Marina and Billy talk about the 2016 night sky calendar of celestial events.
www.billynewmanphoto.com
Hello, and thank you for listening to this episode of the night sky.io podcast. My name is Billy Newman. And I’m Marina Hansen. And this is the first episode of a podcast we’ll be continuing to do that will be focused on the night sky above us and some of the art projects that we’re going to try and build around that, to kind of demonstrate and educate about the events of the night sky throughout the year that’s upcoming. So it’ll be pretty exciting. I think it’ll be a lot of fun. And so this is the first podcast that we’re doing. And what we’re figuring is we’re gonna probably build out a format for it over the next few weeks, as we kind of start to put the project together a little bit more and trying to do a little bit more production stuff. But what I’m excited to do today is talk about a little bit of the basic formula that we’ve got going on. And the main project that we have going on right now, which is the the night sky.io Kickstarter calendar. So it’s this 2016 calendar that we have set up on night sky right now, at Kickstarter calm. And then if you search for night sky, it’ll be the first project that you see, which is cool. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. So we Yeah, we worked pretty hard for this last week to try and get the night sky Kickstarter project set up ready to go. We have our pledge level set. And we already have a few donors, which is really cool. We’ll probably talk about that a little bit later in today’s show. And I guess as figuring that, Marina, you and I would just talk a little bit about the art that we’re making and about some of the stuff that we’re putting together for this project so far. Sure. Sounds like a good plan to me. Yeah. So what have you been working on? So far for night sky stuff?
Well, right, this moment, I’m working on a graphic that is going to be used for the website. And also part of it will be reused, and will be a feature in the calendar as one of the landscapes. But it’s right now for the graphic piece that it’s going to be for the website. It’s a silhouette of Mount Hood in Oregon. And I think it’s from the perspective or the view from Portland. So the shape of it is kind of from that, that view. Oh, yeah, that makes that side of it. And then above it is, is a very full starry sky, kind of inspired by the Milky Way, but not necessarily exactly the Milky Way. Yeah, yeah. Sort of that idea of large, large amount of star clusters kind of stretched out.
Yeah, I think it’s really cool. I’ve been looking at like what you’ve been working on, and it looks really good. And I guess for this one, we should kind of explain a little bit about what what we’re building for the calendar. So I guess we haven’t really talked too much about how we’re building this calendar, that’s going to be like demonstrating the night sky, which we did talk about. And then it’s all going to be illustrations that you make of the night sky that sort of a representative of different scenes that we’ll see throughout the year, which will be really cool. And then I think this page that you’re making right now is really nice with the mountain as the silhouetted mountain and then the milky way above it. I think that looks really cool. Thanks. It’s pretty neat. I like the other one that we made to or the the one that you have CRV, the CRV at the at the little precipice with the the Big Dipper out in front of it there. I think that’s really cool, too.
Thanks. I like that one. Wow. So that’ll be one. That’ll be a landscape that is also featured in the calendar, though it won’t probably won’t be the Big Dipper.
Oh, yeah.
The main feature, though big might be in the background.
Yeah, we should make a big dipper when I was gonna say in this in this one. We should have a conversation about like the months and the types of things that we’re going to try and show during those months. I think that’d be kind of cool to talk about. Yeah, I think that’d be great. That’d be useful. Yeah. So I was I wrote down a couple notes. I was gonna first talk to you about some of the current events stuff. So well, I don’t know. Did you have anything more to add about the art stuff that you’re you were talking about? Or the the new art pieces that you’re drawing? No, I think we can move on to current current news. Yeah, so I guess Today is December 13. So we had the geminid meteor shower that just went over. And so that’s so like, in August, we had the perceive meteor shower, which is probably one of the most famous ones and one of the best ones to observe because it’s in the middle of the summer. And so it’s almost guaranteed that at least on the northern hemisphere, we’re gonna have good observing nights for that. And it’s tough because in December, a lot of North America is covered in cloud cover, or rain or storm or it’s just winter time so you don’t get them any good clear skies to view it. But if you did have an opportunity to which we did, and on the west coast, at least, it was the geminid meteor shower for the last couple of nights, which is pretty neat. And so what that means, like when they talk about geminid meteor shower or the scorpion meteor shower, the Leonid meteor shower or the proceed meteor shower, what they’re saying is that I think what it’s describing is that is the constellation will appear as though all of those meteors are coming from or are originating from. Oh, that’s interesting. Yeah. So that’s, that’s kind of how they identify them in space like throughout the year. So. So like during, I guess, during like the early am hours of the proceed meteor shower, is the constellation Perseus that we see most of those meteors arriving out of. And that’s kind of why we call it the Percy meteor shower. So same for the geminid meteor shower, it’s out of the constellation Gemini, which is just not coming up. It’s one of those winter constellations it’s pretty predominant in the sky during, during like, January, February, March. And then it’s also part of the the ecliptic are part of the zodiac constellations as well. But yeah, geminid meteor shower just went by. So there might be some cool like Astro photography that we could find out there. But of like the Geminids, or you know, like, yeah, drinks and stuff that go by, I think it’d be fun. If we could find one. Maybe we could put like some of those up on our Instagram page.
