Global Star Party 88

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hello everybody this is scott roberts from explore scientific and the explore alliance and
well we've got the whole crew here and we're going to talk about uh our
programs uh this week and uh our events and maybe a little uh some tips and
advice um and we're here to answer some of your questions so uh if you guys have questions this is
really the time to ask them um but uh
we have um um
you guys hear me all right yep yes oh okay everybody's being like quiet is mice back there
so but uh anyways we uh we've had we had a fun week last week
tyler bowman and i went to uh crystal bridges museum of art and um
we had our first what i would call hybrid uh event because we had a real
star party or solar star party event uh but we were also broadcasting it so
just using uh internet from our cell phones which admittedly made it choppy but we
were able to bring that in and then stream in
live views of the sun from tyler's telescope and live reaction from people looking
through the telescopes as well as you know maybe some short interviews and that kind of thing i just made a short
clip of that that we can i'll play later you know a few minutes of it uh so you can get an idea of it but
the message is is that this is something that your club can do as well as as you
as your club starts to get out of uh you know the coveted restrictions and is
able to have in-person types of astronomy outreach events and if you need any
advice on how to do it you know we can certainly give you tips on how to broadcast and how to use
some of the tools a lot of them that are free and and some of them that uh have just
modest cost to them um but uh it was fun to do uh we had great views
of the sun um and um i don't know what was your reaction tyler
my reaction of it was it's always it's especially the kids
especially the ones that were there it was fun to see the reaction of i can look at the sun
i can look at the sun and then once they look at the sun they're blown away
just of all the stuff you can talk about all the the sunspots the prominences
especially the prominences they just loved seeing all that stuff and then trying to tell them this is
what they're seeing you know kind of give them a little bit of science behind it as well that way they can learn while they're
watching or looking at the sun right even better reaction is the adults
because i mean someone that if that's never seen a tough scenes telescope never looked
through one all of a sudden gets to look at the sun their mind's physically blown because they're
just staring at the sun you can't stare at it for long but this enables you to stare at something and see all the
beautiful uh the magnetic storms the prominences uh
uh what what was it what would you call it kent the all the lines and stuff delay
the what granulation on the on the moon yeah on the sun
yeah on the moon that's what we were looking at the moon that was had prominences on it yeah the
frankie like just seeing that it's been so long since we've done this kind of stuff it's not
frankly it's granulated but just being able to see that and show
show someone that's either looked at him or hasn't looked at them it's it's honestly mind-blowing um when we did our
amazon live we told the story that i made a woman cry by just looking at the moon with a 20-inch job that we have
you weren't standing on her foot or anything right no i just said look in this eyepiece and she looked at it
that's how i make people cry at the eyepieces and she literally looking at it for
about three or five seconds she just started crying not like balling
oh yeah but it's so it's very emotional you know so it's life-changing and that's what it did for and it's kind
of it's you know it kind of brings me joy to
show people that this is what you can experience in outreach i mean not really crying but
you get to do something that i'm not a whole lot of people get to do personally
yeah that's my two cents right right well that's great so um
and i know that annie has been out uh doing astronomy and she
discovered that she needed something during her outing and this is something we all need
so we're going to talk about this a little bit annie what what can you advise people
out there that are getting into astronomy i always have a toolbox available
that right there is sage advice hammer size that kind of thing i'm just kidding
what kind of tools would you actually bring in um you know i learned i learned the hard way um saturday that you need
um at least um some allen wrenches um on site
size what size testing is over for today
so here's the deal no you need a full set of allen wrenches probably most most likely just just just to be safe
metric not sae not imperial but i keep both just in case yes keep both but
metric is what ours are so what so what happened is is um we
were daxton and i were viewing i had i had actually taken my my ixs 100 and my ed80 out to a an actual
site to a battlefield park we i have right around the corner from my house um because i really get tired of spotlights
on cemeteries but anyways so we um we we ventured out and it was going
great um and i had leveled the telus i had leveled the tripod all that jazz um
got it all set up and uh i slewed it to a certain location
jackson wanted to see something and um mind you i had i had dropped the great
thing about the tripod your mounts and tripods in my case in my situation i would say
for me personally the great thing for me personally is that i was able to drop the tripod down short enough for daxton
normally i have a step stool for him i had forgotten it um and so
um he we slewed it it turned and it was just out of his eyesight where he could just
walk up to it and see it and he went and turned it and as as soon as he
turned it my whole focuser and everything fell off the back end of my ota
oh yes what was your reaction did you
speak french she yelled at him she yelled at him i don't
speak french i don't speak french at all that's not that's not something i do but
anyways yes i was very i'm not very happy with daxton which is not a normal
thing for me um i'm usually don't get upset with him but um and that's honest to god truth has tyler he's been here
i'm just usually like laugh at him and whatever but i mean in jackson's defense he
didn't know he's like oh no i broke mommy's things it's like oh crap
so did it break anything so it now luckily he whenever he grabbed a hold of
it it was still in his hand um it came off and it was in his hand and of course i'm like i told you you know don't touch
the telescope we've we've gone over a little bit of telescope etiquette with him and so um he's four he's five five
he's five years old um you know of course like any person you'd want to take it and turn it to where you can see
it it's automatic reaction um and so in his defense i did not have the
focuser um tightened down good enough and then in my defense
i assumed that a certain focuser would fit but it did not fit so that is my fault
anyway anyways so it it didn't it ended up
being an okay thing it's now here and we're and i'm working on it but um but anyway so dachshund felt really bad
but but i learned there was a couple of things in the process i learned was i needed hex screws or an allen wrench for
the hex screws because if i would have had that on hand i would have been able to put the focuser back on and tighten
it down and and i would have been able to um continue viewing with it so then i turned around
and decided um i had a friend coming um to do some stargazing with us and like
right like this happened right before they showed up and so i decided well i have my camera
gear so i'll get out my camera stuff and then that's when i learned i probably should keep a flathead
screwdriver around as well yes
because i attached my camera to my dovetail and uh the the lens that tyler is
letting me use i this is the first time i've gotten it out um it's pretty heavy
and tyler wants to say something you didn't break nothing did you
no most people don't bring anything they don't break
break break hello he's the friend i broke his lid his legs
no i didn't so so i on on our dovetail we have a on the
underside we have a screw that screws up into the bottom of the camera and you can hand and hand tighten it um
and i didn't have a flathead screwdriver to tighten it all the way down so anytime i tried to try to do anything
with it the camera would go few and i finally was like i'm done we're
done i'm done
jeff y says that uh one tool that you need to bring uh this would probably be good for the people look through your
telescopes tyler's kleenex for tears
yes i agree i carry them with you always
right but my question would be what else what
else do you suggest that i throw in my tool bag besides a set of allen wrench
and a flashlight you're gonna need a flashlight red light drop something yeah you need white light red light
strap wrenches yep you know strap wrenches that's mainly
for astrophotography i can't get the adapters apart just to give that little extra nudge
um to tighten up your camera on the toilet well it's just a break
i mean there's been some times where i go when i i get out of everything out of the shed i can't get the adapters apart
i just i physically can't get them apart in good strategies tyler strong either
strong but not metal wd-40 don't forget that
why would you need wd-40 you don't want to put that on your optics i didn't say put it on your optics
it would make the stars shiny very shiny yeah actually wd40 is a good thing to put on all the metal parts of
your telescope and wipe it down or wipe it off wipe it down wipe it down because
it wade says bring a 40 caliber all right i guess that would
keep the riffraff out uh if you've got any cables you don't need cables a spare cable extra
uh if you go on a long star party you need backup electronics you know
because you're gonna be out in ten buck two and uh medicine if you're gonna be out
overnight you need your medicines for that night and the next morning and that's true thank you
gotta have first aid kit um cell phone goes star parties for a first aid kit
uh have you ever had a uh a or a sand what are they called a sand burns the nebraska star party stuck
under your big toe i'm waiting for jim johnson to send me an invite yeah so
there's you know little things like splitters you know you fall down hurt yourself get a splinter off your observatory door tyler yeah that would
hurt that is true that would very well hurt very painfully yes so um
it says next of kin info okay it looks like carl blackwell uh
recommended i use a coin like any any coin for a flathead screwdriver yeah any
if you've got a quarter a quarter the better so you can get the leverage or nickel penny yeah if you got loose change and
it'll work for a screwdriver if a slot will allow it so no mike wiesner my son did not learn
a new word because andy doesn't speak french
so uh let's see so um what else um you need to have a well-charged cell
phone and if you're going somewhere you don't have battery to charge recharge your
well-charged cell phone right but you need to tell somebody where you're going if you're going out by yourself true but
advisable i would think especially for women you know there's safety in numbers
um so if you're going out somewhere somebody needs to know where you're going and know what you're going to do i
mean yeah you know i've known guys that have gone out by themselves and something
went wrong either something went wrong with their car or that they had a medical condition where
something went wrong and they were alone okay and that that can that can be a disaster
you know so uh just like when you go diving
you know you always take a dive buddy no matter how experienced you are you know if you're going to go out to a dark sky
site somewhere take an observing buddy of some kind you know
and and you got some backup you got some help um that's important uh
centil says he keeps a multi-tool in his keychain so i think we kind of beat that one to death
um and we had lots of great um advice from the uh particip or the
chat room here um cintil likes to put a plastic sheet down
on the grass before he sets up you know that's nice i use a piece of carpet a big rectangular carpet yeah even on even
on grass i do it you know i used to use uh artificial turf you know because it catches things as it falls
down so that's that's the other thing jeff brings in extra adapters uh
uh josh kovac says he would not want wd-40 near any of his gear
water wd-40 is a water displacement it was designed for rockets okay
if it's good for rockets it's good for telescopes and i will tell you that it'll keep things like your
the metal legs on your tripod from starting to corrode um
and it will make all the metal parts in your telescope look like brand new so uh i recommend it but um
do you just wipe yourself down with it or what do you how do you use it i usually spray it on like a old t-shirt
or something you know like as a rag and i just wipe it down yep
and it keeps the water off okay off the metal parts um
josh kovac likes uh mosquito netting oh yeah
yeah yeah that's a good one that's actually what i hadn't thought of yeah and jeff
wise came up with bear spray so there's bear spray uh
yeah if you live in an area where there's big bears for sure you know what else works as a
animal deterrent is like a boat horn okay yeah yep
air horn air horn
probably for your car you know like a little emergency kit like road flares that kind of stuff jump
start with you what's that jump start kit jump start kit
food food food
well prepared clothing with extra clothes you know right you know it just because
it might be 45 if the wind comes up it gets really cold really quick
yeah yep so that's that's just some of the stuff
there but uh anyways uh you know getting ready for
um getting ready for uh any observing session you should have a minimum of
tools and and annie found that out so and you can stop the hard way
the hard way now she'll have like a whole chest full of tools that she'll take out with her
people be asking me when i get the kitchen sink and everything out what are you doing oh don't mind me i'm just doing astronomy you never know when you
need a kitchen sink that's right so um
yeah and uh making a list you know uh of all your stuff that you're carrying
you know it's always really frustrating when you get out to where you're going and you forgot to
bring the one thing that you needed for the whole
shebang to work so yeah those have gone i forgot i i forgot actually forgot the
spreader tray on my ixos 100 it was i left it at home so but luckily i was able to push that
down um further but if i would have had my mazzo one and i didn't have the spreader tray on
it i would have been up a creek because it the way it's met the way it's put together but
i have gone and observing and left the counterweight rod and counterweight lane
at home makes it somewhat different i have i have brought a big equatorial mount before and forgot the counterweights
it's easy to do yeah but little things like cables and stuff like that especially the little teeny cables yep
those are you know so and we've recommended it before uh before you go out observing you know
it's a it's a really good idea especially if you have like a kind of a complex setup you're going to do
astrophotography um you got a lot of electronics going assemble everything plug everything in
work it okay make sure it all works then tear it down and get it ready to go in your car and
make sure it doesn't nothing moves from the front of your door or you know if you have a car
with a that's in the garage you can load it up and you're good to go but i've had i've had people call they buy a
telescope and it arrives on thursday and they take it to a star party saturday friday
i've been there many star parties where the unopened box was brought to the star party and then
they started in the dark learning how to use it you know it's like uh that is usually a recipe for disaster
right there so yeah you want to assemble everything at home test it all at home check it out
you know i mean you wouldn't buy a new airplane and then unwrap it at the runway you know to fly to
why not scott that sounds like an amazing adventure it would be it's hard to find airplanes like in in wrapping or
in boxes anymore actually you can buy kit planes and put them together yourself and they come in
boxes it might take a little while on the runway ones you can fly yeah yeah
no way way way
called an rc plane look up look at no no real old get inside of quiet planes hang
on hang on
oh yeah okay i'm looking one up we all have something to share here too we'll all get our
stuff online here that we're going to share
make sure you have scott's number in your phone oh believe me i do
hey and speaking of that last night cinto nagapan and i were on the phone together
and centil did successfully make a precision
drift alignment he did it you did his first time live on the air yep
okay here we go i got something to share of a kid airplane this is called a kit fox
and it has sound with it here we go
building your own airplane is a satisfaction like no other the first time the wheels
come up off the ground and you're going on a first flight it is simply remarkable there's just no way to
explain the feeling that you get
that's amazing we believe that we have one of the best kits in the market it's not a feeling of terror
we also believe we own the best manuals in the market and therefore the completion rates tend to be very high because you don't have to source a lot
of items the manual will answer the questions if the manual doesn't answer the questions you pick up the phone you're probably
going to get myself or debra on the phone to answer those questions we have an assembly manual we don't
really have a construction manual you're not fabricating parts to go into the airplane a lot of the stuff that we do
is already done here at the factory the welding assemblies are all done so you don't have to be a welder in order to build this airplane
you don't have to you know hammer out your own ribs and things like that those parts are done and built and ready to go
for you one of the beauties of experimental aircraft is it allows us to use the best technology available for
today and not have to go through that now do you believe can you go for an item that just makes sense you still
don't know a lot of guys no i believe storage economy you know if you're sharing hangouts
also if you're trailering as i missed a part after i put this together oh look he pulled it out of the box and
he assembled the wings and everything and now he's going to fly it oh my gosh
like that you know what would be a great joke is like if you get in that with somebody and then you're like hey where
did this crew go to no they say how long you've been flying and you say about well this will be my
first time so you somebody has to fly for the first
time that's true that's true right harold locke is asking me if my
moon is is one of my pictures no this this moon behind me is um one of our uh
quality control employees heath um his name is heath and that is his
picture oh yeah that is behind me so yeah he made a whole project out of that that was pretty cool yeah it's a mosaic yes
it took a lot of work it did a lot of work so i stole it so i'm going to share something here
that i think was uh pretty fun wade prunty showed this to me and this is uh onstarinsurance.com
and uh so i guess he was going to get some onstar insurance and it happens to be
that the uh apparently the father and the son are looking through an exos or an explore
scientific ed-127 carbon fiber telescope on an exos 2 mount so they absolutely are
isn't that cool thank you wade thank you
that's neat that is neat yeah so these are just some of the things i mean you know
it's it's always fun to see your product picked for something like that um
if you guys watched star trek movies there was a once upon a time that
meat instruments uh had a telescope chosen for i can't remember what the movie was
called but they were learning how to fly at light speed and so they modified you couldn't tell it was a mead telescope
much anymore but they modified a mead scope in the movie but you know if you worked in the business you knew what what it was it's
just kind of fun to see that stuff so um but okay let's get back to uh business
here uh kent will be up tomorrow uh for first
light chronicles and uh on the wing and so what what do you uh what are you thinking kent i think
we're gonna wing it no we're gonna wing it now you were on vacation right so yeah and so i've not
been you know i only have 200 emails left to go through so uh you know that's the somebody was going through the
my orders where orders come in at uh but the the kid my personal email
nobody was going through so working through it is a challenge uh because you know it just takes time and
trying to do my regular work and then two hours of live broadcasting today it's a challenge
so uh i i tried to call uh
the person who's gonna kevin shank uh and haven't got a hold of him uh to verify that he's gonna be on we'll be
looking at his fabulous uh mostly street child but other birds as well that he takes at night and how
he does it gonna teach us a few things that's what's on the agenda if that doesn't work out we'll be doing more
reader submissions we've got a ton of them as well for on the week on thursday
i like seeing the uh the reader the viewer submissions i keep saying reader but
my lifetime career in newspapers is going to be difficult to get this paper
man that's right rid of uh to change my ways eventually i hope
to do it so you know i haven't thought about much like about first light chronicles yet
um you know uh we could uh we could highlight the do it from the
studio the the showroom and so some shows some of the vixen products i can see that vixen label right that vixen
label or telescope over on your desk you know and we we just gotta we just got those in a couple weeks ago and haven't
really spent any time with them uh learning the product line and it's a very long product line is that a
uh rc uh a vc 200l which is their
so-called sixth order flat field caster grain telescope
it's an eight inch so uh but very i mean lightweight
you're moving around like it's lightweight and it is apparently yeah it is lightweight you know
so yeah you can see the uh there's the mirror back there yep so
it's so it's it's a sh it so it doesn't it's not it's not a schmidt it's a casa grain
it's a straight cassette not a schmidt a schmidt would have a right tractor plate right there
or a maxi top or something so um you know it's a so a lot a lot to
learn there's a very extensive product line yeah we have we have a line of stuff that we have in stock
and a whole bunch more products there's special order with no timeline of when they'll be available so i think
we'll maybe talk about vixen just a little bit but a new product line to uh
uh yeah a lot of stuff has come in stock at this point so that's that's pretty cool
so uh we're the distributors of that we are not we didn't i literally was looking uh scrolling through facebook
and looking at some of the pages and one person asked about a vixen telescope and uh another person abdul
uh or tariq uh said explore scientific is you know he doesn't know if they bought or was distributing those and so
i posted a comment that we're the distributor uh for the americas and uh
uh we had we didn't buy them we or the the brand so it's independent brand but
we're handling distribution in the americas um available on our website or from any of
our dealers as well so out there and what's in stock we have up
on our website here's a question um
ken noble wants to know will the 60 millimeter extender tube work with the ed-102 essentials
telescope say that again will the 60 millimeter extension tube work
with an ed 102 uh essential series telescope
which extension tube i know you said 60 millimeters well the 60 millimeter extension tube
you don't have a 60 millimeter so confused is this one that you put
into a draw tube or is this i need more information okay so so can give us a little bit more
information there um the telescope comes with two uh draw tubes either
if it's the essential series it comes with the two inch draw tubes and if it's a
um a uh it's a two and a half because 100 it comes with a two and a half inch
is saying there is a 60 millimeter extension tube for vixen uh we don't know if any of the vixen
adapters will translate over to explore scientific gear you know they're made
vixen gear is mostly designed and a lot of it is built in japan
and you know completely separate manufacturing going on for explore scientific products it's possible but i
wouldn't hold my breath on it you know so where i was going with it is
our two extension tubes that come with it uh would be
65 millimeters long if i'm remembering correctly i've got it sheets somewhere
it cotter or anything the working inch is 32 millimeters yep 32 and a half millimeters or something like that yep
so two of those are going to be 64 millimeters long screwed on to the draw tube on the
telescope so uh the the the diameter and thread pitch
are going to be the questions and the chances of them being exactly
the same m54 m 68 by 0.75 is going to be pretty slim i would
think very slim yep but we don't know for sure so
if if you i do know that scott the telescope behind you does not have
any kind of thread-on extension tubes or anything that came with it
so it's a telescope and a diagonal it's a telescope and a diagonal and a uh
straight through i think it's a streak there are
i have seen extension tubes that slide in okay
so the eyepiece holder does come off
yeah okay and you know a lot of people also like to put third-party focusers on
telescopes like moonlight or starlight uh it may not be unheard of for to see one
of those manufacturers start making for this telescope drop the duke that was
the lens cap so but um
but it's nice and the product has really beautiful fit and finish
and um you know so i mean even down to things like the little uh rear dust cover with a
little holder to pull it out i mean it's just very nicely thought out so
maybe uh some ideas for our own uh explore scientific product line in the future
sputnik 4 is giving uh specs
down to quite a bit of detail there so there you go um
jim's astro says could you put an eaf on that vixen scope question mark
i don't know i got to see the bottom of that focuser did i get answered stand by
okay
how's that for service so um so then so we've already covered your
shows kent um annie what's going on with explore alliance membership
um so um we are currently you know normally normally
we have uh there's tyler you know we walk through the fourth wall here yeah i
think it's funny that he left his lunch where everybody could see it but anyways um so we um
you know we usually talk you know we usually have like dibs and discounts and stuff on new product
unfortunately we don't have any things like that going on right now but um we do have stuff on you know membership is
is growing um i i have been currently a little bit behind on it so i apologize um if you're
if you haven't gotten a gift card i'm trying to i'm trying my hardest to get those out as soon as possible
[Laughter] she's not lazy listen you went on vacation last week i
don't want to hear it you shush trout fisherman
no um no but it's growing and um and it's good you know i think we're at i i
think we're at like almost 2 000 members um is where we're at so which is uh it
it's it's fun it's actually fun for me to see those numbers increasing you know increasing and go and so
um but um but we have the calendar um going still i think i need to update it i haven't
been on it in a little bit um but um we had i was looking at it just before we got on um so
the alliance has the explore alliance um like our shows right now
um i can't believe we're in april i cannot believe that we're starting april um
but we have our normal shows going on of course neith was uh canceled um we have wow
scott is it really our 91st global star party no this is our today
is our 88th global star party so okay i'll cover that a little bit
