Transit Truths

Ok, guys, I need to tell you some things about this Venus Transit which is taking place next week. They might not be what you’re expecting or wanting to hear, but they’re the facts.

The Venus Transit is *everywhere* right now – on every space website, in every newspaper, and right across TV. The BBC is showing a special program all about it the night before, which is fantastic – ANY astronomy on TV is fine by me! – but I’m a bit worried that all this breathless coverage is rather giving the impression that the Transit is going to be a spectacle for the man , woman, child and dog in the street, like an eclipse or a meteor shower – something that anyone can see just by looking up from the litter-strewn, dog-dirt smeared pavement and think “Wow! Look at THAT!!”

I’m sure that there are lots of people out there expecting the Transit to look like a smaller version of a solar eclipse – a big black disc covering part of the Sun, making the sky go dark and causing birds to sing and tail-twitching lambs to run in a bleating panic to their mums.

Er, no.

The fact is, even if the sky is gloriously, fantastically clear where you live next Wednesday morning, as far as the UK is concerned, unless you’re a) either a vampire or an insomniac amateur astronomer, with b) specialist equipment, c) knowledge of solar observing and  d) a BRILLIANT location to view from, you won’t even know there’s anything going on.

Why? Because the Venus Transit is, essentially, the slowwwwwww passage of a small black dot across the blindingly-bright small disc of the Sun, AS THE SUN IS RISING. Even for people who know what they’re doing, who have the right equipment, it’s going to be an absolute pig to observe at all.

So please, everyone, let’s calm down just a little shall we?

The Venus Transit is going to be an amazing event for amateur astronomers with telescopes fitted with special solar filters, or image projection systems. But to see it they’ll have to crawl out of bed at 3.30am that morning, drive out of town past the houses of all the sane, sleeping people, to some godforsaken uninhabited place in the countryside, or on the coast, with a flat, featureless eastern horizon, where they’ll then wait for sunrise, and then squint at, and photograph, a tiny black disc silhouetted against the bright solar disc for an hour or so before it drifts free of the Sun’s limb.

If we manage to do all that, we’ll love it! It will be brilliantly exciting for us, after looking forward to it for so long, and as I sit here typing this post about it I’m honestly getting goosebumps thinking about it.

Yes, a Venus Transit is a fantastic astronomical event, a jaw-dropper for us astronomers. But someone has to be honest here: it’s not going to be seen easily by… well… you know, normal people.

But does that mean if you’re not an astronomer, and you don’t have a special telescope, or fancy equipment, that you shouldn’t try to see the Transit? No.

Absolutely not!

Because this Venus Transit IS amazing – it’s nothing less than the chance to see another planet, another PLANET, moving between us and the Sun, briefly becoming visible against its blinding fiery face as a dark hole. It’s what astronomy, and the study of the universe, is all about. Two planets, and a raging star, in alignment, for pity’s sake..!

No. It’s definitely worth trying to see, and now I’ve pointed out  a few home truths about it, if you want to watch it, here’s what you need to do.

* Go out and drive around until you find yourself somewhere SUITABLE to watch the sunrise from on the morning of Wednesday June 6th – “suitable” means FLAT AS A PANCAKE TO THE EAST, WITH NO HILLS OR TREES, because the Transit will already be almost over as the Sun rises as seen from the UK, so watching the Transit will mean watching the first hour or so of sunrise. And if there are any hills, trees, buildings in the way you will very likely miss the whole thing.

* Having found a suitable observing site, you’re going to need something to observe the Transit WITH. But what? Well, sunglasses won’t darken the Sun anywhere NEAR enough to let you see Venus silhouetted against its disc. And for the love of God, don’t try smoked glass; we stopped using that to observe the Sun back when Noah was building his boat. A piece of VERY dense welding glass would work, but only for very brief naked eye glimpses of the Sun, you absolutely mustn’t put it in front of binoculars or a telescope and lo0k at the Sun that way.

And seriously, if you have even considered for a split second looking at the Sun straight through a pair of binoculars, or a telescope, then get off my blog. No, really, just go, because that is so slap-across-the-face STUPID that you don’t deserve to be reading this. It should be obvious to EVERYONE that if you magnify the image of a blindingly-bright, searingly-hot light in the sky it’s going to BURN YOUR EYES OUT OF YOUR ******* SKULL!!!!!

If you’re still reading then that must mean you’re not a stupid person, so I’ll tell you how to observe the Transit safely!

Many astronomers – professional and amateur – will be watching the Transit through their telescopes, but those telescopes will be fitted with very special filters, made of glass or a a foil-like film that reduces the light from the Sun to a tiny, teeny frction of its usual brightness, thus allowing them to see features on it like sunspots, and also see Venus as a black disc silhouetted against its face. These filters are pretty specialised bits of kit, and unless you’re an amateur astronomer already you won’t know where to get them from or how to use them properly, so forget about them ok?

Other astronomers will be using their telescopes in a different way – and the key word here is PROJECTION. They’re going to line up their telescopes with the Sun, WITHOUT LOOKING THROUGH THEM, and then put a piece of card in front of the eyepiece. The telescope will then project an image of the Sun onto that piece of card, and they’ll be able to see Venus’ disc very, very clearly against that disc.

This is how the aforementioned man, woman, child or dog in the street can watch the Venus Transit. You probably won’t have a telescope, but I imagine you have – or have access to – a pair of binoculars? So let’s go with that.

You’re going to need that pair of binoculars,  their lens caps (oh they’re around somewhere, just look for them!), some card, and a bit of common sense.

First, put the main lens cap on the front of one side of the binoculars, leaving you effectvely with a short, stubby, low-magnification telescope. Next you need to aim the binocs towards the Sun, but without looking through them. This is really easy actually – just point them very roughly towards the Sun and then jiggle and wiggle them about until a bright circle appears on the ground, or wall, or whatever surface is behind the binoculars while you’re moving them. This is actually a projected image of the Sun. See that, and the hard work is done!

