiences in astronomy what i will tell you is i think all of
us as as astronomers amateur astronomers stargazers our experiences often punctuated by
spectacular um views of of bolides or falling stars
you know the meteors that fall to earth and sometimes explode in
the sky some of them leave smoke trails i even heard one one time so
which is uh still to this day i've never experienced it again but i always kind of keep
i know maybe i shouldn't do this but as i'm driving or walking or whatever i always kind of keep my periphery
locked on the sky you know because you never know when you might see something you know and this could happen the day the evening of
course anytime at night and so um you know i love to see uh this you
know these things streak across the sky um just a few days ago ago i reported a
bull lied that was just you know visible here in spring
springdale and it was the first time that i'd seen a bowl i'd start to break apart and then
turn deep deep blue before it it went away and so you know i've seen green ones
yellow ones orange ones red ones you know but this was this was the first blue one so
um and i know that everybody else here has you know amazing stories about uh
bull lights and meteors and meteor showers and this this kind of thing and it always gets us all excited but
you know our program tonight normally starts out with david levy david is running just a little bit late
he he uh emailed me uh yesterday about it and so
he'll be on a little bit later on in our program maybe in about half an hour or so
but it gives me great pleasure right now to bring up
david eicher david eicher's editor-in-chief of astronomy magazine uh really uh
you know the magazines and authority and uh and for many the authority in their
astronomy news and information and uh um you know so it's something that uh
you know if if i you know uh think about my experience in amateur astronomy
astronomy magazine definitely played a huge role in it and still does so um
you know and david eicher has been someone that has been involved with the magazine for a very long time before
that he had his own magazine uh you know about deep sky astronomy and uh he has written many
books on australia i'm holding one right here this is uh his book galaxies um
david i don't know how many books you've written so far but uh i think many and i think you got more in you
before it's all said and done indeed i'm going to uh experiment with a
little bit from a new book project tonight if you'll permit me yeah absolutely so i'll turn it over to david
but i know that you're going to love this so well thank you scott so much and it's a
pleasure to be with you as always tonight and and to see our pals online here
um and uh tonight i'd like to talk a little bit i'm gonna do a reading tonight because uh we're starting to
move back some capability into our building after a year and a half back at astronomy magazine and so the microscope
is temporarily uh non-deployed so i'd like to i've been
doing uh some writing about a project that involves some chemistry in astronomy so i thought i would do a
little reading tonight from some of that material because it involves a bit of it
uh some of my early times with carl sagan who's always fun to to talk about and i won't read the whole
5000 words of this section here we'd be here all night but i'll read some of it and share a little bit of that those
thoughts with you if i may scott absolutely all right this is called chemicals
smells are powerful memory triggers stand on a warm beach and breathe in the sea air or approach the oven with
freshly baked blueberry muffins and you'll identify for me one of the earliest smells that
stands out is the strong aroma of chemicals in my dad's lab he was a
professor of organic chemistry at miami university in southwestern ohio and sometimes as a young kid i would make my
way over to his office after school the university's chemistry department
headquartered in a massive building called called hughes labs seemed like a flurry of activity
students darted in and out lab work dragged on as glassware clanked professors lurked in their offices and
poured over papers equipment buzzed from all directions what was that strong smell i finally
asked it's from chemicals here in the lab was the obvious answer
this son of a chemist then one day blurted out probably at the dinner table as a very young kid
i don't like chemicals they smell i then heard the first lecture on the
terrible stinky nature of chemicals in my life everything is made of chemicals
my dad shot back except for thoughts and they're the result of chemical reactions
then and i'm going to skip around a little bit here so so there'll be one or we'd be here too long but so bear
with me the memory of that dinner time spark lingered a quarter of a century later i thought about that realization
again i was driving on a wisconsin highway making my way northwest from milwaukee past madison and on up to eau
claire i was going to a scientific meeting comets in the origin and evolution of
life and it was the late fall of 1991. i was a young editor at astronomy
magazine and i was excited to be on a journey covering a professional meeting and also set to hang out with one of my
heroes carl sagan so we'll skip then eau claire 1991. now
i was an associate editor of astronomy and still publishing deep sky as well now a quarterly i still vividly remember
the moment when carl walked in the room and i shook his hand and said hello and this was after i had corresponded with
him for about uh uh 15 years at that point about career
advice and what i should do and everything and i decided to ignore him completely and bail out of being a
professional astronomer and get into journalism i still vividly remember the moment when carl walked in the room and i shook his
hand and said hello i reminded him of our correspondence and was a bit surprised when he instantly recalled me
and all of our previous discussions he looked as much like a movie star as a scientist he was taller than he seemed
on tv he reached for something in his wallet which looked fancy i think it was a snakeskin wallet and he was dressed
immaculately he had the kind of presence that commanded the room when he walked in
his warmth smile and laughter were infectious and i was immediately struck by his generosity with his time and
uplifting spirit he talked at length about things that seemed important to me at the time but
could hardly have been important to him so we'll skip further then
and of course carl's connection to the conference on comets and the origin and evolution of life was a special one
after all he spent his early years as a scientific thinker leaning into the subject of chemistry
in his new jersey high school he was president of the chemistry club he made cardboard cutouts of molecules to
understand how they formed at the university of chicago he began to weave chemistry and astronomy together
working in the lab of geneticist hermann mueller and writing a thesis on the origins of life with the nobel prize
laureate chemist harold urey ah when i talked about this with ann this
is carl's widow and drean the executive producer of cosmos the new generation
cosmos just a few years ago how proud i was to tell her that my dad worked for uray on the manhattan project at
columbia university during the second world war there was an early connection between the sagans and the hikers
and we skip ahead a little bit more and this is how carl talked a lot about chemistry and what we're made out of and
actually was one of the uh early astronomers who helped to found what
became known as cosmochemistry the field of chemistry applied to astrophysics
taking this concept to a much wider audience sagan's explosively popular cosmos published in 1980 along with the
pbs tv documentary included a similar version of his famous saying the
nitrogen in our dna the calcium in our teeth the iron in our blood the carbon in our apple pies were made in the
interiors of collapsing stars we are made of star stuff of course you know that famous quotation of his how
thrilled i was when i received in the mail that fall an inscribed copy of his book signed by carlin with the notation
for dave viker friend of the cosmos and that is still a treasured artifact that i have here oh
wow that is so cool
so we skip ahead a lot more or we'd be here so long we'd have to talk about the
whole periodic table and we'll go now to talk about uh well the discovery of what chemistry is all
about and even the greeks um and romans realized eventually of
course when they thought about the substance of earth and what matter was that it was made of minute particles of
course this was a century after the greeks democritus suggested that all matter in
the world was composed of tiny shapes called atoms this led to the basis of the first great and widely accepted
notion of matter from the philosopher aristotle of course who expanded the idea and added the four
basic elements uh ether and another ether the ether
the material that fills the cosmos above earth's sphere
so then writing onward later in time about all these things we're skipping a long time here rene
descartes the french philosopher wrote about the nature of matter but then taking descartes idea a step further
was the great physicist isaac newton of course uh who developed the idea of matter in a more sophisticated way with
his landmark work principia mathematica newton defined matter as a mechanical
substance with intrinsic properties that the universe could affect
mass and gravity and other properties could dictate what happened to matter and how it interacted with things in the
cosmos this was a novel thing that newton introduced at that time at one point newton listed the qualities
of matter extension hardness impenetrability mobility and inertia
in his lesser-known work optics that's with a k uh newton conjectured that god created
matter as solid massy hard impenetrable movable particles that are even so very
hard is never to wear or break into pieces so a
quasi-modern understanding of matter was then finally coming together
being composed of normal matter myself sitting in a conference room in eau
claire and listening to the lectures my mind was awash in these thoughts of chemistry in the cosmos and i think this
is just important for us to remember now uh the basics of what we're made out
of here speakers described how comets delivered a significant amount of water to early
earth contributing a fair percentage of the h2o in our oceans they described how complex organic
molecules are present in comets and how it's possible that cometary nuclei could
have slammed into earth in large numbers and helped to seed the earliest life on
the planet they described the subtle interplay between small bodies like comets and
asteroids in the solar system's early days and the larger rarer bodies like
earth and the other young planets could life have been delivered from the
stars above by a comet smashing into earth or was there so much in terms of complex
organics already simmering throughout the oceans waiting near a hydrothermal vent
time passing and allowing just the right combination of chemicals to come together to start self-replicating
molecules and the spark of life once abundant oceans were in place on
earth on organics in the ocean the conference speaker proclaimed life came about on our planet very
quickly i was a young kid from ohio at the time
reeling with the possibilities how could this possibly be i actually blurred it out loud after
that line sitting next to me carl sagan slowly turned and uttered a single word
chemicals thank you
sounds like uh the the the the line in uh um
the graduate where the guy says plastics your future i'm just gonna tell you one
thing david chemicals okay
here it is okay that's career advice that's your career advice right there
that's awesome wow what a rich wonderful amazing time i mean that's so
cool thank you for sharing that with us that's amazing well
uh gosh uh now you you mentioned dave that you are you writing a book about these
experiences or you know maybe i shouldn't talk a whole lot about it yet but it's going to be a
book about all sorts of what the universe is made up of and kind of why
how we got here and include not just a lot of hard science i think in this one
but a lot of stories about the people who i've had the great privilege of
being around clyde tombaugh bart bach david levy uh brian may richard dawkins uh
buzz aldrin uh charlie duke jim lovell you know lots of
people hawking and stories hanging out and doing things with them that have all been a part of
the story of kind of the realization of what the universe is all about and why we're here on this little planet that's
right yeah that's cool that's very cool okay well thank you so much david uh
that was that was a real gift thank you um okay so up next um
we uh have terry mann a former two-term president of the astronomical league
and um currently secretary of the astronomical league she just can't get away from the
league she's been there for a while she's a force in amateur astronomy and
um you know uh really honored to have her on our program it's been a while though
terry since you've been on you you've been cycling through with uh chuck allen and
carol and and uh uh uh another another name's escape
yeah john john goss and and uh right so yeah yeah very cool very cool
doing al live once a month i'm always there yeah so yeah we just kind of cycle
through and rotate and it just makes it easier especially with vacations coming up yeah
we we work this way too everybody uh you know gets to personally
get to know uh all of you so and uh you guys are certainly uh leaders in in um
uh you know taking care of so many members you know have what over 20 000
members is that right we're getting there yeah we're waiting it's actually been a good year even considering kova
because so many people are really into astronomy so we we've really had some nice growth
in the league with membership i had a conversation uh just um
just a few days ago with one of the really large telescope retailers that's been into it for a while
and we talked about uh the kind of volatility you know in the
amateur telescope manufacturing world it's a very volatile business i mean
you'll have you know you can have a comet or you can have a special opposition or something
very special that's going to happen in the sky and sales will spike like crazy
and then fall like crazy on the other side of the event and and uh you know so all the things i've
been through like uh halley's comet hail bop hayakataki the mars opposition you
know the great um the great eclipse the 2017 eclipse uh these are just some of the things that
punctuated uh the uh amazing rise and fall of interest in
astronomy i think each time you know you get a bigger audience that as it goes along
but there was for a long time and a lot of people talked about it both in the magazines
and in clubs and all the rest of it is that they called it the graying you know i got gray hair right now the graying of
the hobby and they talked about also the fact that fewer fewer young people
are getting into it you know and uh you know so we we have some young people you know connor will be on here and uh libby
will be on and and we we bring these people on but uh um the thing that's different
about the rise of interest in amateur astronomy at least and probably
even in professional astronomy is that um this this pandemic as horrible as it is
you know has made people focus on the universe right from their backyard
and uh uh you know and and all the good things that can come from it you know so i i've been writing bits and pieces i've
been creating a powerpoint i i really want to write a book but i don't know how so uh
maybe i got some palace that can teach me a little bit but uh but the the thing is is that uh i like
to say that astronomy is good for you and the reason why it's good for you is it allows you it gives you a way to reframe
your whole world view you know and uh you know you go out to your backyard
and you look up at the stars and your blood pressure comes down you know and
if you spend enough time you've you can feel this kind of tranquility a lot of astronomers don't talk about this too
much because they don't know how to really describe it they know that it's enjoyable it's fun
and after a while they need it okay but um but this is the thing that i i find most
important i know that well i know that everybody on this program that presents
gets it okay uh and uh i've been out under the stars with many of you and uh
um you know i think that um i think that it is uh something that is
uh really special uh really is a great antidote to anxiety
stress all the bad things that you know that that worry can bring to you um
but uh i think that um the point i was getting to with this
rise and fall and the volatility of of uh of the amateur astronomy world is uh
this is different these are people they're choosing not only to see one object you know and get
that yeah i saw halley's comet or yeah i saw the eclipse or yeah i saw mars
they are getting to be involved in amateur astronomy
and exploring you know as as part of their part of their life you know and so
i see a much more sustainable uh kind of rise at this point so
um and uh you know so for all of you that have chosen to become amateur
astronomers with us you know it's wonderful and uh you know there's uh more resources than there's ever been
ever and um so you're going to want to do things like join the astronomical league you're going to want to get
involved in their observing programs you're going to want to subscribe to astronomy magazine you're going to want
to go to star parties with us you know and really experience what all this can
possibly be because the stories that david told you um you know you're going to have your own experiences you're
going to meet astronauts you're going to meet discoverers you know and and that's that's the thing that amateur astronomy
can do for you that you can't just do with any almost any other thing you know you can't
become an amateur brain surgeon for example okay well i guess you could but they'll catch you okay so
anyways terry i'm gonna i have a long-winded conversation but i'm gonna turn this over to you i enjoyed it you
know did you enjoy that yeah yeah you talk about being you know interested in astronomy and you
enjoy being out under that night sky so much there is such a peaceful feeling when you're out there but i'm going to
tell you the flip side of that when you live in ohio you have a lot of clouds and if you don't see the stars for two
weeks you begin thinking you get anxiety where is everything uh it's like i have
to have my star fix you know i need to see those stars and when i do it's like wow at least they're still there
go there
yeah the school up north has the same problem you do in ohio just to let you
know yeah so yeah carry carry on but yeah the midwest in particular and even east
coast um weather patterns and why especially this year it's been a challenge
yeah i was just up at headlands dark sky park last week and uh was one of the first times i was
out the park and you could actually see the southern milky way and somebody out there said we haven't seen the southern
milky way in two weeks you know and it's been the smoke has been an issue down here too everything's just really
been an issue but anyway yeah once you get used to seeing the stars you don't like to be without them
that's true yeah definitely so all right i will get ready to ask the questions
okay uh
and get back to the beginning here it always takes my computer a little there we go to go back to the beginning
here
as you know we have got um alcon virtual coming up shortly it'll be
from the 19th through the 21st of august we have got a full speaker schedule
that is online and being updated somewhat we have added some speakers that aren't
on here as we've got alan dyer on here uh my
truck oh larry crumpler from perseverance uh will be one of our speakers too
and we've just added quite a few so if you would check on our website
right now we have over eight thousand dollars in door prizes which is incredible because all of the leads the
league's clubs have donated these door prizes and it is amazing what they have
done and what it will mean you know for our first and hopefully only online
conference uh i hope we will always have an online presence for all of our alcons
after this um and it will be nice next year we will be back our plan is to be back in albuquerque which we should have
been for the last two years um next year we hope to see everybody out
there and there's larry crumpler he'll be talking about perseverance mission what we have seen what we are doing now
and what we are and where we are going which i look forward to that talk um and thanks scott
roberts and explorer scientific for the grand prize we have a
127 millimeter matte cast green telescope with the twilight one mount that will be the grand prize that will
be given away on saturday night and as you can see we have quite a few other door prizes the one thing i do want to
point out is the gift certificates that are on here are actually gift cards you
don't have to spend 500 to get 200 off these are actually gift cards that you will be able to use at various um
dealers oh that's awesome that's awesome i think that i think that the outpouring
of the astronomy clubs that are part of the astronomical league uh to give door
prizes this is really kind of a first i don't know who came up the idea probably terry did but uh you know it's i think
it's an amazing thing uh because you said over seventy five hundred dollars i think it's over eight thousand dollars
yes it's over four prices from the club 100 right now yeah that's amazing that's
amazing that's because of all of the league's club that came forward and helped to do that and to me that's
amazing they deserve a big round of applause inspiring yeah it is it's very inspiring for what
the clubs do um you know and it's just great for the whole community and just to be clear
chuck allen came up with that idea that wasn't me okay yes i know chuck's watching right now he
said scott chuck is on his way to observe tonight i already know i talked to him earlier
but anyway uh as you know you see this every time we always talk about never looking at the sun without proper
filtration how important that is to make sure when you look at the sun you do it safely with a proper solar filter
so what i want to start with is the answers from gsp 56 from july 27th which
for some reason to me seems like that was forever ago i can't believe summer's almost over right
yeah so first question was there is a lizard in the sky what constellation is it that's lucerta
the constellation lies between northern andromeda and cygnus
second question within the last decade this world was found to have a reddish
north pole what world is it this is pluto's moon or co-dwarf planet
cheron it is truly not a moon of pluto since the center of gravity of the two worlds
lies outside of pluto's surface wow
last question the apollo 12 mission landed so close to the spot of an earlier unmanned
spacecraft landing the astronauts were able to walk to it what was the name of the unmanned
spacecraft and that would be apollo 12 landed just 200 meters from the survey surveyor 3
spacecraft that landed a shallow crater two and a half years earlier which i
thought that was amazing that's amazing that's that's like something out of 2001 as
space odyssey and it's just sci-fi to me it's incredible just to be that close to be able to do
what they do nowadays just amazes me yes all right these are the people that
answered all of those questions correctly and they are added to a door prize list and the beginning of every
month we announced the winners from the last month so the winners for july beatrice hines book
davies and adrian so had you known that i went to school
at the university of michigan would i still have been a door prize winner [Laughter]
oh yeah that's i i'm not i hate to say it in front of you i'm not a sports fan it's you know oh good yes that's that's
very good to know yeah well i went to mackinac island and they asked where you're from and i said ohio and i
thought they're going to throw me off the ferry yeah really oh jeez there's it's it's
the rivalry is still there it's for the last 15 years and conal at penn state um
even you all have had some fun beating on the university of michigan team but
when it comes to but to bring the focus back to astronomy when it comes to astronomy um we all do tend to get along
okay we we put the differences aside in sports and we look up so yeah so it's
always you know that that one one thing with astronomy you're talking about scott and that you know bringing
different communities together and this is truly one thing that helps us do that regardless of our background so that's
right that's great we're definitely a family definitely
all right questions for today uh whoops and that's the bad slide there don't
look at the dates questions for today nothing's terrible yeah so close
send your answers to secretary at astroleague.org
and the first question how long does it take for jupiter to orbit the sun
and i had someone comment that i went through the slides too fast last time they didn't have time to understand the
question so how long does it take for jupiter to orbit the sun or in other
words how long does it take for jupiter to orbit the sun
thank you scott appreciate that [Laughter]
second questions and i want to hear that echo again what is the most common solid in the
cosmos go ahead scott in other words what is the most common
solid in the cosmos thank you third question maybe exactly those words
why are saturn's rings so bright right now
why are saturn's rings so bright right now well i hear an echo
all right and that is the last question i do want to remind you that astronomical league live will not be
here in august because we will be at alcon virtual so uh we will be back on september 17th
at 7 pm edt and we have claude plymate coming to speak about astronomical adaptive optics
so yeah he will be joining us i look forward to that so scott
that is it thank you very much but send all your answers to secretary astro
league dot org right and if you haven't joined the league do so right now there's still time so
please do and register for alcon virtual it is free and we've got over eight thousand dollars in door prizes not
right it's not chicken feed i mean this is serious
galaxies to be very honest terry i don't think that there's any other
astronomical star party event going on this year where you can win i
have the opportunity to win that many thousand dollars worth of of stuff so that's uh that's a big deal and so
um you know i don't know how many people have already signed up i think it's in the
yes hundreds but let's get it up to a thousand folks i mean come on thank you again to all of the league
clubs for all the support we greatly appreciate it that's awesome thanks gary thanks for
coming on again that's great okay uh do we have did david levy already make
it or am i still waiting okay we're still waiting for david and that's fine
um up next is going to be libby and the stars libby has uh
she came back and gave us a nice presentation about her space camp experience uh libby i from what i understand you're
starting to go back to school like in person again right is that going to happen this month
yes so i start back on school august 16th and um
last year i was virtual which wasn't the best because i was trapped
inside a lot and i didn't really get to see a lot of nature and i was glad that i did get to do a lot of
um the star parties though because i did have time to do that but i'm just glad because i can finally actually have an organized
schedule but virtual school you wake up at like 7 30 and within 20 minutes you
have to somehow pull yourself together to eat breakfast get ready and be ready
to school because it's it was very hard to do all that and especially just
i mean it's like every single day the cove just got worse and i wasn't sure if
i was ever going to go back to school so i hope at least i get to go back now we
didn't even get recess time and we only got 30 minutes to eat lunch and to remind you i had to cook my own lunch
every single day and i wasn't a big fan of sandwich and i can't have peanut butter because i'm
allergic so i literally had to make it took like 15 minutes to make my lunch and then i'd
have to work during lunch too so i'd like to have five minutes to eat so i'm finally glad i get to go back now
but well we're glad too i i'm you know i think that this will probably
be something that uh you'll remember all your life libby and uh probably will be telling your grandkids about uh
what happened during this uh you know this this era so um but you have done some amazing stuff
you have i i was uh having some conversation with your mom about the presentations you've given and
i think i think that you've given more presentations than a lot of adults that
i know okay i mean like over their whole lifetime so that's uh
it's it's pretty amazing what you've done i know you have a lot more left in you okay
um you know and and i know too that you have to limit your time now and you'll only be on with us maybe once a month
but uh we'll always look forward to it and of course you are always welcome on global star party so