the 88th global star party uh will have a lot of the regular uh people on uh
including david levy will be on dave eicher from astronomy magazine will be on he's covering he has been going through
this amazing uh series of minerals and crystals of planet earth so just a really awesome uh
collection that guy has don nab will be on with us from the astronomical league doing the door
prizes john briggs he is the news secretary of the alliance
of historic observatories of which explore scientific is a charter member
of uh way back you know before covid uh we uh you know i got to help uh arrange the
initial meeting at mount wilson observatory and you know it was a historic uh gathering of historic
observatories we had lick observatory and uh griffith park and the vatican
observatory was there um these are all directors from these observatories lowell observatory was there
who else palomar and i know i'm missing one or two others
but we all gathered together we arranged for
coordination of what was going to be the first uh real
collaborative effort between all these aging uh observatories to
um you know come up with ideas and stuff to help sustain them and to increase the
awareness of of what they provide to their local communities and
because they are i mean if you've ever been to like your keys observing that that's another
one yerkes observatory um it is so historic you feel it when you're there
you know and once you understand the machine that you're looking at uh really
you know you can draw a direct line from you know the 40 inch refractor at at uh
yerkes observatory which is you know launched in the late 1800s to the
you know to the apollo landing on the moon uh and even to you know present day
space exploration so and the giant telescopes that are being built today so it's just a lot of the the problems that
were worked out on how to uh use telescopes like that massive telescopes attach equipment like cameras
and spectrographs onto them and then to start to figure out uh what you know the
celestial objects are made out of how fast they're going how fast the expansion rate of the universe is you
know so many questions were answered and um and and it seems like although we see
new discoveries almost every week it's like we're just scratching the tip of the iceberg on what you know what's out
there so um uh but uh the the old observatories uh
do struggle for funds they they struggle for um you know their relevance in today's
society and uh we know that uh i mean all you have to do is visit one to understand its relevance you know it's
it's not only the history but it's the current inspiration that these observatories provide so
um so scott i just it makes me wonder like why why do you think that that is that
they struggle so much like what what could what could um
people that are involved in astronomy do to help to help help with that okay so
so let's just take your keys for example okay uh your keys was supported the entire
time from the university of chicago okay and once your keys got to the point
where it wasn't really of the caliber to do current research with okay
then you know their their their focus and their money started to
focus on new observatories new facilities and that kind of thing and
you know to be very frank there's very little spent on real science you know so
national science foundation and stuff although it seems like a lot of money is spent um when you look at
the budget of countries uh it's just you know it's in the single digits or less okay
um to support science so um you know but uh you know we can
certainly spend you know double digits on military spending for example you know if you
just look like one more percent you know away from military you know
um what could you do you you know so it's just it's amazing what can be done
so the uh you know the observatories the aging observatories uh
require upkeep you know they require a staff
a lot of them are run by volunteer staff but they do need people that are actually hired um you know that can be
responsible for the management of them and these kinds of things so um
so and you know you take a school bus of kids uh with their parents to walk
through the 100 inch of mount wilson and you get to see the actual machine that uh discovered that the andromeda nebula
was really an andromeda galaxy you know and and then if you're still lucky enough
and arranged to do a night observing you can look through it and that's something that we're going to do at explore
alliance we're going to go look through that historic telescope in september so that that's going to be really really
cool you'll look through the same telescope and use the same telescope that edwin hubble used so
so that that's always good and and it's something that keeps uh i think for any
amateur astronomer it keeps them very very um it creates memories that they never forget
how can they support it uh they can support it by joining uh the friends of
those observatories um the alliance itself is still in its
formative stages and so there's no place to donate money to it right now um
you know so that that's but but the individual observatories that are in your state or in your region yeah they
could definitely use uh you know modest donation you know and they'll take that a long
ways but you know we think in the future that
working together um that those observatories can have a louder voice and um
you know and really share what they do uh you know there's i've been to events where there was like
an orchestra playing you know in the dome and uh you know these kinds of things and
they're just incredibly memorable and it makes it really instills in you the
importance of science and supporting science in general you know for future generations so yeah
definitely that's what it's all about that's cool yeah yeah so we yeah so um like scott
scott says we have some things we have some things going on in the calendar you said september we're going to be uh do a
mount wilson um observatory and so i think we're gonna are you going to oracle state park as well sometimes
we'll go to oracle state park um that happens in between september 21st
through the 25th kent you're going to the nebraska star party uh when is the dates on that
uh july july august july hang on
uh july 24th the 29th 25th through the 29th okay
yep correct so right so i'll be up there with the
trailer and my rv and uh wife's gonna go and so she'll be doing stuff with us
and uh we'll take some products with us and and uh probably take the 20 inch dab
just for the fun of it and uh you know we'll have some ixos i'll probably take a couple of ixos 100s
to loan to people uh to let them experience it and uh we'll be having dough prizes that
we're going to donate as well so that's always good they always have a great slate of door prices uh from not just us
but lots of other vendors as well so nebraska is really dark
i mean it's it's let me show you where it is if for people who haven't ever
thought i'm it's in the center of the country you know you can pretty close you know not not a huge
terrible drive because in the middle of the country um
yeah i'll never forget last year when i had a customer that um her son bought
her tickets or whatever to get in to that and she uh called and wanted to buy
binoculars for her and her son to be able to do some viewing and so
but yeah it's really neat because it's it is dark it's from my understanding right can't it's so dark that you can
just use your eye pretty much to oh i mean it's there we go so
it's bordeal class one uh with an sqm meter of 22. so
that's as dark as it gets that's just that's as far as that that those meters go so
so to put in perspective here here's where it is and it is probably the darkest location
for us here in northwest arkansas other than getting out in
even if you go out here in western oklahoma it's still let's just see
yeah it's going to be the same as going out in western oklahoma you know out here can't now where the okietex
star party is located you just can't get any better than that and it's really weird you can see your shadow by the
light of the milky way yeah the milky way the milky way you can see a diffuse shadow
it's pretty cool and i put it in perspective tedford in this little town is that
mullen yeah mullen nebraska is 90 miles away
okay so up to the northeast you get a little bit of light from
valentine but to the south and southwest and you can't see it though
you you go out to that site and you just scan along the horizon you don't see
you know i didn't could not find a light dome from any civilization you know when
i was so cool when i was out there you could see uh just a little bit of indication that the valentine was there
you know 30 miles away but um saw the northern lights one time
there the last night i was there actually back in 2006
saw these pillars of light coming up and i thought gosh there must be some weird fog coming
from it must have been some humidity in the sky to see the valentine you know yeah
and then i realized they were moving and i didn't have a digital camera with me
or some people started taking pictures and it was clearly aurora you couldn't see
color it just looked white but with did you with a with a camera you could see
you could see color real quick with a digital camera and it was it was pretty cool to see aurora you know in the
summer time at merit reservoir so a great place to go uh you know it's a
drive for you know you know if you know a one-day two-day drive you know uh i know you have to you
have to drive away from civilization together that's exactly right you know the texas
star party out the prude ranch is coming up at the end of august uh not august april
and also uh there's another hero a local event here that's combining a music festival
and an astronomy star party together uh a thing called stars and sauce
which is uh tyler and i are the lead stars part of stars and sauce
it's an astronomy event and country bluegrass indie rock
music festival that's basically going to go on 24 hours a day from thursday through
sunday night or saturday night into sunday morning and astronomy all night
astronomy all day on friday and saturday nights so it'll be quite an adventure we're
hoping it's great weather april and arkansas can be
humid rainy cloudy potentially but definitely looking to be a good time
event out there i'm sure scott will show up as well we've got some volunteers from sugar creek astronomical society
rick marshall is going to be doing
video assisted astronomy both during the day and at night it's going to be an interesting event
if you don't like music festivals and you like astronomy
it's not your cup of tea i've got friends who think this is
one of the worst things you could do for amateur
astronomy but you know what's that go to a music festival
and have this that's a great thing to do during amount a depends on what you're going to do i
mean you know astronomers can enjoy all kinds of different social
activities you know if you want to be real real serious and you don't want anybody to bug you because you're going to be making astrophotographs
this isn't the place to go right a music festival is not the place to go but if you're out there to share
and you're doing educational outreach outreach then you do what john dobson told us to
do in astronomy outreach go where the people are okay and that's
exactly what this is you know yeah and and yet there's going to be drinking and
it's actually going to be photography there other luxuries and tyler is actually going to be doing astrophotography while he's there
showing people how to do it eaa i'm not literally doing photography
hold on you're showing people how to do it right exactly just for you correct so
yeah that's cool well that's great so we're going to have to wrap it up it's coming up on five
o'clock and we got to prepare for a global star party but uh as a wrap up uh yes somebody did ask
about the arizona dark sky star party 2 which is the event in oracle arizona at
the oracle state park and along with biosphere 2 so we'll be doing that
we are um uh trying to arrange uh right now the uh a trip also to mount
wilson observatory which i kind of hinted at uh the following week right after
the event so yeah and just before arizona dark sky star party we are supposed to be in
european armenia so the month of september is kind of all astronomy all the time uh you know
and we plan to do live broadcasting from the events
as much as possible and you know should be
challenging exciting and a lot of fun so if you want the astronomy experience of
a lifetime uh you know you'll want to attend one of these events i think you'll find it to be educational and or
memorable or like you all three of them yeah right you know and scott i'll
volunteer to uh carry your luggage at to the starmus if you need somebody
hey scott before we go can i say something um josh kovac took kovac
kovach kovach kovac go kovac um uh in the in the thread asked about his
alliance membership and upgrade and it has been upgraded it's just on a it's just um in a different system than our
regular reoccurring membership so um i do have it updated so i wanted to let him know that so
excellent okay all right guys well we will see you in about one hour uh right on these
channels that you're watching on right now and uh it's the 88th global star party uh again you know we i started to
highlight about the alliance of historic observatories we also have uh kevin schindler from lowell observatory he's
going to be there um young navin uh centil kumar will be giving a
presentation with his special guest adrian bradley doing his nightscapes marcelo souza will be on back on with us
gary palmer uh you know with mastering image and processing dan higgins from
astroworld tv and guest mattia schmidt who's created a new
program in zion national park called stargazing zion he's going to be on with us
and then of course maxi folaris in argentina going over his astrophotography so that's that kind of
that's the program and it should be a lot of fun uh and we will see you there and until
that time keep looking up hi everybody have a great one
hey everybody this is scott roberts with the explorer scientific explorer alliance and we are here
at the crystal bridges museum of modern art or american art
we're set up with uh telescopes to observe the sun and so
i'm going to show you around a little dish and uh we can't i can't see your chats right
now but we did want to come in to be live um and uh and show you what what we're
doing and how we're exploring the sun so let me plug myself
[Music]
[Music]
you can see our telescopes here we've got on this one i have some live solar systems uh
h output filters and we we are with the sugar creek
astronomical society uh and they are set up here with uh some
white light solar pictures it's a big dobsonian here
and then this really cool sunspotter device okay
right and so this thing works it's uh taking the image projecting it reflecting it and bringing
it down here to a piece of paper actually where you could uh mark out where the sunspots are
so that's a lot of fun but uh you know it's great to do uh
astronomy outreach and uh and it's fun to uh to stream some of this stuff live
you can see we got some kids over here uh getting their first look ever at the
sun so that's really awesome
[Music]
[Applause] [Music]
[Applause]
[Music]
oh wow [Music]

Transcript for Reflections - 88th Global Star Party - Explore Alliance:

7:00 p.m..Kevin Schindler AHO: Lowell Observatory
foreign
7:15 p.m..Karim Jaffer - RASC Reflections
you
9:35 p.m..After Party
hey how's everyone doing good yourself
good busy and scattered as usual
that's usually a good thing though it is it is as long as you have a few
minutes somewhere in there to you know find the grounding and i have yet to get that today but it'll come
how are you maxie i'm fine
i came an hour ago from work prepare a sandwich i tried and
i want to to have a good time here so here i am excellent sandwich is good i've got my
coffee david do you have anything with you i've got a gatorade fruit punch g2
that's what i'm rocking right now very sophisticated the athlete
are you crazy having a g2 before global star party
you're not going to drive right no no okay all right you watch all of this
so it was a good one this thing is no never mind it's zero proof damn it
i chose the wrong thing see i'm thinking david is gonna save
people the uh the the need to increase the speed rating to 1.5 he's just going to go with that
1.5 two times let's go as fast as we can you know g2 is the designation of the
uh observed gas cloud that you remember a few years ago that was supposed to potentially fall into the central black
hole in the milky way and create a little outburst of energy that never happened
so g2 disappointed us never happened yet there's still a few thousand years to keep an eye that's
true that's like the people who say well you know beetlejuice didn't supernova well
well it will you know if you start your countdown clock between now and 500 000
years from now it probably will you know but people are a little anxious with these things sometimes
i think it's true
a couple of years ago astronomers they point their telescope to m to the
the black hole of m87 and not from a sagittarius a
i i didn't like why they don't point the most
near black hole from us that's a good question the short answer is because the black
hole in m87 has a thousand times the mass of the milky way's central
supermassive black hole so even though it's you know at virgo cluster distance it was a an easier
image to take although mind you that was the shadow of the
black hole not the black hole it was imaged like the all the press you know
said at the time oh okay that's clear me out thank you but that
was that's one of the most massive supermassive black holes known the one in m87
and maybe we can point another for example in sculpture galaxy or
andromeda maybe and they are working on the milky way as well but which is heavily obscured of
course and it's only a 4 million solar mass black hole it's not a terribly large one
for you know the centers of galaxies of course most all galaxies have central
supermassive black holes in them except for dwarf galaxies of course
okay satellite galaxy for example the larmogenic cloud
right uh yeah but it's a really small one because that's such a small galaxy
overall okay i think
now there are exceptions though you know m33 the third biggest galaxy in the local group has no central supermassive
black hole and it's not exactly clear why because it's a pretty good sized normal
spiral how do they know that david well just from looking at the velocities of stars
and gas near the center which is how they're all inferred i see
because you can only explain that velocity the moment the the the
velocities of gas within that smaller region and stars by um
and by a central black hole and then you can calculate and then for the mass of the black hole from the velocities now
one thing i haven't seen i haven't seen whether there's a correlation between the dwarf galaxies that don't have
supermassive black holes and the ones that don't seem to have perceptible amounts of dark matter
yeah that's a good question and i think we're in early days with questions like like that and and uh you know there is a
correlation generally with the side with the mass of a galaxy and the growth of
its central black hole as well but it doesn't always hold either and that's not exactly clear why
yeah generally speaking the more massive the galaxy the more massive the black hole
was yeah and also you have the gravitonia gravitational lens
producing by the the supermassive black hole right
there are a lot of gravitational lenses around um yep and and uh
you know the einstein cross is probably the most interesting in some ways but there there are lots of them that are
lensing quasars and other and other distant galaxies you know you can see gravitational
lensing the in the really rich clusters of galaxies yes the hercules cluster the
coma cluster etc you know there's so many galaxies and distant objects
uh beyond that those are rich areas for gravitational lensing of course i saw in
a documentary that explained in this a gravitational lens i
don't remember the galaxy particularly but i think with the color they can
um it's like they will travel across the time because they saw a supernova
uh that happened but that same galaxy was
in a different way in in another point but in another point it was a different way
i think and it's like they can
predict that supernova that it happened in the past but
you can see like it was it was the same galaxy but in four different times
it's i don't know if that was correct or why understand i
understand good that but it was really shocking
yeah i'm i'm not sure um about that
let me find if i can let me search
hello david how are you hello dave
[Music]
[Music]
oh
[Music]
[Music] well hello everybody this is scott
roberts from explorer scientific and um let me turn off this little bit of an
echo david eicher and i were playing uh star star tracker star wars or something
you please leave that on scott just leave it on it's so annoying
maybe if i breathe heavy and make growling noises and stuff i don't know you sound just like the
all-powerful beings from episode 13 of season no never mind okay
anyways yeah we were we were having fun so um
but um yeah the audience always lets me know if i have an echo or any kind of audio problem so
so and i do appreciate it um this is the 88th global star party i can
you know when i was when i was writing out all this stuff and everything i was going geez 88 of them you know
that's that's quite a few and uh the thing that's kind of cool is as i
you know i've been to a lot of other just like in-person star parties some some annual star parties that i would go
to like the for instance the riverside telescope makers conference or the winter star party and you would kind of
uh you know you would have this kind of you know really great feeling while you're there because you're there with
your peers you you saw friends that that maybe you only saw once a year or
something like that and uh and then that would kind of have to you know satisfy me for a number of
months okay until i could go to another one but yet here we are we're doing this
every week i get to see some of the best friends that i have okay every week and uh
and we meet new ones um and and we have uh we run into really i mean really
interesting people uh you know uh in the global star party um and you know you're gonna meet some of
them tonight uh that maybe you're not familiar with but um uh you know i'm just i'm excited
every time we do it i look forward to it every you know even during the weekend i'm thinking about tuesday's coming up
you know and and what's you know how how is the global star party going to play out you know so um
i'm really grateful that we can do it um you know i'm grateful for the technology i'm grateful to the audience i'm
very grateful to the presenters uh and uh you know so uh we'll get started here uh with number
88 and the the themeless reflections and so sometimes i think about you know what
should the theme be you know and uh i try to think on past uh global star parties that we've
done uh i think about what's in the news uh you know with this
in the astronomy field uh and i think i try to think about how
has uh you know these star parties affected the audience how does it affect the
presenters and that kind of thing and um so uh one of the presenters that's
coming on tonight john briggs uh he is the new newly appointed secretary of the
alliance of historic observatories and he was telling me about this publication
that he's going to be writing for called reflections and i thought wow okay that that's a great name for this global star
party so that's where it comes from but you know through reflections of
course you know we see starlight reflecting off of mirrors and uh captured onto our instruments or
into our eyes we reflect back on our experiences uh in astronomy um
uh you know we you know we we reflect on what it all means you know so there's so many
meanings to this uh that i thought it was it was good and
some somewhat generic enough that uh you know the presenters can take it any way that they'd like to so
um so anyways uh for now i'd like to reflect on my you
know friendship with david levy who starts out our global star parties he is
a wonderful guy very inspiring uh someone that
is always always participating in astronomy in one one fashion or another
uh he's giving hundreds of uh you know maybe thousands of lectures i
think it is now thousands uh he's written articles his entire life he's got a
whole slew of books and but you know he's out observing uh every
clear night that he can trying to search for more uh supernova supernovae you know maybe a
minor planet or two of which you know i know he's he's discovered many so
um but he's a great inspiration to uh to you and to me and uh he always um uh
through his his inspirational words uh set the tone for a global star party and
so i'm going to turn it over to you david thanks for coming on again for the 88th thank you so much scott
i am really honored to be here we're talking about reflections
and i would like to suggest a direct link right now with reflections and a
literal link because out of the observatory which is maybe about 100 meters away from me
is a 12 inch f5 reflector which is right now i think the
heart the second highest quality telescope i've got it is wonderful
and i use it almost every night and i just love it and it is also an honor to say that it is an
explore scientific telescope i'd also like to mention that this summer we're going to try to have an
in-person star uh retreat the adirondack astronomy retreat
and i'm hoping i can encourage some of you to come to it this summer i will be there for the first part the
sunday the last the sunday i think it's the 26th to 27th
of july and going on for until the wednesday when i
have to be back in order to go to the astronomical meeting with wendy
but i'm hoping that some of you will decide and want to come to come to that this summer
for my quotation today for reflections i'm going to quote
carolyn's favorite poem which is from shakespeare is from romeo
and juliet calm gentle night come
loving black brown night give me my romeo and when he shall die
take him and cut him out in little stars and he will make the face of heaven so
fine that all the worlds will be in love with night and pay no worship
to the garish son thank you scott and back to you thank you very much david
hey david where can people find more information about your
uh star party how would they contact you um actually i was going to suggest that
they contact you okay i'll help you
sure yeah when wendy has an answer to that uh why don't we give him
okay we could give you patrice's email okay
okay well am i allowed to give it over to this
see i would suggest that they get in touch with you scott and then for it i'll send it i'll send the email
over to you okay all right so uh we'll do it this way we'll let people
who are interested in this email explore alliance yeah at
explorescientific.com he also has a facebook page and that's
easy to get to you just look them up on facebook and say i want information about the
retreat and then he will send it to you yes patrice gentilen is his name
how do you spell it s c a t t o l i
n s c a t t
o l i n scattellon
scattelin okay patrice p-a-t-r-i-c-e
yeah p-a-t-r-i-c he's a wonderful friend of mine and i'm hoping that we'll be able to
encourage some of you to come this somewhere and i'll be there for the first half of
it well wonderful okay well i you know i know that it would be
you know any time that you can go out observing with david levy and his friends is going
to be a memorable night so um you know and you'll get that chance also at the arizona dark sky star party
coming up in september as well but the retreat is different yeah the retreat is different and it's
very uh special you know so um so yeah i i highly recommend it
highly recommended okay i also have the debate of the philosophers
which is really pretty much fun it's peter cheneke and
