Capturing the Cosmos with Babak Tafreshi

How do you take an incredible photo of the cosmos? In this extended conversation, Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice learn about how to start taking photos of space with astrophotographer and National Geographic Explorer, Babak Tafreshi. NOTE: StarTalk+ Patrons can listen to this entire episode commercial-free here: <> Thanks to our Patrons Sass Hoory, Paul Kemp, Tor Emanuelsen, Gavin M Benedict, Norman Pestsaina, David Wiester, and Brady Smith for supporting us this week.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And I said, damn, now I know what my last moments on earth will look like if a meteor is gonna take me out.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's uh, if you look at meteor showers, you see them time to time. I have pictures of them. They're just like supernova.

• 0:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, they just show up and then they disappear. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 0:19Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 0:22Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Welcome to StarTalk, your place in the universe where science and pop culture collide.

• 0:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  StarTalk begins right now.

• 0:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  This is StarTalk. Neil deGrasse Tyson here, your personal astrophysicist with my co-host Chuck Nice. Chuck.

• 0:44Chuck Nice?

  Yes, Neil.

• 0:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, we got, we're doing another one of these and this is gonna be a cosmic queries, always a fan favorite. And this one is a topic that we should do more often and we don't.

• 0:56Chuck Nice?

  And what is that?

• 0:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Dark skies and astro photography.

• 1:00Chuck Nice?

  Ooh.

• 1:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Two of my favorite things. This is how you get into it. Oh my God. Everybody's got a camera. Everybody's got, you know, we got this.

• 1:08Chuck Nice?

  I don't know if the camera's that good.

• 1:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  We got this.

• 1:13Chuck Nice?

  Can I really do something with my iPhone? Can I really?

• 1:17Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I did a couple things. I could give you some advice, but we gotta go full guns to get all the advice we can here. And we've got with us, right in the house, Bubba, tough fresh. You are an astro photographer, a space photo journalist, which sounds like you go to space to get pictures. That's probably not what it is, but that's what it sounds like.

• 1:41Chuck Nice?

  Cosmo paparazzi, man. Cosmo paparazzi.

• 1:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let's get a close up on that lander, right? So.

• 1:49Chuck Nice?

  Alpha Tauri over here, over here, Alpha Tauri.

• 1:55Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Smile, this way. Who are you wearing? Who are you wearing?

• 2:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You're National Geographic Explorer. This is a highly privileged coveted designation that goes to people who are scattered around the world doing their thing in the National Geographic family of people bringing the universe to the rest of us. You're also an amateur astronomer. You studied physics in school, love that. And you're an advocate for night skies, dark skies. And that's another good thing. And plus, you're a founder of the World at Night Initiative. So let's, let's, let's, tell me what you're about, Babak. What, what, what drives you? What, how did it all begin?

• 2:43Speaker 01

  Well, I'm originally from Iran, from Tehran. I'm Iranian-American science journalist and photographer. My interest in astronomy started with the first look at the moon, like many others. At the age of 13, I borrowed this telescope on top of a roof in apartment in Tehran, which is highly light polluted. I had a look at the moon and I couldn't believe my eyes, you know? It was much more than the map I had in my hand. All the craters, mountains, and this was just a tiny telescope, two inch, you know? I can remember that scene still second by second. It's almost like being the Apollo orbiter going around the moon because I had no tracking with the telescope.

• 3:26Speaker 01

  So it was with the earth rotation, the scene was moving across, across the view. And I thought, you know, that would be cool to capture it on film. So that was the next night, which failed.

• 3:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Just to be clear, you said something that I want to make sure our audience fully understands. You have a telescope that's not plugged in. It just points in one direction and the moon is in the frame. But because earth is rotating.

• 3:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What's in the frame is passing by and the magnification of the telescope is such that you're basically observing the rotation of the Earth as the sky goes by your field.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Anytime I look through a telescope, that happens. Anytime you even take a picture of the sky, even with your phone, if you go beyond 30 seconds, you start to see stars are not pinpoint anymore, or little trails. This is a fact for the Earth rotation. I mean, it's a very easy evidence of how Earth is rotating and how the sky is turning above us.

• 4:28Chuck Nice?

  That sounds kind of annoying, like it would ruin every picture.

