Transcript for Top:
8:00 p.m..Ten Minute Break
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oh
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8:10 p.m..Marcelo Souza - Sky’s Up Astronomy Outreach
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hello everybody this is scott roberts
from explore scientific and the explore
alliance and i just wanted to give you a
little uh preview uh or just talk about
8:25 p.m..Maxi Falieres- Astrophotography
the global star party that will be going
on tonight uh here in
about 45 minutes is when it will start
we uh didn't have our regular
programming uh because kent martz is on
vacation so
so there you go
um
and uh
so but i did want to talk a little bit
about the people that will be on tonight
of course we're going to have david levy
on um
and then we'll have uh
terry mann is supposed to come on right
after david levy but she's actually in
alaska right now pho she is
photographing aurora so she's coming
back she's on the road driving back to
her hotel room uh probably with some
really cool uh aurora images
she loves to do that
and she may be running a little bit late
so we'll just kind of adjust the
schedule as we go along
um but of course we have david eichert
he's going to be talking about minerals
of planet earth this time he's focusing
on calcium
uh you know stuff that's in our bones so
this stuff was uh formed inside of uh
supernovas so
um
i think that uh
while
you know it might seem kind of mundane
to talk about calcium and the thing that
kind of pops in your head right away
is uh
drinking milk or something you know
um
so uh but uh calcium was um uh formed in
the
uh you know uh from the belches or the
the
the remnants of supernova you know from
being uh fused together and um
so i think that's totally cool we have
gary palmer astrophotographer gabe gary
palmer on from the united kingdom uh
he's been on our program lots of times
and for you that have been watching our
program
programs a lot of times you're going to
recognize i think almost everyone here
um and then we've got rodrigo zaleda now
rodrigo has not been on global star
party for quite some time but he's been
studying uh research astronomy and uh
uh you know he's becoming a professional
astronomer and so that's that's really
cool he'll be on tonight um with uh some
new images and also he'll talk a little
bit about the educational outreach that
they're doing there in chile
this week
um we have uh
in chile they're celebrating uh
astronomy week so i started looking into
this in astronomy day and
astronomy week and astronomy month
they're all celebrated around the world
uh surprisingly at a lot of different
times but
you know as long as we as astronomers
can find an excuse to celebrate it i
think that's cool
um
then we've got dan higgins uh he'll be
on with eric watson
those are the guys from uh astroworld
so eric often co-hosts with daniel so i
think they'll be a lot of fun
and then we got russell fralek russell
uh too has not been on global star party
on a while
um he is uh he's going to talk about his
lecture with
seven-year-olds
that he recently did
up in canada so that's that's awesome
molly wakeling will be with us we're
also expect expecting marcelo souza
and uh towards the end uh maxi flares so
um
so uh not a not a long schedule tonight
um but it's going to be a fun schedule
so
that's all cool
i will
recognize some of you that are in chat
right now we've got richard grace who
signed on first
beatrice finds from belgium wade county
wade was on
i think he was on friday
with tyler bowman on our focus on astro
photography program so it was really
cool to have wade on
and then uh who else do we got here
harold locke who's also been our on a
global star party which is awesome
and um richard benson so
anyways i just wanted to pop in and kind
of tell you guys what we're doing
tonight um
uh we will
you know the the program starts at the
top of the hour uh for the 87th global
star party uh with the theme of cosmic
evolution
so hope you guys uh tune in and we'll
see you in a few more minutes take care
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Transcript for Bottom:
7:00 p.m..Rodrigo Zelada - Astrophotography
harris who i think you know who's at the lpl
oh i i had asked dante loretta but he was
busy doing you know nine missions simultaneously so he suggested walt harris and and i
7:15 p.m..Daniel Higgins with Eric Watson - Astroworld
mentioned what was going to be in the issue to walt and he said oh yeah i you know know david very well you know
speaking of you yeah walt harris yeah well thanks
looking forward to this so i think it's going to be really nice that looking forward to it and i haven't told a word
7:30 p.m..Russell Fralich - Space Stuff Youth Outreach
said a word thank you thank you yeah i think it will be really special
yeah i didn't think that included wendy oh well ever wendy has to know
7:45 p.m..Molly Wakeling - AstronoMolly’s Universe
everything of course yeah yep that's part of the part of the contract yeah
and tomorrow we celebrate the 25th anniversary of that contract
8:00 p.m..Ten Minute Break
wow congratulations thank you david 25 years and we still
love each other that is amazing well we'll have to drink a toast to you tonight here well thank
you [Music] i shall drink a cup of coffee
i'm drinking tea here that's all i'm drinking yeah okay during your presentation and during
some others you may just see my background without me but i am here i just have to move to a
different spot for a little bit yeah yeah
um
um
8:25 p.m..Maxi Falieres- Astrophotography
uh
someone's ringing the doorbell makes me think of that wing song let him
in
i was listening to wings almost all week today yeah
yeah i enjoyed those guys i saw them sorry hi
hi hi terry it's good to see you it's good to see you too
terry you must have like blasted through uh uh fairbanks
yeah i kind of did i thought we were starting it still at eight o'clock eastern and so
i was about an hour behind um so i had to run through mcdonald's
and get something to eat and get back out here yeah the the roads um
in town are great but i'm staying about 40 minutes outside of town and they're
pretty much a sheet of ice but you know i i find my car that i rented slides
very nicely down the road well i'm glad you made it okay
oh yeah yep it's beautiful here a lot of snow but beautiful
yeah i like the um the image of the cabin or whatever it is that you're skating yeah
i've rented a house and let let me see if i can show you out my
backyard just they've had 92 inches of snow this year and we're going to let the audience see
what's going on let me see if i can get this back on but
there is just snow everywhere but like i said it is absolutely beautiful
let's see you got a really good internet connection up there yeah you know i'm really surprised it's not really
focusing very well can you see any of that
better yet yeah it's it's kind of a whole different world
after being in ohio you have the focus out of focus filter
on your zoom so it just looked out of like completely blurred oh there it pops
in and out sharply every once in a while but yeah it's it's just unbelievable but
anyway it's very pretty i haven't seen any moose yet
okay
i like this um uh particular uh quote
by stephen pinker and i didn't know very much anything really about stephen pinker until i read about him today but
a good quotation yeah yeah he's a psychologist and an author
must be interested in astronomy
you know even out here i'm amazed there has been aurora almost every night but
it is amazing the amount of people here and when the aurora is out if you're set
up alongside the road or wherever taking pictures so many people will stop and come up and
want to look with you you know and just talk it is really amazing
how many people because i really believe the astronomical community has definitely grown
during cobid oh yeah
nasa's explorers on mars are on the move and making new discoveries it's a journey you can be a part of too
nasa's curiosity rover which has been climbing mount sharp since 2014 is about
to drive up onto a broad sloping surface called the green hue pediment
this will allow scientists to fast forward perhaps millions of years in mars's history and study the history of
liquid water written into these different layers of rock and curiosity made some interesting
discoveries along the way less than half an inch in size this unusual feature eroded from sedimentary
rock was cemented by mineral-rich groundwater and check out this rock smoothly eroded
by winds over in jezreel crater the perseverance rover is getting ready for a new
destination and science campaign and it's consistently setting driving
records on mars by relying more on self-driving software that allows the rover to avoid obstacles without having
to consult a human on earth perseverance will be pushing north in an
area where an ancient river flowed into a body of water it left sediments in a shape called a
delta the rover will collect more rock samples there the ingenuity mars helicopter will
support perseverance's upcoming science campaign the helicopter has been given the green
light to try to keep flying on mars for the next few months upgrades to its navigation software will
improve flight and operational safety the mars explorers will document the
journey along the way and you can make your own discoveries visit the raw image pages to see the
latest images every day and vote for your favorites to get the latest updates follow at nasa
jpl and at nasamars on social media or take a deeper dive on the mission
websites at mars.nasa.gov [Music]
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[Music] well hello everybody this is scott
roberts from explore scientific and the explore alliance and uh i'm back with
all of our astronomers from around the world uh for the 87th global star party
cosmic evolutions and so um it is uh it's always a uh yeah i always
look forward to tuesday nights because of uh of the gsp and um
you know i'm glad that uh we've got a global audience watching this right now and uh
so uh you know we can get started but uh you know just to kind of recap who's
gonna be on tonight we'll have uh uh david levy will be on with us terry mann
is filling in with chuck allen she's up in alaska right now if you didn't uh couldn't catch some of the earlier uh
behind the scenes part of our global star party um so we're glad she's on with us tonight and
and then we've got dave eicher he'll be talking about minerals of our solar system i think this time he's focusing
on calcium so uh gary palmer is with us tonight which is great um
rodrigo zeleda from chile he's on with us as well he hasn't been on for a while
so it's great to have him come back in dan higgins uh with his co-host eric
watson uh will be on with us from you know astro tv astro world tv
um excuse me russell froelich from the royal astronomical society of canada
will be on with us as well uh he'll be discussing his experiences with teaching
kids uh all things about space so very very interesting he's all fired up about that
molly wakelings coming on with us tonight as well um and then we're expecting uh marcelo souza and maxi
fellaris to kind of wind up the night for us so um so i will uh
transition over to david levy i promised myself i would talk a little
bit about david levy's book his biography which uh david can if he'll
kindly hold up a copy of it i would appreciate that but david is
an amazing individual has contributed so much to education astronomy inspiring
you know people all ages you know if i go around uh to in the astronomy circles
around the world i only have to mention the name david levy and uh of course many people recognize him know him from
all of his contributions but if you ever get a chance to meet the guy he is uh he
is an amazing friend and um very grounded and very uh you know
someone you can ask him any question about astronomy and he's always so interested uh to talk about it and to
share his ideas with you and he's going to do that with us tonight uh here on global star party number 87. so
david i'm going to transition over to you but thank you so much again for coming on to global star party
thank you thank you scott and here there is a copy of this there it is it's kind
of been a we've kind of kept it a pretty good secret i don't think too many people know about it
but it is available if you live anywhere in the world except in the united states
and even there you can get it from the royal astronomical society of canada their website is www dot don't forget
the dot rasc dot ca but if you're in the united states
you can go to starazona.com and you can get it delivered from an american address
because arizona does stock this book in the united states
anyway last last time i
took a little more time than usual because we had david rossiter here singing a beautiful song about vincent
van gogh so tonight i'm going to come up with something a lot shorter i can't believe that i did not catch
this while i was working on my doctoral dissertation over at the hebrew university
it's from a midsummer night's dream it's very short
and it takes place as bottom is about to die and they play within a play
i think and um [Music] just these few lines and here it goes my
soul is in the sky tongue lose thy light moon take thy flight my soul is in the
sky and now back to you scott roberts thank you very much that was short david
but sweet but sweet that's right so david what have you been watching in the sky
recently what's been uh capturing your interest well i i went out last night to
do some comment hunting i did a tenth of an hour and uh then i've been working on this
lovely triple star that i've been following it is uh omicron omicron oh no
we all have to scream no homocrime except this is not the disease
it is it is a lovely triple star
the um brightest star and it is pretty bright it's actually faintly visible to the
unaided eye the secondary is a white dwarf star
and the tertiary as a red dwarf star that can be seen so they're about fourth magnitude ninth magnitude and eleventh
magnitude um having a little trouble catching them but they are pretty easy
to see in the sky and i highly recommend them and the sun is a little less active than
it has been and i know terry's been reporting a lot of auroras
up where she is but uh the sun's taking a little bit of a holiday this week
and let's hope it comes back next week and that's about it okay all right that's great that's good
david thanks so much again so well up next uh we will bring on uh
terry mann she is secretary of the astronomical league uh
former uh two-term two-term president of the astronomical league and she's
someone that has devoted her whole life to understanding the sky and
making that part of her not only part of her own life but you know she shares it with
who knows how many thousands and thousands of people and she's um
someone that has been a big inspiration to me as well and um
so you know i i always love her take on uh on what she understands about the sky
and about the community of amateur astronomers um you know and and i i love to hear her
stories of uh sometimes you know the the battles of uh trying to get more
people to understand uh you know why science is important why it's important to protect our dark skies
uh you know what it takes to really appreciate the beauty of the sky you know and so
terry's out there doing that right now she's kind of this uh adventurer type of person as well and so she's in alaska
uh photographing uh uh aurora which is something i think that she does every year and uh so
we are really pleased to have her on tonight terry you want to come on and tell us what's going on with the
astronomical league and to do the door prizes sure well how are you scott it's been a while
since i've talked to you okay like maybe maybe 30 or 40 minutes
something like that i think yesterday so yeah yeah so the
back story on that was as terry called me up and said scott i think i'm going to be late i'm out here
in timbuktu alaska and uh i said well what are you going to be about what a couple hours
out she says no about a minute an hour 40. i think that she probably put her car
into supersonic speed because she was online
like in 20 minutes or something it was amazing so yeah you know how they always say when
you go somewhere it takes forever to get there but when you're coming home it goes by so fast
especially when you're breaking the speed limit or the sound barrier right yeah well no
no it's too much ice anyways watching me
uh no it's um i tell you up here it has been really interesting because i even
though i don't real i know some people up here but the people i have ran into i spent a
couple days at china hot springs and the people out there when the aurora would
come out and right now as david said um the sun is not real active but up here