Yeah, I want to do some, some quick illustrations as a part of our Instagram account that are of current things like that. That’d be really cool. I’d
love to have more illustrations and stuff to go up on that Instagram page. Yeah, it’d be fun to run like a contest, or like something around like these events. Or like, we can find a hashtag. And then like repost everything from like, the geminid meteor shower photos that we think are cool, or like whatever the next thing is, if there’s like an eclipse or like stars out or something. Yeah, I
like that idea. I think that would be pretty cool. I want to, I want to find a way to fill up that account pretty fast. I get it built up fast, so that we can use it. Yeah, it’s hard to use things that don’t have that many, many other people attached. Yeah,
it is, there’s a few things that we’re gonna have to deal with that that Instagram account and that Twitter page to just get them up and rolling. And it really doesn’t take a ton of time to get. If you get just like a base amount of content ready, like up like 30 or 40 things already, it wants to just kind of push out and that that’ll kind of build up a social system pretty fast for you. So we can do that this week. And that’d be really cool. I’m excited to put out, put out a bunch of cool stuff on Instagram and try and try and bolster that up quite a bit. Be Cool. Yeah, it’d be a really good Instagram account, if we kind of curate it well. And we try and keep like up to one thing there a day?
I think so I think we can do at least one thing up there.
Yeah, and I think astronomy enthusiasts are a broad enough market is not specific, what are really local or really exact to a certain point, but they can be really cool. I’m glad that we’re doing it. And it’d be fun to do an astronomy podcast, there’s really not too many others out there right now that are that are based on like sky watching or natural Earth based observations or the night sky. There’s a lot of things out there, like the ones that I’m hearing are kind of like professors classes. Yeah, more science. It’s all astrophysics based stuff, which is good, it’s fine. It’s cool. It’s interesting to hear about, but a lot of those even stripe, pretty, pretty wide from the idea of astronomy or astrophysics, specifically. And a lot of them get into kind of the more and maybe it’s just a broader market. But it’s all into like nebulas, and like black holes and things like that. But it’s nothing that’s really grounded that’s like this is, you know, this is a star. This is above right now, is this is observable. Yeah, that sort of thing. And that’s what I think I want to have this podcast focused on more is the stuff that’s out. That’s what I bought on the night sky.
That’s what I’m more interested in. So I think that that’s cool. Way to go.