• 4:30Speaker 01

  That's very true. That's very true. That's why we are limited with shorter exposures, less than 30 seconds, unless you use a device that tracks with Earth's rotation, that can freeze the Earth's rotation, we call it the star tracker, or use a motor attached to your telescope that can track the stars. I didn't have that, that tiny telescope. So that's why, that's why the view was moving and it felt like being in an orbit around the moon. So later on, I became an editor at Astronomy Magazine of Iran. I started a TV program for about 10 years. We had a weekly TV program on space and astronomy. I was highly inspired by Neil, in fact. I emailed you back in 90s, if you can remember,

• 5:15Speaker 01

  I'm not sure, but...

• 5:16Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh my gosh. Did I reply?

• 5:18Speaker 01

  You did. You did, in fact.

• 5:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Well, that's good.

• 5:24Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, because if you didn't, this would be very awkward right now.

• 5:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It would be an awkward moment completely. But I do reply to all emails eventually.

• 5:33Speaker 01

  Yes, me too.

• 5:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Eventually is the...

• 5:36Speaker 01

  So yes, that was very inspiring to me.

• 5:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I'm glad to know that I replied.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  Yes, I was very inspired by Carl Sagan at the time until, you know, when he passed away. I wrote one of my first articles for Astronomy Magazine about Carl Sagan. And later, I started a program called The Board at Night in 2007. I was still based in Iran. And since the program became more and more global with exhibitions here and there, I had to leave Iran because it was not possible with all the limitations from the government and also the sanctions and internet filtration. So me and my wife decided to leave Germany and later on to the US. I became a National Geographic photographer in 2012. And recently, much more involved with NACIO across the platform, society and

• 6:25Speaker 01

  other parts of the platform of National Geographic.

• 6:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So let's go to questions now. Chuck, I think we covered the good ground here to see what people.

• 6:33Chuck Nice?

  We do.

• 6:34Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  What do you have?

• 6:34Chuck Nice?

  People are very curious about this. It's good to see. Gotta love this audience. This is Tasha Rath, who says, hello, Dr. Tyson, Lord Nice and Mr. Tafreshi. By the way, Chuck, my last name is pronounced Rath, as in wrath of God or wrath of Khan. Tasha is spelled R A T H. I'm, I think I'm capable of pronouncing that.

• 6:59Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There's no other way to pronounce that. No other way to get that one out there.

• 7:02Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, whatever, like, yeah, exactly. You know, Rata, yeah, Tasha Rath. Okay, anyway. She says, I'm from Oakland, California. I hope my question is, what are the most impactful actions individuals can take to help protect the dark skies in their home and community? Also, are there any stargazing apps that you can actually recommend that are effective at identifying objects in the night sky? Or are they, are they all as dumb and unhelpful as the ones I have tried?

• 7:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So I'm gonna answer the first one. Bob, you don't have to mention this. Ready? So things you can do as an individual? Walk around with a BB gun and shoot out lights.

• 7:49Chuck Nice?

  Bob actually agreed with that. I, let me just say as the adult in the room to all of our listeners, we are not condoning that you destroy public municipal property by shooting out streetlights, okay?

• 8:03Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, Bob.

• 8:04Chuck Nice?

  Which is something drug dealers do so that they could do their business.

• 8:07Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  In the dark, in the dark. So the individual, what power does the individual have?

• 8:11Speaker 01

  Well, talking to your communities. If you're going to a church, to a temple, to a mosque, you know. If you're meeting with the family members, talk with the communities, because this is how the culture changes. The problem of light pollution is not like plastic in the ocean, which takes decades to recover. It's not like climate change we are facing for the next century to recover that. It's a very quick cultural change. Night sky is becoming brighter and brighter by 2% every year on average. This is a very rapid change because of our move to LEDs. LEDs are much brighter, and if they're not used in a proper way, they can create much more sky glow,

• 8:55Speaker 01

  especially the white-blue LEDs, which are harmful to human body as well by changing our circadian rhythm. So, look at the light pollution not from the perspective of astronomers. It's very important for astronomers, but this is a very small community. In a larger scale, light pollution is waste of energy, so it's money involved. Light pollution harms billions of birds and nocturnal animals. Light pollution is about human health as well by changing our sleep cycle. And then, light pollution is important to reduce to reconnect with the night sky, which is our origin and probably our future.