thank you libby so i'll let you uh get started with this presentation yeah so i was actually thinking about maybe every
once in a while i'll do the four o'clock shows because i mean i can't really stay up too late
because i have to wake up at 6 30 in the morning because i'm riding my bike to school but
i'm just glad i get to be back in nature because i love nature and
i've actually started a school mountain biking team so i just love to get out in nature and i
get to see all the stuff and i hope to start a strong me club in my school and i'm not too busy with other stuff
but i hope to and get some a good group of kids together who are interested in space and
even just science too so i'm going to talk about weather and space today and um at the end i'm going to talk
about uh carl sagan's pale du uh pale blue dot because um
i thought that was something super cool that we did at space camp and um
i've been wanting to do something different i know every once in a while i've tried to do something different than talking about astronomy and
something that relates to astronomy i know i did um rockets once so
i thought weather would be a good idea because i love weather i'm always in the good mood first one
so i wanted to talk about what why weather is important now here on earth weather is important for
a good million reasons because it depends on life
it depends on death it depends on um if you're going to get food or not it just depends on a lot of things but another
thing it depends on is if nasa can even launch a rocket or even
if we're looking at another planet the weather can even be important on another planet if a rover was going to
land they would have to make sure the rover would be able to go or and the wet weather wouldn't be bad
and so um not only is it like i know a lot of people in the star party they come and
say well dang it here comes the cloud to cover my sky while i'm trying to do
astronomy and i totally agree about that but i always tell my mom i said
you know i will i will like accept the fact that a cloud came over while i was trying to observe
the sky as long as it's a good storm because i've always been i've always
loved storms i've always wanted to be a storm chaser and i at least try to storm chase i mean
it's nothing you know severe literally i'm like ooh there's a cloud it looks like it's about to rain let's
go just go north mom go north go south take a right turn turn
around take a u-turn and so i try to um do as much storm
chasing as possible but you know it's never really professional stuff that i do
it's just mostly just telling my mom go south and just telling her like go south go
north now and i'm like oh snap the radar says it's going to rain and i was like oh
it's time to go back home now so that's as far as i get and right before um
right before quarantine started my mom she works at a college as a teacher and they were having a national weather
service come and do a talk for storm chasers so i really wanted to go and i won't let me go it was really fun
and i do have to say i was the youngest kid in there i was the only kid in there
it was just all like adults probably over 50 and so i didn't really
see a lot of kids my age at all but i was still excited to go and i
wanted to get more kids interested in weather because i know weather can be very important and just
as astronomy is important as carrying the torch i think weather is too
so um there's a new numerous reasons why weather is important
so i want to talk about how this really connects to space so while we're at space camp we got a
presentation on how does um
how to determine what the natural disaster is from a satellite so the whole time at space camp
we usually just talk about the international space station the james webb telescope and stuff like that we're
talking about spacecrafts so we have one talk about nasa satellites
and they showed us a bunch of images on the screen and we had our journals
out and we were supposed to write down what we think it was because it what that's um what the satellite saw from
space if it was a volcano a flood and you know it was so cool to see those images
because you know you can't really i mean whatever thing is that um
uh you can also create radars satellites create radars too and so i know um during springtime i
check the radar every single day make sure there isn't any storms or something
and like if i look on the radar right now i would see what the satellites were detecting
and so um a while ago while i was at kennedy this is a couple years ago 2018
but um we were going to go see falcon 9 launch
and it was a satellite and so just as we um got to kennedy space center we were
about to enter the museum a huge dark towering cloud just covers
all of the sky and i was just crying because i was like oh lord i won't be able to see the
rocket launch right because the rocket can't launch or there's bad weather and
i was just crying my heart out i was like i live in northwest arkansas i flew all
the way down to florida for a rocket launch please let me go in please and so um
we got on the last bus all the way to the rocket to the launch pad we got on the last bus
and everybody was sitting down and they were like this is the last bus we hurry nasa we gotta do this before the storm
gets even worse and um it was about six pm and i was like oh lord please say this goes
and then they're like okay launch continued and then they just
start the countdown i'm like yay oh my gosh i just felt so lucky the wall behind me right there i have um a
collage of photos of just me doing space stuff and um i know somewhere i have my um
ticket to the rocket launch it's all the way on the top but it was my ticket to the rocket launch
and i and um i know on the phone when you take pictures it'll give you a live version
of it so you click on it i'll give you a live version and my mom took a picture of me in front of atlantis
the atlanta shuttle inside well it was a model of it outside and i
was right by the sign and when i clicked on the photo you could just hear lightning strike and i just ran
and that's what the live photo looked like and i just think of that every single time i think about the launch that i saw but it
was just amazing how it went and so i wanted to talk about weather on other planets because this depends on a
lot of stuff too i mean we know there's no weather on jupiter but we still want to know we're gonna
i mean like even on mars mars doesn't really have weather but if we were going to put a rover to
go collect samples from the planet we need to make sure weather is okay so one of the things that really
fascinates me about weather on other planets is jupiter because that's what i've always heard
about the most in jupiter's red spot i've researched this a lot and tried to
figure out what is jupiter's red spot and i always like to ask my friends and
i say name the worst tornado in all history
and they go the joplin tornado and then i'm like nope the big red spot
on jupiter they're like i thought you meant on earth and i said we're not the only people with storms out there
and so um jupiter's red spot is a very powerful storm it is like
a tornado that has lasted a couple hundred years and it's so powerful
but the thing is there's nothing on jupiter to destroy i mean except it's rocks i mean you can move the rocks
around just scoot the rocks around but it won't do much so nasa has deserved this for a while by
looking at um stuff for the satellites and um
i know my first star party we met um a nasa jet propulsion scientist who
discovered um discovered space volcanoes and i know you can either discover space volcanoes
by either observing from earth with a telescope which is what i think is really cool
um when i look at jupiter from my dobsonian i could just see a little red dot on its surface and it's almost
it's like i can see it very faintly just a red dot and um i think that's so cool that you
can see weather on other planets from earth with a telescope and that's what i think is cool about it i mean
[Music] the clouds might ruin your night of astronomy but if you just research on the other planets i mean you can look
at all this other stuff on planets another day so you can discover the weather on
planets by not only just satellites but also by telescopes
so i wanted to talk about hurricanes and just the weather on earth and talk a little bit about different
stuff on earth so hurricanes um are
are basically just very powerful storms that this they go around like this
tornadoes they kind of have a cone and they go down like that too but hurricanes swirl around and they have
um in the picture you can see this is from space in the middle you can see there's an area of relief which is called the
eye of the storm and so hurricane season starts about september and goes into october
and even into november but um the storm stops in the middle of nowhere
in the eye of the storm which i mean if you were in the middle of a tornado that's probably where it's going to be most powerful
but if you were um in the middle of a hurricane you would just feel relief
and um i've always been one to watch those weather channel shows
people telling themself like storm chasers talking about hurricanes and stuff i always love watching those and i
remember they showed a video on the screen of them just walking outside and there was just damage
and hurricanes last eight days so this is just in the middle of it all and you can see all this damage
and just if you look in the sky you could just see all of it around you and it was
so cool just to see that and how like there's an eye in the middle of it
so i wanted to talk about tornadoes so um a very stunning funny story about space
camp so my space camp is in huntsville alabama and so um
it's always raining in huntsville alabama and i remember well the first when you first
get to space camp you go to your room and you kind of set up where you're gonna stay first you get settled in and
then you go to a little um they have little tiny buildings
like mostly just trailers to the side and there's like four four or five of
them and so um there's a huge group of kids and this
guy looked a little bit cloudy so once i got dropped off of my group they were like
some there's only one tiny little window in the room probably about two feet
long and a foot wide and this kid looks over and he's like oh
my gosh it's really dark outside and i wasn't able to see for the window
and then next thing you know i was trying to look for the window and this sky was gray and we didn't get a
tornado that day but next thing you know some kid goes over to the door
of the trailer opens it up without adult permission
and all of our papers and notes just go flying everywhere and so
our counselor was like oh my gosh she's like okay guys calm down put on your ponchos we're gonna make a run for
it so we ran all the way to the habitats and it was just pouring out rain and
that was just one thing i really remember about space camp because it was a really bad storm we had
to stay in for about two hours you didn't have a tornado but it was
i knew it was part of just part of being in huntsville because the day that i got there
we had to um we were trying to wait outside and uh we were outside somewhere and it
just started pouring everywhere and it was crazy how that weather could
just build up rain and then go away for the day and that happened every single day
so um tornadoes can be very dangerous they pick up debris and so that's what you
kind of see at the bottom of the tornado that's all debris and that's what is being flown around
and um while i was in preschool we did um training for tornadoes you know you
do a root every single day and i always thought to myself i always thought they said
potato instead of tornado and so i always get that confusion
very mixed up and i always like to tell my friends about it i'm like you know when i was in preschool i used to think
tornadoes were potatoes and i always thought it and i was i was
like when the tornado hit or bad storm i always thought that the
hail was potatoes and i remind you i was only two or three years old so it seemed dry to my
mind and so um i want to talk about nasa satellites because i know a lot of people on the
international space station um we saw we were showing a video of you
know lightning from space it looks so cool um the astronauts said that's their favorite part about seeing a hurricane
or tornado or just even just thunderstorms which they just see all these lights
spark around and it's just beautiful seeing it from space and so nasa will
send up satellites to create radars stuff like that and so um
it's so cool to see that because i mean not nasa's satellites help to report natural disasters the radars we
can report natural disasters before they happen i know um
on um if you just look at the radar if you just you can speed it up to see what time
really a storm's going to hit and so it lets us know we're going to be like in storms or not so that's really
helpful technology so i want to change topics because i
wanted to talk about carl sagan's pale pale blue dot because i didn't get to
talk about it in space camp and i know i'll only be doing this stuff um
once a month so i really wanted to talk about it instead of you know i want to try to get another
topic in because um only be doing this once a month i won't have time to do this a lot
so i wanted to get another topic in that i know i won't be able to do as much next month
and so um while i was at space camp we went to the planetariums
and so last year while i was at space camp the planetarium was closed because of
coven and i was so sad so what we had to resort to
was just watching it on the projector and you know that compares i mean
it's still you still get knowledge but it's nothing compared to what the real planetarium was like this year
and um i remember me and um my friend were just sitting
there and we had a host teaching us and she was
like so all these images are shown from what satellites collect of the data in our
solar system and what scientists guess and i was just amazed and it just showed us
um at the end of the talk she was giving us a tour around mars from
satellite data and i was just amazed by that but at the end of the um planetarium
she showed us earth like just what you're seeing right there in the picture she showed us earth
and then she started zooming out and zooming out even further
from our solar system to the milky way
to to our whole entire galaxy and everybody in the whole entire planetarium which is like oh my gosh
we are so tiny and so they were also teaching us about how big
our solar system is um while we're at space camp we did a practice outside
and um every kid who every kid held up the planet card
and they just space us apart to show how far away we are
and so um our solar system is trillions of miles
long it is so big and it's so wide and the fact that we don't even take up one
percent of our universe is crazy so i mean
it's crazy to think about that we don't even take up one percent of our universe and we're trillions of
miles long in our whole entire solar system and earth is literally
like one percent of what the sun is and i don't the sun takes up like
a lot of our solar system mostly the sun and so it's just crazy to see all that
and be like you know something that might be big here on earth like cove in 19 right now
i know that's big because um a lot of health stuff and oh honestly we need to know history
so we don't repeat it and so um just kovan 19
i mean that's what big news for us everybody on earth knows what copa 19 is but thinking the whole entire universe
they don't even know i mean that earth exploded right now nobody else in the universe really
care too much or no i mean they cared but they wouldn't really know as much because there's so many other planets
out there in the solar system that i mean like we don't even take up one
percent which just shows how small we are and how tiny we are so i want to um
show the carl sagan's pelvic um video and so i never i've always heard of it
on the star party but i never really looked into it because i always thought you know
oh i'll like look into it one day i'll do a presentation on it one day because this sounds actually really interesting
and because um and i was researching um
voyager 1 and i just saw this image while i was researching
and i think that's that's us like right there you're there and you can barely even see the content
the continents and all the countries and stuff like that there's no borders
i mean look at earth you don't even see that many borders it's looking far away you don't even see
anything and so it's crazy to think that that were that small and
then you can't even see another planet and view right now
you can barely even see another planet and view and that's how far stretched out our solar system is and we don't
even take up one percent and so i wanted to show the um carl sagan's pale uh pale blue dot video
let's see and we'll go this is a um it's the same audio but it is from the
2014 um remaster of the show
that's here that's home that's us on it
everyone you love everyone you know everyone you've ever heard of every
human being whoever was lived out their lives the aggregate or joy and suffering
thousands of confident religions ideologies and economic doctrines every hunter and forager
every hero and power and every creator and destroyer of civilization
every king and peasant every young couple in love every mother and father
hopeful child inventor and explorer every teacher of morals every corrupt
politician every superstar every supreme leader every saint and sinner in
the history of our species live there on a load of dust
suspended the earth is a very small stage
in a vast cosmic arena think of the rivers of blood
spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph they can
become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot
think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this
pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner
[Music]
our imagined self-importance the delusion that we have some privileged
position in the universe are challenged
our planet is
[Music]
save us from ourselves the earth is the only world known so far
to harbor life there is nowhere else at least in the near future
to which our species can migrate
it has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience
there is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits
than this distant image to me it underscores our responsibility to
deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish
but i never knew this video existed and for a long time i was doing astronomy for
three years and i never missed video existed and it was just crazy that
every single kid at space camp never knew this video existed and i sh they showed it to us at the
astronomy talk and everybody was just amazed and when i got home i showed it to all my friends and i told them i said
you know this talk's just not about astronomy it's about all of humanity it just it
just doesn't show what astronomy does it shows you know it just shows what humanity has
accomplished from the wheel all the way to cars that drive himself and space
vehicles that are going to take people to another planet into our own moon and it just shows
how advanced we are in human technology and how big this news is for us
and i know in the video he says the delusion that we think the delusion that uh we
have that we think that we ever play spot in the universe that we really we
don't really take up a lot so there's so much more to be accomplished and i thought this video was so cool and
um i have to start a club this year in my school for astronomy if they let a
club do it and i know i've been talking with my science teacher because um we had to go to school for
two days to do um testing and while my dad was out in the parking
lot trying to pick me up my science teacher goes over to my dad and goes
you know libby she's gonna have a job in astronomy one day and then i goes
i believe in her and then my uh my dad said that my teacher went
to be honest i don't think she'll have a job in science but i think she'll have a job in astronomy
she and she was like every single time i try to host a class she always brings up astronomy in the chat and and i've been
emailing my teacher we've been trying to email her trying to get her to um be the teacher
who um helps me do the astronomy group in my school because i want to carry the
torch and there's a lot of kids who are interested and i just love to get more kids interested because
i mean it's crazy that i was doing astronomy for four years of my life before i ever knew
this video existed and back a while ago um in march when i was at disney with my
friend um we split up for a while because she didn't want to um she there was this one ride called
mission space and it basically simulates what it's like to launch and
to rock it and it simulates g-force and stuff like that and so um
i remember i was on the outside of the building and there was these glass
little plates on the side of the building and i was looking at them because i never really paid attention it was just me my mom and i saw carl sagan
um his quote up there and i uh saw his name
and i was just amazed as you know i mean i'm not a lot of people know who carl
sagan is but to think that his quote was up on a glass plate and it was just amazing quote i
took my picture by it and i thought that was so cool that i saw somebody
and i showed the video to my dad i showed the video to my mom on the way home
i showed the video to my friends i even i was just this would be amazing
video to inspire anybody yeah libby i think you've uh stumbled upon something that's
very important and um and it's wonderful that you get it you know so um
i think i think that's great i think that's great thanks thank you for your presentation
thank you for having me it's funny because it's like so many people think that we are the biggest thing in the universe
and that everything that's the problem yeah everything we do matters but nothing really does it's just
self-improvement for ourselves and discovering what else we can do in the universe and how tiny we are
yeah i think it does matter motivation it's it's good to have the perspective
that uh um you know the um you know the pale blue dot can help
remind us of you know so that's right all right libby thank you thank you very
much yeah thank you and david levy is back in the house so david how are you oh i'm uh
i'm fine i just came back from my appointment with my nephrologist and
he says with a little bit of luck i might be able to keep my one remaining kidney and um
he's not i mean i was worried he was gonna just take him take a gun and shoot me right on the spot right there okay
but i'm still here and he says everything's fine and we just have to watch it
anyway scotty and everybody else um i think it's really quite
something how carl sagan's wisdom and advice and words
are now transversing the generations so that libby and her generation
are now getting a dose of sagan but for my quote tonight i would like to uh
go back to a late 19th early 20th century writer oscar wilde
and he was pretty shy and he actually wrote these words
while he was in prison it's from the book day profundus
society and we as we have constituted it will have no place for me
has none to offer but nature whose street reigns fall on unjust and
just alike will have clefts in the rocks where i may hide and secret valleys in whose silence i
may weep undisturbed she will hang the night with stars so that i may walk abroad in the darkness
without stumbling and send the wind over my footprints so
that none may track me to my heart she will cleanse me in great waters and with bitter herbs make me old
thank you scotty thank you clear night and hoping to get some observing you
yeah wonderful wonderful thanks for joining us and and for making the sacrifice to um
be here on global star party thanks man
thank you yeah it's wonderful well up next is uh
connell richards connell was brought to us uh first introduced to us by
chuck allen of the astronomical league and uh we've really enjoyed uh having
connell on our programs his presentations are very professional and uh
you know i think that uh connell has a bright future ahead of him i think a lot of people think that and uh
you know so connell thanks for you know uh spending your time with us here on global star party and uh
you know being one of the uh younger uh astronomers that uh present here so thanks very much man
thank you very much scott it's always good to be here global star party is always so much fun and i really do love
sharing the cosmos with other people so i'll get going here i'm just going to
share my screen once i get things set up
and uh let me know if you can see this okay
sure yep i can see it okay wonderful
now when i first saw the theme uh for this week following stars and fireballs i was reminded like many of us
of some very memorable meteor showers or bull lights that we've seen
scott you talked earlier about some of them leaving smoke trails behind i've seen some of the different colors greens
and blues some are more of an orange or yellow so there really is a rich
a lot of rich opportunity in watching meteors and just sitting back and taking in all of the sky and not fussing with
any equipment or any particular gold that you might have and because it's so simple to go out
there and simply enjoy a meteor shower and soak up the night sky i've always viewed them as great opportunities for
astronomical outreach especially for younger people so you know binoculars as easy as they are to use
are one step above the naked eye and and telescopes might be the next iteration after that
i found that when you can find astronomical phenomena that people can take in and enjoy from their homes
without any equipment or a lot of preparation that's a really good way of getting people involved in the hobby
and i'm taking an opportunity to do just that in about a week or so so the local
library is having a program uh where they're talking about summer and nature and reading and of course all of that
and i've been a member of the library's team leadership committee for for some time i've enjoyed a lot of time there
and i'm doing sort of an outreach event there this is on august 13th where i'll be talking
about meteor showers so i'll go to the first slide here i was looking for some materials that i
could easily use online things that were free things that were easy to print or purchase online and things that were
very easy to get into the hands of people so i have four different items plus some
planospheres some small cardboard ones i bought from the astronomical league and i'll get to
meteor showers at the end but starting off here we have something called a dark sky wheel i found this from night sky
network and i figured that if we're giving materials to children it's especially important that they understand the
importance of keeping a dark night sky and shielding your lights and taking in um the dark sky from from
the best place that you can so this chart that i found it has two wheel components that are
kind of held together one shows the constellation of scorpius and they have an orion version of this as well for
winter it's centered on antares and of course that's a very easy star to find in the
sky because of its deep red color and this wheel here shows what that constellation would look like from
different skies and different light polluted levels as you can see just one here you can only see the bright first magnitude star
antares in the middle and as we go around the wheel and get darker you can eventually see more of the sky
and though it's not really drawn on here i suspect you might even be able to see some of the milky way in that
constellation because it is so close to sagittarius where the southern milky way and the center is
now that wheel goes into here and you can slide each slide in as you turn it for the different pollution levels
and then you can also see some information they have on the back this is again from night sky network about
what you can see in different light polluted levels how to stop light pollution and how to understand what
you're seeing and the factors that change that now moving on i have another object here
that we're all quite familiar with we've been talking about this at some of the past couple of gsps would be the moon
now it's bright in our sky very easy for everybody to see there's so much to take in with binoculars or even the naked eye
and because you can see some of the outlines of the seas and even some of the craters i can say i've seen taiko
and copernicus during a full moon because of their bright ray systems that's a really fun project to to share
with people this skywatcher's guide to the moon because uh many of them grew up with the
apollo missions or many of them read about the the missions to the moon in in books as kids
so that's a great way to get people tied up in observing the moon and then observing the rest of the night sky by extension in fact we just celebrated the
50th anniversary of apollo 15. i think that was just a couple days ago where i saw it was the
50th anniversary of their launch back to orbit to dock with command module so this is all quite relevant and all very
interesting to capture people's interest now a third item here i found from nasa
they have a series of charts online uh 12 of them one for each
