The Best Objects To See In The Night Sky - Presented by Celestron - Cosmos Safari

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I was completely lost in the stars.
I couldn't find my own way, andthat experience, I thought, was
going to top everything, exceptfor just a few moments.
Later, I looked down at my feetand I saw my own shadow because

(00:22):
of the starlight and the MilkyWay.
Yeah, and to have a place that,that is, that dark, is not
necessary to see the Milky Way,but it's the best way to see the
Milky Way.
Welcome to the Cosmos Safaripodcast.
I'm your host, dave Farina, andin this podcast, we're going to

(00:44):
be talking all about the bestthings to see in the night sky.

Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'm getting excited about this one, of course,
because we love astronomy.
Right, we're going outside.
I'm looking forward to talkingabout the Milky Way, the moon,
the planets, some globularclusters and nebulae and
galaxies.
But before we do that, dave,are you ready for some trivia?
Always, let's do it.
Fantastic, let's get startedhere.

(01:09):
Okay, first one I think you'regoing to do well on this one.
Let's see.
Let's see if our audience isgood here too.
Which planets can we see withour naked eye?

Speaker 1 (01:23):
Okay, that's one that I really like, because the
first thing that you might see,the brightest one, of course, is
the planet Venus, and Venus is,you know, in the morning and in
the night Generally, you thinkabout that and of course you
also have Mercury as well, um,and then from there you've got
Mars, jupiter and Saturn, um,and then the other planets were

(01:49):
not discovered until we hadtelescopes.

Speaker 2 (01:52):
Right, Very good.
Ding ding ding.
You missed one, though.
What other planet can you seewith your naked eye?
Earth.
Yes, very good, just look down.
Uh, yeah, I.
I always love the fact when I'mtalking with the public, I love
the fact that the word planetcomes from planetes, or
something in Greek which iswanderer in the night sky.

(02:15):
Right, because they're the onlypoints of light other than the
sun and the moon, the onlypoints of light that actually
wander throughout theconstellations.
Right, right, it was justunique.
If you think about it, thereare only five things out there
that don't move, the same aseverything else, which is pretty
cool.

Speaker 1 (02:32):
And then, of course, the moon and sun, all of which
you know, of course, had theirown special places within.
You know ancient mythology.
You know they were seen as thisspecial thing in the night sky,
but they were also used as away to kind of tell the tales
and understand the world aroundthem.
So that oral tradition and theability to tell those stories

(02:56):
and pass the knowledge down tothe young ones was key and the
planets helped to tell thatstory.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Yes, yes.
Now one of the other things, infact the first one that I
mentioned.
So here is trivia.
Question two when was the firstscientific drawing of the Milky
Way drawn?
Bonus points if you say who.
Now, while you're thinking,I'll say I was looking stuff up
and I know that there are likeAboriginaloriginal Native

(03:27):
American drawings and such ofthe Milky Way.
So I don't want to discountthat, but I didn't go down that
rabbit hole.
So I'm wondering when was thefirst scientific drawing?

Speaker 1 (03:36):
of the Milky Way.
Now I'm going to say it's gotto predate the telescope.
Predate the telescope.
The Rodolphian tables, Ibelieve, were the last of the
non-telescopic mapping of thenight sky.
That would be Tycho Brahe.
So I'm stuck on this one.

(03:59):
I don't know, you're stuck.

Speaker 2 (04:01):
Now, assuming I did my research, well, I have.
The first attempt to describethe shape of the milky way and
position of the sun within.
It was carried out by williamherschel in 1785 right, the disc
, the disc shaped.

Speaker 1 (04:18):
I guess that was like on a loaded question.
I was thinking more along thelines of the milky way in sky,
but you're talking about theMilky Way as a galaxy.

Speaker 2 (04:26):
Yeah, my research was short on this one so perhaps I
should go in and dig a littledeeper, because there probably
were some sketches of what itlooked like in the sky and I
just looked up those Rudolphinetables.
I didn't get to read anything,but I looked them up.
We'll have to.
You know what.
I'll come back to this one andsee if we have an update next
time.
You know what?
I'll come back to this one andsee if we have an update next

(04:46):
time.
But yeah, it was then he, in1785, he carefully counted the
number of stars in the differentregions of the visible sky and
produced a diagram and it kindof just looks like a spider web
to me.
Actually, right, it's kind ofinteresting there.
But yeah, and the first one toactually show that it was

(05:06):
multiple stars and not like onething, that was Galileo.
You were pretty much right onthe button there, because he
looked through his telescope andhe's like oh, that's actually
just a bunch of little stars ora lot of stars put together.
What is the best way to makesure that clouds interrupt your

(05:30):
observing?
Is it A get a new telescopedelivered to your house, or B
make any sort of plan to gooutside at night?

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Well, I can attest to A that sometimes, you know, it
does feel like you get a newpiece of gear, you really want
to use it and of course theclouds get in the way.
That actually happened to merecently.
So I'm going to go with A, butB is a close second, especially

(05:58):
if you have to drive really far.
Oh yes, then it'll tempt you,it'll be kind of on the edge.
It won't quite tell you thatit's going to be clouded out,
it'll say, eh, partly cloudy,possible, or completely clear.
Right yeah.

Speaker 3 (06:14):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (06:14):
That sounds like every trip I've ever taken up to
Cherry Springs, our dark skysite here in Pennsylvania.
You're rolling the dice everysingle time Every time, rob and
Dave discuss how to observe theMilky Way, as well as planets.

Speaker 3 (06:29):
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(06:54):
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Speaker 2 (07:10):
All right.
So let's get into the night skyand what to look at, right?
And I figured I would start off, because I don't use telescopes
quite as often as you do.
So I wanted to get started realquick on something that anybody
can see if they're in the rightspot, and that's the Milky Way,

(07:31):
right, you know that stretch ofsky where it's just a little
bit white.
It looks like this, likemilkiness, that sort of spreads
across the sky, and what I foundis that if you're going to see
it, you have to have dark enoughskies, right, of course, now
where we live, or actually wheremy school is, is in.

(07:52):
If you look at the lightpollution map, like the most
common one that's online, we'rein the yellow category, and only
a couple of the nights wherewe've had star parties have we
actually really been able to seethe Milky Way.
But we were able to see it.
You just have to have a veryclear night, meaning no clouds,

(08:14):
but also meaning not muchmoisture either.
Right, right, transparency,yeah, like it could be a clear
night, but if there's a lot ofmoisture, or if the moon's up
and it's hitting that moistureas well, you're not going to see
the Milky Way.
So just a little tip go out, butgo out often and see if you can
see it.

Speaker 1 (08:33):
So an interesting thing about the Milky Way.
And then the word galaxy.
If you think about it, galacticthe lactic part of it would be
like milk, right?
So it's milk-like in itsstructure and we are living
within the milky way, one of thegalaxies of the universe.
So I always found thatinteresting, um I like that.

(08:56):
Yeah, speaking of the milky way,uh, I'm just kind of reflecting
, as you're talking about this,um, one of the first times that
I was ever able to, you know,get out and get to a dark sky
site Once again, our dark skysite here in Pennsylvania the
darkest place is in CherrySprings State Park in Potter
County, pennsylvania, and mybrother and I actually traveled

(09:17):
up there my first year ofteaching, so this would have
been back in like 2008.
And we were camping and I got upin the middle of the night and
I walked outside my tent and Ilooked up at the night sky and I
was just blown away.

(09:37):
The amount of stars that I wasable to see was more than I've
ever seen in my entire life.
And although I run aplanetarium, I was completely
lost in the stars.
I couldn't find my own way, andthat experience, um, I thought,

(10:00):
was going to top everything,except for just a few moments
later, I looked down at my feetand I saw my own shadow because
of the starlight and the milkyway.
Yeah, and to have a place thatthat is that dark, uh, is not

(10:22):
necessary to see the Milky Way,but it's the best way to see the
Milky Way.

Speaker 2 (10:27):
Yes, yes, it is.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
Absolutely.
Uh, just you know, if I, if Ijust thinking about it now, I
get chills up my back and it'sit's amazing that these places
still exist and I really, reallyhope that all of our guests
have an opportunity to get outand to get to one of these dark
sky places at some point,because it's so, so moving, and

(10:52):
especially, if we can get littlekids out there to see this
while they're you know, they'reyoung and interested I think
it'll change, you know, theirperspective on their, on their
cosmos.

Speaker 2 (11:02):
Yeah, I like to go whenever I go on a trip anywhere
else.
I like to look at the lightpollution maps online and I like
to see if there's anythingclose by right that might be
somewhat darker skies that I cango to.
You know, like you said, cherrySprings in Pennsylvania.
I've been to the Outer Banksand there's a wildlife refuge,
kind of like.
I think it's in the middlesomewhere.

(11:23):
That was pretty good, not thebest, you know, there's still
light pollution from Nags Headand stuff there, but at least
there was this spot where Icould get pretty decent shots of
the Milky Way.
And if you, you know, if you'retraveling just find those spots
and just spend like one nightthat's clear and guaranteed to
be clear Spend one night outthere.