• 9:38Speaker 01

  So, these are the important elements to enter into the discussion, because I have the same problem with my neighbors. A few years ago, I was in a condo association, and there were very bright lights. It took me three, four weeks when I got to that place to just move the direction to a way that it could be some changes. They didn't feel safe without those lights. So, first step was, what kind of light do we need here? Does it need to be permanent or motion sensor? In most cases, motion sensor lights are fine, and they're affordable, widely available. What temperature of light do we need? Does it need to be white, blue, or yellow? In most cases, we see much better with yellow light

• 10:22Speaker 01

  because you can see shadows and illuminated areas at the same time. With white, your eyes get saturated.

• 10:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Please. A quick interjection. Chuck and I have an explainer on the temperature color of light. I think if I remember correctly, Chuck, is that correct? Yeah, just something that people normally don't think about a temperature and what color light is, but of course, in astrophysics, it's everything. All right, it's the very foundation.

• 10:47Chuck Nice?

  Or photography.

• 10:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or photography, except there's some photographic language that's the opposite. All right, when they talk about a cooler light, they refer to blue. But a blue is a higher color temperature. So there's some conflicting language there. But we strand that out in our little, look it up in our archives.

• 11:04Chuck Nice?

  That's a good explainer, check it out.

• 11:06Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, I think so.

• 11:07Chuck Nice?

  The color temperature.

• 11:08Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And another point before we pick you up by back is the LEDs are brighter watt for watt, which means when you switch to LEDs, you actually save money, even if the illumination is brighter in the zone. So, so you can save even more money by dropping it down. And so the switch to LEDs was a money-saving move, but you don't want to be irresponsible about it. Which way is the light pointing?

• 11:40Chuck Nice?

  But the cool thing about LEDs, in addition to that, is you can mix the diodes so that you can create a different color temperature.

• 11:46Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  That's what I do at home.

• 11:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That explainer worked, Chuck.

• 11:51Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, man. Why do you think I do this job, man? I'm at school all the time.

• 12:01Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so back, back, pick it up. So, so.

• 12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, LEDs, I think it's a must change for sure. I managed to change the LEDs from 5000 Kelvin, which is white-blue, it has 50% blue light in it, to 3000 Kelvin, which we consider is a sky-friendly. For interior at my home, I use mainly 2200 Kelvin, which is very appealing to the eye, it's very relaxed, especially in the middle of the night if you want to go to the bathroom. If you have this bright white light, you have a hard time going back to sleep. But with a soft yellow light, it's much easier to go because we have some blue detectors in our retina. The cells are responsible only to detect blue light. It's almost near the center of retina.

• 12:46Speaker 01

  And those are triggering the brain to drop melatonin, and that, of course, activates our body. If you get too much blue exposure, that's why the blue LEDs are not good for anybody near the bedtime or anywhere near the bathrooms.

• 13:03Chuck Nice?

  And when you say drop melatonin, what you mean is restrict the production of melatonin, not literally dropping melatonin into you.

• 13:11Speaker 01

  Yes, it cannot do that.

• 13:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right, right, right. And back, your voice is so soothing. I have to conclude that you get full night's sleep every time. You got your lighting.

• 13:25Chuck Nice?

  You talk yourself to sleep?

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, in fact, I just finished a photo workshop here for two weeks where I didn't have any good night of sleep.

• 13:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, okay.

• 13:37Chuck Nice?

  By the way, with what you just said, it's important for people to know, just as an aside, not as an aside, as an addendum. When you're reading screens at night, if you're on a tablet or your computer, you should change the blue light setting on your screen because that could be disrupting your sleep patterns as well.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. And you know, this is the same impact on many other species with the white-blue LEDs. So LEDs are essential change for energy-saving. There is no doubt about that. This is the future that has already started. But it's a question of what kind of LEDs we need to use at every place. In the offices, we need white LEDs, in dental rooms, in surgery rooms. You don't want your surgeon to work on the red light, obviously, but do we need white LEDs on a beach which is home to sea turtles? Definitely not, because they're widely, they're very largely impacted by that light.

• 14:36Speaker 01

  That's why many turtle-friendly beaches in Florida, Costa Rica, Mexico, they are changing the light to red, and it's fully shielded. We call it full cutoff. You cannot see the bulb from a distance. It's only illuminating the ground where it's supposed to illuminate, not to the horizon.

• 14:57Chuck Nice?

  Is that so the turtles can come, is that so the turtles can come to shore at night and lay their eggs?