month of the year and they show you where the constellations are in the sky and then they have some dotted lines here to show
where the ecliptic is and i suspect that's for the celestial equator as well
and at the bottom here this is really great for kids where i'm focusing my library program you have these little
planets all kind of cut to scale and you can kind of cut off that bottom and and
move them around in the sky and see where they are based on different charts whether you find them online or in an
astronomical periodical but this is again a really fun way to get people looking up with no equipment with no
binoculars or anything like that now lastly here we have the meteor
showers of course the subject of tonight's global star party and really fun to share with people because they're always
talking about these in the weather in the newspaper uh in a lot of major news outlets if there is one aspect of
astronomy that makes its way to the mainstream the most i would say it's meteor showers so this is a chart in the bottom here
and they talk about the different showers the piercings probably my favorite and one of the brightest and
most frequent they show you when that peaks and in fact i do have
a binder with some sheet protectors in the backpack i take out observing just with some information on each of
the meteor showers if i happen to be out observing one even though it's just with the naked eye it's really a useful tool to have
now this handout i found from night sky network that i'll be handing out right at the peak of the piercings tells you
how to observe a meteor shower because i've had many people ask me who knew that i was interested in astronomy
and a regular observer they'd say well i'm going out do i just look straight up is there a certain time and they have a
lot of questions like that so it really is important when you're telling people how to observe a meteor shower that the
meteors come from a radiant that being a particular point in the sky and this one
this one is the image for the radiant of the piercings it shows you have this kind of point in
the center and all these arrows coming out showing you where the the meteors come
from there are many meteors in our night sky but you can usually tell what their origin is based on the radiant
especially if it's during a meteor shower and then by extension it's even more fun to learn that when certain meteors come
from a certain meteor shower they come from a specific parent object and you know that you saw a piece of that object
burning up in our atmosphere so it's really a special way to to connect with objects in the night sky that we cannot
see when you're using the naked eye so this handout i found it has some other charts there as well showing how
comets orbit the earth and they scatter their debris across the the earth's plane and that it also tells you
how the objects come by and how the earth is kind of plowing through this field of tiny objects that we see
burning up in the atmosphere and then like i said most important towards the bottom would be the
descriptions of meteor showers now i'd like to conclude i'll go back to an image i had
at the beginning here i think i can zoom in a little bit this meteor is what i believe to be a
pierced i captured this image in august of last year around the time the pierces peaked
and you can see it has a bit of an orange or yellow color i think this was a 20 or 30 second exposure i took
but then again you can find out where the object came from by tracing the radiant back so i was looking at some
star atlases i found some of these field stars and traced it back and sure enough it went right about to where the pierced
radiant was in the sky for that particular day now this image i took it was a little
before or after so it might have been a straggler but still really special to see a an image of that object i'm not
sure but i think it was swift tuttle that is the parent object for this this
meteor shower so thank you very much scott and i appreciate the opportunity to share
meteor showers and some of the work i'm doing with the library and reflect on some of the things i did in school as well
meteor showers for everybody for all of us doing outreach are a really special opportunity to share especially the
piercings which are unforgettable in their brightness and their frequency
thank you thank you very much connell okay so up next is going to be uh
adrian bradley um adrian has been on many of our programs uh he loves to
photograph the night sky and shown as many beautiful examples of that
his specialty is the milky way but all kinds of views of our night sky
where he's always including you know some amazing foreground and landscape that really captures the
imagination so adrian turn it over to you yep so um thank you scott for the
introduction thank you all of you that have uh presented david it is always nice to see you my friend
don't let him take your kidney just yet not until i come and visit and molly it's good to see you on here
in ohio as well um i've joked about uh being from michigan and attending the university of
michigan so i will not hold your new location against you um i personally have no
um fandom with with the ohio state
but the fact that university already heard of it and ohio state university the ohio state university yeah the
school down south um i do believe has some um as far as their science they i mean
they're a big ten school for a reason it's yeah yeah they got some stuff yep so we won't we won't go into ohio
state so much interrupt for a second with all due respect for saying negative
things about ohio molly is from the state that also sired leslie pelter
and he was born in ohio in 1900 he died in 1980 and discovered each of his
twelve comets from belfos we have his uh merry-go-round telescope
out at the uh uh john bryan observatory out here nice it's really cool
anyway sorry so that's okay there the place that i'm going to show most of my images is
actually about 30 minutes from ohio in a place called lake hudson dark sky preserve and um
i've dared yell at the night sky for not providing something
and i've dared ask the night sky to produce something and sometimes the night sky actually
responds you're gonna see with um i'm going to go ahead and share
my screen of images and as i do um
i wanted to i wanted to start by just acknowledging that in astronomy we often
you know we i we go banter back and forth about our schools astronomy has
been a geneva of sorts for all things and one of the biggest things that um
like libby even talked about was covet and we're seeing masked mandates go up
we're seeing different things in the news now about the possibilities of even if you're
vaccinated being asked to mask again and and for many of us it may
spell you know some doom for possible get-togethers
and things like that one thing that isn't offered as much are
ways to address the um sting of having to deal
with the possibility of catching covet 19 and the backdrop of my sky here
is one thing that we offer from this star party and all all of us who like
astronomy from amateurs to professionals we encourage you
if this sort of news gets you down like it gets me down go outside when it is clear and look up
in the sky and you you may find that you suddenly feel a little bit better and um the the the
power that just looking at the universe from your backyard has now whether you
if you're catholic like i am or you know you have a religion or for the atheists that may be out there
we agree on one thing looking up you know the universe itself is awesome
and that is if anything that is should be the takeaway every time you come to a
global star party so i will go ahead and launch into a story
some of the images that you see here and you may notice the milky way being
in a very similar orientation in a lot of them um
i'll start with just getting this image out of the way which is the latest one that i tried to take i like baseball and i found a field
in a northern part of michigan and smoke is still
wafting over us so not much milky way here
but it's still part of why i do my night photography
um not too many other people do it and i find it's a way to combine
my passion of um things like old ball fields or other
quiet wooded areas and a beautiful night sky above them and even if i can't quite
get a perfect night sky i'll still see what colors i get you know i like shooting over water as well
the theme is um meteors and fireballs from the sky so
at one point when i started trying to image the milky way i um
i'd go to this park and i'd take shots this is me learning how to
shoot at the milky way a couple of years ago this is jupiter and this is saturn as we know now saturn
is more over here jupiter rises a little later milky way looks the same but the planets
do move around and that's how you can tell what year i believe this is 20 believe this
is 20 uh 18 or 2019 i have to look at the dates
for it um so
here's how the story goes i decide to try and image the area of cygnus there's a little meteor there
or at least i would think it's a meteor because of how it you know starts
it's light and then gets heavy uh the this was around this uh
was it july 24th time of the perseids so i'm thinking this might be a perceived
right here now at the time i took this photo i didn't look at it this close and realize i did
have a little meteor because there was a fireball if you can imagine being below this frame
a big streak goes right below this frame and when i look at the picture i go i
didn't get it so saying a few choice words that uh
i wouldn't want to say because libby's here and many of you have children um i did not slam my camera onto the
ground but i felt like doing that you know it's early on and i'm a hot head as you can tell just just upset that i
didn't get a fireball in my picture and go for it
so well so the story the story gets better i decided to turn
around and aim at this area in the park and just take some milky way shots because i
was thinking i'll stack a few of them and see if i can get a better looking image
so i turn around i look back up at the cygnus region
shaking my fist in the air and um the guy next to me says did you see that
meteor what meteor and he points in the direction that my
camera was aiming and this was the very next frame and
look what i caught possible perseid and i go wow
i actually caught one and that was despite the fact that i wanted to cuss out the universe for not giving me
a shot like that early universe the whole i cussed out the whole universe and then here we go
that was that was the same size as the um meteor that i saw going under the cygnus region
and i i think this was a 20-second exposure and
the as soon as someone said did you see the meteor and i heard a click
um barely caught that one i tried a couple ways to process this
one i did it this way with the you know the air glow and the tungsten
and look at all the grain i didn't have my noise um denoiser later in life i would try to
put the denoiser on and it didn't help i made a mess of this photo but it still
wound up in a calendar at my job because i didn't know where else to send it
and um this was probably the best that i could do and you know i still have these stars
um you know my love of shooting the milky way and then this one
fireball made this perhaps one of the most unique pictures that i've ever shot
and made me want to continue and keep going um just as easily could have been
this shot which is same area but no
no meteor i've returned to try and capture lightning in the bottle a couple
of times other in a different part of the park i caught a fireball over this milky way
shot or well i call it a fireball i think the rest of you might not it was just this
thin little line here um shooting over over the core
and i remember seeing that meteor as i was acquiring the photo
haven't done it much since um i've gone back
i tried to this this is that same shot again i've gone back i think this is a year
later using different techniques and so you see jupiter and saturn have moved
and i tried lightning in a bottle again but
i think the universe said i gave well so there's this little line right here but i'm not so sure
whether it's a meteor or not but it was always a thrill to see if see if a streak of light
goes across my image just like it did that fateful day in and i'm going to
figure out what year the year was uh not 2019. so this is back in 2019
when that happened so that's 2020 and this is 2021.
another anniversary but there's smoke in the air and i
the best i could do was to try and tease milky way and some stars out of all of the smoke that was going
on but they're saturn this is uh saturn and there's
so i better be careful i'm thinking that this is saturn and this is jupiter i will have to plate solve that to make
sure that's true uh but that's the that's the way that saturn and jupiter look so you can see
over time with these uh photos how the planets move and
why they would be considered they were considered the wanderers or named for being wanderers in the sky because
they were never in the same place year to year so to finish the story i
went out to image at a slightly lesser dark
area nature preserve we had lost one of the members in our uh
we'd lost one of the members in one of the clubs i'm in john koslin and um
we on the anniversary of his death i went out observed did some imaging
it wasn't quite nightfall but i could see enough of the milky way
to um try and get an image of it and couple things happened that night
that um i'll always remember one i once again go and yell at the universe and say
you know john if you're up there why don't you shoot me a meteor you know i dare to
ask for something and then i look away as i'm taking an image and i look back at the image
and this is what i saw going through the milky way
the trail of yet what i believe to be another person because it was around a similar time
and also what you don't see in this image is
later on and even larger meteor streaks to the north above my head i see the
entire thing streaking over and i decided i wasn't going to be upset
this time because i didn't get a chance to image it i figured that one was for me
and i'll always take that as a as a reminder that regardless of belief
the universe can show you a number of things even if the only way you can see it is from your
uh from your own vantage point um whatever park you go to or
if it's just outside of your house dare to ask and you may receive
so with that i will end my presentation
rest in peace to john koslin and if you manage to get clear skies and there
isn't much smoke from wildfires i encourage you to go and look up and
count as many persons as you can and enjoy the night sky
um as long as we have it and um and with that i'll stop sharing if
there's any questions i'll be happy to take those david
yeah thank you that uh as always your photographs are really just so
inspiring and as i said the other day to you um
when i look at your pictures i think of mozart i have a picture here that i'm going to show
it's you're not going to see it very well it's in one of the books that i wrote a book about bart bock who loved the milky
way and in this picture again in the top left you can see vega
and down the bottom right you see out there and it's just a picture of the milky way
it's nothing so terrific nothing so wonderful except the date that i took it
was march 19 1993. that was the night before i left to join
jean and carolyn shoemaker at palomar observatory and
a few nights later while i was at the observatory with them we discovered comets should make our
community and so that's why this picture is so important to me
i just wanted to say that good spread that fits in perfectly it's you never
know what's gonna happen you go out um and look at the night sky and then
any any picture that you take before or after serves as a reminder of
you know of that fleeting moment that you know you you capture you see something out there and you go oh wow
look what i caught 100 times frozen yes
absolutely all right scott back to you adrian thank you so much
okay so at this point what we're going to do is we're going to take a 10 minute break
and then we'll be back with more global star party
hey adrian yeah if you're still here do you have time for a quick technical question
sure no charge though no charge no charge no well if this
leads to the image i'm hoping then i'm sure it'll be worth it so i try and share my screen here
oh well the other participant is sharing well i'll do the best i can so a couple nights
yeah a couple nights ago i was out imaging and i got a series of a bunch of exposures and put them all in lightroom
they were all the same iso in time and everything like that but i was trying to stack them into an image and i couldn't
really figure out how to do that do you know how to do that in both lightroom cc and lightroom
classic they now have a um an option and i'll look forward in uh
cc i think so you can try a photo merge and you can try
hdr but i don't know that photo merge itself works
i know in photoshop there is a direct stack
stacking that you can do um [Music] but you can try photo merge the one pro
the one problem with photo merge though is if you take unless you took images
directly in the night sky and you don't have anything in earth as a reference um photo merge you can actually try hdr
will will merge or stack your images together for astro stuff i've always used deep
sky stack deep sky stacker which is one of the many programs you can use to get the same thing going
but um yeah if you're using lightroom try photo merge
you can try hdr i've done that with a few series of
shots lately um the one that i showed at a baseball field was a merge of three
different images taken at like different uh i believe taking that different um
aperture so that they were different levels of bright or dark and it was able
to stack those into a you know into an image to a final image
so give that a shot otherwise yeah otherwise they're free deep sky
stacker is free if you've got room to download that you can throw all your images into there
and just stack the images you don't have to stack them with any you know you've got like darks or flats and things you
don't have to use any additional um files you can just stack them there and
see what you get i think lightroom will do it for you as well
i'm trying that now the uh photo merge for hdr yeah well i was going for a star trail
so i had 118 images they were 20 second exposures at iso 1600 i think
ah okay yeah that that should work
um yeah just try it you can try the photo merge you can
i know in photoshop you group into stack and um then that works
and what else um layers in photoshop where you take every
single image and you make it you basically make it as you
you import it as a layer and after you've imported all 118 of it you flatten the image and you
have your um you have your star field
but i think the photo merge will also do it okay
i'm trying that now it's taking its time because i had yeah you had 18 images 118 high res yeah
yeah yeah you had the patience to do it um yeah i think uh
yeah i think that'll work for you or at least if it does work for you let me know because yeah that's those
are the other ways i'd have i'd forgotten that i wanted to do star trails but i've gotten into just
getting doing the nightscape so i haven't done star trek i haven't tried star trails again in a while
right right i did them um i guess what i could call my old-fashioned way where i'd do like one exposure for 15 minutes with the
lowest iso i could maybe a little longer yeah but they were all kind of noise and and things like that so
there if that's going to happen you can you'll you'll get rid of the noise after you
um you'll get rid of the noise after you get the image stacked what are the signs
of spring they are as familiar as a blooming thank you a songbird at dawn a surprising shaft of
warmth from the afternoon sun and oh yes don't forget the meteors
spring is fireball season says bill cook of nasa's meteoroid environment office for reasons we don't fully understand
the rate of bright meteors climbs during the weeks around the vernal equinox in other seasons a person willing to watch
the sky from dusk to dawn could expect to see around 10 random or sporadic fireballs
a fireball is a meteor brighter than the planet venus earth is bombarded by them as our planet plows through the flotsam
and jetsam of space for example fragments of broken asteroids and decaying comets that
litter the inner solar system in spring fireballs are more abundant their nightly rate mysteriously climbs
10 to 30 percent we've known about this phenomenon for more than 30 years says cook
it's not only fireballs that are affected meteorite falls space rocks that actually hit the ground are more common
in spring as well meteor expert peter brown of the university of western ontario
notes that some researchers think there might be an intrinsic variation in the meteoroid population along earth's orbit
with a peak in big fireball producing debris around spring and early summer we probably won't know the answer until
we learn more about their orbits to solve this and other puzzles cook is setting up a network of smart meteor
cameras around the country to photograph fireballs and automatically triangulate their orbits
networked observations of spring fireballs could ultimately reveal their origin it might take a few years to collect
enough data he cautions until then it's a beautiful mystery go out and enjoy the night sky
it is spring after all
[Music] well we're back everybody this is scott roberts with explore scientific and the
explore alliance and up next is molly wakeling molly has been on many of our programs
uh both our day programs and of course many global star parties and one of the
things i love about molly is her ability to present the really kind of technical
side of astronomy but also the love and the the
beauty of uh the things that she looks at and photographs and so
um molly i'm going to turn this program over to you uh but i really love having you on the show thanks
thanks i'm glad to be back again um can't be on every week anymore since i'm working on my phd and things are a
little crazy um but i try to come on sometimes um i have a new webcam that is
saturating my face so i'm still kind of working on getting the light levels figured out for some reason so apologies
in advance but don't worry you don't have to see my pictures from my face for much longer because i'm about to share my slides
um let me get this i think you have a cool haircut molly so
yeah thanks i i just got that haircut i'm uh really excited about it
loving the short hair yeah i was gonna say something and decided i'd leave that alone
i think haircut's a pretty safe thing to generally comment on okay good
well that's nice thank you um yes so i i figured there'd be
plenty of talk tonight about what uh fireballs and and meteors are and um
there's not really a specific one to really talk about that i've imaged at least so i decided to
just talk about yet another astronomical object of interest and tonight i decided
to talk about messier 82 also known as the cigar galaxy and this is an
action-packed talk so it'll be a little on the long side but i think it will be it'll be fun and entertaining and
educational um all right so uh what is
the cigar galaxy so uh it is a starburst galaxy it's actually it's it's class um
it's um uh uh shape class is is
usually considered to be irregular although some spiral structure has been found some bard structure uh in the
infrared but it's a pretty chaotic galaxy so it's usually just referred to as an irregular galaxy
it is also known as messier 82 or if you like the new general catalog number 3034
and we are seeing this galaxy from an edge-on view which is one of the things
that makes it so cool is that we're able to see the really awesome uh
gas outflows and i'm going to talk about here in a second all right so first where is the
uh where is the cigar galaxy so it is a pretty northerly target i think it's
probably uh well there would be some parts of the year where some southern hemisphere observers can see it
um but largely it's a northern hemisphere target if so i've got some screenshots from
stellarium here we've got the big dipper over here and it's uh not too far off
the kind of the the bowl of the big dipper here i'm not going to give a detailed binder chart
because you if you're going to go hot decorate you probably know how to do that yourself but here's the kind of
general region of where it's at in the constellation ursa major and when you do look at it particularly
with binoculars or a small like a refractor or a short focal length telescope you can see
both m82 and its partner m81 over here usually in the same field of view
so uh they make a nice pair together up in the sky
so some fast facts i mentioned is in the constellation of ursa major
excuse me uh post pandemic i've been i've been talking to well post
lockdown part of pandemic i suppose i should say we're still inside the pandemic i've been talking a lot more to
my classmates than i have before so i keep losing my voice because i'm talking during the day where i didn't used to
talk during the day for the last year um so it's about 12 million light years
away so relatively close as far as galaxies go which is part of what makes it so bright and so large on our sky
it was discovered by johann alert bode in 1774 he's a german astronomer and uh
later was rediscovered by pierre machaine however we say that in french
who told charles messier about it and then messier included it in his catalog
has an apparent magnitude of 8.4 which is pretty bright and puts it nicely inside of binocular range for
even fairly light polluted locations and it's about 37 000 light years in diameter which makes it a little more
than a third of the diameter of the milky way but it's actually about five times more luminous than the milky way
it just puts out an insane amount of light and that's because of all the new stars that are being formed in it since
it is a starburst galaxy so what is a starburst galaxy
so in the case of m82 uh intense star formation has been triggered by
tidal interactions with m81 which is physically about 300 000 light years away
from m82 so they're they're physically gravitationally interacting
about 100 million years ago tidal forces from m81 started to deform and 82 kind
of giving it its irregular shape previous title encounters are responsible for funneling
all like a huge amount of gas into m82 with that happening a couple of times
between 200 million years ago and four to six million years ago and it's this inflow of gas and dust
that that sparked all the star formation because suddenly there was all this gas
available to form stars and stars were as as these hot young stars
were emitting tons of radiation and stellar wind that compresses the
interstellar gas to make even more stars so it's kind of the self-beating process
and to compare just how much star formation is going on in m82 versus
normal galaxies uh in the galactic center of m82 new stars are born about 10 times more often
10 times faster than within the entire milky way not that a single star is born
faster but that the rate of star formation is about 10 times higher than the rate of star formation in the milky
way galaxy and in most other galaxies so just a furious star formation rate
and their radiation and energetic particles that are coming off of the new stars are creating that
that red glow that's coming off of m82 which is actually a lot of gas and dust
kind of being thrown out by the stellar winds and it's got a
kind of a sci-fi name of the bipolar super wind which i think is kind of fun the super wind yeah
now uh the starburst will eventually consume enough material to kind of put itself out so when
there's not really any more gas and dust around to turn into stars then the rate of star formation will decrease and
that's estimated to happen in a few tens of millions of years but for now we have quite the light show from m82
so there's a lot of other interesting stuff going on in this galaxy as well as one can imagine
uh the chandra x-ray observatory has discovered a fluctuating x-ray source about 600
light years away from the core of the cigar galaxy and while we have observed
a lot of supermassive black holes and um have been sometimes able to infer the
locations of stellar mass black holes we haven't really observed much in the way of of a class of black holes called
intermediate mass black holes which are in between solar mass black holes and
supermassive black holes so um this one based on its x-ray emission is estimated to be between 200 to 5 000 solar masses
which is a lot but a lot less than the supermassive black holes that lie at the cores of most galaxies the one at the
core of m82 is 30 million solar masses to put that in perspective and we
measure things in china maybe we tend to measure the masses of things in the universe in terms of solar masses
instead of saying like kilograms or something like that just because it would be huge kind of like the numbers that are
difficult to work with and putting things in units of solar masses just makes things pretty convenient for us humans
here another interesting thing from that's uh showing up in m82 is a
supernova that was discovered in january 2014 the supernova of course happened 12
million years ago but the light has had just now reached us back in january 2014.
