JUPITER AND MARS 080118

JUPITER AND MARS 080118

Jupiter and Mars Dancing clear and bright In the morning sky The miracle being That the redness of Mars Is visible to the naked eye

MAWH, 080118

WORLDS DANCING

Half a Moon glowing brightly
The halo seeping across a fog-filled sky
White dots puncture the monochrome
There are other worlds, dancing

Moon light
Planets bright
In the morning's
Pre-dawn light

MOONWATCHING

I wasn't up in time for the Red Moon,
but I caught the I unswallowing…

Watching the moon
come out from our shadow;
Orion burning brightly;
The silence except for the river
running,
and
a distant motorbike's roar.

Daft, I know,
but I like to think,

if I stick out my hand,

I can make

shadow puppets on the Moon...

What a shy Moon this is…

It's hiding behind the trees now.

Lunar eclipse tonight…

It's passing through our shadow…

Do give it a wave.

(Then there was this:)

MOONRISE

Last Sunday evening, whilst t'Beloved (and, it seemed, the rest of the universe) were watching the World Cup Final, we happened to glance out of the window of the place we were staying in for our holidays and saw the extraordinary sight of a moonrise over the headland across the bay.

Now, because this was a rather full moon, and given that the so-called "super moon" had happened 24 hours earlier, this all seemed rather more impressive than the deathly dull nil-nil draw which seemed to be playing out on television, and so we gaped and gawped at this rather beautiful view for several moments before deciding that we'd like to capture it in a photograph, even if it was going to have to be taken through the window because I didn't feel quite like dashing outside with a load of old clobber at that time of night.

Now, for some bizarre reason, it turned out that I had four photographic devices with me on that particular holiday. In fact, if you count the Kindle, I actually had five, but let's not, eh, because I didn't even try with that one.

First of all I snapped a quick shot with the teffalone before it was suggested that I ought too try using a "proper" camera, and so I rummaged about in the backpack, produced the tripod, and set up the SLR.

Sadly, my knowledge of night settings for such pictures is sadly lacking, and so I spent a few minutes producing shiny blobs on dark backgrounds before remembering that the pocket camera had some special "night sky" settings and grabbed that out of the bag.

Rather miserably, I couldn't work out where those settings were on the menus, and more blobs were produced as the clouds began to gather and the moment was escaping us.

In the meanwhile, of course, the Beloved snapped off a couple of rather smashing shots on her own camera that I'm now very jealous of.

All of this frantic scrabbling about was not helping me to appreciate this rather serene moment, but I grabbed the much underused "bridge" camera, the batteries of which - rather happily - I'd charged only that afternoon after finding them to be completely and utterly flat.

Once again, the moon proved to be far too bright for the "night sky" setting, but by spinning the dial I managed to find a setting that worked reasonably well, and got a snapshot that I'm relatively happy with, even if it's never going to impress any "proper" photographers.

But the fact that it was born out of chaos and much frantic leaping about will always make the story behind that beautiful moment very memorable to me.

Oh, and apparently Germany won the football in "extra time" (whatever that is) which I'm told means that whoever's best at football has finally been resolved forever and there'll never be any more football.

So that's nice.

"SKY" FALL

There is, of course, the faintest of possibilities that this is just one of those rumours that made it into the newspapers (other news media outlets are available) and got spread about without there being one shred of truth in it, but it has been suggested that, with almost indecent haste, not even a year after his death, and following more than half a century of production, the BBC, in it's infinite wisdom, are "considering" (i.e. May have already decided) swinging the axe on the astronomy series "The Sky At Night."

The cynics amongst us might just think that they were just waiting for Sir Patrick to slip away before they swung that axe and put his life's work to the sword, but I don't really believe that they're quite such the corporate softies that such a decision to at least wait a while might at first suggest.

Admittedly, this quirky, little and rather "specialist" programme is something of an anomaly in the modern brioadcasting landscape but that is actually one of its charms, and considering how much it has inspired generations of astrophysicists in Britain and the World to explore the heavens, it's probably put back far more than it ever takes out and no doubt costs far less to put together than the price of the fees of one superstar appearing on another kind of "search for a star" entertainment show.

Sir Patrick and his almost boundless enthusiasm for all things astronomical might be a hard act to follow, but actually, I think the current bunch are doing a pretty good job and Chris Lintott is pretty much Sir Patrick's protege, but I do think it would be a shame to let it go... and when there are "names" like Brian May, Ben Miller, Jon Culshaw, Dara O'Briain and Ed Byrne showing an interest in all things "space-related" in the media these days, alongside the likes of Professor Brian Cox, you'd think that it ought to have a future when "science on the telly" is such a "big thing" these days...

