Want to participate in a virtual star party? - Forums

Topic starter

May 26, 2020

Hey everyone, hope you are all doing well!

I was contacted by Nancy Graziano about participation in virtual star parties hosted by Fraser Cain on Youtube. She can't post directly here so I offered to forward her message to the group.

There is some amazing talent here so let's go show the world!

My name is Nancy Graziano. I am Project Manager with Dr. Pamela Gay's CosmoQuest and I also work with Fraser Cain, publisher of Universe Today .

Fraser has recently resurrected our Virtual Star Parties which are scheduled every Sunday starting at approximately 9:00 PM PDT. Fraser and our guest astrophotographers stream their telescopes live over YouTube and then later share their images with our community. We have a worldwide audience who tunes in each week. You can find our most recent stream here and if you poke around Fraser's YouTube channel a bit you will find our first two streams as well.

We are in the process of recruiting astrophotographers to join us during our live streams. The participants in our first three streams are all prior participants and, as you will see if you watch any of them, all men. For obvious reasons, we very much would like to recruit a team of women astrophotographers/astronomers to join us.

After looking through the set of publicly viewable images within the Women Astrophotographers group, I can say with certainty that we would love to have any of these talented women join us each week, beginning with you. I am an absolute newby here, and as the founder of the group, I am reaching out to you since I am not sure of the proper protocol for contacting members and issuing subsequent invitations to participate.

If you are interested in participating, and/or if you believe other members of the group would be interested in participating, please feel free to either message me here or send me an email at wshcrew1@gmail and advise me how I may proceed. Additionally, feel free to share this in the forum for the group.

I am happy to answer any and all questions/concerns you may have and I look forward to working with everyone.

Have a great day.

Nancy J. Graziano

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Kathy Walker

May 26, 2020

I'd love to participate, but the time doesn't work for my time zone. That's 1:00 am here, and I prefer to be tucked in bed at that time. (If the sky is clear, my observatory is automated, so I still get to sleep.

)

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Elisabeth Milne

May 26, 2020

Doesn’t work for me either - 9pm PDT is 5am here - not that it makes much difference as we lost Astro dark at our backyard observatory a couple of weeks ago and don’t get it back until the second half of August.

Linda

Topic starter

May 26, 2020

Totally understand about the timezone differences. Would there be interest in timeslots more friendly to other parts of the world? Don't know if they are interested in doing that but if there is interest here, I can pass that on (or you can contact Nancy directly).

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Carastro

May 26, 2020

OMG 5am in the morning UK.

Would love to participate if a better time for UK, but I already had one failed Zoom lecture when I couldn't hear the sound so I might have the same problem anyway, though I am going to try out a different computer for next week.

Great idea though.

Carole

Pam Whitfield

May 28, 2020

5am is a little grim….. and very much daytime in Northern England.

My mount is currently in bits so 'star-party' would be a bit of a stretch!

later this year perhaps….

Best regards
Pam

Debra Ceravolo

May 31, 2020

Would be fun to participate but not good quality broadband here. Is there any other way to do it? I'm in PDT.

Sigga

May 31, 2020

Hi Linda,

I think is great idea but is @ 0400 here and also sunrise here now at 0200.

That said I going to check links referenced above and see if some way I can participate. Thanks for showing idea!

Best wishes,
Sigga

Linda

Topic starter

May 31, 2020

Debra Ceravolo:
Would be fun to participate but not good quality broadband here. Is there any other way to do it? I'm in PDT.

I live in a bortle 7 sky and can get decent single subs, at least for brighter targets. But Fraser is interested in showing narrowband subs for nebulae so as the summer Milky Way rises that's definitely an option.

Mostly they want to do quick, near real-time shots so not a lot of integration time. I may try some live stacking tonight but even then it won't be tons of time, maybe 5 minutes or so.

Linda

Topic starter

May 31, 2020

Sigga:
Hi Linda,I think is great idea but is @ 0400 here and also sunrise here now at 0200.

That said I going to check links referenced above and see if some way I can participate. Thanks for showing idea!

Best wishes,
Sigga

I think they plan to do these going forward so by the fall when it's getting dark earlier they will be starting earlier. Plus, I think they have some interest in doing these on European friendly times lots if they can get enough telescopes together so definitely contact them and let them know you are interested. Might not make sense for several months for the northernmost group but eventually it could make sense.

Linda

Topic starter

Jun 4, 2020

I've been meaning to post this all week and kept forgetting…

I participated in the virtual star party this past weekend and it was a lot of fun! We actually had clear skies here and I was able to show some views through my telescope along with Fraser showing views from a telescope in California and someone in Malaysia showing Venus and the sun so we a nice variety.

Hope some of the rest of you can participate over time!

Linda

Topic starter

Nov 13, 2020

Now that we are well into autumn in the northern hemisphere, the virtual star parties are starting a bit earlier. Currently they are beginning at 10pm ET and run for about an hour. I expect within a few weeks they will shift an hour earlier as well. I know it's still a bit late for our Europeans but astronomers like to stay up late

If you would like to participate, let me know or contact Nancy at the email address listed in the first post.

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Carastro

Nov 13, 2020 · Edited: Nov 13, 2020

I might be up imaging in the early hours UK, 10pm ET I think is 3am in the UK. Of course it does depends on clear skies, and currently there are forecast for clear in the early hours only for the next week.

But I won't have a telescope to show anything through, just what I am capturing at the time which I normally sit indoors and watch remotely from the observatory.

What are you using to connect, I am set up for Zoom?

Carole

Linda

Topic starter

Nov 13, 2020

Carole, they use Zoom for the conference and then Fraser Cain streams the zoom call to Youtube. Feel free to contact Nancy directly or if you would like, pm me your email address and I can make the introduction.

Here's a link to the most recent one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAumxiwAVU4

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Carastro

Nov 17, 2020

Thanks for the link Linda, it does give me some idea of how it works now.
Great to see you and Molly on there. Molly is uncannily like an American friend I have both facially and to hear her speak, I thought I was listening to my friend.

The skies are pretty awful here at the moment, and there will also be the problem of it being 3am, so i may have to do the zoom session from a different room rather than nearby the bedroom as hubby won;t appreciate me chatting at 3am in the morning.

I'll pm my E Mail address.

Carole