it doesn't take a whole lot and you might not get really beautiful coronal type aurora but you still have that
green that kind of moves around a little bit so um i've been here about a week
and i've had aurora almost i think every night but one nothing you know
real bright or anything because the sun is quiet but the people that i have ran into and
just sharing stories and talking astronomy has been amazing it's like i was saying to scott our astronomical
community has definitely grown because there's a lot of people that are out there that are just beginning and they
have a lot of questions and they want to know about a lot of imaging gary palmer will be a great example of imaging
processing um you know so many questions right now because we
have so many new people so this is a great place to be i'm going to be moving out of here in a
couple days and heading up another direction just to try to get a better view and i'm hoping the sun actually gets active too
they keep saying maybe on the 24th we might have a little bit of a brush of a cme and at that time i should be
up higher and where i might have a better view i'm in the woods right now so um but it's been interesting it's
been a lot of fun and the league has honestly been up to a lot of really good
things that are moving forward we are totally redesigning the website and as
you would expect you always have a time frame and it has been pushed back and pushed back but it's because we want to
do this right we want to get everything done just right so people can tune into our website find what they want easily
there's so much information on there is amazing especially when you consider all of our observed programs we have a ton
of them and to be able to go in and search like i have a couple certificates
well i couldn't remember what year i got them or when i got them you can actually go on the league website and if you have
earned a certificate you can search that and you can see what year it was you can get the information and so they are
really fine-tuning this so it's very simple for people to do so we have a lot of stuff honestly going on we will be
live in albuquerque july 28 through the 30th so please join us in albuquerque
you meet everybody scott should be there too um we'll be doing partial uh
broadcasting from albuquerque a little bit of broadcasting some interviewing with some people
so there'll be a lot going on this year we're finally able to get out and move around again
you know and we're careful but um it feels good to get out in the out under
the sky in a different area and to actually meet people in person so
a lot going on right i just posted um the league's website and i also
posted the alcon 2022 website as well so
you need to join the league and you need to uh consider attending alcon 2022 uh if you're at all
possible if it's at all possible for you yeah and the alcon website is live now
you can register i do believe and you can reserve your hotel room um
and naturally since i said that i can't remember which hotel it is but it's on their website uh the rooms are
cheap they're 129 a night they got excellent rates at the hotel
yeah so you know jump on that get there we'll all be there this year so
i think even david levy might be coming up to join us for or at least looking in on us and seeing what's going on i hope
so i really hope so i hope to get out there with wendy yep we hope that the venue is going to be
the venue is going to be at the uh m.c suites hotel in albuquerque yep 129 a night and i think it is a
little bit before and a little bit after uh alcon that you can still get that rate so please come and join us we have
the schedule is just unbelievably good you know we've all waited so long for
this that it is so nice to have it but excellent speakers are lined up uh some good activities so join us if you can
and scott i'm going to go ahead and get to the questions please do all right as you know we
always start up with our solar warning uh if you're going to observe the sun
please make sure that you have proper filter to do that um everybody loves to
look at the sun i mean it's for me it's part of the aurora so i like looking and
seeing what's going on in the sun and it is an amazing star to actually look at so always make sure
you have the correct filters if you ever have any questions contact your local astronomy club or if you don't have a
local astronomy club contact the league we can answer any questions you have
usually but please always make sure you protect your eyes if you are viewing the sun
sungla you know so many people have said can i just wear like two pairs of sunglasses and that'll be fine
and you know no you really need to have the right optical equipment to do this so please
make sure you do so i'm going to go over the answers from march 15. ngc 2169 is an open cluster in the
constellation orion what shape do the stars of the clusters form
that doesn't make any sense what shape and it says 37.
i'm going to say what shape or how many stars can you see in the cluster anyway because there's a number
down there yeah that does say what shape do the stars of the cluster form
um and b they they they form 37. they do form 37. look at that
oh i can see the door i've never seen that before that is so cool
now you can't unsee that no no it's jumping right out at me
that was really cool that was don nav's questions i do believe that that is really interesting
somebody scribbled 37 out there yeah i'm gonna have to check that out now
that's pretty cool okay so answer was 37 and that was b
most of the planets in our solar system are named after geological features
ancient astronomers are greek roman gods and the answer is c greek roman gods
and question three comets inhabit the outermost regions of our solar system
how fast do comets you typically travel as fast as an indie race car i like that
as fast as the international space station or near the speed of light and it is
as fast as an indie race car that's pretty cool so there you have it these are the names
that we received for the answers from march 15th
and all of these will go on a door prize list and at the beginning of each month
we announce three winners so the march winners will be announced at the first
april gsp and we will what we do is keep all these names on an
excel list and then we use a numbers generator and we choose three of them
that way all right questions for today march 22nd
on march 28th there will be a conjunction and actually there's quite a few conjunctions at the end of this
month's month what two planets will the moon glide by
and please send your answers to secretary astrolege.org
question two what meteor shower peaks on april 23rd
and again please send your answers to secretary at astrology.org
on may 15 16 we're going to see a total lunar eclipse hopefully with no clouds
what name has the media given this type of lumery eclipse
and again please send your answers to secretary astroley.org
all right and please join us april 15th for the next a-l live it will be number
16. scott there's going to be a test to see if you can remember that it will be verse 16 a-l live
john wisconsin fail every test huh yeah we try hard
yes john will be joining us to talk about the reground points of the
james webb telescope we're also going to be talking to david levy and scott naturally carol org
john will be there i'll be there and you never know who else might pop up there
and again remember alcon 2022 in albuquerque july 28 through the 30th
please join us check out the website scott has put in chat and scott that's going to do it for me
tell us a little bit about the speaker uh john that's going to talk about the lagrange points you would ask me that
when i'm somewhere with not any of my paperwork with me um
is he with uh is he with j j west or is he uh no he i don't believe he is but he is
someone that has studied um and i don't know there probably is a connection i don't have his bio right in front of me
um but he is a very interesting speaker he has given this talk and he was recommended to the leader
okay yeah so um yeah we look for i look forward to hearing him and that's on april 15th
so please join us then okay all right so um great thank you terry uh
up next will be uh david eicher uh david eicher is the
editor-in-chief of astronomy magazine uh but he like david levy and terry mann he has
spent the better part of his life uh educating others about astronomy uh
today and for a long time he has been with astronomy magazine
at first having his own magazine i think it was called deep sky monthly is that right that's right
okay all right that's good it's great that i remembered that
long forgotten uh astronomy periodicals for 500 alex yeah
well i remember actually seeing the magazine so uh we had you remember back when we had newsstands and stuff so i
did see the magazine and then i do remember uh early issues or earlier issues of astronomy magazine where it
had it looked very um the magazine looked like something that academia would read
you know early on so although i think the articles are always very interesting
and the magazine has evolved uh uh you know both uh you know in print
and online um and uh you know so it's it's a a great resource if you go to
astronomy.com now uh of course you can subscribe to the magazine but you're gonna sign find all
kinds of resources for the beginner for advanced astronomers uh you're going to
see product review information uh you're going to see what's up in the sky you
know so if you're one of these beginners that terry and i was just talking about you you're you're one of the people new
to our community of astronomy you could do no better than to subscribe to
astronomy magazine join the astronomical league get involved with your club you
know and start looking at the sky as often as you can so uh david has been sharing with us over
the last several uh more than several global star parties the crystals and minerals that
are found on planet earth you know a lot of people don't think about that oh well earth is in space well of course it is
you know and of course it's just one of multitudes you know maybe almost
infinite numbers of planets in the universe and uh what a beautiful planet
this place is and how fascinating it is that uh you know that we evolved to the point
where uh you know we could use uh glass uh focusing it on the stars and turn it
upwards to the sky to discover more about ourselves uh but
there's the other way too and that's looking down and um so david's going to share that with us tonight on
the minerals of calcium so that's right and you know we had an old
saying years ago around the office scott uh you know earth is a pla why would you
want to do a story about earth science well earth is a planet too
old saying you know so so and and of course we know through spectroscopy that chemistry is
universal in in the universe and and that uh many of these minerals that we have on earth there would be very
similar minerals chemical compositions on other planets throughout the galaxy and other galaxies as well so we can
through planetary geology get a look at our own planet and imagine what other planets out there might be like a little
bit too so i'm gonna share my screen once again
and i'm going to see if i can share my show and i'm going to start that show
and if everything goes right you'll be seeing a slideshow with a red crystal
beautiful red crystal excellent so so we'll talk tonight about a different class
of minerals but first we'll talk about why we're talking about this the universe is ordered thomas jefferson who was a hero in some
ways early in our country uh said i believe in a divinely ordered universe
centuries before that though isaac newton said truth is ever to be found in the simplicity and not in the
multiplicity and confusion of things well the universe is ordered not by supernatural design but by the
principles of physics as our pal richard dawkins likes to say you don't need to
magic things into existence here but but science tells us we can really understand what's going on here in in
the cosmos minerals demonstrate this in that their atoms are assembled in precise ways by electrochemical
attractions not by randomness or by accident but inherent properties of the
atoms that make them up and guide them into assembling in what mineralogists call a specific crystal lattice so this
is yet another class of ways of looking at minerals ones that are
principally made of calcium which is an important element and it's an important one for life among other things as well
the most most common most abundant calcium dominant mineral is calcite is
calcium carbonate it was named by pliny the elder in 79 ad
it comes in all sorts of colors as a as a common carbon at white
i'm sorry no i thought maybe we had a question
white yellow red orange green blue brown almost all colors of the spectrum here
and it crystallizes in the trigonal system with numerous crystal habits and here's a crystallographic diagram of
calcite but there are many uh calcium-rich minerals
some of them are in your body and we'll talk about that in a second right in in a moment now but i wanted to show a few
examples of what some of these are like and we can talk a little bit about their chemistry too
and this is just how the universe likes to make up a planet rocks are minerals and other
substances if you will that are thrown into a blender and randomized but these are
uh ordered minerals the way the universe likes to bring atoms together
so as i said the most common uh calcium rich mineral is calcite and you can see the
excuse me the colorless the the glassy uh sort of quartz-like appearing crystals here are
calcite along with a yellowish mineral called stellarite that's another calcite
mineral also as a um general comment here i was kind of
pairing back the commentary the labeling on this stuff figuring it wasn't of great specific
interest to everyone but people started asking me can you put the sizes and the specific locations on these things why
are you doing that so so i've given the full mineralogical labels now starting tonight on mineralogists are very
interested as you can imagine in exactly where a specimen comes from sort of in
our world like precisely which galaxy are you talking about or which planet
and also the the long axis the diameter of the specimens is given there as well in centimeters
um this is another uh somewhat unusual calcite mineral this one calcium mineral
sorry zanotlite calcium silicate hydroxide this is an italian specimen
and you can see there are these fibrous radial crystal aggregates of this
calcium mineral here so they're they're although calcium is the predominant
element here the most important of a number in some of these you can see that
you get all sorts of different looks with calcium minerals for a variety of reasons this is a
mineral called lawsonite and it's a chrome rich which gives it a little bit of a green color here emerald green
color from chromium atoms that are in there as well but it's basically calcium
aluminum silicate hydroxide hydrate and it's a fairly good size specimen
here from the cyclades in greece and help me i can't see everything scott
here because i have enough things going on my screen but if there are there are questions that come up here let me let
me know if you would well i have a question uh yes sir lost and i named after someone named
lawson it is it was named after lawson who who was a mineralogist and
i don't remember the details emmy on him he was a fairly obscure guy compared to
many of the names but but i can check that uh but most all minerals although early ones of course
were named after very basic and fairly primitive things minerals named in the
last uh two or three hundred years are chiefly named after people and of course
the species that have been discovered there are more than 5 000 mineral species that are known on earth
now and most the majority of those have been discovered in the last couple hundred years so many many many minerals
are named after people specifically and many of them chemists and mineralogists
of course very cool this here's an another one here danburite
calcium borosilicate and this is a sort of a glassy transparent big crystal here
with some other stuff stuck on it and this comes from a fairly famous site that's the best site for
denverite in the world called sharkus in mexico san luis potosi
mexico and that is you can see there are just some very very different appearances of all of these
calcium minerals now does anyone know why floor appetite or appetite the
mineral appetite apatite is really important to us
and especially a variety of appetite that's called hydroxyl appetite that's
close to this composition but a little bit different it's because our teeth
are made mostly of hydroxyl appetite which is the hardest substance in our
bodies and also a good deal of the bone tissue in us is