Now you know how to line the binocs up with the Sun, all you have to do is put a piece of white card or something like it behind the binocs and focus them until the Sun’s image is sharp and round. You might even see some sunspots! Move the binocs away from the ‘screen’ until you have a good-sized image, and that’s it – you’re ready!

Then, on the Wednesday morning, go to your observing site for quarter to five, look to the east, and wait. When the Sun cracks the horizon, start projecting its image, and voila, there you’ll see the dark disc of Venus against the Sun’s bright face. Something like this…

Simple really!

Then what?

Well, take pictures! Get your digital camera, and just snap away, something will turn out ok.

Of course, if your local astronomical society is holding an observing event for the Transit, get yourself along to it and enjoy the show. The people there will be more than happy to show you Venus’ disc silhouetted against the Sun. But given the time of this Transit you might well be on your own this time, so follow the advice above and you won’t go far wrong.

And if you’re in some other country, your Transit timings will be different – you might even be able to see the whole thing. If you can, I urge you to track down a local astronomy group and watch it with them, you’ll get a superb view and meet some fascinating people with fascinating equipment and knowledge.

Good luck!

Kendal’s NLC-Chasers succesfully track down their prey!

Here we go again, the annual hunt for noctilucent clouds – or NLC – has begun! And acoss the UK, in fact across the world, skywatchers are now getting jumpy and itchy and impatient and flustered every sunset, wondering what the coming night will bring – clear sky or clouds? NLC or no-show? It’s a very, very frustrating time of year…!

The first sighting of NLC during a new season is always special, and for the NLC-chasing members of the Eddington Astronomical Society that sighting came early (ridiculously early!!) on Wednesday morning…

The previous evening, three of EAS’s most dedicated NLC-chasers – myself, Carol and Phil – had arranged to meet up at Kendal Castle after midnight, hoping to see some NLC after a day of beautifully-clear skies, and reports from other countries of early displays of NLC. But by the time we got up there, the clear sky had gone – replaced by a Kendal-smothering blanket of murk, a low grey foggy foulness which obliterated every hint of starlight! No! Not fair!!!

BUT…

Phil and carol’s weather apps on their phones suggested that clearer skies might be found further north, up towards Shap, and Penrith, so, ever the optimists, we piled into Carol’s car and were soon heading north, out of the Auld Grey Town and up towards higher ground Penrith-way…

BUT…

The fog was evil, trly evil. It wasn’t restricted to Kendal, it was aropund and beyond the town, and as we headed north, at almost 2am, we drove through steadily thicker and thicker fog, fog so thick it almost hid the ‘cats eyes’ stretching down the centre of the road.

BUT…

Then suddenly we were out of the fog, above it, and could see stars! Finding a farm gateway to park up in we piled out of the car and began scanning the northern horizon, hoping that some NLC would apear. And after twenty minutes or so, they did…

Just very pale, almost-not-there pale in fact, with no obvious structure, but definitely NLC from the way they were shining in the powder blue dawn-approaching sky with the “normal” water droplet clouds dark pillows beneath them, hugging the horizon. Not knowing how long the display would last we all took photos. Even ON those pictures the NLC aren’t very obvious, but they’re there, and they could be seen, just, with the naked eye, so I thibnk it’s okay for Kendal’s NLC-Chasers officially declare the 2012 NLC Season OPEN!

By 3.15 the NLC were fading from view, the sky brighetning behind them so much that their meagre light was obliterated, but as if to thank us for our perseverance and dedication we were treated to a beautifully bright pass of the ISS as we prepared to go home. Cameras were quickly swung around towards it, and more pics were taken as we all said a quiet, yawny “Thank you!” to the sky for not letting us down…

All in all it was a brilliant night – good company, and a quest completed. Now we’ve got our fingers crossed for another display tonight, because as I type this the sky beyond my window is clear and a cold, dark blue, so I’ll be up at the Castle before dawn again tomorrow morning.

Fingers crossed!

(ISS trail – Carol)

(NLC – Phil)

(NLC – me)

Kendal’s NLC-Chasers! – Carol

Eddington AS “Moonwatch” Mon May 28th…

Last night’s “MoonWatch” was a big success, depsite the weather’s best attempts to spoil it for us by putting clouds back in teh sky after almost a week of perfectly cloud-free nights!

Around half a dozen members of the Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal gathered in the town’s Gooseholme Park, to enjoy looking at – and showing other people – the Moon, and we were hoping to catch a glimpse of Venus too, with just a week or so to go before its long-awaited Transit of the Sun. The park was understandably busy with groups of people playing football or having a sneaky barbecue, but none of them came over to see us, so we were left to observe by ourselves.

And we got some cracking views of the Moon, through a variety of telescopes. The sky was still bright – the Sun low in the sky still – when we set up, so our first views of Luna were quite dim and lacking in detail, but as the evening drew on the view got better and better, and we had some great views of craters, mountains and valleys on the lunar surface.

And then a little later, eagle-eyed EAS member Ian Bradley spotted the planet Venus trying to sneak away without being seen, almost vanishing behind a building. Quickly telescopes and cameras were turned on the planet, and we all enjoyed quite lovely views of its beautiful exceptionally-slim crescent, probably our last chance *to* see it before the Transit in a week or so’s time.

So, all in all a very enjoyable evening, great company, great views, and glorious weather to. Next? Hopefully some NLC displays, and then the Big Day – the Transit of Venus on the morning of June 6th…

Some photos from last night:

See that tiny crescent, above? That’s not the Moon – that’s Venus!

* Thanks to Simon White for permission to use his photos.

The 2012 Noctilucent Cloud Season has begun!

Many ‘experts’ and commentators have been saying that it’s too early to start looking for noctilucent clouds, or “NLC”, that we’d have to wait until early June, but last night the first NLC of the year were seen and photographed (see the NLC Observers page on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Noctilucent-Cloud-Observers-2012/199329523453711 ) so it seems that the 2012 NLC Season has officially kicked off! Yaaay!!!!

The NLC were seen at around 2am, and were quite faint and didn’t have a lot of detail or structure, but that’s not the point. We always start off with small, weak displays, and build up to bigger, jaw-dropping ones, so last night was par for the course, if a little early.