marty rice they are the two philosophers of our event and they sit and talk
and then whoever wins gets thrown into the pond by the rest of us [Laughter]
great okay so that's a lot of fun and i think you i think however
most of the people who come really have a good time i i know they will i know they will
right okay all right well let's um thank you david um
again if you guys have any questions about uh the uh adirondack retreat with david levy
you know feel free to get in touch with me directly if you'd like and uh we'll we'll get you all connected
so um let's uh let's move on to uh you know we we do
door prizes on every global star party and so uh and those are
hosted by the astronomical league sponsored by the astronomical league and uh the astronomical league is the
world's largest federation of astronomy clubs with over 300 clubs under its umbrella
i think over 20 000 members belong to it and it's growing and um
they have amazing uh observing uh programs awards programs uh they really
know how to nurture and guide and you know the astronomical community of which
they're they're you know uh leading so um so don nab will be on with us today he's
gonna be talking about uh the past uh winners and uh read off the new
questions for the door prices so you're going to want to listen up to this hey don
hey scott how you doing good all right thanks for coming on share my screen with you go over uh
over these things start the slideshow
coming through okay yes all right we first we start off every
every presentation like this with a warning about viewing the sun unless you want to cook your eyeballs
you never want to look at the sun unless it's a properly filtered telescope or binoculars
you can't use welder's glasses you can't use
any little uh eclipse glasses over a telescope you can wear eclipse glasses on your face but not use them on a
telescope binoculars has to be done the right way where you can end up blind for the rest
of your life and that would not be fun you wouldn't see any more things in the night sky or the daytime sky so uh we
always always consult with someone knowledgeable before you attempt to observe the sun
okay last week march 22nd presented by terry march 28th that was
yesterday morning there was a conjunction what two planets will the moon glide by
and that was venus and saturn in the morning sky i did not get up to see it i was
heading up early to walk dogs at a rescue that morning so i could not see it
what meteor shower peaks april 23rd the lyrid meter shower looking forward to that
and then may 15 16 that night a total lunar eclipse what name has a media
given this they always call it a blood moon because the light of all the sunsets and sun
rises around the earth is refracted into the moon gives it a red glow
so here are the winners that will be added to the name of your prize list for for pulling
cameron gillis josh kovach andrew corkhill i got him right and matthew
mcgowan okay questions for tonight
and i came up with these so uh here's the first one when astronauts come back from space
they are young slightly younger than if they never left is that true or is that
false here's uh scott kelly this picture was taken during his year
in space so when they come back from space are they younger than if they never left true or false
and as always send answers to secretary astro league dot org and i know it turned would like to have them by the
end of the week next pizza pizza hut delivered a pizza
to the iss in 2001. what topping was featured on this pizza
was it anchovies mushroom salami or sausage
and uh i have i've found out that that pizza costs pizza hut about a million
dollars to get transported the iss
they paid the russian space agency to do it and they uh they actually
got some advertisement out of it but they could not be us astronauts they weren't allowed to be compensated so uh
it was only a russian astronaut so in 2001 what was the featured topping
and lastly if you weigh 200 pounds on earth how much do we weigh on mars
45 pounds 76 pounds
121 pounds or how dare you ask deleted that question all right 200 pounds on earth what would
your weight be on mars again it's an answer to secretary astrology.org and terry mann will sort
through them and last thing announced that two weeks from this coming friday we
have our next astronomical league live with uh john weskovich talking about the lake range points
this is where the james webb space telescope is currently parked and on that show will be carol org terry
mann scott and david levy and don't forget the uh alcon is coming
up july 20th to 30 in albuquerque
okay i look forward to that we'll be there as well so great at the alcon event so
that's going to be great awesome well don thank you so much um and uh we
look forward to seeing you guys next week great thanks okay thank you all right
so um up next uh is uh david eicher if you were
listening in earlier before we uh we started running the uh the videos you
would have heard david uh talking with uh maxi fellaries and and
you know they were talking about a number of things the thing is so i i like this part the early part of the
show because we get off on a lot of different topics uh and we get to really
pick david eicher's brain and uh you know this guy knows so much about the cosmos galaxies mostly i mean i have yet
to actually hear david eicher getting stumped on something um but uh
so it's it's always uh a pleasure and uh you know uh an honor to have
david eicher the editor in chief of astronomy magazine the world's largest uh publication on the subject
and um so uh he is uh i think that every time that we do a global star party and he's
there i just you know i feel the friendship growing more and more of course david and i have met each other
in real life and uh you know i look forward to seeing him again soon at a star party and the next
one we'll be going to will be starmus which i think david will talk a little bit about so
um david it's a pleasure to have you on our 88th global star party
thank you scott and today i'm going to talk about things that are a little bit closer to home than supermassive black
holes we were talking about earlier but get into some more planetary geology if
you will with some minerals because as we know when we look i'm going to start this
slideshow and i hope you'll be able to see that as we've talked about before
as we look out into the universe very distantly even we know through
spectroscopy that chemistry is the same and and so we can hold
uh examples of planetary geology in our hands minerals that are created
um on earth here and imagine that there are many many many similar minerals out there on worlds
in our galaxy and in many many galaxies beyond so it gives us a way of looking at earth earth is a planet too remember
but we can also imagine the many many other worlds that are out there no doubt in
the universe so the universe is a universe of order
one of the great early americans thomas jefferson said i believe in a divinely ordered
universe long before his time isaac newton one of the founders of modern science um was
quoted saying truth is ever to be found in the simplicity and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things
and the underlying point here is that the universe is ordered not by supernatural design
but by the principles of physics as richard dawkins one of our star must pals likes to say you don't need to magic
things into existence but science explains why things are the way they are minerals demonstrate that
because their atoms are assembled in precise ways by electrochemical attractions that bring
the atoms together the these are inherent properties of the atoms and they guide and assemble them
when the conditions are right and the right atoms are there into what
mineralogists call a specific crystal lattice so
working our way through the world we're not going to look at all 5000 mineral species don't worry this will not go on
to global star party 512 okay so don't panic we're working
our way through here pretty well at some point i'll turn back to astronomy here uh pure astronomy but uh for the moment
tonight we'll look at some zinc minerals we haven't looked at the zinc yet as an important
metallic element and the most common of all the zinc minerals of which there are many of
course you can imagine is sphalerite which is zinc sulfide it was called originally blend by
agricola the early mineralogist in 1546 it was also named zincom in the middle
ages even before then it was named sphalerite the the current
modern name by the german mineralogist ernst friedrich glocker in the 1840s from the greek words
phaleros for treacherous referring to various varieties of this mineral being
confused with galena which is zinc sulf which is another uh
similar zinc mineral colors of this mineral are a light to dark brown black red brown colorless
light blue uh and and some others it's a major ore of zinc it's found in a variety of
deposits sedimentary rocks of various kinds lead and zinc deposit in carbonates and
uh often in volcanic sulfides and so we'll look at a few
random zinc minerals tonight as we've been looking at examples of things sphalerite itself its crystallography uh
is isometric which is a fancy word as we've talked about for cubic
and you can see the distribution of zinc and sulfur atoms in a sphalerite crystal
here with a crystallographic diagram pretty simple stuff here's a good modern
example of sphalerite which is this sort of dark uh reddish brown crystals that
are that are on matrix here from a chinese locality uh and quartz kind of coating
the what mineralogists call a country rock which is the ordinary rock that hosts the mineral crystals
and we'll just look at some different kinds of minerals that are that are largely made up predominantly
importantly made up of zinc among other things austenite is another one calcium zinc arsenide hydroxide
this is a specimen it's just sort of flowery white stuff as you can see specimen from the
famous district in utah of tuwelli county which has lots and lots of interesting minerals there
this is a a an astronomy site that almost got going years ago here at a place called
granite gap down in in southwestern new mexico they're not far
from the arizona sky village this specimen comes from of willamite which is a common zinc mineral is zinc
silicate and some other associated minerals with it um from granite gap
down in hidalgo county new mexico rose's site is copper zinc carbonate
hydroxide this is from a very famous mine the huela mine in mapami durango
mexico mexico there are many many uh minerals uh zinc
other carbonates that come from this specific mine you'll see some others in a moment here very well known mine
hemimorphite is zinc silicate hydroxide hydrate and this is a chinese example a
relatively recent find of the last decade or so from the wenshan mine there that has
some a little bit of copper in it to color at a fairly strong blue this is hemimorphite with a very
different you can see the crystals are very very different in the colors as well of the same mineral often this is
from that famous durango mine again but a very very different kind of look of hemimorphite
skullzide is calcium zinc phosphate hydrate this is a small example uh with these
needle-like crystals from australia
and lagrandite is a rare mineral it's a sort of a bright lemon yellow in color
it's a zinc arsenic hydroxide hydrate and this is again from that very famous mine this is a pretty rare mineral
though that is prized by collectors willamite zinc silicate again
from a very famous old time mine in namibia that was mined uh going way way back into the early and mid 19th century
by german engineers who went down to namibia at in the region of sumeb it's a
very famous old time mine there more willamite again from the same mine
with a different look you can see the you know very kind of different uh crystallographic looks here
from the same site atomite is zinc arsenic hydroxide and
this is a fairly strongly colored kind of atomite here for the greek specimen
with some copper atoms in there that give it that sea green or green color
this is the same mineral atomite but here contaminated if you will by a few
atoms uh in the mix of manganese which uh color it this sort of lilac or purple
colored crystals again from that same durango mexico famous mine
a luminoatomite is is colored here by aluminum atoms and you can see these
tiny little uh rosettes that have a very sort of bright uh blue-green color here this is another
greek specimen here cottagite is a rare
zinc mineral it's an arsenate hydrate and it has these kind of fan-like
aggregates that radially spread out here it's an unusual mineral again from the
same mine in durango mexico big big locality for zinc minerals
this is from the congo this piece which has a variety of minerals in it zinc and
again some copper that snuck in i i suspect to color it give it its bluish color
beautiful uh this is from a mine that is uh north
of tucson not far from david country here willamite with some little orangey
yellow wolfinite crystals as well it's a lead molybdate mineral we've talked about before but this is a famous
arizona mine the mammoth st anthony mine which is a little ways up at tiger
arizona north of of tucson
are a calcite is zinc copper carbonate hydroxide this is white calcite in this
uh matrix from that same mexican mine lots of mileage out of that tonight
and you can see the are calcite is is the very light blue green colored stuff
that's in the whitish calcite here and another one hemi morphite with some
calc white calcite associated as well from another mine that's a little
farther up north of tucson uh but not all the way up to phoenix called the 79
mine a very famous mine that i bet you can guess what year in the 19th century
this mine was established and it it's a good producer of all sorts
of fine specimens as well this is a nice one from north of tucson as well
and just to quickly mention again as scott uh spoke about briefly we're going
to have starmus this year again for the sixth time the international science festival uh that will have many many
astronaut and nobel prize winning speakers and even some common folk like me speaking there
but we will have charlie duke and nicole stodd and kip thorne and george smoot and garrick israelian the festival's
founder jill tarter and many many others to be announced in the coming weeks we also
because star starmis means stars and music we'll have some rock and roll
and past performers and we'll announce who's going to be involved it'll be a very exciting lineup this year again
past performers have included brian may rick wakeman peter gabriel brian eno hans zimmer steve vi grace potter and
sarah brightman and many of them i can tell you will most likely be back
this year we'll be celebrating this year the 50th anniversary really let's call
it 51 years of exploration on mars with the uh
soviet mars iii and the american mariner nine missions that opened up our entire
uh era that came of understanding the red planet uh one of our favorite
planets um as another fellow who i think is following tonight a pal of mine kevin
schindler can elucidate coming from lowell observatory there
so that's what i have tonight in the world of zinc and i will stop sharing my screen
and give it back to you scott and thanks once again for putting up with me with
another round of planetary geology yeah i love it i love it you know of course
uh the universe doesn't stop or start at the sky you know so
um it's uh it's everything and everywhere you know so good work david
yeah thank you david uh david uh also uh you know i i
i like to promote the magazine astronomy magazine on the show and uh
uh you know what are the uh what are the editors working on currently
thank you scott for for asking we have a big big era coming because you know the
you know lord help us but the the pandemic really infused the astronomy hobby with a lot of new energy and new
people into it so there's a tremendous amount of stuff going on right now next year will be the
magazine's 50th anniversary so we have a whole lot of special things planned for
next year one of which is a complete and total secret but i can tell you that mr david
levy is going to be involved with a project that will kick off this anniversary year for us and uh sooner however we
have uh some things coming up like a special issue that's just about to go to press
that is a issue devoted to space art and the state of the art of space art it'll have
50 of the best space art pieces presented in one issue it's never been
done in a magazine like this before in collaboration with the iaa the
space art group that's based there essentially based in tucson and the president lives in southern california
and we have the greatest space art of the members of the iaa uh to present in
this issue that's coming up a couple months from now so we're very excited about that we've got some special
surprises that are coming uh later uh this fall as well that are little ways
out that i'll mention in another couple of months and then next year's going to be really big because we have a lot of
special things coming with our big 50th anniversary year i can only imagine that's going to be great so
yeah i put a link into the chat uh if you don't have a subscription to astronomy magazine get one uh and go to
astronomy.com and you can sign up for the digital or the printed or both you know so
um it's great to uh to have i also wanted to mention too before we we go on
to uh uh mr john briggs who who's up next uh but uh both david and the both
davids here have books that we like to promote david levy's
biographical book is uh is available through starzona.com
you know and i think if you're if you if you'd like to have it and david's very accommodating usually he'll sign it for
you so that that's that's uh that's great and it is uh it's an amazing book
uh you know to that where david levy really reveals
uh you know uh the vulnerable side of him but also the triumphs that he's had in his life and
it's really an incredible book to read uh david eicher has uh several books um
that are out and um so one of them is a galaxies you had a 3d
book of of deep sky objects can you list some of those for us david the most recent 3d
book was cosmic clouds uh where stars are born which i did with my pal brian
may who's very much into stereoscopy and and involved with starmus as well as you
know um and and that's the recent one galaxies from random house was sort of
the uh update a couple years ago on the tim ferriss galaxy's book of a generation
ago our sort of understanding of galaxies has really exploded over the last you know 20 years oh yeah and then
there's a book that i've done with my pal mike michael bockitch that's a kids book that's coming out
this fall um that is a child's introduction to space exploration that will be coming out from
black dog and leventhal publishers in september as well so we're excited about that to get a new generation of kids
pumped about this whole era of space that's coming excellent that's great well thank you
guys um so up next is uh mr john briggs john is the
newly appointed secretary of the alliance of historic observatories this is an organization
that is made up of palmar observatory lowell observatory which
kevin schindler will be talking about next and you know the griffith park
the vatican uh lick observatory um and i think i'm missing one or two
others yeah i i missed it earlier today too i
don't know how i can miss it um but uh yeah it's a it is uh it's still
in its formative stages there is a website that i'll share in chat here in
a few minutes um but uh you know they this this uh organization's coming together to make
historic observatories stronger and to give a greater voice to
the community that they serve and also to uh you know share
more the inspiration that they they turn out so um
so anyhow uh i'll turn it over to john but uh i'll say a little bit about john
his his his biography of of accomplishments is extreme is extensive
he's worked at many many observatories uh uh and i think that he is the perfect
one to uh be involved as at the uh you know the so-called management level the
alliance of historic observatories he's been a president of the antique telescope society
and you know if you go to any of the observatories or you attend any of the major star parties
and you just mentioned the name john briggs lots of people are going to recognize that name so
um hopefully hopefully not throwing stones no absolutely not and we've also had the
pleasure of having john on global star party several times so i'm very very happy to have you back and i'll let you
uh take it from here and i'll let you uh also do the uh proper introductions
for kevin schindler excellent scott well i'm glad to have you with me right now because we shared
the experience together what was it a a little over two years ago that's right
just before yeah yeah it was just before covid but i was very excited uh living here in
semi retirement in new mexico to get um an invitation uh from sam hale
and also uh from you because as as as i understand it was really you and
sam hale working together um sam hale being the grandson of george
ellery hale and sam is the the chairman of the board of mount wilson institute now
but various people including u2
recognized uh the importance of some of these noble facilities
communicating a little bit more with each other yes and um maybe doing uh uh
the idea of of some brainstorming between uh these facilities
uh made sense and uh so this meeting was called at mount wilson
and i was president of antique telescope society at the time and i had uh volunte
in one way or another uh volunteered things for mount wilson because it's one of the places that i lived and worked
for a while i was just very lucky to do so and um so i got to be there too
and we found ourselves didn't we scott um among other places uh but but at the
at the beautiful library room in the so-called monastery the
astronomers dormitory yeah uh down sort of at the end at the end of
of of of a spectacular little road up there up in the
ridge top and it was a very intimate setting and i've got to admit um because the group
was so small and because so many of the people present
were like observatory directors you know i'm just i'm just a grown-up amateur astronomer
and i've worked as a technician as an engineer in various capacities any way i could
following projects that had funding here and there so now you you know people look at my my my my history
and and so she's worked with a lot of places well i kind of kind of have to in my
my situation but anyway so uh it was i kind of mind blowing for me to be in the
company of such senior astronomers yes um and we had a wonderful time and and
it was pretty clear that uh many of these institutions like
as particularly yerkes observatory you know we can't take these places for
granted so much anymore a lot of institutions that we've grown up with admiring them
reading about them visiting them sometimes having a chance to get involved with them one way or
another even you think about something like sky and telescope magazine
as an institution and sky telescope now owned by the american astronomical
society fortunately um the continuance of institutions like
yerkes and even mount wilson which decades ago lost its funding from the
carnegie institution you can't take the um uh the purp what's the word
perpetuity for this oh some of these things for granted and so
uh a scene some senior astronomers are historically minded
uh for example the late don osterbrock um the former director of lick
observatory he wrote so many fabulous history of astronomy books in his
retirement well you know towards the end of his career um a lot of astronomers are very
concerned with history so these observatory directors the uh the ones
the the institutions you mentioned thought it was worthwhile to to accept the invitation from sam hill
and uh for for for those folks listening who have not had a chance
to visit this fireplace library room in kind of an obscure spot at mount
wilson it's it's it's really it's kind of a sacred spot
uh um uh albert einstein visited there once and there are photographs of him of
sitting around in chairs this thing is the same furniture it's still there same furniture exciting
that's right that's right people were sitting in the same exact chair that einstein was
sitting in i think it's not like it was a copy or something that's right yeah
yeah i mean somebody had the photograph i think and a number of us took turns sitting in the chair and and people were
snapping pictures it was just a lot of fun but it's you really you were living a very exciting history going back to a
place like mount wilson or to any of these places and the chance to be in the
in the same very spots where so many heroes of of yesteryear astronomy were
but the thing is these similar kind of arguments can also be made
for smaller observatories i i grew up in massachusetts on the very near the
border of rhode island so um one of the most important astronomy clubs in my youth
was skyscrapers incorporated the astronomy club of rhode island
that runs sea grave memorial observatory which houses
an eight-inch alvin clark from the 1870s and as a very cool place and um i was so
happy when in the company of these very senior astronomers thinking about the future of these very
big institutions typically and how they can perhaps redefine themselves in some
ways to perpetuate themselves as education and inspiration sites
and how they can coordinate that these same thoughts also apply to a lot of other places including small
observatories um that have a similar potential for
inspiring us all when we have a chance to experience them like cincinnati observatory my gosh cincinnati
beautifully restored recently among the most historic observatories in the united states
it's a spectacular place so um uh the organization got slowed down didn't
it by the pandemic but still uh things are picking up and a
lot of thought is going into it and uh the folks who
founded it including the affiliates like the antique telescope society uh i think
is going to be described as an affiliate of this organization and other a certain educational enterprises will be
affiliated with this um it's going to be an exciting time and
i think they're the the the the founding members will uh make up their minds how to uh
structure things and we're going to have continuing meetings including um the next face-to-face
meeting is anticipated to be later this year at uh lowell observatory hosted by uh
the director there jeff hall who is among the people uh president of course that um at the first event at
mount wilson so it'll be fun to continue to report on this
and hopefully involve many interested people i think it will be an exciting opportunity for
historical preservation but historical inspiration too
and sharing that and there's a lot of opportunity for amateur astronomers for
this type of thing historical preservation uh to be uh a field
into unto itself than amateur astronomy it's just one of those things um and
i've got a lot of friends who who are into it i hope we'll have more before long so maybe with those words said
unless you can think of something else scott that we should cover that i've overlooked to say in this improvisation
we should invite uh kevin to get involved and tell us about some of the
things uh uh exciting happening at lowell observatory can you think anything else
i should have said no there's going to be more stuff to say and and so i'm going to ask you to come
back many more times because we can't say it all yeah
in one deal because it's a lot i know it's it's wonderful it's wonderful and uh
there's so many stories to tell so many aspects of this that are really important to communicate and um
so uh i'm just really happy that we are have a renewed focus on getting some
things accomplished and a lot of that of course has to do with the pandemic kind of
lightening up a bit so um so i will let you introduce mr kevin
schindler well yes kevin is with us today and i uh first met kevin i believe
at a historical symposium must have been oh
nine or ten years ago at uh lowell observatory there's kevin um