(11:45):
And that brings me to my secondpart about the Milky Way, which
is actually getting pictures ofit.
Okay, that's my favorite thing,which is using a DSLR camera.
That's the way I do it.
I know that phones are gettingbetter.

Speaker 1 (12:00):
I was just going to say that, but as far as the
Milky Way goes.

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Still not as good as the DSLR in my opinion for the
Milky Way, but it is a veryquick shot With your phone.
I have.
In fact, when we were up atCherry Springs last time I got a
couple pictures of the MilkyWay with my phone.
I needed it on a tripod andsuch, but I could get pictures
of it.
But the DSLR does such a betterjob of taking those long

(12:24):
exposures.
But the DSLR does such a betterjob of taking those long
exposures and then you couldkick it up a notch by having it
actually track the motion of theMilky Way and so you can get a
longer exposure.
And then you can go down Dave'sroute, which is the expensive
both in time and money, which islike stacking the photos
together and actually likeworking in post-processing and

(12:44):
that sort of thing which can bereally awesome.
But I don't have the patiencefor that.

Speaker 1 (12:49):
Let's just back this up a few seconds, though.
Most people have a phone, and Iwant to encourage people to try
the phone, because it isactually pretty impressive what
they're capable of.
Now, as Rob said, you are goingto definitely want to have a
tripod of some sort, and Rob'sif you're watching this video

(13:12):
Rob's holding up a small tripodright now.

Speaker 2 (13:15):
Yep, he's got a little tripod with the phone
adapter.
It's nice.

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Right, they're relatively inexpensive for the
tripods and what that will allowfor is it will allow for that
stability that's needed to keepyou know the phone still.
What I would also suggest isuse like a timer or get there's
little remote controls you canget that will actually open the
shutter for you, but you canalways do like the countdown

(13:40):
timer.
That way you're not touchingthe phone when it's taking an
image, because as soon as youtouch the phone it will shake it
a little bit and that shakingcan make it difficult for the
image to be processed properlyby the phone.

Speaker 2 (13:54):
I've got a lot of them on mine.
That'll actually all I have todo is say smile, and it'll take
the picture.
So I see a weirdo going outthere in the middle of the night
saying smile, smile.
It might just be somebodytaking pictures of the Milky Way
.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
Right.
So the next thing is that youknow, a lot of these modern
phones are using internalstacking process.
That is very similar to what wewould be doing in the more high
tech as Rob was sayingastrophotography world, but it's
done automatically for you,astrophotography world, but it's

(14:28):
done automatically for you.
And so these 10, 15, 20, 30second exposures are being taken
by the phones and then they'reautomatically aligned and
stacked, which basically allthat means is you're trying to
increase the signal to noiseratio, so more of what is the
Milky Way and the stars isvisible, and less of the noise
of the camera sensor.
And it's pretty impressive andit's only going to get better

(14:52):
over time, right?
So the camera sensors of todayare light years ahead of where
they were just a few years ago,and in another few years they're
going to be even better, and soI really encourage you to get
out there, try it and just tryto do the best you can with the
equipment that you have yeah,experiment, that that's in fact.

Speaker 2 (15:12):
That's one of the reasons I loved the dslr when I
started doing this like 20 yearsago is it was a digital camera
and I got like instant resultsright away, uh, which was just
uh.
It was motivating because Icould experiment and mess around
.
I didn't have to have film andwait a week to get it processed
and all that, so it was prettynice.

(15:32):
Now the Milky Way is great, butwe have another object up there
that is not always up in thesky, but at least that we can
see, but it is really easy tofind.
What would you say is theeasiest object to find up there?
Of course, the moon, exactly.
So, in fact, I was justobserving the moon the other

(15:53):
night in the telescope that youlent me, and the really cool
thing about finding the moon iswell, hey, you don't actually
need a telescope, like, you canactually look at it and have fun
observing it without atelescope.
All right.
In fact, one of the things Ilike to have my students do is
actually track what the moonlooks like every night for a

(16:16):
month and you start reallygetting a sense.
For how does the moon movethroughout the month?
How does the angle between thesun and the moon.
How does that change what we'reseeing?
And it gives you a much betterfeel for how everything around
you, those celestial mechanics,and how that's really working
out.
So you don't even need atelescope to observe the moon,

(16:37):
but it is pretty cool to have.

Speaker 1 (16:40):
Yeah, you can watch the phases and you can also
watch the position.
You know, if you were to go outat the same time each night for
multiple nights.
That's key right To keepsomething in any scientific
experiment.
You want to keep everything, asmany things as you can the same
, and change only one variable,and that would be the day you're
observing observing.
So if it's the same time eachnight, multiple nights after

(17:04):
each other, you'll actuallystart to see how it also moves
through the sky.
And I would suggest kind ofusing the background stars as a
reference, right, because thenyou can start to see like, wow,
it moved by you know the widthof my fist, you know from night
to night or a little bit greaterthan that.
And, as Rob said, you start toget that understanding of the

(17:29):
dynamics of how things movethrough the sky and what you'll
notice is is that the moon isactually moving backward against
the sky compared to the motionof everything else.
It's moving retrograde comparedto everything else, which just
simply means it's movingbackward.
So if the sky is turning infrom rising in the east to

(17:50):
setting in the west, the moondoes do that, along with the
stars, on a nightly basis.
But if you look at it over thecourse of an entire month, it's
actually moving from westtowards east.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:03):
In fact, you can even see it.
If it's close to a planet andyou look at it, like right at
sunset, and then you look at itagain in the morning, if it's a
full moon, you look at it againin the morning, you can see it's
actually changed its positionrelative to that planet as well,
which is pretty neat.
Now, but here's what I see somepeople do.
Here's what I see some peopledo some people being me

(18:24):
sometimes is they go out to golook at the moon through their
telescope and they take out thatbig telescope and they put an
eyepiece in, they aim it andthey look in, oh, and they
almost go blind.
Right, right, because the moonis bright, right, it's super
bright, exactly, but there are,and a lot of the telescopes come
with this.
I have a couple tips for doingthat, because also, like if

(18:47):
you're out and you're trying todo meteor showers or something,
but there's a crescent moon thatyou want to look at and you
don't want to damage your nightvision a lot of the lens caps on
these telescopes have and a lotof people don't realize this,
but they have like another capover a circle within that lens
cap.
That's the point of that.
You put the big lens cap on butyou take the little one off, so

(19:10):
it allows enough light for themoon to be bright, but not
blindingly bright.
Sure, yeah, I like that.
And then I also like I boughtthese filters.
It's actually one filter, butit's two that are attached.
What they are is they'repolarized filters, so as you

(19:31):
spin them, it lets more or lessof the light through.
In fact, if you have themperfectly perpendicular, none of
the light gets through at all,and then you just back off a
little bit and then you can look, even with high magnification,
and it's not super duper bright,you're not killing your eyes as
you're looking right a variablepolarizer.

Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yes, that's what that's called.
So, and they do make dedicatedmoon filters as well, um, so
they would screw onto theeyepiece and keep once again the
light levels down.
So if your telescope does nothave one of those smaller holes
in the dust cap, you can get amoon filter that will do
effectively the same thing.

(20:10):
Now, one of the things I wantto kind of point out with the
moon is that the observing timethat you go out does make a
difference, and I'm not justtalking about night, like at
what time of day, but actuallywhat time of the month.
So if you're going out on afull moon, that actually is not

(20:34):
the best time to view it, agreed, because you're getting the
light shining down into thecraters and, as a result, you
lose a lot of the detail, thecontrast, all the shadows are
gone.
If you go out during the firstquarter moon or the third
quarter moon, or any of thecrescent phases for that matter,

(20:56):
you have the light coming infrom the side and, as a result
of that, it creates shadows andall of those craters, as a
result, are put into a muchhigher contrast compared to the
background of the bright surface, and that's when you get the

(21:17):
best possible views of thecraters, and that changes on a
nightly basis.
So, for example, if you'relooking at the Copernicus crater
one night, by the next night itmight not look as good, or it
might look better.
And the craters adjacent to itthat didn't look as good the
night before, now they lookbetter.
And so it's always surprising tome, when I look at the moon,

(21:44):
the differences that I see fromtime to time.
It never gets old, it reallydoesn't.
And when you're looking at themoon, in some of the bigger
craters you can even see acentral peak inside the craters,
which you know.
The amount of energy necessaryto cause that to occur just

(22:07):
blows my mind.
Effectively, what's happeningis you've got the impactor of uh
, you know, an asteroid or cometor whatever hitting the surface
of the moon.
You know, many billions ofyears ago, during what was
called the heavy bombardment, uh, which occurred because Jupiter
was actually in motion in oursolar system at that point in
earth's um, I should say in thesolar system's history, uh, but

(22:32):
what was happening is thisimmense amount of bombardment of
the moon and other planets aswell, and those craters are so
large that, when they occurred,the fracturing of the rock
actually kind of slips down andcreates this central peak which

(22:53):
man, it's just, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (22:56):
It's an awesome power .

Speaker 1 (22:58):
It's almost like a water droplet when you throw a
rock into a pond and you getthat splash, that initial splash
, going out, but then the watersloshes back in and pops out the
top again.