made from appetite minerals as well so we're partially made of this
appetite stuff our own bodies uh that is of course recycled atoms from the the
deaths of low mass and in some cases high mass stars this is a jummy kind of yellow green a
crystal of four appetite here from a very well-known area in morocco
where a lot of mining has gone on in recent times
now here's a minerals get complicated sometimes chemically and this is an
unusual one these kind of deep lemon yellow orange crystals called sterminite
this is calcium iron aluminum manganese sulfate tetrahydrox
hydroxoborate hydroxide hydrate so there's a quite a mouthful chemically
i i put the translations in here rather than the formulae but that that is a you know a
blender full of of elements and chemicals going on here to make this mineral it's a fairly small specimen
from the kalahari region of south africa here but again calcium rich
here's another example of an appetite of fluorapatite mineral calcium fluorophosphate
uh on an albite uh white elbite matrix it's a fairly small but you can see these nice kind of sky blue crystals
that are little barrel shaped crystals this is a brazilian piece
this is an interesting one mesolite which is sodium calcium aluminum silicate hydrate
and this is from one of the great mineralogical regions where there are huge numbers of what are called zeolite
minerals that are uh often uh very hydrated with with water molecules attached to them and mesolite
is very interesting here because it creates these needle long needle like crystals and you can see it almost looks
sort of like hair almost uh super super fragile stuff from this indian region
here's another one from the same general area this is a big piece called scolocite which is calcium aluminum
silicate hydrate simpler and this is not quite so fragile this looks a little bit
fragile too glassy quartz like looking crystals but it's a good deal um
more stable and and this one mesolite is super fragile and uh you could almost
blow some of these crystals off with your your uh wind from your mouth
here tremolite is calcium magnesium iron silicate hydroxide that's the grass
green stuff in this matrix this is a finish piece fairly
significant and interesting deep color here fairly good-sized piece this is a
very unusual one here cerabite now this is a fairly rare
mineral it's calcium antimony sulfide antimony is of course one of those
elements that's poisonous you need to keep this away from your breakfast table
um from malaysia from an unusual uh mine in malaysia and this is just sort of massive stuff you can see these tiny
tiny reddish crystals here
this is a cool one because there's a a sort of a zoo of minerals on this one
piece here that are all similar chemically and related but the neat one these little white uh spheres here which
almost look like something out of a you know the really cheap budget out of a star trek episode in the first couple of
years pico pharmacolite which is calcium magnesium arsenate hydrate
and associated minerals including the reddish and pinkish and purplish stuff
on there with it from this same area of the atlas mountains in morocco this is
an unusual piece in a fairly rare mineral
stellarite we saw some of it in the first shot there and this is focusing now not on calcite but on the stellarite
which is this bright orange stuff calcium aluminum silicate hydrate um
this is from kazakhstan um and you can see with almost the same
elements involved as some of the other ones you can get really really different crystal habits and colors and
appearances of the of the minerals even though they're similar but different chemical compositions
pranite is a fairly common calcite mineral it's calcium aluminum silicate hydroxide this is from namibia the
famous uh region of the orongo mountains it's very mineralogically rich and
that's the sort of sea water green stuff in there with some white calcite as well
beautiful this is a big crystal this is the stuff that's fairly similar to what your teeth
are made out of here which is of course the hardest stuff in your body uh and this is a big three and a half
centimeter crystal of floor appetite from uh portugal from there there's
several regions where they're really big uh crystals that of this stuff that are produced one of them is uh is this
portuguese location panasoera
more floor appetite the same mineral but you can see it's contaminated by different things that color it
differently and very differently sized and with a hexagonal shape here
these purplish crystals from a german location so just to show you some of the
variety that you get here this is a rare mineral a phosphate mineral from a famous phosphate mine in south dakota
called the tip top mine this is montgomery eight yet another chemist mineralogist got a
mineral named after him and these are tiny little orange crystals in in the matrix here
and the last one i have here is credit named for creed colorado not for a a uh
a person in in effect calcium sulfate aluminum fluoride hydroxide hydrate from
a specific uh level and and spot in a very famous colorado mine in clear creek county
called the henderson mine um that that gives you this sort of violent credit here that is calcium-rich
stuff so you can see calcium is really the driving force in all of these minerals and you get very different
looks and colors and crystallography in all of those different kinds of specimens and of course that's a
snapshot there are hundreds of calcium-rich minerals and those were just a few examples to show you some of
the variety and just quickly scott to mention again when you're done having gone to the
league convention and you're back home when you need something else to do later you could also join us in armenia where
uh scott and i and others and garrick israelian and brian may and others are going to put the sixth
starmust festival on uh and we will expect about we think about three to five thousand people
there in armenia for talks by astronauts and nobel prize
winners and uh some rock and roll from from some well-known musicians as well so keep your eye on starmus we're
celebrating mars and you can go to starmust.com to see all the information about that
science festival absolutely that's going to be great i i really can't wait uh to experience
this myself because you know i always um uh considered uh that the starness event
was uh if there if there is and i've said this many times but there is a burning man
of astronomy this is this is it so um
probably won't be a lot of people in strange uh outfits and on skates or something or
but no reason but these people who knows these people will be behaving themselves
at sternus but it's a place where you can get close to and you can chat up you know astronauts
you know really important astronomers and other scientists from other sciences as well
and and you get to see some pretty good music uh during the week there at starmus as well we should have
brian may and rick wakeman and brian eno and perhaps we'll get uh steve vai and
peter gabriel and some others as well to be there yeah it's going to be great i i can't
wait so okay well thank you so much um uh david
and uh you know i i do like to point out that uh um that you too can be a subscriber to
astronomy magazine just simply by going to astronomy.com i almost don't have to write that down
it's a great url but you know if you have a tablet or
something you want to see current issues past issues you can get that subscription digitally of course if
you like to have something you can hold in your hand that doesn't require any batteries okay
there is still a great print issue issues that are that are
distributed so but nevertheless you should have astronomy magazine in your arsenal
because it is uh i think it's the world's largest publication on astronomy and they cover all aspects you're not
only going to see things about astronomy but you're going to see the latest information about astronomy gear you're
going to see all the manufacturers advertising there you know so if you love if you love
the the gear to get outfitted for your next astronomy adventure probably should start out first with astronomy magazine
to get an overview of what's in that that landscape of great gear
and great events that you can be attending um so it's just such a great resource
thank you so much david thanks scott yeah okay all right so uh
we're going to move on at this point we're leaving the united states and
we're going to go to the uk to visit with gary palmer who's out there
hopefully with some clear skies but he's always got if he doesn't have clear skies he's got great images to
share with us and lots of knowledge about astrophotography gary thanks for coming on
hi scott thanks for asking me on um yeah we have got clear skies and we've
literally just run into i need to flip the meridian so um
literally as we were just sort of swapping over speakers then um it's just thrown up on the screen so
we'll probably come back to the live images right i've reset everything but um
certainly for looking around on the stuff um solas seemed to have been picking up
over the last week another new active area coming in today could see that was um uh
really spurting out some stuff on the limb you could uh watch that all day and there was a nice large prominent so
i thought keeping it nice and simple how about we process up um a two-part prominent image and put it together
something that people are always wondering about so if i share a screen over
go to that one hopefully you can see that okay so
we start off auto stacker two i've loaded one of the images in
um set it up on the surface that gives you the widest area just in case you've got
lots of stack lines around the edge you might need it when you join the two images together
um improve tracking and then we're coming down uh normally run the the noise robust somewhere
around five on these depends on how close up you are to the images
and then um last thing uh sort of running over to this side is selecting one of the good
frames so i've sort of been moving the slider along there just to one of the frames
gets nice and stable once you've done that analyze the image
it will stabilize up it will work out the good frames and give you a graph as i've said many a time before ignore the
graph it's only looking at the brightness so um really your eye works better i've
had this down below 25 and had really nice images before so
um once that's done just hit on the alignment points uh place aps on the
grid so normally run at about 104 something like that and then
set up how many frames you want so if we look here got 2 000 frames captured
and we've stacked 300. um once that's done it sends him over to
registax and then we can set up for the wavelet so we're quite um let me just put that
back in there we go we're quite distant from it in the center and my terms were quite distant
so um i normally just set up the initial layer of one and then just run up slider number two
until we're happy and if i hit the wall on that way it goes
that's it and then we save it and you would repeat the process uh for
the actual prominent section so the prominent sections image that has slightly
higher exposure and if we go back into that folder
we find the two images there so we can now send these into photoshop so that's the actual prominence there you can see
it arching right over the back here down to there and because it is so high and quite faint then you need to
increase the exposure time so that does make the chromosphere line uh pretty
bright there which means it needs a little bit of repairing when you join these together but we send this into photoshop so
i'm just going to send that one in and i'm just going to get rid of these other two images because we don't need
them there we go okay and then i'm gonna go back
select the surface shot and send that into photoshop so we've got two of them there
and what we need to do is start meeting and tidying these up so we're going to crop these just come in a little bit
you'll always get stack lines uh on these sort of images and
if you haven't got stack lines this edge here will quite often be out of focus where it has had to match the different
frames together so we'll just crop that and we switch back to the prominence
image and do exactly the same pop that
okay so now we need to take the surface off of this image and put it onto the prominence image and
the easiest way of doing that select the marquee tool and just very very gently
come in underneath the black area you can expand it up if you want to but it's quite advisable to keep
your steps on this quite small if you don't keep them small then you end up with points
and odd shapes running along the edge here so just take a little bit of time
and run right the way across
you can expand this up if you want to be really really precise you can enlarge the image and do this
but just for the purposes of this
cool um have you ever had auto stacker impose a
bayer matrix on your monochrome images and not been able to i it's been
happening to mine and i can't figure out how to not make it do that what what format are you recording the
images here um scr ser
i haven't not that i can remember i've had that have you tried both versions of auto
stackers also stack it two and three uh i could try two and see if it happens
there as well because i have had issues with auto stack at three if it picks up on the high cloud
um it can cause problems and in the uk we've always got high clouds so
in general auto stack at three is only used on really really good days
it's a lot faster than auto stacker two but i have found it more stable it
what would be a good idea is is if you can upload that uh one of those ser files onto google
drive um just send me it and i'll have a look at the ser file and see what's going on yeah that'd be
great thank you yeah so once we've marked that out then then we need to copy it
so just copy it run over to the surface shot and paste it in
select the move tool and then we want to try and line it up as good as possible yeah use your arrow
keys on the keyboard and as i said because the chromosphere lines quite bright where we've had to over expose it
in a sense you are going to find that it's a little bit more awkward to match in
you can if you need to use something like a free transform on
that and then select up the grid section and you can just nip up the
edges a little bit and just pull these in like that if they're a little bit out
just to make it look nice and then just drop down the centers very slightly just so it all matches
right the way along it's up to you what you do and how long you you spend on this
once you're happy we need to crop it all yeah so multi-tool again
crop the image up
once we've done that you've got to decide what you want to do with the surface and that's down to each person's
preference everybody's different on this if i'm going to invert it to make it stand out a little bit more and
sometimes that helps when you've got a bright uh chromosphere line it helps because the
um the photosphere is is or the the chromosphere in the sense and the surface shot here is very very dark and
it's quite hard to get rid of that a couple of things you could do is run in and use something like shadows and
highlights yeah that sometimes brightens the line but as you saw there it darkened it
um so you will have to play around but quite often i would use shadows and
highlights uh on these the other way around it is to invert it
um so we could try that there we go and then use a curve on it
just to balance down the edges there so just very very gently curve it around
just so it looks nice and uniform okay once you're happy with that next thing news is just to decide on
whether you want to color it or whether you want to keep it mono it's different for each person again
um i'm going to color it just for the fun uh so we're going to go to 8-bit
mode for now and then we're going to go to grayscale
don't flatten the image keep the two parts separate and then we're going to go to duotone
you can pick whatever color you want here yeah literally i run it as tritone always keep some
black in there otherwise you're going to have problems blending the background in but the lighter the colors the better it
is for a mix normally so you can literally go down the chart here and pick whatever colors you want and
play around with them but once you've picked a couple of colors
then we need to turn it back into an rgb image so come back over into mode
rgb color same again don't flatten leave it as it is
and we're going to start off with the surface first you can see your two layers here
and we're just going to run over to color balance and then we're just going to play around with some colors and you can pick
whatever color you want if you want to go blue then you go blue it's literally it's your choice at this point remember