• 15:02Speaker 01

  Two reasons. One is that because if the beach is too bright, they don't come there usually. And the second, when the baby sea turtles are hatching, they look for the brighter horizon, which is naturally the ocean, not the bush and the sand. But now, this other horizon with all the hotels and the streetlights, it's much brighter than the ocean. They go to opposite direction inland, and of course, that doesn't end very well.

• 15:30Chuck Nice?

  That ain't right.

• 15:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's bad.

• 15:33Chuck Nice?

  See a turtle end up in a strip club instead of ocean. That's terrible, man.

• 15:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or the casino.

• 15:40Chuck Nice?

  It's terrible, man.

• 15:42Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, cool. So how, how long did it take for you to effect that change?

• 15:46Speaker 01

  It took me three, four weeks. So it takes some time, and it's very important to start with your local community, because this is how we are going to change this. We are naturally afraid of dark. So on my T-shirt, it says addicted to the night. You know, we, we are going to become acquainted with the nights to discover that there is a beauty in this natural darkness. It's good to have natural dark nights. Some places it's impossible, like New York City. But if there is a place which is now dark enough for nocturnal species and seeing the murky wave, let's keep that the way it is.

• 16:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  All right Chuck, give me another question.

• 16:39Chuck Nice?

  All right, here we go. Uh, this is from our old friend Alejandro Reynoso.

• 16:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:47Chuck Nice?

  From Monterrey, Mexico.

• 16:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 16:50Chuck Nice?

  And he says, hello, or should I say hola? He says, my question is, what is the most difficult thing to photograph? And why?

• 17:02Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, I love that.

• 17:04Speaker 01

  Well, to me, there has been many challenges, of course, from the beginning when I started in early 90s. On film photography, simply the Milky Way was the most difficult thing to capture properly because the film was so low in sensitivity. And then you needed a Star Trek device, you needed clear dark area, which was not available to me in the city. So that was challenging. Today, with your iPhone or any smartphone, you can capture the Milky Way on the first night, on your first shot of the night sky outside in darkness.

• 17:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  How much more sensitive are the chips in phones compared with the film you used back in the early 90s?

• 17:45Chuck Nice?

  Right, and they use the same terminology, which is ISO.

• 17:49Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 17:49Chuck Nice?

  So what would be?

• 17:51Speaker 01

  The equivalent, so the film is ISO 100. Um, at the time, we were using 100 to 400 and above that it became very grainy, um, very difficult to print large. But nowadays, even the phone cameras are using ISO of 1600, 3200, even higher. With some of the cameras I use for animals at night, we are shooting at ISO 50,000 to 100,000. And it's picking almost every single photon that it arrives. The quantum efficiency, the percentage of photons which it can record, it's up to 70 to 80%. And, um, so with film...

• 18:33Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  With film, it's down in single digits.

• 18:34Speaker 01

  That's true, that's true.

• 18:36Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Sensitivity is single digits, yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 18:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wow, so, so, okay, so...

• 18:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  There are handheld photos you can take today that previously required tripod.

• 18:47Speaker 01

  Even off the Milky Way, handheld photos with phone. Because the phone is stacking images, it takes quick shots of, let's say, half a second and a stack of those which are not shaking and give you a final image after three to 10 seconds, even handheld, you can see the Milky Way. But the challenge today is more, for me, is more into objects such as a supernova in the Milky Way, which didn't happen for the past 400 years. Or a new comet, a bright new comet, or atmospheric phenomena.

• 19:21Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  But just to be clear, we are overdue for a supernova in the Milky Way.

• 19:25Speaker 01

  I look forward to it.

• 19:28Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Every 100 years or so, and we've gone on 400, not since Kepler's supernova in 1600s that we're overdue, so watch the night sky, okay?

• 19:40Chuck Nice?

  You guys are worse than the heirs of a rich a-hole. Like, don't worry, one day that star is gonna die real soon.

• 19:46Speaker 01

  In fact, there is one that can explode any night.

• 19:51Chuck Nice?

  Any day now, that star could die and give us what we need, baby. Don't you worry.

• 19:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's hard to photograph something that is transitory, right? That you don't know when or where it's gonna happen. That would be the top of the list.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  And some of them are atmospheric phenomena. One of the objects that I really love to capture, other than mysterious things like red sprites, they're related to lightnings, or blue jets. There is one object I have not managed to document, in fact, it's never been documented properly, it's called ball lightning.