Speaker 2 (23:12):
That's what it reminds me of.

Speaker 1 (23:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (23:16):
It's pretty awesome.
You can also.
I know there's different.
I know there's an X on the moonthat you can look for.
It has to be in a certain phaseand I know if it were me and I
was about to like learn moreabout the moon, I would go and
look, for it doesn't even haveto be a book, but get some
diagrams of what little spots onthe moon are and the different

(23:38):
interesting things to look at.
And no, you won't be able to seeapollo 11.
You won't be able to see any ofthat with your telescope.
So don't worry about that.
That.
You know it's just not going tohappen.
We have the LunarReconnaissance Orbiter for that.
But, and also, if you've seenthose videos of something
hitting the moon and exploding,right, yeah, that didn't happen.

(24:00):
We would be on here talkingabout that for like days if that
ever happened.
But yeah, and you can also seelike the smooth parts are also
really cool the maria, where atsome point in the past, lava
came up from underneath and sortof laid out and laid flat, and
we call them maria or oceans,even though there's no actual

(24:21):
water, but it is the flattestpart where it would be like an
ocean.

Speaker 1 (24:27):
Like marine, like a marine environment, maria Yep,
and that's because they, youknow, initially people looked up
to the moon and they saw thedifferent coloration and they
assumed incorrectly that it were.
You know, it would be likeEarth and that it was an ocean
on the surface, like the Sea ofTranquility, for example, where

(24:49):
the first moon landing occurred.
Next up, dave checks out theSkymaster Pro ED binoculars in
this upcoming InFocus productspotlight.
I think a combination of the7x50s to, you know, initially
scan through the sky and you'llhave that wider field of view

(25:09):
and if you find something thatyou notice, you're interested in
, that's when you can jump uphere to the 15x70 or the 20x80
to look more closely.
But the scanning of the skyitself, these 7x50s are my
favorite.
I laid on my back the othernight I scanned through the sky
and I looked at, you know,patches of stars.

(25:30):
I found some satellites that Iwas able to actually track,
along with with the binoculars,which is awesome.
So the first thing you need tothink about when you're outside
under the sky is what is it thatyou're wanting to look for Now?

(25:51):
The obvious thing in the sky,of course, right now is the moon
.
Right, I thought it would beimportant to discuss how the
different sizes of binocular aregoing to give you different
views.
I'm not going to be veryquantitative about it.
I'm going to be veryqualitative.
I'm going to describe thingshow they look to me and it's my
opinions about things.

(26:12):
Not necessarily any kind ofhard facts here, but I've been
doing this a very long time andI have a good understanding of
what looks good.
So I'll do my best to try togive you a sense of scale as
well as detail.
So the first ones are the 7x50s.
Now the first thing to do, ofcourse, is to get it in focus,

(26:34):
but that's easier said than done, right?
So holding my hand over the onefor my left eye, I can get that
in focus.
And then I'm going to hold myhand over my left binocular and
I can change the diopter.
Oh, that's smooth.
So they have this thing righthere.

(26:54):
Okay, you'll notice that thatis the dial for the diopter and
it makes it so that this issuper tactile when you're out
here, that you can look at thisdial and Try to figure it out
under, you know, dark skies witha normal binocular, or you can
just feel it with this one.
So I really like that.

(27:15):
Also, don't forget that thesecups do come out, and Because
those cups come out and this isthe same on all three of these
Skymaster Pro ED binocularsFirst thing, once again, is to
focus your left eye using thebig dial, and then there's the
diopter, and that diopter helpsyou to get the other eye in

(27:38):
focus, because yourprescriptions are not identical.
And, by the way, if you wearglasses, like I do, you do not
need to wear them with yourbinocular, unless you have an
astigmatism, okay, and if youhave an astigmatism, I recommend
using the glasses, and thesework fine.
I prefer them because I do havean astigmatism.
For me, I can look through myglasses in here, I can basically

(27:58):
dial the cups down and they dostop at different levels, and so
I can get the exact level thatworks best for me.
And once I've got that in thebinocular, unless somebody else
uses it, it'll just stay there.
It's rock solid.
I really like it.
They're really nice in thehands.
For the ones that are the 7x50s,another thing I want to remind
you about is why you're, youknow, tending to hold it here,

(28:22):
because that's where the gripsare.
Naturally, I prefer to hold thebinoculars out a little bit
farther and rest them on thebridge of my nose because it
stabilizes them quite a bit moreand you can bring your arms in
and towards your chest and evenhold your breath if you want to
stabilize yourself a little more.
But that's about the extent ofit.
At that point, you know, withthe 7x50s I'm having to do that.

(28:43):
Or the extent of it.
At that point, you know, withthe 7x50s I'm having to do that.
Or the 15x70s or the 20x80s.
The magnification on these isso great you absolutely want to
have them on a tripod.
In looking through these, the15x70s are very interesting
because from the 7x50s to the15x70s, that extra boost in

(29:05):
magnification allows me to seethe details on the moon
significantly better.
Now the drawback of having tohave a tripod actually turns out
to be a really nice feature,because when you're looking at
the moon here, any little shakeswith this, when you're looking
at the moon here, any littleshakes with this, you are going
to see.

(29:25):
And so I had been holding on tothe tripod while I was trying
to use it.
Bad idea, okay, hands off.
After you get it in focus,don't touch it.
Try to stay just enough off ofit noticed that I was kind of
surprised by is how the moon ina binocular because it's a

(29:47):
binocular is not upside downinverted like you would see in a
telescope.
And so from someone who iscoming from more of a telescope
background, I'm used to havingto explain about how the moon is
flipped upside down so I cansee how for someone who is just
getting started in astronomydown, so I can see how for
someone who is just gettingstarted in astronomy, that can
be very difficult.
By having the binocular as yourmain observing tool for the

(30:09):
moon, you're actually getting agood amount of detail.
The brightness levels are themain thing that I see when I go
over here to the 20 by eighties.
Okay, so the level of uh, thelight that's coming into this
one is enough that you'regetting this contrastiness that

(30:33):
you don't get with the other one.
So one of the other things thatI really like about the tripods
is that they have, like manytripods do, the ability to hang
some things off of them, andthat gives them the added
stability that you would desirewhen you have something like a
big pair of binoculars at thevery top of them.
For now I am just kind ofhanging the 7x50s off of this in
the bag, and I'm also hangingoff of this one, the Ultima 80,

(31:00):
which is a daytime spottingscope that you would use for
birding or something.
So I've got the 20 by 80 hereand I've got the 15 by 70 over
here, and now we're looking atthe part of the sky that is
opposite of the moon and so wecan see there's a difference.
But unfortunately, at the farmthis is in the direction of the

(31:22):
most city lights.
So I do have a dome at, if youcan see it there, probably a
dome of city lights from mylocal town.
This direction tends to be themost clear and that's where the
moon is right now.
Looking up here, I can find somepretty bright stars and you

(31:45):
know you might want to use thisto look at the different colors
of the different stars.
There are star clusters, suchas globular clusters, that you
might want to look at.
There are open clusters ofstars that you might want to
look at.
The stellar objects are usuallypretty easily seen in
binoculars because they'repinpoints of light.
Some nebulae are visible, butit becomes more difficult

(32:10):
because the actual photons arespread out as opposed to being
like a star is where they're allconcentrated.
So be careful when you'relooking at the magnitude scale
of nebulae.
The same thing can go forgalaxies.
Some of them are visible in thebinocular.
They're sufficiently bright.
Their surface brightness acrossthe entire galaxy is very large

(32:30):
.
But there are many of them thatyou won't see With either of
these.
I don't actually like to lookfor these objects with these
types of binoculars right away.
Here's where having thedifferent ones right away,
here's where having thedifferent ones is kind of like
when you have differenteyepieces.
I actually don't like juststarting with either of these

(32:52):
two pairs of binoculars.
I think a combination of the7x50s to you know, initially
scan through the sky and you'llhave that wider field of view
and if you find something thatyou notice you're interested in,
that's when you can jump uphere to the 15 by 70 or the 20
by 80 to look more closely.

(33:13):
But the scanning of the skyitself, these 7 by 50s are my
favorite.
I laid on my back the othernight.
I scanned through the sky and Ilooked at patches of know,
patches of stars.
I found some satellites that Iwas able to actually track,
along with with the binoculars,which is awesome.
You're not going to see detailon those objects, but the

(33:35):
International Space Station youmight have a chance, the smaller
satellites not so much.
I am looking at Antares rightnow with the 7x50s, and the
color of this star, thisorangish color, is so, so
different from all of the otherstars that are around it.

(33:57):
The temperature of the star iswhy it's the different color.
So that's actually indicatingthat Antares is cooler than the
surrounding more blue coloredstars or white colored stars.
The other one that is out rightnow is actually right up above

(34:18):
me there in that direction andthat is the Big Dipper asterism.
And that is the Big Dipperasterism and it goes the arc to
arcturus.
And if I'm looking at that oneand I'm getting that very
different hue, that differentcolor that you would have seen
compared to the other stars inthe sky, very distinct, I can
also pinpoint some doubles.

