Eclipse? What eclipse..?

Well, yet again the Cumbrian weather thwarted our attempts to see and photograph something cool going on “up there”. There was a partial eclipse of the Moon last night, and after the sky had spent all afternoon gradually clearing, more and more precious blue appearing every minute, we had high hopes of seeing the eclipse. So out of town we – that’s Carol and I – went, and decided, after some discussion and deliberation, to just plonk ourselves in a lay-by just outside Kendal with a clear view to the south east.There was more than a little cloud, but the sky did appear to be clearing still, and as other options considered just couldn’t guarantee anything better we decided to set up our cameras and telescope where we were and cross our fingers. I know, astronomers do that a lot…

By 8.15pm, with quarter of an hour remaining until the Moon – already in eclipse – rose, this was our view…

…and that looked promising! Hints of clear sky on the horizon, through which, we hoped, the Moon would peek…

But it wasn’t to be. At the maximum of the eclipse, around 9.10pm, this was our view…

…so no, we didn’t see the eclipse. Instead we tortured ourselves with looking other people’s pictures of it on our phones, trawling Twitter and Facebook for images taken by people in other parts of the country and other parts of the world. And from what we saw last night, and from what I’ve seen this morning, it actually looks like the eclipse was quite impressive after all. If we’d had a clear sky we’d have seen something quite lovely, I think…

Oh well, I’m telling myself that every “thing” we miss “Up there” for the next few months is a Credit Slip we can cash in for a beautifully clear night when Comet ISON is in the sky later in the year. That’s how it works, right? Right?

 

Naming Worlds…

Unless you’ve been living in a cave or at the bottom of the ocean this past week, you’ll have heard the Big News – that the most Earthlike worlds yet have been found by the incredible Kepler planet-hunting telescope. These two “Super Earths” are orbiting a very, very faraway star, so there’s no prospect of anyone setting off to see them in person for quite a while, but one day, one day…

As I listened to the announcement, streamed live on NASA TV, one of my first thoughts – after the intial “yaaay!” – was “For the love of god will someone PLEASE give these planets propper NAMES!!!”, because their current names, “Kepler 62e” and “Kepler 62f” just seem hopelessly, woefully, despairingly insufficient and yes, pathetic. They need names. Proper names.

Why? Isn’t in enough that they’ve been found? Isn’t that triumph enough?

Well, no, I don’t think so, I really don’t. Because if these really are worlds then we’re going to be talking, Tweeting, blogging and writing about them for a long time – certainly decades, probably centuries and very possibly millennia – so just referring to them as combinations of letters and numbers is ridiculous, frankly. What a waste of time. What a shortsighted approach.

But I think there’s an even more important reason for giving these – and other significant exoplanets already discovered – proper names. The public – who, it’s often and very conveniently forgotten – actually PAY for these incredible discoveries, through their taxes – simply won’t accept them, connect with them or identify with the significance of their discovery, until they’re given names.

Names make places seem real. They build a bridge between them and us. And this is especially true for places and objects out in space, and for the machines which we send out to explore space. I do a lot of Outreach work in the community, spending a lot of what I laughingly call my “free time” standing in front of crowds in drafty church halls, in school classrooms, in community centres and the like, “spreading the word” about astronomy, space exploration and science, and I can tell you for a fact – a FACT – that people need things to have names if they’re to acceopt and identify with them. While science types are comfortable with acronyms, and abbreviations, and bizarre combinations of numbers and letters, people “out there” are not. That’s just rubbish to them, gobbledygook, boffin-speak, yet more proof that aloof “scientists” don’t live in the real world and have no time or consideration for those who do. Introducing a picture as “A Hubble image of part of M17″ will reward me with blank looks and rapidly glazing-over eyes. Introducing the same picture as “We call these ‘The Pillars of Creation’…” triggers a much more positive response.

That’s why  it is my firm belief that until we start giving these incredible exoplanets names they will just remain abstract concepts for most people, something for “the experts” to get excited about and no-one else. They will remain “So what?” worlds for most people, not real worlds.

So, we need to start giving exoplanets names, and we really, really need to give these two new “Super Earths” names in particular. I mean, come on, it’s not as if we’re short of names we could use is it? OK, a lot of the really cool ones – the ones from Greek mythology, legends etc – have been taken already, but there must be thousands left to choose from. Many people are suggesting we name these strange, new worlds after famous planets from science fiction, but I don’t agree with that. The natures, appearances and characters of those planets are fixed so firmly in our minds – we know that “Arrakis” is a hot, desert planet, and that “Trantor” is a planet covered by a single, sprawling city, for example – that naming just any old planet after them would be ridiculous, and inappropriate. And besides, their creators often gave them such specific locations that their names wouldn’t be accurate in terms of stellar cartography anyway.

So, what do we call them then?

Well, what about character names from literature, especially fantasy literature? Personally I’d love to see some of these new worlds given the names of characters from Tolkien’s books, because they’re just incredibly beautiful, poetic and romantic. They just seem right for planets.

Oh, how I’d love to be able to take people outside into the night after one of my Outreach talks, point them towards the area of sky between Deneb and Vega – wherein lurks the Kepler search field – and tell them “Look, up there, between those two stars… out there, in deep space, we have found hundreds of planets orbiting faraway stars, some like Earth… and one of them is called ‘Galadriel‘…” Doesn’t that sound so much better than bloody “Kepler 62f”?

No, enough of boring numbers and letters! These new worlds need names, it’s slap across the face obvious they do. We name things we find – mountains, rivers, etc – it’s just what we do. It’s time we started naming exo-planets too.

I’m not the only one who thinks this, not by a long way. Many other popular and influential bloggers, writers and commentators are thinking, and saying, the same thing. There’s even an online company encouraging people to suggest and submit names for the planet found orbiting Alpha Centauri, for a small fee. It’s a controversial idea, and has many critics, some of them very vocal. Some object to the cost involved, insisting that no-one should have to pay to simply suggest a name, and there’s some justification for these objections, although others note that much of the money raised by this is going towards Outreach and Education projects, and not into anyone’s pockets.

The other concern people seem to have is that public contests like this will inevitably result in planets being given just stupid names. I understand this concern and actually share it; it’s one of the facts of 21st century life that if you give the online community an opportunity to name something – a polar bear cub, a bridge, whatever – some prats and plonkers will submit ridiculous and inappropriate, even offensive, names. Countless “Britney”s and “Spongebob”s are, right now, scattered across the solar system, their names having been added to lists gathered by space agencies for plaques and discs mounted on spaceprobes. And a quick search of the website just now revealed that the following names have all been suggested…

“Neighbourhood of Make Believe” (guessing that’s a suburb of Bucks Fizz’s “Land of Make Believe”?); “Margaret Thatcher” (better have an iron core… sorry…); “The Doctor” (what’s so daft about that? ); “Alderaan“; “Ron Paul” (see? see?!); “Fraggle Rock” (oh, I wish!) and “Mr Squeaky Pants” (an outside bet there, I think). Predictably the names of all the characters from TV’s hugely popular “Big Bang Theory” comedy series have been submitted, and there are Star Trek and Star Wars names a plenty too.  There are some great names tho. I love the idea of worlds being called “Voltaire” or “Iliana”. Sadly there’s no ‘Stuart’ or ‘Atkinson’ on the submitted list, and amazingly no ‘Galadriel’ either. I might have to change that!

But no-one should feel upset by the names on the uwingu list, it’s just a bit of fun; no-one in their right mind is actually going to call a planet “Mr Squeaky Pants“, let’s get real.  I’m pretty sure that if a company or body is smart enough to set up a way for people to submit exoplanet names, they’ll be smart enough to remove all the stoopid suggestions before drawing up a shortlist..!