What does this mean? Well, it means that any clear night – ANY clear night – from now until, say, August, it’s worth staying up late and casting an eye at the northern sky around and after midnight (and for the next couple of weeks at least, up until 3am too) just in case a display of NLC is starting. We may get lucky and have a big display early in the season, but it’s more likely that the first few will be very small scale, faint and less than dramatic, really just wisps and trails of icy blue-white in the bright northern sky.

But, we’ve started! It’s on! So, dust off those binoculars, clean your camera, charge up its batteries, check no-one’s built a block of flats blocking your view north at your favourite viewing location, and get ready for some late nights and early mornings.

The NLC season is full of frustration, disappointment, and worse. It’s also full of excitement, expectation, and beauty.

Bring it on!

Note: For a full guide to observing NLC, look to the top of this page and you’ll see a tab with “NLC” on it. Click on that and you’ll be taken to a detailed feature with all the information you’ll need to enjoy/survive the weeks ahead!

As the Transit approaches…

We’re now just a couple of weeks away from the long-awaited “Venus Transit”, during which the planet Venus will move across the face of the Sun in a kind of “mini eclipse”. The last time this happened the event was widely observed roght across the UK because it occurred, very helpfully and conveniently, mid-morning. This time, however, conditions are less than ideal. Actually, it’s as if the Universe sat down and had a think about what it could do to make this transit as hard and frustrating to watch as possible for UK skywatchers, then went ahead and did it…

For UK observers, the transit will already be underway as the Sun rises – in fact, it will be almost over. We’ll see the last 40-50 minutes, if we’re lucky.

Actually, how much a UK observer will see of the transit will be dictated by where they are in the UK (how far north or south), and how high and cluttered their eastern horizon is. The people who will have the best views of this transit are those who can find somewhere high, with a flat and clear eastern horizon. Then they’ll be able to follow the closing act of the transit, between sunrise at 04.50 BST and the departure of Venus from the solar disc about an hour or so later.

Here in Kendal, we would usually gather up at Kendal Castle, or Abbot Hall Park, to observe a big event like this, but that’s no good for this transit. As Kendal is essentially in the bottom of a geographical bowl, with hills or fells on all sides, Kendalians wishing to watch the transit will have to get out of town, get “up” out of the bowl, and find somewhere with a clear, flat, eastern horizon.

But where?

EAS member Simon White has been working VERY hard on this problem, and using Google Earth to calculate lines of sigh, altitudes and angles etc, he’s come up with a few potentialy suitable observing locations. One of this is the top of “The Helm”, a hill that stands on the eastern side of Kendal, looming over the little village of Oxenholme. But the most promising location seems to be an unassuming layby on a road that leads out of Kendal…

Here’s the lay-by…

…and what’s the view like to the east, towards sunrise, towards the transit..?

Good enough for me! That’ll do nicely…

So, that’s where Stella and I will be going to observe the transit from and, weather pemitting, get some nice piccies from. By the time the Sun rises, the transit will look like this…

…and the Sun will *still* be very low in the sky by the time the transit ends, so we’re going to need a big helping of luck and be blessed with a completely cloud-free sunrise if we’re going to get anything. But fingers crossed, and we have to try, right?

I’ll be posting an “Observer’s Guide” to the transit soon, by the way, to tell you how you can observe it safely from wherever you are.

Venus is still visible in the evening sky, looking like a star low in the west after sunset. Earlier in the year it was lantern-bright, a dazzling jewel blazing in the dusk, but now it’s much fainter and harder to see as it sinks into the golden glow of the post-sunset sky. BUT… through a telescope it now looks absolutely STUNNING!

When Venus is at its brightest it’s not actually as impressive as it is when it’s closing in on the Sun. Back in March,through a telescope Venus was a small disc, and then a fat crescent. But now, now Venus is a very thin, scythe-blade sharp crescent, looking like a sliver of silver shining in the eyepiece. I went up to Kendal Castle last night to take some pictures of the planet before it is lost in the twilight, and I took my telescope too, hoping to photograph its very thin crescent.

Here’s what Venus looked like in the sky last night…

But what about through a telescope? Well. My plan was to use my fairly recently-bought T Mount adapter…thing… to take some photographs through my telescope, attaching my camera to the eyepiece tube and using the scope effectively as a big zoom lens, but I’m honestly just about ready to toss the **** thing in the River Kent, because I just can’t get any good pictures with it. I think the problem is my telescope is fairly small, and the DSLR I use is heavy, so connecting the two you get quite an unstable arrangement prone to vibration, and then when the shutter clicks the whole rig judders and shudders like a jelly, and the images are blurred. So, last night I just thought I’d try to go back to basics, and simply point my camera into the eyepiece and try taking photographs that way, see if anything useful came out. It didn’t help that it was very windy up at the Castle, so the telescope was still shaking a bit, but I am very pleased with the results… see for yourself…

Hmmmm… a lot better than I expected! And with a bit of processing, this comes out…

Yes, very happy with that.

I’m at work the next two evenings, and the good weather looks like it might break on Monday, so I’m thinking that these might be the last images I take of Venus before the Transit. So, the next time I turn my camera on Venus, it will be a black dot crossing the blindingly-bright face of the Sun. That’s a heck of a thought, isn’t it?

Book review: “Our Explosive Sun” – Pal Brekke

The Sun is becoming more and more popular with amateur astronomers nowadays. Thanks to the availability of  Sun-viewing telescopes, like the Coronado PSTs, which allow amateurs to enjoy crystal-clear views of sunspots, prominences and other features on the surface, the Sun is now a very popular observing target in its own right, not just seen as “that annoying bright thing which infests the sky until it gets dark and then the good stuff appears…” And NASA’s amazing Solar Dynamics Observatory sends back stunningly-detailed images of our nearest star, in multiple wavelengths, every day, allowing us to watch sunpots and prominences appear, grow and fade away in almost high definition detail. It’s a great time, then, for a popular-level book looking at the Sun to hit the shelves.