(34:40):
So some doubles to look at wouldbe like Mizar and Alcor in the
handle of the Big Dipper.
It's kind of cool.
You can split the Mizar andAlcor with your eyes, but here
in the binoculars it's just somuch better.
It's such a great little doubleand you'll notice that when,
upon zooming in, that it'sactually not just one set of

(35:10):
stars.
It's two sets of stars or fourtotal, two binary systems
sitting right next to oneanother.
In fact, I believe one of thoseis a spectroscopic binary,
where one of those stars is notvisibly able to be seen as
different, but throughspectroscopy we can detect that
there is a second star that'sorbiting very, very closely to
the other one.
So that's spectroscopic binary,not visible even through

(35:33):
telescopes.
I like both of them all.
Right, that's definitely thecase.
In fact I like all three ofthem.
It's just that they havedifferent uses.
So what else could we be usingthese for?
Well, tonight we've got themoon shining very bright, and so
I'm finding it difficult tolook at anything else, even
through the telescope.
It is kind of a problem to havethe moon in the sky like this.

(35:58):
So what I'm planning to do isgoing to bed and then later on
tonight getting up once the moonhas set, and that way I can
observe when it's darker outside, because not of the actual
amount of sunlight, but it's themoonlight that we're contesting
with.
So I'm going to wait a fewhours.
It moves approximately onewidth of your fist every hour.

(36:21):
It's about degrees.
Your fist is approximately 10.
So here we go.
We've got one hour, two hours,three hours, and it's going to
be over there in the woodsanother half an hour or so it'll
be below the horizon and ourskies are going to get
significantly darker.
Now, if you're dealing withlight polluted skies, do your

(36:42):
best, best to get portable, andwhat better way to do that than
using binoculars right, so I canthrow this back into my car.
In fact, both of these tripodsalso come with cases.
Each of these they come withtheir own case, so we've got the
one here.
For the small seven by fifties,the binoculars fit right in and
this makes for a really niceportable way.

(37:05):
You've got this and your tripodif you've got one of the bigger
ones, and the bags are superdurable keeps everything in
place.
Don't forget, if you're gettingthe 7x50s or the 15x70s, that
you're going to need to get thetripod adapter, whereas the 20
by 80 comes with the tripodadapter built into it, so you

(37:30):
don't need it for that one.
But that's such a great way toget portable and get out to
those clear, dark skies.
Thanks a lot and keep lookingup.

Speaker 2 (37:41):
The moon's great.
What about those wanderers,though?
Right, we've got thosenaked-eye planets which we
talked about in the trivia.
We've got Mercury, venus, mars,jupiter and Saturn Now with the
naked eye.
These are still really cool tosee with the naked eye.
The telescope's even better,but with the naked eye, venus

(38:04):
telescope's even better, butwith the naked eye, venus is
super duper bright.
Venus is typically either in theit's either an evening star or
a morning star, because, if youthink about it in our orbit, the
Earth is on the outside, venusis on the inside track, so it's
going to be close to the sun.
Same thing with Mercury, butMercury is dimmer and it spends

(38:27):
its time closer to the sun.
So that's also a sunrise andsunset planet and it's usually
closer to the sun.
So it's typically harder tofind and it's a little bit
dimmer.
But I like, I really like Venusbecause of its brightness and
if you do have a telescope,venus because of its brightness

(38:48):
and if you do have a telescopeyou can see it go through its
crescent half and gibbous phasesas well, which is really neat.
Mercury not quite as cool, butI love the fact that I can catch
it if I have a really good viewof the horizon and I'm looking
at the right time.
Right, yep.

Speaker 1 (39:07):
Now one of the things that I know that you like
because I've seen, you knowpictures of it and I, for many
years, just driving into work,would catch myself, maybe
looking up at the sky, while Ishould be mostly driving is when
you have a conjunction.

Speaker 2 (39:27):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (39:27):
Right when you have the moon and a planet, or maybe
two planets or more than thatall together into very close
proximity to one another in thesky, and over the course of the
last few years we've had anumber of really, really good
conjunctions and I was fortunateenough to go out and view some

(39:48):
of them, especially when you geta very thin crescent moon and
venus, it just it looks magical,almost like.
It looks like something youwould see in like a movie um it.
It catches people's attentionthat aren't normally looking up.
So if you've ever seen that, ifyou've ever noticed know the
moon and a bright star-likeobject in the sky, you probably

(40:12):
have seen a conjunction.
And now, while I say the wordstar-like, one thing to consider
is how would you know if you'relooking at a planet naked eye,
if you're looking at a planet?

Speaker 2 (40:22):
naked eye.
So what I've heard and I cansay this is kind of true is that
the planets don't twinkle.
Right Stars twinkle and planetsdon't.

Speaker 1 (40:35):
Twinkle, twinkle little star is due to a
atmospheric effect calledscintillation, right.
So we've got the like.
On a hot summer day you wouldsee the.
You know what would be likeheat waves off of asphalt, right
the refractive index of theactual air, the way the light

(40:55):
passes through the air, hasalmost like a lens-like property
, and when you have differencesin temperature you can bend the
light in different ways.
And so stars, their light iscoming from a point source
that's very, very far away, andas that light's passing through
the atmosphere, the atmosphericturbulence causes the light to

(41:20):
shift back and forth, just likethat heat wave effect you're
seeing on that hot summer day onthe asphalt.
Now, because it's coming from asingle point source, you're
getting a stream of photons fromone spot in the sky.
Even if we look at it through atelescope, even the Hubble
Space Telescope, you're stillseeing a single point of light.

(41:42):
The planets, however, they havea width to them, an angular
size, and as a result of that,it does not show up as much.
That scintillation effect, thattwinkling effect, doesn't
appear as great as it would fora star because of that width.

(42:04):
Appear as great as it would fora star because of that width
right.
There's not a stream of photonscoming in at one spot, it's got
some width to it and that kindof cancels out some of that
effect.
So stars twinkle and planetsdon't.

Speaker 2 (42:16):
Excellent.
Yes, you are correct.
I kind of think of it as theplanets are a little more.
They're not quite as pinpointto me and they just look a
little duller, if you will.
Comparatively, I also find thatthe planets are typically
brighter than the surroundingstars.
It's pretty typical thatthey're brighter than all the

(42:38):
stars around it.
I said that Mercury and Venus,the strategy is morning or
evening, no later than, I think,two hours before or after the
sunsets arises.
But with Jupiter and Saturn andMars they're usually up there
in a position in the sky andthey're up there and slowly

(43:01):
moving across the sky over likea six month time period there
and slowly moving across the skyover like a six month time
period.
So the thing is, is thatusually with Venus or Mercury
you kind of got to get out atlike a certain day or week,
whereas or month you know, we'vehad a time where Venus was out
for like nine months in a rowaround sunset.
But the bigger planets Jupiter,saturn and also Mars they tend

(43:24):
to stay in a part of aconstellation.
It travels through it, but itstays kind of in the same area
for the most part andconstellations are up there for
about nine months total,depending on the time of day
that you're looking.
So you kind of get a littlemore wiggle room with the outer
planets than you do with theinner planet.

Speaker 1 (43:45):
So the reason why you're seeing Venus and Mercury
near the sun, think about ittheir orbits are inside of the
orbit of Earth's orbit, and sothey have to be closer to the
sun in the sky at all times,whereas the outer planets,

(44:07):
planets beyond our Earth's orbit, which does include Mars as
well all of their orbits aresuperior, they're beyond Earth's
orbit and, as a result, theywill appear to move through the
night sky, as Rob was saying,through the constellations of
the zodiac right.
So the zodiac constellationsthere are actually 13 of them.

(44:31):
Ophiuchus is oftentimes leftout, but those zodiac
constellations, the importanceof them from like an astronomy
standpoint, is that that's wherethe sun and the planets and the
moon all pass through, and sowhen we're talking about a
planet being within aconstellation, what we mean is

(44:54):
that, from our perspective hereon Earth, that when we look
towards that planet, we'reseeing a constellation in the
background and that changes asthat planet moves throughout its
orbit.
And some of the orbits forthese outer planets take many,
many times longer than an Earthyear, and so they don't appear

(45:17):
to move as much as you gofarther and farther and farther
out.
In fact, some of the planets,as we go farther out are like an
entire human lifespan, and soyou're talking about orbits now
that take, you know, 80 years orsomething right to occur as we

(45:37):
go out to, like Neptune andbeyond, and you know, as a
result, and beyond, and you know.

Speaker 2 (45:48):
As a result, they won't move as much as the ones
that are closer.
Let's say I want to actuallylook at one of these planets
through a telescope.
Now what I've heard is thatrefractors are better for
looking at planets.
All right.
So let's say I actually want toget a close-up view, right,
like I want to see Saturn'srings, I want to see the moons

(46:11):
of Jupiter, I want to seeVenus's phases.
Now I've heard that refractorsright, the telescopes with the
lenses on the front are betterfor planets, whereas the
reflectors, the mirrored onesthat you can get bigger
apertures for cheaper, are goodfor the deep sky objects.