that related to the discovery of the uh expansion of the universe
because among the many historical accomplishments at lowell observatory
were uh early observations of the redshifts of the galaxies and so there was a fabulous uh symposium
there focusing on this and there were historians present i think from all over
the world and i it seems to me that lol
among maybe all the great early american observatories
lol is making a particularly wonderful effort to recognize
uh and and share um its its history and that's why they
have kevin as a uh a chief historian
and public information officer at lowell observatory and i just
want to take the opportunity to uh hold up because i'm so proud to have a copy
of it if i let's see uh i hope you could kind of see my lighting is terrible but
among kevin's uh contributions was in recent years this really great
book the far end of the journey lowell observatory's 24-inch clark telescope
and i'm telling you as a as a past president of antique telescope society i
really like books like this it's lavishly illustrated just fabulous and
uh and i didn't know about it until i attended that uh uh symposium and i just
thought i would hold it up so other people would know about it too but any fellow tall scope nut
would really like to have that book if you haven't heard about it but kevin there are so many things you have a an
amazing new um observational astronomy uh facility a
gigantic roll-off roof with multiple telescopes new telescopes you are
catering to to hands-on observing to the general public in the most
fabulous way uh wall in recent years has built a a a
history preservation and archive a center that we were very impressed to see
at that symposium um and so there's just such a strong culture
of education outreach at wall is the research facility it's very impressive so i i think i should stifle myself and
encourage you kevin to um share whatever you would like to about what's going on and i think everybody here should know
about at lowell in flagstaff arizona hey john i don't know you're doing a great
job here i'm just enjoying listening to you talking about it and it's it's really a pleasure to be
here to see so many friends um and really really gods of the astronomy world i'm really honored to be
able to be part of this and and that goes beyond that i'm honored to be part of lowell observatory
today is actually my 27th anniversary oh wow so i'm no longer a newcomer anymore
but i've been here a while and i started as an educator and then through the years um
was able to avoid pink slips and now serve as i'm the historian and public information officer and and the historian part is
you know for me it's kind of carrying on founder percival lowell's idea you know that doing science is why the
observatory was founded but the founder principal all said you know what's the point of doing that unless we inspire
and excite non-scientists um which is exactly what what this global star party is doing so
it really fits in with that theme and so so for my part i i'm able to
you know devil and writing some books and stuff just to try to promote it you know we have we get a
hundred thousand visitors a year and that number is going to be exploding over the next few years and so to be
able to give them something to remember their visit um is really kind of a nice thing for me
um and i think a special thing about lowell john you've really hit on it and dave
eiker has talked about this also i'm dave who's who's called america's
called law of america's observatory before because it's this personality here
and it's this heritage that's um goes back 130 years of research but also
this this idea of inspiring people the public we don't want to be the ivory
towers up on the hill looking down on everybody we want to share this excitement and
and so that's why i think the observatory is so special plus by the way you know we're still doing
cutting-edge research that's still the driving force here and what i want to do is i'll start a program i want to show
some pictures of things that john you had mentioned our collection center for our historic stuff and then we'll
also um look at that new observing plaza called the geovoli open deck observatory
and then also just mention a little bit about about the research that's going on here
so i'd like to think that i'm pressing the right button here and
you should see [Music] a picture with some pine trees does that sound right yes nice it's good okay
so if you come up to the observatory you see a lot of stuff when you first get your visitor center uh this building
is on the far side of the visitor center um called the putnam collection center and in fact as we speak just behind this
building our new visitor facility is being constructed and that opens in 2024 i'll
talk about that in a little bit but it has six times the square footage of our current visitor center because we're
bursting at the seams because visitation is so great wow but this is our putnam collection center
and if we look at this this went up several years ago on the left side or offices
in the middle is an exhibit area for visitors and then on the right side and then kind of the back
is um our science library and then our collections of artifacts and all and archives and such
um okay if you walk in you can't miss this in the lobby this is percival's car a
founder's car and like so many things at low there's a great story about how
when percival died this car disappeared decades later the owner not knowing he was the owner of personnel's car drove
in flagstaff one of the all-time astronomers recognized the car and a couple years later our current
trustee bought it for a lot more than personal law originally paid for it so
this still said this is in our lobby we bring it out a couple times a year for for parades we still drive it around
and so it's it's kind of i think that that part of personnel the personality of the observatory is not
just the science and it's the personalities and the people people lived up here there's still houses up here where where staff
live um and so you really capture this i think it's something that resonates with the public even though it's not
necessarily interested in astronomy that these are people doing this stuff it's mars red it's mars friend this is
big red as he called it yep and the restoration that is
gorgeous yeah oh yeah so that that's the one side this is a pretty drab looking picture but it's not
quite as depressing as it looks these are our science library which is one of the
few things that's not expanding because journals are now digital for the most part but we have
a lot of our publications in here but we're also planning on putting something else kind
of in the back side of this building and that's photographic place we've got about 35 35
000 glass plates nothing close to harvard and some other places but it's enough to where
you know they're in a basement where the water leaks and on the left all these white envelopes the top couple shelves are
plates that clyde tombaugh took in his search for uh planet x and then the bottom
the bottom ones on the left are uh plates taken decades later as part of
proper motion survey and so one of our astronomers stephen levine
has gotten uh some research funding to start scanning these we're going to start with the planet x pluto plates
um and scanning them means scanning both the envelopes and the plates the plates have a lot of
writing on them so the scan them with the writing and then remove the writing so they're in their original state and
scan them that way um and then transport the plate over to the collection center
um so this is a pretty big project and but it's it's starting now and it
and it's it's possible because we have this collection center and they're not a lot
of observatories yet at least that have a center devoted to
preservation as john mentioned so we're really fortunate to have that um and
i can't tell you how many years it's going to take a while but eventually all of our artifacts and glass plates and
documents and such will be in the collection center so so that's one phase of the
observatory is preserving this heritage um that that we have here and it's the
heritage that continues today the research that's going on today now john you mentioned um this new
observing plaza and this this is this is cool this is just really cool this is i'm going to
show a couple diagrams just to show how it works we opened this in the fall of 2019
so this is a diagram of the building closed the building has two parts this big hanger
and this smaller part to the left and inside are six telescopes when you
open it up you slide that that whole building back and you have six um
telescopes and i have another picture an actual picture of it but these telescopes
this isn't like a research telescope like the 24 inch refractor that was adapted
for the public use these are designed specifically for the public so several telescopes
um the mounts can be raised or lowered with the push of a button and the telescope stays focused on the object so
if we have somebody in a wheelchair for instance we can lower it without them trying to stand up and that sort of thing so this was really
designed for public use here's a nighttime shot
and i'll just kind of tell you what telescopes are here because it's a wide variety i'm over in the corner
kind of out of sight here it's a five five and a half inch f7 wide field reflector
um then we've got a um this maybe the coolest looking one this retro
victorian looking um eight inch moonraker um great for looking at planetary stuff
that's an f12 um we've got two plane waves that are kind of in the back here are 17 and 14
inch and those are both attached to monitors so that we want to have visitors
be able to maintain that really cool one-on-one experience of you know looking through an eyepiece and being
connected to the cosmos but also with the monitors we can have one of our astronomers show
an object they study and get several people around and teach so it allows us to do several different
things and the biggest telescope here is this 32 inch star structure and that's actually
technically the largest telescope on mars hill now so we opened this in the fall of 2019 and
here is the opening event it was in conjunction with a festival of science we do here in
flagstaff it's the oldest festival of science in the country or one of the oldest um and
and helping us open it was in the middle charlie duke and his wife um dot
and i think dave eicher i think you're in here somewhere because you were here for this i'm pretty sure um so we opened this
as part of this event and in fact during that i was able to present charlie duke with an asteroid
discovered here at the observatory that was named in his honor so that was a pretty you know the nerd shot here
um so we opened it in the fall 2019 and we got really excited we're looking
forward to spring break for 2020 when we'd really put it to use and that's when covet hit
and we ended up closing on um on march 13th
which would have been person which was percival's birthday so we ended up celebrating our father's birth by by
closing the place but luckily two years later we're fully back reopened
no restrictions or anything like that um another part of this expansion of the
visitor experience is the new 24-inch plane wave i mean this isn't a dome behind the 24-inch
clark um there used to be a 16-inch bowler and shippens in here that had come from northwestern and there are a
lot of software and hardware issues um and the plane wave we've had we have several plane waves being used at our
interferometer as well as on site here and they're just they're just so robust and great for the public and so
so this is this is kind of phase two of this expansion of the visitor program because we've right before covet we're
getting a hundred thousand plus visitors and there's nowhere to park um their
parking is not big enough there's not enough places to you know for things to do for people
so having this telescope in conjunction with the refract 24 inch refractor plus the open deck observatory
allows us to reach a lot more people and then the last phase of this
in 2024 um we're opening this new astronomy discovery center wow um six times the
square footage of the current facility it's got um three stories the top story
is just so cool part of it you know we've talked about having maybe a planetarium here but flagstaff has the world's first
lining ordinance established in 1958 is also the world's first international dark sky city we we got the real stuff
here um and so we're creating this sort of open planetarium in which we have heated
seats and people can sit back and look at the stars um with our educators and astronomers um
so that's going to be a pretty unique feature of this that we're excited about and the heated seats because it does get
pretty chilly here in flagstaff um this is the construction site just
about a week ago and they haven't done much this thing because we've had some snow but you can see
and this is the back side of the collection center so the visitor center would be to the left of the screen
and you can see the perimeter of the main facility
and then the new parking area will be back here so john when you come here
um for the alliance um later this year you'll see this is going to be going vertical you'll see it'll be moving
along nicely it's really it's exciting because it it
really allows us to not only accommodate more people but of course we're going to have state-of-the-art
exhibits and displays in there also um so we're pretty excited about that
and i thought one one final thing is we've been talking about preserving the heritage here
um you know the heritage of discovery and sharing that heritage with the public but of course the heritage is
still being built you know what happened before vm slavers um observations of the redshift and this
clyde tombow's discovery of pluto and um robert burnham you know he he wrote the celestial
handbook in his off time while he was working here in the proper ocean survey he had a lot of spare time but he he did
that all in the spare time geez these are so many great stories here but the story is still being created
yeah so it's not over no this is this is the little discovery telescope
um 4.3 meter and to give you an idea of size with some people
um this these are some people this is just a couple weeks ago um every february we hauled a festival
called called i heart pluto where we're celebrating pluto's legacy um leading up
to the 100th anniversary of pluto's discovery in 2030 um our we had some aquino panel this
year including don johansen who discovered the fossil hominid lucy back in 1974
um cathy ulkin who works up the swerry is involved with lucy mission i'm will grundy many of you know i'm one
of our planetary scientists i'm involved with new horizons and you know we talked about we're
talking about amateur telescopes um on this night this was an engineering
night when it was closed so they could do some you know maintenance and such so they're able to
put an eyepiece on one of the instruments so we had a 4.3 meter
um telescope with an eyepiece to look at wow which was
i don't know i i needed a cigarette afterwards metal snow it was just very cool
so um every once in a while we're able to do this sort of thing and and so mostly it's it's doing
research and i'll just end with this this that powerful thing about this telescope is
this cube here that holds five different instruments so instead of having
let's say a you know a spectrograph on there it has to be
you know you spend a day taking it off putting another instrument on um these five instruments you can push a
button and the whole wheel spins and within about half a minute you can be
change the light path and and be using a different instrument oh wow so if we it's fast you know the last of the
minute comment david discovers comets we decide to study it through the
telescope we can study it with almost simultaneously with several different instruments
um which is really efficient yeah so so it's really it's really
reproductive and john you said you talk a lot i'm doing the same thing
so i i i didn't take a breath or so i will know you know kevin no this this has been uh
wonderful and ideal it's so obvious to everyone
that lol is setting a standard for uh so many uh levels of achievement
for how other observatories ought to be thinking uh
with a big picture for public education and science uh
advocacy um it's so fortunate that you all there have the freedom to
pursue this because i fear that uh too many other institutions
sort of wrapped up in a very different sort of institutional culture just don't have the freedom to uh
uh to to have the hundred thousand visitors per year that you you you you
have so it's very very exciting it's i learned things i did not realize about
what's going on there right now i am more excited than ever to get back again
and i'm lucky because i think it's only about a four-hour drive um between my
place and yours and i'm just telling you next time you're having an engineering
run on that big telescope oh boy i'm going to be harassing you so
thank you thank you so much for joining us and uh thank you scott for um
facilitating these things and uh it's really really fun to share
with everybody present so uh thanks a lot folks yeah thank you for
all the inspiration and the you know the information of uh you know what uh
history means in in uh you know recent history uh means in in our world today
in you know science scientific literacy uh
so it's um you know it's a pleasure to know that uh uh lowell is uh really setting some
amazing standards one of the people in the audience was ian mclennan uh who was
watching and uh he says hello to you kevin um but uh ian ian and bill peters
were involved in the design of the geovolley outdoor um uh you know
observatory center that's out there i don't want to underestimate ian's and bill's involvement because they're also
large hugely involved with the development of the discovery center and their involvement really allowed lol
to escalate the scale of what we do by by bringing them in
and showing you know we have a lot of smart people here at the observatory like a lot of places but not the know-how and and ian
and bill have brought that in and it's just it's always inspiring to see the ideas they come up with and thinking hey
they're they're doing this for us okay those guys are best of breed of what they do that's for sure they they are
also intimately involved with um consulting for you yurky's future
foundation and as yorkie's observatory uh for so many uh
decades a century uh owned and managed by the university of chicago and my wife
and i both worked there for years but now it's owned by yerke's future
foundation and very fortunately under the wise
guidance of our friends in canada you've just mentioned so a lot a lot of good things going on now and things to be
happy about so there and i'll just i'll just say one final thought when you know one of the things about lowell
is you know not wanting to be you know an isolated place we want
partnerships and that means bringing in the best people one of our advisory board members is dave iker who's on with
us and david has done so much to again to help us think of the observatory in
different ways that allows us to really expand our reach both in science and outreach
and right on kevin just to add one quick thing if i may you know i've been to a lot of
places all around the world in various areas of history and of science there's nowhere on earth like lowell observatory
the blend of the incredible history of percival lull of clyde tombaugh of the slifers of
everything and the current research that's going on in the resurgence that's going on there of promoting knowledge
and the science and the astronomy and the active research and the history it's an amazing uh unique institution and and
kevin it's i'm proud to be your pal and and it's a great thing to have you on tonight i hope you'll you'll be back on
talking about this and what's going on at the observatory a lot more on these things in the future
absolutely yeah we'll be hitting you up for sure kevin so thank you i'll mention the last time dave was in town we've
been visited um the slifer graves at the local cemetery and paid homage to them and since then
i've found the graves of stanley sykes also who was a major instrument maker here in the
early days cool very cool yeah and their inspiration lives on so
thank you very much uh kevin and john and you know i look forward to more of these
kinds of uh you know inspirational talks thanks very much
okay so up next um we have uh kareem jaffer he is the
uh with the royal astronomical society of canada the montreal center he's also
a professor of astronomy at john abbott college uh he is a powerhouse of
astronomy outreach and he is uh a favorite on a global star
party uh you know and so we're always honored to have him on i
i have not been counting kareem but how many global star parties have you attended do you do um
good question i i know it's the vast majority since last may but i don't have a number i think i'm gonna have to go
back through and figure that out i i think it's probably around 20 or so i i still you know i i'm in awe of you
and david with how not not just the the the consistency of the content and how much effort you guys
put in but just how motivating you are for all of us who are you know getting a chance to spend a
tuesday evening with you every week it's just it's it's one of the highlights of my week yeah me too me too so i i get
the energy from from people like yourself and uh and certainly from the audience and so it's
it's great uh you know to be back here and connect the wires uh so to speak and
and uh and to be backstage with you guys so so anyways i will turn this over to you
kareem thank you for coming back on again my pleasure and sorry i missed last week it was unavoidable but i'm
glad russell was able to join uh we have some fun for tonight because with uh john and kevin coming on and the
topic of reflections of the universe i decided that i would do a little bit on the historical
observatories of canada so i'm going to just share with you a few bits of insight on our end and uh
hopefully we can at some point find ourselves seated at the same table with uh with all these amazing if they're a
lull i'm just i'm in awe i need to get down there mount wilson lowell i need to do the road trip at some point soon um
palomar i i your keys i mean i i just think i need to get in my car and drive for a year i
think that's what i need to find the time to do but for tonight we're going to be chatting about reflections of the universe before we do i just wanted to
mention that uh our astro radio show from yesterday is up on astroradio.earth
it was so much fun we got to talk about all the current things happening in space and astronomy
what's the current topics and especially at this point we're chatting a lot about james webb space telescope and that's
kind of key because we have a lot of topics coming up on the james webb that i want to share with you
but first this past weekend we had earth hour and if you didn't get a chance to celebrate earth hour pick any hour
one night just turn everything off be in the dark go outside and get to enjoy a
little bit of the night skies now here in montreal the most of the week this week the night sky is gray and uh
there's you know some cold we had minus 20 two days ago and we're back up to
positives and then we're back down to minus tomorrow and freezing rain so we don't get to see the stars too much but
tonight there should be stars so i'm hoping to pop out there in a little bit and at least you know wave high to the iss as it passes over or something like
that but we had a fantastic event it's available on our youtube channel uh youtube.com rasc montreal and our two
speakers were tim doucette and lisa anne fanning now lisa ann is going to join us at a global star party coming up soon
and she's based out of new jersey but a member of the rafc halifax center tim ducette runs an astrotourism site in
nova scotia in the dark skies and i was just yeah i was in awe my jaw dropped i think
i need to go out there as well so i need to go east i need to go south i need to go west you know i definitely need to
spend a year in the car at some point soon coming up for the rac montreal center
like i said james webb is on our mind so in a couple of weeks we have one of these students
at the university of montreal here in montreal at irex the institute for research on exoplanets whose project was
chosen as one of the first year projects for the james webb space telescope so olivia lim is a phd student but
submitted her project and was chosen as the lead researcher to study exoplanet
signatures of the atmospheres for the trappist-1 system so she's going to share that with us you can register in
advance at bit dot least jwst april 9. it's uh
on saturday april 9th starting at 7 pm eastern daylight time it is a webinar and we also are really excited because
with the artemis mission now you know artemis one is out on the launch pad it's ready to go through some tests it
will be launching soon our rasc has partnered with the canadian space agency
and we are doing a series of events to celebrate artemis the first one is going to be on thursday april 14th at 6 pm
eastern daylight time bettina forge who's a local artist a past president of the montreal center and the program
director for the artist in residence program at seti she's going to be leading us in a lunar sketching workshop
which is one of the things she's done with my students in the past crater sketching is just such a fantastic way to observe the moon and to really see
and understand the details of the craters and get a feel for the formation of those craters
we also are planning our may 7th international astronomy day we're going to be doing a daytime event at our local
rio tinto alcan planetarium we're going to be doing a live stream with rac national across the entire country we're
going to have centers join in from across the country sharing a little bit of a look up towards the night sky and
hopefully towards the first quarter moon on saturday may 7th
i also wanted to mention that the cosmic generation is still running really strong i am so in awe of these youth and
what they're putting together their next event is also in the james webb space telescope it's on sunday april 10th at 3
p.m mountain daylight time 2 p.m pacific daylight time 5 pm eastern daylight time
uh it's going to be one of the youth members a cosmic generation ambassador delali who's going to be sharing a
little bit about the james webb space telescope what makes it so unique how the whole unfolding process occurred
what types of instrumentation is in there and when we're talking about reflections of the universe that 18
mirror assembly those first images have just really set the bar
if you if you read a little bit about the level of precision that james webb is showing now it's in the early stages
we're still doing calibrations but the fine guidance sensors that were built in montreal that were used to align these
18 mirrors appear to have reached maximum resolution as allowed for by the laws of
physics so when you talk about wave behavior and the way in which signals interfere with each other the maximum
resolution you can get is what we've been able to get off of that first calibration image we've got from the
james webb space telescope so that's kind of the direction i wanted to go with tonight because when when
scott said reflections and i mentioned it to my wife she immediately said so are you going to ponder philosophical are you going to go into the metaphysics
of reflections and i said no you know what i'm going to take this literally and i literally want to talk about our
reflections of the universe from up here in canada so i started doing a little bit more
background research beyond what i've done with my students to really dive into what were the first observations of
the night sky in canada and we were lucky i brought in back last fall a couple of guests who actually shared a