But that said, maybe something as important as naming a world shouldn’t be handled by someone charging money for it, however good their reasons.

So, who SHOULD name these strange new worlds then?

To be honest, that’s got me rather stumped, I’ll admit. As you can see from that list above, there are risks with simply asking The Public to submit names, as there are with asking commercial companies to do it. One group currently insisting that it’s their job to do it – while totally failing TO do it, of course – is the IAU, the International Astronomical Union, that mysterious group of professional astronomers that decides the official names of craters, moons, valleys and mountains Out There in the solar system.

I’m sorry, I know it’s grossly unfair of me, and I’m sure they’re in reality a well-meaning, committed group, but after the whole “Pluto naming” thing a few years back, which threeatened to descend into farce for a while and caused a lot of ill feeling, whenever I think of the IAU now an image pops into my head of those Skeksis creatures from the brilliant film “Dark Crystal”, meeting in a dusty, musty old laboratory temple somewhere underground, with hieroglyphics etched into the walls and ceiling, as they debate and discuss and vote on cosmic matters, I just can’t help it…!

Naming exo-planets won’t be easy. There was a bit of a cyber-kerfuffle recently, when a “heated debate”, shall we call it, broke out between two groups of people fascinated by and passionate about this whole planet-naming thing. It ended up, basically, with the IAU shouting down from the top of their castle tower, like the French knights in “Holy Grail”, that they and only they had the right to name celestial bodies and places and everyone else should get orff their land. The thing is, I don’t remember ever voting to give the IAU that exclusive right to name things, did you? My ballot paper might have got lost in the mail, I suppose, but I don’t think so…

Besides, there are countless objects and places “Out There” which have names NOT given by the IAU. Lunar features were named by Apollo cartographers and astronauts, before and after the landings, and there are now thousands of rocks, ledges, outcrops and craters on Mars bearing unofficial names given to them by the people involved in the various rover missions. I suppose it’s possible that one day the IAU will decide to give them different names, but I really can’t see it happening, and if they tried there would be such an outcry it would make the revolution in Les Miserables seem like a mild quarrel. They’d probably write a musical about it.

No, the only solution I can come up with – sat here at my desk on a Sunday afternoon, with a bored and impatient cat sat on my knee demanding food and stroking, in that order – is for the planets’ actual discoverers to have the responsibility for naming them, in whatever way they see fit, either by naming them themselves or by organising some kind of input from the public and the scientific community. After all, if they were smart enough to find the planets, I’m sure we can trust them to find good names for them. There’s precedent for this, of course. People who discover asteroids and comets can name them. So, while I admit this suggested solution isn’t perfect, I think it would be infiniteky preferable to having the IAU sitting in judgement over everyone and everything, like “Q” from Star Trek.

A good friend of mine – who shall remain nameless, but he’ll know it’s him I’m talking about! – wondered in an online Twitter exchange recently if those of us keen to start naming exoplanets were going to give names to ALL of them, all the trillions of them that we now think are out there. It’s a good point – where do you stop? Don’t you have to be fair, and name all of them once you’ve named a few? – but I really don’t think it’s needed. I think we just need to name a dozen or so at first, the exceptional ones, the fascinating, intriguing ones that exoplanet scientists and Outreachers can use to excite and inspire people, and just see how it goes after that. I wouldn’t want to start naming the hordes of bloated, fat, swollen “Super Jupiters” or “Hot Jupiters” we keep finding hurtling around stars just at the eges of their atmospheres. Not just because I personally have a hard time accepting they’re real planets – they’re just too weird, their behaviour too bizarre, their years too short – but because there’s now so damned many of them it’s impractical. No. Select the most genuinely Earth-like, the most intriguing, the most fascinating, and name them, appropriately and carefully, and see if the practice is accepted, then move on from there.

But the basic question is, I suppose, do these planets actually NEED names? Aren’t their scientific designations enough? After all, we can’t go there, they’re too far away. We can’t even SEE them directly, we can just tell they’re there because they cause mini eclipses as they drift in front of their parent stars. So what’s the point?

Well, the point is that giving something a name makes it real, gives it character and identity. And, more fundamentally, we as a species have a need to give things names so we can identify WITH them, *accept* them, become involved *with* them.

You don’t agree? Ok then. Let me ask you something? Do you recognise the names of the following spacecraft…

OV 099… MER-2… LM-5… ?

No? Don’t feel too bad, not many people reading this will have known them either.  But each of those spacecraft made history, and will be remembered, and beloved, and honoured, for as long as there are human beings alive to recount the history of spaceflight.

OV 099 = space shuttle orbiter “Challenger”

MER-2 – Mars Exploration Rover “Spirit”

LM-5 = Apollo 11 lunar module “Eagle”

Now, if names aren’t important, why were those spacecraft given those names? Why are ANY spacecraft given names? Why weren’t we content to just keep their names as combinations of letters and numbers? Because then they would just have been machines, collections of nuts and bolts, glass and metal, rubber and plastic. Because giving them names was essential to allow the public to identify with them, to give them an identity, to link them to history.

You want more proof? Read the following list outloud…

OV 101, OV 102, OV 103, OV 099, OV 104, OV 105…

What did you feel as you read out that list? Nothing, I’ll bet. Just letters and numbers. Now read this list outloud…

Enterprise… Columbia… Discovery… Challenger… Atlantis… Endeavour…

I bet you felt something then. I bet every name sent a tsunami of memories and emotions sweeping towards, over and past you as you read out those space shuttle names. The shuttles were, essentially, technically identical, winged spacecraft with windows, wheels and wings all in the same places, but somehow each had its own personality, didn’t it? And when we say their names today, long after the last shuttle thundered into the sky, we feel something inside us stir.

Some other names to read outloud…

Voyager… Galileo… Sojourner… Spirit… Opportunity… Curiosity…

Again, memories, emotions, all associated with those names.

You see? Names are important. Names are bonds. Names are our way of investing in something. If we hadn’t been able to call them by their names, if we’d just been able to refer to them by their “factory numbers”, would we have been so mesmerised and so caught up in the incredible adventures of Spirit and Opportunity as they roved across Mars? If it hadn’t been given a real name, would Voyager 2′s solar system-crossing journey have been so celebrated? Would we still be so fascinated by it, so desperate to hear if it has finally began to travel into and through interstellar space? If names aren’t important, why was MESSENGER called MESSENGER? Why was DAWN christened DAWN? Why is a NEW HORIZONS now hurtling towards Pluto?

Interestingly, spacecraft which haven‘t been given names have slipped into history without anyone noticing or caring. The Salyuut space stations were fantastic feats of engineering for their time, real breakthroughs in technology, but they were just given numbers, so remain anonymous to the general public this day. But say the name “MIR” and you feel something, even though you are drawn into its history, you feel a part of its mission, its successes and failures.

And then there’s the International Space Station. It doesn’t have a name, it’s just known as “The International Space Station” or “ISS” for short. Originally it was going to have a name, it was going to be called “Space Station FREEDOM”, as cheesy and cliched as a 70s disco song, I know, but in hindsight it would have been better to give it a proper name, I think, because so many people I have shown it to, or talked about it to during my Outreach work, have been disappointed to learn it hasn’t got a proper name. Some have even said “That’s boring”, and while I understand the political reasons for just going with “International Space Station” I can see how giving it a proper, full name would have made it more interesting to people.

But back to naming exo-planets.