“Our Explosive Sun” by Pal Brekke (Springer books) is a very good “beginners guide” to the Sun, its features and structure, and significance. A small, slim volume, it looks lightweight at first glance, but once opened it proves itself to be a real treasure trove of facts and information about Sol. This isn’t a heavy science tome: it’s a no-nonsense entry-level book, with each two page spread covering a different topic (“A Star among Billions”; “The Sun – A Variable Star”; “How you can study the Sun and the aurora”), briefly but concisely. In fact, it looks and reads like a very good children’s book, though that’s clearly not the marked it’s aimed at.

That’s not to say it’s a dumbed-down book. Absolutely not; this is a great example of a book that’s had all the unnecessary 21st century science book clutter and froth removed, leaving just basic facts and figures behind that are actually useful and educational.

The illustrations are well-chosen, a mixture of very up to date photographs and artwork, which complement the text well. There are a few frankly odd illustrations – pieces of artwork that left me scratching my head a little! – but the book is full of images that illustrate the subject perfectly.

After reading this book I felt like I’d just been in the audience of a lecture given by a solar expert (which is what the author is). Each turn of the page is like seeing another well-produced and -chosen Powerpoint slide appear on a screen, with text kept to a minimum.

This book won’t tell you *everything* known about the Sun, but it is a very good introductory guide, and a good snapshot of our current understanding of the Sun, how it works, and how important it is to us here on Earth. Reading it cover to cover wouldn’t take long, but when you’d finished you’d be able to go outide, see the Sun blazing in the sky and understand it better. And that’s all you want from a book, surely?

Definitely recommended.

“Our Explosive Sun” – Pal Brekke, Springer Books, ISBN 978-1-4614-0570-2

Asteroid mining – what’s going on?

Asteroid Miner.

That’s a classic science fiction job title, isn’t it? And we’ve all grown up with it. You could probably fill several shelves with sci-fi books describing the daring exploits of chisel-jawed, stubbled, sweat-stained astronauts risking their lives on huge chunks of rock and metal, out there, in the voids between the planets, risking horrifying death from punctured spacesuits, holed airlines or cracked faceplates to mine precious metals and minerals from them and send them back to Earth. We’ve all grown up expecting to see that, or something like it, one day, and have waited impatiently for the dawn of an age of asteroid exploitation, confident it would happen.

Well, we were partly right.

That dawn has broken, or at least is about to break. But the asteroid miners aren’t buzz-cut ex-marines or oil riggers in patched-together space suits. They’re sharply dressed, young, mega-rich entrepeneurs, businessmen and engineers.

We weren’t expecting that, were we? You might remember that back in 1998 a film came out called “Armageddon”, in which a team of unruly, maverick oil drillers flew out to an asteroid to stop it hitting the Earth, wiping out all life, by blowing it up with atomic bombs, dropped into it down holes dug by very fancy drilling equipment…

Read that last line back and you might see why “Armageddon” is often cited as one of the most inaccurate SF films ever made, and okay, it is about as scientifically accurate as an episode of Button Moon, or The Clangers, but it’s one of my favourites, I don’t mind admitting ( and I get really mad when people criticise it for its “bad science”. For pity’s sake, it’s a film, not a documentary! You don’t watch films to be educated, you watch them to be entertained, to help you forget and escape, just for a couple of hours, the struggles and hardships of everyday life! If I want to watch something that’s 100% scientifically accurate I’ll watch an epiosde of Brian Cox’s “Wonders of the Universe” or an old episode of “Cosmos”). Yes, it’s cheesy. Yes, its dialogue is dreadful. Yes, its characters are stereotypes, and about as deep as the icing on a Mr Kipling fondant fancy, but I don’t care! It’s got two kick-ass, armoured, shuttles launching at once! American heroes blowing up an asteroid – not just any asteroid, but an asteroid that moans and groans like an asthmatic dragon, and shoots out spacesuit-piercing metal spikes! Drilling rigs bouncing across – and then flying above! – that asteroid! It’s a tale of romance! Sacrifice! Epic music! The world saved by misfits and renegades! Come ON! What more do you want from a film?!?!?!?

So, I’m happy to stand up in front of you all and say this: My name is Stuart Atkinson, and I LOVE “Armageddon”.

Accurate or not, cheesy or not,  that film did cement in our minds, I think, the classic image of an asteroid miner: Bruce Willis, inside a grungy spacesuit, sweat dripping down his face as he struggles to dig on a godforsaken piece of rock millions of miles from the Earth…

Well, last night we saw, and met, an actual asteroid miner, for the first time. And with the greatest respect to ex-NASA engineer Chris Lewicki, he looked nothing like Bruce Willis…

What happened?

Well, unless you haven’t picked up a newspaper this morning, or turned on a TV or radio, or gone online, or breathed, you’ll know that there was a big media event in the US last night, which has got the space communities of the internet and cyberspace flapping about like birds on an electric fence. Last night, in a huge aircraft hanger, the top people of a new company called PLANETARY RESOURCES announced to the world what the world had, to be honest, already know for a while – that they’re planning to go out intop space and start mining asteroids for natural resources. Not in a few decades, but soon. Very soon. In fact, their first hardware is already being built, and will be launched “within 24 months”.

After the press event, there were three camps, I think it’s fair to say. In one camp, filled with brightly coloured tents, where half-drunk space enthusiasts were dancing naked around campfires, celebrating the news, there were people who bought it, word for word, and were waxing lyrical about how PR would “open up the solar system”, “change the destiny of Mankind”, lead to colonies on the Moon and Mars and beyond, etc etc. In another camp, set up in a totally different field from the first camp – sitting inside darker, gloomier tents, drinking from bottles of warm beer – were the doubters and cynics, the skeptics who thought the whole thing was naive and over-optimistic at best and ridiculous at worst. Between those two fields, in a smaller camp, were people like me, who listened to the press conference and didn’t really pay much attention to the timetable, the timeline or the hard sell, but got excited by it for a wholly different reason. And that was this: it’s a change. And a BIG one.