You can understand that something that is rather a niche programme would have a lot of people wondering what all of the fuss is about and, despite the moving wallpaper that they watch on a Saturday night, looking at this little bit of "serious but fun" science and saying to themselves that it is "really boring" (or something equally original) but a public service broadcaster (with an emphasis on the "broad" part) should find ways to entertain all of its potential audiences, not just the ones for whom thinking is something that happens to other people.

So, despite the obvious risk of derision for coming out and publicly declaring my admiration for this silly little show which I enjoy so much, I clicked on the links (see below) and joined the FizzBok protest group, and I signed the petition to "save" it (much as I did when they tried to "save" Television Centre, and look what a difference that made...) not really because I expect it to make any real difference in the great scheme of things but simply because I wanted to register my objection and not let yet another of the precious icebergs that make up my life slip away without at least putting up a little bit of a fight.

I know it's eccentric, and I know that there are people who really would wonder quite what all this fuss is about, whilst equally wondering why I will put my limited support behind an issue like this whilst letting the big issues of life, death and cruelty, the famines, the disasters, the wars and the refugees, all go unremarked upon in the small scheme of my life, but that's an easy one, really.

There are already plenty of people jumping on bandwagons for the "big issues" and the big issues are always followed by yet another high profile big issue which also needs our attention, but those kinds of things are the things that pretty much everybody that matters cares about and everyone who is inclined to pitches in and does their best to help where they can.

But it is in the small things, the things that other people are prepared to let slip away on a flawed argument, like, for example, your civil liberties sailing away on a sea of "If you've got nothing to hide, you've nothing to fear" nonsense, or those quirky but fascinating minority enjoyments that the great bullying Gods of Football kick out of their way on the path to global domination of everyone's entertainment options that need to be nurtured, protected and looked after.

And... well, you've got to do something to fight for the things you love, right? And it's better to go down fighting than to just let things slip meekly away...

Perhaps a line like "Rage! Rage! Against the dying of the light" would be appropriate here, except for the fact that "The Sky At Night" is all about light, and much of it is about light coming from parts of the universe which may already be dead as far as we can tell, and all of which eventually will be, meaning that the cold, unfeeling universe is also unlikely to mark the passing of a little TV show which has always held it in the most high regard.

I know this stuff, because I learned it from watching "The Sky At Night" by the way...

http://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/the-bbc-please-do-not-axe-the-sky-at-night

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1398600837035939/#_=_

MOORE MYSTERY

One of the wicked temptations of going to the big city is the W H Smiths on Euston Station if you suddenly find you’ve got half an hour to spare before your train is likely to be boarding. So it was with me this time and I happened upon the latest edition of “The Sky at Night” magazine which was, of course, its “tribute” issue to Sir Patrick Moore.

Whilst I was mulling over whether or not I ought to buy that, given that I had a book in my pocket and that morning’s “Metro” still to read, as well as a colleague who might have been in the mood for an “After-Show” chat, I also noticed the “Special Edition” celebrating his life which was sitting next to it on the magazine racks and so, quite suddenly and unexpectedly, I simply had to, had to, get both, so I picked them up, went over to the counter and paid for them with the last of my cash.

To be fair, I did, at least, resist the other “Special Edition” that was also sitting nearby; Their “Guide to Astronomical Photography” (but I guess there’s still time for me to change my mind about that…)

Anyway, I managed to get onto my train and our seat allocations meant that my colleague was far enough away from me to be able escape my mutterings and musings and try to have a nap, so I opened up my shiny new magazines to have a bit of a read…

Tucked inside the front of my freshly bought “Special Edition” was a hand-written note which was dated nearly two weeks earlier and said:

“Robert, In a moment of madness I bought this from W H Smiths today for you. I am, you may be surprised, watching the Astronomy Series on BBC2 – Absolutely fascinating (Some info way beyond me!) Some learned odd looking bods. Cx”

“That’s odd…” I thought.

Did this mean that my exciting new purchase was actually second-hand?

Had “Robert” or “C” returned it to the W H Smiths for a refund…?

Had W H Smiths managed to sell the thing twice…? (I know that there’s a recession on, but really…)

Then there were other possibilities to consider…

Had “Robert” been so appalled by this mad old gesture that he had returned the magazine to the racks rather than admit to some kind of connection to the thoughtful “C”…?

Had “C” suddenly had a change of heart having decided to buy this token, and thought better of publicly admitting to some kind of affection for “Robert”…?

It seemed odd to me that someone would tuck a note inside such a thing (even if they intended it as a gift) before they actually paid for it, even if they had suddenly found that they didn’t have enough pennies with them when they got to the counter.

Perhaps there are mysterious forces afoot in the lives of “Robert” and “C”…? Perhaps they are having some kind of illicit affair and a strong dose of common sense finally overtook the momentary rush of blood to the head of this rash opportunity to make a public display of their previously strictly private liaisons with all its attendant risks of finally providing hard evidence…?