little bit of the bookend of the first to the first really uh rigorous
observations in canada and the first canadian observations in fact were done
all the way back during the founding of this country and it shouldn't be sorry
it shouldn't be 1947 it should be uh 1447 my apologies but john cabot was the
discoverer of newfoundland and jacques cartier in 1534 started exploring the saint lawrence river and both of those
explorers took observations that seemed to indicate that there likely was some
astronomical material some astronomical instrumentation being used
however there's no definite reliable source that says that they did have
sextants that they did have any sort of device to measure latitude based on the north star but in 1603 samuel de
champlain the founder of quebec actually had records of latitude and altitude of locations visited throughout his setup
of towns and villages throughout quebec and so we know for sure that there must have been astronomical tools being used
and in 1618 we had jesuit colonies come from france and they sent back notes
about the whole setup of their observations and of of their communities here in the new world
and they included in those astronomical observations there were comets that they observed there were eclipses that they
mentioned especially a couple of lunar eclipses which were fantastically detailed in these notes
so all the way back in the late 1500s early 1600s we had observations happening in canada
but what about observatories what about actual locations to take reliable measurementation in order to understand
the universe the first canadian observatories from what we can tell happened in 1750 the jesuit priest
josephia the bonus uh in the college of quebec and the marquis de congolen and the fortress of
louisburg both of those individuals set up small observatory shacks where they
put a lot of the astronomical instruments that they brought over from europe in 1765 we had castle frederick in nova
scotia that had its own location high altitude
observing deck that they used to take measurements and in 1850 an observatory
was founded in quebec city which is just about three hours from here in montreal now these first observatories were
mostly wooden tracks where instrumentation was kept and brought out as needed they weren't
open domes they weren't anything along those lines but they also weren't really reflections
because if we think about it the topic today is not refractions of the universe it's reflections of the universe so we
can't go quite that far back in history if we want to talk about that and
randall rosenfeld who came on in uh in gsp 71 he's been working on our dorner
telescope museum and he talked a lot about when we switched over from refractors to reflectors here in canada
and when we start talking about reflectors the majority of the first ones used were of the model of the
newtonian reflector something very small very easy to use not something very large or elaborate and then some of the
astronomers and some of the meteorologists especially at that time started to build more and more elaborate
apparatus and in global star party 73 lori roche led us to our discussion of the first
time canada really took the stage when it came to these reflecting telescopes
and observatories and that's the dominion astrophysical observatory in victoria british columbia
now this dominion astrophysical observatory was the home of the 73-inch plasket telescope this was being
designed and built at the same time as the hundred inch hooker was being built in mount wilson
and in fact the hundred inch beat the 73 inch plasket for first light
the difference is the 100 inch had first light earlier i believe in late 1917
but it wasn't until late 1918 that it actually opened for
continuous use for research because in between there because of the first world
war there were a lot of supply issues and a lot of demand on the individuals that would have otherwise been tasked to
run the telescope and so there was nobody there to reliably run it so the hooker telescope didn't actually start
being used continuously until late 1918 so for a couple of months in 1918
the largest telescope in the world was being used was in victoria bc
just a little bit larger than the leviathan over in uh over across the pond
now it would be great to have a story of how you know this plasket telescope it is
still being used for research it's been refurbished we saw the old mirror when laurie gave us our walkthrough of the
dominion astrophysical observatory and the so-called center of the universe the area run by the friends of the dominion
unfortunately that friends of the dominion and the public side of this closed down many years ago
and it was the rasc victoria center that has actually started that back up and started running events there pre-covered
so the the research side of the astrophysical observatory still going the public side
of it has now fallen on the amateur astronomers the rasc victoria center and
they've taken it under the wing and really put some fantastic programming together they have a wonderful program
coming up for international astronomy day including a talk by chris gainer who's one of our past presidents at the
rasc national and he wrote the hubble anniversary book for the 30-year hubble
that's available on the nasa website as the david or as the dominion
astrophysical observatory was coming into action and really starting to set a
stage for the level to which astronomy was being done in canada david dunlop over in ontario decided to
do one better so if they could have a 73 inch he was going to have a 74 inch so
he designed a 74 inch telescope in toronto that then became the largest telescope in canada to be used
the actual observatory is incredible because what he did was he had the entire observatory designed and first
built in newcastle upon time over in the uk and then they dismantled it once it
was all operational and moved it over to canada piece by piece to be able to build it all together here and in 1935
when it opened this was the lineup that you had so this was the amount of public attention
that this telescope got at that time this telescope was the second largest in the entire world in
use the third was the plasket which was just one and a half inches smaller
and then followed by the perkins in the oak ridge now this telescope was used for really amazing research part of the research
was 1972 the very first black hole ever identified cygnus x1 was identified in
toronto at the david dunlop observatory oh wow now you remember the story from the
dominion where the public side of it kind of fell off a bit while the research side kept going and the public
side closed down and the rasc stepped up and the local center has taken it over well the same thing
unfortunately happened at the david dunlap the david dunlop was partly being run by the city partly being run by an
independent entity and there was a lot of use being made from the university of toronto
astrophysicists and astronomers when the private entity kind of started closing things up because there really
wasn't any money being made from this the university of toronto and the rasc toronto center both stepped forward and
helped to refurbish the telescope and add a public element so now pre-covered
we had evening events here a couple of times a week large large gatherings sold out every
month and now as covid regulations and covet precautions are starting to be lifted the david dunlap is starting to
be used again and so if you ever come out to toronto or out to victoria i highly suggest that you visit these
couple of observatories i could also you know for a while there i thought i'd start talking about mon
megantic and a few other observatories here in quebec but i wanted to stick to some of the milestones that we've seen
in astronomy and in the reflections of the universe and canada has led the way in one particular area and that's in
radio observation the first big radio observatory was built just outside of ottawa
and it was built in opened in 1959 with a small parabolic dish while a larger
one was being built and a 46 meter parabolic mirror was completed in 1966
and the person who led this whole push was the first director of the algonquin radio observatory was covington and
covington was our first radio astronomer he was the one who detected the
radio signals coming from sunspot behavior from the sun back in the late 1940s early 1950s and he made those
observations at a small facility just outside of ottawa now ottawa was starting to grow at that time which
meant that there were more and more stray radio signals so the need for a better location for the algonquin radio
observatory was really you know it just fed off because that yellow line you see
going along the top there that's the trans-canadian highway that takes us through sudbury all the way out west all
the way out to bc through mountains through large large ranges of prairies
and when you take a look at this map and you get an idea for how far everything is like this is just from milwaukee to
montreal and if you go three times that distance you'll get to the western coast of
canada so the algonquin radio observatory was basically our premier spot for radio observations in canada
but on the west coast we had a second radio observatory near the dominion but
this one was in penticton bc so this was actually inland not on victoria island
and in 1968 just after the algonquin radio dish opened the edition
bc and the dish in algonquin completed the very first long distance interferometry
this created effectively a 3 000 kilometer radio telescope this is the same technology that was used for the
event horizon telescope to take a picture of a black hole just a couple of years ago so it was first pioneered in
canada and the push was to try to do this because we knew that there were
other competing groups all across the world trying to do this but most interferometry at that time was limited
to the speed at which signals could be sent back and forth between two observatories without the signal being
degraded what dominion and algonquin did is they both had atomic clocks that had been
synchronized before being shipped to the two locations so those atomic clocks on videotape placed clock timings
during all observational periods so that when you brought the two videotapes together in the same location which was
at the time the astrophysical institute you could then combine them knowing that you were looking at the exact same
measurement at the exact same time three thousand kilometers apart nowadays the dominion astrophysical
observatory looks much much better you know it's much bigger parabolic dish fully steerable just like the one in
algonquin and just a touch smaller i believe this one's a 42 meter now but what's really amazing about the
dominion radio observatory is they've gone to the next level you will have heard of chime chime is this beautiful
set of curved radio dishes that are now finding these fast galactic bursts of
radio waves that's leading us to a whole new version or a whole new era of
astrophysics research and observational radio astronomy so the canadian history of a lot of
these observatories is a really rich one and if you find yourself in canada whether it's in bc whether it's in
ontario or whether it's in quebec and you can come and we'll take you to mom megantic we'll show you the mcgill old
observatory the new one and we'll even show you our small one here in the rac montreal center there's a lot to be seen
for the historic observatories here in canada scott back to you wow that's impressive
that's impressive you're inspiring me to go up to canada and get get the vip tour of some of these
observatories i'd love that we definitely have to get you up here yeah we've got all right in the trip
yeah so uh karine thank you so much it's great
uh looking forward to having you back um our our next speaker is young nevin
sentil kumar and his special guest and they're going to talk about i think
the same subject about reflections so david you want to come on uh
hi everyone i'm um nevin um i brought my sp uh my one of my friends his name is sugi so can you um
turn on your camera and please introduce yourself
hello uh wait a second okay cool uh hello
i'm sugi and i did the presentation with naveen
we're just gonna share a screen wait
oh wait okay yep
okay so this is our presentation about reflections uh so sugi's gonna take this one okay so
so can you start done like uh yeah so
what is reflection reflection is when light gets bounced back from a surface
there are two types of reflection we'll cover these in detail in this presentation
uh diffuse reflection this is the most important type of reflection
this type of reflection lets us see colors and light from objects this
happens when a light when an object absorbs light but reflects a certain light more example an
apple is red because it absorbs all light except for red light and our eyes see the light reflecting off it
specular reflection specular reflection is the reflection of light in one angle
it is in and out it has two obtuse angles it
happens when a light goes in in a way and then
it gets reflected the opposite way and this is basically how mirrors work
so things that reflect light almost everything on earth
reflects light black holes in empty space do not
reflect any light black holes take up all the light and they don't reflect anything because they
can absorb all light only certain objects do specular
reflection this occurs in mostly smooth and metallic objects but liquids can
also make specular reflections you can look at a puddle and you can see reflections
reflector telescope
the telescope uses specular reflection since it has mirrors
this will be
a way for you to see at an angle so the light will go into a way and then it
will bounce off a mirror and then it the mirror that bounces off will be
concave so it can focus all the light into a flat mirror that's angled and
then that will send the light to the eyepiece and you can see what you're looking at
so diffuse reflection is it basically everything on earth
because everything you can see is effect of diffuse reflection
the specular reflection occurs on mirrors and metals
well thank you that's all well thank you guys
that's great um uh your uh your presentations uh are getting better
every time and i really enjoy um you guys rising to the challenge of uh
you know the uh theme of the program and um you know and you uh when you apply
reflections and the way that light works you know these were all principles that
were studied in death by isaac newton and of course still studied intensely today
so that's uh that's wonderful that's wonderful thank you so much i have a
question i have a question uh a wonderful presentation where are you uh young men speaking from
this both from the dc metro area that's that's great uh optics is a wonderful
interesting branch of physics there's optics and there's optical engineering
and uh those of us who have grown up uh with with amateur astronomy we love
everything about telescopes we can't help it and it's is part of the the fun
is not just learning about astronomy but learning how telescopes work and uh you
both are are on that path many people find optics so interesting they just
focus right on that and there's so many things going on in optics new things
that i for one i don't know anything about but i hear about them so i think it's great to hear you and i encourage
you to continue to think about these interesting things and the beauty of light it all has to do with managing
light with optical parts and very it's all very beautiful so thank you for the presentation
by the way scott my dad wanted to thank you on helping him do a successful drift alignment oh yeah well he he's a
he's a natural you know so uh i've i've helped many people do it but
it's not often they do it the first time so and i wanted to say thank you as well
i think that was a wonderful wonderful lecture that was just given
and it reminded me of my first telescope that i would like to show you now this is a picture
from the montreal star taken in 1962 and you see my first telescope is at the
upper right on the picture there and that's taken over 60 years ago
so i thought you'd enjoy looking at it thank you that's a great picture
thanks and you'll have to scan that and
let me have it for uh some future presentation david i have just done that and i will send it to you i will as well
me as well for everyone that would like a photo
yeah that's awesome only if it's autographed by dovid
we need an autograph and you know that's right yep i have the autographed book so
that's another to add to my growing david collection right
right well adrian how are you uh we miss you on a global star party but you're back
and um yeah so you've been busy yes i had to take a uh professional
shooting gig and um it was uh
it was tiring but it was fun and i included one of the photos that i took
that was already shared on social media from that event um with filmmakers
um there were some interesting uh films about space i didn't get a chance to watch them all
because i was going back and forth capturing the images that they wanted me to get but
i would have gladly reported on what some of the independent filmmakers thought
of space one that i caught a glimpse of some nebulas were shown
mixed in with some interesting uh imagery of uh of someone in space or floating around
in space and um with experimental films you never know which direction you're going to go
but so astronomy was a part of the film festival hopefully
next year i i'll get a chance to actually watch a couple and then report on those
so um well i'm back now and yeah i'm going to
go ahead and share my screen if i can remember how to do that uh it's been a while and of course i'm
wearing a um app that i chose for universally lowbrow astronomers
which is one of the uh astronomy groups i'm in i'm also in the rask uh with kareem thanks to kareem
actually and adrian gave a talk to the university lowbrows this past uh this
month yes it's a there's a 10 minute slide show that
if i give that if i share that slideshow here i'd have to take the sound down because i do have some music behind it
um i'll have to share the i'll have to share that slideshow um i think some of it was recorded
but um so the the discussion for tonight was reflections
so rather than end with a bird photo i started with one scott beautiful perfect uh reflection of a great blue heron yeah
that's a little time ago so uh very serene yep life on earth
of course there's reflections the photos that i've taken since being a part of the um
of this the uh ann arbor film festival um
i don't have too many reflections other than just uh personally reflecting on my
experience shooting professionally here and um looking forward to
you know i don't get very many professional gigs and to be honest i do love shooting the night sky so as soon
as the last event was over i did take a shot and i'll explain why
the road is red did the experimental films get to me am i gonna start doing some weird things with my photography
not all the time as it turns out the road was light painted by a flashing red
light behind me and with a 20 second exposure
there was enough of that red light flashing and you can see where it reaches and
kind of where the influence of that red light stops further up here these trees are
and of course it doesn't reach out into the cosmos so
there's no additional red light on any of the stars the area that we're viewing here
this is actually um corvus this is virgo
so we're looking and leo is buried within some of the uh starlight over here
so this is if you take a telescope to this region plenty of galaxies
and even a quasar 3 3c 273 somewhere in this area
um maybe even next to this uh spot that i have um a little dust on the lens um
there the quasar is is pictured in this photograph of the uh blood road below it so
maybe i when it comes to experimentation and astronomy it's
it's this was by accident i didn't actually think of the fact that the red light would paint itself into my
long exposure so i went a little further away
and decided to do a little perspective there's some weeds here
and here's m44 the beehive here's um pollux and castor
the twins and there's a larger tree in the background but it's lost this is um
let's see i believe auriga is the name of the constellation charioteer
and over here is um pro procyon and canis miner the other constellations are
low to the ground i gave it another shot and
moved away a bit now there's my one of my favorite larger trees
and look clouds started to move in as if to welcome me back to imaging the night sky
can't forget that in michigan there will be clouds but
with nightscapes you can mix clouds and you can mix um
yeah you can mix your night sky imagery with clouds and still have as accurate as you can
there's the stars of the beehive that show up i always find it
um impressive when in a 14 millimeter lens you can still capture you know data from
larger star clusters pretty sure m35 would be around here
somewhere if it weren't covered there's a there's actually i believe a star cluster here
and one here i think is this that might be m35
right there right here the um the star clusters appears little
small groupings of stars in when the detail of your night skate is
such that the star clusters can appear you know that you've got pretty good focus
and i prefer those to you know i artistry i do like it but
then i also like detail so this is
this was actually venus a couple of weeks ago and me attempting to image the rising
core of the milky way but the clouds had other ideas the core would be here but
um the clouds blocked the trip view leaving only this part during daybreak so i thought i would try
again in a different location this is a raw photo before
official astronomical twilight you can't see very much but there is some data this is taken
with um a modified camera with a
i set the temperature to a cooler temperature some 27
100 kelvin on a digital camera um yeah that's the white balance when you
edit it milky way appears there's some
noise reduction some artistry here and i was noticeably pink even though
some of the nebulosity here is real um this is this is real it's a part of
uh ophiuchus and here's aurora fuchi you can see
you can see the beginnings of that um
but some of the uh features were washed out and i just
i said why not yeah sometimes the noise reduction will do it but that i ended up with that
image here you have the north american and pelican nebulas um
this nebula which i should go i really do owe myself uh go find out what some of what this
nebula is so that i can because i look for it as well when
i look at the cygnus region and then here you've got the bulge and part of the center region
where m17 and 18 sagittarius cloud and not pictured is m5
m20 and some of the ngc objects near the core
yeah i love the composition and the subtle range of colors there
yeah this one i made a little more i left it a little pink because that's
the dha regions that shooting with a modified camera afford you you can see
some of the regions and if you notice here are some of the stars of sagittarius
which is slowly rising this was around 5 30 in the morning
and at 5 45 astronomical twilight was supposed to begin
well right before it and of course meteors appear now some of these streaks
could be satellites this one and like this one however
a meteor usually the signature for meteors is you see the light the line
go um faint and then grow in intensity i think i have another shot that
has a definitive meteor in it a lot of streaks in the sky that could be satellites and i would i would uh defer
to david who um observes to tell me whether these streaks
he would believe are more satellites rather than meteors i wouldn't be surprised if they were
um but i wanted to capture the distant well not so distant but uh
off in the distance the lake here and then this part of the milky way which is rising and is now
south and beginning to turn over as we rotate
through it now milky way season for many imagers
this image represents milky way season this is a meteor i saw it as it
entered the picture this is a plane and you can tell by the dots from the flashing light as the plane was flying
through um milky way season to me is year round it just so happens that
during um during the spring and summer months the
bright core rises this bright core and this is the
this is the part that makes its way into a lot of landscape astrophotography and
nightscapers images this northern bulge we have folks from the southern
hemisphere and of course they get to see what's on the other side
where these trees are they'll see what's on the other side of this milky way the full bulge
and um they also see the other southern parts the uh the southern parts
then link up with the orion the part of the milky way
that orion sits in and if you go around the globe
it completes a full circle of what we can see from our home galaxy so
we see different parts of it and there is from north american
or northern hemisphere imagers there is a bit of a bias towards calling
when we can see this milky way season beginning milky way season is year round you just have to go
somewhere where you can image it no matter what time in the milky way is always in the night
sky and the fainter parts you just have to go somewhere a little darker or image
for a little longer to see them so with that i will
stop by share answer any questions that anyone may have mostly it's comments a
beautiful milky way shot uh harold lock says he's watching on youtube he says adrian i think you have
made a significant jump in your landscape astrophotography thank you harold i know you're listening
and harold's been one of those who's followed my work as it's going as it's gone on
over the last year and you know i'm i'm indebted to all of you um that are
on these uh global star parties as as well as others who have
seen some of the work posted on social media um as you know if you're saying that my
that my astrophotography is getting better then i have no choice but to believe you so
i will uh continue you know and the fact that i've invested in some explorer scientific equipment
tells you how much i value being a part of this star party well thank you very much
even though i'm still fatigued i looked forward to presenting for you all and um
you know just my work is a way to promote looking up at the night sky
um don't turn the blind eye towards light pollution and go somewhere where it's dark because
you may be surprised what you'll see with your own eyes right and adrian i wanted to thank you
as well again i really did enjoy it tonight thank you david of course that little picture of uh
the southern cross out of a hotel window continues to be an inspiration for
gathering all the starlight that i can yeah i've never forgotten that it was actually taken from the parking lot
parking okay so uh i'll change my presentation to be accurate parking lot
i think i use hotel window i seem to misremember but that's okay
just going out there looking up with all the lights and then seeing the southern crest right on top was absolutely
unforgettable and i'm so glad that you were able to catch it when i was visiting last
it's great yep absolutely and you never know any never know what
images will um inspire unfortunately i only have a memory of the crescent
moon rising after that and you could see the very thin crescent
rising as well as the lineup of planets right before the sun
crossed the surface during civil dawn and unfortunately i didn't
have my camera with me to capture that moment as well it was beautiful and i i had to make
sure i kept my eyes on the road long enough not to hit anybody because i was trying to observe it but um
definitely whether you view it or image it it's it's about the night sky it isn't about
showing off a skill it's about showing just how beautiful the night sky is that remains my focus
for my images yeah excellent excellent yeah you should uh
probably try to join up with the group called the world at night which is a group of astrophotographers that mostly
do uh sky photography uh landscape photography