• 20:28Chuck Nice?

  Ball lightning?

• 20:30Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Wait, you're saying it's never been photographed?

• 20:32Speaker 01

  Nobody knows, some scientists don't believe it exists, and some have many papers about it.

• 20:38Chuck Nice?

  Well, we should say what it is first, because maybe somebody, not everybody knows what ball lightning is. It ain't Michael Jordan on a good night, or Steph Curry dropping threes from outside, but what is ball lightning?

• 20:51Speaker 01

  It's a ball of charged particles in the air that travels very slowly, sometimes fast, and it's in the size of anywhere from a basketball to maybe smaller. And it has been documented in the history visually, people have seen it discharge. Air can even go through the walls or windows. And so there are paintings, for example, people looking at this magical ball coming in. And they're sometimes explode, of course, because all of a sudden the charged particles are released, could be indoor, and it can create damage too. It's usually happen in a very humid condition. So humid places are better to observe them.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  And we have many visual documentation of that, but never been documented properly by a camera that you can rely on the image. There has been a couple of them, and later on, we found out it was AI generated.

• 21:51Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, so just to be clear, the reason why you have static electricity, because charges build up, and you get near something where it can discharge, that will happen under dry conditions, because in dry conditions that you will hold your charge until you get near the object. Under damp conditions, you're constantly can discharge. But if you have a damp environment, then maybe the ball lightning is itself in its own dry pocket? Is that, could that be what's going on here?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  That's, that's true, yeah. That's, when I read, one of the explanation was that. And, you know, there are similar atmospheric phenomena that has been never documented, even red sprites were never documented until 1980s. Nobody believed they exist. Some of the UFO sighting that sighting we have are in fact atmospheric phenomena which are not familiar with.

• 22:53Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Right. So the recent hearings with NASA are encouraging people with their smartphones to capture anything they don't understand. And your smartphone has metadata of location and time and the like, and bring it to a clearinghouse. So it might be some of these phenomena that were so hard to catch before, because people weren't walking around with cameras until very recently in the history of civilization. We could get to the bottom of a lot of these mysterious phenomena. Yeah.

• 23:23Chuck Nice?

  It's like people getting beat by the cops.

• 23:27Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  It's just like that Chuck.

• 23:30Chuck Nice?

  Yeah. You know, before it was very unlikely you would see that. Now we got cameras everywhere. It's just like, wow, why does this happen every other day?

• 23:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, it's been happening. Right, right, right. Thanks for that analogy Chuck. There is a perfect analogy. Yeah. Another question.

• 23:48Chuck Nice?

  I'm just, I'm just trying to get hate mail.

• 23:50Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. No, it's, can't get hate mail for the truth.

• 23:53Chuck Nice?

  Here we go.

• 23:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay.

• 23:55Chuck Nice?

  This is Kevin the sommelier, our friend Kevin the sommelier, who says, uh, for someone who wants to get into astrophotography, what would you recommend to get started? Just like in return for someone who wants to start their wine journey, they would understand more like German riesling or new world port noir. Those are great places to start. Well, thanks for the tip Kevin. And Neil, what's a new world, uh, noir, Pinot Noir?

• 24:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So, new world is anything other than Europe that planted vines later than Europe. So they would be South America, North America.

• 24:29Chuck Nice?

  So like Oregon or Washington State?

• 24:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Exactly, exactly. And especially making wines in the European style. And we might even include Australia, uh, in a, in a kind of a new world sense of that. Right. So that's what he means by new world.

• 24:42Chuck Nice?

  Okay.

• 24:43Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. So how would you begin?

• 24:45Speaker 01

  Well, you can start with any digital camera with even a cell phone, but it needs to be on a tripod. So if you're using a cell phone, it needs to be on a, an adapter that connects to a steady tripod. Then for example, on iPhone, it can go up to 30 seconds. It's good to activate the RAW format when you're taking an image on the phone. You have possibility to capture it on RAW. And if you're also shooting with a proper camera, you have to shoot in RAW because we need every bit of information for low light images, night to sky images. If you compress it to JPG, it doesn't work very well. And if you're using a camera, the most important other than the camera itself,