Or maybe “Robert” doesn’t even know that he is the object of someone else’s affections and “C” suddenly got cold feet…

Maybe “C” just dropped the thing as she was dashing for a train and someone just popped it back onto the racks...?

After all those other ideas, that would be all rather mundane and disappointing, wouldn’t it…?

So many possibilities, so many strange “goings on” in the world of Amateur Astronomy, it almost leaves you giddy at the intrigue and deviousness that could be going on somewhere in the great unknown…

It will, I’m sure, remain a mystery, but it added a few minutes of allowing my imagination to roam free as I made my journey home…

SIR PATRICK

It’s not been the greatest of years for those of us with an interest in all matters space-related. Earlier on in the year we lost both Sir Bernard Lovell of “Jodrell Bank” fame and the first man on the moon, Neil Armstrong. Then, earlier on this month, we also lost the noted “amateur astronomer” and xylophone-playing eccentric Sir Patrick Moore, a man who had probably done more to encourage and inspire generations of astronomers, both amateur and professional alike, than anyone else in the field.

I didn’t feel the need to write about it at the time. After all, despite the obvious surprise and sense of loss of a man who was so familiar because he appeared on our televisions pretty much every month since 1957, it has to be said that during his more recent appearances he had not been looking well and, despite the very best efforts of “The Sky at Night” team to work around him at his house, “Farthings” (“far things” you see…?), every month, little of what he was saying was very understandable any more.

But Sir Patrick was great. There were more than a few eyebrows raised at the amount of love and affection being thrown in the direction of the old curmudgeon after his demise, mostly from people appalled by his views on politics and women, and whilst his personal opinions probably didn’t play all that well to our modern. More “politically correct” ears, as far as I can tell, he never used his position to try and influence his “Sky at Night” audience with his views.

With Sir Patrick it was all about the astronomy, and the astronomy was all that mattered.

When you find out about the huge tragedy in his personal life, and the loss of his much-loved fiancée during the war, it is a little easier to understand his suspicions of the European union, and why he buried himself in his work.

And what a legacy it was.

Not only did he help to map the moon and therefore help to make the lunar landings in the 1960s and 1970s actually possible, but he is widely believed to be the only man to have met three key pioneering figures in the world of flight and space exploration – the first man to fly, the first man in space, and the first man on the moon, Orville Wright, Yuri Gagarin and Neil Armstrong.

In 1945, this “gifted amateur” was elected a fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society and in 1977 he was awarded the society’s Jackson-Gwilt Medal. In 1968, he was made an OBE which was promoted to a CBE in 1988. In 2001, he was knighted, and also appointed an Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society, the only amateur astronomer ever to achieve this distinction. In June 2002, he was appointed as the honorary vice president of the Society for the History of Astronomy, and was presented with a BAFTA award for services to television. The University of Leicester’s Department of Physics and Astronomy awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science degree in 1996, and a Distinguished Honorary Fellowship in 2008, which is the highest award UoL can give.

He wrote dozens of books (some estimate more than a thousand) designed to ignite the interest of other gifted (and not-so-gifted) amateurs, a fair few more in the world of fiction, which I remember enjoying as a young boy recovering from having my tonsils removed, and the “Yearbook of Astronomy” each year for nearly fifty years. Unhappily I had only picked up a copy of the latest “The Sky at Night” book whilst mooching around in a garden centre last week (and decided not to buy it, it having been during the infamous Christmas Gift no-buy “zone” at the time. I ordered myself a copy later.) and got home in time to hear the statement announcing of his death on the 9th of December 2012.

“After a short spell in hospital last week, it was determined that no further treatment would benefit him, and it was his wish to spend his last days in his own home, Farthings, where he today passed on, in the company of close friends and carers and his cat Ptolemy. Over the past few years, Patrick, an inspiration to generations of astronomers, fought his way back from many serious spells of illness and continued to work and write at a great rate, but this time his body was too weak to overcome the infection which set in a few weeks ago. He was able to perform on his world record-holding TV Programme The Sky at Night right up until the most recent episode. His executors and close friends plan to fulfil his wishes for a quiet ceremony of interment, but a farewell event is planned for what would have been his 90th birthday in March 2013.”

Anyway, in these days when several of our broadcasting giants have been found to have feet of clay, it was good to know that there was still one television icon who we could still regard with a certain amount of respect, even if the Twitterati did feel the need to drag up a few of his less-than-wise opinions as sticks to beat him with.

As the other big-haired celebrity astronomer (and part-time guitarist) Brian May said:

“Patrick was the last of a lost generation, a true gentleman, the most generous in nature that I ever knew, and an inspiration to thousands in his personal life, and to millions through his 50 years of unique broadcasting. It's no exaggeration to say that Patrick, in his tireless and ebullient communication of the magic of astronomy, inspired every British astronomer, amateur and professional, for half a century. There will never be another Patrick Moore. But we were lucky enough to get one.”