I understand why some people think that this is all a bit of a distraction, why they think there’s no need to give real names to these distant worlds, but I diagree. I think that with so many exo-planets having been discovered, with some of them even looking like genuine possibilities for deserving to be thought of as even a little “Earth-like”, now is the time to start giving some of them names. Again, not all of them, just the most special ones. We can’t go on just calling them names and numbers, it’s ridiculous. Real planets deserve proper names, I don’t know how anyone can argue against that.

The question isn’t why should we give them names anymore, it’s what should those names be? And clearly we have to find a safe, sensible and appropriate way of naming them. That will be hard work contrversial and maybe divisive too, but worth it in the end. Because right now, as there have been for generations, there are kids in school classrooms, patiently learning the names of the planets of our solar system – and they could be learning the names of planets in other solar systems too…

What an incredible thing! What an amazing time to be alive! We now know, for the first time, that ours isn’t the only solar system, we know that other stars, many of them, are circled by planets of their own. Just think about that. Ours is the first generation in the whole of human history that can go stand outside on a clear night, look up at the starry sky and know, for a fact, without doubt, that there are other solar systems out there waiting to be reached, explored and, one day, settled by our descendants. The children sitting in those classrooms, all around the world, are the ancestors of the star-crossing men and women who will look into the starry sky of “Kepler 62f” one far future night and see Sol shining there as a mere spark of light, with thousands more all around it.

They should be able to call it by its name now, to connect them with that future.

So come on, astronomical community, let’s stop faffing about, let’s get our heads together, as our hearts are telling us to,  and do the right and obvious thing for once. Let’s honour the past, celebrate the present and build a shining bridge to the future, by giving the incredible Kepler Worlds their own names.

It’s time.

 

 

 

Book review: “Picturing The Cosmos – Hubble Space Telescope Images and The Astronomical Sublime”

Although astronomers and non-astronomers alike all now acknowledge that the Hubble Space Telescope has revolutionised astronomy, and enriched many aspects of our lives with its spectacular science and beautiful images, it didn’t start well. When the first images beamed back from the orbiting observatory appeared on monitors, the scientists viewing them, who had been looking forward to letting out great whoops of joy, could only let out heavy sighs of despair. The images were blurred. They were no better than pictures taken by ground-based instruments – in fact, they looked worse, as if taken through a camera with grease smeared over the front of its lens. They were soft focus snaps of the universe instead of High Definition museum quality portraits. It must have been heartbreaking for the telescope’s team to hear it described as “One giant squint for Mankind”…

Fast forward many years to the present, and “Hubble” is no longer shorthand for technical failure and managerial cock-up. For what seems like a lifetime it has been sending back unbelievably beautiful images of stars, nebulae and galaxies, many of which are so lovely, so head-shakingly stunning they could indeed be hung on the wall of an art gallery -

Actually, it hasn’t. Sent back those stunning images, I mean. The images we see in our magazines and books, on websites, everywhere, are not the images the telescope sends back. They’re the ‘creations’ of men and women on the ground, data alchemists who take the telescope’s raw images and turn them into something… magical.

That’s not to say they’re fake, not at all. Every Hubble image you see in SKY & TELESCOPE, or on Phil Plait’s Bad Astronomy blog or on Nancy Atkinson’s Universe Today website is a real portrait of the universe. They just didn’t start out, or come back from space, that way.

The story of how how Hubble’s raw data is turned into the stunning images we see so often today is told by Elizabeth A Kessler in her new book “Picturing The Cosmos – Hubble Space Telescope Images and The Astronomical Sublime”. How the images are taken, how they’re sent back to Earth, and how they’re processed is all described in fascinating detail by an author who is genuinely fascinated by both the process itself and the people involved in it.

But that’s only part of the book. “Picturing The Cosmos” also looks at how Hubble images are more than just scientific datasets, graphical representations of distant astronomical objects. Kessler explains how they are in the same grand tradition as the famous and gorgeous paintings by artists such as Thomas Moran and Albert Bierstadt and the photographs of Ansell Adams – portraits of exotic, alien places that seem too beautiful, too dramatic to possibly be real, but really are.

When I was offered this book for review I thought it sounded very interesting, and its theme very familiar, because I’ve been saying for years and years, in my Outreach talks, that Hubble’s images are not just pretty space pictures, and give us much more than mere information about the swirling gas clouds, sparkling star clusters and catherine wheel galaxies they show so well. I’ve been insisting for years what Kessler asserts in her book – that Hubble images are works of art in their own right, and as such can and do inspire and move us in ways no other scientific images possibly can. It was delightful  (and a relief!) to learn that I’m not the only person who thinks and feels that way!

When explaining the technicalities of taking and processing Hubble images, and the background to the telescope’s construction, this book is pretty straightforward and factual. But it also provides fascinating insights into what goes on “behind the scenes” with Hubble. It was eye-opening to read, for example, how some astronomers were initially dismissive of Hubble’s images, sneering at them as just “pretty pictures”, until the world went nuts over the now famous “Pillars of Creation”image and then were suddenly converted. Funny that.

One of my favourite sections of the book, “Translating Data“, follows the “creation” of a Hubble image, from raw data being taken to its eventual publication and distribution online. As an amateur image creator myself – if you read any of my blogs you’ll already know that I love taking the raw images sent back by the Mars rovers and turning them into coloured landscapes, mosaics or 3D anaglyphs using image processing software like Photoshop and Stereophoto Maker – it was fascinating to follow  the process, and gave me a new appreciation for the image processing teams who turn the telescope’s black and white, contrasty ‘snapshots’ into the glorious pictures we all enjoy so much.

Away from the technical side of things, this is a very deep and thoughtful book, considering the symbolism and cultural significance of Hubble’s images, and I definitely loved those chapters the most. It was an absolute joy reading Kessler’s thoughts connecting Hubble to Bierstadt, Moran and Adams, connections I’ve made before. Kessler embraces the idea of Hubble’s photographic subjects being portraits of romantic landscapes and exciting frontiers, not just simple clumps of gas, scatterings of stars or lumps of rock.

This is definitely not a “popular science” book that you can dip in to when you’ve got a few minutes to spare. Nor is it yet another book of Hubble photographs, although obviously it contains some. If you want one of those, then go down to your local discount bookshop (or bookstore, hi again, US readers!) and you’ll find several of those there, leaning against a wall, the size of a paving stone and just as heavy. No. This is a detailed description of the technical challenges and triumphs of Hubble (there’s a fascinating section dealing with what ‘false colour’ means and why it is so useful to astronomers), and a thoughtful examination of what the telescope’s beautiful images actually mean on a much deeper level.

“Picturing The Cosmos” pulls off that ever so tricky trick of combining cold, hard technical explanations and descriptions with a thoughtful, emotional examination of the aesthetic appeal and cultural significance of astronomy. I have no other books anything like it standing on my sagging bookshelves over there, and I can definitely recommend it to any science-savvy reader who wants to know how hard data becomes “pretty pictures”, and to anyone who has ever looked at a Hubble photo and simply thought “That’s beautiful…”.

“PICTURING THE COSMOS – Hubble Space Telescope Images and The Astronomical Sublime”

Elizabeth A Kessler

University of Minnesota Press

ISBN 978-0-8166-7957-7

 

Book review: “Your Ticket To The Universe – A Guide to Exploring The Cosmos”

There are essentially two types of “popular astronomy” books. The first type is written very matter-of-factly, quite dryly, no thrills or frills, by an astronomer who knows their subject inside out but maybe hasn’t got much experience of actually talking to non-astronomers about it. They’re essentially “A Beginners Guide to Astronomy” Powerpoint presentations shrunk and printed on paper. Those books are essential, of course, because we absolutely need such reference books to consult at “I just need the facts” moments. Reading them is like sitting in a cavernous lecture hall, in an uncomfortable chair, listening to a knowledgeable but rather cold lecturer talk about the universe, each slide they show crammed full of text, which they then proceed to read out, word for word…

The other type of book is more relaxed, more informal, and takes you on a personal journey of discovery. Reading this type of book is more like listening to a lecture in a small, cosy venue, given by an expert who is supremely comfortable with talking to people about their subject, who is still as fired up about it as they were when they first fell in love with it, if not more so, and whose presentation is crammed full of astronomical information but is presented in a funny and entertaining way which draws you in and refuses to let you go. During such a presentation that famous, cliched lightbulb pings on above your head again and again and again, as you suddenly “get” why this happens, or why that happens.