• 25:29Speaker 01

  which is better to be a low light photography device, is the lens. The lens needs to be very fast, meaning that the aperture of the lens can open very widely. So you can get enough light in the short amount of exposure that the Earth rotation dictates us. Because if you go with much longer 10 minutes, you get a beautiful image of a star trails, not the pinpoint stars. So in order to receive enough light in 30 seconds, you need to use a lens which has an aperture of F2.8 or better, such as F2 1.4. These are fast lenses. And then comes the place, because you need the darkest sky location.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  So look at the darkestsky.org website, look at the light pollution map.info website, and these are sources you can find darkest sky places near you, where is you have to go to see the Milky Way. But also back to the question, it's very important to know about the night sky. If you're going to be wildlife photographer, you have to know about the animals. The same is here. It's fun and interesting to learn about the stargazing. So then you realize what season is best for the Milky Way? What season can I capture Betelgeuse and Orion? What season is best for the summer triangle or brightest star Vega? When can I get a comet? When is the best time for a meteor shower?

• 27:00Speaker 01

  And all these is a knowledge that you can get gradually by reading about practical astronomy. It's fun and it enables you to capture much better images.

• 27:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay. But back, what? How do you make your smartphone take a 30-second image? How do you make it do that?

• 27:20Speaker 01

  When you hold, let me explain on iPhone, for example. When you hold iPhone, it's limited, the night mode on iPhone is limited to one to three seconds handheld. If you keep it steady, it goes to 10 seconds. Usually you have to tap on the night mode on the bottom and then there's a slider. You will see slide as soon as it's on a fixed tripod. Not necessarily on a tripod, but any fixed platform, even on a table or on the ground, connected, attached to a rock. Then you see the slider goes to 30 seconds.

• 27:54Chuck Nice?

  Oh.

• 27:55Speaker 01

  iPhone will recognize vibration of your hand.

• 27:58Chuck Nice?

  Ah, look at that. It automatically sees that it's not vibrating and then extends the time you're able to take the picture.

• 28:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Did not know that.

• 28:05Speaker 01

  On Google Pixel, it goes to four minutes.

• 28:07Chuck Nice?

  Wow, Google Pixel goes to four minutes.

• 28:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So when you say RAW, you mean uncompressed? So you'd have to do that in the settings for the camera where it asks you what format.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Yes, under the format in iPhone going to setting camera form, camera and then formats, you activate Apple Pro RAW. Of course, your, your phone needs to be the Pro version in order to have the RAW format.

• 28:32Chuck Nice?

  And how do you keep the image from getting too bright? Because the longer you're exposed, the brighter the image will become if you're in a fixed position.

• 28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially if you have moonlight, for example, then you don't need 30 seconds. Or if you're near a city, these 30 seconds high ISO images will come into a result of completely overexposed image. So it depends on the moon condition. I usually prefer to shoot the night sky during the crescent moon to first quarter or last quarter, when the moon phase is between 50% to 10%. When your moon is brighter, the landscape will be beautifully illuminated, but the night sky is washed out.

• 29:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Chuck, when I was younger, I would, because the, the moon is just reflected sunlight. So you could take a picture at night with the full moon or of, of just the landscape. And if the exposure is long enough and then you get the result back, it's like a daytime photo. Like you would not know the difference. This is just sunlight reflected off the moon with enough exposure.

• 29:34Chuck Nice?

  Right, right, right.

• 29:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  You, you get it.

• 29:36Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's very confusing when you.

• 29:38Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yes. Another little fact that the full moon is about six times as bright as a half moon.

• 29:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And the laws of reflection are not linear with the angle of sunlight hitting the moon versus the reflected light to your eye. So the full moon is much, much brighter and it's a, it's a mess for everything else in the sky, for sure.

• 30:15Speaker 03

  I'm Joel Cherico and I make pottery. You can see my pottery on my website, cosmicmugs.com. Cosmic Mugs, art that lets you taste the universe every day. And I support StarTalk on Patreon. This is StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson.

• 30:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So Chuck, we got just a couple of minutes left.

• 30:37Chuck Nice?

  Wow, look at that.

• 30:41Chuck Nice?

  All right, well, let's go with a Jaden Peters. Jaden Peters says, greetings from Ogden, Utah, amateur astrophotographer here with a very easy, easy to pronounce name. Thank you, Jaden. Jesus Christ. I was wondering what your favorite celestial object to photograph is and what equipment you have used to photograph it. I am truly inspired by your beautiful, beautiful photos.

