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My presentation on "Signs of Eta C" was VERY WELL received. I put to use the suggestions that the FWAS group gave after my FWAS talk, and it really helped. I think it was Joe Ashcroft that suggested I should show the Monolith Statue at the very beginning of the talk - so I did... It was on the title page that started the talk. Really a good suggestion! And Danny Arthur suggested that I needed to show more of a connection between the drawing on the back of the statue and the sky map.. So I made a transparency with the sky map enlarged and placed it just under the drawing of the tilted Southern Cross and the brightening star. I think that is what clinched it with the audience. So THANKS to Danny's suggestion. And thanks to the several others who had some good pointers!
Janet Mattei, the director of the AAVSO, asked me to write a paper on it for the Journal of the American Association of Variable Star Observers. She was very positive about it being a possible depiction of an Eta Carinae outburst 1000 years ago.
The people in the audience were professional astrophysicists and many serious amateur astronomers, so it was a tough audience to present to. I was amazed! They were so accepting of my hypothesis that the patterns on the back of the Pokotia Monolith Statue were perhaps depicting the first major outburst of Eta Carinae about 1000 years ago. Several people came up to me the next three days after my talk and wanted to discuss it with me. Every one of them thought without a doubt that it was FOR REAL!! It was really exciting!
One woman astrophysicist from Harvard University sat down with me at a coffee break to discuss it. She just took it as a matter of fact that it depicted the Eta Carinae outburst, but thought it might also be the Vela Supernova that exploded about 10,000 years ago.. She wanted me to check on the dates of the occupation of Pokotia and Tiuhuanaco. Could there have been anybody there 10,000 years ago?
I have some neat photos of the telescopes on top of Mauna Kea - I'll do that in the next newsletter.
Thanks for all the support FWAS!!
Sallie Teames
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