it was magnitude 11.7 at discovery and brightened to 10.5 so certainly within
within visual range with a larger instrument um and the fact that you can
see a single star in a galaxy 12 million light years away when it goes supernova
i think it's pretty darn cool and uh so it was definitely within the
range of being able to see visibly with the telescope uh i was not observing yet at that time so
i i didn't see i don't know if any of you got the chance to observe that uh
there's probably a uh astronomy news kind of push out about that because whenever there is a
supernova in a nearby galaxy you can go observe it most of the time it's pretty cool to see this this these transient
phenomena in the relatively unchanging universe as it appears to us
so i'd like to also show in this segment what some of these astronomical objects look like in other wavelengths we deal
with the optical part of the spectrum in in visual and photographic astronomy
most of the time but there's a lot of stuff going on in other wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum that can
tell us even more about what's happening inside of these astronomical objects like the
cigar galaxy so this is a radio image from the very large array and i guess another
radio telescope called merlin at five gigahertz which by the way is about the wavelengths of uh
your uh five of your five uh not your 2.4 gigahertz wi-fi but your
5 gigahertz wi-fi which um some of you may have in your houses um and an unknown object emitting in the
in a radio frequency was discovered at the john rail bank
observatory at the university of manchester in the uk and it's an interesting radio emission
uh it's it's very powerful to be able to see it from here but also it was kind of transient it wasn't there
and then it appeared quite brightly but it doesn't match the rise and fall times
of supernovae and it also doesn't have
any any x-ray light at all which is usually a company's radio light when you
have a type of phenomenon called a micro quasar so and it doesn't really match anything
else astrophysically known yet either so people are still trying to figure out
at least as far as i could tell what uh what this object might be
it's also a little bit too far from the central black hole in the galaxy to be affiliated with that
black hole so whenever there's new stuff discovered out in space and uh there's lots of lots
of stuff that we don't know yet but yet we can probe with the electromagnetic spectrum which is always
really cool to think about on some other wavelengths we have
infrared from spitzer which which highlights that outflow that super wind the the dust cloud
and uh so in that infrared image yeah the the red are uh dust particles
that emit on a um on a longer infrared wavelength and the
blue are hot stars sitting on a shorter infrared wavelength so they they false
color so you can see the different infrared wavelengths that are being shown over on the right is an ultraviolet
image there is setting just some optical in this one as well but largely ultraviolet image from
the swift telescope up in space and uh
the um actually so sorry this note that i have
here respect for the infrared image um the the dust in in that outflow which
you can also see some some glow from in the uv image as well is actually uh
one of the one of the elements that has been detected in that dust is a carbon
compound called a polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon which is
the smelly stuff in tailpipes and barbecue pits and other places of
combustion so you know because we tend to think about especially as
visual astronomers and astrophotographers we're going to think about elemental things in space like a hydrogen gas
oxygen gas sulfur gas and we think about what's in stars like helium and
and these other elements but there's actually a lot of molecules in space as well and that's a lot of what those dark
nobili are that you can see on a dark knight in the milky way uh and are scattered throughout our sky
is there's a lot of of space chemistry happening that is both reminiscent of hydrocarbon
chemistry that we see here on earth but also some chemistry that we don't see here on earth because the densities of
the molecules are so sparse that reactions that happen very quickly here
happen very very slowly in space and you can get molecules that don't exist here on earth because of the different
conditions that are in space so a lot of radio astronomy probes into the uh
molecular compounds that are out there in space and it's really cool to think about like i mean it wasn't just carbon
and hydrogen and oxygen elements that were on earth to form the basis of life
but there was actual molecules out in space that kind of build these building blocks of
life so super cool to think about and finally uh moving up the magnetic
electromagnetic spectrum the x-ray this is an x-ray image of m82 or
at least the the blue and the pink parts are the other colors uh come from some optical data put into this image as well
so you can kind of see what you're looking at but again that gas and dust outflow
glows on multiple wavelengths and as you can see that includes x-ray here from the chandra space
telescope the image on the right isn't uh isn't a wavelength of light
but the magnetic field lines that are associated with the
outflow of gas and dust overlaid over an optical or an infrared image of
of a midi 2 taken by the sofia instrument which is that telescope that flies on an airplane that nasa flies up
in the upper atmosphere or not the upper atmosphere but as far as our planes fly
right and i and there's kind of some some interesting questions about if the
magnetic field lines loop back in which would pull the dust back into the
galaxy to form new stars or if the magnetic field lines break open
and continue to push the gas and dust out into the intergalactic medium
providing material seeding it with material that may eventually become
future stars or maybe even future galaxies uh so dumping material into the intergalactic medium and from what i
could find that was a an open question still as to what the shape of these magnetic field
lines and how they're affecting the those uh the bipolar super wind
uh yeah so observing the cigar galaxy uh it is quite bright so you cannot you can
see it with small instruments to include binoculars even in relative uh
relatively high amounts of light pollution it'll be kind of a diminished smudge as most things in visual
astronomy are but you can snag m81 and m82 together with binoculars or small telescopes and
that makes for a nice view and and uh a decent outreach target if you want to show
people a galaxy that's bright enough to kind of see the shape of uh although it's not as impressive as the
pictures on the box of telescopes the cigar shape is more obvious with
larger scopes where you have a smaller field of view and to be able to kind of make out some of that cigar shape
on the photographic side it's really excellent both at large fields of view
so you can where you can capture both galaxies together and small fields of view where you can get a lot more detail
just on m82 so it's it's really great for for a wide variety of telescope focal lengths and
apertures the red super wind is difficult to catch wideband i'm about to show a picture here where i
captured some of it but um it's it's a lot more easily captured if you do some narrow band
imaging with it either using like a duo or just multi-narrow band filter
the color camera or using a hydrogen alpha filter with your monochrome camera
and if you go under dark skies to image it there's a lot of integrated flux nebula in that region you probably have
seen a lot of pictures of emitting emitte2 with this white glowy dust in the
background and what that is is it's so cool it is the it's it's dust that is around the
milky way around our galaxy that is not being eliminated by one star or one
cluster of stars but just by the total light being emitted by the milky way writ large
so it's kind of this grayish white reflecting off of off of uh intergalactic dust surrounding our
galaxy that you can pick up in image in some places in the sky and uh
particularly it seems to congregate around our north pole
uh up around where where m81 and m82 are so this is uh one
of my favorite images i've i've gotten of m82 so far this was actually over a
single night up at a dark sky site about bortle three and a half up in the tahoe national forest out in
california before i moved out to ohio it was done with my zwo color camera my
asi 294 mc pro just with the astronomic luminance filter
thank you so much m40 and it's just under five hours total exposure time for this one and got uh
was able to get some of the uh not a lot of it but some of that
super wind coming off of here you can see some of the red uh and the dust overlaying the the
edge on view of the core of the galaxy here got a really cool nebula in m81 here and of course all this background
smoke if you will it kind of looks like of the of the ifn the integrated flux nebula
which was super exciting to have come out in my image and me knowing it's not some weird camera phenomenon but that
it's an actual real phenomenon yeah i learned about the fact that the um
that uh flux or whatever you were talking about folks would try thought that it was some
sort of noise and try and get it out of there and it turns out
that it belongs there exact that it's a part of it that was that was news to me when i learned it so
it was cool it's cool to see that i guess there's something similar to that around uh polaris as well yes yes
so it's more of the same up around uh polaris so i think polaris also has some nebulosity around it locally from what i
understand um but yeah there's a lot of of this nebulosity kind of up around the the
north pole region in general um i don't know a whole lot about
whether it's kind of evenly distributed around the milky way and we can just see it up it up in the northern part of the
sky because we're looking um above the galactic plain or
or whether it's kind of concentrated in specific areas i'm not sure but it does tend to show up most often in images of
m81 and m82 and sometimes polaris now that i think of it animating one and 82 are
they they are north you know they're circumpolar for us in northern hemisphere so it makes sense that that
medium would be in that area yeah yeah um yeah that's what i got on mini 2
awesome awesome wonderful okay uh molly that's that's great i've
learned more about m82 than i think i ever knew so thank you so much it's so cool
to see it also and all those different wavelengths and you know and knowing that we have all these um these
telescopes to you know to study it in this way and you know all the researchers to uh
to pick it apart and you know to teach us what's going on inside of that amazing galaxy so
i've got a quick view a quick live view of the ring nebula don't want me to show that right oh
that's fantastic yeah i've been uh while i've been talking my i've been i've been live
stacking some frames on the ring nebula now i'm having some guiding issues so my stars
uh look a little funny oh i also forgot to refocus so a little
that's what this is i i i focused you were too excited to show us that things got out of whack
yeah i like it still i set the focus for what's best for my guide camera which is in between the focus points for
my chroma filters and my astronomic filters for when i was calibrating guiding and i forgot to go back to
the uh the focus point for um uh from a hydrogen filter so it's a lot of
focus but this is a hydrogen alpha image and you can see uh some of the you can kind of see some
of the structure here this little blip that comes off and you can see the central star which is pretty cool
um but i i'm i'm imagining this object all night tonight in focus
after this but yes i'm just live stacking this in
sharp cap and i've got about 18 minutes total on it such a series of 30 second exposures
wonderful wonderful thank you so much yeah okay all right well up next uh is maxi
fellaris uh maxie is uh is uh one of our favorite
astrophotographers from the southern hemisphere in argentina and uh he has uh inspired a lot of people to
get involved in astrophotography uh really on a shoestring you know and he's
shown us how to take some of the simplest equipment and do some of the most amazing astrophotography you can
possibly imagine with it so maxie i'm going to turn it over to you
thanks guys hey everyone how is it going it's going great
good to see you again my friend good to see you too
so good night everyone tonight uh basically like the topic is the
the the baby while we're going here the
exactly thanks niko and i
i only have the chance to capture some quick pictures of
that fireballs because i only
did some pictures in through a telescope that is very difficult to capture
so the last summer when i did some
pictures of the southern sky i i could take some one
in in particular in one picture let me show you my screen
okay do you see it yes
as usual yeah that's a gorgeous eclipse shot
every shot you show us maxie it has to compete with this i think this
is a huge fireball behind the moon right yeah
we could call it that well this was last december
uh well this is the [Applause] the the only
single picture that i took in pidgey back above the telescope
because that knife was very windy and i put it
in above the the telescope with the 18 millimeters in
lens and started to take six minute picture pictures and
when i realized in the another day this was i remember almost
4am and i was very tired but you can see the the southern cross
omega centauri
but in this case it's a little fireball yes
beautiful i in that night i didn't see it you know i
th this was very quickly and they they are very
often i don't know if he says right if one is very continuing
because uh there's a lot of things in surrounding space
and maybe a little rocks or maybe a medium or huge rocks
that are called asteroids and in this case is a meteor
so talking about asteroids in argentina we have a place that we
it's called the campo del cielo the the
i don't know how to say in english the field of the sky or the yeah that's right
this is the thank you malik this is the the region where
there are a lot of impacts that
was a almost a four million year millenniums
in the past and this was uh
there was a lot of native uh cultures that had some
different stories like witchy and kwon but
in this particular region is in the northern of argentina
is in the in the border of a province of the chaco and the province
of santiago and there's a lot of impacts that
the we have in a in america the second
at the at the most time the the the second asteroid
on the world in america it's the only one that's er
and thus is the they can say
asteroid let me show you some pictures of
and that i was searching uh well this is the chaco asteroid is a
everyone can visit it is almost a 28
tons so it's very very huge but the gansetto is almost 31 tons
this is a i think national park
the field of sky this is an excavation where they were found the ancelome
astro in this case immediately in its enormous
find this in i i think and i think maybe it would be more
because it's a very rich region
to to find a lot of emitters and of course they want
the disappear of our atmosphere but
so they they only impact in this place and i i remember the
the first the most white meteor is in namibia
i don't know it's okay but that's it i think it was 16 tons
yeah that's big it's very very huge so
well this is a very briefing of some place in argentina that everyone
of you when the pandemic situation goes by and of course everyone can can
[Music] and this is this region because it's a
very a scientific region and also a very a
culture region because of the natives and all the story that that has it
so of course everyone is invited well
er in in these another days i i was trying to do some planetary
pictures because obviously we are in this last night was the
the opposition of of course i want to try to take that capture and
take some videos i also of jupiter the thing was very very
fine i have some issues of course obviously with my condimentation i was
jealous with myself but
i i can do some well this afternoon afternoon i was stacking
and process some images and this is what uh what i get uh well this
is let me show you this it was last night i
put my computer [Music] in my regular the telescope
and i i have a lot of time to to try to to put a again but
i i was fighting a lot so this is a
derotated picture of jupiter that i took almost in
a half an hour tried to capture the gray red spot but
it was passing by to the another side so and the scene in this case i think it
wasn't very good because i have a very windy one
that's not a fine image well i'm very
i'm trying to to get more of what i get every time you know it's
i think it's an issue of mine because i am over
um over expected i don't know if i say okay
um when i i i could do some other pictures of
jupiter and try to when i did in that time
i only did with some simple grabs and very quickly stuck but very it was okay and i
have a very good picture then in this case i do i did a lot of
things and you don't convince me of course it's an
issue of mine maybe when some people
do about the first time and say oh my god it's in the
big giant planet of our solar system
but it's a it's a little blur i think i overexposed the time of a
recording to to take some pictures but i have this weekend of course
fortunately we have a good weather a good
thing i was in metro blue and tomorrow it would be a good night
i hope so so i will give you another another picture
and of course this is a picture of saturn in the opposition
in this case i i finished it almost two hours ago
because i i i can't rush it's very very fresh i didn't post it
yet um i try to [Music]
to to process very very fine very detailed and step by step
and not do it very quickly or something because uh the [Music]
the videos it wasn't very very good but
sometimes some frames was was okay so i can't study
um well i think this is a a little reason of this
this last week i maybe in
the approximate days in the next days i will try to
[Music] go to a farm road
almost a 20 or 30 kilometers from my cd
to do some again of milky way pictures
but i had to to do it when i go out of work
i have to get the equipment on my car and then i will go because when i go out
of work the sun goes by very quickly here and
i would like to to put the equipment in light day so
the weekend the weather i'm going to say that it's going to be rainy so i have to some
opportunities this week these few days so
i hope that [Music] they could work so this is my little presentation of
course a a a really short briefing of a result of what i did
and i hope to enjoy it so i leave you with this picture
[Laughter] great image though maxie all of your
astrophotography such a treat to uh to look at and to hear about your
adventures in astrophotography it's still it's really cool so well thank you thank you
now up next is uh someone new to the global star party um
his nickname is nico the hammer and uh uh he was introduced to me by maxie so
maxey i'm gonna let you introduce him because um uh you you've known him for a while you
were talking about him um a little bit so uh
how about if i have you uh give a proper introduction okay it's it's a pleasure to to
introduce my my astro friend or astro
nicolas
[Music] astronomer astrophotographer and his
work that he do it's amazing and i'm glad to
to present you to all the audience to all the people that is here in
this session and
how are you uh first of all uh thanks for the invitation
it's great to have you on um i have to ask you though nico how did you get
the nickname nico the hammer oh it's a long story and i i i play
drums and okay and when i was young they say i played
too hard like a hammer ah okay so the nickname
like 20 years now it's a cool name i like it thanks
okay um what i do i have a dobsonian
and i do observations and i do a sketch
and some time ago i i started to to hear or to try to to do some science
and say okay i am in a 9 guys what can i do and i started to
do research on double stars i started with a simple webcam and now i have a
which
and i started to do work works measuring double stars and then i say
okay what else can i do yeah and i started to try planetary machine
and some photos and it's not easy with adoption
yeah but let me show you with my screen i have some things
okay
can you see it yes okay uh this is
an example of what i did with my dog with the double stars
but can you see the stars this is a jobsonian this
so i need to do is i work very hard because i need to to
use software to calculate the the movement
to maturing the not not only the the the relative separation of the stars
in double stars we need a position angle so i need to do i need to know where the
north is on the image so i play with the with the movement
and i made my measures this is only an example
but uh you see the the movement this is what you see it with adoption
uh well it's amazing i i it's amazing i i don't know if anyone that um
does astrophotography by hand tracking with the dobsonian i mean it's amazing well i started with this you see okay i
can make sure i can do the astrometry of the test
but uh i like to do when when i read or hear
now you can do it you can't do it with adoption i said okay let's try why not
so i started to try with a planetary machine let me show you
[Music] this is what i see on my drops and i capture
i made videos like this with the planet moving yeah there's the red spot this is the red spot this is uh two
nights ago what love it it's great but you can see the chant because
i need to pause and resume the recording every time moving the dog with my hands
right and yeah what you have a steady hand that's for
sure like as i have a mono camera i have to do it
three times with the filters to have a color picture
so this is what i stuck from that videos
and this is the the process with the wrecking text wow
excellent yeah it's it's it's really nice when you when you get the the final image
but wow it's a lot of work
wow this is jupiter and this is a then another
another screen with a with two moons yeah it's beautiful
and well as maxi chose the the jupiter last night in a position i have mine
[Music] and well this is the panels
yeah the three captures this is when i stacked before the wavelet
and i have this result i'm really happy with this
yes that is really great
because i was moving it up like two hours or more trying to get
the best moment we have a good night last night and this is
i love these images with with the moons this is a composition i make a
different exposure to get the the moons you can see that moons for for saturn yeah yeah when i
was uh looking at the the females two days ago and say the
night of the opposition we have a lot of moons and so close so this was uh
my shot and i'm i'm really happy with this um
it's really it's it's stupendous it's great yeah thank you and
okay i have also try to do a
photography let's say okay i i am using that option i make a a lot of price because uh
my camera has a small sensor so i i have like um
a magnification of 200x uh yeah so i need to make calculus and and
they say okay i can do at most uh 200 mile seconds it's that's
nothing because it's it's like this a lucky machine and you can see
how i see the stars at that exposure thing right
this is a globular cluster in in constellation of power
i i don't remember the htc
six seven eight five two okay it's a a single
fit stretches all right and
as i'm planetary i make the the four captures i i make with filters and
without filter to make a to try to get a color image
yeah i i just want i just want everybody who is watching right now to really understand
that you have no tracking [Music] pushing a dobsonian with your hand right
i i pushed my dog and wait and capture like 10 seconds okay and move again and
continue to move it and then 10 more okay and look like
i don't know maybe i have another real really short exposures right really short like 100 mile seconds it's
like a uh 0.2 seconds of position okay
look at the results it's awesome this is a real video in real time this is what i see
100 and you just see the bright i just see the bright star
yes but this wow
and it's amazing because you know the first time i i i was making double
stars and i stretched an image and they started appearing first i say okay i need to try
this and oh that's great and i have some
nebula also so one of the people in our audience
nico says so that means i have no excuses now okay
this is what i i i say the same thing seeing everything you need to try
yeah i don't care what is your setup right
always you can do something this is the the omega nebula
obviously it's a real close and i haven't i have no the
the great resolution but you can do it with adoption and yeah
and that's inspiring that is okay thank you and i have some some more pictures to
show well this is an example in in mono with no filters
and i have another picture well this is the uh the nebula
[Laughter]
a small camera you are killing me
because it's it's very like the star and if you are in a in a clear sky and portal two or three the
the carina nebula cover it up you you didn't see that so
uh like i am in an important line in the sky and the nebula is really hard to get
with a short exposures you can get this
[Music]
that's beautiful incredible picture of the bug nebula oh my god i love the planetarium
this is a and you see it's iii this is also in my mind right now
colors on these are amazing i love the color and
nicholas yes this is are you using this are you using to say hey
this is awesome i'm literally speechless that's why everyone else is figuring it out i just blown away this is awesome um
my question is are you using the same camera for both uh when you're pushing the dog for both planetary and the
nebulae yeah yes i i have the liquid five camera
and yes basically for a planetary i use a barlow to get more
more more focal length but when i do the photos
here one of the pilots of creation in wow never tell an amateur astronomer that he
cannot do something when i when i read you can do it without someone okay let's do it it's amazing
the photographer the colors are awesome dude the star colors are amazing yes thank you i use a focal reducer that i i
made myself i break uh let me show you i broke
the reducer
and because this is a lane of the
n25 in a color okay and i put it in front of the camera and reduce like 0. 0.7
of magnification so right that helps because excellent excellent yes flatten it out that's
awesome and so what this is what i do i do what they
say you can't die
and whether the exposure is a lot like 30 second or or what are you using no no
no no because it or video no it we shot in in fit
using 0.2 seconds because the image is moving