I couldn’t have put it better myself… (and didn’t…)

As to the future of “The Sky at Night” well, who can tell? It’s been fairly obvious that his fellow presenters have been bearing the bulk of the load for the past few years, but as to whether this quiet “broadcasting institution” can survive in the modern television era (despite quietly and efficiently having gone about its business for the past 55 years) remains to be seen, but I do hope that it manages to continue despite the loss of its greatest and most enthusiastic supporter, originator and presenter.

Somehow that seems as if it would be his most suitable memorial.

STARDISC

Things to do and see...

I was watching “The Sky at Night” the other evening and the young presenters that are still full of whatever passes for “vim” and “vigour” in astronomy circles were “out and about” and away from their usual studio (at Patrick Moore’s house, I believe) and they happened to turn up at the new “StarDisc” sculpture in Wirksworth in Derbyshire which looks to be a rather impressive way of representing the night sky to those of us who look up, can just about work out where the Orion constellation is, and then struggle to get our bearings after that.

I mean, I’ve got the Star Map on the wall upstairs, I’ve got at least three books about the night sky, I’ve got a Planisphere, and I’ve even got one of those little telescope thingies that’s supposed to help you identify them all, but still, take me outside the limits of the mighty hunter and I’m very quickly lost.

What I really need, I suppose, is to spend a clear, dark night outside with someone who knows what they’re talking about, but I don’t suppose that’s likely to ever happen once I’ve battened down the hatches, cranked up the heating, made a hot beverage, and put the TV on…

The difficulty with a large outdoor display of the night sky is that it’s probably best seen in daylight and yet would be most use in darkness, which is the constant dilemma with the little books and gadgets I have. It’s usually too flippin’ dark to read the instructions, and the light pollution caused by pointing a torch at the page – never easy when you’re trying to hold it open in your gloved paws – usually finds the spirit of the blitz being reference with a hearty “Put that light out!!!”

I do seem to remember that there did used to be clear “bubble” style umbrellas you could buy that had the starfields printed upon them in luminous inks, but I don’t suppose you can still get those anymore, what with the radioactivity, and health and safety, and whatnot…

This problem has been addressed in the sculpture, which is 12 metres across and has been carved out of black granite and, at night, is illuminated by 72 lights which, rather poetically, are powered by solar energy. Around the edges are twelve seats carved out of grey granite and, like in all planispheres, where you choose to sit, and the direction you are viewing both the named constellations carved into the surface of the sculpture, and the night sky itself, depends upon what time of the year it is.

So, if you are looking for a place to go, the StarDisc can be found at Stoney Wood in Wirksworth, Derbyshire, DE4 4EN (if you need to programme your SatNav…), overlooking the Ecclesbourne Valley, and is open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week throughout the year. It is described as being a 21st century stone circle and amphitheatre designed to inspire, entertain, engage and educate and, to quote the artist Aidan Shingler himself:

“I approached this project from an artistic perspective rather than a scientific perspective. Throughout my life I have been enchanted by the mystery and magic of the stars. My interest in the stars lies with our emotional response to them; their power to ignite our imagination and sense of wonder. The inspiration for the StarDisc stems from a vision to create environments where people from all walks of life can gather, contemplate, and connect with whatever lies beyond the sphere of our world. The StarDisc is a temple without walls.”

You can find out more at: http://www.stardiscenterprise.co.uk

STAR

“If you were a star, what kind of star would you be…?”

I’m usually completely rubbish at answering questions like that when they’re thrown at me. I suppose, if you were being kind, you might suggest that I like to think about such things for a little while before rushing to give a definitive answer, but I suspect it’s more likely that I’m just suspicious of the frivolous question, or, perhaps, just even more wary of giving the frivolous answer.

This is another of those instances in life where the idea that something is “Just a bit of fun…” tends to derail my thinking processes. In the past I have been known to rail against many things that I just couldn’t see the point of only to have those same five words flung back at me as if they explained everything…

I had an appraisal once, a very long time ago, where it was said that I might not say a lot, but when I do, it’s usually significant because I’ve obviously been thinking about whatever it is I said for quite some time.

Oh how times change…

I bet there are one or two people out there who might wish really hard for that particular state of my being to reassert itself, instead of having to listen to (or read about) the prattling fool that turned out to be the disappointing upgrade to that version of me, but there you go, we seem to be stuck with it now, at least until the next big system crash where I have to reboot the system or reinstall the operating system and return to the factory settings.

So…

“If you were a flower, what kind of a flower do you think you’d be…?”