all of these images are technically false color so it's your choice as to what you do
adjust all three so you want to go in on the shadows and then on the highlights normally the yellow is quite good on the
highlights for bringing in a nice sort of orangey color okay once you're happy
select the other layer and exactly the same thing again come into color balance
and you can pick off really whatever tone you want so you just go for something like this
and you'll find here is the prominence is a little bit dark the yellows in the highlights is where you can give it a bit of a kick you can bring out the
prominence a little bit more there okay that's just a rough thing it's totally
down to you so next thing how do i sort of get rid of this red in the background that's always a problem
you can see a little bit of a patch here that was the higher cloud today calls it
so go to contrast use legacy mode
and then bring the contrast up and you'll start to blend it down a little bit there we go
make it as angry as you want
and then we could use something like selected color and go in on the blacks
i'm being a bit harsh with this i would spend a bit more time i did on the one earlier it took me quite a while to
remove that hole there and play around with it and then exactly the same on the surface shot so go back to that
go to contrast legacy mode and then you can get a deep orange in it if you want and
that really makes it sort of glow off of the the surface that sort of matches in
once you're happy with all of this next thing to do is is a little bit sharpening so first thing is is going to filters and
noise i'm going to de-speckle it because the wavelet sharpening will leave a speckling layer over it if you're not
careful and then what we would do is once we've done that go in and use an unsharp mask on it
you'll see there that picks all of the detail out in the surface if i click on that
might be a little bit harsh there so running about there select the other layer and do exactly
the same thing back in noise do speckle and then back on the unsharp mask
you see a little bit of noise in the background there then turn it down a little bit yeah
what you don't want to do is make the background too noisy okay once you've got these two together
one way of flattening out that a little bit um you could go into exposure
and use the offset um on the uh prominence area there
don't go mad with it just go up to somewhere around 50. something like that and you'll start to
balance this out here you can play around with it quite a bit um you could
also use the gamma correction if you want in there see whether you can pull that down a little bit more
something like that okay once you've got the two levels together of the two uh sections together
and that's what you like or um you've played around enough with it if you right click on one of the layers
flatten the image and then what we need to do is just look at that line there
yeah that's running across so if forget the blur tool shrink it down
and just very gently take the whole edge off of where we've joined the two of them
quite often if you've not had to over expose
the prominence together then you won't have to do this you can mash them in more or less perfectly but
on this particular case if you flatten it down it just takes your eye off for that edge
okay then you can run into an action something like that um delete your other layer first before
you run that because it will mess it up and then we can just smooth out the
image something like that just let that run off that will take out some of the speckling on the background
there and really that's about it yeah considering the high cloud you're not really going to process much
more out of the image probably spend a little bit more time on the color in there just so you don't get a red haze
across the edge and apart from that go back to there because i need to stop
sharing
and that's it okay well it's never it's never quite just
that's it um but that's that's what's up it's amazing
you can process all of that in such a short amount of time that you do so
i have posted um a link to uh
gary palmer's page he is one of the explorer alliance ambassadors
and there are links to gps astro courses and uh and to a solar imaging page as
well which you want to check out but if you're a beginner or someone that's
you know familiar or advanced but you're trying to bust through something to get to the
next level or if you're even really advanced okay everybody could use a coach and uh
gary palmer is one of the best coaches around for astrophotography and image processing so
i recommend that you take you take his courses and just kind of keep that up on a
regular basis because you know he's going to make you all that you can be in
in astrophotography so gary thank you very much hopefully
if you want to pop in and out as the program goes along uh feel free to
because i know that your telescope's going over the meridian right now yeah so you're just gonna set that all up and
then that will be back on in about five minutes so whatever whenever you want i
will just message you and say that it's all up and running okay so we are going around the world at
this point uh uh down to uh the southern hemisphere to chile to
rodrigo zaleda now rodrigo is someone else that has done a tremendous amount
of outreach in his area he works closely with educators uh in the public school
systems down there he is he loves astrophotography uh he he
has uh he's done he's been very successful i think and also inspiring his own children into uh exploring the
night skies uh but he's down there in la serena chile which is a haven for astronomers
and you know up in the mountains up there is also a haven for astro tourism
but he's going to share some images with us tonight he is the owner also of north
optics north optics is the big uh telescope dealer uh retailer down in
chile and uh so if you want a trusted source you want to get started the right way
and you live down there you definitely want to hook up with rodrigo so rodrigo i'm going to turn it over to you man
thanks god how about you yeah we're all good okay
when and this is a patron and i shared with you the
russian event when i'm going with
a group of friends in the north of las arenas
in the atacama desert near the copiapolo city okay and i shared my presentation
okay [Music]
okay do you see my screen yes we do
okay
okay in incredible i have a friend is a
a partner with neuroptics he's a great astrophotographer is
carlos and he is a group in copenhagen called the
de sierto cosmico and [Music] he
organized the great star party for the many astrophotographer of chile
and is the color the finca cosmica is the name of
the sector and participated a astrophotographer
the santiago la cedena and anchovies
and put your equipment in the best skies
that you see in this picture and
um [Music] this
and this is the picture and some picture uh take in this this night
do you see this picture oh it's beautiful yes this is
my favorite picture my my first
photo in a monochrome camera is my first
photo in a great photo and this photo for the [Music]
the friends is a omega centauri
with the monocamera is the great detail is uh
newtonian telescope uh oreo nuka beautiful
colors of stars yes this is an amazing photo with er
mono mono camera monochrome and this photo is
the la pepa [Music]
lens for this picture is for a carlo
my friends the the set of cosmico this this object is very strange
i don't see uh my friend claudius
take pictures from there the unknown object and this is amazing
this is the color roller comet with the is a nebula in centaurus
this is the catalog um i know she yeah claudio tell me the gloria comet
is for the avarians of the this this nebula rodrigo
do you know if he used some kind of filters to take that picture
this picture is only um with mono camera rgb okay
see the the sky is very good and and uh
dark sky yeah oh i see that he used a sharp star maybe 2.8 a philip you
to know for chasing also from here in a couple days maybe
yes i uh take pictures with this telescope but not in this presentation and
in you know another situation i share on this telescope
okay the team they finished the star party
three three nights and i share with you a little video a tablet
from for our friends okay
this um
[Music] okay
do you see the screen yes we see it yes it's a little video and the
the sunset and the morning with the milky way [Music]
look how dark this is and you've got stars all the way down the horizon it's
beautiful this part of the world is some of the
darkest driest areas that you could ever hope to uh observe from
wow
this is the video for a friend is a night is sunset on milky way
and the morning is spectacular this is this is
spectacular for us three nights in the desert uh
is an amazing experience in the atacama desert wonderful rodrigo is so nice to have you
uh back on to global star party uh i know you've been very very busy um
uh you know and i know that you're involved in uh not only uh i think you're back
studying and and uh improving with your research astronomy um
but uh was i i had mentioned something uh to you earlier about um
an educational program uh that's going on in uh south america is it are are you
can you tell us more about your uh educational outreach work
yes when in chile this this week is the astronomy which is the occasion with the
many a material astronomer and professional astronomer is a
charm with the public the your word and your
experience to the to the children's schools and the
community in la sedena [Music] in virgonia and
elky valley many uh tour astroturf
is this this friday is uh organization for the
planetarium in the vikunia and the um
in rome the salon of the astronomy and in in
in chilean in different city the this week is the weeks of the
of astronomy is many clubs the astronomers are mateo is
um see the start with the students
public and person the interest in their uh
astronomy you know uh i i was able to visit vicuna
um uh when i visited chile the thing that i was left with i think
if there is a country one country in the whole world where an
astronomer or an amateur astronomer would really love to visit or even move
there because it is it's just amazing uh the entire community is just really really embraces
uh astronomy and the science of astronomy um
and you see that all the way down to the youngest levels of their their
communities and their schools so it was a real pleasure to visit that
part of the world uh during during the eclipse uh back in 2019 so i hope to
make it back as soon as possible because i just uh really need to spend more time
under the southern milky way skies and there's a few places better than chile uh to see
that except maybe some places in argentina so maxie can tell us more about that
but i love it i love it i couldn't i couldn't see it yet in the desert or
maybe in san juan maybe near in the border of chile but
here doing 40 miles from here it's uh stunning to
watch it the milky way uprising in the east and well now is starting again the milky way
season so we are trying to be prepared yes that's right
so uh thank you again rodrigo uh okay so now we're we're gonna come back from the
southern hemisphere we're gonna come back up to uh the united states um uh to visit with uh daniel and eric from
astroworld tv so you guys have the screen now good evening everybody welcome back
yeah we're back again so uh guys how you doing max what's going on
scott thank you for having us on again appreciate i'm sure every time any time hey i mean
i'll be on all we i don't have a life so it's okay i could be on i don't know
so uh yeah this is and like we say on the show all the time you know this is a
lifestyle this isn't a hobby this is a lifestyle it it could be life changing
and life uh break the bank breaking the bank is an understatement
man so i was lucky to to grab eric and eric is
one of our uh our longest-running active hosts um with
astroworld but as promised um because i kept on saying i was going to do a powerpoint because everyone's doing
powerpoint so i forget to do a powerpoint just about what astroworld does and and how it does
and what what we go and what we talk about because we do it just like we're doing now you know it's literally a an
astrophotography chat we do it live uh twice a week on wednesdays and fridays
and now apparently tuesdays so so um yeah so it's a lot you know it's a lot
maybe in the future uh astroworld network you know so
never know 24 7. there you go and and this friday we have a super
special guest coming on this friday you know who that is no
eric you know who's coming on this friday uh shoot my mind's drawing a blank right now don't put me on the spot like that
man what's up scott roberts is coming up
why do you do that this is what we do all the time
these little gems of like don't worry i i get it back full fold so
oh yeah i'm sure i'm sure i can only imagine what you guys do to each other and oh it's behind the scenes
oh we do it we do it on camera too so it's oh yeah
no one is safe on astral world tv no one no no and and you know what we're just lucky we
live all over the world for the most part from from from simon lewis in new
zealand uh to eric in the chicago suburbs to jason in arizona we got
people in wisconsin we got people in california so um let me let me before i
start yapping too much let's just go over to the quick powerpoint now it's gonna give a little rundown on uh the
website um and uh what what what you could do on the website and uh you know
how you could join us all right so that being said
so here we go so so astroworld like i coined the phrase an astrophotography community that spans
the globe and it really is and uh we're looking for other people all the time to come in and join us i know times are are
um are are an issue and and can be a challenge but uh we're looking to gain
other people and uh start doing it to join us as much or as little as you want so so um
um so why astroworld um the main reason with astroworld and erica you know feel
free to hit me up if i'm wrong but we want to help people we're not perfect we're not great
but you know we have a lot of people with multiple hosts with different rigs and different things that can answer
questions live on the show everybody knows that when you have an issue on on
astrophotography you want that answer now right eric exactly exactly
you know oh went too fast sorry um but but yeah it's uh you know it it's
definitely in uh definitely can be an issue and you know why not just come out and hang out uh with everybody on wednesday or friday
when it's cloudy and you're doing your dark frames so you know you can do that and yeah we also like to have fun on the
show as we could we could tell you know we like to have fun here we like to have fun everywhere so
um originally uh some of our long-term watchers may remember this uh it started as cosmic charlie and declination dan in
2019 um with uh yeah yeah yeah dying so yeah
hey listen you know you know it was good it was fine yeah so so uh it was you
know it was under the uh the studio we called it we called it ccd squared and um it was it was like a
double meaning type thing you know cosmic charlie declaration day and ccd square plus ccd cameras which is what i
had so that's how that started um
after that we threw out some videos some really bad ones after this when i told charlie to take off the hat
um so so this is how we evolved we evolved
from that that blue sheet is is his uh is his couch behind us
um and uh i still have these shirts to this day but we did some stuff like this
uh you know way back in 2019 um and then we uh partnered with the
back backyard astro imaging club for a short time um and uh
tim cowell and i were doing shows uh for about a year and then we picked up eric
yeah then i came along because because tim you know being in the uk
and the way that you know the the show was going ports him it was so early in the morning
for him the poor man couldn't even get any sleep yeah right so
you know when things so when i came on um a couple years ago for me this whole
thing has been life-changing i mean it really really has i have made a
some incredible incredible friends i've met some incredible people um and to dance point this is a
community i consider this almost like an online astronomy club
and that's exactly what it is it is an online astronomy club where we all we
get together every week and no question is too dumb
no you know or anything like that you know no question is out of bounds when
it comes to astral from talk because guys we have all been there you know we've all been there and we all
have to start somewhere so when i got into astro world you know my main
thing was i being that new to actual photography i've only been with actual in natural
photography now it's been about five years i got started around 2017.