so i make for this photograph of the pilots is like
in every channel i have like 800 feet almost so it's a lot of uh
of stacking information and to get the nebula
so you you get you get all the data highlight all in any post process uh the hundreds of images right afterwards yeah
yes yes and that is i couldn't believe it the first time the
first time i couldn't believe it but yeah it worked but your base frame is 22 seconds
you just stack 0.2 seconds yeah wow for both nebula and gala and
yeah uh that configuration is the maximum time i
can get without making a trade fantastic beautiful
so what this is what i do and uh and what you do is great really i'm
really happy to to be here with you well we're happy you're on the program
oh so a question for you nico um unity gain or a high gain value for
your deep sky uh no i i tried i was a a lot of research because if i use a lot
of gain i i may get some more info but i
the stars are going to explode i have a lot of noise because
yeah i can do a long exposure song i cannot compensate that so i start reading about
the the camera how they used to guide and i
i found that like maybe a 25 percent of the game okay
using in in 11 or six so so
i cannot get the stars uh burning okay awesome but when you stack you you you
do more than snacking right you because if it's only 0.2 second exposure
you must do some like uh stacking in two dimensions right you you
stack not only for sharpness but also to increase the signal somehow of course
yes yes that increase the signal and then i i stretch it uh with uh with
petri site and i look for
a level of okay i i want to to get more
more regular but not that noise so it's a it's a try and test you know
you do like a hybrid stacking approach like where you where you stack batches and then you
you make masters sub masters and then stack those together no no no i i used to use
a one night and an extra for example 500
images of each channel and i make it in one hour and then stack
and the every channel and put it together but
no no no very complex process uh
just awesome this is really cool miko really cool well obviously we could talk for hours but uh this is great
the field rotation right niko they're doing it
with with adoption with you have the fuel rotation so i i lost a lot of
of the picture i need to crop because you have the the four channels and you have the movement
and really funny but that's not bad because you know with you know even with a
rectangular you can cut it off make a square and then circular you know so you you can you can drop it it will be fine
and especially if you use a focal reducer or barlow to get the field of view then
even if rotates you you can take all that black space out so it's good it's awesome
[Music] very cool so what did this presentation uh i'm
happy you're you enjoy it awesome awesome thank you nico thank you
very much i i'll read uh some of the comments here uh chris larson says well
done nicholas i use a five inch dob and got nowhere near the results so really
impressive um mike overakker says did i hear that
right shot on a hand guided dobb that's right
you saw it here first
billy zastrow says amazing work um martin eastburn says i think the bar has
just been raised uh let's see
jeff weiss says the hammer has spoken [Laughter]
you're cool very cool uh jeff wise amazed at your handmade focal reducer
um so just uh really amazing i think you um
gave everyone a a great uh amount of inspiration nico caesar brolo is
watching he says great work nico the hammer um okay thank you so much and yeah i i
will i will give in the in the chat my my instagram so we
if the someone has yeah please go ahead and i'll share it okay and so people can
follow you and nico you are on the global star party mailing list uh right now so
um we do them usually once a week uh we will not be doing it next week because i'll be
on a trip uh you know for about a week myself so uh but um
but typically we have them on tuesday nights like like right now
okay thank you scott glad to hear you thank you all right okay so uh let's see
where are we at this moment here um
i think we're perhaps up to cameron at this point is that right
i can yeah i can i can go okay all right
uh thanks uh well first of all awesome another awesome global star party great to be here
and um good to see you know we got uh connell and maxie and
nico that was great to see you nico hope to see you some more more often here um great great discussion i don't have
any pictures of um of bullets or or anything because
uh as you know up until basically uh last year i've been a visual 100 visual observer um and
so i haven't had the opportunity to to really kind of be equipped to be able to snap so i've just been looking up at the
sky and what i i can just share with you some of my experience on that um i mean
a couple of star parties i've had you know many years ago i was uh looking
up at this guy and i remember seeing in two opposite sides of the sky one was a a really bright
green uh you know green uh trail with a small trail behind it that was awesome yeah
that was just awesome and you could see the smoke trail like almost like uh you know out of a jet
or you know it was just like wow and and then so it had that lingering effect and then it literally went right
across the whole sky and then and then literally about an hour later in the opposite direction
uh there was a bright reddish rusty red orange um one
same thing just right across the whole sky and that smoke's great uh trail behind that that was incredible i forgot
it was many years ago i forgot exactly which uh meteor shower was but um that stuck in my mind and yeah it's uh you
just have to get out there and look up yeah you know and i just haven't had that opportunity uh
you know i've been very busy with my work and all that but i those images stick stuck in my mind and i'm looking
forward to looking up some more in the future here oh yeah so uh i can just encourage that because you if you look up you will find
them and they're really beautiful they're really something to see
and um so i might just a quick update on the camps astronomy we let me just do it
this way um i'm going to um i'm going to just actually use i'm on my
phone right now uh see if they're outside so let me just do this i'm going to
share my screen
actually you know what it maybe do this way instead of sharing my screen i can flip the camera around
and then i turn off the uh turn off the virtual background
there we go yeah sorry i'm just outside
uh if you remember where we were last um cam astronomy session last week
we were in lyra so if i go look at my sky safari here
um we had just finished a lyra and we are
now going to go into aquila so aquila has uh it's rich in planetary
nebula and lots of juicy ones and i was actually just look at 6807 highly recommended it's uh
i would i remember the first time i saw that one pretty darn good let me just show you
some images that will go through more tomorrow but um i was just processing them right now let
me just put this in presentation mode sorry forgive me i'm just yeah i'm using a
screen on a screen and there's a big reflection here let's now i'll kind of do this here
okay let me um go back here okay so if we go
this this was done with a smartphone um so that's uh you can actually see the
central star and then oh there we go and if i go to my latest
astro imager see so this is uh with my asi 294
and you can see couple more stars but what's interesting is when you see those two stars on the
southern part and you see this bright crescent it's a really nice uh nebula to look at if i go back
to the smartphone image um all right zoom
i don't know if you can see that now there's lots of interlacing sorry but basically what it looks like visually
is imagine this shape except more like a gray patch you can actually see the outer annular
arc there visually with even a smaller scope so it's a nice little looks like a nice little puff and
it's very rich star field so anyhow that's that's just a little preview and we're going to look at nine
objects and that will bring us up to a hundred objects explored oops
let me just flip it around here that brings us to a hundred objects uh
uh to date that we've explored together so i'm sorry for the background and all
the flipping around here but i'm just on the road right now so anyhow so i look forward to you made it
you made it yeah i made it you bet i am dedicated i'll tell you so
yeah and i will uh look forward to sharing and exploring more with you uh tomorrow on enig aquala
oh thanks okay so at this point uh we're going to take
another short break and then we'll come back for the after party and uh any of you that are still on with us
presenters uh you know uh we can have uh we can share our conversations and
and um maybe some more stories about uh meteors falling stars and bolides i have
a few of them that i can share myself so i'd love to tell them so all right so uh give us a few minutes
here and um and we'll be right back
and you go that was awesome uh the uh i love that and you know what you're you're a pioneer
uh i think uh dobsonians need the
imaging
i think you have some issues with your connection yes i am
okay okay yeah yeah give me a second okay
what it was fine i i was shaking
congratulations and welcome to the gsp no thanks like it's not the same uh to
think what you will to say in english that i didn't talk in english and for years
[Music]
yes okay yeah no i was just gonna i was just saying uh sorry it was broken up there
but um uh basically nico i tell you you're a real pioneer uh the dobsonians really
need uh you know this astro astro imaging and ea capability and what you're doing there
is is fantastic i mean there's so many times i had i used to have an 18-inch topsonian and
and you know there are so many times i've wanted to kind of share what i've seen and uh now you with what you're doing
that's kind of the you know you're really pushing the envelope to be able to do that so this is awesome
good stuff thank you thank you cameron and it's it's a reality that uh
with uh with adoption you have more aperture so
i repeat uh when i when i saw the first time with a
stretch an image and and see all that stars i said now i can believe it
but uh it is really nice uh it's a lot of work to get a
a nice photo but but it's great yeah but you know what you're doing
right i mean i mean i'm maybe getting ahead of ourselves with guess what with
imagine a tracking mount with dual axis motor
and with real-time image plate solving or or put a push here a phd guiding
that can do what you do without breaking your back you know what i'm saying and so so you just basically
you you can just do that it's not a very complicated thing to do you've built the
pieces to do that you're doing human human uh engine right now but if you you
know uh i think we we should we should we should work on a on a motor drive system
that can do a phd on a job yes i i was reading about that but
i i do enjoy the the observations so i i am trying to get a
another equipment a small equipment to to to make the the photos and the work
with the lowers and very well stars and and maintain my my thoughts on i like to
observe and moving so i will try to do it both
[Music] i i do uh
astronomical sketching i do register the observations
and i maybe i will i will prepare a presentation of that
and to talk with
[Music] and how to find some objects
uh i i will prepare a presentation for other night
that would be awesome because you're right down the same path that i i enjoy very much i want to be able to do the
same thing so in it you know and i i think with with the capability
of kind of a hybrid where you can do go-to and also star hopping
you know to override with clutch uh you know to be able to do that and then do astro
imaging to enhance combination right you can make it really a very enjoyable
experience yeah that's right that's right and and i i try to do more
to enjoy i try to enjoy and i try to make contributions
well i i published my double star measures and i started to trying to do
an eclipse in binaries yeah but it's a it's a hard work i i i get an
eclipsing by a a few weeks ago but it was three hours taking
[Music] pictures moving the option and it was really complicated
so that is why i went to get another another telescope to put it to work and
and keep enjoying with the dog yeah you kind of need you know this is
why you need to try different things because what i found i kind of went through this nico in the
last couple years here i used to have like i say the large telescope and
i i really uh i do like it you cannot beat the aperture there's no question but
but to be able to grab and move a small telescope to the front yard to the backyard based on where the planets are
or where the comet is you can't be that right i mean and to be able to quickly deploy it and
have a go-to system uh to be able to track and then also to be able to disengage that go-to system
and just do some star hopping you need kind of a mix of different things to get the maximum enjoyment
because sometimes you just don't have much time sometimes you want to just relax and
have very little technology other times you want the technology to be seamless
so it just works right so it's uh it's it's it's nice to have all these
different options available to us now yeah that's right that's right that that's why i do
start i guess observe i make a photo i try to enjoy everything and
no how long have you been doing this
um i have my with this camera and making the double some photos like i don't know maybe
less than a year and before i have another son had made and
i have another small excitement but but
[Music] you enjoy with different uh straps but this dog is i love it
the as you say the apertures rules [Music]
and oh yeah yeah you know i can observe with the with the ninja in the city some
bright galaxies or nebulas using filters is really
really nice yes yes that's nice and then that explains uh
how you can get like you can do 0.2 second exposures because uh with the aperture
you get that light you get that signal to noise very quickly yeah that right yeah
[Music] yeah that's why you know
you you you you all on the flip side you want a wide field as well you want to be able to do that with the wide field so i
think um you know i i wonder uh i'm going to be doing ed work you can't beat that
with a wide field but from an aperture perspective that that would be good for
for some but but to be able to do for example a hyperstar a system uh you know on on an eight-inch
mechanical green or something to get that larger
oh here we go sorry and we're back um
so what you've been hearing is uh our uh our astronomers uh
shattering back and forth about uh astrophotography uh and you know i think
that nico nico we're really happy that you came onto the program and shared your work
and everything maxie thank you for um you know uh presenting him to us so
it's really wonderful pekka it's nice to see you on uh how i swear
good morning maxine hey becca all right hello cameron
this part of our program is the after party uh it's coming on earlier than it has before uh which is yeah which is not
not so terrible you know it's good we have we have more time you got a little bit more time that's right
last night i slept three hours again because i want planetary images
and then i would process it so uh this time it's okay
i can handle it you you'll be hunted okay that's good that's good
nice nico i mean this is just the kind of this is the um you know we call this the after party
because it's it's kind of like you've gone to a star party and uh you know everybody's now hanging
out getting a cup of coffee or you know uh you know it's something
something uh nice to drink and uh he's taking money and talking with friends you know so
and we are getting you know people chatting with us as well so
that's great that's great wanted to i wanted to mention something on august 25th
uh dr linda spilker who was part of the original voyager
mission team okay when they spent the voyager spacecraft up uh she she had gone straight from
from graduating university to being uh to working at the jet propulsion laboratory this is the only job she's
ever had okay so she went to go to work in the jefferson laboratory she gets put on the
voyageur team okay uh right away okay and uh
and then from you know through her experiences with voyager she she then became one of the uh
principal scientists of the cassini space mission whoa right and so this this woman knows more
about saturn's rings than any person ever any human in history okay
she had like i don't know 200 scientists working under her okay she is now that now that of course
cassini had culminated in the uh you know them crashing the spacecraft
into into saturn um you know it's timely to talk about it right now because the opposition is
saturn and all but uh she uh is now back on the voyager mission this
is still an active live again still it never stopped it never stopped
okay so amazing 1 and 2 are now in interstellar space they're out of the solar system okay
they're still communicating with with the spacecraft i heard that i don't know it was the voyager 1 i
they lost the signal that's why uh it's a it surprised me or maybe i heard it
wrong you're still communicating spacecraft and uh it's why they're still getting data they're still learning
about the you know beyond the solar system now you know and what that that
environment's like and um so uh you know earlier uh libby talked
about the pale blue dot the pale blue dot image was taken by voyager and so and carl sagan took a lot of uh
he took a lot of criticism from his peers about wanting to turn
a spacecraft around and shoot a picture of earth because they said it had no scientific value
okay yeah yeah it's probably one of the most it's more ignorant
yeah it's beyond important that's right humanity so it's uh
right so that's uh so linda will be on uh she can she worked with carl sagan
she she worked with all these people and uh so it's um
uh i am so i just got the email this afternoon you know that she's going to come on to our program on the on august
25th which is a i think a wednesday something like that so uh
that is the day that's the anniversary of i think voyager 2's fly by of saturn
so he'll be talking about i'm going to try to get her to talk about the voyager mission as it is as it
was and as it is today and and you know some emphasis also on saturn so i'm
excited about it scott i have seen that cassini the
commentary and uh she said so so linda is on that
documentary she is yeah and she told that every time she looks at saturn a
part of her is there yeah yes yes that's amazing documentary and
everybody should see that yes they decided on the last moment that
they will crash it it was not planned from the beginning but they wanted to uh to cassini to
deliver the most the last second they for my everything
to the last breath take so that's really cool really cool so if
you have questions you have any question about saturn or voyager or you know outer planets um you
know planetary missions these kinds of things
you're going to want to send in those questions i imagine there'll be a lot of them so we'll have everybody send in their
questions to um uh to annie and then um you know she can
we can prepare those questions for uh linda so she can answer them but uh it's a rare experience i mean this is uh
you know to to um uh be able to interact with uh one of these uh you know top uh
scientists in her field so in their field 24th 25th
25th
yeah yes so what's happening in in stockholm stockholm it's uh quite quiet
on master my front but i did some solar imaging and
took actually one picture of uh with my iphone
and look at that and i have
looked some before as a star but when i took this picture i got
really that okay if we just look it
a little bit more as a star and this is with my iphone and with app
and this is one twelve thousand of a second and when you get those uh like
you see the sky you see the threes and so on but if you look the sun you can see it is a star
and it's so close to us that it's our mind maybe
selects it from a star to sun
but if you begin to look our sun as a star you
i think you get closer to the space that i am looking after
totally space but sun is there like
something other than a star it don't belong to the category of star
but when you take shots like this you maybe begin to think okay
we have a star very close start and that could help
you do the beginning of uh of the vastness and uh
how huge this only the our solar system is and we are
actually so close to the star yes we can and moon
at the day time if you want if you look at
as different eyes you do at the evening or night you begin to realize that it is
something that clothing floating there in the emptiness without no trees no sticks
already did so it's there and uh
it's uh by by by himself herself and um that's kind of uh stuff stuff i
do yeah when it's not just a photography or something else but that picture of the
sun made a huge it's not a huge impact but it
it touched me and it's really a star
and we why can't we see at it as a star
but the sun yes and peck i i know exactly what you're talking about because
uh you know people they you know they're they they wake up uh
you know maybe they wake up before even the sun rises but uh you know when they see the sun start to rise and go okay
it's getting daylight i gotta do this i can see that i can do this exactly you know and uh
and they're they're thinking about about the sun more maybe like as a timepiece or something
you know uh source of light source of light
what time it might be okay yeah a lot of people get getting
making suns uh trips and so on so it's like it's like more than
more uh something that gives us
warm uh health and tan fun things
play around outside right those things but i think that
it's rare that you think it's like a star you don't take the leap immediately that this is a no yeah
celestial object you know it's a star right they that's that just doesn't
that's not your first impression you know and it's hard to take that step that
it's really are a white thought for start
uh you know i think this has to do with conditioning you know you talk about
people people uh often talk about conditioning and you know what our parents teachers
teaches us what society teaches us you know and all the rest of this and um
uh i think to the important lesson of
looking at the sun one you know maybe being grateful to the
sun for all the things that it's giving us because you know the earth is a i mean you can think of as a child of of
of this star okay yeah but uh you know uh just
take a few minutes and think about you're flying around this this star at the perfect distance that
this star is flying through space through the arm of the milky way and the milky way is flying through space to
you know vomit a galaxy and stuff you know all this this uh this ecostate could be a
civilization and one let's say any one
thing is looking our sun our star as we look there son
that connection it's hard to think but when you get that
you've realized that the distances and and the whole
whole mechanism that's divorcedness and and it it
it's more fun to do astronomy when you realize that
we have a connection and we have a really near connection that the star our
son probably needs a little bit more
attention yes like it is a star the the
ancient people like natives in in america
they believed that the the sun was a god
like the egyptian and they adore and
um and do you know what they think culture they didn't
sacrifice people and something like that but they um
they follow uh they they was they they religion but today
uh the sun that that's it everyone see
around the world they they say okay like you say it is okay
it's now time to wake up now time to go to work to
go dinner and it's like more a clock like uh yeah you might even hate when you first
wake up that oh you know the sun right you know this kind of feeling but
yeah i i like when i when i go to work
i in almost 8 00 a.m and
now i see that the sun rises when i passing by through a a
a yard where i do people sports the sun comes up but
in these days the the moon is very
romantic because contrast with the
the deepest blue sky no darkness and
when the sun comes up they push that a little
a pink a color and that briny white
light a reflection of the surface of the moon uh gives a
a perspective that you you know you don't you don't hope to see it at
the morning yeah your relation the the moon in the night
uh and and the of course the sun on the day but it's not like a star it's a moon it's a
satellite so max you have a point there because when you see moon at the daytime at the blue
sky it's something that not belong there it's something
something my mind is telling that okay
there that shouldn't be there that round thing floating in the blue
sky yeah it should it be that only sounds should be there so that's why i feel i when i look moon
at the daytime i usually then only do visual beat my eyes because it's so
magnifying feeling all pinnoculars
not often with scope but it gives different content
to how can it float there with no visible sticks or treats or something it
is only there at daytime yeah and there should be
i think if we saw like some sort of structure holding up the moves far more surprised yes
really love to observe the moon on the day and
according that you said before i think that we we used to to look beyond and we
forgot about the sun and about the moon yes and and when you see it uh on the
sunset or or the sunrise and and you keep thinking that
whoa that's the moon and that's the sun and and you you know that
we forget it why we forget that beyond but this is incredible yeah too
often there they are actually we see them yes i like to use the moon like a
perspective way to see another planets and you know uh
i remember the star wars movie uh star trek movie and when you see
uh the planets and everything you know oh look at those well you have it in the
sky in the night and or the evening or the afternoon and when you have the moon
you see the moon but the more beyond is maybe venus for example and
you with your mind you can do a three-dimensional
yeah solar system yeah and but in a realistic way not in a
program or a software or something like that no no no no no and that's
well i love it when i do that yeah because that is the that you
leave you on the earth under your balcony or on where you are but you
let your imagination just fly there and look it from the thing from different
uh angel from direction and that is what i
just like need and that's feeling is something i just
work on all the time to get that feeling more clear more
more powerful for me and just to realize that the sun
i'm beginning to like uh pull myself all the time that sun is the star