Yeah, I think it’d be a lot of fun. And we should have like other things where we can like talk about telescopes or talking about like setting up things and like different projects and stuff that we try to get stuff ready to go or to try and build out our site or the cool night sky observation stuff that we’re doing. Yeah, you find, but I’ve liked the night sky for a long time. I’ve liked astronomy and sky watching for a long time. And so I’ve tried to learn about like a lot of the stars and a lot of the different I don’t know aspects of them or features are like how they move throughout the the winter months and the summer months and the constellations that are at least in the Northern Hemisphere. But like I was talking to you about, I really want to go down to the southern hemisphere. Yeah, and learn about all the stars that are down there. I think it’d be really cool. Sunday, when we get to do it’ll be a lot of fun. But yeah, I was gonna say you and I should talk about now. We should talk about a few of the, like different features that we want to put into the calendar over the year. Yeah. So like, there’s going to be the January through January of 2017 art for the calendar that we’re building together. And so we’re just trying to sort out the art that we’re going to use, it’s all going to be featured of constellations or skywatching events or things that you can observe during that month of the year. And that’s going to be kind of what triggers are what’s kind of the inspiration for the art that we’re making for it? Yeah, that’d be cool. So what were some of the ideas that we’ve got? We’re talking about, like the winter hexagon. Yeah, that’s the big one that we were that we were talking about getting in there. Yeah, I think the winter hexagon will be a cool feature. So it’ll probably oscillate like month to month like well, because I think A big part of the calendar should be about bringing out or kind of educating people on the constellations themselves to the structures in the sky that are out and available to see. I think that’d be really cool. And I think that’s something that we can kind of factually note note down a little bit easier. And I think it’ll be cool in the calendar to reflect like, what planets are up, or like when Jupiter starts coming up. We can start reflecting that but I think for the winter before a lot of those planets come up in the in the evening sky, at least there’s three right now. Yeah, I think three that are visible in the early morning sky, there’s like Venus, Jupiter, and Mars are all visible in the morning sky. And then so in the late night sky coming up soon, in the early winter, we’re going to see Jupiter in the late night sky, and then moving kind of into the early evening sky toward like February March, so we can start featuring it more. At that time. I think that’d be really cool. But at first, I think talking about the winter hexagon, which is the it’s like Capella, Capella caster, polyx, procyon, Rigel, Alderaan, and Beetlejuice. And it’s like this big kind of spiral shape of first magnitude main sequence stars that are in kind of the main band of the Milky Way of the set of winter constellations that were able to see at night from probably like the beginning of January, into the end of March, I think is kind of the last time you can see Orion. So I’d probably be around that time, or, yeah, end of March, early April is probably the last period that you can see it. But so I think like for January, I’d be really cool to feature that and then feature just some information about the different stars that are there. So that’d be like one month. And then I think there’s an eclipse that’s coming up like a lunar eclipse, which month is I think it’s in March. So it’s like near, I think it’s near the equinox. So I think we should mark things like that on the calendar dates, that’ll be fun. And then we can mark, the equinox is going to be happening here that day, which would
be cool to do also.
So we can try and like, check that off. And then maybe feature that in the artwork for the month of March is like something that’s kind of an eclipse moon or something. Yeah, it’s in there. I think that’d be cool. Yeah, I think it’d be pretty exciting. And the other thing that I was going to talk about, like in the spring months is going to be like Mars and retrograde. And that was, when we were looking at that that was cool. Yeah, we’re kind of observing how Mars is going to be moving the summer, the spring and summer. And it’s gonna be really exciting, because it’s going to be one of the best times that I can remember in the last 10 years that that will have available to us to give good observations of Mars. And I guess it’s probably a 1010 or 12 year cycle that it takes. But I remember back in 2000, to 2003 2004, we had a lot of good observations of Mars. And so it’s nice that now back in 2016, we’re going to have another good section of observations of Mars in the spring and summer sky. And so it’s going to be the close pass as we come in. I think this The earth is moving at a faster speed. And so we’re gonna swing in real close to Mars. But for the next, I think six months, Mars is going to be in retrograde. So it’s going to be tracking backward across the sky, kind of similar to have a moon is in retrograde. Each night, we see the moon track backward or eastward in the sky, as it gets closer and closer to a full moon. Does that make sense? Yeah, and so Mars is going to be doing something similar to that, but over the next six months, and so we’re gonna see a track backwards in the sky, as the year kind of progresses. And so it’s relative location where the constellation Mars would currently rest in its relative location