and i really didn't you know know the first thing about getting started and
it's it's websites and it was youtube videos and channels and channels like astro world
that and when it was teamed up with the um astro backyard you know not afro backyard but with the with with the
backyard club it's like i had a place to go and i had a place where i could meet with like-minded
people people who were you know experienced or novice and we can we can ask these
crazy questions and get on and get honest answers
you know and get honest answers and have fun doing it too and that's one of the reasons why i
really wanted to when dan asked me you know to be a part of this it was a no-brainer for me it was it was
like why not what else what about what else do i got to do at night
nothing well nothing in new york yeah no no no we're not even doing anything i set up my
entire i set up three rigs last night and it was just cloudy but um yeah it was horrible i got a picture of
that but uh but um [Music] let's see so let's see five only three
more so now since eric joined on um we have we have nine hosts now over the course
of the two days uh excellent yeah so um got myself scott
on the top right eric on the bottom right peter myers um and then we got
tegan jesse uh we got tyler jason we got all these people and believe it or not these dates
are right eric yeah i looked it on youtube you thought it was three years for you it was two years yes it's two
years but it's great yeah it goes fast but um and you know and then we're also
on everything so uh so yeah oh yeah yeah and awesome um awesome you have in
fact your own uh your own uh astrophotography network you know
video network so it's awesome it is and and how wonderful it is for the
audience because these are channels that uh uh you know
you don't have to pay for okay you're getting incredible incredible uh uh you know knowledge from
the this team that you know that is doing hands-on willing to share all
their information with you um you know and the you know a great way to support them
really is just by going on to their channels liking them subscribing to them
sharing them you know and helping them get a bigger audience because uh uh you know it
i will tell you while it's it's enjoyable for us to do this okay i loved
it i love doing this as well but um it's work and uh
and it's there's an investment you have to have the right software you have cameras to buy you've got all this stuff
to do and um you know so it is wonderful though that we're able to engage the greater uh
uh astronomical community on a global basis you know so
and so really my hat's off to both of you and your entire team you know you're
doing a great job thank you and if i can just if i can just do one shameless plug for our website it's a brand new website
um astroworldweb.com and you go and go on there and we also
we have some wonderful wonderful sponsors that have come along um am i able to share my screen here
really quick and i can show you the website sure okay great um
i'll just go ahead and share this and hopefully everyone can see my screen
yep great so in this astroworldweb.com and this is a new website that was
developed by one of our fellow astral world members um simon
um who's in who lives in new zealand he took he made an incredible website for
us and you can meet the team little learn a little bit about us as well as one of the cool
things that we have is that we have started what we call the picture of the week where
our subscribers or members of of astral world actually share their video
actually share their photos and now we're getting to the point where at first we were
judging the videos now we're actually putting it out into a poll for everyone to participate
and give their opinion and give in place their votes and what happens then is
that at the end of the week we choose a new picture every week and then eventually it will become um one of
those pictures will become the picture of the month and then we'll end up making what we will end up making an actual world calendar
that we will um be able to share with everyone um feel free to take a look at
that you can sign up it's not you know you can sign up here um you can you can sign up on our website you can add you
can check out the astro world store which has a lot of cool merchandise and the one thing that i will say that is so
awesome about the store is that for if you purchase things from the store
five percent of those of the of what you give us that goes towards astral world five percent
is actually given back to the astro community um and we give back to a
random astronomy club around the world it's just a random astronomy club in the
world that we will give whatever you know five percent of those earnings that come from the store we give back to the
community which i think is fantastic um and
you know i'm just i guess i'm just so excited about this website i'm excited about being with astroworld
and it's been it's been just a blast for me so i really i really appreciate the opportunity to hang out with dan and all
and everybody just you know and just have a lot of fun and learn i learned i learned so much about you know
thing you know about astronomy about astrophotography right now i'm learning about ifn i had no idea what ifn even
meant you know integrated you know flux nebulae so you know it's really really
cool what you can learn and you know and just you know enjoy yourself you know so yeah and don't don't let eric fool you
he doesn't like me [Laughter]
well it's great to see uh the popularity of astroworld grow and
uh you know you guys are doing an amazing job thank you so you've got uh uh out in the audience right now you
have uh sean nielsen from visible dark oh yeah
yeah and uh you know so it's it's all very cool well that's awesome and what do you guys
say i mean aside from having me on friday what what's what's in your future
uh for guests oh it's it's amazing
yeah so basically um i believe april 6th we have bob denny who's going to be
coming and giving us a rundown uh of alpaca so that's going to be nice and
interesting um let me just get my calendar up real quick yeah because it's we just had hendrick uh
from the starring he uh for those of you that haven't seen this star aid product you might want to take a look at it it's
it's pretty awesome um i know in later in april we are having
the great uh uh charles bracken yep you know he's coming on
um who's had so he was an author of something really awesome um astrophotography books yeah photography
sky atlas yeah sky yeah yeah the planner deep sky you know deep
sky imaging primer so that's going to be a lot of fun having him on we've had um
we've had so many other people that have had that have come on i think we're having um some other people coming we
have we have uh colin hague um he's going to be coming on um then we have um
chris woodhouse uh who's another uh who's another author out there we're
working on getting him on um plus yeah so we got a bunch of stuff going on
um we have uh we've had every single one of the masters of pixin site come on
we've had sean nielsen a number of times come on as a matter of fact sean um holds the the astro world show record
for longest show
it was it was three hours and 17 minutes if i remember right that's the longest show that's a
that's a long show yeah you had the opportunity to have adam block on um
and he was able to teach us quite a bit and taught me quite a bit on picks inside he took me to school i'll be
honest [Laughter] he gave you the beat down yeah yeah
that was funny that was funny he he literally he literally came on the show to to talk to eric
yeah that was interesting and scott this will be your second time too yes my second
time yes i'm looking forward to it and uh um so that's awesome thanks for coming
on to golden star party and sharing the experience and the uh uh you know all
the universe of astral tv with us so i appreciate it guys
thanks max have a good one all right so we are going to move on to
uh russell fralek uh from uh the royal astronomical society
of canada uh he has been uh deeply involved in uh the
outreach programs uh for the rasc montreal center and uh you know he was uh he sent me an
email today uh very very excited about uh his recent experience with uh i think
some second graders uh uh who were learning about space from russell so
russell you're on great thank you very much scott just uh share the screen here
oh just a sec wrong button there we go
there we go uh how's that yeah
good stuff all right all right thanks again scott thanks for the opportunity yeah kareem uh sorry he couldn't make it
tonight um but um yeah he was talking to me about so about my grade two class experience
yesterday so um we do a lot of outreach and uh most of it's been of course uh delayed
or postponed because of the pandemic we did a couple of local community outreaches last year
in the winter it's really hard to do outside because until recently it's been around minus 20 minus 25 mostly
today it's very nice it's about zero uh very 32 fahrenheit sorry zero degrees
celsius uh so i we got an invitation for a grade two class and uh
it's frankly my first time talking to seven-year-olds since my own daughter
was seven about uh oh long long time ago so
uh before i start uh we'd like to make a just a quick uh promo here uh kareem would have done it but if you were able
to join us tonight it's uh earth hour the coming this saturday at 7 00 to 8 30
p.m eastern daylight time so hey russell uh we're seeing we're seeing the presenter view as opposed to the full
screen oh sorry thanks molly just a sec i will do the old-fashioned way how
about the low-tech way um if you share your other screen instead of this screen then you should
grab it all right this is how i won't change the screen thank you very much yeah okay i will do
this one how about push the button
and how's that uh we're seeing uh powerpoint still uh
not the presenter view uh so you do not see my slide uh i see
yourself in this slide but we see also the rest of the powerpoint it's still working oh really okay
it still works uh it's less interesting if you have a second monitor um yeah
maybe that's the problem just yeah so so share your second monitor instead and then when you when you go when you hit
the present button in powerpoint it'll it'll go to the second screen okay or maybe i'll just close my second monitor
i had this problem last time all right that works too is this better
we still see the presenter view somehow okay one last time okay
last time and then we'll move on all right
second screen oh there it is [Music]
[Applause]
okay so uh sorry about the delay here so earth hours coming up oh i just lost the there we go uh this
saturday seven to eight thirty uh montreal or new york or atlanta time oh it keeps shifting around and uh we have
several guest speakers tim doucette uh lisa and fanning and many many more we're gonna be talking about lots of
different things with earth hour please join us if you can uh there's a connection otherwise if you can't see it
just go to reschmontreal.org and there's a link there so i will continue so uh
i like i like the scott's theme for this week uh what a dull universe it would be
if everything and it conformed to our expectations and i must say that my experience with my with the grade twos
well i didn't really know what my expectations were but even if i did they did not conform they went way beyond
so my challenge perhaps you have a similar challenge so i am a teacher by profession actually
i'm a professor at a business school but my youngest students are at least 20 years old
and i find them challenging yep so our instructions were could you
please spend an hour to talk about space stuff that was the instruction
so we have 60 minutes it's uh their final class of a very long school day so
it's from 3 to 4 p.m in the afternoon they're pretty excited they're pretty tired there's 30 of them
and uh english is not their first language this is a french language school and it's an english as a second
language class and uh and they're learning words for body
parts and body movement and i was asked to could you please include something about that in the show
and uh because of uh the restrictions still up here we were not able to go in person so we did it on microsoft teams
there was a very very patient teacher and he had a support teacher in the class
so that was the challenge so what did we talk about so my theme was
how big and how far and i thought okay that's i guess that'll be okay and we we got them
moving so i asked them how big how big they were and they had these really really great answers and how far things
were and i tried to frame everything in terms of objects that they were familiar with because
they were throwing numbers around oh it's a thousand or it's a million or i even got a gajillion
and i really thought should i ask them to write that on the board how many zeros is that exactly that's
right oh they're they're very funny they're very very cute so first they were super excited i could really say
the minute we the word space came up they all like perked up
uh it was really really nice and we started with earth i had a little board that i could draw on and i drew
them like in a little sketch and i said how how big are you some said they were
really big some said they were small then i asked them how big was the classroom and i could see it in the
camera and they said that was big i said what about their home they said that was
big so we're talking about bigger and bigger and bigger and then i said well you know we're on the earth
and i have a little uh a tiny i have a little earth so i pretended i
was from this cartoon despicable me with a little shrink ray so i gave him a shrink ray and then we
shrunk the earth down to this side so they were they were pretty impressed
then then the teacher said well they're getting a little bit fidgety oh they were so i asked them to jump up
and down and i and they were like very excited and i asked them okay so you're jumping up so you're pretty strong but
you always come back down why and the answer was unanimous it was gravity sir
oh that's great where does that then we started talking about the earth so this was very much
improvised as you can possibly imagine i would measure their attention span in order of maybe 40 seconds
and uh after the jumping one kid i could hear in the background screamed uh
because one of the other kids beside him stepped on his hand so the teachers helper had to stop the class and they
had she had to flop him over her shoulder and carry him out to the nurse's office
i didn't know str um astronomy was so dangerous but they were having a great time we
talked about the sun we talked about how big how hot things were they all the hottest thing that they would compare it
to were volcanoes they were very interested in volcanoes and i tried to i
turned it around to their oven at home and they said that was very hot too so okay it's very good i asked him how big
the sun was compared to the earth so they really liked this discussion they liked that
because they wanted to talk about big things that's pretty good we talked about the
moon they were fascinated not by the moon picture but by the the way the the
word was spelled because in french moon is la lune l-u-n-e and they were fascinated by
these two little o's i think we spent two minutes on these o's
it was amazing i thought they'd be interested in the craters but nope they like the o's
we also talked apart in scott round to like the moon it was round no they liked it because it
looked like little eyes looking back at them from space really i never would have thought of that so they were very
very creative we talked about distances so i i went back in uh into my room and i held my