and uh just um you know the the your your work is uh
you know you have some really beautiful and sensitive work adrian so
um you know and so it's it's appreciated you share it with us it's awesome
it's awesome so nevin wanted to he had an astrophoto that he wanted to share
before we go to our 10 minute break do you want to do that nevin sure um this is gonna be quick
okay i'm gonna share my screen
all right so i got a couple photos recently so this is
basically a cardinal from my porch oh yeah at my house so uh it was like a moving exposure a couple seconds
exposure from like an iphone 13 for max cool good job on catching a cardinal in flight i've struggled to do that
uh yeah you kind of need a couple exposures but the next one would be kind of better this is the cardinal sitting on the
branch before it flew on on one of the bushes next to my porch so then these are some nightscapes i
kind of try to take like this clouds moving and then like the like also from
my porch like at nighttime like you can see the the house like next to us there
and then like some other houses there and some light pollution yeah so now this is our neighborhood like the
sport like the north facing view you can see all that light pollution from all those streams yeah
all those clouds even street lands from the um opposite neighborhood so it's a lot of light
pollution so then your dad was showing me the light pollution from his backyard last night
yeah there's a lot so this is a bald eagle right here that that's a ball wow
yep good catch we went camping about last weekend so we uh found it there
uh i actually have a couple more bald eagle pictures
there's the bald eagles over there and then
we were actually in the middle of a hype when he took this so we took a couple second exposure on the phone
so it turned out pretty good so [Music] about that and then
so then we got us we got a sunset as it um as the sun said it next door campsite
so we have we got a couple exposures from that with the trees this kind of was a darker sight so it
was a bit away from the light pollution but there still is a little bit of light pollution
so you could probably see a green light there i don't know what that is but you can see the lens flare yep
yeah so prob that you can see the sun a little bit closer setting
and then that's the sun rising in the morning
oh yeah that's pretty much it great
all right that's good okay so we're going to take a little bit
of a stretch here uh and uh give everybody about a 10 minute break uh so
it's a good time to get a something hot to drink or get a sandwich or something and uh we'll be back in 10 minutes and
our speaker coming up next um will be
will be keep everybody on pins and needles marcelo souza from brazil so
um we'll see you in a few minutes
now we gotta keep an eye out for norm's name adrian let's see who gets up their first norm
or tariq or chris harold
who's the money on this time
i think tarek looks forward to it
i actually thought beatrice might come in from the side and just beat the ball but yeah that'll be next time
and cynthia who's watching yep naveen are you gonna are you thinking of
giving one of the talks for uh cosmic generation uh probably i might want to get one
that would be fantastic uh i know nathan bella tara
they're all they're all looking for more people who are interested in chatting or sharing some of their ideas even the
presentations that you and cg are doing here you can put those together into kind of a retrospective or something
like that yeah we could probably do one of those yeah or you could just go you know completely
new topic and just go go crazy on it that's always fun too
yeah yeah i have nathan's email and um taro in the cosmic generation email so i can always get in touch
awesome awesome
hopefully beatrice that would be awesome
well thank you so much norm it was a lot of fun and uh i'm glad you enjoyed it was it was
actually fun to learn about um adrian it was good to see you again and
good to see your pictures yes i will i will look to return next week as i
trying to make sure i don't have anything blocked away for uh the month of april and so far
um i don't so
the only thing on the calendar says the moon will be at peregrine on the 19th i'm pretty sure i can still do the star
party with the moon at perigory so hopefully
hopefully no more surprise jobs come up on tuesdays hey don't don't knock them surprise jobs
are good ones they are good and uh also i hope that
let's see this is the month of april so the month of may
i will be let's see the full moon is the full moon
is out
is encroaching on by more important um pursuits of astronomy so i'll have to
see what i can do i'll be living vicariously through all the eclipse pictures
everyone will take and share on that tuesday well i will be reaching out to gianluca
and most likely sharing if we have clear skies knock on wood anything we get over
here right now i'm going to head out and see if there are any clear skies and if there are maybe i'll actually pull a
telescope out for the first time in months so it would be nice it's been too long our forecast has gone back and the
clouds are coming to us so i think you have all sent them our way no no we've got the rest of the week we've got
clouds and we've got ice so uh okay it's not gonna be fun good night everyone uh stay tuned for
session two uh there's some great talks coming up i think i'll be watching along uh
on one of the streaming platforms as i as i continue to try to recover from a
long week of double duty i didn't take the time off of my regular job so i would
i'd do the regular job in the morning and then shoot through the evening for uh the film festival so
it was rough but i made it through so excellent yeah i will talk to everybody
later keep looking up everyone on the chat and everyone here definitely grab yourselves a coffee or
tea and stay tuned for part two yep you got about five minutes
webb's mirror segments began as beryllium ore mined in utah
they crisscrossed the united states to be formed [Music]
lightweight polished
[Music] gold-coated and finally perfectly placed on the backplane
structure with the help of a robotic arm
[Music]
i am muted i did this so many times i just wanted to say hello and i hope
that everybody had a good break and uh you're watching the 88th global star party with the theme of reflections um
up next is uh marcelo souza uh from brazil i was just watching him
uh uh during some of the other presentations while he was uh with the lewis cruel's astronomy club uh giving a
live presentation as well so you're a very busy guy marcelo and uh it's it's great to have you on
global star party hi how are you thank you very much for
the invitation right now i i i invited you have two students of our projects that are here
also participating with us today because today we launched our first
app about astronomy that's an epic about the
body about variable stars then we have here the participation of
isabelli and the devil i i asked them to introduce themselves
please obey hi everyone good night i'm isabel
and i'm from the programming part of the project and
that's all i'm part of programming
and this is possible to develop the apps yes
it's as a part of programming of the projects beyond startup tomorrow
so i have two uh [Music] two students with me
so we we are now we are
made this app so it is a presentation for you
great
hello we have you all
right here they were responsible for this departure for strolling please
could you introduce yourself hello guys my name is deborah i am mr a student here in brazil i do
two degrees one in science computer and the other in physics
in the project i'm responsible for the astronomy party with me i have one
student bruno bruno pontes she she works with me in the project
and the in the development of this epi we have the help of a
another another colleague in the project a volunteer achasia so we are acting off
tree and we develop our app that
peoples can use it for measuring the variation of office stars
magnitude of stars and send it to us this data so we can
analyze this data and produce produce information and it can knowledge
great
the idea that what motivated us to produce this app
is because we would like to find a way to motivate people to look
within naked eye to the stars and to the sky at night
then we imagine that the if they have
motivation to [Music] send that and the war like here
begin to work with astronomy and measuring the magnitude of the valuable
stars these will motivate them to participate in other
astronomy projects as they we only choose is variable star that see are possible
to see we could the naked eye in the southern hemisphere
he used the edge reference project that was
developed by the aav [Music]
and i made a translation for portuguese many years ago and he used it as a
reference for our app now i will show you images and the
isabelle can say this is part of the young style of tomorrow probably had to have the
support and of the constellation of the united states in
hindi and it is uh the name of
the app in portuguese that is a
valuable write something like this in english i don't know it's correct relation to
english but uh something that you really changed
variable uh bright of the stars then something we
use in portuguese only this by the name of the app that we will
produce also a version in english of the app but this is the first version that is in
portuguese now isabel could you talk about the app yes
so is the professor marcelo says
and we made a verbal star zap
so in the first and first screen we have a note
so um
see you only in the sky see on the stars in the sky and then take
pictures uh to save the database so uh the name star's name uh
that is that is name uh and a picture
so the second second screen we are charcoal the
part hystericals and we uh we we are
uh variable stars and and other other
and the other in variable stars so
[Music] i i don't have a three entry screen
at their screen they make the registration
send out information then they have a database that requires all the
information about the observation of the star that we suggest and with these informations we will
produce light cools about stars and it shows stars that's
possible to see with naked eye and you have a short period now deborah would you talk about this
please
hello are you hearing me yes yes oh sorry
so we we chose some stars and we based it on
the material and developed by the american association of
of variable stars we we create we develop in this material in
portuguese so this material we have a general informations about variable
stars as type is in classification and we have a guide
and this guide teaches the the persons how to
how to observe these stars on the sky so we have the star maps and the
using these star maps the the public can can can easily find the
these stars and compare the variety for in the ending this way
uh measure the magnitude the difference between the magnitude
and the we selected some some stars in
sothemisfairy using these star that we select this
list we can use it easily observe these stars
with naked eye so we don't the people don't need the uh
a telescope or a binocular just using the eye
the the app is divided in sections and its sections help it to understand the
other and so we have general information informations about variables star
conceptual informations and practical informations the idea is creating a
database using the data sent by the users so
this is the main idea of the the app created at the
with the information sent by the users he here in brazil is the first
first happy developing in such way
for such use so it's very very interesting and we hope that people
can can enjoy our idea absolutely
i i have a question is is the the data going to the double avso or is
it going to the students uh in brazil and they're creating the light curves
yes this is the main idea we received we have two students that you work here
with isabel and one student that we work with deborah a student from fundamental
school in brazil elementary school and we will motivate the students
in schools to participate in the project and as you have
we start with short periods with the observation that they make
it will be possible to build the light curves and we hope they participate also
when we analyze the information sent by them
isabel could you talk about the students that are participating with you
yeah it's a few students with me
uh the casia and stephanie so it's the different
cities in brazil so it's a it's a very participating it's
a very clever smart and we
he's helping me uh with this the app
so we studies the
the the metro so i studies the code
so we train and we three of us
made uh happen together in in
one it's me my part and stephanie uh was the part of her and
kezia part of her so in final
together this is completely app and
the result is here and it's uh
it's a very very uh beautiful and uh
beautiful work because it's uh the first app it's my first app and first episode
yeah you guys must be very proud of that accomplishment and uh yes you know to do something that's so progressive and to
be doing science at such a young age it's really inspiring it is inspiring
wonderful i learned too much with this project so
she's learned to right yeah and you're very lucky to have a
great mentor like marcelo souza he's uh i think he's a
a great teacher and yet he's uh he's gentle uh to help people learn more you
know so uh and always inspired and and i think that everybody likes to uh
to work with marcelo if they can get the chance yes absolutely you are a great look
it's uh it's a very opportunity it's here it's here and to be in the project
it's uh all happened with this project it's a very lucky and it's a
grateful yeah that's wonderful it's wonderful thank you thank you so much it's a great
presentation thank you and the important is that what
they develop they develop the system and all the tools that are necessary to produce apps
then we are going to use any other apps the same system using the same tools
then soon we have another astronomy apps and they also apples for the daily life
here in brazil then they are we are planning to produce 10 apps until the
until july they already produced the apps but they are making the final
adjustments then soon we are going to launch new apps [Music]
right it's good it's all good it's great uh it seems that you're always moving
from a science project to science project marcelo so that's it's uh i'm sure it's very interesting
for you but uh it is such a great opportunity for these young people that
you're involved with so um you know thank you for the hard work that you do
thank you very much yeah yes how are your supporting help [Laughter]
congratulations is a very endeavor [Music]
yeah thank you for coming on to our program yeah is this the first time for you to be on a
live program for uh in the us or the world actually it's a global
the second for me i was
in the the first representation here
yes but always a little bit nervous oh i'm sorry
don't worry about that it's alive don't worry about that that's that's
fine it's fine you get the the main thing is you know what you're talking about so that that's the that's the big
one you know so and you do so that's great endeavor thank you so much uh
isabelli uh you guys have a great evening marcelo thank you again it was wonderful and we look forward to seeing
you on the next global star party so thank you thank you thank you thank you so much
bye-bye my pleasure thank you good evening scott thank you good evening
okay so up next we're going to go to uh dan higgins and dan you got uh do you
have someone that uh you're bringing on with you tonight
do you hear us all right can you hear me yeah i hear you hi i actually thought i was on after two more after marcelo i'm
sorry i apologize but yeah uh actually gary palmer was supposed to
be on and uh uh he called in sick so oh
okay well my my guest is not here yet okay um well let's see uh
let me see if maxi or excuse me matthias might be coming on
i tell you why don't we why don't we take another short break okay
and then we'll have um you'll have your guest on and uh and then matthias schmidt should be on by
that time so okay i apologize about that no problem no problem
yes sometimes these things happen so no yeah no problem but i did want to say i did want to say
thank you for having me on um on your uh astroworld tv last
friday i'm sorry that my audio system just was not behaving so
yeah you know i i i don't know what the the problem was like it was my side of
your side i'm not 100 sure i think it was my side because i was trying to log in these things happen sometimes where
yeah you know you're trying to do a live thing oh yeah definitely and so i sign on my my piece
my mac for whatever reason didn't want to behave so i sign on with my
tablet and that seemed to work for a while and then there was this weird uh
static and then echoes started happening and yeah you know i think it might have been the
tablet but who knows i mean those things happen i think it was the tablet yeah no no those things happen when it
comes down to uh you know technology you know just especially when you're doing it live you know so that's true that's true
okay all right so we're going to take another 10 minute break here okay and
we'll be back awesome
hey what's up guys how are you hey maxie
hi hey matthias daniel hi mike
max maxi maximiliano what is what do you go by maximiliano exactly from argentina
i just had um gnocchi tonight because on the 29th of the month in argentina
people have nokia i have friends in buenos aires i was in patagonia and in
antarctica for the solar eclipse so i oh my heart my heart beats for argentina
oh thank you i'm glad to hear it so you you went to the solar eclipse in
antarctica yes i did no that's a a huge privilege to go there
you know i think you from here from buenos aires or argentina went to chile and then
they go more to the south right it was in ushuaia and then we were on a
vessel for two weeks unfortunately it was clouded on eclipse day but um
we saw a million penguins to make up for it [Laughter]
you know for being this way there was a really good weather in that time because it was summer practically
and you have uh well in winter it's like alaska for
example and in in summer it's cold but uh
in that time hit him in buenos aires province it was really
too much heat we had and i i
could see the the solar eclipse by saturday images only and pictures that everyone's share
but i it was a strange eclipse because it was pointing
to it passing by
in the solar atlantic and then goes by to almost the
the entire uh across the world if you see it a
in the planet's fur and the shadow was really really amazing
i i could able to see the the 2020 eclipse solar eclipse that was a
in patagonia and that was really
pretty amazing a very good experience and what being self
like you did is it's unbelievable i was in san juan province in 2019 i
couldn't go in 2020 to join my friend in argentina so
we went together yeah the 2nd of july yes we
we have passing by here from chibiko from where i am at the center but
yes we have clouds but then go when the sun goes down see that
huge bald black amazing hey guys
um we're we're back after our 10 minute break and uh we've got uh metea schmidt
here as well as dan higgins but it looks like dan does it look like your uh your
guest uh is not gonna make it no it looks like uh
looks like his spectrum is giving him an issue i see and uh i told him i told him go with
fios and uh he didn't listen to me and uh he's known on the show
uh at astral when we're on the show he's known as max headroom because he's always oh his internet's always
oh it's horrible he tries to blame it on the kids and the streaming and it just it just never works okay yeah it's just
horrible so so we'll just go on you know the show okay all right then you're on man
so let's uh uh you know uh when i was on last time
uh with you at astroworld it was it was great you you were uh
covering a lot of um aspects pretty much focused on
my background and stuff like that but uh and then i i watched for a little bit afterwards um
as you guys transitioned out how how did the show end up oh the show ends up good we we get so many
awesome questions from people all over all over the world pretty much we got and some of the people actually a lot of
the people that are on this show yeah transition to us yeah yeah they follow
the shows around yeah so it's it's cool interesting because you know like people like central watches every week uh jim's
astro watches every week mark ellis yeah i mean i could go on with a bunch of people that go on and on and i hate to
say it but you know you know uh sugi and navin you know they are they're just
awesome yeah oh yeah they're just awesome and and every time i'm on the show
they leave they say oh i'm so excited to see the people from asteroids they leave before i come on so i can't tell them
how good they did but but nice job with the uh i think they're watching out in the in the chat room
right now so amongst chat so yeah yeah i think they said they were on youtube
yeah yeah yeah no they're they're great and they they tend to kind of play off of each other a
little bit and it's really cool to watch them give a presentation together so it's very cool it's very cool yep yep
that's awesome so what's up what's next for um astroworld tv well next i got
let's see i got the list right here so next guest on asteroids is going to be april 6th and that's going to be bob
denny and he is going to be giving us a rundown of alpaca
so that's going to be a lot of fun because you know a lot of people have been screaming for something that's not
windows-based for a long long time and uh it's finally coming to fruition in in
one way or another and alpaca is going to be one part of that so it's going to be really interesting on on having him
onto the show and give us a nice little uh hour rundown on what it could do for those people that like uh max or um or
linux boxes linux yeah so you know i um
i met bob denney many years ago uh when i was working at meat instruments
and he flew his dc-3 you know he's on the ec3 he flew it into
i think to john wayne airport uh which is very near the building at that time and uh
um you know he talks to me about this idea about this uh ascom idea you know
and i'm really excited about it and um uh you know uh bob was talking about
developing this community and joining up all the software you know which would
have given uh me to i think an incredible edge in the industry at the time
and uh unfortunately the engineering engineering team or the management at
meat instruments just did not see the value of it but bob denney went on to change the
astronomical world with uh with by connecting net basically networking uh uh planetarium programs
and observatories and telescopes and cameras all this stuff and uh weather systems
and so it was just um you know it was just really uh remarkable he came to the riverside
telescope makers conference with me uh and used an eight inch lx 200 telescope and he ran a script in front
of me is the first time i'd ever seen anything like that and and the scope was just robotically going
from one minor planet to the next to the next and the next getting data and reducing data and all the rest of it and
this is early 90s okay yeah so
or mid-90s something like that i mean bob bob remembers the dates better than i do but uh
um but he's a remarkable guy and he has given an incredible uh
uh amount of resources to the astronomical community he's just a very nice man a
real gentleman you know so yeah i can't wait i'm i'm super excited about that um
and then after that uh we have charles bracken uh coming on on april 13th um who is the
author of the deep sky imaging primer amongst a bunch of other things okay so
he is going to be uh on on the 13th and then eric cole um is going to be on may
13th who's an astrophotographer and also part of the astro imaging channel so uh
that's going to be awesome and we also have chris woodhouse coming on and in a recorded show
um yeah that'll be a recorded show that's to be announced um and i just got some i
got some really cool news um so for those of you that don't know what
astrowolf is basically what we do is uh we do two shows a week and they're live
youtube shows uh on wednesdays and friday nights um at nine o'clock and
eight o'clock eastern respectively and um we have guests and we have a whole bunch of stuff going on we talk all
about just different topics on astrophotography whether and it's very very
laid back not comedic but it's just very laid back atmosphere uh that we kind of
like to have we make fun of each other and stuff but yeah you guys are fun yeah you know it doesn't have to be all
serious because you know what yeah we're astrophotographers we make mistakes just like anybody else yes
our pictures are awesome and they look great and all this kind of stuff and we spend hours and days
months and we're out of our minds and our wife wants to divorce us because we're spending 35 000
worth of stuff you know so that keeps you out of the bars at night though right yeah you know that's right i mean
you could be spending thousands of dollars on booze right yeah i mean you know what you are you know i i keep
on saying get your kids involved in that photography because they won't have the money for drugs or alcohol so you know
it's you know they'll be fine you'll know where they are they're at the beach taking shots and whatever and that that's right yeah getting into trouble
while you're at home your backyard making images exactly exactly so
but it's it's all good and and that's what we do we we do a lot of stuff on that but we also have
a lot of giveaways and stuff like that and one of the biggest giveaway that we have so far we're giving it away this summer and you have you have to be a
youtube subscriber to get this in order in order to get be involved in this we have a
one-of-a-kind prima luce eagle four pro
okay okay it's gonna be totally max well not totally my almost totally maxed out 32
gig of ram wi-fi 6 um brand new 2 terabyte samsung evo 980
pro hard drive um it's going to be tall and and the best
thing about this forget about all that stuff the coolest thing about this it's going to be matte black
okay it's going to be matte black and and it's going to be done in a way so that the letters and the writing on it
are red so okay so it's going to be a little reverse
all right there's only going to be two in the united states okay one is going to be given away through astroworld and
well i think we're going to do it on the the fourth of july week somewhere in there i think for sure do it right in the middle and
the other one that tom's keeping so tom bramwell over at primal lucha lab uh who
runs usa is going to be keeping it for himself so so so that i'm super excited about and it's
a giveaway it's not a raffle it's a complete giveaway but you do have to be a youtube subscriber and we will
cross-reference everybody okay so dan why don't you put uh your youtube channel in chat for me and i'll just
post it on the uh in the chat for the audience if you just go to ask for world tv on youtube where
the first you'll find it okay yeah we're the first one there just don't go to astroworld i have too many people coming
up to me and saying i came here for travis scott and you know for those of you that don't
know who travis scott is travis scott is an american rapper um who just recently
almost got arrested for something because of his concert some people got
beat up at his concert or something oh yeah it was not a good thing but um whatever the case may be you know go
check out astro and you know what i did tonight i got first light on something um and don't make fun of the picture
because it's really you know this is literally so this is on a very
semi-low budget stuff it's on an eq m35 with a red cat
uh all right an asi air and an eaf and that's it and
people that know me are gonna make fun of me because i am the ccd mono guy
uh and i don't do i don't do cmos color i just don't you just don't i just don't
do it you know my first real camera was in uh was the sak 7b
but way back when that was mono and then i bought my s big sdf 8300 mono