is going to change and its magnitude is going to change, it’s going to go from being quite dim right now to I think, like a 1.6 magnitude, and then in May is going to be a like, negative two magnitude. So it’s going to swing by like three whole magnitude. So it’s going to go way brighter. Yeah, it’s gonna get way closer to us, and way brighter, and it’s gonna be probably one of the brightest objects in the sky, it’s gonna be cool, because then in the spring, we’re going to have a really good view of Jupiter add opposition to us, or maybe not absolute opposition, but it’s going to be like a plus two, or excuse me, a negative two magnitude, star in the sky or object in the sky, and so will Mars. And so Mars is going to track back from where it is right now in the sky all the way back to Scorpio. So it’s going to get right up into Antares right next to Saturn and then it’s going to stop retrograde, like right around May 30. And then it’s going to start pushing back forward across the sky, which is really strange. So it’s gonna push back out past Scorpio and then back into Libra. And then it’s going to swing back into Scorpio and then back past Saturn, and then it’s going to continue in retrograde for the rest of the year, which I don’t know how that works. Like, does that make sense at all, like how it goes into retrograde and the backout are out of retrograde? I should look into that we should talk about it on this podcast in the future. But it’s going to go back into retrograde and move past Sagittarius and then into Capricorn and Aquarius. And then it’s going to remain in the sky for a whole year. So as soon as it starts becoming visible, it’s going to stay in opposition of us or so on the dark side of the earth. So it’s going to be viewable at night for people in the Northern Hemisphere and in the southern hemisphere, as opposed to, for the next like, maybe 13 or 14 months. Yeah, and it’s changed, since most things are only up for, let’s say, six months, since we have 180 degree sky. So we only have that much time for it to be viewable. So yeah, it’s gonna be really strange to watch it, fight it FIGHT backwards against the constellation, and remain in the night sky for the next, like 12 months. Wow, that’d be really interesting to watch. Yeah, it’ll be really cool. So I’m excited to do that. And I’m excited that what we’re going to be able to do with his colliders is indicate in those minds, like where those planets are, yes, yeah. That’d be really interesting. It will be cool. And it’ll be cool in this podcast to get to talk about, like, what we’re observing with Jupiter, and then what we’re observing with Mars as it goes into retrograde and like, as its location, like, moves past one constellation into the other. But I think it’d be really fun to watch it. Kind of do that little hoop hook.
Yeah, I think so too. Yeah, really fun. So I guess we’re probably going to talk about, like a few thank yous to our donors, which is really cool.
So our Kickstarter campaign has been gone. It’s been live for, I think, three days now. And we have two backers so far. And we really appreciate the support for that, we’re going to try and publish this podcast and get a little bit more interest, or at least provide a little bit of continued explanation of why we’re working on this project, or what our interest is in, in working on astronomy driven education stuff, and trying to put together a cool calendar for people, you know, so it’ll be fun. It’ll be cool Christmas present to or Yeah, beginning of the year president for I mean, I’m really looking forward to getting into some people. Yeah, that’d be really cool. So much appreciation to the the donors that have already contributed a little bit of money in the efforts to, to raise some funds to go to press and print a full run of night sky calendars. That’ll be pretty exciting if it goes through. So we’re gonna keep talking about that on this podcast. And I figured that we’d be able to close it out unless you had any other things to talk about. Or if you had any other issues that you wanted to bring up, Marina, I think we’ve covered it pretty well for now. Yeah, I think it’s, it’s been alright. I think it’s cool. Thanks, Marina for talking with me about some of the stuff that you’re working on. And we’ll probably do this bi weekly is what I’m figuring. Yeah, yeah. So probably like twice a week, we’ll go through and give a little bit of updates on the progress that we’re making toward completing the Kickstarter goals and, and completing like the art. Yeah, we have to do for the calendar, getting that prepped for, for the first of the year, when we’re gonna had to print with it and, and make it so it’d be really cool. But it’ll be fun. I think for the next, like 30 days, we’re going to do kind of practice, or we’re going to do an effort of sort of fleshing out what we’re going to do for this podcast. And then we’re going to try and tighten up our format a bit. I think that’ll be a lot of fun, when we can sort it out a little bit. And then we’re going to continue doing this throughout the year to support the 2017 Knights guy calendar, and to support the night sky.io website that we’ve created. And that’s going to kind of work to become a greater asset or greater resource for people that are interested in learning about news and events and things about the night sky above us at this day and date, so it’ll be pretty cool to work on. I’m really excited for it. Yeah, it’ll be fun. So this kind of marks the start of a lot of those projects that are going to be coming in 2017. So for Marina Hanson, and for myself, Billy Newman, thank you for listening to this episode, the first episode of the night sky.io podcast. Thank you.