This is one of those books, and I can’t recommend it highly enough.

This book is basically a masterclass in astronomy outreach and education. Its as if the authors got together somewhere and decided to put down on paper The Best Astronomy Outreach Presentation Ever, to show everyone else how to do it. Which might actually have been the case, because the back cover proudly states that the two authors – Kimberley K Arcand and Megan Watzke – have “a combined 25 years of experience working to bring the wonders of the cosmos to the public”. Both are involved in Outreach and Education for NASA, working to support  the Chandra X-Ray Observatory. They are Outreachers to their core, and it shows. Reading their book is genuinely like sitting in a hall, listening to them give a presentation.

The book is hardly revolutionary in its format, taking the reader on a trip through the universe, from the Sun to the distant reaches of the copsmos in the classic “astronomy road trip” way. But this is no ordinary, boring road trip that just stops at the most obvious places, the places everyone goes to. This road trip takes in places off the astronomical beaten track, oddities and curiosities. Yes, it takes you to the universe’s Mt Rushmores and Yosemites, but it also takes you to the quaint little towns tourists rarely discover, and the beautiful beaches and forests only the locals know about.

But really this is, as I said, a masterclass in astronomy Outreach. Reading it is honestly like listening to a skilled, knowledgeable astronomy lecturer, or in this case a pair of lecturers, Kim and Megan, who are superb and natural communicators. I do a lot of Outreach talks myself, and reading this book, thinking of it as a presentation in paper form, made me realise how far I have to go and how much better I can be. Kim and Megan give a presentation during which nothing jarrs, no jokes misfire, and heavy, hard science rubs shoulders easily and comfortably with “Wow! That’s amazing!” factoids and “Sheesh, I had no idea…” moments of scientific revelation. They explain the heavy, hard stuff clearly and concisely, translating the gobbledygook and jargon into easy-to-understand language which is, after all, what Outreach is all about, isn’t it? At several points in the book I read one of their descriptions and thought “Right, NOW I get that…” when a concept or theory I’d previously struggled with suddenly made perfect sense.

This is a bo0k clearly written by two people who love astronomy, and are excited and inspired by the universe. Reading it made me feel the same way, and I’ve been doing this stuff for almost forty years now! It’s a real “fan letter” to astronomy. It might be the authors’ jobs to tell people about the universe, but it’s their passion too. So many books lose sight of the fact that astronomy is exciting, and fascinating, and incredible, and just fill their pages with lists and tables, and trot out the same facts old about the Great Red Spot, or comet tails, etc etc etc. Not this one.

Of course it’s illustrated, richly – it’s commercial suicide for an astronomy book NOT to be nowadays, when there are so many websites offering jaw-droppingly beautiful astronomical images – and the pictures are well chosen, complementing the text perfectly. But to be honest I found myself skipping past the pictures to get back to the text, because reading it is just so much fun and so enjoyable. The text is littered with always relevent and appropriate pop culture references – movies, music, anything to engage with the readership. I just loved this paragraph…

“As we mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, there are many moons around the planets in our Solar System. Some of them are simply fascinating. Science fiction writers have been drawn to moons as intriguing destinations for a long time – think of Endor from return of the Jedi or Pandora from Avatar. While none of the moons contains Ewoks or Na’vi, the moons in our Solar System offer compelling scientific reasons for exploring them. here we describe just a few of our favourite moons.”

That’s an example of how the text flows freely and without any jarring subject or topic changes, each page, each section connecting perfectly with the next, just as a good presentation should. Again, the sign of very skilled Outreachers.

If that all sounds very gushy, well, sorry, but it’s a book I’m happy to gush about! It’s not perfect tho. I’m not smitten by the look of the book, i.e its use of spacey header fonts and the layout, which makes the book feel a bit like a Star Trek spin-off book from the 1980s, but that’s just a personal thing; the contents are far more important, and I can’t fault them at all.

Go into your local bookshop (or bookstore, hi, US readers!) and you’ll be faced with a huge choice of popular astronomy titles, all staring at you from the shelves purring, pleading “Buy me… buy me…” Which do you choose? Well, if it’s there, you’d be hard pressed to beat this one, in my opinion. If you buy it you’re effectively arranging for a private astronomy Outreach talk to be given in your own front room, or study, or wherever you read, by two extremely skilled communicators. They’ll show you beautiful pictures, and explain clearly how amazing the universe is, and how we’ve learned so much about it.

Highly recommended.

“YOUR TICKET TO THE UNIVERSE – A Guide to Exploring The Cosmos”

Smithsonian Books

Kimberley Arcand and Megan Watzke

ISBN 978-1-58834-375-8

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Actually, the timing of the publication of this book is perfect, because it provides a perfect illustration of the importance and value of good Outreach, at a time when NASA’s Outreach work is being hacked and slashed back because of decisions made by politicians. I know that there’s a battle going on in the US now in the political world, and as a Brit I can’t, and don’t, claim to understand it, but it seems to me from this side of the pond that one of the US political parties is going completely gibberingly village idiot insane, embracing pseudoscience and downright finger-twirling-by-the-temple drooling, witch-burning, pitchfork-wielding lunacy.  I can’t understand it, it’s quite frightening. It’s as if they are terrified by science, and hate it, absolutely hate it. And because the only thing they hate more than science is the other political party, they’ve brought about a situation where the US budget has had brutal cuts forced upon it. One of the consequences of this is that NASA has made the decision to severely cut back on its Outreach and Education program – just at the exact moment in time when people need to be educated and informed about the value of science more than ever before, and the relentlessly marching armies of ignorance and superstition need to be pushed back.

This book is a perfect example of what great Outreach can achieve – it can help people understand their place in the universe, and open their eyes to the incredible things science gives us. I honestly wish that every one of the stupid, stupid politicians engaged in the current War Against Science in the US could be sent a copy of this book. It might help a few of them realise just how ridiculous they are, and how important Outreach is. Outreach is so essential, *so* essential; every talk, every website, every Tweet, every FB post, every computer-rendered image, is an investment in the future. To just cut it like this… How many childrens’ dreams will this drown? How many flames of inspiration will never be lit? I wish I could get them all in a room, lock the door, throw a copy of this book at them and scream  “You goddamned bloody idiots! THIS is what you are stopping!”It might be too late to stop a huge amount of damage being done, but History will judge them very harshly for this, the morons. In a thousand years time, when men and women finally stand on worlds orbiting faraway stars, looking for Sol in their night sky, their children will be taught in school about what happened, and the names of the cretins responsible will be spoken with disgust and contempt. That’ll be their “legacy”, the idiots.

 

 

Comet PANSTARRS seen from Kendal!

Yes, we did it, we saw the elusive Comet PANSTARRS!