I’d have to think about it…

“If you were an animal / a bird / a vegetable…”

I really need to think about it…

“If you were a…”

Look! I told you that I’d have to think about it…

Animals… Birds… Vegetables… It’s far too difficult for me to narrow down the various traits that every single one of them might have in common with me, so I end up being non-committal or refusing to play along, whilst simultaneously considering just how much DNA I actually share with the average banana. Perhaps it’s because, in the end, I really don’t know myself all that well. Either that or I simply don’t know enough about the natural world to be able to pluck exactly the right (or at least most appropriate) option from the vast list of possibilities on offer, so that, if I were to play along and choose a particular kind of dog, like, for example, a Dalmation, because it’s the first thing that pops into my mind, it’s a rather ridiculous thing to do when the rest of the room takes one look at me and thinks “Dachshund…”

Perhaps a better game would be “If I were a [???], what kind of a [???] do YOU think I’d be…”

But I think that, after a great deal of thought (and a corresponding amount of documentary watching) I’ve managed to narrow down what kind of star that I think I’m most like…

It’s a Red Giant…

After all, when you think about it, it’s almost a perfect fit. Something existing in a bloated state in its late middle age, well past it’s prime, and getting ever older after most of its useful work is done, whilst doing its level best to destroy that which it once nurtured, being not quite so hot as it once was, making a point of drawing attention to itself by trying to seem brighter than everything around it, and, ultimately mostly exhausted.

That all sounds very familiar, does it not…? Most appropriate, I believe, although, maybe you all had me down as a White Dwarf…

SOME BIG STUPID QUESTIONS

I should think that it ought to be pretty obvious to anyone who’s ever visited these pages over the last couple of years, and indeed, anyone who’s ever actually met me, that I am no scientist and I’m certainly no mathematician. Whilst I can still do a number of fairly difficult equations in my head to calculate percentages and angles and how much my shopping is going to come out at, the language of equations tends to be fairly meaningless to me unless someone is going through it all very slowly, and even then I’m just as likely to forget most of the process just as soon as the kettle boils, and the energy added to the molecules of the water has agitated them just enough for them to reach the critical moment of the state of change that usually occurs at or around one hundred degrees centigrade mark, give or take a few variables.

Given that I trained in the arts, I suppose that’s really not all that surprising. After all, despite everything, I still meet people who presume that art is what the “stupid” kids did at school instead of learning the real and important stuff. Art teachers still get tarred with much the same brush too, as I found recently as I bristled my way to work after a minister talking about raising the educational standards of teachers made a point of stressing that “…even art teachers…” would need these capabilities in future.

Imbecile! I wonder who taught him…? Some of the wisest and cleverest people I’ve ever known were art teachers…

Mind you, I’ve never been all that brilliant at the arts, either. My paintings were always “adequate” and I’ve been “good enough” to get by in my career. I was once considered “well-read” although it turns out that I’ve read little that is considered “worthy”. My writing borders upon the turgid and is, at best, derivative. Nowadays I find anyone “gushing” on about the process of acting positively sets my teeth on edge, and my philosophy tends to be little deeper than to be of the “I reckon” variety that I find so tiresome in the rest of the world these days.

I am, when it all boils down to it, a bit of an ignorant philistine.

I mention all of this because I had a flash of inspiration a few days ago, forged, no doubt in the big bang of my own misunderstandings. A few simple thoughts based upon the woolliest of understandings of a few scientific ideas gleaned from one or two documentaries on BBC4 that most real scientists and thinkers would obviously dismiss as the random ravings of an idiot.

But, nevertheless, they kind of made sense to me, which probably says a lot.

Now, because of the circles I fail to move in, I’m unlikely to ever actually get the chance to sit down with an actual genuine scientist and ask these questions, or make these points, so instead, I’m just going to tap them out here and leave them festering as little puzzles for whoever might happen to come across them one day as they’re idly pottering around unable to sleep on the night before they get their Nobel prize…

I kind of understand, for example, that for the super-symmetry model to work in a perfect universe, there would be no room for life to exist because the symmetry of the mass, the energy and the forces would immediately be cancelled out by the anti-mass, the anti-energy and the anti-forces, and that that’s where the Higgs field comes into play, but does that really mean that all of the stuff that we can see in the universe is only the result of the errors in the system….?

That life itself is the “butterfly wing” causing our chaotic universe…?

Perhaps this means that there is no other life out there after all, because the rest of the universe is in harmony and it’s just the presence of things like the Earth itself that is the fly in the ointment… We just can’t see the bigger picture because we’re sitting here upon what is ostensibly the problem, hurtling through eternity on a rocky error, and contributing to some kind of huge cosmic joke whilst looking back at the results of the mistake, trying to find answers to which we ourselves are the problem.

Or maybe it’s just the galaxies and stars and planets collectively that are the errors. The very things that we are looking at are the mistakes and the things that are most removed from the mean, and we should be pointing all of our telescopes at the spaces in between them if we really want to know what’s actually going on.