it's nothing that gives me tan or that i i do have to
avoid it now but uh yeah yeah it's a really star
that somebody else lucas at start from their perspective but we are taking that
for anything but not star right
you know the idea that the sun was a star is only about uh
2500 years old okay so the the um
some of the earliest uh ideas put forward was um there was a greek astronomer or maybe
thinker his name was annex anaxagoras uh alex
yes yes and uh he he he first proposed that the sun
was uh like a fiery stone and that uh you know and that it was only you know
it wasn't very big like maybe a few hundred miles in in diameter okay
uh and that the other the other suns okay uh were also the same thing but they
were too far away so we couldn't feel the heat from them you know how how correct he was okay
wrong about the distance you know but he had he had basically the idea you
know um you know not not a stone but uh you know again there was a lot to be
still worked out and then it was like uh what 700 years now about
200 years ago or 200 years past that aristarchus comes up with a similar
um you know proposal and then it's ptolemy okay
so like you know 200 years goes by and another couple hundred years goes by and then hundreds
of years more go by okay and also a lot of work happening in that time
today we have a solar probe so between ptolemy and a guy named
kaepernick okay now he lives in the 1400s okay
uh but in 1543 he just before he dies he propos he publishes a book called uh
uh revolution of this orbium celestium in which he proposed you know sun-centered
solar system and then you have giardano bruno italian as a philosopher and then and then comes
galileo okay uh and kepler and hydrogens and and now
you know and now we we go all the way up to the parker solar probe okay we're going
we're flying to the sun all right yes it's
i think it made already the speed record
or it's gonna be like 520 kilometers per hour wow
the solar probe going crazy fast yes it has already gone for 365 000 kilometers
per hour but it's it want to speed up more i mean it is so close sound that
so you're gonna burn your fingers if you don't touch it [Laughter]
and do you think that those the the source yes
let's go ahead maxi no i i will uh do a question of of what we talking about
tonight uh if anyone saw a fire fireball
a daylight
i haven't seen i have seen and lightning i have not i've seen video i've seen video of it in daylight you know not
myself seen my my uh
uh i don't know anyone else here see see um uh i've seen a lot of lightning
lightning ball i i see i saw it too but at night no at the
daylight i think that that we are watching up all night
about the chelyabanks uh uh uh meteor that that uh you know it was a
small asteroid that fell in russia yes that was definitely see in the daytime
and we got lots of video of that you know so um it got brighter than the sun
so it was uh uh you know an amazing uh experience i
think um it was pretty cool too because david eicher showed us some uh when he was
showing his meteorite samples he has a sample of this meteorite so whoa yeah
you showed it's got this it's a finnish satellite
that recorded that transit that you have in the
opening scene ah you know the sword saw me
is that right it's a finnish satellite wonderful
yeah so we are up there yes you guys are up there yeah
that's right yeah right but the pervarance has a
finnish humidity sensor on it
yeah so we are also in mars wonderful yeah yeah
um so next time guys uh you've gotten mike overakker has been
chatting uh in here and i think you've been talking to him but uh he says you fired up my
interest in using my big scope he's got a big dobsonian for more than just astronomy outreach i never thought i
could get images like you like you get now i know better yeah i know uh he said that he has a
15-inch dog i didn't think that before
also it justifies your absolute what what size is your telescope
10 inch you said 10 inch wow
spectacular i don't know when you want to go do it too [Laughter]
if he has a back hurts the back when he's moving the
dobson with a 10 inch i don't know if you have a 16 inch or something like that to move
it but no that's that's very difficult because they have a
long focal too yes if you if you are looking at the ocular you you need to
move so i i think that pinch
is is in the on the limit that that you can handle while you are observing or trying to
make a capture maybe maybe a 12 but bigger they complicated
[Music] a bigger aperture always makes it more complicated oh it's a much more
i'm curious do you have any issues with coma or anything like that with a shorter focal length because you said
you were going for wider fields um i have a i have a little comma when i i
i'm upstream or if i put a a reflex camera you can see the comma on
the borders but i as i work with a with a small size sensor
is imperceptible you cannot hear that that's uh that's good
and bad because i you have too much magnification so there they are
nebulous that they can fit on the screen but for the other hand i i have
no dick on my effect and and that's great because i i don't have to buy a color reducer
i see yeah so you just go in towards the middle right yes
all right [Music] so maybe next global star party we all
show our dobsonian astrophotographs yeah that's right it would be good
one night i i couldn't i could i will be with my dog on the
on my backyard and i show you i like that would be great that would be great
so nico tell us more about yourself you um uh you're a musician are you still
performing now um i now i'm performing but with my
friends to play because uh now i'm married i have two childs and
not easy no i i do it
for the pleasure of play yeah sure right
that's great and uh and how do you know maxie well i know maxim because a facebook
group okay because they are amigos in [Music]
because we live really far what are maxi a 150 kilometers
maybe more maybe more yes so we meet in person a few times
just uh one or two nights with the scopes and we travel together
to the to the last fun eclipse that was really funny
two days days driving with no sleeping and what was amazing like
140 400 kilometers and two days
and also with the walkie-talkie we was uh
we were walkie-talkies to talk in the cars that was really funny really i
imagine that's correct maxi you have to show me then brazil a
little bit more no argentina when it's allowed to travel as
normal maybe i come to argentina also yes when
he comes together normally of course you're a middle like everyone today flights is
like it's hard to find any flights to states
okay there are flights but uh it's very is it difficult right now pekka to get a
flight to the united states i yeah i just look for a flight and
sus one fla uh though biggest are flying
but it's like 19 hours flight you have a three or three changes
and uh and so like if you want to fly from stockholm
to springdale fayetteville yes first it's a change in miami then
change in charlotte and it's like waiting five or six hours
so a 19 hours flight so just fly to dallas and i'll come and pick you up yeah we have a we have
finale i think flies from stockholm to dallas yeah yeah yeah dallas is about
a five hour drive from here yeah okay yeah so i can
maybe we'll rent a car i know i i'd like to oh yeah american car under
and drive and see some american views also so that's my target
awesome yeah i i i need to come to united states very soon
very soon yeah yeah sure so uh
connell uh you have um you've given some really great presentations uh what what
was you know what was your original inspiration i mean you you know a lot of
young people might be interested in something you know but not very many people that are interested
in something go and give presentations on something okay so how did you get
started with presenting your material you know i i can get why you were interested in
astronomy and you know i can really see you've really taken off and run with it but
uh when did you first start giving presentations and why why do you like to do it
so i first started in april of course i've been in excuse me into amateur astronomy for
some time by then and it was in january of this year that i joined the astronomical league
and you know it was over christmas break i'm looking at things to do and things to grow in the hobby
the way i'd typically done my observing before is it was mostly visual and i find a list of objects in a planetarium
program that i just thought were interesting and i'd go out and observe those and it got a little boring for me after a while i found i was burning out
i wanted some goal so i looked into the league and i see the one of the first programs that they had the observing programs
was the lunar program and i thought well i've already got the observations for that i've gotten plenty of pictures
plenty of notes and sketches so i reached out to the program director who was chuck allen
yeah and and submitted things and we went back and forth he said you know i'm here if you need anything if
you have any questions about astronomy or things you're interested in and i said yeah actually i am so i'm
interested in sharing this message of of getting youth into astronomy this was about maybe 18 months after i'd started
the club at the high school yeah and he said um oh i have so much to tell you here
and he told me about uh growing up in louisville and the presentations he gave there and some of the connections he had yeah
and through there i came to uh speak at astronomical league live that was their april edition right and then uh gsp
after that he he invited me on and uh you were gracious enough to host me and and and since then oh sure so i found
it's been really fun to to speak about it not only about the outreach but i found with
the themes that we do like comets or meteors i get to look into my images and share them with people or i get to learn
about a subject in order to teach about it i think that's a really good way to learn uh just on my own
and then uh especially since you sent that email earlier this week about how wide our reach has been with with so
many viewers and so many shares and all of that right that really makes it worth worth doing and and uh
it's really been a great platform to do astronomy outreach on you know so
especially during this pandemic you know so uh
every once in a while as i'm putting together the programs and everything i think about all the people that are still stuck at
home okay still um uh you know uh
you know there's still the you know the danger of going out into
uh the world and and you know perhaps contracting uh coven 19
and so it's it's something that uh you know i'm i'm
i'm concerned about uh i'm not as freaked out about as when it first happened you know uh we've i
think a lot of us have learned to live with this uh deal and i you know i went and got i couldn't wait to get
vaccinated so i did um but uh you know still there's uh you
know with the variations of the the you know the virus
and all the rest of it it's it's something that uh we're still dealing with you know so
um but i'm glad i'm really glad that you guys come together uh with us and and uh
and make what global star party is you know because it's it's nothing without all the presenters you know you know
scott i i thought today already that what you have built
it's not just a show or global star party
i think it's more like an almost an institution
it's it's i think it's my international community of astronomy yeah yeah that's that's what i'm trying
to it's something huge it doesn't doesn't take a lot i mean it there's of course
work and in doing all of this but but uh uh
you know it it doesn't take a lot of convincing to get amateur astronomers who
love to do outreach to yeah you know to come out and share their passion their
love for the sky their knowledge you know all the rest of it i mean i i wish i could i could be putting people to the
eyepiece you know and letting them uh you know look through my telescope too but uh
um but this is for me the next best thing actually it's
not even it's it's its own thing now you know and i used to think it was really kind of
second to doing um you know in person astronomy but now it
it really has become uh you know something quite on its own because i mean
we have people around the world right here you know one side of the planet maxi
nicholas on the other i'm on this side with connell and and cameron's on the on
the uh west coast over there so you know i think now we have uh
an audience that watches from around the world so it's it's really cool you know and that's right that's right i think
that that is really cool to as you say we met people
that we will not see in a in a presidential party and which are different experiences and
you are talking to conan i i really like the uh his presentation because
it inspires another to take a look and observe things that
people maybe doesn't know and there is some uh always
always is someone that say hey i can't do that with because i can do it with my
eyes i can do it with a binocular and maybe with a telescope and i think that that's great
i think so too i think so too it's gonna be like uh 20 centuries
dallas or bold and beautiful show that's going on
and only the actresses and actresses changes
but but the story goes on that's true
that's true so you have built something very huge
and very good scott this is like uh well a gift card
yeah thank you for having the raster numbers thank you you're very kind becca yeah but that comes from art and this is
i think in the maybe last year or in the beginning of this
i never thought i would be talking in english to other another person's
world right now i'm sitting in my house talking with
pig and stockholm you know when i was first time i was like
walking on the hot stones you know nervous as a
that's right and he said that you told me that you really
did not speak very much english until you no no started coming onto the global star parties i had a post almost 20
years i listen i read but not spoken for 20
years it's a long time yeah and you know
if you play up this first you can see how nervous i was it was like uh oh
yeah i understand you were you nervous
you didn't seem to be nervous at all so no i was i was uh
shaking because yeah i i we know typically speaking english
so you think about you hear about and you think of what you are going to say but when you tell when you need to speak
okay okay i know you're speaking in a different language
many people first off think in their own language and then they think about how they're
going to say it exactly exactly
[Laughter] i have worked in other countries before
and uh uh mostly in asia you know china uh taiwan
uh some a little bit in japan and uh uh you know i think that for anyone to
speak more than one language you know most people in the united states honestly
most of us only speak one language you know you go to other countries then you have people speaking two three four
sometimes five languages you know and uh so uh
you know i was always really impressed with that um and i always tried to
uh when people wanted to speak english with me i always try to make them feel comfortable because i can't speak their
language right i could speak some words or something but so i'm always really grateful that
people want to try their english and and speak with me you know so i think that's really cool
yeah that's right it's cool to try to speak because we hear a different country's cultures
experiences everything and so it's really nice yeah and that makes it
really interesting you know the for the fraternity or this this
i think we all feel it you know that uh all of us that are involved in astronomy
we know that we have this common thread we have this bond okay and this bond is
not only between us that are living but this bond goes back
a long long ways you know to all these astronomers that we read about and stuff
and and um uh you know i i mean uh you know the
the the guys that first thought of this the sun being a star can you imagine
pekka that guy must been thinking just like you okay he's like this is not just something for
me to tell what time it is or that it's time for me to go to work or this but this is like you this fiery thing in the
sky you know yeah yeah those other things are also fiery things out there too far away
you know his mind must have just been blown i mean you know at that time so
that's so cool and the cool thing is that we speak the
common language and we discuss and we have we realize that
somebody says one word and we are there even instantly if somebody says oreo
nebula we are there instantly and that's so wonderful to share
the feelings not just the mechanical and the results and so on but
the feeling how do you feel when you looked at and how do you make up your mind cenorious
about saturn rings and so on that we feel differently but
we are looking for the same feeling in the in the last point that we
really feel that yes right something i do wonder sometimes
oh sorry go ahead no no no no all right okay well something i do wonder sometimes is
we were talking about the greek astronomer who first theorized that the sun was its own body and and it gives us
all the things that it does just like the other stars in the universe do but i wonder if if we're doing our own
version of that continually because when we look in our eyepieces we might say well that's a gray fuzz in
the shape of a circle or this one's an oval this one's a stick yeah it's like well yeah there is that
and it would be pretty boring if that were the case but when you understand that you're looking at a galaxy or a planetary nebula and you look longer and
you sketch and you write and you tease out these details that becomes something really special because you're uncovering
the nature of the object and not just looking at it for the the pure photons that are hitting
your eye and just saying well that's what i'm seeing uh without understanding
do you know what i mean by that yeah totally yeah it's like i think the same in
sorry and i love to learn
research what what the object i am observing because i think that we observed the
time it is a time machine the ocular is a time machine and that's great and that
there is there it's not just point just but i on the telescope
you are looking a million years ago that's this blow my mind
yeah it's like it's like trying to find a tree in the forest
when i when looking for galaxies or so on if you think that okay that's a forest
but where is the trees yeah and you just like
go in deep in that that there is our sons
our son is one of those hundred billions of
suns there in that forest when you think the galaxy that there is
250 billion trees
so that makes wow it's like spinning in your head right in
trillions of forests yeah exactly exactly
exactly so that's to make the vastness a question somebody's watching here his
name is uh reza mattore and the question was is with which telescope he wants to know
the brand and the model can a beginner never go wrong okay
uh and uh uh nico nico's answer is pretty good uh
he says i think there is not wrong equipment and the best is the one that you can use every day that is actually the
an excellent answer you know because uh you start somewhere you you think risa
think of of uh you're about to embark on a journey
you know like like you're going to go hiking or you're going to go on a big adventure
and you need gear you need some equipment to go along with you all right
and so the thing that you're going to be going after
because you want to see you want to see distance you want to see detail okay
and there may be many things that you want to do but i think that
you know nico and maxie and several others have been on this program
have shown that you can take very basic equipment and do all kinds of
things with it you know like the niko showed us beautiful images of planets uh
deep sky objects and all the rest of it done with you know his camera a modest
camera and his 10 inch dobsonian uh yeah
[Music] go ahead i remember and say uh
everyone every time someone asked that yeah or you that question that's a
common question i i started with a very small scope and
if you go to that dark sky there is no bigger or smaller scope the
the important is you can bring it that scope and you can try it's portable enough that you can take it yeah that's
right uh it's more useful a small car than a big plane
that's right you know and i i think also that that begin with something that leaves
you something to reach to that you
there is that small spark all the time that can i read small can i can i reach
more a little bit more and how far can i go with this equipment
so there is always that spark that that fussy thing on the sky i need to
see more and detail it but i i keep this one because it has to
be something that you can use quite fast that it's not taking your
half an hour to set up and begin to observe that it's really in quite a few
minutes let's let's take you as an example pekka you have your observatory set up on your patio okay it's yeah it's
right there okay it's always set up it's always set up it's always ready to go
yes right yes and that that is uh that's another aspect of uh
i needed about astronomy do astronomy where you are okay exactly exactly you
have to wait for a perfect night and you have to travel far distances and you have to carry a big telescope okay
uh that that experience on that one weekend on a moonless night in some
super dark area might be amazing and you may never forget it but
i'm only doing it one or two nights a month except the best okay yeah so
that's why it's how often you do it right i i saw when i had to
make everything all set up every night when i wanted to
or photography always well then i decided after i got this msro time with sherry
i decided no more no more things to put you up and so on so i did a remotely observatory
now i just have to attach my scope push the on off pattern
connect my cameras that's it i can do visual i can do astrophotography from my
room from your room like that that's why we talk
sometimes with nikko because he has a dobsonian and he always say to me hey
okay i'm going outside and in maybe five minutes he put me in his ground and
starts to wash and everything and i have to dissolve the equipment put it on the
backyard put it on a alignment the the weights and everything calibrate the
focus i have maybe one hour
i don't know and the collimation the the focus uh she is
everything okay and then i will start to do some pictures even okay when i start he say
okay i finished the list of double stars that i have to do now i'm going to watch
oh you need a dome
i would also suggest to anyone looking to get a telescope would be i'd actually say get binoculars first
because it is very hard to tell somebody they are telescopes it's two televisions
because you know um when someone asks me i want to get a telescope which one should i get that
you know i always follow up with well what are you trying to do because it really depends but binoculars
do suit themselves more to a good blanket answer they're great tools for
building up foundational skills if you want to do planets and watch conjunctions you can see some deep sky
objects you can watch satellites there's really a lot you can do and then they're also small enough and
portable enough you can put them in an overnight bag you can take them camping you can walk right outside if you have school or work
in the morning or whatever in my experience um they're great on a tripod you can use the same tripod for a camera but they're
a very basic element that i i think everyone here would say is like a swiss army knife in the
astronomers tool kit it is for everything binoculars are something that every astronomer should own you know so
i have always my pictures even if i do something i have to always be beside my
telescope just while i'm imaging just looking
or with if i don't use pinnacle i have always i can watch
the imaging from my from my screen so i do same time i do a little bit visual
and photographing but mostly today i do visual only
from my remote from my remote i just watch the sky moon
sometimes i take you some pictures but it's so fun when we did that with cherry msro
telescope yes the visual is it's so amazing because
you get just just wherever you want to go there is no
just a target just point it somewhere and just look at that and enjoy
right and use the amplification of the yeah the optics and the camera to let you visually see right yes yes that's
right that's great
okay guys and i'm going to bed because i need hi nico
you take care thank you very much again yes everyone thank you welcome you're welcome to come back on
global star party anytime every time if you like yeah i love it i will love it thanks all
right thank you have a good night thanks nico have a night good night great meeting you
yeah jeff wise uh says my advice is not to get a giant sct
on a poor tripod for the first scope i did and it sent me back a year as far as as
enjoyment of my equipment in the night sky it was the exact opposite
it was the exact opposite way to start you know so um
i've seen that many times jeff where people bought maybe
too much telescope to begin with you know uh because they're so enthusiastic um
you know but um uh and i've i've seen them go all the way from you know maybe having you know a 20
inch a 25 inch telescope you know they get aperture fever they want more and more yeah but then you know that heavy
big telescope becomes too much of a labor you know and they stop using it and uh
you know they maybe only go out a few times a year you know and then maybe only a couple of times a year and then
maybe not at all uh for a year you know and it's sitting in the garage or whatever
so it's important to have something that is portable enough for you to really all the time
i mostly use my ed80 i have i have scopes but that little uh
you like that one huh yes it's something between everything it's like it's
it's just fits for everything so have a wide field it has a
good quality of glass you can do full for
moon photography solar everything deep sky yeah deep sky
so it's it's most used scope in my park so i would say
it's like binoculars it's like the next yeah the next essential gear
yeah an 8080 yes or something like it you know so right there's there's many small telescopes
out there that you can look at um and uh you know the uh
the ed80 uh for me is something i i also like to to have in my
my arsenal you know so i think that for me personally what i like to have is um uh you know an
astrograph that's all set up you know with cameras and everything and then
i like a dobsonian you know because i like to i like to push a telescope and uh and just find stuff you know
and then and a pair of binoculars and that with those three pieces of equipment that's that's
that's everything for me you know so but uh the other essential piece of