Full report here…

http://waitingforison.wordpress.com/comet-panstarrs

 

Kielder Spring Starcamp, March 2013

Like most amateur astronomers, I have a list of “astronomical ambitions”. I want to see a very bright, naked eye comet (COME ON ISON!!!!), I want to see a supernova, and I want to be around when the first person sets foot on Mars, and when someone, somewhere, or something, discovers extraterrestrial life. Admittedly they’re all at the “Ha! You’ll be lucky!” end of the spectrum, but also on that list was the rather less ambitious ambition of  “Go to a starcamp”. I’ve heard and read and been told about them for ages, for literally years, and always thought “That sounds really good! I’ll have to get to one of those sometime…!” But sometime never came, other stuff always got in the way, you know what it’s like. Life, huh?

Well, last weekend I actually did it! With two fellow Eddington AS members, our friends Carol and Simon, Stella and I went up to the Kielder Spring Starcamp. And did it live up to expectations?

Oh yes…!

We arrived mid-afternoon on the Friday, after driving north from Newcastle, and every mile we travelled the weather got worse. By the time we reached the famous Kielder Reservoir the sky was leaden grey and icy mizzly rain was coming down. We stopped by the reservoir to take in the view…

Then headed further north, along and around the reservoir, to the campsite. When we pulled into the car park we were greeted very warmly by one of the organisers and shown to our pitch. It was definitely a good decision to have “gone electric” by paying for a hook up to the power, because even by then it was perishingly cold, and we knew as we put the tent up – flapping about in the growing wind and icy rain – that we would be needing both of the heaters we had brought. Soon after we started setting up our friends arrived, and there was room tyo pitch their tent next to ours, so by sunset we had established the Eddington Astronomical Society “Base Camp” for the 2013 Kielder Spring Starcamp..!

Soon our tent was all set up, cosy and snug and warm. Well, it had to be, as we’d brought company…

Yes, we took our rabbit with us. Well, she’s called “Cassiopeia”, what were we supposed to do? Leave her at home and have her miss all the fun?

After setting up it was time to get out and explore…

Kielder Campsite is long, with trees on both sides, and when we got there there were already quite a few amateur astronomers and event organisers milling about, most, it has to be said, looking up at the sky with expressions on their faces ranging from disappointment to disgust and hatred. The forecast was for absolute cloud that night, and probably the next as well, with a *CHANCE* of a clearer sky on Sunday night, the last night of the starcamp. Lots of fingers were being crossed! So we milled about a little, talked to some of the people there, and everyone was really friendly, more than happy to welcome us to the event, ask where we’d come from, ask about our Society, etc, and we were made to feel very welcome, which was something of a relief, because I had been a little worried that a starcamp might be a bit like one of those saloons you see in Westerns, where newcomers walk in and everything stops and all eyes turn towards the strangers. But no, nothing like that at all, we were welcomed with open arms, and everyone was glad we were there!

So, with no stars to see, and no prospect of any stars to see later, we just went to look around the site, and down the bottom end, past the Anglers pub, at the foot of the hill, we found the Minotaur Maze..!

But what do you do when you’re at a Starcamp and there are no stars to see? Well, you wander around the Starcamp, taking in the view, meeting and talking to people, and looking at poor telescopes huddled under tarpaulins and sheets, starved of starlight and looking very sad indeed…

Then you retire to your tent early, and, as the rain starts to spatter against the canvas, turn in, get warm under your quilts and inside your sleeping bags, and look forward to the next day, when there are talks to go to and vendors to go and buy things from..!

After a yummy tent-cooked breakfast the next morning we headed up to the Castle, where a programme of illustrated talks had been arranged, with a roomful of telescope and astronomy equipment retailers available to sell you anything and everything from an eyepiece or filter to a full size telescope. I succumbed and bought a tripod for my small refractor, and a yellow eyepiece filter which I wanted to use on Comet PANSTARRS (having read on a forum how yellow filters are good for bringing out detail in the tails of comets…).

The talks, four of them, were very good and the room was full to the sides. We heard about telescope building from Roo Powell, and Rob Ince told everyone about the amazing things being done at the Galloway Observatory too. Gary Fildes who runs the Kielder Observatory gave a fascinating and very personal talk, and he really came across as a force of Nature, tremendously driven and focussed and absolutely one million percent determined to make Kielder a world class facility and something of a Mecca for amateur astronomers. he has grand plans for the observatory – a telescope for disabled people to use, a planetarium, an astronomy “village”, and I have no doubt whatsoever he’ll make them all happen…

I wouldn’t like to try standing in Gary’s way when he’s trying to get something done!

The final talk was all about the hunt for exoplanets, and was given by Dr Sue Bowler from Leeds University.

It was a fascinating talk, a very professional presentation, and I’m going to be cheeky and email Dr Bowler and ask if she’s be willing to travel up to Kendal to give the talk to my astronomy society!

With the talks done it was time to wander around the vendors’ stalls one last time, then we headed back down to our tents. In our absence the sky had darkened and rain was in the air again, and prospects for any stargazing looked bleak, so we decided to come back up to the Castle after freshening up and grab a bite to eat at the Duke’s Pantry cafe there. Then back down the hill, and into the Anglers pub for a couple of drinks before retreating back into our tents as the snow started to fall. On the way we actually caught glimpses of several stars, but the cloud soon swallowed them up again, and that was that. I did wonder if they were the only stars we were going to see…

The next morning, Sunday, we woke up to this view…

Which was fun! Overnight a light dusting of snow had covered the campsite, but look! Blue sky! Surely a sign of good things to come later!! I headed down to the toilet block, to go and sit in The Warm Room for a while and check my emails and Twitter on their new broadband connection there, and while I was there the snow started to fall a lot more heavily, and by the time I got back to our tent it looked like this…

Soon the snow was falling thick and fast, and we retreated into our tents, fired up the heaters, and just watched the tent ceiling grow darker and darker and darker as snow settled on it… When I looked outside again I saw this…

Stargazing that evening didn’t seem very likely! And as the hours passed, more and more snow fell, on and off, flurry following flurry with half hours of sunny blue sky inbetween… Carol was loving the snow, as you can see…!

Mid-afternoon we were invited to go for a walk with some of our fellow would-be stargazers, so we wrapped up as warmly as we could and headed for Scotland! We nearly reached the border, but it started to snow heavily again so we turned back, but it was a lovely walk through some spectacular scenery…

But by this time the snow still wasn’t *that* heavy, and the campsite still looked very pretty, and as we headed back up the hill to the Duke’s Pantry for dinner, to meet some of our fellow Starcamp attendees there, it really was looking very poor. By this point most people had just gone back home, either because they were scheduled to or just because they’d lost heart and had given up. Only a few hardcore optimists were left, and the campsite had a very empty feel to it. But those of us who were left were determined to make the best of it, and there was a real feeling of astronomical stiff upper lip! In the Dukes everyone chatted very happily over dinner, swapping stories – some of them horror stories – about mounts, camera trackers and telescopes, and inbetween courses I (ever the optimist!) sneaked out to see if there was any sign of Comet PANSTARRS through the trees. There wasn’t. And the final time I tried I went out to find really heavy snow falling, great thick, fat flakes of it, and it looked like we were doomed to see no stars at all…

But…

As we walked down from the castle stars started to pop out above us, more and more of them, and by the time we were down on the campsite field again the sky was beautifully, magically clear, a vivid shade of deep, dark grey-blue studded with stars. Jupiter! Sirius! Orion! They were all there! YES! We were going to see stuff at our Starcamp!!

With our boots and wellies crunching and crumping through the snow we scattered to our tents to set up our gear and do some observing. Being just a humble 4.5″ GoTo – with no GoTo actually fitted to it! – I was able to set up my telescope and start looking at things before everyone else had even started putting theirs together, and soon I had the Orion Nebula in my eyepiece. It was… unbelievable. The grey-green wisps and billows of nebulosity filled the eyepiece, actually overflowed it, and I could hardly tear my eyes away from it.