• 31:10Speaker 01

  Definitely Northern Lights is one of my favorite because it's ever-changing, especially when aurora is overhead, it's creating a kind of a known as crown. And it's almost like raining in colors down to you. It's an effect of perspective, in fact. And that is my most favorite object in night sky to shoot. Unfortunately, not possible to shoot it from my neighborhood in Boston area due to light pollution and latitude, but from Iceland, from anywhere, Nordic countries, Alaska, Northern Canada, these are frequently viewed. Another object that I love to photograph is a bright comet. And those are not very

• 31:54Speaker 01

  common. Every decade, we have one great comet. The last one in northern hemisphere was two decades ago, in 1997, Comet Halbach. And then-

• 32:05Speaker 01

  We had 2007, another great comet in the southern hemisphere sky. And nothing after that. There were good comets, but nothing we can call a great comet. So I'm really looking forward to it. Something like Haidab can be viewed from middle of New York City. So it's very impressive to look at it in the dark sky. It has maybe tail of thirty, forty degrees. I remember comet Hayakutake in ninety-five. The tail in dark sky was ninety degrees.

• 32:35Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Okay, but so, but you can't summon up a comet, nor can you summon up the northern lights. Uh, so you have to be very opportunistic when these events are available to you, correct?

• 32:48Chuck Nice?

  How about for us mere mortals, is there anything pedestrian that you really like photograph?

• 32:54Speaker 01

  The Milky Way. The Milky Way is like elephants in wildlife safari. So that's what you're going to see. And, you know, it's unfortunate that more than ninety-five percent of population in developed world can no longer see the Milky Way from their living area because of light pollution. And that includes North America and Europe. If you include the entire world, it's about sixty percent now. That's they cannot see the Milky Way anymore. So there are generations who have never seen the Milky Way. I had a recent program, um, and a New York Times, um, retired journalist was with us. And she never saw the Milky Way in eighty years, living in New York City.

• 33:37Speaker 01

  For the first time she saw it in this program I do every August in Maine. And she was almost crying. She was so impressed by the beauty. Of course, she was also disappointed that the Milky Way didn't appear to the eyes with color. Because our eyes cannot pick the real color of any diffuse object at nighttime. We're not sensitive enough to colors.

• 33:58Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Spoiled by Hubble. Or the James Webb.

• 34:03Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 34:04Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, we are. Yeah, tell me about it. Oh, wait, do we have one, one more? Because I want to hear the answer to just one more.

• 34:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  OK, fast, fast. Bring it on fast.

• 34:12Chuck Nice?

  Very quickly.

• 34:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Go.

• 34:13Chuck Nice?

  It's a super fast, super fast. This is Jason, and he says, have either of you, that means the two of you, not me, have either of you ever seen something that gave you an undeniable truth about something else? So you look through your lens and you see something that confirms something, a truth in another area of your life? I think that's a great question.

• 34:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. Well, since ninety, early nineties, it's been like thirty years since my teenager that I've been photographing the night sky. I captured many UFOs. But every time, an astronomer explained that. So for me, there has been some really exciting moments. First time I captured a rocket exhaust, for example, or this cloud coming out from the extra fuel dumped by a rocket in the upper atmosphere. Or the first time I captured a military grain drone. I had no idea. I thought this is a UFO. Or first time I captured an exploding fireball, a very bright meteor, we call it bolide.

• 35:19Speaker 01

  And these were really changing moments in my career. And then I learned something, that these are natural phenomena or man-made phenomena. And I still have a few objects in my images which are not explained and I imagine are related to large drones.

• 35:36Chuck Nice?

  Well, look at that.

• 35:37Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So your UFOs became IFOS in the presence of expertise. That's all that happened there.

• 35:43Chuck Nice?

  Uh huh.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:45Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  So for me, it was the Leonid meteor shower in 1999, where we expected a meteor storm because Earth was passing very close to the, what was the head of the comet responsible for the debris that were plowing through as we orbit the sun. So rather than a few good meteors every five minutes, you'd expect maybe a few good meteors per minute or even a higher rate than that. So I'm there mid-span of the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, and I'm looking up. And I see a star just appear out of nowhere. And it just got brighter and brighter and brighter.

• 36:31Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  And then it disappeared. And I said, whoa. Then I had to like, I'm thinking in like fast time here and I say, well, that's not a meteor, meteor streak, left and right and up and down. And then I said, oh my gosh.

• 36:46Chuck Nice?