equipment for me is the community of uh of astronomers i love going out with uh
groups of people and uh observing the sky and so
uh it's for that reason that i like to put together events and um
so you know i i'm really looking forward to next year's events when i take people to
mount wilson observatory we'll use a really big telescope you don't need to bring one a inch telescope will be
enough just to see the telescope is enough for sound make sure you bring your
camera make sure you bring binoculars you know a red flashlight
you're going to need all that stuff um yeah but uh you know you'll you'll get to experience what it was like
uh what it is like to be one of the mount wilson astronomers you know so and at the end
of it we give you a certificate you know that you are a mount wilson astronomer we have
part of the observing staff sign it okay so it's it's authenticated and uh
uh so it's um you know you get to you get to join the legions of uh astronomers that included
hubble uh shapley uh you know bada uh you know all the great astronomers you
can think of from that era you know also shared that um that glass so you know
and and that sky so um you know i i can't wait to do it again it's because i must see
event right yeah just to see the scopes
yes you know easy enough yeah yeah it's it's
it is wonderful just to see them but uh to actually observe with them is is even better you know so
yeah and came home to eight inch and a e 80
can be a little bit frustrating well you'll be amazed how well a small telescope performs after using yeah
um one such occasion we were using the 60 inch at palomar observatory they had
the oscar meyer 60 inch and i had my 13 inch dobsonian just
outside just outside the dome and we were looking at all kinds of stuff
part of the observation was to look at uh the andromeda galaxy with the 60 inch
telescope now the field of view is so tiny very small you know yeah and so when we looked at
andromeda it just looked like we were looking into a fog bank it looked like fog oh it didn't look
yeah you couldn't see spiral structures or anything like that when i got back out with my 13-inch of course there was
andromeda spire alarms you know looking spectacular so
there are times when uh smaller telescopes uh can give you a view that's far more
satisfying than a big scope this is more less is more that's right
that's right yeah so let's see do we have any more um
comments questions martin eastbourne when to caution you
about those long flights they're really hard on you i used to fly to southern france or italy from california
then to korea and japan wow flown 23 hours from california to home
in mid-pacific using four uh four props so
four props wow okay that was some hard flying um
yeah you want to try to keep those uh those stretches as short as you can
um and i know what you're talking about too i used to fly every two weeks
from los angeles to taiwan and back you know so two weeks there two weeks back two weeks
there two weeks back you know and so a lot of miles um
and the jet plug to flight oh and the classic jet lag yes that's right from sweden to u.s it's
it's worse than back yes then coming back that's right it's uh it's it's a one day
you have to strive to stop yeah at least one day yeah yeah
well great so guys uh do we have any other
anything else that you'd like to cover here tonight
i don't know okay well i i i hope tomorrow
well the scene was five and four and the chess stream was
were going to be three or two it's it's very for a
a planetary system it's very good you know i remember two years ago
when in the winter i think it's better sky
than the the summer sky because um
the cold weather uh here in argentina we have um
it's too much a wet weather and sometimes a in the
in the the highest cla i i don't know how to say it in the
highest place of chess stream is very very turbulent so
it's not like in central america uh is
they they have a very good saying in america to get a more
um pictures of planetary images
to get more resolution or more details so uh
in this weekend and in this week we we are having a very good weather
a very very i don't know if it's too much dry but
the yesterday was almost 3 a.m
and and the scope was uh dry it it wasn't well and
and almost uh one or zero degrees outside i have my
my my hand i don't know if you see it's a oh yeah
it's the cold weather i i had i was outside with my
jacket my hat and a scarf but my in my
my hand was outside with the mouse because i was seeing the the computer
and moving the the mount because i
i have the the monochrome camera like nico i have to change filter
in the world and they will [Music]
filter exactly and i have to do manually so
i have to be there i i couldn't be i can't go inside okay
to do a one minute a video or a
a per channel so yeah i got to check it out and start to
to to to recall so
yeah it's like you had to suffer it's worth it it's worth it
yeah okay so do you wear gloves do you wear gloves on your hands i forgot
oh you forgot i was very concentrate in consented
so yeah i forgot to wear this oh no
and also i forgot to dinner he forgot dinner wow
i i it for your energy to keep your body warm and you know
my my wife when uh when she worked not in the
in the the late night
[Music] she worked on the day and when i put my grub outside it maybe
was 10 p.m and she screamed max she's the dinner
because i i was forgotten i was concentrating taking pictures
when i come and sat inside no i had to hear it
oh it works i swear every every time i have to wait and
okay so in this night it doesn't happen but i
[Laughter] and she didn't have dinner waiting for you of course so you know you have to
make your own dinner no no she in that time she she waits for me and that's why she was a guy
yeah that's fine yeah but uh sometimes maybe now i you have been
eat and she went to bed when she went to bed don't do nice
don't make any noise because she's she hears something and
okay that's uh maybe krakatoa
[Laughter]
[Music] she's a very
well yesterday i was yelling with myself with everything and when she went to
work and she she said me well you have that face
and i saw her and i said because i i can [Music]
put it the the collimation okay and she doesn't understand that you have
frustrations yeah i i was almost three hours
outside tried to call him no no
really i i was very frustrated because i put it
all good the demand was aligned uh very weighted but
the pictures i i didn't started with saturn because i
have a behind the tree so i i prefer to start to
to to to get very very detailed in
the the the equipment so um i
i don't know i'm i'm still remembering and i'm still frustrated
even now even now uh no but i
you know i say okay that's it let's go to take pictures of saturn
let's see how it's going uh i don't know this is a an astrograph
telescope is a short telescope he is not
prepared to do planetary pictures and maybe that's it
that's why i have some pictures very i remember the the rings of saturn it was
over uh overspoke like it was three
rings you know okay three games above and you know what is going on
but i figured out that maybe the scene uh maybe also the
aperture maybe it will uh maxi i i think i think what you need to
do is you need to build a permanent setup okay you need to have something whether it's
on the patio of your house or something so that you can leave it set
up you can tweak it get it better better better better better and then and
you don't have to mess with it you just go out and turn things on and you enjoy it and
then work work around the problems if you have light pollution you know get get
creative like pekka did you know he was making things to cover lights and and shields and these kinds of things
too so that you know because if you're if you are fighting the equipment
this this takes a lot of the joy you guys are listening in the audience you guys very good this takes a lot of
the joy out of of this economy you don't enjoy it exactly tomorrow equipment to disappear you want
this you want to know the equipment so well you want it so set up you know and if you're having to bring it out set it
up you know no matter if you're living in an apartment a condo
whatever your situation is you can set it up permanently you can
yeah no i initially think that that's the right way to go but
i forbid forbidden everybody nobody had access to balcony
and i i was almost getting and change the uh the hand
handle when you open the door yeah to code look so no
way out there nobody no one can touch your equipment yeah yeah
i i i imagine to pick up a when invite someone to the balcony he was covering
the code balcony
so pekka can you show i think you have some photographs of your your setup outside yeah can you show some you can
share some images here absolutely let's see where i can find them
you know also when the the difficult part of all of this
is when i have to go to bed i have to discern everything that i was fighting a lot to put it out together
oh look at that now that's a scope
and i have a and let's see if i can find that
with my computer room i have also that one but let's see
where that is
oh here we are you can go through
whole thing so
it's the build of the pc that is the ready
set up for you my observatory uh pc oh so there is uh
yes three gigahertz a pc with 256
gigabytes hard disk and there is two terabytes hard disk and this is the
500 jigs dragon traveler
so this flies between my main computer in my room and between
the setup and there is shuttle with smaller bigger yeah
in all that equipment we have the same pen drive
yes yeah but i this is the step for sun
oh yeah it's covered with you know with you have you know windshield in a wind
the car window the windshield for the solar the sun
when you park in the the sunny day you just put it oh that's an earlier idea
fully very very cheaper and a very good idea but i found that the
problem with that was that i lost my uh connection for
everything that was wi-fi and so on because
yes so uh let's see bring the cart on
this is the computer room where i have this uh that uh for
making the cabling uh
for that's the final cabling for the computer
so it's found for the humidity that's my uh
mission control mission control is this
i've been to observatories that do not have as many monitors as that okay there is an ipad also for this for
my uh sky cams i have two cameras outside
and it's all controlled by game pad also that's the mount
yeah very cool so that's the setup oh you're decked out pekka that's awesome
so that's my my observatory that i have built up
after cherries msro moment
amazing yeah so i i wanted to have something that i
can do very quickly and because i was starting to avoid
to making visual because it takes too long time to make a polar alignment and taking
mount inside and out so i needed a very
fast things that i can just like it takes less than five minutes um
and i'm up and running running with my my stuff so
i needed that so i can just uh if i see that
it's a cloudy night and i see in my uh forecast and so on that there will be
a let's say 40 minutes gab i will take the chance
if there is something i can visually or photograph
i it's the only take five minutes to i am up and running that's everything see
that's what you need maxie yeah i i have a question let's go i don't know if you
uh well maybe of course you know the the the dome of the observatories yes they
are semi-circular but also i saw some
another observatory that the the rooftop moves
outside i i've used both i've used both in the advantages of the rooftop
first off it's a lot less money okay much less money uh
and you get to see the whole sky so you could have uh you can be
with your telescope you see you know if a bolide goes overhead you're gonna see it if you're in an observatory dome you've
got a little slit okay now the the dome makes it is more comfortable
especially when it's cold okay because it keeps wind off of you and that kind of thing you know
um but they don't don't produce
this um of course if you have a
um a very hot weather
for example in summer uh when you go tonight you have to put that observatory
a cooler because the the images will be
blown with the heat of the yeah of the of the the air the hot inside of the of the
observatory right yes yes yeah that's right and so
um a roll-off roof observatory cools off faster exactly
you know so uh and you can do it with more um you can have more telescopes in there you
can have uh you know you can make it very comfortable you can put a couch you can have your stereo system your
microwave your little refrigerator you're you you can live there you know
moxie you can also have your stationary with uh i did this from uh terry pauline
it's just like a 10 bucks tarpaulin that i uh
just folded and taped so now it's like a
moisture rain solar protection
and i have a small window i have a fan also on the floor
that's get out and makes this the air circulation
so the moisture is much slower than outside
so i keep the electronical out of moisture
well here in my backyard i have three dogs i don't think
they are i was protecting your scope yes of course i have my
german shepherd luna you know every time i go outside she
with this cold weather i they sleep
with um above the the parisia the the
the barbecue place yeah and they have they
they some um they couch to to get some rest
but she wasn't outside beside of the telescope because i was
there and she was freezing but she was there she doesn't mind
your company i am i am thinking about the dog but uh
let's see i want to somebody to sit down and listen to me when i'm doing
reading something david levy uses a roloff roof observatory
and he has two domes on his property so he's got two observatory gums and the roll-off observatory he usually he uses
the roloff roof observatory more than the other telescopes but he does use all of them you know
but if you want to you know if you were to go observing with david uh you would definitely see him spending a lot of
time in there when we do the arizona dark sky star party uh
you know i'll talk to david about having you know a group of people come and see
his setup you know because it's it's pretty cool you know so
um and uh you know he's uh he's discovered a comet from this location and uh
so it's it's uh it's a special place i think but i think you'll see the advantages of a roll-off roof uh
uh you know that that uh solves many problems you know so
okay i will i would say that that advice and plus it does not look like an
observatory that's another big one you know yes sometimes people see an observatory they go oh my
god there's that guy's got to have a lot of money and uh you know they've got something very valuable inside right
exactly and this is like more a place like you put your um
the tools of the garden or something like that and no this is cool
this is my place of course
i of course i spoke with my fiance of this in
maybe in a few years or some years when i have my my my own
house uh i i say to her uh i will have my place to put my
equipment yes okay inside my house no no not again
you will be outside okay don't bother all right
okay the entire okay okay so
probably you know maxie you probably don't have to wait okay if you if you
can set up a portable building okay uh and and build it out then later when
you buy a piece of property and you have a house and everything then you can set a foundation but if you keep it portable
so that you can take it apart and then move the walls and you know this kind of thing then yeah
if it's not too big no yes i i will i would think about it
i would think and you'll be much happier and much more productive
you know so or maybe a caravan and take the roof off
and build a caravan where you have a you have everything you have a small
home with you just sealed the half of the caravan and on the other side you have a bed you
have a bathroom water and you can cook some food but build
just to the other side take off the roof and make some
i saw a caravan i have planned to to do that
actually maxi what what and pekka that's what you're doing right now pekka is uh is is really good because that
system that you're setting up is kind of portable already right i mean yeah you're building all the pieces
and all the connections and everything and then uh once you do i'm kind of trying to do the same thing with
i don't have as much gear as you have but i'm starting to build up something so that ultimately
uh you know you could make an observatory out of that so although you know but but get the telescope get
the electronics you know all your cabling uh all that set up and then and then you're then
you're good to go yeah look at this setup right here this is uh
this is a very inexpensive one some plywood and it looks like origami you know yeah yeah
um this this one is uh um
you know if you want to get uh very fancy uh you could you know people have built
uh small observatory domes like this but this is uh that one's a nice little
roll-off roof yeah that could all be something like that would be great i think yeah
i think so too and it's more cheaper a lot cheaper
a lot cheaper we sell explore scientific cells domes but the domes are like
three thousand dollars you know and for a few hundred dollars you could make
you could start to build a building you know yeah i would think about that
and it could be to start off just to have walls you know
so that it they're high enough to keep the the wind off of you okay and then uh
you know what pekka does you cover the the the mounts you know and then just bring your
tube assembly in and out maybe you know something like that and yeah some people say that it's
better if you have a beer of concrete or maybe of a iron
yes to to put the the mount uh and
because if you is going to be there is very very
hard to to move of course and and then the the
triple factor this this guy sells these
observatory sheds on ebay
let's see let's see
i have seen some designs of the roll-off roof and i don't know how much cost this adds but if it's not a lot this could be
cool um where they'll have the main part of the the building dedicated to their telescopes and tools
and then there's a little bit kind of cut off with another wall and some insulation where they have a warm room
and i guess this applies more to people uh maybe up in the north of the country at least in the us
but then they can have all their computers and a couple of reference guides and things like that in there and then everything is just run out to the
telescopes for imaging i've always thought that's yeah it just seems like the dream that that you know the way to go with that
it's like if you have your own place you know and
of course i love to er to grab the the equipment outside
and start to do the alignment to the to get focus and everything
but in this time i think i learned to
to try to to get some more time to do some things that
start to when yes i grab the the equipment takes me and of course
i think i don't enjoy
and you know maybe i can very early
put a statue to make some pictures and also put another equipment very
common to do some observations because
sometimes i forget to do some observations i i i
how can i say i'm a very occupative
occupant i go by uh taking pictures and see what's going on seeing the guiding yeah
you know but it's more like uh
hate and love yeah love hate relationship exactly but
you know max's journey to do everything and come to a point
because i think i did too fast i didn't enjoy the journey to get done and remote
observatory and because the journey to to get
all done must also be uh something
you should experience yes experience and uh i'm
i'm a little bit packing down down back forward now and
because i did everything too fast and make mistakes and now i'm backing off and i'm doing my
re-cabling my cabling redone so it will be better and so on so so
i think uh did everybody do is at uh
own uh how fast you like but but i forgot to enjoy
so therefore i go back a little bit and do it again so i enjoyed the the that's
the journey yeah you got it you got it you you got it that's exactly the formula yeah yeah you you there's so
many times you see it time and time again i mean we all do it you just buy you kind of overdose on a whole bunch of
stuff yes you you know you kind of over buy and then you can't really enjoy it fully and then
you get something then you get frustrated because it's not all working yes and uh so so when you
like you say take a bat take a take another deep breath and and back off a bit and then
kind of put the pieces especially if you already have a lot of stuff that were maybe a mistake before but now
you know how to use them more optimum excellent and then you can and then you can say hey i got some you got some real
treasure right you got some really good stuff yes and you can get the most out of it it's uh it's really fun yes
cameron you are totally right there and you realize
first then when you have everything set how to use what scope when uh with what camera so
before i did that it was totally cows i did i had too many
scopes and too many setups and now i began to realize that i can't use that
scope with this and that moment you know that that happened to me in the solar eclipse in
december because i i grabbed my my f5 telescope and
the max suitable and in my head it was planning all in
all the the travel the talking with nico and two friends that
came with us and i was visualizing what i'm going to do
and i did the opposite you know
and because i i of course i want to
take pictures with the with the newtonian but also i want to take pictures and
with a cell phone and doing do it
a at the same time but uh where the cell phone was remotely
and the camera was taking manually pictures uh and i couldn't because the the time
runs out i i it was very very hot it was in summer
but uh the the the clouds i remember was very
they was our enemy because we don't know if we are going to see it or not
and i remember i put the the aq5 with a newtonian and this i say okay that's it
it's going i started to grab the the star adventure with the maxwell
and when i realized someone screamed okay it's coming it's starting
right now and i say no i don't i i have to do something and i start to do
with the newtonian and that's it i put i leave the the maxwell right there
because i i don't have no time and and that's that and those are the
things when you say you don't enjoy it
and you are seeing a something very unusual
and you have to to think very cold in that time yes very
difficult the all the things is happening because you know it's it's
only almost panic almost panic exactly
maybe it's like when in the international space station is going to to grab the
i i don't know maybe another model and it's you you don't have to do any
mistakes maybe you don't have any possibility well in this case it's maybe you have
somewhat but maybe a few years and
uh when happened the eclipse you know it was
like put it out of your of your back a a very
huge bag of stones out because i remember i
i started to cry and everything from some things in my family too and i
remember seeing and we both we were crying because
they prepared the preparation because we don't know we didn't know if
we are going to see it of a pandemic situation uh
we start to to make plans to say okay we are going yes we are going okay
we saved some friends who if they can show you us someone uh
cannot uh see where you're going to be to to rest
see where was the travel see the places see the permissions because we have to pass
over another province and we say okay if we are going to to
rio negro it's another police department the the police of the
the royal police the the patrol police sometimes a
makes a ask you money to pass
oh really yes yes it's some corruption yeah it is in everywhere but
they say if you have some collaboration to [Music] for some friends something like that you
know and you say yes yeah i have i don't know a hundred bucks and
take it okay going going and you know it's really really happened if you don't
pay me okay you have a flashlight uh that
knows it doesn't uh it's on or you have i don't know some problems some they'll
find a problem they will find it oh the fire extinguisher is a very
almost old you know some
i don't know so it's argentina
there's many countries yeah yeah but now it's of course uh
unfortunately i know my maxi i mean i think this is just
a byproduct there seems to be no way no substitute to getting these experiences
right you have to get the experience these bad experiences experience to be able to really
know what to do next time it seems that's the way we learn right we have to have these
humans have to have these experiences you know to kind of over exert
themselves push themselves to the limit get frustrated so that we can learn right i mean it would be there is very
very uh and that's where this is this community is really awesome for the young folks the young
they can learn from our experiences uh you know and and so when they go through the journey
uh they'll be that much better equipped and and reduce the frustrations as they go through because you know and they'll
they'll have their own set of frustrations pushing different envelopes but uh but at least they can we can get
them past you know some of the basics you know and and pass the torch
you know sometimes when you say okay i i don't enjoy it i'm still angry and
frustrated but when the time passing by and you know oh how stupid i
was i i don't have to do problem with that
of course it's very difficult but when you realize it's like like you say
cameron it's a learning journey yes and i think also that
we who has been around with astronomy that
the mentorship if we find somebody under our wings
yeah and be like a wingman that we let them do
uh as far as they can by themselves but be there when
it's needed and helped them over threshold
but not giving them too much like hand giving
so that they have to experience the by themselves and when the stop comes
then we are there when needed like a mentor should be
but the only the knowledge that they have somebody to ask
when things go not wrong right so that would be
like a mentorship program that the young ones can just
like ask i live there and there and i do this than this and then
somebody connects them that okay here we have one kind of mentor that you can contact
and i i think everyone can grab some
not a acknowledge acknowledge i don't know it's okay
and but also everyone
is not that owned of acknowledge
you know because i give you some some tips some er some steps to do
something but maybe i don't know it doesn't work
but you realize that it doesn't work and you can share it it does belongs to you it belongs to
everyone who can um
need it so of course sometimes our people say no no i'm i'm
pay me if you want to my knowledge uh i i am not that kind of person