I’m not going to go through PR’s plans in any detail, you can read all about them at their own website ( http://www.planetaryresources.com/2012/04/faq ) but basically, they’re planning on mining natural resources – water and minerals – from asteroids that are, or come close to, the Earth. They’re going to build and launch their own small space telescopes to look for and find likely candidates for mining…

… then send small prospecting probes to those asteroids to check them out…

…and then use other craft to collect those resources from them (er…how? That wasn’t made clear, to be honest, to the frustration of many). They may even bring small ones – i.e. house-sized – back to Earth whole, to process them here…

 They’ve already raised the money needed to allow them to do this, they’ve already started to gather a team to design, build and fly the hardware, and they’ve already got plans in place to grow the business. They acknowledge that what they’re planning to do is going to be extremely hard, and that they will have failures, but they accept that, and are going to push on anyway.

And that’s the main reason to be excited about this, I think. Forget the hyperbole, the huge profit figures being thrown about, the probably over-optimistic timeline. The big news here, the big change, the big difference, is that there is finally a group of people who are actually Going To Do Something, instead of just talking about it, preaching about it, producing Powerpoints and computer simulations. They’re building spacecraft, right now. They have the money, right now. They have a clear path in their minds, that will almost certainly include failures and disappointments, but those will be dealt with if and when they happen.

And it’s about time.

NASA was never going to do this, nor was any other space agency. Oh, yes, they’ve talked about it, told us how much potential there is for resource exploitation “out there”, but it’s all been blah blah blah. This, I think, is the real deal. Maybe not PR themselves. They might die a death (I personally think not), but again, that’s not the point. The point is, finally, in 2012, it seems that there are people with money, and vision, coming together to get off Earth, get out into space and DO SOMETHING.

I watched the press conference last night and to be honest the figures washed over me. All that bankers talk about GDP, the gross value of platinum, economic returns etc etc, I didn’t really take it in; I was just thrilled to see people standing there, enthused about space, with a plan to DO SOMETHING. When Eric Anderson told the audience that there had been enough talking, enough planning, it was time to start building things and go somewhere I almost jumped out of my seat and cheered. Because that’s how I’ve felt for ages, and probably many of you have felt the same way too.

I think the message from PR is one many of us can identify with, and have wanted to shout out and SCREAM from the rooftops and mountain peaks for years…

We were walking on the Moon FORTY years ago for f***s sake! Can we please stop f***ing about and get out there and DO SOMETHING?!!!!

So, deep breath – where are we? Well, we are NOT at the dawn of a golden age of solar system exploration and colonisation. This is just the possible start of a possible age of small scale natural resource collection from space. If everything works! PR is not going to turn us into a multi-planet species, and is not going to build colonies on the Moon or Mars; they are not going to put a single person in space, they’re dealing purely with robots. PR is not going to bring a km-wide asteroid back to Earth and use it to start building a USS Enterprise in a skeletal drydock above the Earth. Nor are they going to launch missions into deep space to look for and collect deadly alien creatures and bring them back to Earth for exploitation – they’re NOT Wayland-Youtani and we’re all quite safe. No. Take a deep breath everyone. The world hasn’t changed.

But what has changed, I think, is the WILL to do it. This team really seems to have its act together. Funding. Facilities. Determination to succeed. They’re all in place. They’re proposing a radical new approach to this – to mass produce small items of space hardware, rather than build one-off multi-gazillion dollar machines, and to accept that some of it will break or go wrong, to think of it as practical and almost disposable, instead of wrapping it up in cotton wool and treating it like holy relics. I like that. It seems realistic and practical.

And theyhave tons of money behind them, and some serious, high-powered backers too. (One of them is Titanic- and Avatar-producer James Cameron. He’s the one the mass media seems to have fixed on as the Big Backer, and one of the reasons why PR is so exciting, but I thought it was very interesting last night how his involvement in the project was played down by the panel. Acknowledged, yes, but definitely played down. Clearly they want the engineering and science  and economic benefits to take priority over glossy celebrity and adventure. Interesting…)

So, yes, the actual Hows of getting the minerals off or out of the asteroids are still pretty – ok, very! – vague, and PR really needs to give some more info about that or people just won’t take then seriously. As practical and sensible as their approach is – find useful asteroids, scout them out, then mine them – no-one’s really interested in the first two steps, it’s the actual *mining* part we’re interested in, isn’t it? That will come, I’m sure. But really, the sooner the better, or once the initial excitement has died down, PR risks being seen as just the latest bright idea by a bunch of rich guys with so much money they don’t know what to do with it all.

So, everyone, calm down, ok? This is interesting news, and while I personally felt shivers running down my back while listening to the company launch last night, there are still a lot of gaps to be filled in. But PR seems to be a serious company, with serious goals, and a serious approach. They’re definitely worth watching, and I wish them all the best. They could be the best thing to happen to “space” for a generation, because, if nothing else, they’ve given us back something many of us lost a long, long time ago:

Hope.

Hope that maybe, just maybe, after all these years of us hearing how expensive space is, how dangerous and risky it is, how only Governments and bloated space agencies can reach it, there are people telling us something different – that it can be for everyone; hope that there are some people who would rather make a spaceship with metal and glass, and wire, than with a graphics package, in the memory of a computer; hope that maybe, just maybe, there are people who look up at the night sky and think of “space” as a real place that we can live and work in, full of resources we can use to our advantage, rather than an empty blackness.

But above all, hope that we haven’t retreated from space after all. Hope that in a time when the ISS is the limit of our astronauts’ reach, when people insist we never flew to the Moon, and when politicians seem determined to force scientists to stop looking for life out in the solar system, there IS a chink of light shining at the end of the tunnel. Because if we can mine asteroids, for water and metals, that can only help efforts to send people out into space, because it will make building, and fuelling, their spacecraft easier, and cheaper.

PR won’t be sending people to asteroids, but if they succeed, it might be metals collected from asteroids and sold BY them that are used to build the spacecraft that eventually take men and women to them. And although PR won’t be sending people to Mars, it might be money raised by their operations that funds expeditions to there by other teams of entrepeneurs and adventurers, who are sick of waiting for Governments to take that next giant leap. We’ll have to wait and see.