(46:32):
But I remember you telling methat that's not necessarily true
.
Can you tell me a little bitmore about that?
Because I have looked throughrefractors at Saturn and it's
pretty nice it really depends,right?

Speaker 1 (46:47):
so there are benefits and drawbacks to all of the
different telescopes designs,and that's why there are so many
different telescope designs.
Now, refractors, the ones thathave lenses without mirrors,
those are the ones that a lot ofpeople think of when they think
of a telescope.

(47:07):
Right, they're the ones thatGalileo, uh, was using, um, and
you know, if you ask somebody todraw a telescope, that's what
they're going to.
they're going to draw, or youask AI to draw me a telescope,
they're going to give you thatkind of Exactly, exactly Now
they, they can be very good forplanets, but if they are not
well-corrected and what I meanby well-corrected is that they

(47:30):
have optics that are very basicthey can introduce
color-fringing chromaticaberration, where you'll see
kind of a rainbow-y effect.
So, um, the planets, becausethey're bright, have a tendency
of kind of exacerbating that.
So when you're looking througha refractor at a planet, if you

(47:55):
see anything like that, that'spossibly what you're observing
Now.
Reflectors don't have thateffect, but they also, um, can
suffer from some other types ofthings that are other
aberrations, like sphericalaberration, and when you're
looking at a planet, the detailthat you can get with a

(48:19):
refractor is more difficult toachieve with the reflector, is
more difficult to achieve withthe reflector, but you don't get
any effect of chromaticaberration now, which, as we
discussed in a previous episode,that was kind of the whole
point of Isaac Newton's designof the first reflector is to get
rid of that problem ofchromatic aberration.

(48:39):
And so the reality is that anyof these telescopes are good for
observing, and it reallydepends on a lot of factors that
it's very difficult to say, andI think everybody wants their
own telescope to be the bestright.

(49:00):
There's lots of different appsout there that you can use and
pull up.
You know what these things,these objects, will look like.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Yeah, I have never really lucked out with looking
at Mars.
Now that's probably more due tome not being very well, but
when I have looked at Marsthrough a telescope it was not
during opposition and it waskind of disappointing because it
was just a little red dot Rightnow, luckily.
I just looked it up it lookslike we have the next opposition
of Mars is January 16th of 2025.

(49:33):
Ok, so if you've got atelescope and you want to start
looking at Mars, you know, startgetting ready, start getting
used to using that telescope,and then January is going to be
a real good time to check outMars.

Speaker 1 (49:46):
I think even better than that is.
As soon as Mars is visible,start viewing it now, right.
View it as it's coming towardsus and you'll start to see the
change in angular size.
It'll get bigger and bigger andbigger and bigger and bigger
and bigger.
Then it'll get to oppositionand then it'll get smaller and
smaller and smaller and smallerRight.

(50:08):
So these actually coordinatevery closely, by the way, with
the launch windows to Mars.
If we're trying to ever go therewith a Mars mission, because
you're going to try to launchright before it gets to
opposition, let it kind of playcatch up with the Earth and then
you know, you get yourspacecraft, you know, there

(50:29):
around that same time.
So this kind of oppositionthing is going to be coinciding
with possibly future Marsmissions and I cannot wait.
I hope I see it in my lifetimewhen I can look at Mars and know
that there is someone out therewalking on it.
That's going to be cool.
That is going to be cool in mylifetime when I can look at Mars
and know that there is someoneout there walking on it.
That's going to be cool.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
So, it is going to be , will we?

Speaker 3 (50:50):
see them.

Speaker 1 (50:50):
No but, will it be pretty cool to know that I have
them within the view of my, uh,my field of view of the
telescope.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
Yes, just like when, man, whenever the ISS goes over,
I go, man, there's six peoplejust flying right over me right
now, like that's a cool feeling.

Speaker 1 (51:06):
Right, we're going back to the moon, you know, and
that's going to be a similarexperience.
I know, of course, some peoplehave had that experience, you
know that are a little olderthan us, but that's something
that I've always wanted to beable to experience is knowing
that I'm looking at the moon andthat somebody's out there right
now walking on it.
That'd be so awesome.

(51:27):
That's going to be happeningagain very shortly.

Speaker 2 (51:30):
Hopefully.
So let's move to the other twoplanets that are really cool to
see Jupiter and Saturn.
So these are again outside ofearth's orbit, so they stay
generally inside a constellationpretty much.
Now Jupiter my biggest thingsare usually the moons, which you

(51:52):
can see in any telescope.
You can see in a pair ofbinoculars, you can see in one
of those you know do-it-yourselftelescopes.
If you have it steady enough,you can see the four Galilean
moons.
Quick quiz what are the fourGalilean moons Go?

Speaker 1 (52:11):
Io Callisto, europa and Ganymede, ooh, you're quick,
nicely done.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
I always miss one of them, and it's never the same
one.
It's always a different oneevery single time.
But yeah, so those were thefour moons that Galileo saw with
his first telescope, and Ithink there are some rumors that
some people, I think in ancientChina, could actually see the

(52:36):
moons of Jupiter with theirnaked eye, like they held a
piece of grass up or something.
I don't know.
I might just be rememberingsome weird stuff, but, um, you,
all you need is a pair ofbinoculars.
Make it nice and steady and youcan see those.
And the cool thing too, is thatthey move throughout the night.
So if you go out in thebeginning of the night and then

(52:58):
you go out early in the morning,you can actually see how
they've shifted, which is prettycool.

Speaker 1 (53:04):
Right and if you're out at just the right time.
Once again, I would suggestusing one of the apps out there
to try to find out when thesethings will occur.
You can have transits where themoons will actually pass in
front of Jupiter, and if youknow what to look for and where
to look, you can even see theshadow of the moon being cast

(53:27):
onto the surface of the planet.
That's pretty amazing to see.
I've seen it a few times.
And also we have occultationswhen it's passing behind Jupiter
as well, and that's somethingthat is pretty neat, especially
if you're watching as it becomesocculted when the actual event

(53:48):
occurs, because it'll just kindof like fade out and be gone and
you're basically seeing aneclipse right of jovian moons,
right like that.

Speaker 2 (54:00):
That's pretty cool.
You're seeing when, when thetransit goes and the shadows
going across j Jupiter, you'reseeing what a total solar
eclipse looks like on Jupiter,which is just really cool.
And then, of course, jupiterhas those cloud bands right,
little stripes, essentially.

Speaker 1 (54:17):
Zones and belts.
What's that?
They're called zones and belts,zones and belts, yep, and the
ones that are kind of thebrighter ones, they're actually
at a higher altitude in theatmosphere and the ones that are
darker are actually deeper intothe atmosphere.
So if you are observing thatand you're looking at those

(54:38):
stripe patterns, you canactually imagine now the
three-dimensional aspects ofthat as well, which I always
thought was pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (54:48):
And it's got that great red spot which is like
three Earths big, and itdisappeared for a couple years
in the past right, and then itsomehow reappeared.

Speaker 1 (54:59):
It started to get smaller.
I wouldn't say it disappeared,it definitely got smaller, and
there's still some debate as towhat exactly is happening.
Uh, but it's.
It's been there for a very longtime.
I mean, as far as we know, itwas visible even as far back as
galileo's time.
Yeah, so we we don't know howlong it has been there it it's

(55:22):
effectively like cyclonicactivity and, as a result, you
know, we're seeing a stormsystem, effectively.
Right, it's been lasting forhundreds of years.

Speaker 2 (55:36):
Come on, that's amazing, right Like with the gas
giants.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
The kind of interesting thing is is that the
ability to monitor and trackthe activity in the atmosphere
is actually easier than Earth,because it doesn't have all the
disruption of surface featuresthat Earth has, like continents
and water bodies, and all ofthat variation in the terrain

(56:01):
can affect your atmosphericconditions and, as a result,
weather patterns.
There's none of that on Jupiter, and so it's basically all very
laminar flow.
It flows fairly easily acrossthe underlying layers of the
planet, and so that plays a role, of course, in the ability to

(56:24):
have one of those storm systemsbe active for that long.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
I never thought about it that way.
Actually, it makes a lot ofsense that you don't have that
interaction between water andland and all the topographical
features.
And lastly, we've got Saturn,which with, again, any telescope
, you can see the rings.
Now, if you have a differenttelescope, you might be able to
pick up more of the rings, or atleast it'll be bigger, but the

(56:49):
rings of Saturn, this is theclassic just aha moment for a
person in astronomy.
They see Saturn's rings and theygo, wow, right, and it's just a
whole bunch of debris that'sjust all going around the planet

(57:09):
.
They're not solid, right, right, you can actually go right
through it, kind of like WALL-Edid, right, and Saturn is really
, really cool.
One of the things you want tobe careful of when you're
looking at Saturn because I'vedone this a bunch of times is
don't try to bring themagnification up too much,

(57:29):
because when you bring themagnification up too much, it
gets bigger, but you're dealingwith the same amount of light,
so it gets a lot dimmer and soyou can't really see as much
detail.
It kind of seemscounterintuitive, but you kind
of want to balance between it.
You don't want it too small,that you can't see any detail,
but you don't want it too big,where it's too dim anymore.
What have you encountered interms of looking at Saturn?