arms and i asked them the moon and the earth are they that far away and they kept on going so they really had a and
in a sense about the distances involved i think they really appreciate it it was farther away than their home was that
was pretty good uh then uh there was a we took a little pause while they they had a little
stretch and that the teacher tried to settle them down and then he said would you take some request questions i said
sure from seven-year-olds of course and i had no idea what they were gonna ask so their first question was sir can
you show us the planet mercury really okay
and then we talked about mercury what's the same between mercury and the moon and what
was their answer they both start with the letter m
because of course they're learning english and in french this starts with an l and this starts with an m and they
were like fascinated as the class went by their ability to
express themselves with their we talked about body parts how many hands high and those kinds of things uh there was
getting a bit tougher for them to express themselves in english so although it was a class to learn english
most of the discussion switched to french but with the latter half of the class and i think that was okay
we talked about venus they knew so what did these kids know about the planets already without me saying anything
they knew mercury was the closest planet to the sun and it was very very hot and it had no atmosphere so how do you guys
know this stuff they knew that venus was special they knew it was super hot and super
poisonous wow i i was i was like pretty impressed we talked about um uh meteors and how
many stars there are in the sky they recognized this as a comet and they
knew that a comet was made of rock and ice they're seven years old i didn't say
anything yet we talked about mars
one kid i said so class why is mars so ready orange it's a different color than
the other planets and one boy stood up and confidently said sir
because it's made of rock that's made of iron and there used to be water flowing
on mars and it's gone now and all that's left is the rock
so i said wow you know so much maybe you should apply for a job in nasa
and he was very very happy uh jupiter they like it was big
they liked about they liked the rings uh what else now we then we finished off
with talking about uh the galaxy our galaxy how do you know it's there etc uh
and there's a few other things but i guess uh in 10 minutes uh what were my expectations uh just so
i i was just able to hang on hang on for the ride and hopefully uh
stir up some interest some of their curiosity
but i didn't really have to do much actually they were very very keen at the end of the class
the teacher said thank you very much we're finished and pretty much all the students insisted on
staying in the classroom they came up to the camera to look at me and show me their book about astronomy each of them
had brought a book about astronomy and they wanted to show it to me so it was really really cool
they were pointing to their favorite page or their favorite picture so that was very inspiring the kids were
great they so much energy i have so much respect for primary school teachers
after that experience wow how do they keep those kids happy and focused
so just my last couple of minutes here my last minute just a reminder from our earth hour and we'd like to see you if
you can join us online and otherwise uh uh that's it for me unless there's some
questions i was pretty shocked very happy tired and i'm sure i'll be doing it again very soon
thank you well that's great that's great i think that um those of us who who get involved in
outreach like this you know we do it for a actually it's kind of a selfish reason
because we get so much energy from it you know um so that's that is uh you know it
that's that's the gift of outreach and astronomy um i i found an
interesting website that i called attention to in the chat but it's called uh
uh it is uh the website is new
space and it is a call uh for a new um a
new way to express astronomy through you know all the professional levels and
uh amateur levels anyone that wants to get involved and they are asking for signatories on
this i just signed it myself because i really believe in the
in the vision and mission of this project and so um i would definitely
uh uh recommend that if you are into uh outreach in astronomy like uh russell
here is and most of the people in fact all the people that are on global star party uh
and uh it is um the the charters signed the call for a new astronomy uh you can
read about it when you go to the website so great thank you i just have one last
thing uh for our friends uh overseas in new zealand it is i found my old uh dark
sky project shirt from lake tecuvo which i went to visit a couple of years ago pre-pandemic and i'm looking forward to
going back soon thank you yeah i love this shirt it's cool that's
great all right thanks thank you so much thank you
okay so um let's check in quickly with gary before we switch over to molly
wakeling uh i'd like to see if gary's got anything live you can share for a couple of minutes with us
hi scott yeah we've um got me m81a 82 up at the moment so just
doing some test imaging really okay let me share that over
there we go it's just nice straightforward simple five minute test shots
yeah it's on a wide field rig at the moment a ascol fra 500
with a 2600 um color camera so it's just literally
doing some wide field shots just testing it out seeing what the field of view is like i can so i've just been to get a cup of
coffee and i can see the the sky lightning over the mountain where the moon is rising so
we won't be doing this one for much longer switch over to one of the other cameras but um
this is a lot of really what i do is the scopes come in we're just setting
them up different cameras different fields of view um we'll run it for a couple of hours
and then move off to something else there's some other scope or some other equipment on tomorrow night so
it's quite nice sometimes if you actually get a couple of weeks where it goes quiet and you can do some imaging
for yourself and concentrate on something quite nice but very nice
with the winter we've had uh haven't really had that option at the moment so
i like the way that m81 and m82 are kind of positioned in the sky just seeing the
image of this this pair uh it just uh it really uh sums up the the feeling of
of looking millions of light years into space and and uh you know to
see the you know the amazing uh wonder of what galaxies are i mean galaxies are the whole reason i got into
um into amateur astronomy i i wanted to see as far back into distance space as i
could uh to you know get that i don't know that experience of look
back time you know to see back millions of years in the case of m81 it's about
12 million light years away yeah we've got a couple of the big scopes up over there because it is
galaxy season here so um we i just did the first uk show
saturday so we had all sorts of stuff going off there and then coming back and
everything else so um one of those will be going on over the next day it's actually looking clear for about a week
here which i don't know what's happening i must be in a different wow zone somewhere you know
yeah i know it's often cloudy so thank you gary thank you sleeping and dreaming at the
moment right okay so uh molly wakeling is uh is back
with us and uh she's been she's often on global star party uh
she's been very very busy and uh you know so um we're real fortunate to have her on
tonight uh i uh uh have had some conversations with uh
molly over the years last couple of years i met her at the advanced imaging
conference and uh find her to be you know really fascinating and her uh
her interest in not only astrophotography but the science around what she images you know so
and uh she's kind of formalized all that with her astronomy uh programs so we're gonna let
you uh have the screen here uh molly also i i wanted to point out that uh molly was
the winner of the uh wilhelmina fleming uh imaging award that is it's the first
astrophotography award uh specifically for women in in astronomy so
congratulations thank you scott yeah i'm not on too often i'm working on
my phd and that requires a lot of energy in a lot of times so uh
i i come on when i can but i'm on spring break this week so i finally put together
a talk uh so let me meet my phone i finally put together a talk that i told scott like
must have been like um like two months ago now something like that we were talking about i did a
presentation on nebula a nebula one night and someone was asking if we'd be able to see
what if we'd be able to see the nebula if we were up closer to it so i decided to go ahead and answer that question
with math okay um so let me get my powerpoint started
here answer my screen
okay uh yeah so um and it's something i've wondered about
too and a lot of people have asked me about at outreach events i decided to go ahead and
finally do the math and see what the answer that question was
all right so i decided to do uh the orion nebula because of its popularity
and its brightness and it gives kind of a like if if i wanted to go look at another close it'd
probably be this one so i decided to to use the orion nebula as a case study so
it's 1 344 light years away and it's 65 by 60 arc minutes in size so
about 1.1 degrees squared i rounded off to one degree for the sake of this all this math
it has an apparent magnitude of plus 4 and a peak surface brightness
at the core of 17 magnitudes per second squared and we're going to come back to that
all right so here's our scenario we're in a spaceship on the last ship in particular it was uh
last slide it was the the enterprise [Laughter] so we're on a spaceship
and we're gonna fly by the orion nebula at about a distance of one light year which in astronomical terms is quite
close so how big for our first question is how big would that nebula appear on our sky
so uh so we have our basic picture of the observer looking at the orion nebula
at some distance d and it's going to subtend some angle
from from earth we see it subtending a it's it's one it's one square degree so
it's like one degree by one degree and uh and from that we can do a little trigonometry to figure out what the size
and light years is of the orion nebula
so remember our good buddy our good buddy sine cosine and tangent from high school and if you recall one of the many
mnemonics for remembering uh whether it's opposite adjacent or
hypotenuse that goes into that fraction there for tangent it is uh adjacent or
opposite over adjacent so we have our our x over d so the um
the uh the width of the nebula in this case um is what we're looking for we're
looking for that size in light years and the and d is our distance from the target then theta is that angle that it
subtends on the sky so one degree this case uh it subtends one one degree
but in order to do the trigonometry we we have to cut that in half so we're using half of theta
and half of of uh our the value we're looking for x here
is we're gonna get the half of that value and we'll multiply by 2 to get the full length of it
so plugging in some numbers we have if you rearrange this equation
we get d the distance times the tangent of theta over 2 equals
the size of the orion nebula divided by two which once you plug in the numbers gets
us down to 11 light years is the half width making the full width of the origin of
the 22 light years which is pretty close to the actual value other than you know did some
rounding off with the actual size of it and the distance and whatnot all right now what if we took the orion
nebula and we changed our distance from 1 344 light years to one light year how
how how big is this angle theta how much sky will it subtend at one light year
so we just have to rearrange that equation again so that uh we get theta over two so the half angle
equals the inverse tangent or the arc tangent excuse me of um
half of that width divided by our distance so plugging in those numbers we get the half angle of 84.8 degrees
multiplying that by two it it's so it's covering 170 degrees
of our apparent field of view when it's only a light year away which is almost half the sky so if you were looking out
of a porthole on the enterprise it would cover floor to ceiling everything that
you can see unless you went to the other side of the ship and looked away from it it would just cover your whole sky on that whole one side of the ship
and this works out to be 28 764 square degrees i'm not even going to say what that is in full moons because
it's still a large number so just go with it's about half the sky in size which is pretty incredible
yeah and the human eye can only see looking straight ahead about 120 degrees
yeah yeah so it would it's it's it's bigger than your field of view you could look all around and just see the nebula
you'd have to turn your back to it in order to to not look at it basically
um all right so uh just to kind of to kind of illustrate what that looks like so
uh so we're here on the earth my second monitor is up high so i'm kind of looking above it um
and our distance of 1344 light years it subtends that one
degree angle and if we fly a light year away from it we are very close to it indeed and it
fills up half the sky so just kind of to kind of illustrate what i had on the last slide
and i don't think i need to say this but this image is not to scale
it's a big spaceship yeah it's a pretty big spaceship it would be
smaller than a pixel if i put it in real size but yes that's the illustration
that's awesome uh all right so um so you might think okay we're closer to it we should be
able to see a lot more of its light however the nebula is emitting the same amount of light
but it's now spread over a much larger area but also that light is diverging less
because it's closer to us uh due to the inverse square law so a little more math is needed to see how
bright it would be if it was if we were within one light year of it
so i'm going to take a quick detour to talk about what magnitudes are because we're about to get into a lot of
magnitude values in the next bit so um if you do any astronomy at all you
have come across these magnitude values for how bright things are in the sky like that's a magnitude 5 star that's a
magnitude 15 galaxy so i and it might in you may or may not
have have known that if this is actually a reverse logarithmic scale of the actual brightness of these objects
so uh brighter objects have smaller values of magnitude so uh for example on our table down here
series is a magnitude of negative one and a half um whereas the orion nebula has a magnitude
of plus four and there's a lot of stars out there that have magnitudes of three four five six seven all the way up
and uh it's not a it's not a linear scale but it's not like a regular base 10 logarithmic scale either it's kind of
in between so uh it goes it goes by order of of this constant
squared cubed fourth fifth depending on how many magnitudes of difference there are so
uh one magnet one one unit of magnitude brighter
is uh the fifth root of 100 which is approximately equal to 2.512 times
brighter if it's two magnitudes brighter then it's that number squared
if it's five magnitudes brighter then it's that number to the fifth power it could just back to a hundred so it's a
non-linear scale but it's also not just base 10 logarithmic either it's like this this base two and a half this base
fifth root 100 log scale um you know i should look into the into the
history of why that is it's probably simple but i should uh i'll have to think about that for next time um
yeah so here's a table of of some objects that we know and love venus is uh negative 4.2 it's brightest
you see real bright and easy in the sky sirius is really easy to see from everywhere the dimmest