  That must be an angel.

• 36:47Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  No, I said, oh, no, I said, yes, it was a meteor. Headed straight for me.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:56Chuck Nice?

  Oh, my God.

• 36:57Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That's what I'm saying.

• 36:58Chuck Nice?

  Oh, snap.

• 37:00Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  I had to deduce this from first principles. I said, if they're hitting me at all angles, at some point, what's a meteor gonna look like when it's headed straight towards you?

• 37:10Chuck Nice?

  Wow.

• 37:12Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My gosh.

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Fortunately, most meteors from a shower are coming from icy objects.

• 37:18Chuck Nice?

  Yeah, so it got brighter and brighter and then of course it dissipated into the atmosphere and then that was it.

• 37:25Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  That was it. And and I said, damn, now I know what my last moments on earth will look like if a meteor is gonna take me out.

• 37:35Chuck Nice?

  Yo, that is, oh man, I never heard that story before. That's super exciting.

• 37:39Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:40Chuck Nice?

  No, you never told me that. That's amazing. That's super exciting.

• 37:43Speaker 01

  Meteor showers, you see them time to time. I have pictures of them. They're just like supernova.

• 37:49Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, yeah, they just show up and then they disappear. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 37:52Chuck Nice?

  Wow. So how do we get people before we continue to get out and do more to look up? I mean, Neil's always saying, keep look, keep looking up. How about the people who aren't looking up at all to they're not keep looking up? How do they start looking up?

• 38:08Speaker 01

  I think a trip to a national park or state park in a dark sky place is the best way to do this because many of the national parks in the US and Canada are dark sky designated locations, especially in southwest US. Some of my favorites, for example, in Arizona Nevada border is the western end of Grand Canyon.

• 38:30Speaker 01

  Or the Great Basin National Park. It's at high altitude in Nevada and it's also very dark. There are plenty of dark sky locations in that area. All the five major national parks in Utah are dark sky designated or going to be soon. In northwestern Nevada, we have the Black Rock Desert, another dark sky place. Even very close to Las Vegas, on the way to BT, on the way to Death Valley, there's a dark sky area. Another place I have photographed many times is Cathedral Gorge, which is inside Nevada and border of Utah. And it's just fascinating, um, rock formations with dark sky above.

• 39:14Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Or all of Australia and Central Africa.

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 39:20Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Yeah, no, but you're right. If most of the population of the world lives in the northern hemisphere and most of that population lives near cities, then we have to be very surgical about how we get the, these people out there. They need to know where to go. Is there a map they can go to online that identifies these dark spots?

• 39:38Speaker 01

  There are two ways to do that. One is light pollution map dot info. Uh, that's a website. And there is also a layer for Google Earth. Um, a university study provided this layer of, uh, known as the, um, the map, the atlas of artificial sky glow. Um, and this you can add it to your Google Earth and then you can zoom in and see another place. Uh, another website is blue-marble.de. It's a German enthusiast who includes all these satellite images from every year. You can look at Earth at night and find dark sky places near you. But do not forget that elevation is not there. So if you, even if you're in a bright area, but you find an elevated side,

• 40:22Speaker 01

  which is at least 4,000, 5,000 feet above sea level, then you start to see dark sky even within the cities.

• 40:32Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Very cool. And right now, you are speaking to us from Iceland. What are you doing there today?

• 40:38Speaker 01

  From Reykjavik, Iceland, this was my last day after two weeks of a photo workshop capturing the Northern Ice and the Milky Way with a group coming from all around the country. I do this

• 40:49Speaker 01

  all around the world. I do this twice a year in March and September, known as Aurora Photo Tours.

• 40:54Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Oh, wow. So people can actually hang out with you and learn how to do what you're doing is, oh, look at that.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do four or five workshops.

• 41:04Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  My invitation might still be in my inbox, I'm guessing.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  Exactly, yes.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Anytime.

• 41:10Neil deGrasse Tyson?

  Let me check. Let me check my inbox if I've ever been invited on this. So you made a career of this. This is a brilliant, important, and envious career path that you've made for yourself here. Congratulations on that. And keep that going. All right. Chuck, we out. All right. This was fun. And back, thanks again for being our guest on StarTalk. All right. I'm Neil deGrasse Tyson, your personal astrophysicist, finishing up this Cosmic Queries edition of our night's search for night skies. As always, especially after this episode, keep looking up.