Speaker 1 (57:54):
One of the things that I enjoy looking at are the
gaps in the rings, the divisionsthe most famous of course, the
Cassini division and the reasonfor these divisions actually has
to do with the moons andmoonlets that are within the
ring system and there's thesegravitational tidal effects,

(58:16):
they're called, where basicallythe moons will clear a path
around in that part of Saturn'srings.
The gaps are actually a resultof that gravitational effect.

Speaker 2 (58:27):
If you're new to astronomy, I would say your top
targets are Jupiter and Saturnand Venus, with Mars and Mercury
also in there.
And just one last tip is you'renot going to be able to do it
with Venus and Mercury, but withJupiter, saturn and Mars.
You're going to get betterresults if they're higher up in

(58:50):
the sky.
They don't need to be way upabove you, but you don't want
them way down on the horizon,because again you get that
scintillation that Dave wastalking about and you usually
get even darker skies whenthey're up a little bit higher.
So make sure you're, you know,just at least higher than like
15, 20 degrees, and you shouldbe just fine.

(59:10):
We're going to take a littlebreak right here and come back
with a second round of trivia.

Speaker 1 (59:17):
Rob turns up the heat on Dave in this next round of
Last Minute Trivia.

Speaker 3 (59:25):
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navigate the sky with CelestronStarSense Explorer, the
telescope works with your phone,using patented sky recognition
technology to pinpoint its exactposition in the night sky.
Select an object to view andfollow the on-screen arrows.
The bull's eye turns green whenyour object is visible in the

(59:47):
eyepiece.
It's astronomy made simple.
Learn more at Celestroncomslash explore.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
All right, dave.
Second round of trivia.
Are you ready?
Yes, as ready as I'm going tobe.
All right, fantastic.
Now the first question is goingto be a little bit more of a
feeler.
See, if you know this.
It's going to be a little bitmore of a feeler, see, if you
know this.
Above what aperture doreflectors and refractors start

(01:00:16):
becoming drastically differentin price per inch?
Is it going to be A 2 inches, b3 inches, c 4 inches or D 6
inches, three inches, c fourinches or D six inches.
Now we all know, while you'rethinking, you know, we all know

(01:00:41):
that reflectors, the ones withthe mirrors, you can make them a
lot bigger for a lot cheaper,right, uh?
Whereas the refractors thathave the lenses as they get
bigger, it's harder and harderto actually get good optics at a
good price.
So when does that big splitreally?
When do the refractors reallygo up in price?
So what were my options?
Again, two inches, three inches, four inches or six inches.

Speaker 1 (01:01:04):
Definitely six inches .

Speaker 2 (01:01:07):
It is well, definitely six inches.
Yes, I'm going to give you halfa point because I'm going to
say that C four inches is whenthey actually start getting a
lot higher, sure.
So yeah, I'll give you half apoint on that one.
In fact I looked it up.
Basically, a reflector at fourinches is around $400 or so, but

(01:01:31):
you can find some refractorsthat are higher than that, and
then there are some that are wayhigher than that, that are also
at four inches, but yeah,definitely six inches.
A Dobsonian at six inches mightbe $700.
And there's lots of variabilityin there.
But some of the refractors atsix inches are like nineteen
hundred dollars.
So you're talking a big jump inthat price.

(01:01:54):
Uh, so you know, choose wisely.
Now we've got a second questionhere and um, what are some ways
to upcycle your old, unusabletelescope?
And I'm going to give you fiveoptions.
You tell me if you can do this,okay.

(01:02:15):
A decoration around the home.
B.
A lampshade.
C.
A DIY vintage movie camera.
D.
A can jam target or E.
A potato gun or secret answer Fall of the above.

(01:02:40):
F, all of the above.
I don't know, I'd go with F,all of the above.
I was looking for some examplesand of course everybody can put
one as a decoration, but I sawsomebody actually take a
refractor and take out the lensand put a light bulb in there

(01:03:00):
and make it like a lampshade,which looked kind of weird but
it worked.
And yeah, somebody took like theI don't know if it was a lens
cap or the dew cap kind ofchopped them off and made like
one of those old school twocircle movie camera, like reel
to reel camera things.
I saw that and I just inventedthe can jam target.
I just invented that up.

(01:03:21):
I figured you could probablythrow a Frisbee in a big enough
one as well as a potato gun.
I feel like there's somephysics teachers out there who
would enjoy making a potato gun.
Last question what object ismost often mistaken for a quote?
Ufo, and I'm going to have youjust guess without options.

Speaker 1 (01:03:44):
I would say that that would be Venus.

Speaker 2 (01:03:46):
Yes, that's the one that's most often cited as the
most common one, and it makessense, right?
It's bright, it's low on thehorizon, it's sort of setting,
and it'll disappear like an houror two later.
Now the next part of the triviais how many of the other ones
do you think you can name?
Are there things that are oftenmistaken for, some sort of

(01:04:06):
flying saucer or alien spaceship?
Celestial objects yeah, orregular objects?
What do people usually call inas UFOs?
What do you think?
Airplanes yes.
Satellites.

Speaker 1 (01:04:18):
Yes, and meteors for meteor showers, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:24):
Yeah, so I looked at a couple lists online and I
found Sirius is sometimesidentified brightest star in the
sky, jupiter, similarbrightness to venus right.
Uh, rocket launches.
We saw one coming back fromcherry springs, right.

Speaker 1 (01:04:38):
Yes, we were looking at it like the spacex launch was
the wildest thing I've everseen in the night sky and I was
completely taken up because,especially where we were, we
were nearly up at cherry springstate park.
I mean, we were well up in themountains, deep in the heart of
like the susquehanna state park,and it was crazy.

(01:05:01):
And we're on our way home.
Um, yeah, did not expect to seethat from there.

Speaker 2 (01:05:07):
Yeah, Especially now.
They launch right around dawnor dusk and they have these huge
plumes that you can see.
So I can see why people wouldsee that Comets, military jets,
weather balloons, meteors,fireballs.
Oh, this one is my favoritelenticular clouds.
You know the type of cloud thatlike forms over a tall mountain
like Mount Fiji and they kindof look like lenses.

(01:05:28):
Yep, of course that's going tobe mistaken for a UFO, sure.
And the last one is well,everything is a UFO if you're
bad enough at looking at things.
Next up here I have, as far asthings that people want to see
in the night sky is globularclusters.
Now, I know that with our nakedeye we can probably see a

(01:05:49):
couple.
I know I think I've seen theHercules cluster with my naked
eye.
I was in a very dark sky sightand it was very good seeing, and
I just barely made out thatfaint fuzzy up there.
But can you tell us a littlebit more about what a globular
cluster is?
And then, how do we actuallyfind them in a telescope?

Speaker 1 (01:06:08):
So a globular cluster is a grouping of, you know,
many, many tens of thousands ofstars, um, and we don't actually
know how they formed Um.
We know that they're very old,uh, and the question is were
they formed as their ownseparate objects and were

(01:06:32):
basically collected by thegalaxies, as the universe you
know was being born, or are theyactually part of the process of
galaxy formation?
What we do know is that itappears that galaxies all have
globular clusters.

(01:06:52):
If we look out at othergalaxies, we can see them.
For example, andromeda Galaxyhas globular clusters as well,
and there are many of them overa hundred that are in a
spherical pattern around theentire galaxy, so they don't
necessarily follow the normaldisc shape.

(01:07:15):
They're in what's called thehalo, and so we once again don't
know exactly how they formed um, but we do know that they're
old, and the reason we know thatthey're old is because they've
got only stars that are morelike the older, redder type of
stars, um.
When stars are very large, uh,they produce a lot more energy

(01:07:40):
and, as a result, have theability to be more on the blue
side of the spectrum, um, andthose are the ones that would
form like things like supernov,like supernovas later in their
lives and their life cycles arevery fast and they use up a lot
of gas in that process, and theglobular clusters are almost
completely devoid of gas.

(01:08:00):
They've used it all up and soall that's left are these
smaller stars that continue tobe.
You know, in that first stage,that first life cycle, um, and
we can actually use that as away to date how old the globular

(01:08:21):
cluster is.

Speaker 2 (01:08:26):
So then, when we're looking at these things um what,
what do they look like?
When we're looking at thesethings, um what?
What do they look like whenwe're looking at them in the sky
?

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
uh, basically what you'll see is it looks like an
enormous patch of stars allclumped together um the central
point of them.
It can be so close togetherthat you cannot actually
differentiate the individualstars.
It just looks like one bigsolid lump and then, depending
on the size of telescope thatyou have, you basically see a

(01:09:00):
kind of like a gradient of lessand less and less stars as it
gets farther and farther fromthe core.
I've had an opportunity to lookthrough an enormous Dobsonian I
think it was like a 20, 24 inch, something like that.
Um, and I mean a 36 inch.
I've seen, um a globular cluster, m13, the Hercules cluster with
, and the amount of stars thatyou're able to take in in one

(01:09:25):
eyepiece is just unbelievable,and so they all kind of look the
same.
Um, there are some slightdifferences.
If you know what you're lookingfor and they are generally seen
, you know in the same seasonthat you'll be seeing like
galaxies, which would be, youknow, the late March, mid-may

(01:09:48):
time frame when it's galaxyseason, because you're able to
see farther out, but they are infact around all throughout the
year.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
Okay, so then it sounds like if you're going to
get a telescope to see globularclusters, you're going to want
to get a light bucket, you'regoing to want to get a reflector
that can take in a lot of light.
Is that correct, or are therestill advantages with a
refractor?