because i don't think the expiration and the
the steps that you did a another person will be be doing and
maybe is suffering with that and you can help that yeah that's right
exactly of amateur astronomers right there yeah
it is collaboration absolutely yeah exactly so
i don't know it's my humble opinion about that no well there's another thing too i mean in this
day and age there's so much information out there and so much access
i think uh what's needed more than anything is is more of this type of community what scott has uh created to
to help clear to clear this clear the air and and give some guidance and give
some direction because it it's a it's a very broad
subject and a very broad thing and there's a lot of different directions you can take and
and a lot of you know there's tons of information out there good bad and different but it's nice to
be able to have this and have real time talking and and and and coaching and
sharing experiences and you know uh i'm sure if you know a lot of the stuff
we talk about there there are you know there are groups out there if we can
reach out and connect that have done some really advanced stuff
but they're in an island right they haven't connected um you know and and and i'm i'm i think
i'm convinced that as we get this community we're getting a lot of excellent people
with a broad range of of things that they're bringing to the table which is fantastic
and it just gets better and better and that just helps everyone enjoy it more and gives that
mentorship at all different the full spectrum which is great and we can share and enjoy
you know it's really great and yeah i love it because the leap from visual astronomy i felt from visual
astronomy to astrophotography including astrophotography it's
totally new world it's like gigantic
huge portion of so high technology and and stuff
and what should go exactly right it's like a brain jurgery
from visual astronomy when you get into a photo
astrophotography and i was overwhelmed with all data and all
stuff to read and all programs to handle and learn
and i almost felt on my knees to go back
but i decided that okay i start with my dslr and only moon
and i just read about how to take moon photography
with dslr and when i was like uh warming clothes then i took out
my my ac 120 camera and began to learn
how it works and i didn't know anything about stacking or
or process
wavelengths and all that you know levels and stretching and
and it was like science fiction for me
well that's the thing okay you you get hit over the head with that stuff right right away and that was the barrier
that used to be uh even even tougher with uh with film yeah right
i mean uh it was it was it was it was too big if i heard a light i remember getting an astrophotography
book and learning about all the iso but if i had somebody it's me it sound one then if i
had someone to tell me then the pekka enjoy this
even it's hard even how hard it is you punch your head
to the wall and you swear that that mount will
be on the trash very soon [Laughter] enjoy enjoy
because you will remember to start those these days
with enjoy and love for yourself and how fun it was to learn
and that's and that's the trouble that the amateur astronomer do
one has to do and has to do because uh yeah
i think we talk about this another time but some people of course they
they offer when they're going to grab some equipment they sell
okay you can they sell a very huge telescope a very
huge amount and they don't maybe realize how put on a
alignment i don't know uh or and that's start with
a simple equipment and trying to to get some perfection with a
simple grab and then when you say okay that's it i this is all i can do with
this i have if i have to go more i will be more
if i'm not i'm okay with this and that's it and
yeah i remember no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no that's okay
no no i i was just saying it's all about setting expectations right and how many how many both an
equatorial amount when kovid came and thought that okay let's
let's look something like visual and now
when they got the equatorial month they didn't understand it how this works
i have to learn it too i i start with a al asimov a
amount that has a go-to but that go too
helps me to know more the the the sky yeah because
every i remember a a
when i saw uh i don't know a simple star i don't know i
even didn't know the name or in what constellation it is
and and that equipment helps me to just understand
in the passing by of the time the summer skies and the winter skies
and then when i say when when i realized that i
have i i i want to do astrophotography i realized that i have to change the
amount because in our um
stopped me is in some cases and i have to continue so
every equipment it's okay but
if you can use it that's your equipment and that's it
yeah i would certainly agree from my perspective that there's a lot to be said for for some mentorship in amateur
astronomy especially with equipment because you know some people get in and like we were asked tonight um i'd like
to get a telescope what kind well it depends on what you'd like to observe and what your previous
experience is um there are a lot of what we call the department store
telescopes the dreaded toy telescopes that really get you nowhere but then there is also the other way of
of getting all this expensive equipment and understanding how none of it works or even how it goes together
so i think in my experience i was i kind of figured it out myself and it worked all right
but it is really useful to have people there to say here's how you observe and here's how you do these objects and
photography and or maybe they they even don't know what they want
you know you don't see oh okay i want to see maybe it should be there okay you can see with
too much stethoscope but then they realize oh i have i want to
take a picture but i i i see a very shiny ball with the
the moons that they are very shiny too and and they they frustrate it but
they think that no no this equipment it doesn't help me but you
because maybe some some some people they say hey you know
you can do it with with that growl you have to buy this another and
that's the commercial part and i
i i sell uh i i work in the sole place of computers and and like you say corner
i every time a customer comes to the to the store i asked a
for what they want that computer that a printer because
some people goes to the how much cheaper is the computer or the
printer and but i i asked for what do you want to do it
with your house or you need to do it for study or something like that because it's not the
same and they don't realize that because they think oh it's a printer i use it when i
want and now if you have an ink [Music]
ink shape a printer you have maybe three weeks to do it to
use it because the the ink will be dry and you will not more
[Applause] i even capable to to print but with the
last print you will be maybe a month or more
okay we're going another term but it's the same thing uh
i don't go to commercial i go to results
and that's maybe what people need to
to to show them uh what
they really want you can do this you can do this you can celebration you can do
photos you can do i don't know documentation you can do education
and maybe it has the the little spark that
turns on right right yeah it's about discovering that spark because it really has to come
from within i mean you cannot make somebody enjoy something they have to they have to see that saturn's rings or
or or you know the moon or or a comet or something
or or even uh you know uh or or bullets or you know something that
is is the uh kind of that spark like you say to really have them once they have that
they're they're gonna go on that journey right that's the key the key and then we can help guide them and and it's about
setting expectations like you say you know what can you see now like if they start saying you know and and make them happy
about seeing like i get a kick out of seeing faint galaxies like little faint fuzzies right and that gives me gets me
really excited i just love that yes and and and but most people you know
you show people that it's like what the heck is that a piece of fuzz on the eyepiece i don't see anything
yeah
exactly so you kind of ha but they have to be but when you if you kind of set their
expectations say hey you're going to see a piece of fuss here but then you show them like m51 on an 18-inch dub
right and you see the spiral arms it's like whoa you know that's pretty darn good right i mean to
be able to see that with your own eye and then then you start to really appreciate
uh you know you know all the those photons from millions of
hundreds of millions of light years away right tens of lights have come to your eye and and that that connection when
you get that it's it's almost like scott you've you know the overview effect you you know
that's just the start of that bug you you gotta but but but that person it has to be
within them and they have to make sure that and just to help them they they got to have the right
expectations on what they can can and cannot do with different equipment like me i'm still
like more the fussy uh not sharp pictures of galaxies
where where it's it's like uh it's long uh very far from perfect
picture but it leaves me to work with my imagination
so there is something uh yet to get yeah well it's the it's the heart and the mind of the astronomer
really yeah it's not the equipment so i
second picture of jupiter i took first with my dslr
and very i saw the galileo moons but then i took the next
night i took my 8 inch and camera and
it's very low it's on 18 degrees of altitude so it was
seeing was quite bad but then when after processing it's
still fuzzy non-sharp but i think that this is
better than i expected because i have something to play
around this is not hubble telescope photo this is with my eight inch
in balcony and my
stuff has taken this picture and that gives me so much joy
that is like photos from star our sun
first travels behind me with speed of light hits the jupiter
punches back travels almost half away back and hits my small small small sensor
and that is that makes that makes the the uh party even more
party you know i have here the cosmos of carl sagan
oh yeah this is the i don't know the edition
it's in spanish of course but it's very old because my my father
about i don't know i was very little boy and
he has it so i remember seeing the pictures of the
nebulas and galaxies and you know this is a picture i don't know
okay oh oh your background's torn around with it
let me oh let me stop the the background yeah that will work
okay so you see the orion nebula yeah
this is was uh that was a good picture back then exactly that's right
and this was with them
it was a said it by the hail observatories you know
and that that m42 shot was yeah this is was mine yes
exactly so you got inspiration from a very young age that's great
that's awesome of course uh in that time like
there was film pictures uh you know a lot of that scott we we talked about
this with scissor but um
let me put the score again okay and
now with the cell phone you can do it oh look at that yeah so this is my
telescope that's nice yes i started out with when i was uh nine and ten years old okay it's a 40
millimeter 40 millimeter refractor
have the push pull change for magnification
the finder scope had no adjustment at all in fact you can see it's not even aligned
and no optics no optics in the finder it's just a tube on on this this kind of tripod
you know the reason why i keep this telescope is because it's sentimental value now doesn't it i remind myself that this is
where it all started this was my first observation of the moon and uh
it cost my parents uh in 1970 it cost them 17 and 50 cents
which was at the time for them it was about a month it's a big gift it was
oh and and you know when you're when you're that age and you you get something like that that's like what
what an instrument i mean what an instrument to have that play with and i i think scott you were
saying you took that apart and put it back together many times
yeah and then including the eyepieces right and who knew that many years later here
you go you're now building them waterproof eyepiece there you there you go right now i just thought i
know where something like that will take you so it's it's yeah it's kind of like that i
started my with the pro camping colors it was an eight
times 50 picoclovers but the other tube
was broken and those were you really just had one yeah yeah and those was
all too heavy for me to hold oh wow so i laid laid them on the
window shell and was on my knees and get some on the window yeah
what's the fun what stefan is what i read about the protuberances on them on
the sun right when i was eight or nine
so it took 46 years for me to take my own
picture of prominences i see yeah the 46 years i
before i read about tom them and was like uh
i it was very hard for eight years old to remember proto
bedrans and 46 years after
i took my own picture yeah so that was like
uh it was you i could say that was a holy moment
yeah to wait 46 hours and then get an own taking picture
so that was okay right now but yeah
and it's not it's not the pressure specifically good picture but it's
it's it picture of prominences well this is the travel that we did with
nico and uh this is a place in sierra leone we did
it's a um a very mountain place in
and this is the the the window this is the mountain window
okay and this is a selfie that i i do with a camera yeah
here's niko oh yeah cool cool
and well this is in the eclipse i you know i'm talking about the prominences
i remember seeing that i always want to see the prominences of
the sun always uh when i bowed my brother filter
of course i know that i couldn't see it but i i can see
the the you know the the dark spot
of the sun but always want to see that plasma a
show goes beyond of the sun and
in the in the pictures that i did i i could took it
but in this case it's uh it's like that but uh
well that was beautiful well that's progress here this is the
oh this is very it's really nice
breathe it's very big i did the car that's a conversation
[Music]
another one because i do the calculation of the parameter of the sound
and a and comparison with obviously the moon
i did some maths and gave me the the size of the five earth
uh putting it together and there's another one
and and there was a more let me see if i find
some crude image i took a you can see i was a machine and in that
day because look at you [Laughter] you were doing lucky imaging in yourself
well it's 2019 no there was the 2020 in the forum
yes last december uh the 29 19 uh ice
it was in my city in chile 20 kilometer from here was the the
middle of the place that will be better but we have clouds
i only could see the
when it was completely and then they
turned uh turns again the sun um i don't remember in what image uh i
think is in this here
wow yeah beautiful oh man multiple prominences that's
incredible and see this this is not um
that's not exactly it's not appropriate of the moon yeah yeah yeah you can see the craters in the
mountains that that's awesome the ridges that is really cool actually you can see it on the bottom left
beautiful yeah lots of good stuff in that picture wow
this was very very shiny this was without the
the the filter you know let me here he's with the with a filter
for everyone he's seen this is with a filter but when you put salt
see this little
line is this oh my
yes it really hurts with your eyes
and crush only a picture
and only that shows how how strong sun is
oh yeah this is amazing you know and they are not close to each other
moon and sun they are a little bit there is a 150 million
kilometers behind them between them
well here i was continuing taking pictures and i remember
almost in i think it was in this
pictures i see through the the
the camera and i see the the clouds passing by but also the
prominences with my eyes but not directly
uh for precaution but i could see it you know
and that stuff and that was amazing here look at this
these are the prominences but this is [Music] sun
surface wow that's right on the edge whoa nice
man how did you do that i don't know
it was a lot of work that's for sure i was taking pictures uh one by one
i with this camera i only can do a six pictures a
one by another but i was
putting the the speed of the picture and i don't remember
the let me see this is there
16 is and one over 1 000 seconds
of exposure to get this
this is the the original the other one was sedated but
this is the raw format there's more darkness
but i think in this this time it was a cloud passing by
you know you can see right
changing it up and look at the colors though it's beautiful yeah really nice
it's contrasted it's like a flare but it's a huge
very huge a five planets earth
yes yeah in here you can see the clouds in this case it was very in this color
the sky this very blue darkness and
and here's some exposure pictures he is coming out the corona
and here the clouds is going passing by so what is mesmerizing yeah
i feel like i'm watching another eclipse this is great beautiful
all the the corona structures that's really nice i love the wispy bits on the north and
south poles there those are really stunning and this is a capable to see it with
your own eyes this is amazing when you see that there is there is no
substitute i mean that that uh that wow moment when you can see the
some structure in the corona and you see those those arcs coming out
it's like wow you can actually see it it's like surreal it's awesome
yeah this is amazing well he's so dark too yes
he is in this part is going starting to get more flares
you can see very shiny and
and then well here's another one
it's very it's like overexposed but oh
all that flares this is not the surface this is a the flowers
and the other ones it was a covered by the moon
and then it started to to to get the the light
and then
taking pictures this is one by another one it is
very fast yeah look at this fraction of a second it happens it's very quick
look at this yeah and i say okay you know i have to put
again the the filter because i don't know very quickly right now
and then i put it into the camera and see all the brightness it was this
it's just that thin line yes it only
happens one second in this case in this photo and then instead
but i i continuing and that's it that's
a very shortly resume of the eclipse
unforgettable feeling forget the thing yes
unfortunately it wasn't dark spots uh on the sun surface but
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i remember a guy who's doing astrophotography
pictures let me i saw the sky page of nasa
wow that's so
um well this is the the the skype page
and they put they upload some pictures of that time
unfortunately they don't put any photo of mine but
this is an amazing picture he this was talked by
in eduardo he's from santa fe
he wasn't able to go in to valcetta but his
this it was taken from his house this it was with a coronado
and these they there are the same flares
that i took yeah yeah that's that is neat
that is neat well you know that's that's the the real thing is is kind of this self-discovery when you
when you can even if it's your if it's totally different type or style a picture to be
able to seem the same types of structures in in celestial objects
yeah is is it gives you that connection and which is really interesting about
this you know the talking about the journey of self-discovery it doesn't matter how crude the picture is
if you can see those same prominences with whatever equipment you have for example it's it's just it's amazing and
it's real it's like wow yeah you know all those things like when i when i took the picture of whatever the
eagle nebula with the pillars connect creation it's not a great picture but hey i can see it i can see the the pillars
and uh yeah that's just it's like it's so cool right i mean
you know it's it's uh it's it's wonderful and you know oh this is cool um
they back uh how he said the the backstage
here's the max return the telescope behind me and that i i
i'm capable to grab it he's my car he's the
car that we found this is the place this wall
helps us a lot because it was a very windy day it was patagonian windy
caesar was almost almost one kilometer from us and they are
they they don't have protection so the wind was passing by passing by passing by and
when this is the argentinian [Music]
technology a piece of carton to
don't get a hotter and start and leave taking pictures
basically from a friend that's correct and here's niko
here's his dobsonian cover
these are the people that they were again
that's nice yeah the 10 inch dubsonia that's a great scope because it's it's nice and light easy to maneuver around
easy to be easy to transport that's awesome
this is ariel with his refractor with the homemade filter
and you know you know what you see the the the wall when oh yeah the eclipse
uh before it starts it's look it's like when you see those movies of
mars it was like it would be you've been there uh
of course oh yeah yeah you're right the landscape really changes into that
that hue that kind of rusty hue um it really you're right it affects the
entire like like for example uh we we were close to some trees
the green goes away this is desert yes and but even with even even if you
have like the vegetation it starts to neutralize yeah it changes
yeah oh you even have it on film that's awesome yep yeah it's really neat effect
it kind of makes it monochrome with a hue
yes and this is my filter solar filter and i remember it was
starting to rain and when the sun comes again i
dried the water and it was dirty
leaves at least the the thirds of the of the of the rain
yes of course this is when the eclipse finish and so we start to
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the famous argentinian barbecue no th this is um
like a sandwich like a chorizo sandwich or something
something like that but uh this is with only cheese yeah a
bread and this is a chorizo and that's it simple sandwich
exactly okay you you will eat it and eat it and eat it
and so this is a picture of a
what this is me nico seva
er em alan and this is ariel he's a another friend of us that we
we met in here you know we drive a more
of the road and then he calls me and he said where are you where in here but
he said a man i am 16 meters
behind you come to come with us i have a better place and this is what's amazing
amazing place because that wall but you can see the chorizo
here yes and and that's it that's
a at that time we started to to return i it was maybe 3 00 pm and we
come to uh to the hotel almost 1 a.m of the morning
we only stopped one time in that that night
and it was a very very good journey
wow what a great experience that's uh really cool that's awesome
yeah you covered it really well too you covered all the you know the whole feeling of it
you know did you see the back of the of my car how it was
yes i have another telescope it was my horse no no
of course i traveled alone i did it with my fiance now she will be
she will not support that travel but then seva the another guy traveled with
me so we went two and two with both cars and chatting
with uh with a walkie-talkie because in that place or some place we don't
have a cell phone signal and oh yeah
so we can be communicated with us to do where you have to go to the bathroom
okay we we will follow you and that communication of travel and and that was very intelligent because
uh maybe he um passing by a a a truck
uh and he say uh pass okay it doesn't come
anyone and so i pass him through all his weights
and when we are going to to san antonio
nico a thought that he has a
fuel er in his car but when he saw the the
the the the the
the fuel it was uh he didn't realize he was a
with the car a ups a offside up and
when we are in the middle of the desert he says the the emergency of you
start on so i i i went uh
in front of him and we traveled at almost 80
kilometers per hour maybe there will be 60 miles per hour
in the middle of the desert wow yes now that and that's that's the
things that we always remember because they're funny stories and
and that's all the travel stories yeah
yep yep
oh guys well it's past the midnight hour and
yeah i'm turning into a pumpkin i think so
it's been a great day though and um uh wonderful to spend it with all of you and with all of you in the audience too
and uh i know they got a lot out of it we had people uh waking up and
united emirates watching it from about four a.m till you know work time it's it's about nine
something over there in the morning uh and uh we are
uh you know it's it's a honor to
to be able to uh you know be with all of you guys you know you you guys give me a lot of
credit but really the only thing i do is i just kind of hook it up and
and and send out the emails and stuff like that it but it is really it's it's the
presenters on the show that make the global star party what it is uh and the audience and so
um i'm glad to uh you know for me it's an honor to go for the ride and uh
uh to be able to interact with all of you because i'm i get a lot out of this too you know
it's very rich for me and uh so i love it and um
but uh it's time it's time to uh call it a night and um
thanks very much yeah thanks a lot for your words and yes
we'll miss uh we'll miss you next week but uh yeah yeah yeah so yeah we will not have a global star party uh the
following week uh be gone all week and we won't have any programming for that week but
we'll be back with some some great star parties uh don't forget uh dr linda spilker will be
on august 25th you're going to want to mark your calendar for that um and she will be
you know you know this is this is someone that's made it full loop from from her her young life working on the
voyager space craft missions to uh working on cassini and now she's back at
uh with the team uh controlling the voyager uh spacecraft
so that just blows my mind it blows my mind that they're you know they say
the engines the phoenix what's that it's like the phoenix it's like the phoenix it is it is i mean
they've been flying these spacecraft since the 1970s so you know and it was not too long ago
maybe one or two years ago that they fired off the engine to do a course correction on one of them
and the engine had not been fired in 35 years okay
so whoa it's it's uh it's just amazing to me to
think about that if you know we have spacecraft going into interstellar space
and uh the new horizons spacecraft is is uh you know right behind them so
yeah excitement yeah so anyways that would be really cool all right gentlemen thank you very
much yes good night everyone thank you good night everyone thank you everyone
and uh we'll see you all take care yes take care bye bye
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