The thing about super-symmetry appears to be that, in the words of that old Sammy Cahn lyric “You can’t have one without the other” and so the absence of one, always means the absence of both, so that the search for the Higgs seems to involve looking for not one but two unlikely events occurring at precisely the same time, and also looking for two things that ought not to be happening at all if the system was perfectly in balance.

Basically, it seems to me that, not only have I once again displayed my massive ignorance about the whole subject when I really ought to be just shutting up and keeping quiet about things that I really don’t understand (Ah! Once again my entire childhood flashes before my eyes…) but also that if I understand it correctly, then the entire universe and our place within it is all a bit of a mistake and, suddenly, a great deal of things start to make a lot of sense.

LISTEN UP

I seldom manage to work myself up into a state of real anger about the news agenda any more. I may get miffed, I sometimes get irked, and I’m often irritated by it, of course, as anyone who has more than a passing familiarity with these pages could no doubt confirm, but I’m seldom made angry by it. After all, I just don’t seem have the energy any more. I’ve retired, defeated, from the ring in the realisation that it’s a hopeless cause, and come to the inevitable conclusion that for me to try and change the way things are in this vacuous modern world of ours is just a waste of time and effort.

On Tuesday the 6th of August this year, however, a sad event was announced which managed to annoy me in ways which I wouldn’t have been able to predict that morning when I got up to face the day.

I just happened to be sipping my mid-morning cup of coffee and idly kicked up Twitter to see what the world had been chatting about whilst I’d been tweaking and twiddling around with some design work.

Rather sadly, I chose the exact minute when Jodrell Bank made its sad announcement of the death of its founder, Sir Bernard Lovell, that rather brilliant pioneer of radio astronomy, and a bona fide British genius, at the age of 98, and I found that rather unsettling and upsetting.

What was more unsettling was how long it took the primary British news broadcaster to announce the story. ITN and Sky were fairly quick off the mark, and the University of Manchester, where he did much of his pioneering work, had an announcement up within minutes, but BBC News were, rather ironically, focussing their radar on a man not managing to jump far enough in a sand-pit and continued to fret about that for another two hours before they finally announced the “breaking news” of the passing of a truly great Briton, knighted more than fifty years ago for services to something far more fundamental than being able to go a bit faster than someone else.

He was, of course, a very old man, and, despite the great leaps and strides made in recent years, and the rip-roaring triumph of that remote landing on Mars the very same week, science still struggles to be considered “sexy” to the news media outlets, and it is very difficult to get the BBC to admit at the moment that there is anything other than the Olympic Games happening in the world, but there really was no excuse for their tardiness in announcing to the world the passing of someone of whom we could justifiably be very proud and who quite rightly deserved to be called a “legend”.

After all this was a man who helped develop the radar system that was part of what made our shores safer from invasion during the second world war and without whom… Oh, so very much really.

A man who built himself a static 60 metre parabolic dish just to prove a point, before raising the funds to build his masterpiece (only relatively recently renamed the Lovell Telescope), the radio telescope at the Jodrell Bank observatory, which is still at the forefront of astronomical research and one of the foremost astronomical radio telescopes in the world more than fifty years after it was first built with an expected lifespan of perhaps at best fifteen years.

Back when it was first completed in 1957, Jodrell Bank was able to prove its worth shortly afterwards by being able to track and confirm the orbit of the first Russian Sputnik at the start of the “Space Age” and Sir Bernard and his team (he was already well-known enough to give his first name to Professor Quatermass in 1953) were able to intercept the signals from the Soviet Luna probe and trump the Russians by being the first to show their pictures of the dark side of the moon, but since then, the work started in that field in Cheshire has taught us so much about the nature of the universe and our place within it that we should be grateful every single day that we had minds that were enquiring enough and fascinated enough to think beyond our little planet and make it possible for humanity to go out there and explore it.

I only hope that someone was able to tell him about the success of “Curiosity” and that he understood what had happened out there before he left us.

Sir Bernard Lovell, 31st August 1913 – 6th August 2012.

CLEAR SKIES

My! The sky was beautifully clear the other night as the cosmos danced its graceful dance against a sea of deepest indigo, without a cloud to block the view. Sadly, the limitations of my photographic skills and equipment are always most demonstrated by my attempts at taking pictures of the stars, so instead I’ve done you a quick drawing on the computer of what I saw. A bright new moon hung above the horizon towards the south-west with its crescent pointing towards the sun which picked out the features on its surface making them ironically possibly more visible than they are during a full moon.