Whatever happens, it’s just amazing, don’t you think, to be here at a time when there are people on TV talking about asteroid mining on the news, and on business discussion programmes, instead of in a cheesy science fiction film.

One last thought. During the media launch last night, the crying of a baby could frequently be heard in the background. Not loudly, but loud enough to hear over the speeches. Just think… that child is now going to could grow up in a world where asteroid mining is being talked about seriously, by businessmen and engineers, instead of fancifully, by science fiction writers and dreamers. When she, or he, grows up, who’s to say what might be happening “out there”? Maybe he, or she, will travel to the Moon onboard a shuttle made out of metal mined from an asteroid by PR’s probes. Or they might travel to Mars and help build a base there, drinking water processed from an asteroid by a PR probe. Such things aren’t necessarily science fiction any more. That’s got to be something worth celebrating.

You want to see some asteroid miners? Here you go…

PR might crash and burn, or fly and triumph. They might kick-start our species’ long-overdue exploitation of space, or might fail, and delay it even longer. But the main thing is they’re going to give it a damned good try – and for the first time in a long, long I find myself daring to believe that maybe, just maybe, I might live to see people walking on Mars in my lifetime. Because come on, if we can mine asteroids, we can land people on Mars, surely…

Eddington Astronomical Society’s Grand Day Out to Jodrell Bank…

Yesterday some of the members of the Eddington Astronomical Society of kendal went on a long overdue “Grand Day Out”! Split between a van – sorry, “band wagon” – and a car, ten of us headed south from Kendal to the world famous radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire. And a cracking day it was too: the weather was kind to us, the company was great, and the telescope wasn’t pointing skywards, as it is sometimes, so we had a fantastic view of its huge dish.

After arriving we delayed briefly our exploration of the observatory’s “attractions” to grab some food after the long drive. While some of our group headed for the visitor centre cafe, the rest of us braved the rather cool afternoon to sit outside in the open air, at one of the sets of tables and benches scattered around the attractive grounds… With the great dish of the Lovell telescope behind us, it was a pretty fine place for a picnic…

Then, having munched our sarnies, crunched our Scampi Fries and drank our coffees and Cokes, it was time to head off and explore! The Great Dish awaited!

Now, I’ve been to Jodrell Bank a few times now, but it still makes me gasp with surprise and delight when I see the radio telescope. It’s just… huge. It’s so big it’s hard to put it into words, the feeling you get when you see it. This great smooth-sided bowl looms ahead of you, filling a third of the sky, supported and surrounded by a mass of grey metal girders, beams and struts. And then, ridiculously, impossibly, it starts to move! Gears screech, metal grinds, wheels turn, and the whole thing, the whole damned thing starts to pivot around, lining up with Something new out there in the universe. There should be a deep, heaving groan when it comes to a halt, that would be very fitting – and that’s how they’d show it in a film, I’m sure – but there isn’t. It just… stops. The noises stop too. All is silent again. And the Lovell Telescope is doing science again, drinking in radio waves from the green, grassy heart of the Cheshire countryside. Quite amazing.

So, we wandered around for a while, just enjoying the view, taking lots of pictures of course. Here are a few of mine…

Then we went inside to take a look at the attractions offered by the visitor centre’s “Space Pavilion”.

I have to be honest here – and I’m not having a go at the observatory, I just need to report what I found and how I felt about it, ok? And I’m speaking here purely as an individual, as a paying customer/visitor, NOT on behalf of the Eddington AS.

It might be a budget thing, it might be a management problem, I don’t know, but I’m afraid I found the contents of the Space Pavilion quite uninspiring, and a poor imitation of the Jodrell Bank attractions of the past. Really, you’re done looking around the Pavilion in ten, maybe fifteen minutes, unless you are willing to sit through all the various films on offer. I’ll come back to them. The “hands on” parts of the Pavilion are ok… but there’s too much reliance on just looking at things on the wall – and although my mate Carol clearly enjoyed listening to the headphones dangling from the walls…

…I’m not a huge fan, I think that isolates people and puts other people off. Having said that, the infra red camera and screen are brilliant fun, loved them… here’s a pic of Stella and I taken off the screen…

…but one whole wall is taken up with a big map of the world and small pictures of the various telescopes scattered around it. It’s meant to highlight the international nature of astronomy, I know, but most people who were there when I was there gave it a curious glance as they passed on their way to look for the loo, and that was it.

Those films, yes… The films being shown inside the “Film Pod” (I think it was called) are very interesting – they recount the history of the telescope, from construction to the present day- but shown in a long narrow room, so the screen is hard to see if there are more than a few people in there; it’s a matter of trying to find a chink of light between the heads of the people in front of you…

Then, in another, circular side room, there’s a rolling presentation of short films produced by the European Space Agency, which – like most ESA Outreach material – are interesting, and informative, and very well produced, but they’re shown on a small screen, in a room that has nothing covering its huge circular skylight s it’s like broad daylight in there, meaning they were hard to see. It just struck me as a rather lazy – and cheap – way of putting across information. If the room had been darkened, and the screen bigger, it would have been much better. And really, it didn’t help that there were cardboard boxes scattered over the back tables, making the room look like it was half film room/half cupboard. Disappointing.

But I forgave that, because as I sat there, shielding my eyes from the light pouring in from above, I was looking forward to going around the corner to the small 3D movie theatre which was there the last time members of the EAS visited Jodrell Bank. That was one of the highlights of our trip! Only a small room, admittedly, big enough for maybe twenty, thirty people, but the 3D show was GREAT, a thrilling trip around the Sun, flying low over it, through prominences and through the corona… I was *so* looking forward to seeing that again..!

It’s gone.

Where the 3D movie room used to be there’s now just a big room full of chairs, I guess for school groups to sit in. Which is very valuable and useful from an educational outreach point of view, but what a shame it cost the 3D movie theatre.