Speaker 1 (01:10:13):
Because they're stellar objects, that they're
made of stars.
The pinpoints of those starsare relatively bright and you
can get away with pretty muchany telescope to look at a
globular cluster.
However, your ability toresolve different stars that are
kind of close to one another,it improves as the size of the

(01:10:37):
telescope gets bigger, andthere's no way to get around
that physics, because it's oneof the properties of telescopes
is it's resolving power, and theonly thing that really truly
controls that is the size of theaperture.
So the bigger the aperture, themore resolving power you get,
which is the ability to separatetwo point sources of light from

(01:10:58):
one another at smaller andsmaller scales.

Speaker 2 (01:11:03):
Okay, all right.
Now I've noticed when I try togo out and look for globulars,
one of the important things isto make sure that the moon is
not out right, or at least not ahalf moon or bigger, because
you get too much light pollution.
You can't really pull out.
As many stars have you foundthe same thing?

Speaker 1 (01:11:23):
Sure, I mean.
It certainly makes it moredifficult to have contrast in
the sky when you have a fullmoon out there, for sure.

Speaker 2 (01:11:32):
Okay, all right, so we've got globulars out there
and you're going to need more ofa telescope to see the
globulars.
One of the popular things thatI've found to find, and one of
the first things I find when Ido get a new telescope, is a
nebula right, and, of course,the most famous one is the Orion
Nebula right.
Yep, it's a very famous target,for you know, the first time

(01:11:55):
you take out a telescope, youkind of remember what it looks
like because you've looked at ita lot.
So when?
Well, actually, first of all,am I correct in saying that you
can't see any nebulae with yournaked eye?

Speaker 1 (01:12:12):
well, you can.
Um, really, in fact, the one ofthem you just mentioned there,
the orion nebula, is visible, uh, from a dark sky site.
So, you know, when I go up tocherry springs, um, you can just
look right up in the sky andyou can see it okay, it's got to
be pretty small, though, right,pretty hard to see it's bigger

(01:12:33):
than you'd think.
It's pretty impressive and youcan make out some other ones if
you know what you're looking for.
Triffid and Lagoon Nebula, youknow, kind of look like little
smudges.
They're relatively bright,they're relatively large in
terms of the angular size and ifyou're in dark enough skies you
can definitely see it.

Speaker 2 (01:12:54):
Okay, All right, so you're going to have to hunt for
it, but it is there and you cansee some with your naked eyes.
So what if I want to see itbetter?
Are you thinking um a biggertelescope or a certain type of
telescope?

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
Certainly, the bigger the telescope's aperture is,
the more light you're collecting, the easier you'll have a
chance to see it, but it isimportant to try to get to
darker skies.
I think that that's the biggestdifference, because these are
not stellar objects, they're notpinpoints of light, they're

(01:13:29):
diffuse and as a result, becausethe light is spread out over a
larger area, it's more difficultto separate that from the
background of light pollution.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
Right.

Speaker 1 (01:13:42):
And, of course, going out during a new moon is always
recommended when the moon isnot visible in the night sky,
because really you're talkingabout with a nebula.

Speaker 2 (01:13:51):
it's typically just a big area of gas and dust that's
reflecting light off of otherstars that are nearby for the
most part.
So it's kind of like a light ina fog machine at a dance or
whatever.
So it's going to be dim, so youwant to be able to collect as
much light as you possibly can.

Speaker 1 (01:14:09):
Right, and so there's actually three different types
of nebula.
To clarify, there's an emissionnebula.
Emission nebulae are basicallybeing heated up, so this is gas
that's being turned hot due toits proximity to stars and, as a
result of it being heated up,the atoms within the nebula

(01:14:31):
become excited and they emit aparticular color of light, so
that color for hydrogen would belike a pinkish color.
There's also reflection nebulae, and reflection nebulae are, as
their name implies, reflectinglight off of them and they tend
to be more blue in color.
Then the last of them is thedark nebulae, and dark nebulae

(01:14:54):
are more dense, cloudy typethings that are kind of in front
of the light source andblocking and silhouetting the
actual nebulae itself, and mosttimes you're going to end up
with a mixture of all threetypes.
In these complex areas of theMilky Way especially, you're

(01:15:14):
going to end up with all threetypes in close proximity to one
another, because in realityyou're looking at a three
dimensional object, and so onceyou start to kind of think about
that it's one of the things Ialways like to do when I'm
observing is to realize thatthis is not a single object,
this is a bunch of gas, and youcan actually start to make out

(01:15:39):
like, oh wow, I'm looking intowards you know where that star
is at, and, for example, theOrion Nebula.
There's some core stars down inthe very heart of the Orion
Nebula that you can't even see.
But you can kind of see thislight spilling out from inside
the nebulae because the actualstellar winds and the radiation

(01:16:02):
pressure of those very largestars are actually blowing a
hole in the nebulae, which iswhy you're seeing them.
They're kind of shrouded out bythese dark nebulae, like
Horsehead, for example, is agreat example of that.
It just gives you another wayto enjoy these objects.

(01:16:24):
As you observe them more andmore, you become more familiar
with them and they become oldfriends.
You can go back to them eachyear and you can kind of study
them further.

Speaker 2 (01:16:36):
In fact, one of the old friends that I'd like to
visit every fall and winter isthis little patch of the sky
that is a little difficult tosort of guide my way through.
There's a couple of guidepoints, but it's this faint
smudge in the sky called theAndromeda Galaxy.
Yes, right, it's now.

(01:16:57):
You'll see pictures of thisonline.
You're not going to see what ison a picture online if you're
looking through a scope, right.
But I have seen in my skieshere in Pennsylvania, in the
yellow area, on a very clearnight.
You can actually detect a faintlittle smudge up by Andromeda,
near Pegasus, near Cassiopeia.

(01:17:18):
You can actually see a littlesmudge.
I've seen it.
It was easily found when I wentup to Cherry Springs, because
it's very dark, so there's morecontrast.
You can't.
The rest of the sky is black,so it's easier to see.
If I'm going to look at theAndromeda Galaxy, I need to get
my 10-inch Dobsonian orsomething like that, because I

(01:17:39):
want to bring in as much lightas possible, right, sure?

Speaker 1 (01:17:44):
Yeah, aperture with any deep sky object is something
if you're doing, visualobservation especially is very
important, and the Dobsonian isone of the best ways to kind of
achieve that on a budget.
You know it's a light bucket,as you said.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Yeah, yeah, I love looking at Andromeda because
it's actually kind of deceptive,Like it only looks.
When you look up there, itlooks pretty small.
It's quite large.

Speaker 1 (01:18:13):
Yeah, it's huge Three degrees in the sky.
It's about six full moon widthsacross the entirety of
Andromeda galaxy.
It's that big.

Speaker 2 (01:18:23):
Six, that is, that's big.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
It's enormous.
It's about three.
It's about three fingers wide,at arm's length.
So some real quick measurementsYou've got.
Your pinky is approximately atarm's length.
Hold it out as far as you can.
It's about one degree.
So the moon and sun are abouthalf of your pinky's width.
It seems small, but try it thenext time you see the moon in

(01:18:48):
the sky.
Five degrees is effectivelywhat the three, three fingers,
three fingers wide, and then thefist right, about Width of your
fist, 10 degrees or so.
And then we've got Rock on man.
Rock on is about 15.

(01:19:08):
And you know you can always puttwo hands together and get to
30, uh, which these measurementsare rough, but they actually
help quite a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:19:19):
So if you're looking for, you know, a particular
object in the sky, you canalways use your hand as a
measurement tool or if youlisten to that other podcast
about astronomy, last MinuteAstronomer, and he talks about
oh, it's 10 degrees above thehorizon, like you know, hey,
that's one fist width.
I put the bottom of my fist onthe horizon, mercury will be
about one fist width above that.

(01:19:41):
Yeah, it is.
It is actually quite handy andit's I like to look at it's what
?
Two and a half million lightyears away.
And so this is the cool part ofastronomy which we've talked
about before, which is you'reseeing two and a half million
years into the past, right,because that light, traveling at

(01:20:02):
light speed, took two and ahalf million years to get to
your eyeball, and those photonswere sent two and a half million
years ago, two and a halfmillion light ago, two and a
half million light years away,and it landed on your eye.
Like that's really cool.
Dave, we are kind of wrappingthis up.
We've talked about basicallyeverything that you can see with
a telescope out there.

(01:20:24):
You know, we just talked aboutgalaxies, we talked about the
globular clusters, which areneat to see, uh, and of course,
the planets, uh, the milky wayand the moon.
Um, as we wrap up, what do youthink?