which you know workhorse camera sure awesome and then i got
a qhy 16200 so then that's another it's easy to do and so
why why is it that you're so enamored with these mono cameras well the resolution on it is just is
just outstanding but you know what i got to tell you that that
cmos is catching up very very close uh to what you can get i mean they're very
you know you'd be hard-pressed to find some of the differences between these mono shots and these these high-end
color cmos cameras i mean like like 2600 or 6200 um that that are just
ridiculous but buddy here's the picture and you're gonna have to excuse it believe it or not this is a
new camera you have to excuse the big dust mode but um this is completely raw
so i mean but i wanted to see if i could do okay
okay yep but that is a focused it's mostly
galaxies you can see galaxies and that's a five minute shot at portal eight plus
wow so wow i mean should i be going five minutes in my
area no absolutely not um that is just not good so i lowered it down to two
minutes uh okay and it's slowly loading up and that's a
little bit better okay it looks a little smoother a lot smoother a lot less gradient i
could probably should probably even go down to a minute and just do a whole bunch but um i mean
when this is all put together this is going to look pretty good but this is the red cat i got a bunch of bunch of little galaxies little galaxies yeah
yeah and uh you know in all fairness you know just just so uh
you know i i like to show this let's see if i can go into um
where's my c i got too many hard drives i'm sorry see completed images and this is this is
one of mine here and okay
that's this is what you really do this is what i really do yeah this is this is uh with an uh esprit
um that's beautiful thank you um that that's the esprit 80 with the uh s the s
big camera um and uh that's with the um believe it or not that's what the uh
the optolongs the seven uh eight alpha and the six and a half's
um but yeah so that's the largest that's what i do yeah i'm kinda i'm kinda stuck
with narrowband being from long island i can't really i could do rgb but it's a lot
more difficult than than narrow band obviously with being the light pollution the way it is
i love the narrow bands shots you know i think they're great so yeah you know it's it's all about seeing
the structure and the nebula and stuff and i mean really remarkable i mean i could remember
nuts i remember in this just crying over light pollution you know so
um so people were making fun of my picture behind me i'm sorry well
because all right so there's a story about this picture behind me and i'll try to do it before
before it switches on me because it switches on me but um a gentleman on youtube or facebook or
something said oh my god you know that horsehead nebula is great it looks like jar jar binks from star wars
so i said oh okay so i just had to do it so so i just i just did uh i just did
that to my horsehead nebula and now i got george r banks in the horse head i i have another comparation that i did
the picture this weekend uh you know if you hear about the
the mystery gabriella mistral nebula yeah it's it's near in the
carinae and that nebula is called by a poetry
from chile because it has the shape like his face
but i am a star wars fan and i compared
like the the senator palpatine episode three
when he says uh not from a jedi and he turns around
and you can see the same face and now i start to call it also the
palpatine nice nice there you go hey you know we got a star wars nebula finally so that
finally yeah it had to happen we had to do a new category
for the fans i think absolutely that's funny that's good yeah but but
again like like this kind of back and forth that we're having now that's exactly what we do on the show so yeah just a lot a lot of back and forth it's
a lot of having fun and and it's a lot of learning on both sides so absolutely absolutely well that's great
well i'm sorry that uh scott was unable to join us tonight but uh why don't you tell us a little bit about him other
than he's got bad internet oh you've got he's got horrible internet um as as a matter of fact i got let's see do i have
it here i think i do hold on a second i i had to so so somebody had to scott
doesn't say a lot and when scott says something he kind of throws his face into the
camera and he kind of he kind of leans in like this and so he's like bursting your bubble
through the monitor yeah so so one of the guys on on the channel we're just
making fun of them left and right so yeah so he took a picture of scott and threw it
on the discord and this is what it looked like
[Laughter]
and this is just scott being his normal selfie this is copy and scott that's it okay all right i do remember him
oh yeah i'm sure you do but i mean you know he's a great guy and uh yeah you know he is a professional uh
portrait photographer and uh live you know livestock birds sure um you know different landscapes
and that kind of stuff um but he does a lot of work like that and his his wife
joe finn is a um a web designer so um both of them have creative family
yeah and and they've both been instrumental in making the logo uh they both made the logo pretty cool they've
been doing some help on the website and that kind of stuff but we make fun of scott a lot i remember we talking about
spending 30 35 000 on yeah equipment well that's what he did first first what scott did first telescope
first telescope buys a c14 edge yeah
a a a a a um las monde 11 hd
you know mount yeah with a rainbow mount head on it um so he's got you know it it's
ridiculous with the eagle four pro and the whole thing the whole shebang on jmi
wheelie bars and everything and the uh monster moag off axis guider um
and uh what else you know he's got the um the the the automated focuser by
feather touch and it's a whole bunch of big mess and you know what out of all of this he's had
all this stuff he's been putting it together since he's been on the show for like i guess about over 13 14 months now okay
yet to take a picture really has not taken a picture yeah
that seems to be like a crime there should be like uh some sort of astronomer police
you know force out there that goes out there and at least gives him a ticket you know so yeah i'm going ready to drive down to florida
and drag that wheelie bar back to new york and i'll sit there and do that i'll do this 1700 miles all the way up
all the way up that's right i mean you know but yeah scott's getting they didn't old francis scott he just moved
from from rochester new york uh to northern florida so so you know all
fairness and he actually got it down to florida safe and sound because we all know how shipping has been working recently with
damaging equipment and all that yeah you know he got it down safely and everything's up he's finally got it up
and running so hopefully hopefully this summer we'll see some pictures from them in uh in the nice
steady skies of florida so yeah oh yeah and they are steady so that's uh one of
the real attractions of doing astronomy from down there you know just incredible seeing conditions yeah i know i know
nothing about that no no i'm not in long island i know nothing about you you've never been down
there i know i've been down now but not to image you know you know um you know i had to go down
and see okay next winter star party you come down to the two absolutely okay i'm sorry i'm i'm ready i'm i'm ready for
that and i'm ready for okie tex and i'm ready for uh um you know i know it's not as good as
anyone else but i've been dying just to go to staunton river and you know you know it's but cherry springs is coming
up in three months right yeah and that's a really dark sight yeah i i go there
a lot religiously yeah okay i go there a lot but anyway i don't know you know i
know you it's ten o'clock so uh um i could be like like it's ten o'clock it's time it's nine o'clock
so you did scott smith thank you no if i did scott bit this might this
might turn you know nc 17. so
well daniel thanks for coming on again to the global star party so absolutely
yeah and um uh you know hit me up sometime we'll do a door prize for
astroworld tv okay yeah you got it all right thank you
have a good night max mathias good luck thank you all right all right good night
here we go okay so uh the our next speaker is matthias schmidt and matthias
and i have known each other i think we're going maybe on seven or
ten years something like that at this point when i meet matthias
he is the executive producer for a children's
science-based uh television program called space racers and um
you know i was really fascinated uh by the concept and uh watched a number of
the episodes my grandchildren were watching us so they were they were turned on by it and i encouraged
matthias to go to the northeast astronomy forum and i don't know that he had been to a big astronomy event like
that but i knew that he was very interested in astronomy and so uh we collaborated on a few things but
it wasn't too much longer that matthias confided in me that he
wanted to make a change in his life and and to really you know chase his dreams and um
so he did that and uh you don't really see that very often in people because
one i mean it really takes uh it takes a brave individual to fundamentally
change what they're doing and make a break and go and do what exactly what they want to do and so
um you know i'm really you know i'm proud to call matthias a friend he is
he is still following his dream and that has culminated in a program called uh stargazing zion
at the zion national park and so i'm going to bring matthias on he is matthias is also an um explore alliance
ambassador and um he is uh he's running an amazing program right
now so tell us more about it hi guys thank you scott
uh yeah we met uh maybe eight years ago at eight years yeah that northeast astronomy
um forum and i knew nothing about astronomy and scott has been very
generous with this time very helpful and in 2017 i was in oregon
for the total solar eclipse and i was infected with an incurable virus called
eclipsophile and ever since then i've been traveling to see eclipses i was in argentina 2019
2020 i wasn't able to travel unfortunately um last
december i was in antarctica on a vessel um and saw the longest cloudiest total
solar eclipse ever and uh was compensated with seeing a million penguins
luckily icebergs and seals and for any of you guys that are
watching and are wondering uh what to do you know with your lives maybe
um today is what matters there's always a first step when i got back from
oregon i became active in the astronomy club in new york city where i'm still a member
i enrolled in the master of astronomy program at swinburne which i'm finishing this year
and then 2020 um i um
wanted to move out west because i love astronomy i love teaching and i wanted to be active
in a in a school i was teaching at a high school in new york and uh
i found uh an opportunity in cedar breaks national monument which is a national park in southern utah
and i'm the dark sky coordinator there i wish i could coordinate dark skies or clear skies
but i don't have that power um but i love what i do and last year i met
somebody through the saint george astronomy group where i was voluntarily pressured to be the vice president now
and i've met wonderful people in astronomy that are very encouraging
with their time with their knowledge and um i started a private stargazing
business called stargazing design which is adjacent to zion national park which received its uh dark sky
accreditation um last year so the skies are really dark um and um i do tours
there um with a few people um and i'm just going to give you an
idea of how it looks there i use a stellarium to plan tours
and um i've done a stellarium class for the
astronomy club in in new york city so if we were in the field tonight
this is how it looks the sun would be sitting here in the west um here this is this is the border to zion
national park um and here you look
to some of the uh peaks of zion national park um
and here is our field and this this picture was taken in uh as you can see from the
from the wheat here this was taken last last year in august so i uploaded a 360 panorama into stellarium
um and this helps to uh you know initially to plan tours and figure out when
certain objects um are rising and where they are in the sky and um you know if we would go like you know
a little bit forward um [Music] you know you'd see the milky way here
yeah this direction um this is like i would say like a portal tool um
a portal tool location you have some light pollution from san george
which is close and uh cedar city in this direction on
sunday night we did a tour and we had the iss pass a low to horizon
for a few minutes we saw plenty of satellites um we um
we saw some um meteors and uh it was it was a pretty uh pretty clear night
um i'll just show you some pictures for you to get an idea how uh what we do for for the people that um
let's see that that visit us um where is my uh so
okay see where's my zoom share my screen
thank you for being patient oh no problem so we have a uh um photographer that
uh takes pictures of our of our guests there's a little lamp this is this is
not fire right light bulb and uh you know here you see zion
national park here some light pollution from cedar city um and uh
people just love the experience to sit on under dark skies we have these yogi boat
chairs which are like uh bean bags and uh you know we have telescopes
people are lying down here and look it's like this is like a natural planetarium yeah and um
you know here you can see orion uh here you can see the pleiades um here
uh here's me being in action with the laser pointer um we have a bunch of telescopes i'll
give you just an overview in a moment of uh you know here's another picture we have these you know red lights although
people don't trip over the tripods you hear our visitors you know they just
lay down and i you know tell people if it's very comfortable and you fall asleep you know feel free to do so just
uh um if it becomes really interesting you know um i'll wake you up or maybe your own
snoring wakes you up um but um you know
so matthias are these people they're coming to you uh
are they experienced amateur astronomers some of them or are they new to
experiencing the dark sky so most of them are coming to zion national
park as a tourist to visit um i get a lot of questions about what
telescope they should buy um we've gotten some amateur astronomers
but these are mostly people that just have never seen you know the milky way
or have gone on a on a stargazing tour and you know because of the increasing
um uh light pollution that we have to deal with i'm also a member of the international dark sky association
um we're you know slowly losing the night sky to urban development and poor
poor lighting you know we could fix a lot of the problems that we have with light pollution especially on the
horizon with just using proper lighting yeah just taking it down yeah and um
um it's it it feels you know it fills with joy for people who come and just are totally
blown away by the night sky you know i don't always want to say it's easy to have a tour when the night sky is this
pristine but um we we love what we do and we believe that if we share
what we love it gets multiplied so we want to give these people just some basic tools to navigate the night
sky what to look for when and uh and for them become um
you know night sky advocates on their own so when they uh when they get home
and they say you know what i could improve my outdoor lighting sure i could um
uh you know i could invite neighbors and we'll just do our own little star party you know you don't
you can do naked eye star parties with binoculars you see a wonder of
of objects and um you know with telescopes it gets even better and
we do it we do take pictures with some of our telescopes and
and you know we we share them with our uh with our visitors afterwards
and um um you know something like this you know they like
when they when they look through a telescope you know this is this is an um unistellar eevee scope you know when
they see something like this you know they're just blown away there's they're saying you know did you can you can see this in the
night sky with the telescope yes this is amazing right this is you know
this is not a hubble telescope image but you know they see and they get an appreciation of how wonderful our
universe is and um the tours are about uh two hours
um we start at the gate of the of the land uh where we hold our star parties and i
have a little uh scale system of the solar system set up and we walk from the gate to the
observing site where the where the chairs are and uh i go through all the planets of course it starts with
pluto there's always controversy you know that's it's it's fun to talk about
you know what they know and um we'll go through pluto the outer planets
the terrestrial planets and then i ask the the guests so if these distances are
scientifically accurate how big do you think the sun is um you know the sun for those distances
to be accurate is the size of an orange and uh uh you know who gets closest to
the answer it gets a little meteorite from uh from a meteor that fell down uh sorry meteorite
that fell down in in argentina it's um uh 4.6 billion years old it's one of the
building blocks of our solar system and then i asked so okay the sun is the size of of an orange where is the
closest star and the closest our proxima centauri is where chicago would be
so that gives people an appreciation of the scale of just our solar system and
our immediate neighborhood and then i do a um a little cosmic calendar
tour and where i compress the age of the universe into a calendar
year thanks to carl sagan who popularized this this idea
and we start at the january 1st midnight the big bang and and december 31st midnight new year
and there are some benchmark dates that we talk about so that way people have a sense of the time
scale of the universe so first we do the distance scale then we do the time scale
and you know to slowly uh lead our guests into
an appreciation of uh how how insignificant we are but also how
significant you know we are here as a result of
13.8 billion years of evolution in our universe and uh
it gives people a a moment to pause and just enjoy this vastness of the universe
this this infinite ocean and and then we do a telescope tour we look
at the nebula we look at the open clusters we look at
globular clusters and uh and galaxies you know depending on what time of the year it is we see
different types of objects but you know with every with every category you usually find at least one or two
uh to give people a sense of what's out there and then we finish with a consolation tour
and um this is always fun to talk about the constellations of the zodiac and i say
you know everybody should know at least one consolation of the zodiac you know and then i say i'm an aquarius so
aquarius okay leo gemini and then people are like oh this is cool and um
[Music] and then people have people have wonderful questions you know and uh you
know where's the closest black hole and i tell them well the closest black hole is in my uh laundry room between my
washer and my drive life socks keep disappearing right um
but it's uh it's it's i love what i do and we love what we do at stargazing zion
and um it's uh uh
for to see how excited people are and uh how curious they are you know the the we
have the curiosity of children in us and um
uh frank herbert said uh he wrote the dune the desert planet that the universe is
always one step beyond logic so it's really a nice
kind of balance to have so many questions about the universe that you know you
we haven't really answered yet and then understand so much about the universe
and how we arrived at answers to some of the most basic questions
and um it's never too late to learn something new my my uncle in germany he's 95 he started to become a hobby
astronomer 20 years ago and these days you know once a week i got a cool picture from him the other six days he
complains about the clouds so you know if you're a hobby astronomer that's that's kind of normal it's normal you
know it's normal it's never too late you know today what matters it always starts with the first step no
matter how small it is and um you know this is i'm here because of
people like you scott and wonderful members of the astronomy clubs that i'm member of and of course you know if
there wouldn't be a demand by our interest by people in the night sky i wouldn't have a job at
the uh for the national park service or a stargazing business so uh it's wonderful to see that people
continue to be interested in this and are and the interest uh is growing
so matthias you i mean you've gone through this big transformative experience okay
by most people's standards you were living an extremely successful life you
were living in new york you're an executive producer of a successful
program uh you would think that um that you know
i mean to make such a big change is a and i said you were brave and that's true
but this transformation i mean personally how
i mean do you think that it's really changed you for the better do you think that uh would you have changed anything about
this i uh i think life goes in circles
okay when i was a teenager i was in engineering school in in germany and uh
uh i studied physics at university but i was lacking social maturity so i didn't have
the the grit to uh to go through with a challenging program
and i left and i went into business school i came to america i was
in finance after another panic attack i decided this is not for me i
started helping out with the kids tv show which was a a
total new stimulus for me to explore uh talents that were
and talents and interests that were lying dormant and um
uh it kind of you know the the pilot light never never got extinguished
the pilot light for science and astronomy always was always there it just
it just took a while and some social maturity to uh uh uh uh to really light the fire and to
energize me and all it took was uh a total solar eclipse which is kind of ironic because you know you don't see
the sun but all of a sudden you're being i was energized by something that wasn't
there right um that you didn't see um and
courageous brave sometimes you know for me
i it was a spring 2020 and
covet was raging in manhattan and you know i was i sat down and meditated
and i was asking myself one of the most basic questions what do you want to do with your life
yeah and the answer was i love astronomy i love teaching i want to be under
i want to be out west in nature um on in new york i saw maybe 15 stars a
lot more stars on broadway or wannabe stars right and then i just decided okay um
[Music] i i'm going to regret this if i'm not
gonna try yes and uh so my friend guillermo from buenos aires
who is my eclipse spouse who i met at the solar eclipse in argentina in 2019 he's a graphic
designer so i asked him can you help design my my resume he said yes
so he sent me this this design draft of my resume and i saw it and i started
crying and i thought if i can't get a job with this resume because it was really creative i'm never going to get a
job so i applied of my first job at achara school in arizona as a science teacher
and on monday i sent in my resume on tuesday they called me back wednesday had a zoom interview thursday they
offered me the job as science teacher wonderful but it was biology for you know in high
school for teenagers and i wanted to focus on physics and astronomy and so i said no thank you and i kept looking and
then um there was this job at the cedar breaks national monument i applied and
my boss said matthias you are that crazy to move from new york
city to cedar city that's worth a shot so uh
you know i think um you might some some of the viewers might
have heard of the book the alchemist yes
if you really want something the universe conspires to help you i think i'm paraphrasing here
and the universe just guided me on this path
you know it that sounds a little bit esoteric and philosophical but um if there's something that you love doing
you know whether it's art or you know astronomy or science you know pick your
favorite hobby there you will find a way to make it work and you will never work
another day in your life i you know i love i love what i do and if i you know in in the winter when
there's not much not that many tours you know luckily i um you know i have dark skies so i took
uh an image of the andromeda nebula with my ed80 right
and uh it's wonderful you know is it a big change do i miss my friends in new york
i miss i miss sushi i'm in soccer um but
there will be new things to fill your life with and uh you know fear can be a powerful motivator
and as long as you recognize what that beyond behind the fear is also
excitement fear and excitement are cousins yeah
or or you know fear and courage are you know cousins that are under uh
uh supported by excitement so there are and within today's age with
the internet with education at the tip of your fingers um
and if you are open-minded if you ask people for help this is like hogwarts
right you know if you ask for help help you um it's um
the night sky is a a global commons that we need that we need to try to uh um
uh preserve uh uh for us as a species
and with all i see amazing pictures on instagram um
by people that all of a sudden have gone become more active in the hobby of
astrophotography and it is it is amazing how creative and how much energy people have
in pursuing their hobbies and hobby a hobby can become a profession
and you can make a living yes that's right it becomes a lifestyle
lifestyle style yes yeah a lot of people will ask me you know uh yeah so your hobby is
your job and i go well you know for me it's i i think it's more of a lifestyle you know and
uh the the transformation that you're talking about i've seen uh you know happen to many people to
different levels you know i mean for in your case i i felt it was very dramatic and
amazing and uh it really made me happy to see you go and do this because i knew
that um i knew that you had become you'd gone over the tipping point you
know especially after expressing your excitement over the eclipse that you saw
you know i mean matthias and i call each other on a semi-regular basis and and uh
share share our ideas and and i you know uh thoughts on things and
um you know i think that probably your program this uh you know stargazing zion
i think that what's happening is that you are creating kind of a transformative
environment using the night sky you know how powerful it is
okay to to you know kind of uh shed you know you do some
i i you know i've heard it termed ego loosening okay but when you get people
out under the night sky and you keep them up long enough okay and they're out there observing and they
and then someone says hey can i ask you a stupid question i know right then okay when when they
ask me that okay and if it's about astronomy i know that at that point that they they're
going through uh uh they're waking up okay and they are
um really starting to learn and explore and this can happen at any age i mean they could be
100 years old or they could be 15 or 10 okay but
this this kind of experience can happen and um uh at that point uh
for many that is that is the that tipping point sends them off on a journey that never stops you know so
um and so that's that's kind of uh when you join the if there's a fraternity of
astronomers that's that's kind of the induction right there so right
so that's that's wonderful and i'm glad to see that you have created this program and um
you know if there's anything i can do to support or promote uh your
your stargazing zion i'm happy to do that why don't you talk a little bit about the
people that you recruited you know and and what were you looking at in in your group uh
you know to you know are they would you did you hand pick these people or or was
it uh did they find you so the people that i uh um oops
that was unintended hey there we go
these fancy lights you know that you can control sometimes they just go to sleep on their