Not going to mince my words here: whoever made the decision to take that 3D movie theatre out of the Space Pavilion is an idiot. An *idiot*. I don’t know why it was removed, but without Jodrell Bank’s own famous planetarium (that was ripped out long ago, sadly, and I don’t think there are any plans to put one back, which is a great shame) it was, at least, a chance for visitors, young and old, to get some sense of the amazing stuff “out there” and, more than anything, a chance to see something actually *moving*, because almost all of the other attractions there are static. No, I was really gutted about that 3D movie theatre being taken out. If it was a budget problem, well, ok, times are hard, but I can’t help thinking that some of the money from the cafe/restaurant could be used there (at £8 plus for a burger and chips there’s money flowing into there, definitely). And if it was a Management decision, based on what they thought visitors might want to see, well, congratulations, good job, you numptie.

But I don’t want this to sound completely negative! Jodrell Bank is still very definitely a great place to visit. It is drenched in history, and offers people a chance to visit a working scientific instrument and get a sense of what modern astronomy is all about. And yes, there is stuff for old and young to do, just – I feel personally – not as much as there could, and indeed should be. Someone please give them some more money so they can add to what’s there.

I also need to point out how good the lone “guide” inside the Pavilion during our visit was. I never got his name, (edit: I’ve since been told, by someone on Twitter, that it was “Eric”) but he was very enthusiastic and welcoming, made the effort to talk to everyone, and answer questions, etc, a real asset to the place. And the kids running around the Pavilion were enjoying some of the things in there – the biggest hit was definitely the “black hole simulator”, being demonstrated here by Stella…

Anyway, back outside, into the fresh air, and a chance to enjoy the *real* Jodrell Bank – a big, big, big radio telescope, set in beautiful surroundings. Anyone going to Jodrell Bank today should go expecting to spend most of their time outside – walking along the paths that meander through the grounds, seeing the beautiful telescope from all sides, just to appreciate its size, and having fun with the acoustic dishes that stand in the radio telescope’s shadow – rather than spending a lot of time indoors looking at “stuff”…

So, yes, we had a great day out. Jodrell Bank is definitely worth a visit, if only to stand beneath the enormous telescope and marvel at its size and the engineering achievement. Everyone in our group enjoyed our visit, and we’ll definitely go again. But, being perfectly honest, it does need more than it’s offering visitors right now. Hopefully they’ll find some money from somewhere to boost the attractions in the Space Pavilion, or, even better, to build a planetarium there again. That would just about make Jodrell Bank perfect.

Update: I’ve written an astropoem about the visit, which you can find here:

http://astropoetry.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/jodrell-bank

NASA wants help planning the future exploration of Mars

Following the recent blood-spattered, Washington Mars exploration budget chainsaw massacre, NASA is looking for help with mapping out and planning its future efforts to reach, study and explore Mars. Here’s the press release…

http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2012/apr/12-112_MPPG_Update.html

On there you’ll find a link to a much more detailed article asking for input from “The Mars community” – which means scientists and boffins, I think, not rover-huggers like me.

But here’s my two cents worth anyway.

(Warning: this might well turn into an unrealistic, naive rant, but it’s my blog, and I’m free to post my own personal thoughts here about my passion for Mars and its exploration, so there! *raspberry noise*!)

I wish, oh how I wish, I could take the NASA “Powers That Be” up to Kendal Castle with me on the next clear night, lead them into the ruins of Kendal Castle, and show them Mars shining like a jewel above the crumbling towers and turrets. I’d then tell them what I think they should do about Mars, and it would be this…

You’ve a chance to take a deep breath now, to pause, and figure out what’s really important. And when you think about it, I mean really seriously think about it, you’ll realise that there’s one overwhelmingly, face-slappingly obvious question to answer about Mars. Not how strong its winds are, not how many layers its rocks have, not what’s going on in its core. But this: is there, or has there ever been, life on Mars?

No-one’s a bigger fan of the rovers, or of robot geology, than I. I live, breathe and sleep the adventures of Spirit and Opportunity, as my writings show. But really, it’s time to get serious about martian astrobiology. We’ve been pussyfooting around the question of life on Mars for too long.

We should know by now, damnit, if Mars has, or had, life, it’s ridiculous! Depending on who you ask, Viking may or may not have found evidence of microbial life - and a new re-evaluation of the results from the landers suggests that the probes did indeed find life, we just didn’t realise it then. (Only fair to say that that re-evaluation itself is being hotly debated, but that’s a good thing, because it shows just how important and timeless this question is.)

It honestly baffles me how it can be that we still don’t know if Mars has life or not? Come on!! The Vikings landed 35 years ago!! People were wearing flares then, and sideburns, and brown/orange suits with huge flappy lapels! Mobile phones were the size of bricks, home computers were only found in science fiction novels, and the height of TV drama was Charlies Angels! It’s two thousand and ***** twelve! Mobile phones are so small you can slip them into your pocket. We have home computers with a frightening amount of processing power, that people plucked from the 70s would think were magic or reverse-engineered alien tech. We can fly probes through the plumes of Enceladus, and land them on Titan. But we haven’t figured out yet if there’s life on Mars? It’s nuts!

So, if I got those NASA people up to Kendal Castle, on a dark and clear night, I’d tell them this…

Stop faffing about, and just set NASA’s Mars exploration teams a challenge that they can become passionate about; a challenge with a true goal;, a task with a beginning, a middle and an end. Tell them to find out, once and for all, if Mars ever had, or now has, life.

To help them with this, go global. Ask for help from and collaboration with space agencies, scientists, experts and communities all around the world. Organise a huge conference, inviting all those people, and set it a tough but single goal – to establish a framework for a genuine, no-nonsense, answer-the-bloody-question-once-and-for-all mission to look for signs of life on Mars. Find the most promising-for-signs-of-life landing site on the planet, and figure out exactly what equipment a lander (or landers) would need to carry to study it properly. Figure out exactly which tests would have to be carried out on the samples gathered. Agree on a definition of “martian life” right from the start, so the mission scientists aren’t humming and haa’ing after the landing.

Basically, hang above the venue’s main entrance a ruddy huge poster – “WANTED: Martians, Dead or Alive”.