that the average person somebody with decent vision can see naked eye is magnitude plus 6.5 for like
a star um and the dimmest the hubble can see for a star is plus 31.5 which blows away
my telescope for sure so okay so that's the magnitude scale
so um in order to talk about how bright the orion nebula is going to look at one light year we need to talk about surface
brightness so the apparent magnitude of an object is actually integrated over the whole surface of the object
so a magnitude 5 star is a lot brighter than a than a large magnitude 5 nebula
because that star is a point source all of its light is concentrated in one small area whereas that large nebula
uh that light is spread out over a larger area and so even though it's magnitude 5 it
could be really hard hard to see if that nebula is near to us and looks bigger on the sky so surface brightness is more
useful measure of how bright something is in order to compare it to other objects
so uh there's a there's a relatively simple formula for this uh which is here where s
is the surface brightness in in units of magnitudes per square arc second this is the same unit of brightness that if you
use a sky quality meter uh that's that's what that's using and little m is the apparent magnitude
of the object in in units of magnitude and a is the surface area in units of
arc second squared so for example messier 33 has a apparent magnitude of
5.79 and messier 57 the ring nebula has a has an apparent magnitude of
8.8 however if you ever looked at these objects in a telescope you you can know that the ring nebula is a lot easier to
see than m33 is in fact it could be pretty hard to actually see m33 from light
pollution whereas m57 you can see it almost anywhere that's because of their surface
brightnesses messier 33 is much much larger on our sky
and physically than the ring nebula it's 62 by 37 arc minutes compared to the ring nebula's
1.4 by 1.1 arc minutes so the surface brightness of m33 is 23 magnitudes per
arc seconds squared whereas the surface brightness of the ring nebula is 15 magnitudes of our second squared and if
you recall as we just talked about with magnitudes uh a um a larger number is less bright so 23 is
a lot dimmer than 15 on our magnitude scale so that's why
even though m33 has a higher apparent magnitude it's actually dimmer than the
ring nebula when you go to look at it in the telescope all right so if we want to get to uh
if we want to find out what the surface brightness of the rhine nebula would be at one light year we need to calculate
its um what its apparent magnitude would be at one light year so first we start with
the absolute magnitude so that we can convert from our 1300 light years down to one light year and for this we're
going to use the distance modulus formula this includes so
capital m is what we're solving for here which is the absolute magnitude which is actually the apparent magnitude at 10
parsecs because there's really no absolute magnitude unless you talk about the total amount of of luminosity being
emitted by the object and that's another unit that is used elsewhere but is less useful for us as as earthbound
astronomers um lowercase m is the apparent magnitude and d is the distance in units of
parsecs where one parsec is 3.26 light years
so we plug in the numbers that we have for the orion nebula we know that its apparent magnitude is 4 we plug in the
distance and parse x and we get an absolute magnitude of negative about negative
four now uh that's his magnitude at 10
parsecs so what uh how does that convert to what its apparent magnitude is at one light
year so we just rearrange that distance modulus formula and plug it back in for
a distance of of one light year instead of a 1300 light years
uh we plug in the absolute magnitude and this this value here of this .307
parsecs that's how long a light year is and we get that its apparent magnitude
at one light year is negative 9.588 magnitudes which sounds really bright
brighter than venus almost as bright as the full moon but there's a catch
that light is spread out over 28 764 square degrees so it's not gonna look as bright as in
magnitude negative nine star if there was one that light is spread out over a large
large area so what is its surface brightness then we can go back to the equation that i
had on the surface brightness slide and plug in our new values our area
this is the square degrees that it subtends when we're a light year away from it convert that to arc second
squared plug it into our surface brightness formula
and we get 19.34 magnitudes for our second squared which is pretty dim
compared to light pollution if you live in like a suburban area you get about 18.5 to 19 magnitudes per
arc seconds squared so it's about as bright as the light pollution in in your
area and this average value is actually dimmer than the core than the core of
m42 at its current distance which is 17 magnitudes for our second squared
now once i got through all this math i looked at the numbers and was like man those numbers are almost the same
also because they are surface brightness is independent of the distance so we didn't have to actually do all that math
because somebody else has done it before us to figure out what the surface brightness of orion is
but if we don't have that number handy this is how you can calculate the surface brightness of an object
and once you figure out the surface brightness of where it's located however whatever distance away you don't have to
calculate it for any other distance because it's going to be the same and the reason for that is in my i
jumped ahead a little bit my fourth bullet point the radiative flux so like the photons per
second decreases with the square of the distance but the angle subtended by the object
also decreases with the square of the distance so the two cancel each other out so whether that whether the orion nebula
is one light year away or 300 light years away it's going to have between 17 and 21
sparks like a squared surface brightness depending on what part of it you're looking at
now uh i was announcing research for this a guy roger clark actually measured the surface brightness of the orion
nebula and measured it across the surface across the line in his image and
showed the surface brightnesses of different parts of the nebula so the trapezium we all know is the brightest
part and so that's that gets up to 14 magnitudes per square arc second
and the dimmer bits get down it's 19 and 20. so
what what would this look like if we were a light year away you could see the glow dimly just like
you can from the ground if even in a fairly light polluted area you can see kind of the core of the orion nebula if
you know where to look except that would be all over the whole sky as opposed to being in that one spot
however the stars would be a lot brighter that's because they're pretty much always point sources
until you get very close to them so uh the brightest trapezium star theta
one orionis is from our distance apparent magnitude 5.1
at one light year doing the same math it would be magnitude negative 10.5 so as bright as
the full moon if the full moon were a point instead of a surface area so brighter than venus basically by
by quite a lot um and the other trapezium stars would be so they'd be very bright stars that
actually probably cause a lot of a lot of light pollution from those stars
and of course i average this over the whole nebula so there are some knots and filaments that are brighter than this
um and for instance the the trapezium region gets up to 15 14 magnitudes per
square arc second so you'd have kind of a patch of sky that's actually relative relatively bright uh compared to the
rest of the sky you would notice it being a brighter glow
probably not enough to see color still i didn't look into that question but um yeah you would kind of see this
dim diffuse glow over an entire half of the sky and a lot of the stars in the urine nebula would
be much much brighter than they are from here it would be bright enough to cast a shadow
for sure yeah the stars would absolutely yeah yes and you might be able to read an astronomy magazine by the live
stars potentially yeah yeah it's uh if you're moving out to a dark sky site
and have had your night vision kind of ruined by jupiter yes it's it's jupiter is not that right
compared to this to negative 10 so it would definitely ruin your night vision uh to look in that direction
uh so yeah are there any questions in the chat um i think people are blown away by the
math but love the whole concept of figuring out
what uh what it might visually look like uh through um through your process so i think that's
totally cool we can see how brilliant you are molly so well the math is just a little bit of algebra
and uh and one one trigonometry equation uh it's not so bad there's no calculus
in this story [Laughter]
very cool i really appreciate it molly thank you for coming on to global star party yeah
okay so folks we're going to take a ten minute break and then we're going to come back with um
uh with uh marcelo souza down in brazil and uh
and then uh we'll check back in with barry palmer and see what's going on in the uk skies okay so give us 10 minutes
water
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yes
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well i hope you guys enjoyed that uh 10-minute break um we are uh back with dr marcelo souza who
doesn't like to be called doctor um and i can understand that i think i
embarrass him sometimes by that but uh he is a cosmologist uh he is a
uh professor of astronomy uh physics and um uh he is probably the greatest force
in astronomy outreach in brazil and known all over south america and of course up here in north
america too so marcelo thank you for coming on the show um
he is uh as an aside he is also the editor of sky's up magazine which is a global
astronomy magazine it's free for the download and uh so i'll give a link on
how to get that but marcelo thank you for coming on to the global star party
thank you very much for the invitation it's a great pleasure to be with you ever
i'm sorry because i think that now you have different time zones i don't know why now the difference between yes
now is two hours not three hours i think that something changes yeah and your
time is already in the daylight savings time so i may maybe this because i
for me it changed then all right but now we have a difference of two hours on right right
i remember this and uh i have here something that may be that
is curious for you and the other people from united states
because you have a brazilian uh research he already died but he was a brazilian
he came from a brazilian indian group
and he studied the reconstellations okay
as or the this group uh the history of the constellation but
this group saw in the sky then i will show
how that part of the brazilian indian groups
they see the constellations in the sky is different from the way that
we make the identification of the constellation for us
the identification is from the bright stars where you connect the bright stars and
we imagine a figure here and but the brazilian indians part of
the brazilians see the constellations in a different way
well there i will show you this is the i'm only showing the image of the oriole
right here and the scorpius that's it they are the main
constellation for us here with and also with the southern cross
because the orion is his uh for us is the constellation of the summer
and the scorpius foreign and here in brazil
they call out people call these three stars here
the three marys and these three stars in the bell of the
of orion everybody knows here as three marys
they call in portuguese is tres marias three marys
that are together yes maria i think that is mary in english no
i i'm saying correct oh yeah also maria maria
everybody knows they they don't know the name of the constellation but they know
because they see here for us in
in the beginning of the night during the summer then is near the
in the beginning of the summer then it is easy to find then everybody knows here in brazil
well and here at constellations that's the brazilian indians so here is the milkway
and what they use as a difference here here is scorpius centaurus
wolf here yes and what they use as a reference is the
difference of the bright regions of the milky way and the darker regions of the
milky then what they they see these oh sorry
these brazilian groups i need you to change here because
okay okay now you guys what they see here uh here is south and cross
okay you have some towers here what they see here they see the constellation of
emma that's like another street how did that they say things i don't know that is a big bird
a big one that you see in australia what is the name that you say
everyone here that you call emma it's like this one that you see that you'll see in australia
and we call him here and the it is average trees i'm trying to find here the correct two words in english to say
and here they see they see they see this bird
and you the head of the birds is here in the [Music]
dark vision of the southern cross here is the cow
bag i don't know if he's correcting me is important is it called sakura kahavan
ice rich is this i don't know if he's correct
here is the red of them here uh near the southern cross and they see
here because you have a dark region here in the southern cross
and here escarpus here is the part is part of the birth
of the the birth here and and the alpha and beta from
centaurus are jews that the the bird ate
and is here in the neck of the birds and how that
this research uh did his work he talked with the
ancient from the these indian groups and they
show in the sky watch they saw and then he drow
and this show to them to know what is correcting me is
this is one of them that is very famous is the concentration of emma you say immune
this is another one near towers here is here players
and they see here another that is a brazilian bird these
constellations are huge in the sky yes very large constellations but sometimes
they have two constellations near they cross
now something that's important to us here for us here is to
find the south pole
in the sky this celestial south pole here for this is very important to find because you
don't we don't have a polar star as you have in the north
then we use the southern cross as a difference for us
and also 50 seasons when we have the autumn here number one
before uh in the beginning of the autumn that is happening in this period now
you see the southern cross in this position in the sky
okay and in the winter the southern cross is in this position in the
beginning of the night it's pointing for the south because here is the south
pole in the sky and it's a less south pole the projection of the south pole in the
sky in the celestial sphere that you have in the sky
here is the position of the southern cross in the beginning of the
spring here and in the beginning of the summer
we don't see the sultan cross in the sky
then this is a reference for us that came also
that comes from the brazilian indians then we know now
if i i look to the sky here i will see the southern cross i see now
the south and crossing this position in the beginning of the night in the movement of the southern sky the
southern cross is this one the southern cross moves
here is the center of the circle in the south south pole
in the celestial sphere here let's imagine huge projection off just
if you were to hold your hand up okay against the sky from the the instar of the southern
cross how how many hands or fingers would you hold hold up to find the south
pole i will show you is four times in half four times in half
okay you measure this one right okay we call here we have a name for each
star here it's not uh recognized by the international astronomical union but is what we use