As the sky grew darker and darker it started to literally fill with stars, and I grasped for the first time what it’s like to be under a truly dark, light pollution free sky – and reealised too just how badly light polluted my own sky is. By ten pm I was feeling a little bewildered, there were just so many stars above and around me. The constellations – as I’d been warned they would – began to be hard to recognise, as their outlying, fainter stars blazed brightly. Orion was a revelation, his raised shield and club suddenly clearly visible, and the faint stars which make up the legs and head of Ursa Major were obvious too. I never see those from Kendal, never…

I started taking photos, just of anything and everything really, panning the camera around to all directions, just making sure I captured something of the sky, and had some memories recorded on my memory card as well as lodged in my brain. In the bitter, bitter, biting cold, with the ground covered in snow, I stood there grinning like an idiot, photographing Orion… Leo… Cassiopeia and Perseus… the Andromeda Galaxy… and more. A couple of times other Starcamp attendees wandered past to check we were okay, and to join with us in delighting in the starlight. At one point I called Carol over to look at The Crab Nebula in my telescope eyepiece, marvelling at my best ever view of it. Ot looked like a misty grey, smudged thumbprint in the eyepiece. The Pleiades were a pocketful of sapphires shining on black velvet, and the Double Cluster looked like two piles of salt spilled on a black tabletop…

And M31… M31 was a long, oval smear of yellowish-grey light in my telescope. It was HUGE in binoculars, just huge. A truly magical view…

Carol and I took some time to go for a wander around the campsite, seeing what everyone else was up to. One poor guy was ready to throw his telescope into the river, as it had suffered some kind of mechanical failure just as the sky had cleared, and he could do nothing with it. Another of our fellow stargazers was happily imaging the Heart Nebula, and yet another was using some of his very impressive collection of cameras and lenses to take astrophotos… And all the time, above and around us, a sky filled to overflowing with stars. Just wonderful.

Suddenly those stars started to go out – a big snowstorm was approaching from the NE, and soon we were in the middle of a blizzard! Covers were quicklly thrown on scopes and cameras before we fled back inside… and boy, did the snow come down. All through the night one mini-blizzard followed another, it was so frustrating! To head out and see stars, and to grab half an hour under them, only to be forced back inside again when another blizzard rolled in like a snowy tsunami was exciting but draining, and by midnight I’d had enough and zipped up the tent flap for the final time, surrendering the night, and the stars of Kielder to then snow. But I didn’t mind, I didn’t feel cheated. We’d gone up there to see stars, and we’d seen them, thousands and thousands of them, and as the tent roof started to sag under the weightof the falling snow I drifted off to sleep, with the whirring of the fan heater and the orange glow of the halogen heater turning our tent into a little sauna…

Next morning I woke up and could tell right away that there had been heavy snowfall overnight. The air was deathly still, and I could see snow and ice on the tent’s sides and roof, silhouetted against the fabric. Shivering I pulled on my wellies, zipped open the tent flap – and stepped out into Narnia…

Snow was piled up against the side of the tent, and our Base Camp looked like it had been set up at the foot of Everest rather than in a forest in Northumberland! Sensing great photos were there for the taking I headed out into the morning…

Yes, those are icicles hanging off our tent..! I later found out it had fallen to minus nine degrees overnight, with wind chill making it feel more like minus twelve..!

Stella and I had decided to treat ourselves to a cooked breakfast up at the Castle before leaving, and the walk through the campsite and up to the castle was just spectacular…

(Thanks to Carol for taking that picture of us!)

Eventually it was time to pack up, so after a few last pictures…

…we reluctantly packed up our tents and the Eddington AS Kielder Spring Starcamp Base Camp was no more…

So, that was that… an ambition achieved, one of my longest standing To Do items ticked off. Was going to a Starcamp everything it’s cracked up to be? Absolutely. We met some brilliant, very friendly people, who welcomed us into the Starcamp community from the very start. We listened to some fascinating talks, and met some very interesting vendors too. We saw telescopes of different shapes and sizes, and chatted with their knowledgeable and enthusiastic owners, who were more than happy to share their experiences and advice. And although we only saw stars on one night out of the three we were there, when the sky did clear it was – well, stunning is an over-used word but it’s the only one that fits to be honest. To be at a truly dark site, under a truly dark sky, absolutely strewn with stars… to see stars spattered from horizon to horizon, like white paint flicked off a paint brush onto black card… to see the constellations as they truly are, and not the edited, watered down, half-arsed versions we get from our towns and cities… well, it was humbling, exciting, bewildering, and so much more. It made me realise why I fell in love with astronomy in the first place, and made me determined to go to more Starcamps to have that experience again. I can’ wait.

Should YOU go to a Starcamp? Yes. Absolutely. Find one near you as soon as you’ve finished reading this post, and book a place/places on it. You won’t regret it, in fact you’ll kick yourself that you didn’t do it years ago, like I did.

February 15th…

Well, what a strange old, exciting and frustrating day yesterday was. It had everything. Looking back on it this morning I’m not entirely sure I didn’t dream or imagine the whole thing.

It started off in the usual way – with me waking up, yawning, feeding our naggy cat and them reaching for my phone to check what had been happening in the world overnight on Twitter. By “world” I mean, of course, the world of astronomy and space exploration, not the wide world. I used to check what had happened in that by checking the news sites, but dear god that’s so depressing, full of stories of horse lasagne and celebrities and other nonsense, so now I go straight to Twitter to see if there are any new images of Comet ISON doing the rounds, or if Comet PANSTARRS has magically brightened, or if Curiosity has found another ‘shiny thing’ on Mars for the web’s nutcases and fruit loops to obsess over.

So, yesterday morning, I went down, waaaay down to the bottom of my Twitter updates, and soon saw a Tweet talking about a “bright meteor” seen in Russia. Hmm, ok, no big deal, bright meteors are seen all the time. I wondered if anyone had managed to take a picture, that would be interesting, but if they hadn’t, well, no worries.

Then I scrolled up a bit more… another meteor tweet… then another calling it a “fireball”… then more and more, each one more excited and breathless and disbelieving than the last. Soon I had realised that Something Big Had Happened, something which was going to dominate the news that day -

Hang on… wasn’t today the day that a big asteroid was going to fly past Earth? One that had no chance of hitting us?

Had they got that wrong?

No, surely not. “They” were experts, the same experts I keep telling people have to be trusted because they have brains the sizes of planets and computers which are frighteningly powerful. No, this was something else. This was something different, surely. But what a hell of a coincidence…

A little more scrolling rewarded me with a link to an image…

…bloody hellllllll….

Then another…

Then I found a Tweet linking to a YouTube clip, so with the now well-fed cat sitting on my chest, wanting to play, I went to the clip and started it playing -

Dear god… look at that! A huge, fat, churning, billowing white vapour trail painted across a breathtakingly icy blue sky. Split in two? Two trails side by side? It certainly looked like it. TWO pieces had come down together? How likely was -

Then the explosion. The sonic boom. The camera spinning wildly as the person holding it was battered by a shock wave from above, a shock wave which shattered the windows all around them, covering the snowy ground with deadly shards of glittering broken glass. As more, smaller, more distant explosions thudded and whumped in the background, like an artillery bombardment, and alarms blared deafeningly, the camera straightened again, panning along the length of the vapour trail…

It was like a scene from “Cloverfield,” and I’ll admit that for a moment I wondered if I was watching a very realistic, very clever hoax. It looked real, but the chances of something like this happening, and someone filming it, seemed, well, a bit unlikely…

But then I watched another YouTube clip, and another and another. Each snippet of film, whether shot from a moving car driving down a road or a static webcam looking out across a town square showed the same thing – a stupidly, stupidly bright fireball crossing the achingly-blue sky, sliding across it, gliding across it, leaving behind a line of burning gold which quickly thickened and fattened and clotted into a milk white trail of smoke and cloud. That was all some showed, in soundtrack-free silence. Others had sound, the sound of windows shattering and splintering and building alarms wailing and car alarms shrieking after a chest-compressing detonation farm, far above. It was quite incredible, and just watching it on my phone’s screen set my pulse racing and left me feeling more than a little scared.