Speaker 1 (01:20:36):
what is your, what's your favorite one to take a look
at well, we haven't discussed,um, some of these other objects
like supernovas and planetarynebulae, and for me I find them

(01:20:56):
fascinating because what you'reobserving is the end state of a
star's life and although they'recalled planetary nebulae, a
planetary nebulae is the deathof a sun-like star, and so,
within that planetary nebulae iswhat's called a white dwarf and

(01:21:20):
at the end of our sun's life,which we're about halfway
through our sun's lifespan,which is about a total of 10
billion years, we're about 5billion years into that 10
billion year, we're about 5billion years into that 10
billion year long lifespan, andwhat basically occurs is that
it's used up all of its fuel,and that fuel is hydrogen gas,

(01:21:40):
mostly turning into helium, andthey kind of fizzle out and the
gravitational effects are nolonger able to hang on to the
material, as the core of thestar starts to produce some
additional elements, um, whichwe're not going to get into the
details of today, uh, butbasically it blows yeah, that's

(01:22:02):
a completely separate podcast uh, but basically it blows those
outer layers away and you end upseeing this remnant called a
white dwarf.
The other type of object thatcan be produced by larger stars
is a supernova.
Now, supernovas come in manytypes.

(01:22:23):
Once again, we're not going toget into great detail here, but
in the center of a supernova canbe one of two objects.
One of them is a neutron starand the other one is a black
hole, and that all depends onthe amount of mass that remains
at the death of the star, so, ofcourse, the black hole being
the larger of the two.
Now, I look at these objectsnot as their own separate thing,

(01:22:51):
though.
My favorite thing to talk aboutand to view myself is the full
process of what's called stellarevolution.
And so when, when you'relooking at a nebula, you're
seeing a stellar nurse, oryou're seeing the stars being
born, seeing a stellar nurse, oryou're seeing the stars being

(01:23:14):
born.
When you then look at somethingcalled an open cluster, which
is not a globular cluster, it'san open cluster.
That's when you basically havea bunch of stars that were born
together in a nebula and the gasfrom the nebula has been blown
away by the stellar radiationand you're left with a patch of

(01:23:35):
stars that move through thegalaxy.
Because, keep in mind, stars domove around the galaxy, yep,
and over time they will spreadout, but you're seeing, in an
open cluster, an early state ofthose, basically, you know,
juvenile stars that have justkind of exited the cellar
nursery.

(01:23:55):
They no longer have the gasaround them, but they're still
in their grouping, um, and wecall those associations.
As they start to spread around,we can keep track of them by
how they they appear to bemoving throughout the galaxy,
but then, uh, as we we start tosee the stars die, we'll start

(01:24:18):
to observe these, uh, differenttypes of stars, um, and the
different types of stellarremnants, the, you know,
planetary nebulae and thesupernova remnants, and then
that whole process starts overagain.
Right, this is a cycle, and forme, I really like to think about

(01:24:39):
that a lot, because, as thesesupernovas are occurring, they
are producing the elementsnecessary for life and we are
living in a solar system, on aplanet with heavy metals that
were produced in supernovas, andsome of those metals and other

(01:25:05):
materials are flowing through mybody right now, the heart of
these largest types of stars,the red super giant stars.
They produce iron.
Iron is a necessary componentof your blood to be able to
transport oxygen, and so you'reseeing, basically yourself,

(01:25:27):
you're seeing our own making inthese objects, and we're living
in a star that had other starsthat came before it, that made
it possible for us to be here,and, as Carl Sagan says, we are
all made of stardust Right, andfor me that really hits home.

Speaker 2 (01:25:54):
Yeah, I can't think of anything more metal than a
supernova explosion spreadingits guts across the galaxy and
then a new solar system usingthat and the leftover detritus
of that stellar formation thenbreeds life out of ashes of that
supernova.

(01:26:14):
Come on, how cool is that,right?

Speaker 1 (01:26:16):
Yep, yep, and supernovas.
Actually they can actuallytrigger other activity, other
new star formation through theswirling of dust and gas within
the nebulae.
So you know, this process ofstellar evolution to me is what

(01:26:36):
I look for when I look up at thenight sky and I try to impart
that you know same perspectiveto others.
So let's wrap up here.
Just talk about briefly theways to share astronomy with
others.
You and I have been in a localastronomy club and we've talked

(01:27:00):
about in previous podcasts howimportant those local astronomy
clubs are.
But one of my favoriteactivities that we use but one

(01:27:25):
of my favorite activities thatwe use you know we were able to
do with this club is to kind ofbring the public out to use
telescopes and look through ourtelescopes and share it with you
know, people of all ages andjust feel their reactions.

Speaker 2 (01:27:30):
It's amazing to witness the first time somebody
looks through a telescope and itis something special and that's
why, whenever I do star partiesand such, I have these little
certificates right that say hey,star party name.
You write down their name andthen you say, hey, what did you
see?
Oh, we saw Saturn.
Was that the first time?
Yeah, it was.

(01:27:55):
And so you say I saw Saturn forthe first time.
And then they have this littlething where it goes this is the
first time I saw another planetclose up.
I love doing that because itkind of puts that seed in their
head and then they have that.
You know, whether they put iton their wall or just stash it
under their bed, they do have itand they might come into
contact with it again in thefuture and go oh, I remember
that that was awesome, I want todo that again, right.

(01:28:16):
So I love doing thatcertificate thing.
It's very, very simple, but Ithink I think it's pretty
effective.
Um, and I also, like you said, Irely on our local club to bring
out their telescopes and I relyon experts and friends to come
out.
And I think that's also one ofthe cool parts is not only do

(01:28:36):
you have other people helpingother people, you're building a
community in that sense Yep.
And or if you're out looking inyour backyard and your neighbor
sort of walks out, is walkingthis dog and you say, hey, you
know I've got Jupiter in thescope, you want to take a look
at it.
You know you're buildingcommunity and you're building
relationships.
I think that's that's really avaluable part of this.

Speaker 1 (01:28:59):
Absolutely, absolutely.
It's one of my favorite things,as I said, especially, uh, for
little little, for little littleones, um, to have their chance
to see.

Speaker 2 (01:29:13):
you know just the reaction on their face, uh, when
they look through the telescopefor the first time, for sure,
and I know we've been kind oftelescope centric here tonight,
uh but I do want to mention Idon't want to get into it, but I
do want to mention that findingconstellations and asterisms is
a really easy way to get to dothis.
There's lots of good sky mapsout there that will tell you

(01:29:34):
what constellations are whereand when, and they put them out
monthly.
And you know, even if you're ata beach town like sometimes I
go to Ocean City, maryland andor Wildwood, and it is lights
galore over there.
However, I can still see theSummer Triangle right, cygnus,

(01:29:57):
aquila and Lyra, and theirbrightest stars, deneb, altair
and Vega.
I got it.
Yes, you know, you can stillsee those, even in the very
light polluted skies.
And I would highly recommendjust get a constellation book or
just look up a sky map and usethat hopefully with a red light

(01:30:17):
and not, you know, your phoneand just go out and see if you
can find the constellations.
You don't need a telescope.
It certainly helps and there'sa lot of fun.
But I'd say, just go out, getsome constellations and go ahead
and make your ownconstellations.
They're all arbitrary anyway.
Make up your own, it's more fun.

Speaker 1 (01:30:37):
I do want to highlight that our sponsor,
celestron, has offered a $100gift card for their Threadless
merch store card for theirThreadless merch store, and Rob
and I are both wearing ourCosmos Safari podcast shirts
today and I've got my CosmosSafari podcast mug here and I'd

(01:31:03):
love, for it holds liquids verywell.

Speaker 2 (01:31:05):
100% guaranteed it'll hold your liquids.

Speaker 1 (01:31:09):
And all you gotta do is find over on Celestron's
Instagram the details about thisparticular drawing, and they're
offering the $100 gift card.
The details are right there, socheck it out over there on
Instagram and you might be thelucky winner to get your Cosmos

(01:31:31):
Safari gear.
And for the rest of you, thestore is open.

Speaker 2 (01:31:34):
Yeah, I love seeing this stuff all over the place.
I love talking to people aroundthe world and, you know,
building this community as we gois really something special, so
if you can help out with that,that would be fantastic.

Speaker 1 (01:31:46):
I am thrilled to finally have a chance to talk
about some of these objects thatwe all enjoy, and there's more
to come as we continue on withthe podcast.
We've got some great guestscoming up.
So if you haven't already hitthat subscribe button and thanks
for listening or watching Clearskies to everybody.

(01:32:06):
Clear skies If you're stilllistening and like this podcast,
please consider becoming one ofour Patreon patrons.
Memberships start as low as $3per month, with benefits
including opportunities to askquestions of our guests.
Also, please consider liking,subscribing and sharing this
podcast to help us bring theuniverse even closer than you
think.
The podcast will be availableevery third Tuesday of the month

(01:32:30):
.

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The Best Objects To See In The Night Sky - Presented by Celestron

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Best Objects To See In The Night Sky - Presented by Celestron