Below it, the bright discs of two of our nearby planets could be seen so clearly even with the naked eye. They’re the ones that look like very bright stars but don’t seem to be doing any “twinkling” if you decide to go and take a look. The one that appears larger is the smaller of the two but, as Father Ted might have put it “Venus is small, but Jupiter is far away…”

If you look in the other direction, the bright reddish dot that you might see in the sky is Mars and I’ve been told that, if you’re very quick (which I seldom am these days) you can even spot the frantic little planet that we call Mercury hanging around near to the sun just after it sets.

Beyond all that, the constellations of the stars were about as clear as they are possible to be and as we arrived home after another late-evening run to the station for me (after having been abandoned again in favour of more interesting social interaction…), we simply had to stop and stare at how beautiful it all was. So much so, in fact, that it seemed a shame to go indoors.

This, of course, is at a time when the evening sunshine has already left and the sun-worshippers have packed up their barbecues and only the most determined (or maybe the most drunk) remain outdoors chatting away. There’s also the added advantage that a clear night at this time of year doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll be scraping the ice off the car’s windscreen in the morning, so it’s a bit of a “win-win” if you like such things.

I’m always surprised about the relative position of the moon in the sky. Here where I grew up, the lunar cycle from  “new” to “full” and beyond goes from right to left, but in other parts of the world you grow up with it seeming perfectly “normal” for that sequence to go from top to bottom, right to left, or bottom to top. This all seems perfectly normal if it’s just the way you’ve always seen the moon, but doesn’t half seem odd to any visitors who pay attention to such things.

This, I suppose, was some of the “evidence” that finally convinced the early astronomers about how the Earth moved through space once we started moving about on this planet instead of living our entire lives in one little village, which probably helps to prove the old adage that travel really does broaden the mind.

As the planets get closer and closer to the much-talked about (and feared?) alignment, they are giving us a stunning display as they sit there, shining brightly in the evening skies. Granted they’re not hanging there quite like the huge (and gravitationally improbable) discs that are painted in the sky in film and TV science fiction, so it might be a slight problem to persuade any children that you might be eager to inspire that this is quite such a fantastic thing.

Well, not unless you get the telescope out.

We were recently in a nature reserve looking out towards the ocean and doing a bit of whale-watching, and both got terribly excited at seeing momentary water-spouts erupt on the distant horizon. Sadly, however, one of the Park Rangers was chatting to us later and said that it’s very difficult to persuade their younger visitors about how wonderful this actually is. She blamed the “Discovery” Channel for having raised their expectations when it comes to seeing whales. Somehow a distant spurt of water doesn’t impress when they want full hi-definition slo-mo of the whale-tails rearing up as they dive, and, I suspect it’s a similar problem with stargazing.

Somehow, the back garden astronomer is never going to compete with the images taken by the Hubble space telescope, but that’s not really the point. If it’s dark enough and clear enough, the night sky is just a thing of beauty in itself.

MIDNIGHT SUN

Astronomical rule number one: There is one universal truth in that stars will die.

Astronomical rule number two: There is nothing human beings can do about rule number one.

Stars are the engines of the universe. These huge bubbling balls of superheated gas burn for so many years that we find it difficult to comprehend the timescales involved, and with such an intensity that the pressures and forces within are enough to transform matter and create all of the other elements including the ones that are necessary to build people like you and me.

They are the necessary raging infernos that create the stable gravity fields and other circumstances that make any form of life even possible. Without them we are quite literally nothing and all of the matter that makes up our tiny insignificant bodies was once born in the blazing heart of an exploding star. We are, as the man said, literally stardust.

But whether your preference is for the poetic or the scientific, rule number one still applies.

Light from the distant stars can take thousands or even millions of years to reach us, meaning that we are only ever really looking at things as they once were and not as they are now. Any of the stellar phenomenon that we are able to witness will have happened so long ago that they are probably over, and it is perfectly possible that many of the stars we see in the sky that guide our ships or, if you choose to believe such things, our destinies are not even there any more and haven’t been for as long as humanity has mapped the skies above its head.

We form then into patterns and constellations and they are so far away that those constellations still look exactly the same whether you’re standing on the moon or whizzing around in an orbiting space station, but all of the constituent parts might be as far from each other as they appear to us to be from here.

I sometimes wonder what constellation our own tiny diamond in the sky is part of when you gaze back upon us from Rigel or Epsilon or Betelgeuse? Sometimes I wonder what the creatures of Rigel or Epsilon or Betelgeuse would even call themselves. Probably not Rigellans, or Epsilonians or Betelgeusians, I’m sure. Whatever it is, it is unlikely to be in a form that we truly understand, no matter how many gold records we clamp to our deep space probes with the general sense of hope that our friendly aliens might have record players that spin at exactly 33 and one third RPM. After all, even now there aren’t that many record players of that type in the average home, and many of us struggle with other languages spoken by people who we share our planet, our DNA and our basic fundamental similarities with.