And that was how it started. The Day The Sky Fell.

Bizarrely, it took the TV news here in the UK a good couple of hours to latch on tothe story. They were too busy reporting on the latest discoveries of horse meat in processed meals supposed to be made of beef, and the shooting of that paralympic sprinter’s girlfriend in South Africa. Eventually they caught hold of the story (“We’re just getting reports…” No! You’re not! You had the reports HOURS ago! Wake up!!!!), and began speculating wildly, of course. So I turned them off and went back to Twitter for my news. It’s more reliable nowadays.

In yet another bizarre coincidence I had been asked to go on my local BBC Radio station at just after 8pm, to talk about the Carlisle castle-sized asteroid which was going to fly very close to – but harmlessly past – Earth later in the day, so I was able to slot the#Russianmeteor into my piece at the very start – incredibly, the presenter didn’t have a clue what I was on about! I had to tell *him* what had happened!

By lunchtime the picture was clearer. A fair-sized chunk of space debris – a piece of rocky asteroid, most likely – had streaked through the atmosphere above Russia, leaving a spectacular trail hundreds of miles long in the air before exploding high above it, sending a blast pressure wave down to the ground, shattering windows, blowing out doors, and terrifying people across many hundreds of miles. Although there were a few scattered reports of buildings having been damaged, that damage appeared to have been caused by the same blast wave which had destroyed so many windows, and not by actual pieces of falling space rock. A hole had been found in an icy lake beneath the meteor’s trajectory, and there were suspicions that meteorites had fallen into the waters but no way of proving it, yet. But the internet was groaning under the weight of pictures of fallen walls, shattered windows and, of course, that ghostly, now iconic smoke trail cutting across the azure Russian sky…

Looking at those images, and watching the videos again and again and again on the TV and YouTube, several thoughts came to mind. First – bloody hell, we’ve been lucky. So, so lucky. If that asteroid fragment had exploded closer to the ground, those towns and cities might have been flattened, like those trees in Tunguska in 1908. People would have died if that had happened, many people. It would have looked like a scene from ARMAGEDDON, with wrecked buildings and bodies.

Then I thought, rather selfishly probably, how amazing it was that we live in this internet age, this YouTube age, this Twitter age, when a story like this is being shared with the world literally within minutes. Ten years ago things would have been very different. Today, when something like this happens, it’s recorded, hashtagged, posted and shared with the world within MINUTES, that’s just incredible, isn’t it? It genuinely is a small world now.

But my over-riding thought was this: Dear god, what must it have been like to have been UNDER that? To have witnessed it? To have looked up on that cold, crisp morning and see a second Sun crawling across the sky before the hand of God slapped down on you from on high, breaking every window around you and leaving your ears ringing and your heart thudding in your chest as you stood there, numb, literally wondering if the world was ending..?

I couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to be walking up my own street, carrying my bags of shopping from Iceland and Home Bargains, and to see a fireball like that skating across the sky, to see shadows lengthening and swinging around me as the fireball etched across the heavens, to see the world go white as it exploded, and to stand there for a minute or so, in calm, in quiet, gathering my thoughts, looking up at a cream-white vapour trail cutting the sky in half above me before the shock wave struck and the windows of the shops around me exploded outwards in a blizzard of tinkling, twinkling glass shards…

Next time it happens – and there will be a next time – it might be here, where I live. Or it might be where you live. Chances are it will be where *someone* lives. And that should make our politicians get off their fat arses and take the prospects of that seriously.

By teatime the #Russianmeteor was still in the news, but was slipping back down the league table of interest. But by then I had other things on my mind myself anyway. My astronomical society – the Eddington Astronomical Society – had scheduled one of our increasingly-popular Moonwatch events for yesterday evening, and by teatime the sky, which had been cloudy all day, was suspiciously and spectacularly clear, so a good 45 minutes ahead of the event’s 6.30 start time I went to the Brewery Arts Centre to set up my telescope and start showing people the Moon.

The plan, as usual, was to show people the Moon’s craters, seas and mountains through a variety of our telescopes, plus Jupiter and some of its moons. We’d have a chance to see a very high and bright pass of the International Space Station too, just after 7pm. There was also a very, very faint chance that we might be able to see the headline-hogging asteroid 2012DA14 as it skimmed past Earth, just 17,000 miles or so above our atmosphere, but we weren’t counting on that.

It was a brilliant evening, it really was. We must have had eight, maybe nine different telescopes there, and by the time we all packed up – only because mist and cloud rolled in – we must have “shown the sights” to more than 70 people, young and old, fascinated and just curious alike. We saw the space station in all its glory, arcing up towards and then beneath the Moon and Jupiter and then above and away from Orion. Little did we know that as  we were watching the space station, someone onboard the orbital laboratory was watching us, floating by a window and taking our picture…

How fantastic is that?!

So, yes, a fantastic night. And although we didn’t get to see the asteroid, visitors to the Moonwatch were able to see and hold a piece OF asteroid; I took along a large piece of the famous Canyon Diablo meteorite which blasted Meteor Crater out of the Arizona desert 50,000 years ago. The kids who hefted it in their tiny hands thought it was *brilliant*, and the adults were pretty impressed too!

Back home after the Moonwatch there was time to reflect a little on the day’s events. It had been a day of ludicrous and terrifying coincidence. One asteroid had raced past Earth, exactly and comfortingly as predicted, while another, smaller one had essentially hit us, blowing up in the atmosphere just a hair’s breadth above the ground in a populated country. We had had two near misses in less than 24 hours, thus proving the Earth really is a target in a cosmic shooting gallery. That’s a very sobering thought, isn’t it? Like I said to one of the visitors to our Moonwatch, if we could actually look up on a clear night and SEE all the bits of ice and rock and metal spinning around and past us, we would never set foot out of the house again, it would be bowel-looseningly terrifying.

We were all given a sobering and timely reminder of our place in the universe yesterday, and of how important we don’t just sit on our hands, here on Earth, but get OUT there, and explore, and find other places to live so that all our civilisation’s eggs aren’t in this one fragile basket. If that rock that exploded over Russia had been ten times bigger, or just half a dozen times bigger, things might have turned out very differently indeed.

The Sky fell yesterday, but amazingly the only damage done was to windows and walls. Hearts were stopped, pulses were jolted, faces and hands were cut, blood was spilled, but no-one died. Next time – and we might be decades, years or just days away from that Next Time, we have no idea – we might not be so lucky.

That #Russianmeteor was the universe giving us a well-deserved kick up the arse. It was the universe pulling away our nice cosy duvet as we sprawl in bed watching “X Factor” or “American Idol” or “The Kardashians” and shouting at us “Get up! Stop lazing about! DO something!”

I hope we do.

UPDATE: I couldn’t help wondering how big the “smoke trail” left behind by the Russian meteor was, so I did a bit of research. The most often quoted length seems to be 320km, which sounds impressive but doesn’t actually mean anything does it? I mean, how can you visualise that? What IS 320km long? So I used Google Earth and Photoshop to go back in time and change history so the Russian meteor had actually been a British meteor, and put the smoke trail “over” my part of the world…

GULP…!!!

