My Presentation at RocheStar Fest 2022

Date: July 24, 2022

Background

The Astronomy Section of the Rochester Academy of Science has held an event each year known as RocheStar Fest at their Farish Observatory complex in Ionia, New York (south of Rochester).

For the past three.years that have not been able to hold this event because of Covid-19. This year they were going to try and have it again.

I was looking forward to this, as I have never been to a RocheStar Fest, and the curtain of Covid-19 came down just as I began my Astrophotographic Journey.

To my surprise, I was asked if I would consider giving a talk about my Astrophotography as the main speaker after dinner on Saturday evening.

I was honored to be asked, but I suggested that others might do a better job - after all, I have only been at this for three years. Others have been doing this - in some cases, for a decade or more, and were more accomplished.

But they still wanted me to do it, so I asked for guidance on what I should speak about. I was told, “Just cover your astrophotography and show lots of great images.”

Well - that was a pretty wide-open brief, so I decided that I could do pretty much anything I wanted.

After thinking about it for a while, I decided that the only thing I could do was speak about my own personal journey and experiences regarding Astro Imaging, and so that is what I did.

The Talk

The weekend of RocheStar Fest offered clear hot weather. While this is certainly better than rainy weather, the heat of the day took its toll.

While meeting folks and talking astronomy was a nice departure from the days of Covid isolation, my wife and I still had to be careful. I have some health issues that put me at risk from Covid, and we have an adorable little 18-month-old granddaughter that was not vaccinated at the time and who we would be seeing shortly - so we had to protect her well. So we decided to stay outside for as many events as possible and to mask up when we were inside with other people.

This talk itself was to take place in the Ionia Fire Department Hall. The good news was that it was air-conditioned. The bad news was that it was inside, and I would have to give the talk with my mask on. I was not crazy about this, but I saw no way around it.

After an excellent dinner, my talked got started around 8:30 in the evening. I was already a little crispy from the heat of the day, and I soon discovered that the air conditioning was really struggling when the room was filled with people.

So the talk began, and after a few slides, I was feeling more comfortable. It had been a long time since I had given any kind of talk, and I was rusty.

About the 40-minute mark, I started to realize I was in trouble. I was hot, and 40 minutes of talking loudly with a mask on were overheating my face and head. I began to feel faint and a little wobbly. I could tell that my articulation was suffering, and I started to repeat myself. I kept thinking about what the talk would look like if I fainted before I got through it.

But I kept going and made it through. Shortly after, I took a few bottles of water and stepped out into the now cooler outside air, removed my mask, and chugged the water. Such a relief! I went back inside and asked my wife how bad it came off towards the end. She did not notice anything amiss - which surprised me. When I later saw the video, I could tell the points where I was struggling, noticed when I was misspeaking, and cringed when I said the same phrases over and over. But I guess you always are your harshest critic.

Enough of that. The audience itself was simply great! They were attentive, laughed at my corny jokes, and remained interested and engaged through the long talk - they were simply great. But then again, my experience with astro enthusiasts has always been like this.

So I can report that both my audience and I survived my talk, and I am glad I did it. It’s the first talk I have given in a long time, and as such, and while there was a lot of rust to shake off there, it did help me to coalesce my thoughts around my astrophotographic experiences, and it gave me a baseline for things to work on should I ever be asked to do another talk!

About the Video

The folks with ASRAS had things set up so they could video the presentation and share it via YouTube with members who could not make the event. However, a technical snafu caused the video to be lost - the sound was captured, and there was some talk about taking the slides and putting them into the video to at least have something.

My wife videoed the entire talk with her cell phone. She was not expecting anyone other than family members or me ever to see it, so she was not super careful about it. But now, it was the only surviving video of the talk.

Recently I have been leaning in on doing more video content on this website. I am not very good at it, but I am trying to learn. I decided to use this video as an exercise in video editing. I was trying to learn iMovie and thought that perhaps I could enhance the video.

So I:

• Cropped the video, so the table in front was not in the way

• Enhanced the picture quality

• Enhanced the sound by removing background sounds and enhancing voice frequencies

• Added slides and images to the right parts of the video

• Added intros and outros.

These helped the video - but there are still parts where the camera is moving around or lost focus - So I apologize for that!

Thanks!

Finally, I would like to thank ASRAS for inviting me to present to the group, and a special thanks to Mark Minarich, who provided great help and support to me as I prepared the talk!

I had a blast at RocheStar Fest 2022 and am now looking forward to RocheStar Fest 2023!