Focus. Get serious. Get real. No other distractions. Plan a mission to go to Mars and answer the question of life there once and for all. Have it carry a laboratory that would test the dirt and soil there with the right instruments to find life it’s there; have it carry a microscope and camera that would be able to image fossils, or micro-fossils, if they’re there to be seen; have it carry sensors that can sniff the martian air and detect the icy cold breath of microbes and bacteria if they’re there to be found. Yes, it would be a big mission, a complicated mission, but it’s a mission with a set goal and a history-making, magnificent prize at the end of it. And a result either way, positive or negative, would help define our view of Mars – and what to do with it – for generations to come.

That’s what I’d tell them.

Why?

Well, ok, that’s one of my dreams, to be around when life is discovered on Mars, so it’s a selfish ask, I know. But also, because I really think the public would actually get behind a Mars mission dedicated to looking for life there. Because while many of you, my dear readers, care passionately about the meteorology, geology and chemistry of the Red Planet, most of the people Out There – doing their shopping, washing their cars, playing with their kids, balancing their cheque books or walking the dog along the river on their way to the pub – don’t actually give a monkey’s about any of those things. They honestly could not care less about how detailed that HiRISE image of layers in a crater is; they haven’t got the slightest bit of interest in how complicated the chemistry is of the martian dust, or how it is distributed around the planet by Mars’ weather systems. They couldn’t give a **** if Mars has a solid or liquid core. None of those hings are relevent to them, and never will be.

But life on Mars? Ah, now there’s something interesting..!

I have this conversation and this reaction all the time, pretty much after every Outreach talk I give. I’ve lost count of the number of epople who’ve come up to me and said something along the lines of “Aliens on Mars? Hmmm… if there are simple life forms there, then maybe there are more complicated forms of life Out There, right?”

If NASA set itself a goal of finding out once and for all if Mars had, or has, life, and sent a mission there purely to answer that question, I think they’d get a huge increase in public interest and support.

I’m not stupid, though, I’m not naive. I know that getting ANYTHING to Mars is incredibly hard, and such an astrobiology-focussed mission would take a helluva lot of planning, designing and operating, but I genuinely think it’s the only way for NASA to move forward with Mars exploration. As much as they appreciate the pretty pictures of Mars sent back by NASA’s hardware, many people do wonder – I know this because they tell me – if it’s actually worth the enormous expense, because all the science doesn’t actually change our overall view of the universe or our place in it. Great science, yes, but of no real consequence to the average person. But many of those “average people” have a real interest in our place in the universe, and are intrigued and fascinated by the prospect of finding life in space, because, very simply, it would change our view of things.

I know I’m probably coming across as unreasonable here, as impatient and unrealistic, but that’s ok, I’m just typing as I think, and I’m thinking that if NASA is asking for input from people then my input is as good as anyone else’s. I don’t work in space science, I’m not an astrobiologist, or an engineer, or a software designer. I’m just a guy who lugs a telescope up to a ruined castle on a cold, clear night to gaze longingly and lovingly at Mars, and wishes with all his heart that we finally, after all these years, knew if there is anything alive on it, or even just if anything was alive on it once, you know?

Because seriously, in 2012, we really should know by now.

Flying over Eddington crater…

Regular readers of this blog will know that I’m proud Secretary of Kendal’s astronomical society – The Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal. We used to be called just The Eddington Astronomical Society, but people kept asking us where Eddington is. We had to tell them that no. Eddington isn’t a place – Eddington was a person, a very famous astronomer. This astronomer, in fact.

Sir Arthur Eddington was, I suppose, the Professor Brian Cox of his time – without the boyish good looks and hair blowing in the wind on a hilltop! He was an astronomy populariser, always on the radio and in the newspapers, and writing books, spreading the word about astronomy and the universe. Very fitting then, that in Kendal, the town of Eddington’s birth, should a) have an astronomical society and b) have it named after Eddington. The Eddington AS was born just before the last Venus transit, brought into the world by Kendal astronomer Philip Stobbart, and since then has grown to become the largest and most active AS in Cumbria. We’re all very proud of that!

But sadly still not many people here in Kendal know much about Eddington, or his work or achievements. We’re going to work on that. One thing we want to do is tell people how the world of astronomy has honoured Eddington by naming things “Out there” after him. An asteroid bears Eddington’s name, and there’s also a large crater on the Moon named after him. Unfortunately it’s very hard to see from here – on Earth, I mean, not just from Kendal! – because it’s very close to the Moon’s limb…

… and so is only really visible properly for a few precious days. Here’s a photo I took of it a while ago…

That’s just a very low tech pic I took by sticking a digital camera next to the eyepiece of my 4.5″ scope and clicking away until something half-decent appeared! Here’s a rather better view of Eddington, courtesy of Google Moon…

…and a view from another angle, which clearly shows Eddington is a “what’s left of a crater” crater, flooded with lava from one side, and with a range of high hills on the other…

Now, as I said, it’s hard to see Eddington because it’s along a very poor line of sight for us Earthlings. But luckily we don’t have to just rely on our own eyes any more to see lunar features – we have hardware flying around the Moon, with cameras, and occasionally they take pictures of the things we want to see. And, as luck would have it, the GRAIL spacecraft recently flew over Eddington crater, and took a bunch of pictures with its low resolution MoonKam! Yaaay! New images of Eddington! Here’s one of the “raw” images…

…and with a bit of clearing up and messing about with, you can get this…

(and before anyone says anything yes, I know that’s not the same image, I’m just making a point… )

Anyway, turns out GRAIL took a whole bunch of images of Eddington as it flew over, and you know what “a whole bunch of images” means don’t you?

ANIMATION!

Here then is a 7 frame gif animation of GRAIL images, which – if you use your imagination a little – gives you the impression of flying over Eddington crater… (you MIGHT need to click on the picture below to start the animation)

I know it’s just a choppy animation made of rather low-resolution images, but I think that’s brilliant! Not the animation, but the chance to see a crater on the Moon named after one of the famous sons of my town, the same astronomer that town’s astronomical society was named after!