own yes um so last year i met these uh uh two
wonderful people hannah and adam that do a tubing business in zion where you basically go down the virgin river that
carved zion national park over a million years and
they were saying you know our clients come and ask what can you do at night and
design has wonderful dark skies so they were looking for somebody that is
interested in astronomy outreach and you know the universe guided me to them they found me i found them
and um and now this year in our second year uh there's uh um
the the demand is exceeding our expectations and we're looking to higher astronomy guides
so we're trying to uh recruit them from um you know local universities colleges
and kind of everywhere and we're looking for people that have uh you know physics or
astronomy background and the reason is because we
we want to be able to talk about the science
and not just have somebody you know talk about the constellations um and tell stories you know which is
essentially as well because storytelling has helped us to
grow as a as a species we're essentially social animals and the night sky has
been an important navigational tool and the calendar and um you know i i kid that when you
look at some of these constellations and their names that when the greeks came up with these names they probably had a lot
of wine to drink that night or salt right or something or something
wine or whatever they were drinking back then yes so you know when when we look at some of
these objects i think it's really um it's good to have
um somebody explain in basic terms the science behind something you know the
difference between a planetary nebula and an emission nebula and a supernova
remnant you know they're all called nebula and uh when we talk about the solar
system you know why the gas giants are so big and why the terrestrial planets are so small or
people always ask about black holes you know how black holes form
and it's you know when you are when you have a science degree of physics or astronomy
or or geology degree and have studied some planetary science
it is really a a distinction and a competitive advantage to have somebody explain in
most basic terms you know the science or how a telescope works yes and you know
people ask about the hubble space telescope people ask about the james webb space telescope and
um you know we want our audience to not just hear some you know cool and funny
stories but also at least have the opportunity to be exposed to the science behind sure
astronomy you know astronomy is arguably the oldest science and um
we have such a huge body of knowledge in astronomy that borrows from a lot of other
um other areas people always ask about aliens you know is there other life out
there and if you are a biologist or if you have taken a few astrobiology
courses then you can you know not just say you know i i tr
i'm german it's hard to if but you know even germans can have a sense of humor so
people people ask about aliens and i say you know there's a big sign outside by pluto
and that says you know don't visit the third rock from the sun at least not yet that's it
so you know you can talk about i say if you ask 50 astrobiologists about the
definition of life you get 100 different answers but then we just have discovered the fifth
thousand exoplanet right so we didn't know exoplanets yeah when we
were kids that was just they didn't know that there were planets out there it was science fiction exactly
right so uh i think it's you know in times where
or not just these times but any times where science can be abused
a lot of people claim to be scientists what i have discovered for
myself is that astronomy has been the most humblest of educations
with every kind of glimpse of an answer that i have about a topic i have a
hundred more questions and i am amazed by the speakers that you invite by the
knowledge of the guests that you have of the audience um it is fascinating i learn more from
other people just by listening and wondering
than anything else and i realize how little in fact i know about all these things but i love what i do and if i get
to share just a little bit of knowledge that i've acquired and have been exposed to maybe
you know this continues for people to have a different attitude towards science you know people say oh i
have a theory you know i always joke people say you know flatter our society
i say you know uh the earth is a sphere no matter what the flood or society says
you know people start to laugh and i say you know they're not stupid they're not stupid you know
they're just wrong the evidence is in an overwhelming fashion where earth is a sphere
and um they find ways to uh
to question your own sanity you know these are the questions that the normal person just doesn't have an answer as
far as they say if you look outside you know the horizon is flat you know that means the earth is flat right but
if you if math you say well if the circumference of the earth is 40
000 kilometer what you see here is such a small angular uh angular arc that it appears to be
flat but nevertheless i have i am in no position to say somebody is you know dumb or stupid i
i just you know we all are uh we all are of the same species and um
uh and uh sometimes it's just you know i don't call them conspiracy theories it's
a it's an opinion because a theory according to the scientific process is not an opinion so
it has been proven oh yeah real theories amongst real scientists are
it's like a meat grinder i mean there's oh my god yeah you know major scientists
have devoted their lives to crushing your theory you know if you if you can get to the theory stage so it just
starts out as maybe an idea then you develop a hypothesis and then
you know then you gotta have some experimental things to kind of support
something that might become a theory and then from then on out i mean einstein's theories are still being
scientists are trying to rip them apart you know if they can you have to prove einstein
wrong somehow but uh so far uh you know einstein's still batting a thousand so
you know so far in our cosmology class right now we're doing the special and general
theory of relativity and it has been proven over and over and over again i'm
working on a on a course for the for the fall for our astronomy club about the special and
general theory of relativity because it's uh it's really fascinating what
einstein came up with and his gedanken experiment his thought experiments
what would it look like if i am riding on a bicycle next to a beam of light you
know this is just mind-boggling this was 120 years ago of course he was working
as a patent clerk he had plenty of time to think to think things about these things yeah i don't want i
don't want to say patent clerics have a lot of time on their hand and what they do is not important it is
but he was just an incredible in an incredible genius the the thoughts that
he had and his ex his thought experiments with the with running trains and lightning
striking in the middle of the train and the mirror and detectors and clocks and
somebody an observer standing on a on a on a platform at rest and the
thing the theories that he came up with it is mind boggling still today i sit there and
scratch my head and think how can yeah right right
well well i'm glad you're doing what you're doing uh you're you are living
what a lot of people would kind of tongue-in-cheek say you're living the dream and uh you know i i know that um
i know that the passion that you have um you know the interest level that you have and the care that you take uh
really will change people's lives um sometimes i mean i've heard scientists
say this you know they go look the explaining the technical things or
you know the science is easy okay but inspiring someone
okay that's that's something totally different you know and so there are there are gifted educators
that do both uh you know and i think that that that's uh i think you're doing that so thank you i
i actually to give you an example how we inspire each other um
i was part of my job i was visiting uh elementary schools last year in in the
fall to hand out the fourth grade passes get kids in the
national parks and i was i had two major projects i was doing variable star observation and some
computational astrophysical problem with our supercomputer and
after i visited one of these classes this fourth grader this little girl
she wrote while i had my presentation she wrote a letter to me i'm just gonna
i'm just gonna read you the first few lines telling you that i get inspired too by
kids hopefully i'll be able to share some of my passions so
she was writing astronomy astronomy did you know that there are millions of
different universes and galaxies in space there are other spaces and there are
other solar system not just ours did you know that almost every planet in
our universe is named after a goddess i'm a master of science i can make about
anything and there is thousands of zodiac signs
i also have rocks that came from space some looked like they were melting
i like to learn something new every day i can make volcanoes
and the more black holes swallows stuff the more bigger it gets
i'm gonna start making science projects and taking pictures i love learning
about amazing things
wow that's great how old is she nine years old nine years old i had this as my
motivation to get through my semester so yeah we know each other that's you know
this is a circle right yeah like the auroboro um
so as long as we end up in the same place with a new perspective i think
going in circles is fine yeah sure well thank you very much thank you so
much for coming on mathias and sharing this with us and we'll have you on again um
and uh and learn more about uh stargazing zion i think it's going to mushroom here pretty soon so thank you
all right well good night thank you okay so maxie
uh it is your time and um
thank you for coming on uh and uh you said you had some new astrophotography
that you wanted to share yes i i was well hi everybody good night uh i was doing some pictures this
weekend uh yeah i have maybe almost all night long
and well there was pretty amazing night because there was
no wind the moon was coming up more later and also i could see
the conjunction of venus saturn mars and the moon and
well i i try to to stack and process my images
i i want to share my screen let me
here okay do you see it yes that awesome eclipse shot
thank you that this is one 2020 in the fourth a 14th
of december so basically i went to
three places uh they're almost been in carina region and centaurus region
here in the southern hemisphere i started with
taking pictures of the gabriela mr nebula
this is a single frame that i could take you can see here's the
netherlands practically and here's this a
a cluster of stars nearby and i was only almost one hour taking
pictures and well i tried to to process
stuck and i think i just finished these pictures
this is the results practically i turn the
let me i can see because of this menu here to put more
larger here's the the face of
uh like we say mario galena mithral or the senator palpatine from star wars
looking looking the size so [Music]
also in this place this is really awesome the topic of today was the reflections
and i want to talk about the lights of the reflections that produced by stars
in this case they are reflecting all this nebulosity and
because of them we can we are able to see a in our eyes or in this case with the
cameras all these colors and and shapes because
if this wasn't there uh there will all be black practically
so this is just finished pictures that i did
and another place that i went it was uh
to the ngc uh 3621
this is a a galaxy a also i think it's in centaurus
i couldn't finally process this but let me see if i if we can see it
here this is only a stacker of all the pictures
and i have to keep processing the colors
and the shape and gave it more focus but
focus looks nice to me yeah but to get a more of the convolutional in
the structure of the galaxy you can see the in the arms oh yeah the clouds is like a
blur so with they come with the convolution tool
you can get it more uh like a focus more details i said
you have to be careful because you don't want to mess up the entire
image so it's a a delicate process but here anyway
there's a lot of galaxies and for example there's one up here
this they are really really far away and also
well here's another one and and
i had to crop this image because one size of this a
stack it was messed up but in that part
there was like a a galaxy cluster it was really really good area but
this was taken here in my backyard in portland six seven skies
and anyway i for now i i'm still able to to
to getting pictures so the next object was um
was the almost taking pictures of the entire night almost i think was four hours maybe it
was 60 image at 33 minutes and uh
yeah three hours practically oh wow taking pictures of this area
also near in centaurus a constellation and this was a
one object that rodriguez showed was the last gsp in
in the star party that they once in chile and i i didn't know this object so i
tried to to get it from here and for example this is a
single shot of three minutes and
you can see is some kind of reflection yes this tiny galaxy
but yeah there's the only stars agile galaxy there
but what i could do in the
stack and process was this
no sorry this is was not it was
finish yeah i think this is one
well i have in even that portal and these three hours
i could give almost the shape
it looks more three-dimensional you know it's um for the background i try to be
a it has to be be careful to not screw it
but you can see also here we have the the
reflection of this this is our two stars you can see like an eight
they are really nearby one of each other
for example here's another one he was reflecting this place at the background
of this entire nebulosity and here's the
that little galaxy i i couldn't couldn't get much too much
details here but uh anyway i
the next weekend maybe we can go to alberti and
i i i think that we're going to take pictures of from this place again
for the entire night practically trying to get six hours less
to and of course with good darkness sky so maybe i can get more information and
details on all the nebulosity and the structures so
that's let's hope i can get it uh
so basically that's that's what i what i did this weekend
i beautiful i i have almost two weeks with well moonlights and
clouds wind cold weather hot weather
so now well i i had to to take advantage that
at night uh tonight it was night it's a clear again
but it's a lot of wind outside and it's really cold so
uh i i want to [Music] save my energy for the weekend
for the weekend for the so well
that's that's my little presentation for tonight i hope that you like it nice that's good
maxie i i know that you two are involved i think you were involved with uh trying to get a
uh an observatory um working again for the for public
outreach how is that going yes uh it's getting a
in this month i talked with what what you mean the the observatory of alberti
i think so yeah because you were showing the place where i where we're going to
to meet okay yes yes uh i talked with marcos uh i think yesterday because i i want to to
tell him that we want to be there this weekend he could not be able but
he told me that the the the
deconstruction and the restoration the of the first phase
is a going again working
and he thinks maybe the the next month or maybe in in the finale of may
it will be that part finish so they can start to
build the new observatory right now the first place is a practically
a restoration the restoration of the entire school
and to so people can go and have
this i don't know how to say be comfortable
there not you have bathroom you have what a cold and hot water and you you can get a
shower you can rest you can prepare some food maybe and also
they trying to get a internet connection because they
a wire is passing by in the street but
they they want to finish that part to start to do also um meetings with the
um with their students and and other schools from the
area uh and also do meetings of uh astronauts and
stargazing and also for people like us the astronaut amateur
astronomers and matter of photographers that wants to be with
some kind of good skies and be comfortable yes also you can go with with your
um i i don't know how to say it where are
you going to sleep in in a camp um yeah yeah and
i don't think yes you can
you can bring that and you can rest in there if you want
but the the the another way is to be more
comfortable and with a good weather with a width with a good um
temperature inside there yes rest it's not too cold you get you're warm you're
yeah you can eat something like you said take a shower these things these are all the things that you know
professional astronomers get to do when they go to the big observatories because most of them have like a place for the
astronomers to stay uh it is important uh i think for
amateur astronomers to try to get as comfortable as they can um because also if you are doing a or
you're driving a lot or maybe driving a lot you're up late at night uh
you know you might be a little dehydrated you know these kinds of things
if you go to where it's high and dry and um you know so and a lot of amateur astronomers kind of push the limits you
know um uh because they wow the sky's great and everything and then and you
forget it's a little dangerous to drive back home you know you're tired you're sleepy um these kinds of things so and
i've experienced that myself so it's uh um definitely these days you know when i
go to a stargazing event i have a trailer i bring it you know it's it's the best
accessory i can think of for an amateur astronomer because when i'm ready to go to sleep i walk
five steps go to my trailer and i fall asleep you know so and it's got a little kitchen and
bathroom and a little shower so it's it's perfect for someone like me um if i had a permanent facility that
would be even better you know so i'm glad that you guys are building that out
well maybe you can hear maybe some uh noises of the some animals some fidgets
or something like that in the middle of the night don't be scared but don't be scared
maybe you can wake up with a picture behind your your face or something yeah
yeah yeah i used to observe a lot in the deserts of california and there's a lot of
coyotes uh snakes um you know stuff like that out there oh our lasers we have uh
the legato avedo
how big is it it's it's big it's in it's more um
afraid of us that we are afraid from him but sure he
he appears at the uh at the day because he needs a heat but at night we
maybe we have um sorry no they are
pretty smelly yeah yeah yeah it's everywhere no skunks
skunks yeah yes for example
but not that romantic and well well we have a birds we have bats
we have the entire animal that they are in in rural places
and squares we don't have here no no we no squirrels
no but in duham they a maybe 20 years ago
some people put a bring to argentina squirrels
and they start to be everywhere they multiply oh yeah like crazy
yes the same thing in for example that today mathias say was in usual
they have a huge problems with um how the the the animal that's um
it's a wood and then
no no there it's like um
the beaver oh the the beaver is isn't bieber it's not
from this place i think so they this is a problem all over the world you
know because as people traveled on ships to the where they would bring animals thinking okay we need this or we'll
we'll bring some of these over here you have a out there in you have wolves
you have a coyotes you have bears we don't have those animals here so they
don't have predators only pumas that's all yeah just a puma
[Music] so yeah that's why they can multiply
and it's a huge a risk from the
the the the ecologist of here for example yes
right so well like we say um
the the observatory is uh starting again with the
with the reconstruction uh he he told me that when we went
when we go this week weekend we can see some kind of changes
maybe a couple months they we can do some barbecues because they will put some parisias so
if you go at the day or we prepare and then of course at the night they will go off because of the
smoke but we can we can do that
and like i said it's a thinking of trying to be comfortable
and and of course and the accent of all this
is for everyone it's free oh that's great that's
well the education here in argentina emotionally free and also the the the
healthcare it's free if you have some problem you can go to the hospital they will not
uh you don't have to pay of course this is has some
maybe differences between a private a hospital
or private sure yeah there's always specialists in private hospitals and stuff that for
people who want to pay for it you know or organizing for it but uh it's it's very nice that your country uh
supports um you know all citizens with free health care you know that's great
that's great yes exactly yep so there's there's uh uh you know
there's lots of thoughts and very political divides over in the
united states over these kinds of things but uh you know i have been in countries where
um uh healthcare is uh essentially free and uh it's just like one less worry
especially for older people so you know
and i would think that um you know in your in your senior years you know if you're
devoting yourself uh to you know lifestyle like astronomy you
know uh again that's just another thing that you don't have to worry that your money's going to be going to is
a lot of health care bills you know so yeah yeah
in this case the the the government supports you and that's why in the taxes and in the
in well it's supposed to be to go there
sometimes not sometimes i i don't know i'm not someone to to judge but you'll see
those things in the in the facts so uh well that's
that's how we are here from now yeah yeah yeah that's okay that's okay
well i i love you actually i love that fiction that's behind you that's a pretty good let's go to this telescope
yeah for planetary that that was very very good i think so yeah i'm anxious to
start looking through it so we get um uh arkansas we get uh two or three days of
nice weather and then you know thunderstorms or high winds or something
so you're gone but i i will get my chance here pretty soon well
you you if you wake up early you can try with venus maybe saturn i don't know jupiter is
really low now but near from the sun but also with the moon maybe with that scope
i think it is going to be is two inches of a
outside when you put the ocular or yeah it's a two-inch focuser yeah
and it has a has a flat field adapter right in front of the secondary so
uh-huh oh that's nice yes and um
uh you know it's uh six inches or eight inches it's an 8
inch f9 yes it's really good for galaxies yeah
i'll plan to enable that yeah also so that's that's good if the if the
it has that corrector it gets more flatter the the image
uh i have yet to actually examine critically examine uh astrophotographs
from it but i will be soon so yeah okay i'll let you know how it goes
excellent yeah but i'm very it's on my desk so i'm very interested in this
particular design myself so that's fine that's nice that's that's a huge lens
yeah so what hey okay so maxie what's on what's on your
horizon what's your well are you just going to image more this object you showed tonight just get some
more time in on it and then and then what do you have another object that you're
planning or what's your process like what do you how do you decide what you're going to
be imaging well basically i i use stellarium and sky safari to
to see what it depends of the the magnitude that says this softwares
and then i i put the configuration of my scope and my
size of the of the sensor to get how
is my field of view so maybe if i see a galaxy or
when you see that's a beautiful picture of hubble and
but when i go with my scope i see a really tiny or maybe they are really big
or maybe i have a medium size so i
i want i i want to to to
be prepared for what i'm going to take and also where is er if it's passing by through
my senate or maybe it's low to the south or maybe it's more to the northwest or
the east and uh for example the system galaxies that
i have i have the martinian chain and but they they are
maybe almost 40 degrees passing by i have almost
four hours but for taking good pictures maybe there too
so i had to be too many nights taking pictures of there so to get more info
so i i i always want to take pictures that that
objects that they that i have much too much time but
sometimes the the the feelings of oh i want to take this
picture because i i i put the scope to to capture
but i i start to see what what's what's another object passing by
and i say oh maybe this object i can see it so i want to take pictures to everything
and yes that's that's a big mistake because you don't concentrate in one object to to get more info so you can
process them with a much details
right so well i i hope this week
to continue taking pictures to this nebulosity and
like i said maybe six hours less with bored to three skies so
i think the info was going to be more more better than here in my city
and well i i love to take pictures of galaxies also
but i think maybe with my scope i
at the edge of what i want to get you know
and [Music] for example some galaxies you can get some really pretty good shapes
but in other ones they are a little blurry or
you you want to get more detail that's the
the i don't know how to say el vicio or vicious
that wants to get the next step and so well
this is my goal from now yeah well you're a great astrophotographer
and um you know i think that you'll reach all your goals so probably exceed them
uh you know when once you get astrophotographers they're the kind of people that you know once they hit a
level then they want to go they want to break through that you know so right yep
well thank you very much maxine thanks for coming on to global star party again and uh i see dan and matthias are still
back there so thanks very much guys and i want to thank the audience for um
being with us tonight uh the conversations turned towards uh
went from squirrels to them talking about microscopes so
i guess i'll have to break out some microscope uh you know some of my microbes and tardy
grades and stuff like that so and um it was a lot of fun today we had
really interesting talks by everyone uh um you know earlier our first in our
first section we had uh uh of course david levy and don knabb
from the astronomical league dave eicher from astronomy magazine john briggs
the newly appointed secretary of the uh alliance of historic observatories
was with us talking about louisville observatory in particular and then they brought on kevin schindler from lowell
um who's uh their public uh outreach officer over there uh kareem
professor kareem jaffer from john abbott college and the royal astronomical society of
canada was on with us uh very interesting uh young naven and his
uh and his special guest gave a uh you know powerhouse uh uh talk about
reflections really cool of course adrian bradley is sharing his nightscape astrophotography with us and then we
have marcelo souza with his students from the
young stars of tomorrow and um you know his uh projects that they conduct in
brazil uh it was very interesting to to know that they had created an app for
reporting uh details about variable stars so they could create light curves
and then dan higgins was on with afterworld tv he's as i mentioned he's still he's still back there in the zoom
room with us matia schmidt who's also still with us
talking about stargazing zion and the transformative experience of astronomy
um and then ending our program tonight right here with maxie so and his awesome
astrophotography so thank you very much um we'll be back uh next tuesday
for the 89th global star party and uh i look forward to it so maybe uh cesar
barello will be back with us by that time so okay all right thank you thank you very
much good night everyone you guys have a great night and uh good
rest until next tuesday where we'll keep you up late again so
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wow [Music]
you