And according to a report in a British newspaper today, if the meteoroid had entered the atmosphere just a couple of hours earlier, it *would* have been my part of the world beneath it. Wow…

2013 -The Year of the Comet (was Comets)..?

At the end of last year astronomers amateur and professional alike were almost weeing themselves with excitement at the prospect of there not being just one but two bright naked eye comets to look forward to in 2013. Comet PANSTARRS, due to shine in the northern hemisphere’s sunset sky in mid-March, was shaping up to be another Hale-Bopp, and Comet ISON was showing all the signs of being a truly Great Comet, with a “You must be kidding! Look at THAT!” length tail, maybe even bright enough to be seen in the daytime sky too. Yep, 2013 was looking like being The Year of The Comets…!

We might have to change that to Comet, because PANSTARRS is not brightening as quickly or as much as it would be doing if it was going to become “another Hale-Bopp”. Lots of people are now observing the comet regularly, and when their observations of its brightnes are plotted on a graph it is definitely behind schedule, and I’m actually worried that if its current level of brightening holds then it might actually be quite challenging to see in the sky after sunset in mid-March without some kind of help, by using binoculars or a telescope I mean.

This might be disappointing, but it’s not a huge surprise, and responsible astronomers and astronomy writers have been warning people from the start that this might happen. Past comets which have promised to put on good shows have laughed at us and fizzled out when they stepped onto the stage for real, and PANSTARRS might be one of those teases. Of course, the comet could just be playing with us, and waiting to brighten properly until it’s closer to the Sun, in which case we might yet be treated to lovely views of Hale-Bopp 2 this March, we’ll have to wait and see. It’s too late to know for sure yet, so let’s be optimistic – and cross our fingers! And hope that instead of this…

… we get this…

Two bright naked eye comets in the same year did seem a bit greedy, rather too good to be true. It probably was. But even if PANSTARRS isn’t another Hale-Bopp it will provide us all with a fantastic dress rehearsal for ISON, and will allow us all to prepare for ISON’s arrival by scouting-out an optimum observing location, practising how to observe comets and, of course, practising how to *photograph* them, so let’s have no wailing or gnashing of teeth!

Kendal joins in with BBC “Stargazing Live”

As we have done every series so far, the Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal has been supporting the BBC’s fine “Stargazing Live” series by holding astronomy events in our town.

On Monday night our monthly meeting was given over to a “Beginners Night”, when we invited people interested in getting started in astronomy and the hobby of starwatching to come along, learn about our Society and learn about the hobby too. And, brilliantly, 51 people came! Not all of them were potential new members, but the vast majority were, and they enjoyed presentations describing how to observe the night sky and how to use binoculars and a telescope. Hopefully many of them will join our Society as full members in the future!

Then yesterday was a HUGE day for us! BBC Radio Cumbria – always fantastic supporters of our society and of astronomy activities and events in Cumbria – came through to Kendal to broadcast live from the town all afternoon, and to promote our “Stargazing Live Skywatch” we were holding that evening. Here’s presenter Caroline Robertson by the Radio Cumbria gazebo, ready to start her show yesterday afternoon…

And here she is talking to Anna Hall, the Education Officer at kendal Museum who, as EAS members know, is one of our greatest supporters and most enthusiastic helpers too…

It was a brilliant afternoon, and Caroline and I chatted many times on air about Arthur Eddington, astronomy in Kendal, what people can see in the night sky, and more. Other guets also talked about Eddington and astronomy, and we were even allowed into the Mayor’s Parlour upstairs in the Town Hall to see Eddington’s medals, which was a treat and a privilege.

Of course, the main aim of the day was to publicise and support our big evening Stargazing Live event – a public Skywatch up at Kendal castle. We were hoping to be able to show people Jupiter, constellations and more, but when Caroline’s show started at 2 the signs weren’t good: Kendal was being smothered under a thick bank of mist and low cloud, hiding the Sun completely. And sadly that mist and fog didn’t lift – as it had been forecast to by many weather experts online! Curse them! – and as the time to begin the Skywatch arrived there was absolutely no chance of seeing anything up there…

But of course we went up anyway!

…and it’s a good thing we did, because lots of people trekked up to the Castle to see us and talk about astronomy despite the weather!

And ok, so we didn’t see any stars… or anything else in the sky… but we did get to “spread the word” about stargazing, and give out a load of Stargazing Live booklets, AND invite people to our third and final Stargazing Live event, an illustrated talk and ‘astronomy night’ at The Box…

And we had a lot of fun too, as we always do when the Cumbrian weather laughs at us as we try to observe the night sky…!

UPDATE:

On Friday (11th) night our “Astronomy Night” at The ox, down near Kendal Museum, was a big success, withover 60 people coming along to listen to an illustrated talk entitled “A Tourist Guide To The Universe”, see and hold some rare meteorites, and be introduced to telescopes by members of the Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal…

It was great to see and meet so many people interested in astronomy, and hopefully some of them will become members of the Society in the near future.

Our next event (to be confirmed) is a MOONWATCH in the gardens at the Brewery Arts Centre on Friday February 15th. Hope to see you there!

Meteor Madness…!

I’m late writing this up, I know, but hey, better late than never…!

Last Thursday night members of the Eddington Astronomical Society of Kendal gathered up at Helsington Church to watch the long-awaited 2012 Geminid meteor shower. Previous meteor showers had been ruined by the weather, or the intrusion of the big bright Moon, so when she saw the forecast for Thursday night was clear, without any Moon to spoil things, our observing co-ordinator, Carol, put the word out that there’d be a Meteorwatch up at the church late that evening. And so, by 10.30pm, ten of us were sat in deck chairs and loungers (well, eight of us, I preferred to stand and keep awake by walking about, as did another of our observers), staring at the beautifully starry sky, ready for the show to begin..!

And it was a decent show too. Not brilliant, not fantastic, but yeah, pretty good, and between 10.30pm and just after midnight – when cloud rolled in and ruined everything – we saw easily 50 or 60 Geminids. Most were pretty average, mag 4 or 5, but a few were considerably brighter, and a couple were MUCH brighter, minus magnitudes. The most memorable of all was a slow-moving, flaring fireball, a beautiful purple-lavendar colour tinged with emerald green, which dropped towards the horizon like a stone skimming across a still lake before vanishing behind a bank of cloud. I had my camera pointed in that direction… roughly… but didn’t get a picture of it.

In fact, I didn’t get a picture of a single Geminid! Always pointing in the wrong direction, or “between exposures” as is usually the case when photographing a meteor shower, you know what it’s like. Here are a couple of my meteor-free photos…

Would have been nice to have had one of those crossed by a big flaring meteor, but that wasn’t to be. But to be honest, I didn’t care, it was just great to be out there, under a starry sky, with a load of my Eddington mates, having a really good laugh together. Lots of jokes, lots of silliness, and lots of shooting stars – what more could you want?

There was one slightly serious side to the evening. Carol really wanted to take a special photograph as a tribute to the late Sir Patrick Moore, so we all got out our red torches and, as she took a time exposure, drew the letter “P” in mid-air… It was a lovely idea, and hey, whaddya know, it worked..!

Well done Carol! Another of our members tried the same thing, and his turned out even better, but I need to ask his permission before posting his photo, so check back for that.

Sadly, just after midnight, cloud and fog covered the sky, ending our Meteorwatch, and that was that. But it had been a great evening, and we all went home happy with what we’d seen, and seen together, more importantly.

Roll on 2013, with not one but two comets for us all to enjoy observing together too…