Actually, if our predictions are correct, we’d better hope that the Betelgeusians have got themselves the hell out of there, assuming that they were ever there in the first place, although, with the cycle of starlife being what it is, if they were ever there, its likely that they were extinct billions of years ago anyway.

Alas, poor Betelgeusians. We never knew thee… Your crimson skies and silver smoke are lost for all time, as your red giant flickers at the top right hand corner of what we think of as Orion. One day, possibly quite soon now, that red flicker in our skies will burst into bright light and outshine everything else in the night sky for a few short weeks as a kind of midnight sun, one last glorious hurrah, before you flicker and fade to memory and we start to redraw our starcharts.

Because, like everything, stars will age and become weaker. This is not the sort of thing that happens overnight of course. The entire span of human history might play out as we gaze upon a red giant going through its protracted death throes, but all stars start to get old, just as one day ours will. When its fuel starts to burn out, its gravity field weakens and so it expands and consumes anything orbiting relatively closely to it. When this happens to our sun, that will basically be the proverbial “it” for planet Earth and it will be perhaps left to the Epsilonians or the Rigellans to lament our passing.

Once that has happened, massive gravitational forces will cause the sun to collapse in on itself and release a massive burst of radiation that might outshine an entire galaxy for a very short while, burning as much fuel in those last few weeks (or whatever its observers, if any, might call their segments of time) as it did during its entire lifetime, and then it will be all but gone, blasting out all those various elements, all the atoms that made up you and me and our entire solar system into the universe around us, maybe one day to form part of a new cradle of life orbiting a star that hasn’t even been born as yet.

You can currently see a supernova burning if you look up on a clear sky into the pinwheel galaxy just beyond the handle of that old astronomical favourite the Plough. I’ve not yet seen it myself as the skies around here remain almost permanently cloudy at the moment. It’s already passed the brightest its going to ever be, and being 21 million light years away it’s never going to dominate our night skies or look like anything other than just another flickering light to the naked eye, and it was dying a long, long way away whilst our distant ancestors will still working out how to walk on two feet, but, perhaps, we should take a moment to pause and watch as it passes, burning out its last message to anyone lucky enough to see it: “As am I, so you will be.”

MISSING THE METEORS

This year’s Perseid Meteor Shower peaked in the early hours of a recent Mid-August morning and, despite being fascinated by many things astronomical, and having known that they were coming from news reports I read on the internet, in the end I still failed to actually get up to have a look at yet another celestial spectacle, and point my camera at the heavens to try to get some blurry proof that I was there.

I’m just not committed enough, obviously.

I could, of course, make all the excuses. None of these would have stopped a committed stargazer like Sir Patrick Moore back in the day, of course, who presumably had the kind of single-minded dedication that led to him eventually getting that knighthood, I suppose, something I suspect I’m never likely to be under consideration for given my lack of commitment to anything very much. However, in my (rather feeble) defence, there was some talk of the moon being too bright to make any significant spectacle, and forecasts of significant cloud cover, but I suppose I should only really admit that I really, really needed to get some sleep, and, at this time of the year, the light mornings and evenings do tend to make the spectacle of the heavens a sight that I see far too little of, as the darkness coincides almost exactly to the few hours that I do seem able to sleep through.

Come the inevitable wintertime when I’m battling my way through the snow and ice on a pitch black evening, it will only be the spectacular skies above that will make any of it seem worthwhile and I will find myself gazing once more in awe at the beauty of the stars glinting away on that inky backdrop, before grumbling ever so slightly over the fact that the “glass half full” part of me will tell me that a clear and cloudless night means spectacular starscapes, and the “glass half empty” part will know that I’ll be scraping a massive amount of ice from my car windows in the morning. A small ticket price to pay, I know, for the Greatest Show on Earth, but somehow it always feels like a right royal pain come the icy dawn.

As for the Perseids, well, there’s always next year, of course, and as and when and even if I go out and buy myself a proper telescope maybe I’ll finally have a genuine excuse to sit up half the night. Telescopes are, after all, relatively cheap to buy I’ve recently discovered. Not a pittance, though, and not the sort of thing you might find inside a Christmas Cracker or a Kinder Surprise egg, but a lot cheaper than I always thought they were when other, more privileged kids had such things when I was the kind of nipper who could only squint at the sparkling skies in wonder. I’ve had my eye on a little portable number that might double as a bird-spotting scope, and I think that I might yet be sorely tempted, if I choose to sacrifice some other treat for a while. After all, for sake of just a few quid, I get the the chance of seeing the whole universe in return. I imagine that some chilly nights sitting in a deckchair with a flask of coffee at my side might soon be on the cards.

Maybe Napoleon was right, about us being a nation of shopkeepers, because a nation of such needs people to actually go shopping, preferable without the aid of a housebrick,  to make the system work, and so everything really does seem to come back to shopping in the end.