here this first one here that is the bright one we call the magalians star
magellan star okay this one here is mimosa
in portuguese that he called this one that is like uh
orangey red we call hubedia that means something like it's like almost red
something like this all right okay and this one is pallida
that is not so bright it means in portuguese and this one that it's
not belongs to the the cross but is here in the constellation recording from it in
portuguese that something that is someone that she comes but don't
belong to the the house or something like this
and call information in portuguese then to measure the distance we do this
we use two fingers in our hands and we try to
we feel our hand to put like this part of the
southern cross inside two fingers one two two the two fingers here and then we
measure in this direction four times and a half
four and a half times yes and here is the position of the south public
in the celestial sphere the projection then you go in this direction that is yourself
perfect i'll remove it this is what we use
to find the the south pole but most of the people here don't know how
to do this they imagine that the south and first points to the south
is what many people here think then when we go to schools and make a visit we
uh talk about these with students but they know how to find the south
using the south and cross only during the summer that in the
beginning of the night of the summer that's not possible to use because we can't see the southern cross
but later appeared southern cross then they can use this but during the internet is
something amazing because southern cross is right in this position it's kind of
in the vertical position then pointing directly to the south where he is in
this position the beginning of the night and doing that there's a great uh lesson right there for
any amateur astronomer you know you want to pay attention to the southern cross and remember what uh marcelo said it's
the distance between the two stars that you see there which is about two fingers wide and then you go
about four and a half of those distances over and we do this because we like to use
a german mount for the telescopes then it's important to find the south and
then we use our fingers to find the position and it worked well
wonderful and here is the south man you use this with frequency here this thing
that's it whatever do when they go to to make observations here is like how
the southern cross moves during the nights [Music] today in this position then
you move and the center of the movement is this the
south pole in this elasticity here
beautiful is what you do here to find
and this is something that's by the name of the constellation that
this is a popular name is a popular name that you use here in
here is i want to show also that they are not near they are very far one from another
because the nearest star from us is the obedient that is 88
light years from from us and the the far one is the party that that is 364
light years
and now we are doing activities in schools for the younger stars of tomorrow continue doing and now as
we don't now they allow the people with students and everybody to
don't use masks here in brazil here here de janeiro or state i am still using but
they they it's not mandatory now you can use if you want you use your
feelings and now you have here more students participating now
you have all the students of this group that are involved in the activities
these we organize today in a school we have more than 100
students participating at this moment they now have big crowds
of students now involved yeah uh some amazing after this project
in schools and this week we will launch the first
cartoon animated animated cartoon that we are developing
will be transmitted by a local tv here in our city it will be the first
cartoon for tv developed here in our city about astronomy and science
but and here are the students participating in the project
um there's some things yeah there's a lot of students now
i just student the schools now are full of students because they had turned to
schools and as we can we don't have problems now we've covered here
have few people in hospitals now you can you don't need to use masks and
you have much students in schools
organizing also the international meeting in april 22 23 well
that's it we are already uh
organizing the program of the events everybody will be very welcome
thank you scott thank you so much thank you
thank you yeah all right have a good night thank you so much
so thank you very much [Music] so remember what you learned from
marcelo tonight okay uh so when you make that trip to the southern hemisphere you'll be you'll
be the head of the star party because uh you'll you'll know how to get those
mounts polar aligned in the southern hemisphere it's great
okay so um we're gonna wrap up uh the 87th global star party with gary palmer
uh and uh how's it going over there are you still you still getting uh clear skies yeah
it's still getting clear skies the moon's risen now so um
if i just share this across first off
it's very faint just because of the type of filter but you can just see the elephant's trunk nebula
in here that's using the color camera and one of these new dual band filters
different manufacturer this time so it's the antler version and it seems
quite tight it's about five nanometer filter so um
when i was i did some imaging earlier before we came online i'm just going to share the other screen over now let me
just move a couple of things around why is it get a bit complicated um
just go back to that and then we're going to share
that hopefully you can see the pixel inside screen
yeah and this was using the same filter earlier so if i
work out what i'm doing and stop myself getting lost let me just close that one up a bit there we go so that's how it
came in after it was stacked on the filter a couple of hours something like that
and then just a little bit of playing around with it while we're online um just to clean it up
oh yeah so what it will be quite good for is is um taking the red out and then adding that
into an rgb image so doing this from um
you know light polluted locations those sorts of things um it's going to work quite well
but been finding with some of the filters they're allowing a lot of moonlight in and
different other things and this one seems quite a bit tighter than some of the others that have been around so
yeah quite happy with it um yeah it's got a lot of detail in there and if you image for a lot longer
um you're gonna get a lot more detail but from the point of view here orion from my side is getting quite low now
it's hitting one of the mountains um quite quickly so not really going to see that till later
on in the year much more this year so that's really about it at the moment
there's not much else um sort of going on yeah it's uh it's just
because it's fine with it with any sort of filters you need a good four or five hours of a target and then
they will really brighten up um but when you're looking um even on five minute images they're coming in
quite dim um for the the single five minute image but they're quite interesting
because a lot of people use one shot color cameras you know if you live in locations where
the weather's a little bit poor can take you hours and hours and days and weeks to gather all of the rgb data
so having these things available now the technology that's behind this stuff
is making it really interesting yeah and just adding another edge
to imaging right absolutely you know um something i'm going to ask
you about later uh have you uh this is this is a new
where we're the distributors now for vixen here in the united states um uh
i they put this they plop this down on my desk and i'm really really interested to
see how this particular scope performs so um
you know adding to our his arsenal of optical tube assemblies
uh for astrophotography have you experienced have you done any testing
with this particular model yeah the vixen are very good um they always have been they've had a
good reputation for years and years they generally sort of stick to a design and
they come up with something to spend a bit of time working it all out and coming up with the designs for something
and they will stick with it for years you know it generally works
that's the thing and um but yeah there can be a little bit more expensive than some others a bit like
takahashi and those sorts of things but you get what you pay for you get a reliable telescope and it lasts
a long long time um the image quality is normally really really good
yeah we've had it in for about a year and a half uh one of the 100 mil
uh quad telescopes uh quad refactor um
and they're really expensive you know over here they're about five thousand pounds for one of
these things you know they're not cheap right but the image quality on it is very very
nice you know it doesn't matter really what camera you put on the back is always a
nice image out of it so i can't remember the model but years ago they had a really big one it was about
310 mil um unit that's very similar in designs that
is green i think about about 10 years ago i had one of those in
and that was a fantastic thing at the time just to run around the night sky with that and uh yeah i think it was a vtl
something like that but anyway yeah had a few of their products in we're going to have some more in over the next few weeks
right yeah have a look around and try and get one of those in and we'll have a bit of fun
so i would like to see some uh some let's see what you can do in imaging with with uh something like that so
yeah really looking forward to that they're they're really nice
they really are um always enjoy using those but some of their old refractors i know a lot of people um all over the
world still use some of the older vixen refractors for solar imaging oh sure
they're so well built um you know you can have them they're 15 20 years old and they're still running
really really well in this day and age so well vixen dixon is a pretty old company
from like 1949 or something like that i i get introduced to vixen products in
the early 80s uh celestron had brought in the line back then
um and uh so it was just it was uh i i marveled initially just at the machining
quality and and all of that and uh so i thought that their eye pieces their
camera adapters everything was just you know just so nicely done you know so
when you when you scroll with their adapters together and things like that everything's really nice and smooth and
um it's what i call functional you you look at a lot of things on some of the modern
stuff and yeah it has a use but i don't know what it is for the vixen it's just
everything when you look at it the handles all of those sorts of things they might not look modern but they're
functional and they all work so this is the handle when i first picked this up i mean it's
just right it's right at the balance point you know so um and i was i was surprised at how
relatively lightweight it is and so you know and when you've done this
for so many years and this is really this is very nice you know yeah when you pick up some of the
modern stuff um while it's nice and it all works well um they are quite awkward sometimes to
mount you know they haven't got handles on them they're absolutely you know i've always said this um
you know i've mounted a couple of 14 and uh 16 inch leads in the past and
you know you're watching what you're doing and i remember there were people that messed their backs up and and uh
i did a show for me in the uk about five six years ago
and uh we had one of the big mounts there and they said to me um what what are your thoughts on it i said yeah it
looks really nice it is lovely i said it's a shame that i've got to have an allen key to do up the saddle
plate while i'm holding a 14-inch telescope it's not a one-handed thing you know and it's
yeah that's a fair point that is you know but um you know i haven't always got a
friend around to um hold on to something or tighten something up and
i think that's the thing when you look at a lot of the products these days some of the
common sense has gone out of it you know right yeah and that's so
there's there is kind of a back to basics uh uh you know design
that vixen does that is characteristic of vixen but i
also noticed that the fit i mean the paint jobs are beautiful it's you know
every part of the machining is done very very nicely so anyways i i i just wanted to pull that
out and show it to you because i thought for sure that you had uh had some experience with it uh
that particular one has a built-in corrector for to make a flat field yeah but i don't know yet uh because
we're literally we're just getting the equipment now um you know how big is the image circle uh
you know those kinds of things so maybe you have some of that uh old information from yeah some of the i did find that
was the only thing that was a little bit disappointing on that refractor that we had here um the um it was really more
suited to medium format cameras yeah and in this day you know
um that's going to be really sharp you know there's a lot of us that sort of argue
is it worth using a full-frame camera on a lot of this equipment you know
it doesn't necessarily give you the nicest image your styles can look you know quite pin pointy and and things
like that so um you know i've got one of the cameras i
don't think it's in here because we had it at the show i mean that's absolutely huge you know in the center and
when you put it out there you've got a lot of other issues to run up against yeah all of a sudden it's right having
that field of view is fantastic but there's always something that gets in the way of that field of view right
um on the target so from my point of view i like getting
quite close to things you know when i'm imaging things i like to lean quite close so i generally don't go for the full format
cameras that's for my own imaging right um but i understand that you know
in this there's a thousand different types of imaging that you can do and everybody likes something different that's right
and so and that's why there's all the different equipment out there so yeah right
that's it that that's what makes it a brilliant hobby you know there's so many choices now
um that you can run off and do that's really what it's all about it's good fun
absolutely so again uh you know i recommend that you
uh you know if you want to learn more about your equipment uh you're uh you
know especially if you're into astrophotography uh you know you should definitely hook up with gary palmer uh take some of his
classes no matter if you're a beginner you know intermediate or you know advanced uh you know you can get
you know i'm sure i'm sure it's it's uh um you know you know a joy for gary to work with uh
astronomers at all levels and um you know even if you're you you're as as
good as gary is uh i'm sure that you can really get into uh some very interesting
conversations and um you know figure out ways to even get better than you were so uh you know and
that's the whole goal that's the whole goal gary thanks so much um what time is it
getting over there now um it's 2am 2am okay
9pm here that's true that's very true well thanks very much thanks to all the
audience that watched today uh for a global star party we'll be back next tuesday with the 88th global star party
being that it's 88th i think maybe i'll have to have like some sort of special door prize or something so we'll have to
figure that out but uh thanks again uh to everyone watching around the world
and um i want to thank uh to all the presenters that are maybe watching in the audience or
watching here on zoom and uh you guys keep looking up and we'll see you
tomorrow take care good night
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